Toast, Salad and Nasi Goreng!

There is nothing that can beat the feeling of waking up naturally. No alarm clock and no child peering into you eyes from 0'm distance asking for;
a) A hug
b) A drink
c) Do dragons really exist?
d) its too hot
e) its too cold
f) is it morning?

Because today people is the first day of my Easter holidays, a lovely long weekend.

So I go about planning my lovely lazy day. Breakfast consisted of a HUGE plate of toast, with a variety of toppings, jam, peanut butter, chocolate spread, butter. All lovingly prepared by my husband along with glasses of juice and steaming cups of coffee. A big heaped up plate sat in the middle of the table and we just all dive in and take what we want and it takes no time at all for it to be reduced to a plate of crumbs.

The luxury of being at home all day is not having to eat a packed lunch, today was a chicken salad. Just a normal salad using variety of leaves and salad vegetables, with some sliced up breaded chicken I had in the fridge, topped off with homemade croutons.

Homemade croutons

Simple really really simple. Just take a piece of sliced bread (the crust is better), tear it into pieces, as small or big as you want. Throw them into a roasting dish, add some rosemary leaves and then spray with olive oil (you can drizzle with oil but I prefer the spray as it limits the oil and is therefore less fats).

Then put them under a hot grill, turning them over and spraying again mid grilling.
Once golden they are ready to scatter onto salad. By the way whilst preparing this salad I cooked some rice up ready to cool and put in the fridge for later... you will see :-)

 

The rest of the day was spent shopping for bike accessories as I had a lovely new mountain bike for my birthday.

 

For dinner tonight I made Nasi Goreng. Which basically is Indonesian Fried Rice. Rice with Bacon, Prawns and Chicken. I took the recipe from 'The practical cookery book', which states it is a simple and quick recipe. Lets see shall we....

 

Right firstly I did read through the ingredients that morning to ensure I had everything and noticed it stated cooled cooked rice. Now I don't know about you but I have been bitten so many times by this, I see 'rice' and don't notice the 'cooled and cooked' part. This then adds 25 minutes onto cooking time and also the meal is never quite the same as the rice ends up more 'squishy' than pilaff. This time though....it wasn't going to get me!

 

So to make life easier I brought lardons of bacon to save time in preparation. But the key to any successful meal is the preparation.

There is a reason they do this in restaurant's, it's because not only does it save time in the long run but it also helps give you a better meal in the end, as you don't end up over cooking anything while your still chopping up the herbs!

So how did it go I hear you ask? Actually really well, its a very simple throw everything into the wok meal. The recipe was very easy to follow and it tells you when to throw each thing in so you don't end up with over cooked prawns. It took about 5 minutes maximum to prepare, however this does not include the 30 minutes at lunch time when I cooked the rice, but for future planning I will do this the night before. Cooking was 15 minutes maximum. Oh and yes I know when you look at the picture below.... I need to work on my presentation.

The verdict from the family, they ate every last grain of rice! My youngest daughter stated "Mummy thank you for making food I really like".... :-) We even had prawn war!! The annoying argument between the kids on who has the last prawn, of course as a loving mother there is only 1 solution.... I ate it!