kitchen scenes

Family dishes: Fish patties with shallots and green beans; Garlic and coriander chicken with baba ganoush dip; Sri Lankan curry feast with cauliflower rice.

Fortnightly cooking ritual for baby: fruit and savoury medleys for freezing using seasonal and organic produce - apples, pears, carrots, sweet potatoes. Thrown in the mix some frozen peas, corn and organic blueberries. Freshly mashed up banana and avocado. In addition, carefully selected store bought organic baby food. Keeping it simple and fresh as possible...anticipating the diversity of Spring and Summer produce!

Max (always on his own initiative) selecting and preparing snacks and mastering his knife skills.

fairy garden for boys

Max asked for help to create a mini camping scene from a book he borrowed at the library. I was so delighted because I adore the fairy gardens over here. It's wonderful when my son and I are on the same page which just so happens is quite often - usually of the sweet and crafty kind. Mini garden accessories are now on the op-shop list and the rest can be made with branches, bark and stones. Looking forward to our 'mini' Spring collaborations.

spring family food

This year our winter food theme was homemade pies, along with the usual slow cooked meat and vegetable tagines for dinner and simple vegan soups for lunch.

For spring, we are currently cooking delicious recipes from Healing Foods by Sanda Ramacher. Thankfully we don't suffer from any of the afflictions (listed on the cover) that many people struggle with these days. I bought the book several years ago because I wanted to expand my wholefood cooking repetoire with homemade yoghurt and almond meal.

There are so many amazing cook books at the moment (like I Quit Sugar) that are grain, gluten free, sugar free and lactose free and I am so tempted to buy but can not since the self imposed 'no buying of new cook book rule' until we actually make our way through most of the recipes from our big pile of already bought cook books!

Do you find that you often use a few recipes over and over again from your cook books while many have never been tried even once?

We'll be cooking from Healing Foods all spring while we help hubby get his health back on track and get things a bit more balanced while he is doing the no carbs, no sugar thing.

Perfect family spring dishes to me are little patties of goodness such as Chicken Burgers made with macadamia and cashew nuts, garlic, shallots, coriander, grated lemon rind, egg whites and salt and pepper. Pumpkin chips (more like pumpkin hooks) baked in organic coconut oil and steam greens. I like to drench mine in lemon juice and flaxseed oil. All made with good things from our local health food shop.

around the lake

A walk around the lake and a bit of sunshine on a cold winters day was very much enjoyed after a long "croupy" school holiday.

snow day

 

A magical morning enjoyed by all the local children right in their own backyard! We usually experience the cold temperatures with just some snow dustings here and there. It's a lovely moment to savour, even just briefly before the sun melts it all away. It was wonderful to find Mr 5 out there busily making a snowman. After a long and tiring week tending to a sick croupy family a nice wintery surprise was just what the doctor ordered to lift our spirits.

honey and walnut winter brownie

A promise to Mr 5 that we will enjoy afternoon tea on a picnic mat at the front of the house because finally the sun had come out and he'd spent almost 3 days in doors with a bit of croup. But I had to work quickly and prep tonight's dinner - Pork and vegetable pie with a simple homemade pastry - before those few rays of sunshine disappeared.

Honey and Walnut Brownie
1 cup organic flour, 1/2 teaspoon aluminum-free baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon natural salt, 180g 70% dark chocolate, 125g butter, 1/2 cup organic rapadura sugar, 1/2 cup raw honey, 2 large free-range eggs, 1 cup finely chopped walnuts.

Preheat oven 180ºC. Mix the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Melt the chocolate and butter in a double boiler. Set aside to cool. Beat the sugar and honey in to the chocolate mixture. Add the eggs until just blended. Mix in the dry ingredients and Walnuts. Pour in to a 9 inch (23 cm) square pan. Bake for about 30 minutes. Do not over bake! Always under bake brownies just a little so they are nice and gooey in the middle.

As usual we all had two servings (not smiley baby of course) including Rob when he arrived home from work. As I packed away the leftover brownies I could tell that we'll be in desperate need of a delicious sweet fix in only a couple of days.

rainy day almond and jam kisses

One of my (self-imposed) duties as a stay-at-home mum is baking delicious sweet treats for my little family. Keeping them away as much as possible from the store bought variety which are mostly full of additives and leaves you feeling quite unsatisfied.

The plan is to have my sweet treats last almost a week and I say this to them as I am eating my second consecutive serving, unbeknown to them. They never last that long, no matter how much I make they disappear in 3 days! But that's a good thing, hey.

On this rainy day, I was inspired to make sweet treats with almond meal (flour) and some leftover jam we won at a local fair.

My cooking thing is to find traditional recipes and tweak them with some better wholefood ingredients. I find this gives the baked sweets more depth and texture and leaves you feeling really satisfied and happy.

Almond and Jam Kisses
3/4 cup butter, 1/2 cup of icing sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 1 cup plain organic flour, 1 cup almond meal (flour), 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/2 cup real jam of choice.

I know, icing sugar! I usually cook with better quality sweeteners but I had two failed attempts at tweaking refined sugars to better ones last week. Today I needed a sure thing, my intense cravings depended on it. My family's intense cravings depended on it.

Preheat oven to 180ºC. Beat the butter, icing sugar and vanilla until creamy. Mix in the almond meal, plain flour and salt. Drop tablespoon of the dough on to trays spacing them out 5 cm and flatten them slightly with a fork. Bake 15-20 minutes or until just golden on the edges. Warm the jam in a saucepan over low heat until liquid. Stick the biscuits together in pairs with the liquid jam. I used apricot jam and fig jam.

Recipe tweaked from this cookbook.

Enjoy and I'll probably see you in about three days:)