Weeknight meals ... the 2026 edition

Seventeen years ago (!) I started an Excel spreadsheet recording all the dinners I cooked at home. Over the years I've become more efficient at producing tasty, nutritious, quick meals. On the one hand, the annual number crunch indicates quite a lot of repetition; on the other, we're (mostly) enjoying healthy, delicious food that isn't over-complicated and leaves plenty of time for the many other delights of semi-retirement: gardening, reading, socialising, exercise, volunteering …

So, here's what I cooked most between April 2025 and April 2026:

creamy tuna pasta
hearty vegetable and barley soup
pasta and sauce
macaroni cheese
kimchi and cheese jaffles
scrambled eggs with feta and crispy chilli
spinach and feta triangles with veges
nectarine, rocket, haloumi and pecan salad
spinach and feta quiche
tomato fondue

A couple of new favourite recipes this year have been paneer fried rice and crispy haloumi with tomatoes and white beans. Apparently we need extra protein as we age, so I'm trying to be conscious of including plenty of legumes, eggs, nuts and cheeses in our diet, particularly as I rarely cook meat anymore.

Cheers!

For about two weeks each year, Majura Valley Farm becomes

a sunflower maze. Andrew and I enjoyed a lunchtime

walk among the flowers and the artworks last month

What we ate this year

I've been keeping a spreadsheet recording what I cook for (ahem) sixteen years now, and every year I tally up the most-eaten meals. Our diet (at home, at least) has become almost vegetarian along the way. This year's star performers were:

spinach and feta triangles, served with veges
scrambled eggs with feta and crispy chilli
creamy tuna pasta
kimchi and cheese jaffles
vegetable curry (Indian, Thai or Sri Lankan)
pasta and sauce
macaroni cheese
vegetable and barley soup
spinach and feta quiche
Sri Lankan cashew and pea curry
tomato fondue

Most of these things are cooked from fresh, simple ingredients, though a couple (such as the pasta sauce, and the tinned tomato soup that forms the base of the fondue) have some unpronounceable ingredients. I've just finished reading Chris van Tulleken's book Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn't Food … and Why Can't We Stop? and am feeling very aware of the environmental and physiological harms caused by the modern food system. I expect I'll spend more time thinking about what to eat in future.

No, I didn't cook this! But isn't it beautiful? We spent a week on Lord Howe Island last October and ate this meal at Driftwood. Something with noodles and chilli and tofu and peanuts and coriander. Sublime.

What we ate: the 2023–24 edition

I've been keeping an Excel spreadsheet listing the meals I cook at home since 2009. (Oh. My. Goodness.) Around 20 April each year I sum up what we ate most in the past year and write about it on this blog. I guess I'd hoped my cooking would become more sophisticated or more creative with time; not sure that has happened! Though the spreadsheet now has 296 rows, suggesting a reasonable amount of variety over the years. 

The data for this year still shows we're in comfort food mode … or, perhaps, that as I get older and more attached to my garden, I become less interested in trying whiz-bang new recipes. Ah well. We're alive and kicking so I assume we're meeting our nutritional requirements. Here's what we ate most times this year:

scrambled eggs with feta and crispy chilli
cheese and kimchi jaffles
cheese and spinach triangles with veges
creamy tuna pasta
roasted veges (probably featuring yams!)
vegetable curry (Indian, Thai, Malaysian or Sri Lankan)
macaroni cheese
nachos

Despite the old favourites, there have been a couple of new entrants to the menu this year … following my fabulous trip to Sri Lanka in November I started making this lovely cashew and pea curry, and another new fave is zucchini, eggplant and pumpkin rendang using a curry base from Zest Byron Bay. Oh, and I went through a rash of making Middle Eastern-style casseroles (soooo good!) when Exotic Bazaar was selling cooking sauces; unfortunately they have stopped making the sauces and are now specialising in Persian Love Cakes. I may need to google how to make my own sauces from scratch …

On an unrelated note, here's a photo of some coffees purchased recently at the University of Canberra. Is it just me or does one of them depict a vaping seahorse??

