inner pickle

for this good food

I'm pretty good with dinner. I usually make it myself, the majority of people at the table eat it, and we mix it up. With the exception of Saturday pizza movie night on which the kids have what they call "plain" (homemade) pizza every week. And we have a grownup version. 

Sometimes though, I'm without a meal plan and I find myself staring forlornly at the fridge or pantry. 

It's always those days that I visit a friend and their amazing-smelling dinner is cooked at 2pm and cooling in the fridge. I've never been able to cook dinner at lunchtime. It used to be that I was working, and more recently I have no idea what I'm doing but it's not cooking dinner in the middle of the day. You? 

Last week I was walking with a friend at 5pm, she has four kids, and neither of us had made dinner. I asked her what they were having. Burritos. 

I never think to make burritos. 

I had mince in the freezer and flatbread in the bread box. The perfect quick and easy kid-friendly dinner.

 

 

Avocado optional.

What's your quick fallback family dinner ideas? I'm starting a list!

xxx

pumpkin's not for pie

I've been super lucky to be given two homegrown pumpkins in the last week. One Butternut and one Jap (or Kent). Both glorious. 

The first was in exchange for a bag of new mandarins off one of our trees (don't you LOVE a barter?!) and the second was a gift from new friends (who feel just like old friends) who treated us to lunch on their verandah this weekend overlooking amazing green hills. 

So pumpkin soup for dinner, and we'll roast the rest for pasta or risotto later this week. YUM.

(With homemade hummus and flatbread.)

 

PUMPKIN SOUP

Ingredients:

2 small leeks

1 onion

3 cloves garlic

tbsp olive oil

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground tumeric

1 tsp ground coriander

approx half a Butternut pumpkin, peeled & chopped

approx a third of a Jap pumpkin, peeled & chopped

3 medium potatoes, peeled & sliced

approx 1 litre of chicken stock

1 cup red lentils

 

Method:

Cook the leeks (trimmed, washed), the onion and garlic in the oil until translucent. Fry off the spices for a minute or two. Add the pumpkin and potato and cover with stock. Stir in the red lentils.

Cook for approx 30 minutes or until the vegetables are soft and the red lentils have thoroughly cooked down (and disappeared.) 

Blend with hand blender until smooth. 

I got the idea for adding the red lentils from my mother in law - they're such perfect protein and no one would know they were there! Jen adds coconut milk to hers too, which is delicious. 

Ivy will have the pumpkin soup with cous cous stirred through it tomorrow. She eats before the rest of us then snacks in her high chair while we eat. 

Tonight it's peas.

This year I am planting pumpkins and peas. Two of my favourite veggies.

What are you eating?!

xxx

 

 

feeding the baby meat

This post is sponsored by Nuffnang

If you’ve been following along here you might have been around for Meat Free May last year. We went from a fairly low red-meat-eating base (about twice a week) to zero for a month, for primarily ecological reasons.

I was pregnant with baby number three, Ivy, and after May, I continued not eating meat. I found I couldn’t. Adam hoped like mad that I’d get back into it after the baby was born, but as I had flirted with vegetarianism since I was a teenager, he didn’t hold out hope.

Once Ivy was born, and breastfeeding was in full swing however, nothing could keep me away from roast beef. Or a good sausage. Or a lovely roasted free range chicken.

Which means I gave Meat Free May 2011 a lot of thought.

And there are three more issues.

1. Adam and I intend, sometime soon, to become primary producers. Probably Beef. Maybe goats. Definitely chickens. Meat Free May seems a little odd in this context.
2. We’ve begun buying organic beef direct from a farmer, and it’s simply amazing. I can’t recommend this purchasing method highly enough. If you’re in the city it’s worth the drive, I promise. You can contact your local food co-op and see if they have contacts, you can google ‘meat from the farm’ and append your local area, or if you’re in coo-ee of the Illawarra  contact these guys 
3. I have no intention of withholding meat from my rapidly growing hale and hearty ten month old. She loves it. And let’s not get started on the four and six year olds. They abstained relatively well last year, but I was driven by a deep inability to stomach meat at all and so whining fell on deaf ears. This year: if there’s no bacon for a month I think there’ll be a highly organised mutiny (possibly led by Adam).

