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!

Start of a new project inspired by the movie 'Julie and Julia'

My younger son is staying at home for a year and he loves to cook! And I love to cook when there is someone around to cook for. So for this year, we are going to merge our passion for food in the kitchen and get to know each other better. I think! I hope! The problem I have is trying to think up what to cook every day, and worse still, what ingredients to buy for the week ahead.

Last year my BFF, Madelie (who is an award winning romance writer - I had to get that in - so nice to see people becoming famous) came and spent a long weekend with me to celebrate her birthday. On her journey down, she found an Ideas Magazine Special Issue at the Johannesburg International Airport that has recipes for every weekday for five weeks of every month for all twelve months of the year! Halleluya! An external brain to ensure domestic culinary variety!

Being single and on my own at home, I was not in the least moved to do much with the magazine other than glance through it occasionally if I was going to cook something new up for the boys (I have two) when they came home from varsity for the weekend or vac. But mostly my three cheese MacCheese was requested among some other old favorites, so the scope of my culinary skills have not been expanded. But now, with Son at home and studying a challenging course, and needing highly nourishing meals because he is active on the sports grounds, I am moved to expand my horizons and not cook any dish twice throughout the year. To this end I am going to follow the Ideas Magazine special issue religiously. Son is tolerant of the idea and is a keen helper in the kitchen, so I am sure that this will also be an experience for him that will stand him in good stead as he heads out into the world from next year onwards and has to cook for himself. It is also while we cook together that we share our thoughts and philosophies!