Vegie Smugglers

Because ANZAC biscuits solve everything

April 16, 2012 · Filed under All recipes, News, Sweets & treats · Tagged brunch, feeding the family, ideas, lunchbox, recipe, treats

Thank you to my Queensland friends who have brought it to my attention that you all started back into Term 2 this week.

And where is the long-promised term 2 planner? Ummmmm… well… creative differences with my team (i.e. I’ve been a bit lazy, but arguing strenuously with myself about the ongoing procrastination) have seen a slight delay. I’m hoping that it will be available from Thursday. You’d think I’d be super keen to complete the set, but alas, I do find thinking about 50 lunchboxes all at once to be a challenge. I’m sure you can feel my pain and appreciate the measures I go to, to keep your lives running smoothly.

While I tinker away, getting my mezze plate looking just so, I’m keen to get you all started, so below is the recipe and here is the link to download the menu planner for week 1.

Forging an even greater respect for one of our most meaningful of holidays, these ANZAC biscuits are guaranteed to grab the kid’s attention and imprint a childhood memory that links respect for the past with autumnal leaves, crisp days and compulsive urges to eat way too many biscuits in one go.

Most recipes for ANZACs are similar. No need to meddle with perfection. However for my batch, I’ve used treacle instead of golden syrup. I like the sharper flavour – and besides, I’ve a massive tub of it clogging up my fridge ever since I made ginger bread biscuits at Christmas. Feel free to use whichever is lurking at your place. Both are spectacular. In fact I think these are my favourite biscuits of all time. Yours too?

These biscuits are history – all eaten within hours of leaving the oven.

ANZAC biscuits

1 cup plain flour
1 cup traditional oats
¾ cup brown sugar
¾ cup desiccated coconut
2 tbsp treacle (or golden syrup)
125g butter
1 tsp bicarb soda + 1 tbsp water

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

In a large bowl sift the flour and mix in the oats, sugar and coconut.

In a small saucepan melt the butter and stir in the treacle. Mix in the combined bicarb & water. Stir well (mix might froth slightly). Pour into the dry ingredients. Combine well, roll into balls, place on trays and bake for 12-15 minutes until as chewy or crunchy as you like.

MAKES 32ish.

_______________________

April 2013 update: Since this post, I’ve gotten it together and you can now buy the Complete Lunchbox Planner here.

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Fifty shades of red (the best way to smuggle… raw tomato)

April 12, 2012 · Filed under All recipes, News, The best way to smuggle..., Vegetarian, Vegie smuggling techniques · Tagged cooking techniques, feeding the family, recipe, salads, vegetables

There are some current trends that I’m managing to avoid. One Direction, orange jeans, and MKR have been easy to skip. The Fifty Shades of Grey e-book though, piqued my interest as soon as I heard it classified as ‘mummy porn’. Realising that I’m their target market and determined to do my best to stay up with the trends I downloaded it IMMEDIATELY. Admittedly around page 40 when first introduced to the ‘playroom’ I had second thoughts. I don’t want to seem like a prude but I’m a bit of an Elizabeth/Mr Darcy kind of a girl and 480 pages of bondage wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind. Still I’ve done my best and have gallantly just finished book 2. I’ve stuck with Grey and Annnnaasssttaaaaassssssia through romps in bed, in the boathouse, on boats and in the playroom (eeewwwwwww).

As a way to spend some time, it’s somehow reminding me of a sexed up, book version of ‘Escape to the Country’ – I’m glued with promises of the next scene, the next escapist fantasy, a new reception room (where of course they will stop for a dalliance). Basically a bunch of absorbing snippets that compile to make a vaguely dissatisfying whole. At the end I’m feeling slightly hoodwinked and not sure why I’m spending any of my life consuming it.

Anyway despite posts on porn film food, and an admission that I had inadvertently introduced my toddler to internet nudity, this blog is supposedly about good food, not erotica and the real point of today’s post is to tackle a tricky ‘best way to smuggle’ – raw tomato.

Unlike other vegies that are easy to sneak into gorgeous meals (like spinach, mushrooms & cauliflower), raw tomato with its high acid content is pretty tricky to hide. While the kids like a mushed up raw tomato pasta sauce, gazpacho isn’t quite floating their boats just yet. And hiding it raw can be tricky, so my best option is to dress is up, Fifty Shades style, with a delectably kinky dressing.

