It’s been a while between drinks …

Oh dear, it’s been more than two years between posts! That is a while between drinks, sorry dear readers (if there are any of you left!)

So, a quick update:

• Abby is now 4 1/2!! Eek! She’s awesome in all ways, and challenging in all ways, as all pre-schoolers should be!
• We have a second daughter, Emily, who’s almost 19 months, who is similarly awesome but challenging – I think this explains the lack of posts!
• We bought a house! It has a lovely backyard, but my growing attempts have been largely unsuccessful –  I tried to replicate the awesome passionfruit vine that grew of its own volition in our previous place, but sadly it has had limited success thus far. We have had some lovely strawberries and blueberries, but we have also had possums, who are quicker than we are 😦
• I have continued cooking and freezing!! Mostly for my two voracious eaters – they are very keen on their food, which is great, but makes it feel like we have two teenage boys in the house on occasion!!

Feeding an 18 month old

Emily loves food in general, and I did a similar use of purees and a bit of baby-led weaning with her. Breakfasts, she loves porridge, hot, cold or in between, and she can feed it to herself which is great! She also loves Weetbix, toast, and fruit, so she gets a pretty good amount of variety – she will eat two serves of Weetbix and two pieces of toast in a sitting!

Lunches, she loved soup (I didn’t try that early enough with Abby, who isn’t a fan), so for about a year, she had a veggie soup for lunch every day – literally whatever veggies in the fridge, a bit of ginger, some veggie stock and some canned beans, blitzed up in the Nutribullet and then put into a Sinchie reusable pouch. I’d make a big batch, freeze them, and then she’d eat them directly out of the pouch after they defrosted a bit in hot water!!

This was a great way of ensuring lots of veggies and liquid for lunch – add a cheese stick, some fruit and some bread and avocado and she was very happy! Of course, about a month ago she became more picky and won’t have the soup anymore – oh well, it was good while it lasted!!

Dinners, she loves to feed herself, so I used to make purees of meat and veggies ie chicken, beef, lamb, whatever we’d been eating, and give them to her with couscous or pasta – again, great to freeze and use! She is now going through a picky phase, though, and seems to have taken against these nice easy meals! So I’m separating things out a bit and seeing how she goes, she loves meat and some veggies, but is teething and picky!

Go to foods are all the dairy (cheese, milk, yogurt), bread, berries, bananas, crackers, eggs – the usual toddler fare! I’m trying to get her to eat more veg by themselves – she loves peas, but comes and goes with all others.

Feeding a 4 1/2 year old

Abby is a great eater, but eats a little less than Em, which is funny! She also prefers meals separated ie meat and veg and carb separately rather than soups or stews or curries – they like to make it harder for me! Breakfast is Cheerios or weetbix or porridge or toast.

Lunch – last year Abby started at a preschool where we have to pack her lunch – so annoying! Luckily though she is happy to have the same thing every day – an avocado wrap, strawberries, cucumber, crackers with Laughing Cow cheese, and something baked if I’ve got it, ie muffin or cookie or pancake. Recently she’s rejected the cheese, however – any hints on a protein that I could include, bearing in mind that the centre is nut and egg free?

Dinner – pasta and sauce is acceptable, as is pasta by itself with meat (chicken, kangaroo, lamb, sausage) with veggies on the side. She is pretty good with veggies, likes broccoli, carrot, sweet potato, cucumber, tomatoes, corn.

She loves sushi, scrambled eggs, crackers, fruit, pancakes – the photo below shows my attempt to make butterfly-shaped ones using cookie cutters, which were a bit deep so made it hard to cook the second side – any tips for lower shaped ones?

So that’s my food update for the moment – I haven’t baked bread in a while, my starter sadly died due to lack of use, and my garden is sorely lacking, but I will get there! And I will attempt more regular updates 🙂

Chickpea. Neither chick nor pea. Discuss.

I’ll spare you the usual apologies for length between posts, but I will give you the sad update on my garden – neglect has finally claimed most of it, alas!!

With the exception of the daffodils, who continue to defy the odds by springing cheerily from the ashes on an annual basis, and the society garlic and passion fruit vine, which both appear to be doing well despite no intervention from me, the rest of the garden is in a sorry state. I think I will have to abandon the yearly attempts at blueberries, due to the inconsistent weather beating the poor little buds off the stems before they can even create the berries!! And my forgetting to water the avocado plant (and not noticing how much sun we were having) appears to have had a terminal effect on it 😦

I believe that having a more accessible garden will yield better gardening results, so am hopeful that the next place we live in will have such a garden, and that my future gardening reports will be more positive!!

