Creamy chicken with lemon and rosemary

Chicken thighs in a creamy sauce with lemon and rosemary.
After what felt like a particularly cold winter we are in full spring mode, hooray! The worst should be behind us now and I have a suitably zesty and lemony fresh recipe to get you into a sunshiny mood. If you are lucky you may even have a lemon tree in your garden with fresh lemons that you can use to make this amazingly creamy sauce. We have one which was given to us by some good friends several years ago, soon after we moved into our then new home. Fortunately it has not succumbed to drought, pests or a lack of conversation but it has not exactly flourished either. In fact, nearly six years after we planted it, I think it is roughly the same height as it was when we got it, give or take a few extra leaves on either side. So until our stunted tree can get its act together it is store-bought lemons for us!

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Spring vegetable and red pesto tart

A slice of vegetable and tomato pesto tart.

I do enjoy a cooking challenge, and when I was contacted by the team at Faithful to Nature and invited to participate in their recent blogger competition I was immediately interested. The challenge was this – to create one seasonal, organic, vegetarian family meal using pantry products from Faithful to Nature as well as fresh organic produce. Each blogger received a voucher to purchase their choice of products from the thousands and thousands of products on the Faithful to Nature website, ordered their goodies online and then used them to create a delicious dish.

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Creamy tomato penne with pesto

 Quick pasta dishes
We love a good pasta dish in our house, and this is one of my go-to recipes for a quick and delicious week night meal. The sauce is ready in under thirty minutes and can even be made ahead of time and reheated. And I have to say it again – it is so tasty!

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Bacon and broccoli macaroni cheese

 

This post comes a week later than planned, and regular readers might have noticed that I was missing in action last week. The week started with a fun trip to Bloemfontein and a food demonstration (look out for another blog post about this next week) but quickly went downhill after that as I returned home to two sick children as well as having a nasty bout of flu myself! So unfortunately my regular schedule went out of the window, but I am happy to report that aside from a few lingering symptoms things are on the up for team Ulyate!

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A trio of summer spreads – hummus, tzatziki, tuna pâté

Greetings and Happy New Year everyone! I have had a lovely break, albeit a busy one packed with get togethers with family and friends, bits of admin that we did not get to during the year and plenty of feasting. We even managed to end off with a few days away in beautiful Franschhoek – just my little family, which was a perfect way to end off a busy holiday. It almost made up for the administrative portion of the holiday – because nothing screams “holiday fun” more than having to queue for five hours to renew your car licence and another eight hours for passports! Hey ho.

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Spaghetti bolognese

Spaghetti bolognese with mushrooms and parmesan

There are probably as many variations of this dish as there are families who enjoy it. Or perhaps even more! I love making this dish but dear husband is usually the Spag Bol King in our house and even he and I have our own different ways of preparing it. Bottom line though – it does not matter who the chef is, spaghetti bolognese is a firm favourite on the menu, and one thing is always the same – we both love to pile in the mushrooms!

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Ginger, mushroom and chicken stir fry

Quick stir fry with mushrooms, chicken and ginger.

This week I am diving deep into my recipe collection. All the way back to the 90’s in fact – they seem like forever ago! Today’s dish is adapted from a stir fry recipe I made in my high school Home Economics class, nearly 20 years ago. I even have the original (rather yellowed) handout from that class, on it a handwritten recipe that was copied on the old “rolio machine”, which then made its way from a school ring binder all the way to my current recipe book shelf.

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