My hubbie concocted this quick salad and my kids LOVE it. Dolloped into wraps, and onto burgers – it’s been a real success. And yes, before you email me with outrage, I know that it has SUGAR in it (the irony is not lost on me that porn will make none of you irate, but sugar is akin to the devil). It melds with the balsamic and cuts through the acid. I have no qualms about the sweet content – anything that gets mouthfuls of vitamin rich, raw tomato into my children’s tummies is just fine with me.

Laters…

Dressed up, with somewhere to go.

Adam’s ‘dressed up’ tomato salad

8 roma tomatoes (or equivalent quantities of cherry, grapes or vine tomatoes)
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tsp brown sugar
Salt & pepper (be generous – they are essential to balance out the sweet/salty combo)

For the adults: chopped parsley.

Chop the tomatoes finely, pour over the vinegar, sprinkle the sugar, season generously and stir. Garnish with parsley if you like.

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Please help Vegie Smugglers, my child only eats…

April 11, 2012 · Filed under All recipes, Vegie smuggling techniques · Tagged cooking techniques, feeding the family, ideas, parenting, recipe, vegetables

Four thumbs up for Vegie Smugglers... hurrrahhhh!!!!!

For the sake of entertainment, I usually keep this blog deliberately light and fun, figuring that healthy food is best delivered with good times. But today I’m going to be serious. No truly, not a single joke, not a single bad pun. Why? Well over on the Facebook page I’ve had a recent influx of pleas for help from parents desperately bound and beaten by food wars with their children. I help where I can, but thought it timely to write a post on strategies to help solve your mealtime dramas. I’ll cover some basics and finish up with a real world example of how to apply it all.

OK! Let’s start with some basic vegie-smuggling thoughts and strategies…

1. It is possible to get your children excited about eating vegetables.
2. You have to tempt them with delicious smells, sights and flavours.
3. The techniques you need to do it are simple.
4. Commitment is needed from the parents – change isn’t always easy.
5. BUT! You’ll be so pleased that you made the effort once you’ve created a new habit of happy mealtimes.

Let’s look in detail…

1. Believe that you can make the change in your family.

I’ll be the example. Two horribly fussy kids. One ate only pasta, fruit & cheese, the other only meat & potatoes. Both now happily eat (nearly) anything. It’s possible. You can do it. And then you can start a fabulous blog and write gorgeous cookbooks.

2. You are going to tempt and lure your kids.

With food that smells great while it’s cooking, looks great when they sit down and is SO delicious when they take a bite that they won’t want to reject it.

3. Simple kitchen techniques can turn it all around.

Prepare ingredients wisely and introduce them to your family slowly.

I encourage you to do whatever you need to do to introduce new vegetables in a positive way. While I’m not a fan of hiding cooked and mashed vegies (too many wasted nutrients), if this is the only way they will be currently tolerated, then this is the place to start. My preference is to smuggle vegies by grating them or chopping them finely. Peel things like zucchinis first if your kids have a vehement hatred of green bits. Gradually the kids will become more tolerant and you will have to do less and less to hide stuff. The end goal of course, is to have children (and husbands) who happily accept everything.

Smuggle & don’t smuggle.

My recipes contain a combination of visible and invisible vegetables. Dinners serve a dual purpose – sneak in enough invisible vegies to solve the immediate nutrition concerns, and also present visible vegies to get the kids understanding that healthy food is part of the everyday.

Often food is a power play. Kids will pick out the visible stuff and think they’ve won the war. That’s fine, because the rest of the dinner they’re eating is also full of healthy stuff, so really you’ve won (keep your smugness to yourself). Getting a picky kid to happily sit and eat a chunk of cauliflower will take time. While you’re waiting for that miracle, you can relax knowing that their nutritional needs are being met.

4. Tackling change with your kids is tricky and requires patience and commitment from the parents.

Your child is not going to go from eating plain pasta to lentil soup overnight.

But you can serve their pasta with a dish of roast capsicum sauce to dip into. Soon, you might be able to serve the sauce on top. Then you can add some grated carrot. Gradually you’ll be able to work your way outwards, incorporating more and more ingredients and flavours.

It’s essential to keep your menus interesting (and new).

Please don’t serve the same thing every week. When parents say, “they only eat…”, it means that they’ve been browbeaten into only serving those things because they can’t deal with the dramas of trying to serve anything else.

