I came home tonight to discover my wife had made probably the most amazing tomato soup I've ever tasted. She performed this feat with about ten minutes of effort (plus about an hour of simmering), so I decided I needed to note it down.

Ingredients

• 1 Tbsp oil
• 1 medium onion, sliced
• 1/2 head of garlic, peeled and chopped
• About 4 slices of bacon, diced
• 3 cans of chopped tomatoes
• 2 tsp of vegetable stock powder
• 2 tsp of sugar
• 1 cup of water
• Cream
• Parsley for garnish

Method …

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We recently got a Fornetto Basso - it's an 18" bullet smoker/barbecue, advertised with three tiers of deliciousness: two bbq racks, and a rail under the lid for hanging meats for smoking. It also has a large metal water bowl, which goes at the bottom. The water helps to keep the meat moist, and helps regulate the temperature.

However... The water bowl also turns out to be my new favourite bean-cooking vessel! It's quite huge (probably about 8 litres) and of course it doesn't consume any of the precious roasting …

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What do you do when it's dinner time, and you haven't got any ingredients ready for the meal?

What if (perhaps as a result of being an ultralight hiker), you also have a huge surplus 500g sachet of tuna?

Tonight these particular stars aligned, and I ended up making these amazing Tuna Patties: http://allrecipes.com.au/recipe/15705/tuna-patties.aspx

I did tweak the recipe considerably, though:

Ingredients:

• 2-3 large potatoes, peeled and cubed for mashing
• Optionally, swap one of the potatoes for a kumara or some pumpkin
• 500g …

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Jeez I just discovered I've only posted a single recipe on this. Time to change that.

Chicken for dinner tonight. I was feeling a little adventurous, and definitely wanted some miso involved, but also felt like cayenne pepper and shallow-fried chicken strips. Here's the result! This went really well on a base of bulgur wheat, and with a side of stir fried veggies.

Ingredients

• Two chicken breasts, skinless
• 2 tsp miso paste
• 2/3 cup plain flour
• 2 tsp celery salt
• 1 1/2 tsp onion powder
• 2 tsp smoked …

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I had the urge to make a homemade alfredo the other night. I found a recipe called "Better than Olive Garden Alfredo Sauce", which is pretty descriptive, I guess. I made a couple tweaks here and there, though.

I usually stray wildly from recipies whenever I decide to follow one, but having not made an alfredo sauce before, I largely stuck to the guide. A couple changes I did make, though:

• Instead of adding the garlic and cream together, I heated the butter and fried the garlic to bring out …

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