Easy Dinner - Couscous Salad

Kate has been practicing her cooking skills recently and has made a few meals over the past few weeks, but I'm behind on posting them.  This recipe for a cousous salad is very easy and is nice for a hot evening as it can be eaten at room temperature or warm or cold.  

The hardest part of this recipe is peeling and chopping the eggplant - seriously, it is that easy.

Ingredients:
1 medium eggplant - peeled and cut into 1 cm square cubes
1 vidalia (or other sweet) onion - chopped
1 cup of frozen peas
1 can of chick peas
2 pieces of roasted red peppers, chopped or sliced
1 cup of couscous
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
approximately 1/2 cup of olive oil for cooking the eggplant and onion


Method:
1.  Cook the eggplant and onion in a frying pan, adding oil as it is needed so it doesn't stick.  Cook for about 10 minutes until the onion is translucent and the eggplant is cooked.
2.  Add 2 tbsp of water to the frozen peas, cover, and microwave on high for 3 minutes, stirring part way through.
3.  Bring 1 cup of salted water to a boil, then remove from the heat, add the couscous, stir, cover and let sit for 5 minutes.  Then fluff with a fork
4.  Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl and enjoy.

You can find other quick and easy recipes that take approximately 30 minutes to make and use approximately 6 ingredients at Project 6:30 (you can see I took liberties with the number of ingredients for this recipe, but it's worth it as it is delicious and easy to make).  I would love it if you joined me in linking up easy recipes.  I'm sure we can all do with some new cooking inspiration.

Project 6:30 - Tuna Potato Patties

We made our first Project 6:30 dinner - that's right a dinner that takes fewer than six ingredients and less than thirty minutes to cook (see here for details).  I thought I would share the recipe with you in case you know a young person just learning to cook or even for yourself if you want to put a nutritious delicious dinner on the table with minimal effort.

Last week Kate made Tuna Potato Patties - they were simple to make and tasted great.  It is easiest to make this dish using leftover mashed potatoes and cooked carrots so plan ahead folks and make extra the night before.

TUNA POTATO PATTIES

Ingredients:

• 4 large potatoes, peeled, chopped, and cooked until tender
• margarine (I don't usually measure how much I use in mashed potatoes, but about 3 tablespoons should work)
• milk (again I don't usually measure, but about 1/2 cup of milk to start with and add more as needed to get a nice moist consistency)
• 4 carrots, sliced and cooked until tender
• 1 tin tuna, drained
• 1 egg
• whole wheat flour (about 1/2 a cup)
• salt and pepper

Method:

1.  Mash the cooked potatoes and carrots with margarine and milk.

2.  Add the tuna and egg to the mashed potatoes and carrots.

3.  Form the mash into balls about the size of an apple and then flatten.

4.  Mix whole wheat flour and salt and pepper together.

5.  Dip the flattened patties into the flour mix.

6.  Heat oil in a frying pan and cook the patties on medium-low heat for about ten minutes or until they are cooked. 

Serve with another vegetable or a salad for a really well-rounded dinner.

If you want to see some other ideas for quick and easy dinners have a look at this post.  And feel free to link up your own quick and easy recipes for everyone to try.  After all it isn't just university students who need quick and easy dinner recipes!

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Don't forget to enter the Sharpie Fabric Pen giveaway.  With all the extra time you will have from cooking such fast dinners you will be able to whip up some crafts using fabric pens.  To enter the giveaway you must leave a comment on this post.

Project 6:30

Kate is home from university for the summer, which is awesome.  Next year she will be living in a house with two friends, which is also awesome.  However, she will have to cook for herself, which is not so awesome - given that Kate can't cook! We've decided that this is the summer for Kate to learn to cook.  She hasn't taken to it like her brothers have, so I'm going to make sure that over the next few months she masters making some recipes she can cook next year when she returns to university.  I've dubbed this PROJECT 6:30!  




That's right folks I'm working on getting Kate familiar with recipes that use less than six ingredients (not including salt, pepper, and oil) and that take less than thirty minutes to make.  I bet university students aren't the only ones who want some quick and easy recipes for dinner so I'm going to share the recipes here on my blog.  I actually find I use the search button on my own blog to find recipes I know I have posted. I can find them faster and easier by searching my own blog than by digging through all my recipe books.  It motivates me to post more tried-and-true recipes.

I've added a Mister Linky to this post so you too can share your favourite quick and easy recipes. I mean who doesn't need some new recipes to include in the dinner-time roster. I've added a few of my own favourites from earlier in my blogging days in case you missed them. I will likely be focusing on vegetarian recipes and ones that don't take too many tomatoes as that is what Kate prefers, but you can link up any that fit the Project 6:30 criteria (or fit it approximately anyway).