So at the risk of dismaying vegetarian readers, I’m posting my first meat-based recipe in a long while.

Simple Beef Casserole.

It’s from here and very similar to a stew I make regularly in the slow cooker on swimming lesson days. I love the addition of zucchini dumplings for this recipe – I‘d never thought of those.

It is also an out-and-out Ivy favourite. We eat it one night and whiz up the leftovers and freeze portions for her. She loves it. It’s quick to make, nutritious and high in iron and protein. Perfect.

 

 

Simple Beef Casserole

INGREDIENTS

800g beef rump or chuck steak, trimmed of fat, cut into 3cm cubes (I used blade this week)

2 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, roughly chopped

2 carrots, peeled, cut into 2cm pieces

2 tbsp plain flour

400g canned diced tomatoes

2 large potatoes, peeled, diced

 

For the dumplings:

1 cup self-raising flour

30g of margarine or butter

1 medium zucchini, grated

1/3 cup milk

METHOD

1.  Heat a large saucepan and add half of the oil. Add onion and carrot. Cook for 5 mins or until soft. 

2.  Meanwhile, heat a non-stick frying pan. Toss beef with remaining oil and cook in batches over high heat until browned. Add to saucepan with onion mixture. 

3.  Add flour, tomatoes, ½ cup of water and potatoes. Bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for 1½ hours.

 4.  For dumplings: Sift flour into bowl and rub in margarine until mixture is crumbly. Stir in the zucchini. Add milk and mix to a soft dough. Knead gently. Divide into 12 portions and form into rough balls (This make 12 very large dumplings or 24 small. I’d recommend smaller for kids.) Place dumplings on top of casserole for the final 15 mins of cooking. Cover and cook for 15 mins or until dumplings are risen and cooked.

 

 

(Excellent with a small Shiraz.)

xxx

 

decision fatigue

Some decisions are easy. 

Like this morning. When my new-to-us old car wouldn't start. And Adam wasn't here. And I'm a feminist and all but not a mechanic. And it wouldn't even tick over.

Call my Dad? Of course I called my Dad. Who drove over (he can drive over! I LOVE living here!) and jump started it, and graciously said he and Mum hadn't shut their rear door properly before and run the battery flat many times too.

He even followed me to the school (we now know what the late procedure is) and stayed with the car so I didn't have to turn it off. Thanks Dad. Legend.

Another easy decision: send Tilly to preschool today with a shocker cough and dramatic ear infection? Ah, no. Not even if I'm feeling crook myself. Stay home and think up crazy crafts instead. Accompanied by lots of camomile.  

 

Give the baby a dreadful plastic snake to play with? Will it amuse her? Yep. 

 

Will I keep glancing at it out of the corner of my eye and jumping? Yep.

Will I at one point actually shriek when Tilly moves it and leaves it under the clothesline? (Even though it's bright green and fake looking?) Yep.

By late this afternoon camomile wasn't the beverage I was wishing it was. 

And I was pretty happy with a little list I'd drawn up last week to take some of the night by night decision making out of dinner. There was a time I loved looking at the the fridge at 6.30pm at night and throwing together imaginative creations. I can barely remember it. 

I now have this list:

Mon - salad

Tue - soup

Wed - egg based or bean based

Thu - Pasta or rice based

Fri - Slow-cooked (+ dessert)

Sat - Pizza & movie night

Sun - Roast (+ make stock)

 

I just get sick of thinking up balanced menu plans and this takes some of the guess work out. Using whatever's fresh and whatever's in the pantry, it just means I can cycle warm & cold salads, our favourite four or so soups, a frittata or quiche or a bean nachos or whatever on a Wednesday, maybe risotto or pasta bake or vegie fried rice on a Thursday.

On Fridays Tilly is at preschool so I can put something on at lunchtime. Saturday night's been homemade pizza at our place for a couple of years now, and the Sunday night roast and making stock straight after worked really well. I used leftover meat in the salad on Monday, and the stock was the base of the pumpkin soup on Tuesday and a vegetable risotto on Thursday.

So it was soup night tonight.

I had a jar of green split peas in the pantry and a few rashers of bacon left over from the weekend. Given my state of mind, I didn't think to soak the peas over night. I'd heard you could simmer them for five minutes then soak for an hour to the same effect. Tried it. Worked. 

