Frugal sandwich mix and almost take away for a hot night
Jan 19th, 2009 by Dani
Summer has come to Melbourne this week with another scorcher today. The sort of day that makes one reluctant to cook for fear of unnecessarily heating up the house. To add another challenge to the day’s meal provision, chez KP is drastically short of fruit and veg. Lil Miss’s birthday extravaganza made the farmers market impossible.
The first task to be tackled was lunch. I had enough bakery bread left in the freezer to make sandwiches, the tricky part was filling them. With some judicious mixing of scraps, I made a sandwich filling for 6 sandwiches.
Frugal sandwich filling
1/4 tub cream cheese
slightly less than half an avocado
half a carrot, diced
1/4 capsicum, diced
1/2 tomato, diced
medium tin of tuna in springwater, drained
juice 1/2 lemon
seasoning
- Mash everything together with a fork.
The next challenge was dinner. I confess to be somewhat less budget minded but certainly not extravagant either. A quick trip to a local Chinese restaurant yielded 1/2 a roast duck for $12. The rest of the ingredients were found in the fridge, pantry and garden. We had four generous serves out of this. More satisfying to the taste buds than takeaway would have been but I felt as refreshed as though I’d had a night off cooking. Win/win.
Chinese roast duck and noodle salad
1/2 Chinese roast duck
1/2 capsicum, julienned
1 carrot, julienned
1/2 lebanese cucumber, julienned
1/2 red onion, sliced
thin Chinese noodles, cooked and drained
bunch coriander
1/2 cup peanuts
Dressing
add to dressing that comes with duck
1 teaspoon chopped chilli
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 teaspoon palm sugar
juice 1 lime
- Combine all salad ingredients in a large bowl and toss (if making in advance, add peanuts and coriander immediately before serving)
- Combine all salad ingredients in a jug and whisk with a fork. Pour over salad immediately before serving.
Great work – really refreshing salad idea. I can taste it. Sort of thai, sort of Vietnamese, but bloody nice for sure.
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I must admit it exceeded expectations. The Bread Winner ate so slowly I nearly lost my mind waiting to do the dishes, but it was because he said he had to savour every mouthful.
Hi The sandwich fillings reminds me of my trip to New Zealand. We had a cook who followed us throughout the journey of 2 weeks. Every day we have different group helping the cook to prepare the meals. My group happened to be preparing the sandwich for lunch and we did the same ingredients that you used in your filling. In addition, we added toasted peanuts which brought some crunch to it. It is really yummy.
Thanks for bringing back fond memories.
Cheers
Olivia
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Hi Olivia! How timely you should comment on this post today. I just made another version for tomorrow’s lunches using chive and garlic yoghurt cheese instead of cream cheese. I love the idea of adding peanuts but unfortunately nuts are banned at both school and creche. I’ll have to try it on a weekend.