Inspired meals

I had a wonderful weekend on an ongoing project of mine, I guess it reflected on the kitchen. I even made my lunch!

My bf's lunch.

There was some chicken leftovers (I was so happy when I saw I didn't have to cook meat!) which I de-boned and but into bite-sized pieces and put then on a lettuce bed. Next to it there's some broccoli, sliced tomatoes, cucumber and couscous. The problem about having couscous at home is that since it's so fast to make, we make it until there's no more. I just put some couscous on a pot and cover it with boiling water (about 1 finger above the couscous) put the lid on and go finish other things. When I'm done with all of the preparations, I uncover the couscous and it's done!

Surprisingly I wanted to make my own lunch too but didn't want to eat any meat so I experimented a little:

My lunch.

From left to right there's cucumber, hijiki with lettuce underneath, some cheese rolled, olives, sliced tomatoes and broccoli. In the silicone cup underneath the tangerine was a little treat for after my exam :D some pumpkin home-made sort of jam. I don't know the name of the pumpkin in English but in Portugal we call it Gila. It's very stringy and I love the sweetness of the pumpkin itself. It's one of my favourite things to eat since I was a little kid.

While I was eating it I realized these tupperwares are perfect for salads, I've tried eating other things here but I get too full and end up eating more than needed.

I haven't posted so much recently because well, I'm kind of waiting for my things to arrive (which should arrive next month by the 22nd) so I can start improving. I am also waiting for another bento book and when I have it I will post about the books I got on X-mas all at once. Until then, I hope I keep my inspiration up and will to cook wonderful meals!

X-mas meals

And here is most of my meals for X-mas eve and day, I thought I'd share them because even for me, it was a different kind of X-mas meal than I'm used to at my home town. In Portugal there are variations of what should go to the table according to the region: some cook turkey, some lamb, salted codfish, cow meat marinated in whine and garlic, and so on... This was my grandparents' version:

There were some home-made olives, salad, cooked shrimp, whine and the seafood soup at the center

- For x-mas eve, we had seafood soup, salted codfish cooked and then baked with mashed potatoes and a few more treats on an extra table (because the dinner table was just too small (or full?:D)

The seafood soup

I forgot to take a picture at the codfish and mashed potatoes at the beggining, but I still wanted to show you (If I could I'd get you to taste a bit, it was really good) This is what was left when I remembered:

And this was the worse part, or the best:

"The extra table"

Back row: a sweet my grandma made out of almonds and sweet potato, dark dry figs, almonds and raisins, white figs.

Bottles: 2 different home-made liquors, one out of goat milk and the other one out of figs.

Front row: 2 types of olives, bolo-rei and pumpkin puffs. I couldn't find a better translation for the puffs but in portuguese it's called "filhoses".

By X-mas morning the puffs were gone and for lunch we had roasted chicken with potatoes:

We could only eat one for lunch (5 people)

I took this one just for reminding myself how I should roast mine:

This next week I'll have soups and very little or preferably no sugar and minimum amounts of food so I can burn the weekend's.

Portuguese dish

What we had for lunch today with some visitors:

This is something my grandparents used to eat on their childhood, after going to church on Saturday morning, for lunch. They're usually served with cabbage leaves and some potatoes, carrots or just bread (due to the lack of resources back then) topped with olive oil. It's not very common to see people eating these blood and rice sausages because they're very high on calories and have a lot of fat content. I personally love them but it's something I eat once a year or less.

This is how it looks on the inside:

We also got fresh olive oil, homemade, and I love it when it still hasn't settled so I thought I' show you how it looks like.

Even with the flash, you can clearly see it's not clear and in cold weather it tends to coagulate and look really bad. If i can make it freeze I'll make sure to take a picture.

This year my family got 40kg of olives: 12kg to eat and the rest to make the olive oil. Here's a little sample of the olives already sliced, cooked in garlic, salt and bay leaf. They're stored in the cooking water with all the other ingredients in.

The sausage with potatoes and cabbage is a very heavy dish. We ate about 3/4 of one of these sausages and refused to dine anything other than a light salad and an (smaller) egg. Sometimes the egg I use is smaller than most eggs. It's not a quail egg. There's a variety of small chicken that lay eggs half the size of normal chicken eggs, but they're nearly double the size of quail eggs. I got some fresh ones yesterday so we used them as they're from family members.

I might show you some more Portuguese cuisine tomorrow so stay close ^^