That’s the growing – on the cooking and freezing front, the slow cooker really came into its own during winter, with chicken, lamb and beef turning into wonderful meals with minimal intervention – there’s something very satisfying about putting everything in a pot before you head off to work, then having an enticing aroma greet you when you return!! We would then eat the results for multiple meals, on pasta, couscous, in pies, in tortillas – very versatile!!

Abby, in the way of toddlers, sometimes likes our food, sometimes rejects it out of hand, so I continue to make meals for her and freeze them so there’s always something healthy on hand for her.  She is a big fan of spaghetti bolognese, and I have found that our recipe, with the addition of a number of extra veggies food processed into it, can pass muster for us all, so I make up a big batch, with zucchini, carrots, broccoli, spinach and whatever else is lying around in the mix with the mince, and we all enjoy it!! I crossed the line by adding bok choy to one batch, however – it gave it an odd taste, so I’m sticking to mediterranean veggies from now on! My pro tip for freezing meals for toddlers? Freeze the leftover rice or pasta in with the meal itself, so it’s all ready to go when you want it – you’d be amazed how well it defrosts, and you have a complete and balanced meal!

She is a great little eater, liking fruit and veggies by themselves as much as in curries, bolognese and the ever-popular frittata, so we are very lucky – our only complaint is that she isn’t a big fan of chips or nuggets, so when we eat out, we have to ensure that there are other options, ie if we order her schnitzel, mash and peas, she is likely to only eat the peas!

She has also been known to eat broccoli and zucchini raw, and there was an enjoyable dinnertime where she repeatedly called for ‘more broccoli’ – not something you usually hear from a toddler, I’m sure – we know we’re very lucky!!

Her favourite snack/addition to a meal is chickpeas. For a few months earlier in the year, she demanded chickpeas for every meal, even breakfast!! I only complied for dinner, creating a mix of chickpeas, veggies, garlic, veggie stock and canned tomatoes, which she very much enjoyed. After a break of a couple of months, the chickpeas are back in favour – she’ll eat them straight, (ie drained and rinsed from the can), and likes them added to other meals – I actually have to put limits on how many she can eat at one sitting, as surely too many can’t be good for the digestion!

I know, I know, parents reading this will want to kill us – don’t worry, we do know how lucky we are, and try to appreciate it while it lasts!

I also tried some creative chickpea cooking – the results were a bit crumbly, but still eminently edible, although I enjoyed them more than Abby did, she’s a purist, just wants the chickpeas by themselves!! The recipe for these cookies is from One Handed Cooks ( http://onehandedcooks.com.au/recipe/chickpea-cookies/), who I heartily recommend for all food baby and toddler!

So I will leave you with a picture of Abby eating – I can’t believe she is already two!!

Her fork handling skills are quite good, and she can drink from a cup without too many spills, so she’s really growing up! She’s very chatty, loves talking and singing and all music, and has varied interests ranging from the garbage trucks to her dolls to the Mickey Mouse club!

I think in the absence of any successful gardening adventures, I might use her as the ‘grow’ part of the blog for a while!!

 

An ode to fritatta

Hello all! Yes, it’s been a while between posts – I think I might have been overly ambitious thinking I’d have lots of time to post with a young one! A’s in a pretty good routine, we’re still doing 2 naps a day, although sometimes it’s more one morning nap then an afternoon ‘rest’ but not nap – she’s probably transitioning to one nap, but we still find her morning nap good for all of us, and enjoy our lunch outings, so we won’t transition just yet! 

But we are all in transition – I’ve just started a new job, J’s just started his PhD, and A has just started daycare 2 days a week, so lots of big changes for us this year! The rambling about nap time relates to how much time I actually have – she’s on the go most of the day, requiring supervision and/or interaction, especially in the crawling to walking transition, so I find I only have time in her nap time, when I’m often napping myself, showering, or cooking, so blogging has fallen to the wayside!

The garden alas hasn’t changed much – the random weather has not been great for planting, or my existing plants, like my poor blueberries – turns out blueberries are not self-pollinating, in that they need two plants to pollinating each other, so I’ve now got two, but sadly the storms trashed my original plant, and the new one has only produced a few little berries – as usual, holding out great hope for next year! I think the location of the garden and the hardness of the stones  makes it hard for me to remember and be inspired by it at the moment – my rosemary died again! But the mint is happy, as is the society garlic, so I’ll get some more herbs going again, and leave the more intense gardening for a while.