Number crunch (the three years of COVID edition)

I'm still keeping a menu and planning meals, though the system has become more flexible lately! Rather than writing a list of days and a dinner item next to each, I've started just making a list of food ideas, cooking and eating them in any order, and crossing them off. It's working well. And I'm still recording all the dinners I cook in an Excel spreadsheet. It's been fourteen years. That's a LOT of data! Here's what I cooked most over the past year:

creamy tuna pasta
scrambled eggs with feta, spinach and crispy chilli
vegetable samosas
vege burger wraps or brioche
roasted vegetables
kimchi and cheese jaffles
pasta and sauce

Seems we're still eating a lot of comfort foods. Ah well.

Crunching the numbers, 2021/22 edition

I've been using a weekly menu for many years and recording meals I've cooked in an Excel spreadsheet since 2009. (Nerds! I know.) Every year, on the arbitrarily chosen 20 April, I crunch the numbers and analyse what we ate. Admittedly, the menu has featured a lot of comfort food over the past three years. Partly due to the pandemic and partly because since I've had a garden to potter in, cooking has fallen down in my list of priorities and interests. Ah, well. Here's what we ate most over the past year:

vege burger wraps (18 times)
pasta and sauce (18 times)
oven-fried fish with veges (15 times)
roast pork and veges (14 times)
creamy tuna pasta (12 times)
pulled pork and coleslaw burgers (11 times)
macaroni cheese (9 times)
Greek meatballs and Greek salad (8 times)
leek, potato, bacon, bean and cream soup (8 times)
vegetable samosas (8 times)

I did try a few new recipes over the year, for example:

potato latkes
Keralan fried cauliflower
French goat cheese salad

and have managed to produce a variety of fruits, vegetables and herbs in the garden.

Not making any rash promises about diversifying ... but we have been eating more vegetarian (or vegan) meals than non-veg ones for a while now, and I'm keen to continue that trend.

A year of pandemic comfort food

(with thanks to my partner Andrew for suggesting the headline!)

On the 20th of April, every year since 2010, I've crunched the numbers on my Excel spreadsheet of menu items to find out what we ate most over the past year. Nerdy, I know. The weekly menu is handy as it helps save time and resources, while the spreadsheet not only tallies up what I cook, but reminds me about meal ideas I may have forgotten.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic. Oh my goodness. I don't think we've EVER had a year so packed with comfort food. Dumplings. Pasta. Wraps. We may have gone a bit crazy for carbohydrates. The past year has been a roller coaster and it ain't over yet. The Australian government is dragging its heels on the COVID vaccine rollout and it's hard to see the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. Sigh.

So, what we ate. Mostly, it was:

pasta and sauce (27 times)
dumplings (Japanese, Polish, Russian or Chinese) (23 times)
vegetable curry (18 times)
creamy tuna pasta (14 times)
macaroni cheese (14 times)
vegetable samosas (11 times)
vege burger wraps (10 times)

Ahem. That must be why we're looking and feeling so roly-poly. In case you're wondering about all the dumplings, the Japanese ones (gyoza) are available from our local supermarket and make an easy weeknight dinner; I was inspired to find and try the Polish and Russian ones (pierogi and pelmeni) after reading two riveting books by the fabulous Judy Melinek and T.J. Mitchell about a Polish-American pathologist. Turns out the lovely little deli at Belconnen Markets sells such delights!

After disclosing my disappointing diet for the year I feel the need to share some more positive news, so here goes. After five years of talking about building our 'dream shed', we finally did so. It's been a long slog, but the shed was built in January and February and I've spent much of the past two months up ladders painting it. The left hand portion will become our new and improved garden shed while the right hand portion becomes a home office. There's still some work to be done on the inside but I'm glad to have finished all the work on the outside. Cheers.

The annual number crunch (2020 edition)

This is the eleventh year in a row that I've kept an Excel spreadsheet recording evening meals eaten in our household, and analysed the spreadsheet each year to find out what we ate most often. I've been using a weekly menu for much longer than eleven years, and the spreadsheet is a way of capturing the data from all the handwritten menus and looking for patterns (and ways to diversify our diet).

Not sure this level of discipline actually DOES lead to more diverse eating ... we still have our favourite dishes, and things that appear again and again! While the spreadsheet currently has over 260 rows of data – where each row is a menu item – I do tend to rotate between a few dozen dishes. Ah well. If anything, the tendency has become even stronger during the COVID-19 pandemic. It's comforting to fall back on flavourful favourite meals.

