May 1992
For an introduction to what these Menu Diary posts are about, please click here.
Monday 4 May. Steak with green pepper sauce, herbed spud, beans, carrots. Tren describes it as gluggy but yummy. She is referring to the green pepper sauce. I haven’t had it for years. It was made with peppercorns that came in a small green can, and evaporated milk was the other main ingredient. It was delicious, but hard not to make gluggy. We also had that sauce with Chicken on other occasions.
Thursday 7 May. Saffron chicken, white rice, pappadums. Trenna concludes “Magic”. The saffron chicken was a great recipe and always delicious. It will appear many times over the coming diaries.
Sunday 10 May. It was Colin and Julie’s turn for the session. Afterwards Trenna and I had Hungry Jack’s. It would have been a whopper each, and probably some chips. In later years we would NEVER have Hungry Jack’s for dinner, but the evidence is clear that that wasn’t the case in 1992.
Monday 11 May. Don’t ask me! “Spanish rice and bread rolls”??? No idea.
Tuesday 12 May. Apricot Chicken was the first meal Trenna cooked for me, and we did return to it many times. The initial recipe was in The Colour Book of Casserole Cooking edited by Hilary Walden. Published in 1978 and Trenna’s copy reprinted in 1981. It looks like it cost $5.95 at Angus and Robertson.
Friday 15 May. More HJ’s!
Sunday 17 May. Another slight mystery here. Nachos (“A Hit”) and Scones (“not bad”). Seems like a funny combination? I’m guessing that we made scones for morning or afternoon tea for a visit by either my parents or Trenna’s sisters. Then we just finished them off for dinner.
In later years Nachos got dropped from the menu as I think it became difficult for Trenna to swallow it.
Thursday 21 May. It seems that king prawns in beer batter, saffron rice, tartare sauce was even better than a roast! I don’t remember that meal but I’m thinking I might try to find the recipe.
And we had it the next day with chips, lettuce and bread.
Sunday 24 May. Just “Nibblies”. I can believe that. For many years around that time, on a weekend we would grab a drink, probably in my case a beer, and probably then Tia Maria and Coke for Tren. We would sit on our front porch, or in the lounge room if the weather wasn’t so good, and eat quite large quantities of various sorts of nuts, potato chips/crisps, and rice crackers.
Often we would do a crossword together. Or sometimes we would just chat. It was really pleasant – but murder on the figure.
Tuesday 26 May. Trenna describes Panthe Kowshwe as “unique”. I would say “unique and very yummy”. Trenna did a great job with it.
The menu for June 1992 is next.