However, the baby food cooking and freezing definitely continues! I still make a fruit purée to mix in with natural yogurt, Weetbix and milk for A’s breakfast, although sometimes she has overnight oats, sometimes pancakes if I’m in the mood! So breakfasts are pretty standard and easy, cos we’re all half asleep!

As she is a big fan of finger food, and I’m a big fan of being able to eat as well, I like an easy lunch option that I can make in big batches, freeze, then easily defrost and have it ready to go. Enter the frittata! I was not a big fan of frittata as a youngster, and I can’t say that I love it now, it’s a bit too eggy for me. However, it is the perfect way to get lots of veggies into a toddler with miminal effort! Here’s how:

1. Process/grate whatever veggies you have – I use to grate, now I save time and energy by using my little hand held processor, it would be even better with a bigger one! Any veggies will work – I usually have 4-5 in there, like baby spinach, zucchini, carrot, kumera, capsicum, broccoli, kale – whatever you want to use up!
   
   

   Grated veggies pre mixing!

   
   
   

   Defrosted serving of frittat ready to be devoured!

    
2. In a different bowl, beat together 4-5 eggs – I’m sure you could use the non-egg  substitute if there are allergies.
3. Then add 1-1/2 cups of flour to the eggs and beat well –  it depends how much veggie you have and how wet it seems, the flour will bind it together, so add  more if needed.
4. Then add 1 cup of grated cheese and the veggies, mix together, pour into a baking tray, flatten down and bake for around 30-35 mins at 180 degrees.
5. Voila! Once it cools a bit, I cut it into little squares suitable for toddler hands, then divide it into portions and freeze them, so there are plenty ready to go! I find it makes around 12-15 serves!

 

So that’s our lunch staple – I usually add some cucumber, some bread with avocado or peanut butter, a cheese stick and some fruit, and little miss is very happy!

Mmm, yummy!

Give me more frittata!

And she can feed herself the frittata, so I can eat too! Win win all round! I’m still enjoying sneaking veggies into things, although I will also  need to keep encouraging her to eat them in their natural state as we go on!

Oh yeah, love that fritatta!

Baby food

So, folks, it’s been a while between drinks over here at the blog, the usual reasons (baby, winter, general slackness!), and also because I have been taking far more photos of my baby than my garden! 

Winter has not been kind to my garden or my enthusiasm for gardening – as I reported last time, I planted a couple of new crops, which never went anywhere, and then it got colder, and darker, and I preferred to nap when my baby napped rather than struggle with difficult crops! So, the garden is not up to much – the society garlic, kale, avocado plant and chives still continue cheerily, but everything else isn’t up to much – when spring arrives, so will my enthusiasm! Also, having a crawling baby who puts everything in her mouth is hard to garden with, especially on the cold hard cobblestones in our backyard – I don’t think having her start to walk will make it easier to garden during the day when she and I are home alone, but as the evenings lengthen, I can hopefully attend more to my garden while my husband attends to her 😊

   
   
However, despite my gardening hiatus, my cooking and freezing has continued unabated! My pressure cooker gets a regular workout, as it is definitely cosy warming stew-style dinner weather! I follow some recipes when I have the ingredients or the interest, but my go-to dinner is:

– sauté some onions and garlic, 

– brown the meat (some type of shank or stewing meat, usually red meat rather than chicken, as I haven’t tried to coordinate veggies and chicken yet), 

– then put whatever veggies are on hand with some stock, some herbs, some tinned tomatoes and the meat back in

– cook for about half an hour on high pressure. 

It makes enough for us to have for dinner a couple of nights in a row, and then a few meals for the baby too!

I find that even though I’m currently home on maternity leave, having a small human who depends on you for everything, ie food, entertainment, sleep and waste disposal, doesn’t leave much time for creating gourmet meals from scratch every night! I also prefer to nap when she naps or do other things rather than always making dinner then, so find double up meals such as in the pressure cooker invaluable, especially as they often taste even better the next day when the flavours have developed!