So, here's what we ate most between April 2019 and April 2020:

vegetable gyoza (a new entrant to the list! bought frozen and heated at home)
pasta and sauce (classic comfort food)
hearty vegetable and barley soup
tofu curry
BLTs (sandwiches or wraps)
shakshuka
pumpkin and pea curry
potato, leek, bacon and bean soup

Most years I vaguely resolve to do better in the coming year, but 2020 is looking so strange that I don't want to make any promises I won't keep. Provided we stay alive and well fed (even if comfort food wins out) let's count that as success this time.

Cheers!

Another year has zoomed by ...

Ten years ago, today, I started a spreadsheet to record all the meals I cooked (based on the weekly menus I still maintain), and each year on 20 April I've listed what we ate the most. I wish I could say my cooking has become more diverse and creative since leaving my day job, but am not sure it has! These are the things we ate most frequently over the past year:

BLT wraps

falafel wraps

Chinese dumplings

creamy tuna pasta

potato salad

potato, leek, bacon and bean soup

pumpkin and coriander soup

teriyaki tofu with veges

macaroni cheese

rocket, pear, pecan and blue cheese salad

Which isn't to say I NEVER cook more adventurous things. Yesterday I made shakshuka and tonight we're having fesenjān. I think it's just that ... since moving to a house with a garden, I'd rather be gardening than cooking! Sometimes the two activities overlap – this year we've successfully gown pumpkins, garlic, chillies, various berries and a range of herbs – but these days you'll more often find me wearing gumboots than an apron. Ah well.

Another year has flown by!

Ever since our Japanese cooking class in Kyoto two years

ago, teriyaki tofu has been a weeknight favourite

Oh my goodness. I've been keeping a spreadsheet recording our household's meals for nine years this week. It's always a fun exercise to analyse what we ate, though each year it reminds me that I should probably try to be more experimental and creative ...

What did we eat most between April 2017 and April 2018?

Potato, leek, bacon and bean soup (19 times)
BLTs (sandwiches or wraps) (11 times)
Deconstructed samosas (9 times)
Potato salad (7 times)
Teriyaki tofu (6 times)
Chinese dumplings (6 times)
... and all sorts of other stuff, just not so frequently.

My new food year resolution is to try some new Middle Eastern and Asian recipes ;-)

Crunching the numbers (yet again)

For the past eight (!) years I've kept a spreadsheet recording the meals I cook at home. This is pretty easy to do as I keep a daily menu and every now and then just move the data from the hand-written menu to the spreadsheet. Using a menu helps ensure a varied diet and minimal waste; analysing the data each year reminds me to try new recipes from time to time! Over the past year (April 2016 to April 2017) our most-eaten meals were:

Leek, potato, cannellini bean, bacon and cream soup
Teriyaki ... something (tofu, veges, udon noodles, or a combination of those things)
Chinese dumplings
BLTs (sandwiches or wraps)
Creamy tuna pasta
Salmon steaks with veges
Spanish omelette
Pasta with homemade pesto

New favourites, which may appear in future most-eaten lists, include kelp noodle salad, rice paper rolls, spaghetti lentilaise and blue cheese soufflé.

Note to self: need to keep increasing the amount of vegetables in our diet. I hope to increase the size and yield of my vegetable garden over the coming year, so maybe that'll lead to new culinary discoveries too.

The last of our massive crop of tomatoes. They won't ripen outside

(it's too cold now) so fingers crossed I can convince them to ripen inside

Reflecting on recipes followed and food eaten

This is the seventh year in a row I've used an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of meals cooked and eaten at home. It's pretty easy. I keep a weekly menu to save time, prevent waste and maintain variety and just transfer my hand-written scribbles into the spreadsheet every few weeks. It's a useful exercise as not only does it provide an interesting glimpse into our evolving lives and diets, the spreadsheet itself reminds me of dishes I'd forgotten and should rediscover!

Andrew's talented sister Fiona made a series

of t-shirts featuring their Dad's aphorisms.

Once in a while I DO try a new recipe that's

just too awful to record. Not very often though ...

