Red Spinach Pancakes

I'm home alone for a little while as my husband has left on his summer holiday. He is going to the UK for a wedding and to see his friends and family. I, meanwhile, am here in Hong Kong, working again. The beginning of the school year is busy, and I am spending late nights at work. I don't have much time for making meals. And now that Anthony is gone I don't feel as much motivation, either! Producing a big meal seems a waste. Instead I'm eating simple things such as these vegetable pancakes.

With the hubby away, I also like to try out new vegetables. Check out this vibrant red spinach.

whole grain onion flatbread

Possibly the easiest flatbread ever, and also 100% whole grain. Just whisk together, let it rest while the oven warms up, then pop it in. Simple.

Now, equally easy: describing something as 100% whole grain when it is, in fact, all whole grain. Or saying that a colleague gave 100% effort when they did actually do so. Why do some people say that they gave 110% effort?

summer squash and carrot pancakes

I'm reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating by Barbara Kingsolver for the Kitchen Reader book club later this month. I won't spoil the whole book, but, in one sentence, the book is about a family that decided to eat only locally grown and produced food for a year. It's fascinating, and at the end of the month you can expect a full review.

Locally grown food is a difficult idea for me at the moment since Hong Kong is a city that doesn't produce (much?) of its own food. Everything is from elsewhere. My milk frustration is one example of trying to find a local solution that works for me. (*Milk update below.) With vegetables I have been turning the local challenge into more of a fun game. There are plenty of local vegetables, though they are not all vegetables with which I am familiar. When I shop at the "wet market" that is a short bus ride away, there are rows of stall holders all selling mounds of green things, not all of which I recognise. I have taken to buying several veggies I recognise and then picking a few I don't. This has been a very successful strategy; with the help of The Visual Food Lover's Guide and The Vegetable Bible I usually manage to identify them in English.

Food Matters by Mark Bittman & Sweet Potato Spread

This month the Kitchen Reader book club has been reading Mark Bittman's treatise on "sane eating". I have used Bittman's recipes and ideas in the past because I love his simple style. In recent years he has become more interested in health and the environment and it has really impacted what and how he cooks. I've been inspired, so I was thrilled to read his book, Food Matters. Thanks to Elizabeth of Spike Bakes for choosing it.

He writes compellingly about the kinds of food that we can enjoy that also minimise environmental damage, expense to our health, and reduce costs for us. The first half of the book contains the evidence he provides for each of these three areas; it's hard hitting.