Three for the Box

Early morning chaos is something that my 4 year old is blissfully unaware of. He makes his debut in the kitchen at 6.30 a.m. for his morning cuppa (horlicks) and does a casual inventory of his lunch box to see if all is in order. He's just learning about healthy foods and has his own personal list that includes fries, chocolate and cookies. He's magnanimously relegated processed chips to the "not healthy" category. But he always expects to see something different in that mini box and I spend 30 minutes every evening suffering from performance anxiety on this score!

I went to the mart last evening and found some nice cherry tomatoes, sliced pineapples


and together with a pack of sundried tomatoes I had in the fridge, this morning was relatively easy.

1. Salad : One cup of halved cherry tomatoes and diced pineapples topped with mozarella cheese. I made a savory version for my own lunch without pineapples but with a dressing of extra virgin olive oil, oregano and chillie flakes instead. If cherry tomatoes are hard to come by, just use regular ones as long as they are red and firm and dice them just like the pineapples.

2. Hash Browns :


This is the quick version. Peel and grate one large potato directly into a dish of salted water. Heat a few drops of olive oil in a frying pan. Take a handful of the potato, squeeze out as much water as you can and place it directly on the sizzling oil.

Flatten with a spatula and sprinkle with salt, pepper, herb and grated cheese. As the oregano and mozarella were already on my counter, I used these but the choice is yours and is even optional. I had a few sundried tomatoes soaking in a bowl of water



and I topped a few of the browns with these for a burst of flavour. Again optional. The hash browns are crunchy and filling with taste just fine with nothing but salt and pepper. These can be served with eggs and some fruit for a balanced breakfast.

3. Shammmi Kababs : I usually pre-mix the kababs and freeze, so all I had to do was shape and shallow fry them. I will put up this recipe in a separate post soon.