So, baby food – Abby is almost 10 months old now, and we started giving her solid foods around 5 1/2 months. We initially started with veggie purées, sweet potato, carrot, pumpkin, then added some fruits, apple, pear and banana, and avocado. Once she got used to it, and went up to 3 meals a day, then we started on meats and finger food such as steamed veggies, fruit, cheese and bread.

It took me a while to get comfortable with her feeding herself, as I was worried about choking, and when they gag, it can be quite scary! But she’s a great little eater, and certainly enjoys feeding herself, so we do a mix of mashed foods and finger foods nowadays for most meals.

The freezer is your best friend when it comes to baby food, because you can make larger batches and then freeze, so there’s always something on hand! I freeze her food in these little silicone icecube trays, the ones I use are Heinz, the bottoms are easy to pop out, which makes it easy to then put the little cubes in plastic bags or containers in the freezer, and then use the trays again for more food! 

  
What does she eat? Well, I’ll do a few posts breaking these up, and try and take more photos so it’s more interesting!

We try and make a mix of carbs, protein and healthy fats for each meal, and portion sizes are still something that I find a bit confusing. For breakfast, it depends on who is feeding her (my husband and I, neither of us morning people, take it in turns to get up with her around 7am and look after her in the morning).

If it’s me, I make extra porridge from my own serving and she has that with some fruit and Greek yogurt. If it’s my husband, Weetbix (the kids ones with less salt, there are mixed messages about salt before the age of 1, so we try and reduce it or avoid it), still with fruit and Greek yogurt. To save time and effort, when I make my own stewed fruit for my breakfast at the start of the week, I mash a bit up for her and then freeze it in the trays so there are easily accessible little cubes for us both! As it’s currently winter, and I try to eat seasonally with fruit, it’s pears, rhubarb and apples, and some prunes in hers to keep her regular! Also, to save money and effort, I have started making her yogurt in the EasiYo maker – to try and delay a love affair with sugar (I still struggle with mine!), we give her Greek yogurt rather than sweetened, and so far so good, she’s happy to eat it mixed with things in breakfast, or mixed with fruit later in the day as a dessert! So I make a batch of plain, then also separate some out and mix with fruit to use for other meals!

Sometimes she’s super keen on breakfast, sometimes she’s not – as breastmilk is still supposed to be a major component of her nutrition til age 1,  I give her a breastfeed first thing if I’m up, so she’s not then as hungry for breakfast til a bit later, whereas we switch it up if my husband is up. She is also becoming very independent and keen on feeding herself, which I’ll talk more about with the other meals, so I’m trying to think of nutritious breakfast finger food – we did pancakes the other day, which weren’t the greatest success, because I foolishly decided to make a big batch at the same time as trying to feed her, which meant I was distracted and she was frustrated, especially as I put the fruit purée on them, making them hard to grasp for her! I have frozen them and given them to her plain as part of breakfast and had much more success, which is good – that’s a tip I have learnt about baby feeding, if at first you don’t succeed, try again at a different time before ditching all your hard-cooked food!

  
Obligatory cute baby photo –  this is her eating breakfast a couple of months ago.

 So, suggestions for finger food breakfasts? What should I put on toast at that time of day?

I blame climate change …

Really, it must be climate change that is affecting my garden, can’t possibly be baby-induced time pressures and forgetfulness!

The reason I blame climate change is because the weather has been crazy here over summer – alternating between sweltering and stormy, my poor plants haven’t stood a chance! I even planted zucchini and kale with the best intentions, but they didn’t even sprout because the weather was so random!

My lime tree produces tiny limes that then fall off before growing to edible size – any tips? It’s been happening for a few years now – I try to add compost and citrus food, but it doesn’t help!

Our passion fruit vine is vining up the fence nicely, but no passion fruits. I have already shared the sadness of my poor blueberry plant, as the winds took all the flowers in a storm, so again, no blueberries for us!

On the upside, the marigolds that I planted last year to help the tomatoes are going fm great guns!

The kale I planted 2 years ago keeps springing eternally with almost no encouragement, you can see it in the back of the above photo! And the pretty purple flowers are my society garlic plant, always happy and lovely in my salads! 

And in news  of things I’ve actually planted in the last few months, my tomatoes are growing nicely, so we’ll have a cute little crop.

So that’s the current garden status – trying desperately to triumph against the elements and my lack of attention!