Green split pea and bacon soup

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups of green split peas (ideally soaked overnight or as above)

2 medium brown onions, sliced

2 carrots, peeled, sliced

3 potatoes, peeled, sliced

3 rashers of bacon, chopped

1.5 litres chicken stock

seasoning

 

METHOD:

Cook the onion in a tablespoon or so of olive oil. Add a pinch of salt to help it sweat. Throw in the bacon and cook. Add the other vegetables and the soaked peas and cover with the chicken stock. Cook for approx 30 mins or until the peas collapse and are soft and the vegies are cooked well. Blend with a stick blender or in a food processor. Season to taste. 

With some bread or not. Wouldn't it be awesome if that was the hardest decision you made today.

Hope your week is going swimmingly, and thanks for stopping by! 

xxx

home economics

Dal, I find, is quite divisive. People either get it or they don't. A bit like IKEA. 

I love love love dal. Even before vegetarianism, I'd wheel this one out regularly. Luckily I've got number one son on board so I can make it more than twice a year even though the rest of the family aren't mad about it. 

(Truly, what's not to love about red lentils I ask you?!)

The provenance of my dal recipe is hazy. I think I first learnt to cook dal thanks to my darling friend Leah now two thousand kilometres north of Sydney who I once worked with and started a lunch club with, in which one person brought lunch in for three and then the next two days you had lunch cooked for you. It was totally fab. We'd do awesome salads and bring in cold quiche and swapped recipes like girls possessed. And Leah cooked a fabulously simple dal. I now cook this off the top of my head but I think this is where it came from. 

 

I cook dal because I love it. It's tasty and I can imagine one day eating it while hiking the Annapurna circuit in Nepal with Adam and the not so wee ones. 

But another reason I love it is because it costs about 10 cents to make. Well maybe not 10 cents but damn it's cheap. Well under $5 for an entire family dinner. And it's super nutritious. 

Gotta love that.

We usually have brown rice - in fact we rarely have white rice in the house. But I bought a big bag of jasmine to attempt to make my own rice crackers. Better get onto that before we eat it all!

 

RECIPE FOR SIMPLE DAL

1½ cups red lentils (approx 300g)

1 large onion, thinly sliced

2 cloves garlic, crushed

3 cm piece of fresh ginger, chopped

1 teaspoon ground tumeric

 

METHOD

Cook the onion, garlic and ginger until soft in a splodge of oil (olive or vegie or macadamia nut - whatever you have handy.)

Add the tumeric and fry for another minute. 

Add the lentils and stir until coated. Then cover all with water and simmer until cooked, usually about 20-30 minutes. I keep checking and stirring and adding water if it's too dry. Season with salt. 

You can add chillis which spices the whole dish up (add with the tumeric) but I've been cooking this for kids for the last few years so I leave them out. 

I love this for one more reason: you can cook it one-handed! Chuck it all in. Stir. Serve. All with a baby with a headcold on your hip! Try it!

xxx

 

all about the girls

These two, actually.

This is quite an old photo of two of my favourite people in the world. Ten years old, in fact. On the left, my sister Naomi, on the right, my sister in law, Rachel.

Yes it looks like they're in some kind of incarceration facility but it is, rather, the front door to a basement apartment Adam and I lived in when we first came back from London. 

I also have lots of photos of these two in London, and other fun places, but they are not conveniently scanned and on a memory stick from my father in law (thanks, Jim.)

Once upon a time the four of us shared a one bedroom apartment in Bethnal Green in true Aussies-in-London fashion. It rocked. 

And we shared a LOT of meals at a place just like this:

Which brings me to my post. 

Ad and I took the smallies for an early dinner at above-mentioned noodle place and had a fab time (yep, a bit unexpectedly, smallies, public, all that.) And it took us back to those days (when we felt like adults) hanging with the sisters in Covent Garden. Eating number 42 Yaki Udon. Good times. 

(I hasten to add there's no free lunch/sponsorship/kickback thingo going on here... this is authentic nostalgia!)

What's new? Instead of being here with Nomie and Rach we're here with the kidlets. Who were great company. 

 

Instead of a hangover we have colouring in pencils!

