Brown Rice and Avocado Salad with Vietnamese Dressing

Everyday home cooking is often about using what you have on hand. Each evening when I look in the fridge and cupboards, I have to make something to eat with what I find.

Sometimes I plan a week's worth of meals and then each evening's job is easy. At other times I have no plan. But food must still be produced. And I refuse to eat (or serve) something boring. At least not more than once a week!

This super easy dinner is based on a Nigella Lawson recipe. She made it originally with black rice and prawns, but the headnotes suggested avocado as an option. I usually have leftover brown rice on hand, and I made a few substitutions in the dressing. That doesn't really matter, don't you think? As long as an interesting meal is produced and enjoyed from what is available, I am happy.

Creamy Cauliflower Soup

This soup doesn't have any cream.

This soup does have a creamy, smooth texture and taste.

Furthermore, this soup contains a full head of cauliflower, two leeks, and a potato. The potato is the secret to the creamy texture.

This warm and creamy soup could not be more satisfying in cold weather. It's easy and cheap to make. It dresses up well for company, when you can garnish it with parsley leaves, fresh ground pepper, and some sunflower seeds. It can be made in advance and reheated when needed.

This soup is the reason you need to buy cauliflower this week!

Weekend Links #26

Weekend Links is a way of sharing all the engrossing things I see around the internet. I publish Weekend Links approximately every two weeks. As usual, I welcome your ideas and feedback.

food reading links:
--Starbucks are going to start displaying calorie counts on their UK menus (from The Guardian). It should come as no surprise that plain coffee has virtually no calories, whereas the syrupy Praline Mocha with Whipped Cream has 555 calories.
--A helpful primer on sea vegetables (from Small Bites): their health benefits, where to buy them, and how to prepare them. Andy includes three recipes to get you started.
--Troubleshooting tips if your homemade bread is too dense (from The Kitchn).
--Six tips for interviewing someone successfully (from Dianne Jacob). As always, Dianne provides food writers with lots of excellent ideas and the comments are stuffed with more.

Seven Foods for Healthy Hair

I don't know how to have a good hair day. I recently got a new hair cut and colour; sophisticated is going to be my style henceforth. However, "natural" (also known as "frizzy mess") has been my default hair style for many years. I had to go out and buy a hair dryer yesterday. And I am determined to have more good hair days.


I bought two "hair styling for dummies" books. Both contain a section about food for healthy hair. Of course, I gravitate to the food section in any book! (Plus, reading about food meant I could put off the nervous moment when I had to pick up my new hair dryer.)

How to Write Recipes to Make Cooking Easier - Carrot and Apple Muffins

I was making carrot and apple muffins for my colleagues. Every muffin recipe uses two bowls and the recipe is always much the same. Wet ingredients go in one bowl, dry in another. They are combined with a few strokes, then the batter is dropped into the muffin tins and baked. Muffins are designed to be easy; hence the reason I make them so frequently. But the recipe I was (roughly) following for the muffins was making the process harder.

NoSugarVember: Could You Go a Month Without Sugar?

When Natalie's suggestion of NoSugarVember popped up on Twitter, I was already four weeks into a no-sugar experiment. In October I had decided to avoid sugar and sweeteners of every kind, including fruit. I had been reading a lot about sugar over the past six months and becoming more and more convinced about the merits of quitting sugar. October had not gone well, though, since I had been sick for two long weeks, spent a week on holiday, and celebrated my birthday. I felt no regret about eating sugar on my birthday, obviously, but the other slip-ups were demotivating.

Discovering #NoSugarVember on Twitter encouraged me to get back to my sugar-free experiment. (I didn't follow Natalie's guidelines exactly since I already had a routine established, however broken. For example, I did not eat any fruit, but did allow myself milk and vegetables such as sweet potatoes and corn, which have some sugar.) It was a month of great success, for the most part.

Sunrise Breakfast

For my birthday this year I got the most amazing present - a sunrise breakfast with my husband as part of our holiday to Bali, Indoneisa. We were staying at a hotel with beautiful beach frontage, and he arranged for us to have a sunrise breakfast on the last day of our stay. The day before it happened, I found myself wondering, What would be served at an intimate table for two at sunrise?

Edible Gift: Hot Chocolate on a Stick

I like to give small gifts to my colleagues at Christmas. I usually want to thank about 40 or 50 people at work who have contributed to my year - fellow maths teachers, office staff, and friendly colleagues. I'm on a budget, so 40 bottles of wine is ruled out as a gift idea! But handmade gifts are usually reasonably cheap to make. They involve a bit more time, though. And people are grateful for something handmade because they realise that it took time to make.

My Sugar-Free Experiment - and Pumpkin and Almond Loaf

The more I read about sugar, the more convinced I am that I should give up sugar. So I decided I would during October and November, as an experiment. I wanted to see if I would have more energy and fewer cravings. Don't dismiss the idea of quitting sugar! Read on to find out more.

Visit to a Tea Plantation in Yangshuo, China

I recently accompanied a school trip to Yangshuo, a town in an agricultural area of southwest China in the Guangxi province. Together with 48 students and three other staff, I climbed, biked, hiked, and kayaked through the gorgeous rural scenery and walked through bustling, dusty chaos of the town. One highlight for me was a visit to the Qi Xian Feng Peak tea plantation, on a hilltop outside the town. We had a tour, picked tea, and drank tea in the traditional way. I even got to pour the tea for the group!