The early days of introducing new foods can be tough. You need to persevere and get to the point where the kids are used to variety and unfamiliar food items. Get them used to leaving their food comfort zone and avoid the “I don’t eat that” food battle.

Don’t be put off by the tough times.

Not every new meal will have your children dancing with joy. Sometimes they will refuse food and they will have to go hungry. This is unpleasant. But hold firm – I never cook a second meal for my kids. If they’ve genuinely tried something (not trying is NEVER an option – our deal is TWO big bites) and they don’t like it, they can have some bread and butter or a banana. They won’t starve. It just means that they’ll be hungrier (and hopefully more open-minded) tomorrow. Hang in there, you will crack them.

5. And it’s worth cracking them.

I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to sit having a happy mealtime with your children, watching them munch away on something adventurous. It’s a battle worth fighting, because you are giving them a gift – a love of good food and healthy eating habits that will last them a lifetime.

So here’s our real world scenario from Zoe…

“Hi, my 3 year old son is a very fussy eater, the only things he eats are – pasta, schnitzel, nutella, cream cheese, butter sandwiches, it’s been like this for nearly a year, how do I change it.”

Start with what he does eat and work outwards.

He likes pasta. So try this orange sauce – serve it on the side the first time if necessary. Move onto a bolognaise. If he likes the bolognaise, try it in toasties and pop it into baked potatoes. Then move onto cannelloni or lasagne.

He likes cream cheese. So make these salmon pikelets (leave the green stuff out first time) and coat them with a generous slather of cream cheese as a lure.

He likes bread. So try these oat & banana pancakes, or these cheese puffs, or this okonomiyaki, or this frittata. You’re trying to break his narrow-minded approach and get him eating a wider variety of stuff. Then push further and further.

He likes schnitzel. So try this healthy schnitzel in a wrap. Add a bit of vegie dip.

And the nutella? Well, I’m really sorry, but that has to go. Remember, from now on, the parents are dictating the menu. Nutella offers you very little nutrition and keeps his palate trained to sweet stuff. Kids are still allowed to love treats and eat chocolate, but not everyday.

Once he’s making progress and eating a wider range of healthy stuff, surprise him with this beetroot & chocolate brownie. No one says food can’t be fun.

So I hope that helps. Remember, if you’re having ongoing concerns about your child’s health, please see your doctor. I’m a mum, not a nutritionist and can’t give any sort of medical advice.

And with a disclaimer given, I will just whisper from one parent to another, that Vegie Smuggling works, and you should try it. And it’s not just me; you can read testimonials here, about what other parents have to say.

Back to poo jokes next week, promise.

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Vegetable subterfuge (and when to tell the kids the truth)

April 3, 2012 · Filed under All recipes, News, Red meat, Vegie smuggling techniques · Tagged beef, freezer, mealtime, parenting, recipe, vegetables

Admittedly, the placement is poorly thought through.

Turns out that Mr Meat & Potatoes has been in the habit of overshooting the toilet and weeing in the plastic bathroom bin. Doing its job well, the swing-lid has been closing post-stream and I’ve been none the wiser. Now, without revealing too much about my lax home-making abilities, I had noticed a smell but thought I’d just give it a few more days before investigating. You know, in case it was going to fade away all by itself and my intervention was unnecessary.

It didn’t though. The smell got stronger, almost to the point of rancid and then I realised I was going to have to do something about it.

So I sniffed about and there in the bottom of the bin was a puddle of urine that dated back several days.

I wondered if this was my little boy’s subconscious way of getting back at me for all of the vegetables that I’ve hidden in his food over the years. Perhaps his angelic little face is hiding a brain that is secretly ranting, “and this hidden piss mum, THIS is what I really think of all of your hidden zucchini”. Or perhaps I’m just reading a bit too much into it?

Often I get asked about how much subterfuge goes into my meals. Do I TELL my kids what they’re really eating?

The answer is yes and no. When they first sit down and see something pleasing and smell something delicious, I’m not going to kill the mood by blurting, “hope you enjoy the mushrooms”. But once they’re finished, or if they ask mid-meal, I happily let them know what ingredients they’re gobbling up. Since I’m past the emergency, early days of absolute food rejection, I’ve now moved onto food education, which is a really important second stage. I need my kids to know now, that a meal is more than a single ingredient. That even an ingredient that they don’t THINK they like, can be combined with other ingredients in truly tasty ways that they DO like.

