Potato and egg salad

Components:

• potatoes that I diced, parboiled and fried with spices and oil
• two fried eggs
• pickled onions
• premade salad
• balsamic vinegar

Root vegetable Frittatta salad

Saladify everything. That's how you lose weight. Surprisingly, this was not at the forefront of my mind when I was thinking of ways to use up the fritatta, salad mix, dressing and tomatoes in my fridge. I'm just buying a lot of fresh produce lately.

Bread free hamburger

I wanted to make a low carb version of one of my favourite meals: The hamburger. This is one of my attempts, accompanied by oven baked potatoes (which I unfortunately left in the oven for too long without oil, which meant overly dry though slightly crispy potatoes and a ruined baking pan). The egg and burger pattie were both cooked in the microwave. You could say I was trying to make this low in fat, but really my aim was to reduce the calories by as much as possible (since fat as the highest density of calories).

This is a high fat version I created for my dad and brother while I stayed in Bateman's Bay. The bacon is streaky and has been fried to a crisp on the stove, as has the egg and pattie. The whole thing is covered in wholesome seedy mustard.

Somehow everything tastes better when fried in cold pressed extra virgin olive oil. Maybe I should compromise and have this instead of wasting my time with eating low fat things 3/4 of the time and chocolate 1/4 of time.

Kangaroo, potato and apple stew

This was originally intended to be a pork, potato and apple stew. This was inspired from a recipe I saw on an app in my iPad (I'll try to find out what it was). In all honesty, pork would have been much better. When the apple is cooked, it has a similar texture to the potato (pomme d'terre ring a bell?) and takes on the flavour of the meat while retaining some of its own flavour, which goes into the broth and serves the same function as vinegar in enhancing the meat's flavour.

Abundance bowl with carrot and sultana salad

I recently learned about "abundance bowls." They are modelled on donburi, which are various types of meals that are based on a bowl of rice with toppings. Only with abundance bowls, the rice is generally "bulked out" with lentils or chickpeas, and they are topped with salads and lean meat. The salad I used here was a carrot and sultana salad with a dressing made of peanut butter and French dressing. It didn't sound very appetising, and I didn't touch it for the longest time. But next to the lentils and rice, it felt like an abundance of flavours and textures. The nuttiness of the peanut butter accentuated the nuttiness of the lentils in the rice, and the tang of the French dressing balanced out the nuttiness. The sultanas added a little sweetness. The rocket added zing. Overall, very happy.

Mum's lamb roast

Mum always wonders why I stay so skinny. It's because I load up on veggies, but also have small amounts of tasty things like roast lamb and gravy. And I don't pick at the lamb all of the following morning until it's gone.