The food is still really good. In fact, better than I remember. Maybe that's because we're in Sydney? And it was a glorious late afternoon and we had a view across Darling Harbour? I know, life really sucks. Poor me. 

If Nomie and Rach had been there it would have been perfect.

xxx

 

 

eating for energy

I have a tired boy.

And it's actually not Henry.

(Although by the end of last term he was officially cactus, and I kept him home from school one day in the second last week. Fatigue does apparently come as part of Velo Cardio Facial Syndrome, we're figuring out ways to help minimize it.)

No, my tired older fella. The one who works hard and packs it all into every day.

The one who, even if he's totally exhausted, still plays the "kids run maniacally at the front door when Dad gets home and he'll throw you up in the air" game. 

Who, even if pooped, always stacks the dishwasher. Marvellous man. 

And of course, I leap to the conclusion the tiredness could be iron deficiency. Heme iron, the red meat kind, because the man has a vegetarian cook in the house and although a steak might just do it, he'd have to cook it himself. 

Rough, hey?

So I've been obsessively feeding the family superfoods high in non-heme iron! And protein!

Spinach, cracked wheat and pinenut pie. 

Vegie sources of iron don't absorb as easily into the body, you can help this by eating foods rich in vitamin C, like a tomato and citrus salad! With your spinach pie!

A big batch of homemade hummus. 

Chickpeas are ace. (And also full of zinc, folate and protein.)

Have I lost you yet?

Mmmmm, check this out:

Yes, that's what Adam said too.

And guess what? I made TONS of it. 

Organic soybeans, barley and lentils. Carrots, celery and tomatoes. Slow cooked for forever.

You can do so many things with this zingy protein and iron-filled wonder!

I made shepherd's pie:

Twice!

And I made little pasties. Should've photographed them, they were cute. Next time. 

Also, burritos! With extra tomato! And cheese!

Snacks: cheese and homemade crackers, boiled eggs, dates and raisins, oven-toasted almonds. Iron booster balls. Bananas.

Wholewheat, oat and cranberry cookies:

And lots of iron-rich homemade wholegrain bread:

Ideally spread with peanut butter, unless you're Adam and you believe peanut butter is from the devil. 

Did it help?

Maybe a bit. My cold seems to have almost gone! (And Adam has it. Oops.)

I think, perhaps, I'll slow down on the ernest superfoods business and start researching holidays.

Two week oughta do it. 

xx

 

 

Vegetarian "Sausage" Rolls

Really.

So good. And no need for any animal to die for you to totally get the sense of a sausage roll! (Am I about to discover sausage rolls are really an Australian-ism?)

Anyway, I made these up initially for Henry's birthday party. They were OK - I made them creamier with sour cream and cheese in them - but I wasn't happy with the texture so tried again. And these are delicious. Really happy with them. Have to blog them so I don't lose/forget the recipe!

I served them with sweet chili sauce at the party, but for dinner will serve with steamed vegies. Or a spinach and haloumi salad would go perfectly too.

VEGETARIAN 'SAUSAGE' ROLLS

Ingredients:

3 sheets of puff pastry (I have yet to make my own. Coming soon. I used the frozen version.)

1½ cup wholemeal breadcrumbs

½ cup rolled oats

1 large zucchini, finely grated

2 carrots, finely grated

1 tablespoon tomato paste

2 eggs

1 cup chickpeas (cooked)

1 tablespoon tahini

salt and pepper

Method:

This recipe is easiest if you have a food processor, but you can easily do it without. If you have a processor, whizz your bread into breadcrumbs, and throw in your oats and process till fine. (Otherwise make up your breadcrumbs and bash up your oats in a mortar/pestle.)

Add your zucchini and carrot into the processor and whizz (or add to breadcrumbs and oats in a big bowl and mix well.)

Add the chick peas to the mix and process well until smoothish.

Add the eggs and tahini and process again.

(Or just stir up well in the bowl!)

Add seasoning to taste.

Lay out a sheet of puff pastry and cut in half (into 2 rectangles). Spoon some mix down one long side. Paint edges with milk (to help stick) and roll up into long sausage. Cut into 4 (so each sheet makes 8) and paint the top with milk. Sprinkle with sesame seeds.

