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As mentioned in Day 6 of the Challenge Courtesy of my husband who had complained about not having time to cook recently and said that he wanted to make ramen noodle soup at some point. So while I painted the crib, he made dinner. Light and refreshing, filling and very tasty. Easily tweaked to be vegetarian, too. Ingredients: 2 noodle nests 1 knob of ginger, grated Half a head of garlic, grated 2 carrots, grated Handful of batwing mushrooms, 1 cup of spinach 1 cup of cabbage, chopped 3 cups of chicken broth 1 1/2 tbsp cooking sake 2 tbsp soy sauce 4 cups of water 2 tbsp peanut oil 2 eggs A handful of chives 1) Fry garlic and ginger in oil until golden brown and fragrant. Add water and broth. 2) Simmer for a few minutes before adding carrot, cabbage and batwings. Add sake and soy sauce. Cook 10 minutes. 3) Add spinach and noodles and cook until done. 4) Meanwhile boil eggs for 1 minute then remove from the heat and leave for 10 minutes. Peel, slice in half and place them on top of the noodles with chives. This came out super tasty. Not too heavy after a hot day but still filling and nourishing. It would have benefitted from a handful of fresh coriander instead of chives had our plant not gone to seed... I was very grateful to hubby for cooking it and hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

This is my own (inadvertent) version of a dish of my mother-in-law's. I had never had vegetarian lasagne before meeting my then boyfriend (now husband). He made this for me back when we were still living in Edinburgh a long time ago. I really enjoyed it (even if he did freak out a little about the layering) and it is a dish that has stuck around ever since. I decided I wanted to make it last week but couldn't be bothered to pull up the recipe, so I set about making it from memory. I thought that my conception was pretty close to the original until Hubby called me out on it. I still haven't checked the original recipe but there are some bits that have ended up changing. Here it is! Ingredients: 1 tbsp olive oil 3 onions, chopped 1/2 head garlic, minced 2 tsp cumin 1 tsp oregano 1 tsp sumac 1 tsp tandoori powder 2 black beans, cooked, OR 3/4c dried + 1 tsp baking soda 3 c tinned tomatoes 1 1/2 c spinach 1 1/2 - 2 c ricotta 3/4 c coriander, chopped 3/4 c parmesan, grated 1/2 c mozzarella, grated Lasagne sheets 2-3 tbsp butter, melted Salt and pepper to taste 1) If using dried black beans, start by cooking them at a simmer with 1 tsp baking soda until tender. 2) Heat olive oil over medium heat in a frying pan and sauté onions and garlic. Add these, the spices and the tomatoes to the black beans and cook for around 15 minutes, allowing the flavours to meld and the sauce to start to thicken (add a little water to the beans if necessary). Using a fork, mash up the beans, or partially blitz the sauce. 3) Mix the spinach with the ricotta. Brush a lasagne pan with melted butter and begin layering: sauce, ricotta and spinach, a handful of coriander, lasagne sheets, brush with butter, some parmesan. Repeat until the layers near the top of the pan. For the final layer, ladle some sauce over the lasagne sheets and sprinkle mozzarella over the top. Pepper generously. 4) Bake at 200°C for about 40 minutes, until crispy on top and noodles are tender when stabbed. Serve warm. I was very happy with how this came out. It was moist and rich and very tasty, with a lovely deep flavour from the beans, and very cheesy. I made the ricotta for it fresh just before assembly too! Mixing the beans in with the sauce means that they stay nice and moist, and the whole dish was too, without being wet. I find this very satisfying, and as much as I like a good, traditional meat lasagne, I also like having different options and variations up my sleeve when the need or the fancy arises. I am indebted to my mother-in-law for the original, and am very pleased with this version.