I will be back next week with cooking and freezing news – apologies for delays between posts, with a gorgeous little one who is so keen on the world that daytime naps are the enemy, I often focus on eating, showering or napping when she finally succumbs, but will have more regular posts, probably indoor focused as my gardening is even less likely to succeed as we enter winter! And that’s ok, because I’m nurturing a gorgeous little human instead 😊



For auld lang syne

So, another year comes to a close. I started this year by starting this blog, because I wanted a new hobby, a creative outlet and a way of discussing and sharing my other hobbies with other like-minded people.

The first half of the year went well with my garden, my cooking, my freezing and my blogging. The second half of the year, not so much on all fronts.

However, I am ok with that, as the reason for all of that is my gorgeous daughter. That was also a goal of 2014, one which I am very happy we were able to achieve with minimum fuss (well, the pregnancy bit, anyway, life with a newborn is maximum fuss!)

Now our bub is 11 weeks old, and we are starting to feel a little bit more like parents, understanding her a bit more, and enjoying her developing personality with her smiles and cute noises. My long-neglected garden finally got a backyard blitz yesterday, as the cat naps Abby likes to take during the day don’t leave much time for the type of cultivation (and weed removal!) required. With the generous babysitting of grandparents, Jon and I were able to fix the garden back up, remove all the weeds and dead plants, and make it feel like a nice place again! Before and after shots below.

Having a baby has taught me patience, to embrace the chaos, and that sometimes you need to press pause on things, change your goals, and that’s ok. My garden has not had my attention, and that, combined with some crazy weather (heat followed by storms followed by cold followed by storms followed by heat) has led to the sad demise of plants such as my broad beans, who grew beautifully, then succumbed to Robert Downey mildew before we could harvest enough for a meal – specimens below.

I also haven’t been able to cook or blog much, partly because of lack of time, partly because of lack of energy while I processed this massive change! But again, that’s ok! Life is what happens when you’re making other plans!

New Year’s resolutions? I will keep blogging, and will return to my gardening and cooking, but with the understanding that having these activities forcibly scaled back by another amazing creation is definitely worth it! I’ll try not to become too much baby blog, but will share some highlights (or poo stories, if you want those, we’ve got plenty!)

The garden is surviving well – new tomato plants are thriving, as are strawberries – from a pre-bought plant rather than seed, something which again is ok as cultivating from seeds was a bit beyond me over the past few months! I planted some zucchini and kale yesterday, so we’ll see how we go! Some herbs are on the cards for the new year, maybe some lettuce – I am scaling back my plans to focus on things we will eat and that are low maintenance for the time being, so I feel less guilty about not being able to focus so much on the garden!

And cooking will also return, I need to make more snacks for me that are less sugary (breastfeeding makes me starving and a sugar monster!) and have more nutrition, and as the little one calms down more in the early evening, fancier meals will return! But again, the change is good, and it’s all about short-term adaptation for long-term gain.

So Happy New Year, thanks for sharing 2014 with me, and being understanding, and I look forward to more adventures in 2015!

Growing, cooking and freezing of a different kind

There has been a long delay between posts, and while there are multiple reasons, I think the longer I left it, the more epic I thought the next post needed to be, which makes it harder to start again! So, here is the small post that will restart me on regular posts again, sorry!

As you know, I’ve been growing a different kind of plant, a baby-shaped one! To stretch the metaphor, the baby was growing and cooking for most of this year, and the last few weeks of pregnancy really made it hard for me to cook or garden, as bending down or lifting things became a real challenge, with a large watermelon blocking my movements!

Our gorgeous baby girl Abigail was born in mid October, and I must admit, my life has been a bit on freeze since then, as dealing with a newborn, however cute she is, has been quite the shock to my system and way of life. I think I naively assumed that while the baby would impact on what I do, that I would be able to return to normal programming fairly quickly, because all babies do is sleep, right? Well, they do that, sometimes, when it suits them, but they also feed a lot, and as I’m breastfeeding, and recovering from a C section (little bub was breech for quite a few months, so no way of dislodging her otherwise!), it’s all quite tiring and overwhelming. I know that the first few weeks are tough, everyone says it, everyone’s been through it, but it is quite another thing to actually go through it yourself.

So my garden is definitely suffering, it’s getting watered, but not much else, ie weeding and staking have fallen by the wayside, because again, bending is a challenge! In terms of cooking, we prepped a few things before the birth, such as spaghetti sauce, burrito mix, soup and some snacks, a recipe for one of which I will share in the coming weeks, and froze them, so that’s been quite handy, as being tired and then thinking about cooking isn’t high on the list!

