January 2010, Week One, Monday

This meal was thrown together in nearly no time at all. We had bought two smoked chicken fillets on Saturday and Son had brought a pile of two-minute noodles back from his camping trip in the Eastern Cape last week. We had bought fresh asparagus on the day and had some butternut in the vege drawer of the fridge which was bought for Son's bearded dragon. But she eats it so slowly because she is only about a year old, so we will share her food with her sometimes.

I put the pot of water on the stove to heat up water to get the noodles started and then took a load of laundry outside to hang up - using time expediently as we women do. (Yes I do hang washing up overnight and yes it does dry - eventually). The phone rang and it was a friend calling from Cape Town where she was on holiday. We had about a 10 min chat and I excused myself saying that laundry was calling, which she understood, as we women do. When I came back into the kitchen, which was bout 15 mins after I put the pot on to boil, Son was already serving the meal onto our square dinner plates with artistic flair! He had piled the noodles in the centre of the plate, arranged the asparagus over the top. He had steamed circles of butternut from the narrow part of the vegetable ( I know, botanists out there, it is technically a fruit, but we are in the kitchen now and not in the lab) and placed them on top of the asparagus and then slices of smoked chicken breast were spilled over the lot. We used only one chicken breast for the two of us. When sliced up it goes quite far. I then popped some butter and lemon juice into a coffee mug, microwaved it for 30 secs and drizzled it over the whole mass, and then ground a dusting of black pepper over the top! It looked superb...and tasted awesome. A really good combination and guess what...we were eating vegetables! As we women know we should do, but often don't!