Gracing the table

I still vomit from time to time and I still have raging nausea, (though not as much as before) but - believe it or not- I have begun to enjoy cooking again. So, over the last few weeks I have been photographing some of our dinners. Do keep in mind that sometimes I simply do what is easy (and perhaps not the healthiest option. Mom you may want to shield your eyes. Or better yet, just skip this post.) or what I am craving at the time or, if we have an abundance of broccoli or corn for instance, whatever just needs to get used up. But before we get to the main courses lets talk dessert shall we? Yes. Lets.

Here we have Bayan enjoying a bowl of homemade mango and coconut ice cream. This is literally fresh mango and coconut milk blended together and then poured into the ice cream machine until it reaches soft serve consistency. Bayan and Ruhi both love this. Anisa prefers blueberry ice cream. Considering how hot it has been I figured why not make both? This is just frozen blueberries, a bit of sugar and frozen organic milk cubes blended together in the thermomix until it reaches ice cream consistency. Very nice if I do say so myself.Martha made some completely scrumptious raspberry muffins for Persian classes last week. They were amazing. I think I ate half of them and even after shamelessly gorging myself I couldn't stop thinking about them so I tweaked my blueberry muffin recipe just slightly and made a double batch (of raspberry muffins) together with a fresh strawberry and raspberry jam and with a little pat of butter - wow. Soheila and the kids have helped me polish off the first dozen already. For a special treat I made a chocolate custard using only eggs, milk, (a little) sugar, cocoa and cornflour. I wasn't overly impressed but the kids quite enjoyed it. I might try it with rice flour and rice milk next time.

Deep dish apple pie with vanilla ice cream. Need I say more?And last, but certainly not least, the famous New-York style cheesecake. Don't worry we had lots of visitors to help us eat this.Dinner 1: Slow cooked pork chops, mashed potato, broccoli and cauliflower bake, corn on the cob and two salads. Dinner 2: Craving the cheese. We have a vegetarian pasta bake, a Quiche Lorraine and salad.

Dinner 3: After a long day I cheated and made a very easy, but kid friendly meal: sloppy-joes, potato wedges, steamed corn and salad.

This does not count as a meal but I have been craving this as well and we have had these pretty frequently. Well, Ruhi and I have. I started making these around Halloween and tried to pass them off as a Vampire favourite. Ruhi didn't mind it, Anisa and Bayan tried it but were not impressed and I can't get enough. It's simply fresh carrot, apple and beet juice. Yum. Dinner 4: This is one of Ruhi's favorites Chicken and vegetable curry with rice. I wasn't fast enough to get a better photo - oh and look a forgotten dessert: homemade custard with fresh apple crumble.

Dinner 5: Again with the potato wedges (I think we must go through phases of eating a lot of these and then none for quite some time) a tex-mex vegetarian bake and salad.

Dinner 6: This is one of Anisa's favorites. A very mild, slow cooked vegetarian chili, served with corn chips and sour cream.

Lunch: I must have been on a Mexican kick. Corn quesadillas with fresh guacamole, a kidney bean dip, salsa and sour cream. Dinner 7: Bayan's favorite: Spinach and cheese cannelloni, corn, cauliflower and broccoli bake and salad. This is one meal that I don't have to remind or encourage Bayan to eat. Dinner 8: Grandma's chicken soup, potato wedges (sheesh) and salad. At least we eat a lot of salad.

Dinner 9: Salad Olivieh and fresh sabzi with what appears to be left over lemon-garlic chicken and, wouldn't you know it, potato wedges.Looking back, these are just some of the meals I have remembered to photograph, but they seem distorted somehow. I mean what's with all the potato and where is the rice? That is another favorite of Bayan's and we normally have that with some sort of khorest at least twice a week. I also forgot to photograph the putanesca ( a fabulous Italian spaghetti sauce that is even better than anything you can get in a restaurant). I have had major cravings for that one and will post a recipe (and maybe even a photo) sometime soon.

Meanwhile breakfast is normally a simple affair, but we did make waffles with syrup and freshly made orange juice one morning.Lunches are often quite simple: soups and sandwiches. And Bayan often requires more than a little persuasion to eat them.

Never to be outdone, we have a very creative sandwich maker in the house. Ruhi turned her lunch from an ordinary tuna salad sandwich into something a little more imaginative. We present: Cecil the cyclops monster. He is tuna and salad on the inside, with a pickle tongue and a bulging olive eyeball on top. I have it on good authority that these cyclops monsters can be very delicious. Last, but certainly not least, something inedible to grace the table. Ever since I had made the tablecloth last year, I had been wanting to make some matching napkins to go with it. Well I finally got around to that and found that I had enough material to make a set of six. Yet somehow it was still incomplete. Something was missing. Then it hit me: napkin rings. We have some beautiful china dishes that my grandmother spent half a lifetime collecting. She gave us her set as a wedding present and I adore them, mostly because they remind me of her. She also loved pearls and used to wear them frequently. So here is what I did:

I took a loop of bracelet sized memory wire, curved one end added a silver bead (the go with the trim on the plates), I then added 18 4mm Japanese pearls, 1 6mm pearl, 1 silver and diamond style rondelle, 1 8 mm pearl, another rondelle, another 6 mm pearl, another 18 4 mm pearls and another silver bead before curving the end and hooking the loops together.I think it works really nice with the plates and napkins and I think that my grandmother would certainly approve.