So yes, I DO tell my kids what they’re eating. It’s a vital part of teaching them that healthy food is part of the every day and something to be celebrated and enjoyed. And once your kids are eating a wider range of meals, it’s a good time to start with the wider education at your place. Get them talking ingredients, teach them how to choose good produce, encourage them to help out with little tasks in the kitchen.

And perhaps one day soon, they’ll even be big enough to start cleaning the bathroom.

Wee little meatloaves (boom tish!!).

Individual meat loaves

These are an easy to make vegie-smuggling basic. They store in the fridge for several days, can be cut up for sandwiches or wraps and crumbled into baked potatoes. And they freeze really well too.

Canola oil cooking spray
2 slices multigrain bread
1 carrot, peeled, roughly chopped
1 zucchini, roughly chopped
Handful of green beans, ends removed, halved
3 spring onions, roughly chopped
2 frozen chopped spinach cubes (about 50g), thawed, OR a big handful of English spinach, finely chopped
500g beef mince
2 tbsp tomato chutney
1 tsp soy sauce
(optional)
1 egg
Black pepper

Preheat oven to 180C. Spray a 12-hole muffin pan with cooking spray and line with paper cases.

Use a stick blender to do the chopping for you. Start with the bread. Make your breadcrumbs and add to your mixing bowl. Then chop the carrots then zucchini, then the beans and spring onions, adding to a mixing bowl each time.

Use your hands to combine the remaining ingredients. Divide the mix into 12 portions and press firmly into your muffin tray.

Bake for 20 minutes or until browned on top and cooked through. Serve with salad, steamed corn cobs and tomato sauce.

MAKES 12

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Leaving it all behind

March 30, 2012 · Filed under Craft for non-crafty parents · Tagged craft, ideas, parenting, school

'B' is for 'behind', 'beyond' and 'blocked'.

I love the parenting truth that once a stage or phase has passed, you totally move on and forget all about it. Or perhaps block it out of your memory, depending on how awful it was. Like the entire first eight weeks of having a newborn. Or the four months that I had ongoing mastitis (and a dependence on cabbage leaves). Or the 4.30am wake up stage, which lasted for a year or two (now of course, I can’t really remember specifics).

When you’re in the middle of these stages, they feel eternal. You are obsessed with them, googling specific questions like “3 month old baby poos only green moss-like substance”. Luckily someone else, somewhere in the world, has already had these issues and usually there are a stack of relevant answers to advise you. God knows what people did before the internet.

For a solid year, Mr Meat & Potatoes had night terrors. It was harrowing. Despite all my research that told me there was nothing we could do about it, and that it would pass and that there was no point trying to sooth him, we spent hours in his room, for nights on end, trying to pat, cuddle and talk away the unsoothable. It was a particular parenting lowlight that had us almost broken with lack of sleep and worry. But sure enough, in the space of two weeks it stopped. And we’ve never had to go back to it. Although on the rare occasion my children cry in the night, my heart immediately begins thumping and I feel the adrenalin surge again.

So too, now that Mr M&P is in kindy, I haven’t given school readiness another thought. Which is funny since last year I was so focused on it and made so many worksheets for him.

Possibly your kids were too young for them last year and you didn’t notice them. But this year, perhaps it’s your turn to focus on scissors and pencil grip and the alphabet. So here’s a rehash, of some of the sheets that I needed last year, that you might need now.

A lovely easy start to learning with some fun ‘spot the difference’ type visual discrimination pages…

Is your little monster ready for school?

Basic scissors & numbers here…

A Midnight Oils album cover? Maybe not, but numbers 1-10 nonetheless

Basic alphabet sheet here…

Don't worry, the actual download is perfectly alphabetical.

More scissor work (with a certificate) here…

Another award to stick on the fridge....

Basic shapes…

Because a circle is always MORE than just a circle

Some numbers and colours here in a pixel colour-by-numbers…

What will it be??? You'll have to download to see!

And no, I never did finish off the detailed alphabet sheets. On a quiet day I will though, so stay tuned. In the meantime, here are letters A-F, letters G-L and letters M-R.

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Rice v. pasta

March 27, 2012 · Filed under All recipes, Food experiences, Ham/pork, News · Tagged cooking techniques, feeding the family, mealtime, pasta, vegetables, zucchini

My first job was waitressing in an Italian restaurant.

