I am hiding away tonight. I am in trouble. My husband is not happy and I don’t blame him.
I am a terrible decision maker and a terrible shopper. I know this about myself and therefore rarely buy anything more than a book online.
Until last week.
I made a purchase.
It arrived, requiring assembly, a lot of assembly. Once my husband had spent far too much time putting it together I realised it was not what I wanted…..not even close. It fell into the ‘What on Earth were you thinking?’ category. All I could do was laugh, no one was laughing with me.
So tonight he has taken it apart and packed it back in the box.
It is reminding me of the time many years ago, before the little ones existed, when I bought a cross trainer. I am silently chuckling as I type this. My husband however does not find it funny. Again he begrudgingly put it together, and there it sat, taking up a great deal of room in our very small home and not once did I use it. We even took it with us when we moved, again it sat, unused. Luckily I become friends with a dedicated exerciser who happily took it off my hands and merrily trained away on it everyday.
I must get better with this decision making thing. I possess everything that negates the process. I swing from being painfully impulsive to drawn out periods of procrastination. I make my decisions based solely on how I feel and have no concept of being practical, sensible or rational. I have a long history of poor choices and of lessons unlearned.
My husband on the other hand is entirely practical, sensible and rational. Can you image how frustrating his life must be? I thank him, time and again, for tidying up the mess, for ironing out my creases, for fixing whatever I break. Sometimes he gets fed up, leaves me in the lurch and completely dumbfounded, sooner or later though he comes back and puts out his helping hand. He really is the man for me. I may not be the girl for him and how he will cope with a lifetime of this I am not quite sure, I guess he drew the short straw.
Satay Chicken Burgers
500 grams chicken mince
1/3 cup of natural peanut butter*
2 tablespoon tamari*
1 tablespoon honey
3 tablespoons of coconut oil if you are choosing to shallow fry them. I have also given the method for baking them in the oven without any oil, this is actually our preferred way to have them.
Place the chicken, peanut butter, honey and tamari into your food processor or blender and pulse until smooth, well combined and sticking together. Using damp hands shape the mixture into ten even patties. The thickness of mine is approximately 2cm.
To shallow fry your burgers – In a frying pan melt the coconut oil over medium heat. Reduce the heat to low and place your burgers into the oil. Cook for 4 minutes each side. I cook the burgers in two batches of five to avoid over crowding the pan.
To oven bake your burgers – Omit the coconut oil. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius or 356 degrees Fahrenheit. Line an oven tray with baking paper. Leave a little space between each burger. Cook the burgers for 15 minutes, turn them over and continue cooking for another 5 minutes.
Once cooked sit the burgers on paper towel to absorb the excess oil.
While the burgers are cooking you can prepare this quick and easy salad.
Simple Salsa
2 cucumbers, diced
1 punnet of cherry tomatoes, halved or quartered
the flesh of 1 mango, diced
Using your hands gently toss the ingredients in a mixing bowl.
Serve the salad with a couple of wedges of lemon and the chicken burgers.
Throughout winter we serve the burgers with sweet potato chips such as the ones you will see here and here.
* if you are following a paleo diet you can replace the peanut butter with roasted almond butter and the tamari with coconut aminos. If you are nut free you can replace the peanut butter with hulled tahini and double the amount of honey.
Enjoy.