Once things settle down a bit, I will do some more posts about my poor garden (some storms and heat have not been kind) and some cooking I’m doing, and will probably reflect a fair bit of motherhood as well, because I hear that no-one has ever blogged about that before! 😉

To leave you with a couple of photos of the angel (when she’s not being a demonic crying monster!)

Two very different nuts

I was just looking back through my photos to pull some together for this post, and realised how over winter I am – it’s been very cold and rainy here the past few weeks, and I had a horrible cold on top of that (coughing + baby in belly = uncomfortable!), so although I am normally someone who doesn’t mind the cold weather, I am definitely keen for some warmth, longer days, summery food and hopefully less rain so my garden actually gets a bit of a chance to grow!! Anyway, that’s my random end of winter rant over 🙂

I did some planting a few weeks ago, of tomatoes, peas, red cabbage, english spinach and broad beans – the rain has probably not helped their ability to thrive, but I can report that there appears to be shoots of all of them, which is positive, so there will be more to report on over the next few months!

In older garden news, let me tell you about peanuts!! More specifically, growing them!

Peanuts
As you know if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, I am very much an experimental and haphazard gardener, who likes to plant things to see how they work in a small space, sometimes with great success (cucumbers, tomatoes, I can sense another good summer for you guys!), sometimes with sad results (corn, broccoli, one day I will conquer you!). Peanuts fit somewhere in between these two camps – they were a success, but a limited success, because the yield wasn’t high, but then the effort put in wasn’t high either, so I think it’s ultimately a win!

Now, I helpfully didn’t record when I planted these peanuts, because it was back in the days when I was a bit sloppier about my recording dates. However, I would guesstimate that it was sometime between October and December, as these photos were taken in January and February respectively, and the plant is clearly already quite advanced!

January peanut plant

February peanut plant

I then harvested the little guys in June. So, it’s a long slow process to get peanuts. However, the thing I like about peanuts is you just let them grow, no real intervention required!! The plants grow, then form little yellow flowers, which then drop into the earth and burrow down to create the nuts – how cool is that!! The nuts themselves actually grow under the soil, on the roots, and you know when they’re ready, because the plant at the top dies!! Finally, a positive spin on plant death!

The dead plant at the top, soil and peanuts at the bottom!

You then shake the whole thing out of the pot, and sift through to find, voila, peanuts!!

Soil, with peanuts!

Peanuts loosed from their soily home!

When I initially bought a ready grown peanut plant a few years ago, the success of which inspired me to plant my own, the vendor helpfully advised that you shouldn’t eat the peanuts straight away once you harvest them, you should leave them to dry out for a couple of weeks, as there is some residual toxicity going on that you want to avoid! So, I dutifully put my small crop of peanuts in a container in a sunny spot in our kitchen for the past couple of months, and am now slowly nibbling my way through them, making them last as they are so few!

Peanuts in container – still soily!

Peanuts in their shell – see, actual peanuts!

Peanut after a bite – not roasted or salted, just raw and fresh!

Summary – peanuts are a fun plant to grow, in that it looks pretty, is very low maintenance, and is fun to harvest, but unless you plant acres worth of them, you won’t be making homemade peanut butter anytime soon! In hindsight, there are probably some things you can do to ensure more flowers grow, leading to more peanuts, but I don’t think that would have dramatically increased my crop to the point of making my own peanut butter, which would really be the ultimate goal!

The other nut – coconut
No, I haven’t decided to grow coconuts, even I, with my spatial awareness issues, am aware that a palm tree won’t work in our suburban backyard!! However, I did receive a free 1L sample of Pure Harvest Coco Quench coconut milk, which I thought I’d review for you here. I don’t tend to go in for dairy alternatives, mainly because I don’t have to, I tolerate (and in fact adore) traditional cow’s milk dairy very well, and therefore don’t really need to adjust my taste buds to the other types. I have dabbled in almond milk with cooking, and liked it, but still sometimes find non-dairy milks a little intensely flavoured compared to what I’m used to when milk is the focus of the dish like coffee or cereal. However, in the event that the bun in my oven isn’t so accommodating of dairy, and I need to cut out dairy for a while while breastfeeding, it is good to consider how I will continue to enjoy my breakfasts without regular milk!!

