Vegie Smugglers

Yummy for mummy's tummy

How did your mother’s day go? Mine was a pretty good one. A card from Mr Meat & Potatoes with a picture of a scribble ice-skating (thankfully captioned by lovely daycare carer) and inside he’d dictated “you’re special because sometimes you take me to the Easter Show”. Miss Fruitarian was more verbose in her well decorated effort, “I love you since you take me ice-skating (common theme) and buy me things”.

Yet again, no mention of the delicious meals I serve up to them night after night. Or the myriad other events that keep their lives running smoothly each and every day for the whole rest of the year.

Luckily my best-friend is much more aware of the effort I pull and spent much of the day on Sunday cooking treats and serving me warm beverages in a variety of my best china. Then he disappeared off to work for a bit and the kids nipped off to the neighbour’s place and I was left blissfully alone for TWO HOURS. Now THAT’S a good mother’s day present!

Finally the guilts got to me and went to retrieve them. I was greeted with my daughter’s back as she raced off and a “not coming home” tantrum from Mr M&P who went on to wet his pants. And I’d just been thinking how nice it was to be having my first nappy-free mother’s day.

The rest of the day passed with the regular conflicts, them bossing me around, me bossing them around and finished off with lots of cuddles. A bit of a snapshot of my life of mothering at the present time. Love, crankiness and the odd pair of wet undies.

Funnily enough, I tend to get a bit more undying love and hoots of ‘you’re the best mum in the whole wide world’ on other days – actually whenever I cook them something like these Apricot & Yoghurt Biscuits…

Yummy for everyone's tummy

Apricot & yoghurt biscuits

1¼ cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
¾ cup rolled oats
¹/³ cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup dried apricots, sliced
2 tbsp hazelnut or
almond meal
²/³ cup vanilla yoghurt
¼ cup canola oil
Demerara sugar, for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 170C. Line two oven trays with baking paper.

Sift the flour, baking powder and cinnamon into a large mixing bowl. Add the oats, sugar, apricots and hazelnut meal and mix well.

In a small bowl, whisk together the yoghurt and the oil.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well. Add a little more yoghurt if the mixture isn’t quite wet enough to absorb all the flour.

Using wet hands, roll 22 balls (ping-pong-ball-sized) and space evenly on the trays (these biscuits don’t spread much). Press with a fork and sprinkle with a little extra sugar (demerara is nice). Bake for 20 minutes until golden.

MAKES 22