Weekend eats

Lots of cooking happened in my kitchen this weekend.

It started with three fresh ripe strawberries we picked off our potted plant.
We shared, 1 1/2 strawberries each, sliced over a bowl of cereal. In my bowl is Vita Brits, Tropical Muesli, and Corn Flakes, with low-fat soy milk.
For dinner on Friday, Andy made some 'Kung Pao Seitan', based on a recipe from the back of a noodle package. We subbed seitan for pork, added extra veggies like Chinese Broccoli, mushrooms, and carrots.
Saturday breakfast was more sharing. We split a bakery hot dog bun, topped with avocado. We shared a bakery fruit bun (most Woolie's and Cole's are vegan, check the ingredients list) with nuttlex, cinnamon, and vanilla sugar. We split a tomato and cooked it under the griller. And we split a round of watermelon, cut into wedges here. Sharing food is a good way to get lots of variety and start your day off right :-)
What to cook for dinner the night before the markets? We had a bit of wilty Chinese Broccoli (marked down to $0.85), two limp carrots, a BIG capsicum, a small handful of fresh mushrooms, and some green beans. We added to that with some pantry items: dried shiitake mushrooms, and udon noodles.
They were combined in the wok with lots of ginger, some garlic, chilli flakes (dried from our chilli plant), and a sauce of golden syrup, apple cider vinegar, and soy sauce. The combination of sweet and tart was delicious, and the kick of ginger rounded the whole thing off.For dessert? SusanV's Pineapple Coffee Cake (thanks, Amey, for pointing it out!). When I made this, Andy thought I had to add coffee to the batter. Apparently coffee cake doesn't exist in Australia; here, it's tea cake. Regardless, this cake was delicious. My version had extra goodies for the topping--desiccated coconut and almond meal. High fat, I know, but delicious. The cake got moister and yummier the second day.
Sunday afternoon. I think Andy was bored. He cooked up a feast of Mexican Lasagna. Between layers of tortilla was refried beans, carrot, eggplant and tomato. The whole thing was topped with slices of fresh tomato, BBQ sauce, and some sliced black olives. When it came out of the oven we topped it with avocado (which takes the place of cheesy toppings really well!).
Those pumpkin wedges in the background? They are still to come. Andy cut slits in them and stuffed them with rosemary. While the oven was on, we baked those, as well as some sweet potato, and two baked potatoes for later in the week. Doubling up on oven meals is sorta what we do; it's cheap, it's efficient, and it keeps the house cooler later in the week!