So, when we ran out of milk the other day, I decided to give the coconut milk a whirl. I used it in my porridge for around 4 days, in my coffee and in one of my late night cereal snacks (bub gets hungry in the middle of the night!). I found that I could taste it in my coffee and cereal, and while not unpleasant, as it is quite a nice flavour, it would probably take a bit of getting used to if I was to use it full time. However, in my porridge, although the consistency looked a bit different (see below), it tasted almost the same, which is positive for me, as it means it functions well as a replacement for my warm breakfasts, and is likely to be able to be adapted to other breakfasts as well.

Coconut milk porridge cooking – the consistency looks a bit more watery than with regular milk, but it still cooks up fine!

So, on the whole, a thumbs up from me – it is easy to use, store in the fridge like normal milk in a carton, shake before use and away you go!

Recent eats and garden update

Hello my lovelies,

I will get around to posting about my peanuts, once I get around to eating them – when you only produce a handful of them, you want to savour them appropriately! I’ve also realised that I don’t necessarily need to wait for something big to update you on, I can also do some more random updates on the bits and pieces going on in my life – let me know if you’re happy to read those as well, or what you would prefer!

However, despite my extreme laziness in the garden of late, there are developments to share with you! I have found that one of my tomato plants is currently defying the laws of nature and gravity, which I always like to commend! I’m of the ‘perhaps if I leave that almost dead looking plant for a few weeks/months something interesting might happen’ school of gardening, as you never know when a plant might suddenly spring back to life – my herbs frequently do this! So at the end of the tomato season a few months ago, I did pull out some obviously dead plants, but left this one because there were still a few green shoots. Recently, I noticed that while the bottom of the plant appears dead, the top of the plant hasn’t noticed, and is blithely growing flowers for new tomatoes, even though it’s on a very odd angle! This is why I love nature!! We’ll see how these tomatoes go …

See, the base of the plant appears dead, however new life continues to spring!

A closer look at the impressive tomato flowers, defying the odds!

Also, my pea plants are going well, growing up tall and hopefully will have pea pods to show you soon, but here is the plant in the meantime:

Pea plants in progress

I also overcame my laziness (I blame a combo of questionable weather, general busyness and the fact that my increasing baby bump makes it harder to lean over!) in my winter planting yesterday. My compost has actually been going wonderfully well – full of worms, which I take to be a good sign of decomposition and general compost health!! So, yesterday I planted some more tomatoes, some broad beans, some English spinach, and some red cabbage – I still don’t know why the red cabbage didn’t grow at all a few months ago, so if that happens again, I’d say it’s the seeds, but we’ll see how these new crops go!

In food news, I have been enjoying my EasiYo yogurt so very much for breakfasts! In my usual porridge, on muesli in the warmer weather we had last week, as an afternoon snack, and on the weekend, I made myself a lovely plate of French toast, served with homemade yogurt, defrosted berries and maple syrup – it looks like a cafe meal, if I do say so myself!!

Cafe-ready French toast!

And last week I made an experimental salad that turned out wonderfully well – I poached some chicken thighs in some society garlic, peppercorns and parley, cooked some quinoa in chicken stock, roasted some pumpkin, and then all combined these with some rocket, cherry tomatoes, avocado, and homemade beetroot relish (which is awesome, by the way – canned or fresh beetroot, diced, with 1/3 cup brown sugar and 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar, bring to the boil then simmer until it’s nice and relishy looking and tastes tart but not too strong – it keeps in the fridge for ages and I add it to everything!) All the flavours went so well together, it was super yummy – apologies for slightly blurry photo, I will endeavour to stop taking photos like a guerilla and actually take time to take them properly!! And the good thing about poaching the chicken was that it created plenty of stock for me to freeze for future soups and stews!

Awesome chicken and quinoa salad!

So, that’s what’s been happening in my growing, cooking and freezing world of late!

Peanut butter goodness

I have two posts planned on my love of the peanut – this one will focus on an awesome cookie I made recently, whereas the next one will focus on the fun to be had growing peanuts yourself! Not enough to make peanut butter, though, which is my great love …

A few weeks ago, I decided that a more beneficial way of satisfying my love of all things cookie and sweet (usual, but even more so during pregnancy, I must say, although that’s perhaps because I try and justify it by saying the baby wants it … 🙂 was to make some yummy cookies myself, to try and combat the high levels of crap found in commercially sold/available in my work kitchen options.