The things I remember most about it were never remembering which way the coffee machine dial turned off (no-one ever told me ‘righty-tighty’), the embarrassment of returning to a table where I’d just been to admit that I’d just forgotten what they’d just ordered and one really busy night, after a quick loo break, running through the kitchen back into the restaurant with the back of my skirt tucked into my stockings.

Generally then, it’s safe to say that I was a crap waitress and the whole experience was vaguely traumatising.

For years afterward I didn’t touch pasta. And if I was held at knifepoint and ordered, “you must choose only one main meal carbohydrate for the rest of your life” I would happily marry rice and leave pasta, cous cous and potatoes behind forever.

Perhaps it’s karma then, for all the incorrect orders that I took, that my kids love pasta. I think nearly every kid in the whole wide world does. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that if your kid hates the stuff, they are weird. WEIRD.

Nutritionally, there’s nothing in pasta to get excited about. I’ve even seen it called BAD CARBS. Well said. Mind you, white rice falls into that category too so I guess my argument for rice is baseless and quite prejudiced. Did I mention that my kids don’t care about any of that and that they still LOVE PASTA? They do.

And so it’s been sneaking back into the house over the last few years. It’s still only once a fortnight or so, but now even I am a bit partial to a bolognaise or smoked salmon, dill & lemon or this spaghetti carbonara. On the scale of smuggling success, it’s fairly low, there’s little room to hide anything, but I still cram in spring onions and long strips of zucchini which just meld in(to the bacon fat).

It’s worth sharing, as it’s pretty much the only dish I’ve trialed this year that resulted in TWO EMPTY BOWLS, which is my version of THREE HATS, only better, cause there’s nothing to scrape before stacking the dishwasher.

The pasta will win tonight.

Spaghetti Carbonara

3 eggs
3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
400g spaghetti
2 tbsp olive oil
250g bacon, rind removed, large areas of fat removed, diced
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
6 spring onions, sliced
2 zucchinis – use a peeler to slice into thin pieces, then cut vertically so that you have long spaghetti-like strands (whether you leave the skin in or discard it is up to you and what you need to do to get your kids to eat it).

Whisk the eggs in a small jug, mix through the cheese. Set aside.

Now do two things at once…
1. Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil and cook spaghetti according to packet directions. Drain, drizzle over half the olive oil and mix through (tongs makes this easier).

2. Heat the rest of the oil in a frying pan, add the bacon and cook for a couple of minutes. Then add the spring onions, garlic and zucchini and stir until the zucchini starts to wilt (about 2 minutes).

Return the drained pasta to the saucepan, pour over the vegies and use the tongs to mix a bit, then pour over the egg & cheese mixture. Combine quickly, season and serve, topped with optional parsley, pepper and extra parmesan.

Comments (9) »

When did kids turn into such monsters?

March 26, 2012 · Filed under News · Tagged kids, parenting

Who else is volunteering at school these days?

With more time on my hands, I’ve put my name down for all sorts of things around school this year – reading groups being one of them. It’s proving to be an… um…. interesting experience.

Each Monday by 10am, I stumble out of the kindy room, slightly shell-shocked and desperately needing a cup of tea and a lay down.

I know naughty kids have always existed, but it does seem as though there are so MANY of them these days. Admittedly, the boisterous behaviour seems to have settled down by year 2 (I do reading with them another day), but the kindy kids are BLOWING MY MIND. Today, a boy was hitting me. I asked him to settle down, did all the ‘good’ parenting strategies, then ended up just wanting to smack him. I pointed out that he should be showing his best behaviour when there’s a guest in the classroom. “You’re not a guest, you’re just a mum”.

When and HOW did five year olds get so rude and disobedient?

I’d like to think it’s good parenting that has seen my kids grow up as lovely little people. But I’m not that smug and suspect that good luck has had quite a bit to do with it. Although I do maintain that good nutrition plays a major role. I’d love to know what these revolting little kids have eaten for breakfast – they just seem so out of control.

Afterwards, a mum of 3 and I debriefed. Both of us remember being incredibly awed and respectful of parents (our own and others). We decided that if we could pinpoint the moment, or the social change or value shift that altered this, we’d make a fortune. So what do you think it is? What has created this new normal of fearless kids who lack respect and are almost uncontrollable?