With lots of fresh chanterelles available (they still have moss on them at the grocery store) and autumn coming on, something warm and filling but not too heavy celebrating seasonal produce seemed in order. This time I didn't make the spätzli myself, but the dish came out tasty and colourful! Ingredients: 2 tbsp olive oil 2 onion, chopped 3-4 c chanterelles 1-2 c pumpkin, chopped 1 c ham, diced 1/2 - 3/4 c spinach, wilted 500 g spätzli 1 c mozzarella, grated 1 tsp thyme Salt and pepper to taste sour cream to dollop 1) Heat oil in a skillet. Sauté chanterelles. Allow them to give up their liquid, tip this out, and add the onions. Sauté until translucent and add other ingredients except the sour cream. Mix well. 2) Place in a preheated oven at 180°C until the tops are crispy and the cheese is melted. Dish up and dollop with sour cream. Super simple and tasty, this dish hit the spot! Approved of by Hubby and Little Bit, this one's a keeper. And with all the chanterelles recently, ways of using them are necessary. This dish was tasty with the ham but could also easily do without.

Miso paste works well in this, as does balsamic vinegar. added to the other ingredients later. 2) Cook your spaghetti as per instructions, reserving a little pasta same pan, fry your mushrooms, then just wilt your spinach. 5) Toss all ingredients together in the pasta If the sauce is too thick, add some lemon juice or the pasta water, depending on your taste test determinations

Handful of pomegranate seeds Salt and Pepper to taste * Could be replaced with pumpkin purée, either homemade As a side note, the ricotta in this was homemade last week, as I had wanted to try freezing the ricotta This could easily be made gluten-free, by simply omitting the pasta layer, which we included primarily

Drain when slightly under done, reserving 1 - 11 1/2 c pasta water. 5) Once the zucchini is tender, add further 5 minutes until the shrimp is white and firm but not over done. 6) Place cooked spaghetti and pasta

This year, I accidentally planted lemon mint on my balcony instead of a variety I might be more familiar with and like more, like, say, peppermint or spearmint. Ironically, the lemon mint is one of the few of my plants to have flourished this year. I planted more things too early, then we had late snow and frost which wiped a lot of my plants out. I replanted and hoped for the best. Then the spring was very rainy and drowned a number of them. Then we had hail. Twice. A lot of plants were flattened. In and amongst weather catastrophes, was Little Bit, who delights in tearing up my plants by the roots, or picking the leaves off of them to make mud soup in his paddling pool. Through all this, the mint survived. I was delighted until I made tea with it and discovered that the flavour was not quite what I was expecting. I wondered if there had been black tea left in the bottom of the pot? No. I tried again. It still tasted odd: at once muddier than regular mint and more acidic, but without mint's typical freshness. I left the plant alone for a bit and wondered what to do with it. And then I hit on the idea of a pesto. It took a little tweaking, but it worked out well in the end. I had to add a little water to get the blender to work properly, and then it was too wet as well as needing a grounding note, so I added some stale bread to the blender. If your consistency is ok without it though, skip the bread. I also gradually increased the amount of garlic. As the pesto is raw, I was worried that too much garlic would be overpowering, but the pesto really did need it. Here it is. Ingredients: 3-4 c fresh lemon mint leaves 3-4 tbsp olive oil 1/4 c pine nuts 1/2 head garlic 1/4 c water 1/4 c bread crumbs Juice of 1/2 lemon 1/2 c grated parmesan Salt and pepper to taste 1) Blend all ingredients until smooth. Taste test. I am happy with how this came out. It doesn't taste overpoweringly minty (but then, neither does the parent plant) but has a nice balance to it. We had this first with sandwiches. The minty pesto worked very well on wholegrain seedy bread with cheese and sausage for lunch. We have also tried it with spinach and ricotta tortellini, and it was delicious. Little Bit refused to try it, but then he doesn't like any sauce on his tortellini.

Rainbow Lasagna the other day, so when in need of a quick easy dinner, I threw this together to have over pasta With the leftover sauce, I mixed in tomato and peas and turned them into pasties for a picnic. These were arguably better than the original pasta the sauce was used for.

It is tasty as a dip for tortilla chips, or spread on little puff pastries with tomato paste and parma ham, with or without cheese, and of course, the classic, with pasta. Add to pastry or pasta, use as a spread, or simply dip. Enjoy.

There was beef mince in the freezer and pasta sheets in the pantry. Easy. I had enough for 3-4 layers, finishing with pasta, sauce and then cheese. 4) Bake at 160°C for 2 hours tempted next time (because there will be a next time) to use additional courgette layers instead of pasta