Now, there is sometimes a big debate in Australia about the difference between cookies and biscuits, largely based on the Americanisation of our language etc, and some people use these terms interchangeabley. In my view, biscuits are harder, and made for Anzacs (it is not an Anzac cookie, people, it’s an Anzac biscuit, made to travel long distances and survive!) and/or by Arnott’s in large packs and found frequently at workplaces. Cookies, however, are softer, often a bit sweeter, American in origin, and made by Subway/cafes/lots of bloggers. I feel that a choc chip biscuit can be nice, but a choc chip cookie can be even nicer, as it is softer and chewier, and if I’m buying from a cafe or similar, then it’s a cookie, whereas if it’s served at a work morning tea, it’s likely to be a biscuit. However, sometimes it just depends on how long you cook it for, I have often planned to make cookies and ended up with biscuits!! So it’s not a hard and fast rule, but these are definitely cookies – chewy, soft and oh so yummy!

The recipe below is truly wonderful, so much so that my husband wolfed many of them down and said that I could make these anytime I like (high praise indeed!) They also lasted surprisingly well, probably because it’s colder weather – I made them on Sunday, and they kept in an airtight container until Friday (not many of them, due to our high incidence of eating them!), so I didn’t have to freeze them as I had thought I might, although as I plan to make them again this weekend, I might make a double batch and freeze them just so we have them available longer!!

I really love peanut butter – I love it on toast, I love it with crackers, I love it flavouring things, I think it gives a lovely sweet/salty tang to sweet things that I very much appreciate. I must say, I haven’t yet gotten on the alternate nut butter (almond, sunflower etc) bandwagon – I like almonds, but didn’t really like the almond butter I tried, so I might need to try it again, or just continue to enjoy my love affair with peanut butter! I also love it with chocolate – those Reese’s people know what they’re doing! Therefore, I wanted to bake a cookie that would have both peanut butter flavouring and choc chips, and voila! These are not necessarily the healthiest thing, but in moderation, a very welcome addition to our eating! I made these in my Mix Master, which worked well for a properly mixed cookie dough – just had to try and stop myself from eating too much raw cookie dough, darn raw egg restrictions!

I found this recipe on the lovely vegan blog Oh She Glows, because I really like her recipes, but as I am not vegan, and wanted to use ingredients we had around the house, I have adapted it – here is the link to the original if you’re interested – http://ohsheglows.com/2012/12/05/crispy-peanut-butter-chocolate-chip-cookies-vegan-gluten-free/

Peanut Butter chocolate chip cookies

Ingredients
1 egg
1/4 cup butter or margarine (45g)
1/4 cup peanut butter (70g)
3/4 cup lightly packed brown sugar (135g)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp fine grain sea salt
1 cup rolled oats(105g)
1 cup +2 tbsp almond flour or meal (I had almond meal, so used that – you can grind your own almonds if you feel the great urge, I didn’t!)
1/3 cup chocolate chips, dark or milk would work fine

Method
1. Preheat oven to 350F and line a baking sheet with baking paper.
2. With an electric mixer or in a stand mixer (ie my lovely Mix Master), beat the buttery spread and peanut butter until combined. Add sugar and beat for 1 minute more. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract until combined.
3. Beat in the remaining dry ingredients (baking soda, baking powder, salt, oats, and almond flour) one by one. If your dough is dry (this could be the case if too much flour is used), you can add a touch of milk to thin it out. Fold in chocolate chips.
4. Shape 1-inch balls of dough (smaller than golf balls) and place on the baking sheet. If chocolate chips aren’t sticking to the dough, just press them in with your fingers. There is no need to flatten the balls as the cookies spread out a lot. Place balls 2-3 inches apart.
5. Bake for about 11-13 minutes (I baked for 12 mins) until lightly golden. The underside will also be a rich golden brown shade. The cookies will be very soft coming out of the oven, but they will harden as they cool.
6. Allow to cool for 5-10 mins. on the baking sheet and then transfer to a cooling rack for another 10 minutes. Sprinkle cookies with flaked sea salt to bring out the peanut butter flavour even more (which I forgot to do, but might do this time!)
7. Enjoy!! They should last for almost a week in an airtight container, or should freeze very well.

Here is the one photo I remembered to take before they were all gone – as you can see, I only allowed myself to bring one to work as a post-lunch hit of sweetness, it’s all about portion control over here or else I would scarf the lot!!

Peanut butter choc chip cookie goodness!

Enjoy!