Friday, January 23, 2009

When the Cat's Away....

....or in this case the kids!

Mum took the kids for the weekend - yeehaaaa! Believe me I kind of needed a wee break!
Normally their Dad takes them somewhere for a couple of weeks over Christmas , but this year he'd recently had a 7 week vacation in Australia, USA & Europe with his partner instead, & doesn't seem to have had much time available off work to spend with the kids. Never mind ;o)

Anyway: + two adults - two kids = go anywhere, do anything & eat whatever you like time (around here anyway). Exciting aren't we?

We went shopping - food shopping at the supermarket at the Mall ....& to the Asian food Warehouse. We'd decided to treat ourselves to easy grazing types of food while the kids were away & needed to stock up on essential items like Olive oil, chick peas, nuts, certain herbs & bulghur wheat to do so.
The Mailleman say's he isn't taking me again. Apparently I am worse than going to a supermarket with kids.





OK, so I may have taken a few detours that involved clothes shops & changing rooms at the mall, I think he was kind of expecting that anyway as I had mentioned something about synthetic board shorts melting when hot glass landed on them & jeans just being a bit too hot to sit & torch in at this time of year.

But I definately came into my own at The Asian Food Warehouse.

OK so a packet of fruit burst sweets had hopped their way into my the basket at the supermarket & the new seasons Apricots were just to juicy & ripe looking to walk past without picking up a few.
Really, is it my fault that the Bulghur Wheat, Chickpeas & Tahini that needed to be picked up from the Asian Food Warehouse had incense sticks, tissues that were too reasonable to resist, & two different types of talcum powder (I couldn't decide which I liked best) & the most divine smelling freshly ground Moroccan Spices added to them?
I think not!

But I digress. We got home & the food preparation began. Realising we had no ground cumin I set the mailleman to do the heavy work with the whole cumin we have.



An hour or so later we had our 'grazing' food, rather substantial quantities of it in fact enough so as some could be stored for the next couple of days for further grazing, my favourite type of food - Tabbouli, Hummus & Dukka.



Some light refreshment to go with that & I was replete from head to feet!



Something else you can do when the kiddos are away - break all the rules & put your feet up on the coffee table!!!
(Actually I only did this for the photo , I can never relax with my feet up on a table so I guess some things ingrained into my system! lol!)

Ahh you just know you've reached middle age when a fun night without kids is food & Some good British Comedy on TV ;o)

5 comments:

angelinabeadalina said...

Ah, bliss! Enjoy it, you two :)

Patty said...

Sounds like you had a wonderful time. I'm intrigued by Dukka! What is this exotic food?

Deb said...

Patti - hi! Oh if you like spices & nuts you'd like Dukka. Basically it's a (Egyptian in origin) blend of different crushed nuts, seeds & spices. The blend can vary depending on the recipe you use. You can either use it as a garnish through salads & other dishes or mix with sour cream as a dip...or the best way is to serve with a variety of flat breads & olive oil (or oil of choice) & dip the bread quickly in the oil & then in the Dukka then quickly propel towards your mouth! (The speed is needed only because it's so yummy!!)

rosebud101 said...

That meal sounds wonderful to me! Why didn't you invite me? Glad you enjoyed your free time!

ShellyD said...

I'm liking the looksie of all this exotic food. Ooh more reason to pack our bags and head to your neck of the woods.

My hubby said it's in the fine print of the contract and does not say much when we end up going to this shop and that when we were only going to one place. LOL

YUmmy!! Yummy!! Yummy!!