So, what have we eaten this year? I traipse off to an office four days per week so week night food tends to be either quick and easy to make, or defrosted from a previous weekend's cooking spree. The dishes we ate most often between April 2015 and April 2016 were (drum roll please):

Potato, leek, bacon and bean soup
Hearty vegetable and barley soup
Pasta with sauce
BLTs (sandwiches or wraps)
Chinese dumplings
Spanish omelette
Potato salad
Nachos
Dal makhani
Pumpkin and pomegranate stew
Rocket, pear, pecan and blue cheese salad
Teriyaki tofu
Shakshuka

Well, I certainly manage to cover a range of cuisines. My goal for the coming year? Cook yet more spicy delights! Cheers.

Crunch time

For many years now I've kept a household menu, to save time and money in planning meals, ensure variety and avoid waste. Since 2010 I've been tallying up what we eat each year (nerdy, I know) and posting the results on this blog on 20 April. That date seems to roll around faster each year!

This year our most eaten home-cooked meals were:

potato, leek, bacon and cannellini bean soup

creamy tuna pasta

Thai eggplant curry

Chinese dumplings

potato salad

pasta bolognese

Shakshuka

Spanish omelette

pumpkin and coriander soup

I've also discovered a few new favourites that are likely to feature in future lists ...

steamed silken tofu with lemongrass coconut milk

char kway teow

Bombay toast

black pepper tofu

and just lately have been experimenting with reducing carbohydrates in recipes by substituting piles of fresh vegetables for (say) pasta or bread. (My pancreas has opinions and I'm trying to listen to them.)

Cheers!

Crunching the numbers

Well! Another year has gone by. Several years ago I started recording meals cooked at home on an Excel spreadsheet to get an idea of how varied our diet was. I keep a weekly menu anyway, so it's not difficult to take the extra step and churn out the stats. Here's what we ate at home this year:

hearty vegetable and barley soup (11 times)
vege burgers (10 times)
BLTs (9 times)
creamy tuna pasta (9 times)
pasta and sauce (9 times)
potato salad (9 times)
potato, leek, bacon and bean soup (8 times)
Spanish omelette (7 times)
Thai eggplant curry (7 times)
pasta and pesto (6 times)
seasonal vege omelette (6 times)

... and many other things too! A few new favourites have appeared on the menu recently:

eggplant and cheese bake
pumpkin risotto
falafel wraps
pumpkin, feta, beetroot and rocket salad
steamed silken tofu with lemongrass

and I rediscovered an old favourite, vegetable laksa.

All in all, a delicious and nutritious year. Yum.

Here's what we ate in previous years, if you're interested:

2009 to 2010
2010 to 2011
2011 to 2012
2012 to 2013

Yeah, yeah. I know I'm a geek ;-)

Annual culinary number crunch

For several years now I've been recording what I cook at home (in a Excel spreadsheet – how nerdy is that?) and doing an annual number crunch to find out what we've been eating. The results from 2011–2012 are here, 2010–2011 are here, and 2009–2010 are here. This year's list is a bit underwhelming. Think it may be time I diversified a bit! Anyway, here's what we ate the most:

pasta and sauce (various pasta and various sauces, whether bought or home made)
vegetable omelette (whether Spanish or with seasonal vegetables)
potato salad
BLTs
hearty vegetable soup
pasta and (home made) pesto
Shakshuka

There have been a few new entrants to the menu lately – avocado macaroni cheese and all manner of vegetable omelettes, for example – but I need to try some more new recipes, or maybe trawl the spreadsheet to be reminded of some old favourites.

No matter what I make, cooking is still a joy. I've been away from home for several weeks lately – on holiday, at a course, at a conference, and showing a friend around Sydney – and felt quite discombobulated being away from cooking facilities. Some people find mindfulness in meditation ... I find it in cooking! And housework. (Don't tell anyone. It is very unfashionable to enjoy cleaning one's own house.)

2012: the scorecard

At the start of 2012 I wrote a blog post on my goals for the year, and followed it up with musings on mending or recycling rather than buying new, saving money, time and resources in the kitchen, the challenges of getting things repaired, and non-tangible gift ideas. Hmmmm, is a pattern forming here? I've long been frugal and a bit of a greenie, but am becoming more and more concerned about avoiding waste and clutter as I get older.

