mondays

I don’t like Mondays. My days are not usually hugely productive at work coz it’s like my brain has this huge shock every week when it realises the weekend is over. And not much usually going on on a Monday evening.

So I did what I usually do when I am bored and fed up.

Cook and Bake.

Yuh huh.

I started off with dinner coz I am always starving when I get in from work (usually because I have had my lunc too early because Richard eats his at about 11am and that makes me hungry too). Today I had one of my Top 5 comfort dinners: pasta with a glug of olive oil, big slosh of lemon juice and a big pile of parmesan. Never fails to make me feel good. It’s also a common meal coz I always have the ingredients. If there ever came a day that I didn’t have olive oil, lemon juice and parmesan in the house, the apocolypse must have happened and distracted me.

Then I started baking. I started with these oatmeal and apple pancakes that I bookmarked on the Supper in Stereo blog such a long time ago to make. They are good, especially with oodles of caramel sauce (she recommended maple syrup but I discovered mine had mould on and Hannah knows just how little I like mould…). I have a huge stack of pancakes now which will do me for breakfast/snacks for the next few days.

I used a couple of apples left over from the big bag Clotilde and Stephen gave me last week. They invited me for dinner, I said I’d bring dessert, and they gave me this bag of apples from Clotilde’s niece’s orchard in France and requested apple crumble. I was more than happy to oblige. Although we were so stuffed after the steak and then the obligatory French cheese course, that we didn’t make much headway with the pudding. Not a problem though. Turns out crumble makes really good breakfast on a chilly morning.

Then I made lemon squares from Anna at Cookie Madness, quite possibly the best lemon squares ever. This one I had bookmarked more recently and was actually commited enough to this recipe to go via the shop on the way home from work to buy icing sugar. They were worth every step of the diversion (about 200m). Tomorrow is the weekly bring and share dinner at Liesl’s so these will be my contribution. Minus the one I ate already.