I'm looking after my friend's mum's house this week with 3 cats and a whole load of chickens! I seem to have earned a reputation as the go-to house-sitter around here =P
I've got lots of fresh food from the greenhouse and their allotment to eat and fresh eggs every day, it's going to be awesome.
It's also a perfect way to kickstart my Bat Fit!
Last night I cooked spaghetti with courgette sauce and spinach balls, I tried to follow this recipe, but I left out the chili because I can't handle it =P (I know, I know, I am a source of shame to both my Trinidadian and Bangladeshi family members, but it burns my mouth so badly). I divided the amounts by 4 to get one portion.
First I prepared the spinach, the leaf parts for me and the tough stalks for the hens (they love fresh veg).
Pureed the garlic (home-grown; it was drying in the greenhouse =]).
I crumbled some slightly stale bread into breadcrumbs (the hens will be eating the rest of the stale bread =P) and grated the cheese. Then I cracked an egg and beat it. As you can see there is no shortage of fresh eggs here, these are from one day!
I blanched, drained and chopped the spinach then mixed all of the ingredients for the spinach balls together. I meant to only pour in half of the egg (to match the proportion of the other ingredients) but my hand slipped and about 3/4 ended up in the bowl so the mixture was a bit runny! I had to drain off some of the egg and give each ball a good squeeze to keep them together, how slimy!
This is what they looked like after cooking:
Then I made the sauce with grated courgette (the ends of the courgette go to the hens as well), garlic and Parmesan. I also cooked spaghetti as I had no rigatoni.
And the finished dish with extra cheese (naughty me), voila!
It tasted pretty good, but I think next time I'll put in some extra herbs or spices to make up for removing the chili =]. Not the healthiest recipe in the world thanks to all the frying but still full of fresh ingredients and a carefully controlled portion, so not a bad start!
I'll post some pictures of the cats and the adorable hens tomorrow when I have the day off work =]
