While the house was being painted…

While our house was being painted, Jac and I stayed at Jac’s mum’s place. On the first night, she cooked up a delicious dinner for us all. To start the meal, Mexican bean and chicken soup. She got the recipe from a Woolworth’s catalogue. She served the soup with bake-at-home bread rolls. I love these bake-at-home bread rolls, hot and fresh out of the oven and spread with butter. They’re crusty on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside. The soup was chunky-style, which I much prefer over smooth, blended soup any day. In the soup were beans, chicken pieces, tomato, red capsicum, carrot and onion. I would’ve liked another bowl, but didn’t want to get too full from the starter!

Main course was corned silverside with vegetables. This is a dish I only ever eat at Pattycake’s, and I love it. The silverside and vegetables are served with a mustardy white sauce. I especially love the big chunks of cooked potato. There was no dessert, but we were full and very satisfied when we were done – all that we needed was a nice cup of tea to end the meal. :)

The next day, Jac dropped me off at work again, and I grabbed myself a toasted ham, cheese and egg sandwich for breakfast. As soon as I unwrapped the sandwich I wasn’t thrilled to see the egg, which was cooked very hard! Overall, it tasted pretty good – I liked the chewy cheese and the ham, but the powdery egg yolk wasn’t to my taste at all. And there was no sauce in the sandwich – gooey rather than hard eggs would’ve been much better. It was quite a dry sandwich.

That evening, Pattycakes had dinner plans with her friends, so Jac grabbed us a Nando’s Party Pack for Two for dinner. We’ve had the Party Pack for Two before – you get two quarter chickens (with drumsticks), two chicken thigh pieces and two chicken tenderloins. Like the last time, I ordered the chicken basted with the BBQ marinade rather than the standard peri peri. We got two small sides with the chicken – garden salad and chips.

I can never have too much chicken.

We assembled ourselves plates of chicken, chips and salad as Jac’s mum got ready to go out.

The chips were freshly cooked, crisp and well salted.

The chicken was all saucy, succulent and finger-suckingly, lip-lickingly perfect.

The next day, Jac dropped me off at work again, and I grabbed another chicken and vegetable pie for breakfast.

This was even better than the square lunch bar one – bigger chunks of chicken and a very tasty thick gravy.

I bought a big cup of tea from a coffee stand. I also grabbed a lemon and coconut bar to eat with the tea. The coconut was great, and the bar was buttery good, but I thought the lemon flavour in the frosting could’ve been a lot stronger. I like lemon-flavoured things to be very lemony, otherwise I think, why bother?

We were due to go back to our house that night. Jac had hockey that evening and told me I’d have to get my own dinner that night. So at lunch time, I grabbed two takeaway meals – one for lunch, and one for dinner! This was lunch – ginger chicken and garlic vegetables with stir-fried rice noodles. The chicken was tender and very gingery, the vegetables visibly garlicky.

For dinner, I bought more of the ginger chicken, with steamed bok choy and rice. After I tasted the ginger chicken in my lunch, I really looked forward to eating the ginger chicken again for my dinner. :)

These next two photos technically don’t belong in this post as I ate the food featured in them after the house had been painted. But this next item, a mushroom quiche, I had for breakfast the next day, because it was convenient to do so. The quiche was eggy and loaded with champignons, fantastic for a lover of eggs and mushrooms.

For lunch that day, butter chicken, with green beans and capsicum and rice. The butter chicken didn’t really have that rich, creamy moreishness that really good butter chicken has. I was a little disappointed. But the green beans were wonderful. They were shiny, studded with garlic and called out “Eat me!”