Cleaning win

 "Come here, two year old. Help me clean the bath with harmful chemicals." Said no mum, ever. 

But this afternoon, my little guy and I spent a very funny twenty minutes scrubbing out the bath, using an easy peasy mix of bicarbonate soda and cider vinegar. It froths unbelievably when you mix them together. Then, you just spoon the paste onto the area that needs help, leave it for a minute... Wipe it clean and voila! You're done. 

This worked a lot better than any commercially available cleaning agent I've tried, by the way, and it was just so awesome to watch the glee in my son's eyes as he was allowed to make all this lovely, bubbling "mess". 

Plum Pikelets (Sugar free, gluten free)

This is a delicious little stack of sugar free, gluten free plum & sultana pikelets that I'm serving up as afternoon tea on a rainy Friday. 

These are my favourite type of food. Because they're a byproduct food. A byproduct of the delicious plum crumble I'm making. The stewed plums create a divine, sticky syruppy juice that I used for sweetening these babies. Quantities are sort of approximate as I was a little too giddy with the thrill of Pikelets to pay proper attention.

Ingredients:

1/3 cup plum syrup 

1/4 cup sultanas

1 cup almond meal

1/2 cup spelt flour

1/4 cup rice flour 

1/4 cup milk soured with 1 tsp cider vinegar

50g butter melted 

1 free range organic egg, lightly whisked

1 tsp gluten free baking powder 

Combine all ingredients in a bowl until combined. Spoon into moderately hot pan (with butter) and cook for approx 2 minutes per side. I served them with cream (proper cream, no gelatine or gums thanks!) and organic frozen raspberries.

Sweet potato crisps with guacamole

This is such a quick "treat" snack for kids, and Jonno has just devoured half a sweet potato and half a zucchini, before he even got to the avo dip. 

For the crisps, I thinly sliced the veggies and fried them quickly in coconut oil, until they were lightly browned. They're so flavoursome, don't be tempted to add salt or any other seasoning. They really don't need it. 

The dip is just avo, curry powder and fresh squeezed lemon (this is a hit with my not-quite-one-year-old!). 

Baby bites

Stewed apple, ricotta and berries.

Sweet Speak

Two year olds make the loveliest pronouncements. This morning, my son, who has become particularly interested in just how his food is served, came up to me in the kitchen, holding an apple from the fruit bowl, and said, "Please open the Happle, mama."
Bless.

Breakfast muffins - banana and cashew

These muffins are a bit of an improvisation on my standard muffin recipe. With only 2 tablespoons of sugar (spread across eleven muffins), I think they're a pretty good start to the day. They have a mashed banana, free range egg, 1/4 cup cashew butter (or peanut), 1/4 cup rolled spelt oats, 1 tablespoon LSA, 1/4 cup bran, almond meal, spelt flour and baking powder. They're going down a treat in our home.

I have to say how much I love these cake papers. I ordered them from the London transport museum, along with matching napkins that have long since all been used to wipe chubby little cheeks.

These took around 15 minutes to make "n" bake. Not a bad brekkie option!

My first Irish Strawberry!

This lovely evergreen tree is one of the ones I most love in our garden. It came with the house! The previous occupants of our little bungalow lived here from when the house was built, and they were keen gardeners. I worry that, since buying the house, we have let the garden get terribly overgrown. We have been a bit busy with our two little seedlings inside the house, but now that the weather has turned cool, I'm looking forward to getting my fingers in the soil and tidying up our patch of earth.

Anyway, this tree. Despite my disavowal of gardening work, this tree does get a pretty regular pruning, of sorts, as I love the waxy evergreen leaves as foliage in my cut flower arrangements. The fruits though are something else. They start life as delicate little bell shaped flowers, not dissimilar to orange blossoms, though neater and not fragrant. They puff out to spiky little yellow orbs and then, over the course of a short few days, bloom into a dark, rusty red. The fruit inside remains a deep yellow.

I'm hoping I'll get enough between now and Emme's birthday to make a jelly for sweets. These old fashioned varieties of fruit really don't get much attention anymore but I would love to hear from anyone who also has access to Irish strawberries. What do you do with them?

Dinner time

Spaghetti and meatballs with berry yoghurt dessert <3

An ode to Antonio

Last night, my sister and I were home alone, and by home alone I mean her, me and four kids between us. But, once the children were asleep, we had one of our favourite dinners: Carluccio's Penne Giardiniera. Of all the very many things I miss about living in London, mid-week dinners at Carluccios is high up on the list. This is an ever-delightful meal, made even tastier by the restaurant's donation of 50p per dish sold to a UK charity. I learned to make the meal shortly before moving back to Australia- thank goodness.

When my ten year old nephew learned of our Carluccios imitation dinner, he jumped up and
down on the spot and requested that we have his favourite carluccios dinner tonight-- pollo alla milanese. It's basically a thick chicken schnitzel with crispy roast new potatoes. It fills me with such pleasure to see little people, and their changeable taste buds, really tucking into a nutritious and simple dinner.

Would you buy this?

For my part, not in a million years. I'm not adverse to junk food, per se, but a spread with zero nutritional value whatsoever- I mean nil- seems unconscionable, especially when marketed at small peeps, as this must be. Ice cream, sure- at least there's cream and egg in with the junk, so there is something wholesome and essential. But this? It gives me shivers up my spine that a disgusting product like this has shelf real estate, let alone the R&D that's gone into producing it, the marketing money, the carbon footprint of manufacturing it, bottling it and then shipping it (made in America). I could weep when I think of harried mums and dads trying to push their children around a supermarket to stock up on the weekly essentials only to be confronted by this junk.

A sun for my son

This morning's brekkie- a copycat bacon and egg mcmuffin except with a difference. I made this with a wholemeal bun, organic FR bacon, a poached FR egg, and a vintage cheddar. Mandarins- the current fruit du jour - rounded out this yummy brekkie.

Colours

I have been experimenting this past week (well, so much as re-wiring our house and installing a new oven would allow!) with natural food colours. A friend is looking to make her son a healthy but purple cake for his upcoming birthday and the challenge is too tempting to avoid becoming part of! The little cupcakes were purple when uncooked but after baking they'd mellowed to a purple-tinged brown. The icing was great, but perhaps too pastel for the cake in question. So, the quest continues. These icings though are made with pure cream and organic spinach for the green, and tinned blackberries for the purple. I experimented with adding in orange juice, vanilla seeds and coconut and these were all great additions for a different flavour.

GF chicken goujons

I made these for my little guys the other night. We had had a busy afternoon and evening in the park and I wanted a quick and easy dinner. This was 15 minutes from beginning to end- I made a crumb for the chicken out of rice puffs (organic whole grain) and and Parmesan cheese. Lightly fried them in butter and coconut oil and served with carrot batons and homemade mayo.