Tuesday, January 16, 2007

A revision exercise


First time with Plantation beans was not a resounding success. The power of bacon to render green beans irresistible was not as great as I had anticipated.
But not being one to give up easily I found another version of Southern Beans. Its a little different than the first version I tried and was tastier. In fact its delicious. Freddie liked the vinegary-salty taste and I used thick lardons of bacon this time. Lardons is such a good word for such a delightful food product.
So it worked - another vegetable he might consider eating again.
Our family has been a little taken up with the joys of the 11 plus entrance exams. For those of you outside the UK, this is an archane practice still alive in the British education system by which children reach the ripe old age of ten and are tested to see where they might go on to secondary school. So at ten or eleven it is a cue for hundreds of children to be entered into an academic meat market. Why ten or eleven? Seems such a random age to take a snapshot of someone's educational promise and judge where they should be educated. I'm using this as an excuse for our laziness on the Great Big Veg Challenge. The focus on revision has rubbed off on our cooking habits. We revisited loads of the old blogged vegetables - artichoke pizza was made again along with asparagus in parma ham. When the exam is out of the way we promise to be more adventurous.

3 comments:

  1. I find that a bit of Lawry's sesoning salt goes a long way toward steamed broccoli (are you on broccoli yet?). My 4 yr. old daughter and twin 2 yr old goddaughters will eat it up this way. The secret to using just a little of seasoning salt is to salt in while in the steamer basket and still a bit moist. The salt really sticks, and so you can use less.

    Hello from Indianapolis, IN! :)

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  2. Okay, I can see that I missed the broccoli from the sidebar! Have you entered the fantastic world of black beans yet? All the kids I know will eat black beans, and they're a great source of fiber. I drain and rinse them, and add them to a little burrito. I use a rotisserie chicken that I have de-boned, and then I assemble a burrito with the following:
    -shredded rotisserie chicken
    -drained and rinsed black beans (canned)
    -a little sharp shredded cheese
    -a bit of salsa (kids love a fruit salsa on this, like a peach pineapple salsa)

    I throw it under the broiler for a minute, and then roll it up. So easy and fast! And, it has the bonus of hitting quite a few food groups.

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  3. Anonymous7:57 AM

    Thank you for these recipes - yes we have "done" broccoli and if you look down the right hand side of the blog you can see the posts with ideas and recipes.
    I found the greatest success was with broccoli pesto - incredibly easy to make and lovely on pasta. Freddie loved it and of course we can now build on his new love of this vegetable.
    What is the speciality in Indianapolis. Freddie loves knowing where our readers come from and what is local to that region. Please keep visiting and keep in touch with you ideas.
    GBVC

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We always love to read your comments - thank you