As stated in the original post, my overarching goal for 2012 was to be 'absolutely conscious about consuming only items I need, rather than buying any unnecessary clutter'. I didn't want to buy for the sake of buying, or get rushed into buying things that looked like bargains (but probably weren't), or acquire things I regretted. I fell off the wagon a bit in April when we discovered the delightful Hoola Hoop in Braidwood and I bought (ahem) five dresses! In my defence, I'd always struggled to find dresses I liked, and that fit me, so perhaps I can argue that this was just making up for not having any dresses in the previous twenty years or so? In any case, all five have become well-used additions to my wardrobe, so they definitely haven't turned into clutter. Anyway ... I kept a tally and ended up buying sixteen new items of clothing or footwear during the year, including several that were replacing other things that had worn out or fallen apart. This sounds pretty extravagant to me, but apparently is not. According to Juliet Schor, in her 2010 book Plenitude:

In 1991 Americans bought an average of thirty-four dresses, pairs of pants, sweaters, shirts, underwear, and other items. In 1996 that number had risen to forty-one. By 2007 per-person consumption had soared to sixty-seven items. American consumers were purchasing a new piece of clothing every 5.4 days.

(page 29)

I'm not American of course, but perhaps Australians are just as consumptive? If so, I guess I can pat myself on the back for only buying one quarter of the number of items the 'average' consumer does. (Or possibly even fewer? Professor Schor doesn't specify whether her figures include footwear. If they don't I guess my tally looks smaller still.)

Oh, and my other goals for 2012? Mostly achieved. I wanted to finish my uni course (done), continue volunteering and making microfinance loans (done), not get diabetes (succeeding so far), lose weight (whoops – not achieved), cook more Asian recipes (not really achieved – will try harder in 2013) and renovate our bathroom (didn't get around to it! Another one to carry over to next year).

My goals for 2013 will be similar to those for this year. I'm going to keep up the clutter and waste avoidance project, as it's quite a satisfying feeling. Oh, and I really do plan to cook more Asian food! How about you? Happy New Year.

A handful of magic beans? No thanks

Way back in the mists of time, I did a uni subject on data mining. It was quite an eye opener. While I guess I'd always known there was no such thing as a free lunch, it was pretty confronting to realise just how much personal data corporations were collecting on consumers, and how easily they duped us into providing our data. I've always hated receiving junk mail – whether in the mail or electronically – and am a very private person, so am leery of providing my personal details for inclusion in databases. No, I don't have frequent buyer cards, or belong to cinema clubs, or collect any sort of 'points'. Apparently that makes me a tad unusual! Anyway, data privacy and so-called loyalty programs have been in the news quite a lot lately. For example:

– Target has worked out how to tell if customers are pregnant, so it can push baby products on parents-to-be. This caused a bit of outrage earlier this year
– The Sydney Morning Herald called data mining 'the hottest new job you've never heard of', and noted that privacy issues had yet to be solved
– Choice magazine analysed store loyalty programs, finding that consumers were providing detailed personal information, for very little reward
– The New York Times magazine found mined data being used to push different products toward different people, and to charge higher prices to those perceived to be less price-sensitive (e.g. owners of Apple products), and
– Australian blogger Mia Freedman had a bit of a rant about how every shop she goes to tries to sign her up for yet another loyalty card, and her wallet was overflowing (and patience wearing thin).

I'm with Mia. No, I do not want to join your loyalty program! I'd rather pay a few extra bucks and retain my privacy, integrity and choice. As always, just my two cents' worth. How about you?

Ten thousand hits? Whoa!

When I started this blog in July 2005 it had two main purposes – to share recipes with friends who asked for them, and to be my ‘recipe book in cyberspace’. It has performed both those tasks admirably, but has grown into something else too … a resource for people I don’t know! A couple of years ago I posted a recipe for wattalapam and, quite unexpectedly, that meant I started getting heaps of hits. I guess the word ‘heaps’ is relative – it has taken over seven years for the blog to reach ten thousand hits, and some blogs get that many daily or even hourly – but I was pretty excited to see we’d clicked over into five figures this week.

