Watercress & Artichokes

Yesterday I was lucky enough to be invited to the Olympic Judo by a colleague, my first Olympic event! It was very exciting, just the traveling to the venue was fun, I felt like a tourist in my own city. The amount of helpers everywhere and their friendliness was amazing, London, why can't you always be like this?!

Congratulations on Gold, Korea

I've never seen any Judo before (although I vaguely remember my brother attending a class or two when he was very young) and I learnt a lot, mainly listening to the (obviously very well informed) Judo fan sitting behind me (thank you whoever you are). The atmosphere was great and seeing all the supporters from the competing countries felt very special. Having also seen the torch row down the Thames on Friday I have to say that I'm now really looking forward to my second event very much.

Apart from a little swopping around of days, we have stuck to the food plan. Doing so is making serious holes in my stock of tins and essentials and budgeting in the coming weeks will be harder when staple ingredients such as rice have to be replaced. A few years ago, M and myself attended a curry cooking class and one of the dishes we learnt (chicken vindaloo) has since become a favourite. This weekend I experimented with some mung beans to make a simple dhal to have with the main curry (and leftovers for lunch on Sunday). This was the first time I used asafoetida, a pungent onion like spice, that was quite hard to track down (I found it in a corner shop in London). You only use a small pinch and it certainly packs quite an odour but it's supposed to aid digestion. The dhal was delicious and very easy to make, simply boiling the beans and adding the spices and chilli before cooking briefly again for 10 minutes and stirring in some fried garlic and cumin seeds.

On Sunday I made some simple tarts using a tin of artichokes found at the back of the larder. I'm afraid that two had to be sampled as they came out of the oven but there were enough left for lunch with a simple fridge raider salad for Monday and Tuesday. This recipe and that for the watercress pesto are both from the Waitrose 'summer harvest' supplement and are well worth trying.

Artichoke and tomato tarts

Monday's dinner of spelt spaghetti with a watercress pesto was simple, easy and delicious. Will definitely try this again. I used a whole bunch of English watercress, which is cheap and plentiful at the moment.

Spelt spaghetti with watercress pesto

Yesterday's meal was a thrown together vegetarian chilli made with lentils and butterbeans, with brown rice and a chapatti (acting the part of a tortilla!) left over from Saturday's curry. Again, this gives us enough for lunch today.