I think I used a total of 3 sheets, making approx 24 rolls. I think. I'll make it again and update this if I've got that wrong.

Bake in a moderate oven (180°C) for about 20 mins or until golden.

Hide them from the kids unless you want them all eaten (note to self.) Also hide from Adam. In fact, make an extra batch because they freeze beautifully (uncooked) and you can take them out and cook from frozen for a snack.

Because it's all about satisfying snacks.

(I am a mad breastfeeding woman. You there, back away from the bakery item.)

Or any excuse, really.

xxx

Thanks, Winter

Last day but one of Winter down here. My favourite season, gone for another year.

For the love of Winter: it was the hardest thing about living in Brisbane (Winter? you call that Winter?) and the best thing about living in London.

I chased Winter one year with Adam, right up to Swedish Lapland, it was early March and still a frozen wonderland. We each got on the back of a sled filled with dog food (and little else) and a team of 6 or 7 sled dogs, and led by an insane Norwegian dog musher (who actually had a belt made out of baby seal fur, not kidding) we mushed North for five days.

Does it seem a weird trip for a total animal lover?

Well, I tell you, I've never met happier dogs. They obviously thought Kenneth (the musher) was one of them, but they were uber happy.

Other things I love about Winter?

soup soup soup

GOSH we eat a lot of soup in this house. It's the best way of cleaning out the bottom of the fridge and getting a bunch of vegies into non-vegie-eating three year olds. Here, anyway. I know some kids don't like the texture of soup.

I'm about to go out to the kitchen and make a big batch of broccoli soup before my lovely sturdy green broccoli all goes soft. Dinner for tomorrow night, will just need reheating, and I can carry Ivy around between 5pm and 6pm and not leave her in her little rocking chair at that time, which she really doesn't love.  Just another reason to love Winter, really.

This soup is Cauliflower.

 

SIMPLE CAULIFLOWER SOUP

Ingredients:

1 onion

3 cloves garlic

splodge of olive oil

1 head of cauliflower, broken up

4 large potatoes, peeled and diced

1.5 litres vegetable stock

salt and pepper

Method:

Saute the onion and garlic in the oil. Stir the cauliflower and potato into the onion and garlic then pour over the stock.

The stock should only just cover the vegetables - if you've used a bigger or smaller cauliflower, adjust the volume of stock accordingly.

Cook on low boil for approx half an hour or until the vegetables are soft. Mash or blend with a stick blender if you have one. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Bye, Winter. Love you long time.

xxx

 

 

what goes up

And as quick as you can say JINX... oh dear.

The components:

* A dastardly forty minute wait in a queue at the IKEA checkouts (yes I complained to the manager and he promised he'd fire someone.)

* I bought a wonderful Manduca baby carrier at the Organic Expo on the weekend, and Ivy hates it. Something about the way her legs and hips work. She cries every time I put her in it. Back to the sling for a while. (Which is a shame because the carrier is terrifically comfortable.)

* I was running errands all day and ran out of time for lunch. Headache. Idiot.

* I burnt the dinner. Burnt it.

LUCKILY there was leftovers of this:

Spinach and Barley Dumplings!

Based on a recipe from Laurel's Kitchen (love that cookbook) you basically mix up a cup of cooked barley with a cup of cooked chopped spinach, add 2 eggs and some herbs and seasoning and then flour as needed to bind (use barley flour if you have it, I used wholewheat, about half a cup I think.)

To cook the barley, you toast it first in a large heavy pan until it turns golden and fragrant. Then cover the barley with water and bring to boil, once boiling, cover it/ put the lid on and take it off the heat. That's it. This amount of cooking and then the cooking it does in dumpling form is the perfect amount - not mushy, not hard at all. Perfect.

Roll the little devils in some more flour...

then chuck them into a pan of stock.

Cook for about 8 minutes.

I made a tomato sauce with onion, garlic and about 8 chopped tomatoes. Cook for about 10 mins then add a tin of beans, any kind you like - I like cannellini - and cook for another 10 mins.

We're getting gorgeous Jap pumpkins in season round here, so I roasted some in the skin to serve with.

Really delicious.

And all together a wonderful backup when the house smells of smoke and the mushroom and leek pasta is cremated.

xxx