Here are some stats for nerds like me who enjoy ‘em:

My eight most popular posts – together, these make up about
50% of the all-time hits on the blog.

The ten countries where most of the traffic has come from. OK, so lots of the Australian hits are probably from me (it is my recipe book, after all) but it is fun to see all the others!

I’d like to thank Jo Savill and Walter Mason for linking to my blog from their much more illustrious blogs, and I’d like to thank Google for driving so many wattalapam seekers my way, and I’d like to thank YOU for reading this now. Cheers.

Doesn't time fly?

For several years now, I've written a weekly menu to keep track of the meals I cook at home. From time to time I transfer the data into an Excel spreadsheet so I can see what we're eating and how often. You can see summaries of what we ate in 2009-2010 here and 2010-2011 here. Once again, I've tallied up another year of meals. Between April 2011 and April 2012 the following dishes were eaten most often at our place:

vegetable curry (12 times)
nachos (8 times)
rocket, pear, pecan and blue cheese salad (8 times)
dal makhani (7 times)
Spanish omelette (7 times)
spicy cauliflower fritters (7 times)
lasagne (6 times)
Thai eggplant curry (6 times)

Newcomers to the meals list this year include various vegetable curries (some inspired by my trip to Sri Lanka last year), various omelettes and fritters (e.g. zucchini, basil and feta), roasted vegetable salad with lime dressing (from the Blood Sugar cookbook), mushroom, potato and coconut soup (inspired by a visit to Bagus Place, Tioman Island, Malaysia), shakshuka, and a Sri Lankan-style cashew nut curry (from Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey cookbook).

This blog started out as my 'recipe book in cyberspace' and it still is – I often refer to it while cooking. But it seems to have become a resource for others, too – there have now been over 5000 hits on the blog, and over 2000 have involved my recipe for wattalapam (a Sri Lankan coconut custard). People from all corners of the globe seem to come to here (via Google) looking for a recipe for wattalapam! I hope they're not disappointed. Have you tried this recipe? Did you like it? Feedback is always welcome.

Thanks for stopping by, everyone!

Blood Sugar

I have a cantankerous pancreas. The first time my doctor told me my blood sugar figures were abnormal, five years ago, I thought there must have been some sort of mistake. An error with the pathology, or a statistical blip. After all, I was neither overweight nor obese, had a healthy diet and did plenty of exercise. I took the information seriously – increasing the intensity of my gym workouts, and casting an even more critical eye on what I ate – but expected that the numbers would come right at my next annual check-up. They didn't. That's when I bought a blood glucose monitor and started measuring my blood sugar levels each morning and comparing them against what I'd eaten and done the previous day.

Despite what you read in the media, not everyone who develops adult-onset diabetes is overweight, or obese, or sedentary, or hooked on junk food or fizzy drinks. Some people just inherit dodgy genes and no amount of 'lifestyle' adjustment seems to help. So far I've managed to avoid developing diabetes, though the numbers seem to get a little worse each year and I doubt I'll keep it at bay forever. On the plus side, the data collection has been interesting and useful. I know that my pancreas has opinions. It doesn't appreciate bread (any type), rice (even basmati) or pasta, and disapproves of fruit (whether fresh or dried, tropical or temperate). Vegetables and proteins, unsurprisingly, get a big thumbs-up, and happily so do small amounts of red wine and dark chocolate.

Anyway, all this is by way of explaining why I'm about to recommend a book called Blood Sugar. The book is written by a chef who has diabetes, and who also survived a major stroke. To quote from the blurb:

Michael Moore was busy running his restaurant, cooking on television, climbing the ranks of top chefs in the world and travelling the globe. He was already living with diabetes and for a top chef surrounded by great food, he faced the daily challenge of healthy eating. Then, one day out of the blue, he suffered a major stroke while he was out to dinner with his family, an event that changed his life and his outlook on food, forever. (More info at Michael Moore's web site.)

I bought a copy of Blood Sugar a few weeks ago and really like it. The book is written in an accessible and entertaining style, and is packed with delicious recipes. If you too are struggling with a cantankerous pancreas, it is well worth a look.

Hey, hey ... it's a word cloud!

(with thanks to www.wordle.net)