And PS, teachers, I love you ALL. You are all saints, and I thank you for your commitment to shaping the next generation. It’s astonishingly hard work.

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You big tart

March 20, 2012 · Filed under All recipes, Sweets & treats · Tagged celebrations, cooking techniques, feeding the family, fruit, recipe

Serve with ice cream (low fat of course)....

Fruit desserts are great, aren’t they? Especially when they’re full of a stack of visible fruit and you can totally pretend that the copious amounts of sugar, fat & gluten are mere triffles in the overall scheme of things.

And so it is with this Bill Granger tart – but so pretty it is and so easy to make. And delicious too. I love Bill’s recipes. They’re simple, and generally they work well. He recommends plums and orange juice in his recipe, but I was short of them, so here’s my version…

Plum (and other stuff) jam tart, from Bill’s Basics

100g unsalted butter, melted
1/3 cup caster sugar
Just over 1 cup plain flour
¼ cup almond meal

Topping
800g fruit (I used 6 plums, 2 soggy nectarines, and topped them up with frozen berries)
½ cup caster sugar
2 tsp cornflour
1 tbsp water (Bill uses orange juice, which would be great, but I didn’t have any)
Lime zest (my addition)

Preheat oven to 180C. Grease a 23 or 24cm springform cake tin.

Stir together the butter & sugar. Sift over the flour and a pinch of salt. Stir to form a dough. Press into the pan, bake 15 minutes until golden.

Sprinkle the almond meal evenly over the cooked base.

In a large bowl, mix the fruit, sugar, cornflour, liquid & zest. Pop over the pastry and bake 30-40 minutes until set. Cool before serving. (I ate this both warm, at room temp AND cold – all delicious).

Serves 8-10

Um on Cake

March 17, 2012 · Filed under All recipes, Chicken, News · Tagged chicken, feeding the family, parenting, recipe, vegetables

Even the papertoy monsters are needing a good lay down.

Each family seems to have its own charming vernacular ‘en famille’. A range of sayings based on cute toddler mispronunciations that become ingrained over the years and are known only in that household. For example, in our house, we all wipe our bums with “paper towels”, the second day of the working week is “tooosday” and “um on cake” is a cutsey, friendly way of asking the kids to HURRY THE FUCK UP.

The phrase originated from a friend’s 3-year old urging for action; “Come on Kate, come play”. Mispronounced it was cute and bossy enough, without being offensive. So it stuck.

I seem to have been saying it a lot lately. “Um on cake, get in the car… um on cake, put your shoes on… um on cake, get dressed”.

I realised, of course, that we’ve reached the dreaded WEEK 8 of term. In my household, it seems to be the tipping point, when tiredness catches up and everything starts to go pear-shaped.

True to form, Miss F started WEEK 8 by falling down the stairs. She was being a goose, attempting a risky maneuver that I’ve warned her off doing in the past. Usually kids have that fabulous innate aptitude that makes them bulletproof in all sorts of situations, don’t they? But by WEEK 8 of term, the reflexes have slowed and high-degree of difficulty activities just become disasters.

She fell badly, is quite bruised and I’m waiting for my phone call from DOCS.

So with basic movement proving tricky, the chances of them effortlessly eating challenging, nutritious meals just got that bit slimmer.

If your kids are at the same point, I don’t recommend trying out too much new stuff for the next few weeks. Stick to accepted basic meals, and familiar flavour profiles. Indulge them a little – you’ll just be making your own life easier, after all.

And I let my kids eat a bit more ‘junk’. Vegie Smugglers junk of course, like these oven-baked, egg-free chicken nuggets. Seeing as there’s no secret vegies in the nuggets I introduce the kids to the joys of a schnitty sandwich. The picture shows a lunchbox version with some pumpkin dip (recipe in the upcoming Term 2 planner) and spinach leaves. For dinner I add lots of grated cheese & carrot & iceberg lettuce (a current favourite). Secure the wrap with foil and you’re away.

Schnitzel sandwich heaven

BAKED CHICKEN NUGGETS

500g chicken breast
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1 1/2 cups crumb mixture (I like to make of mix of regular bought breadcrumbs, posh panko crumbs and blitzed up pumpkin seeds – sesame seeds are also a yum addition)
Spray oil of your choice

Slice the chicken into even, bite-sized pieces. Mix with the lemon juice, soy sauce & paprika. Cover and marinade in the fridge for at least 1 hour, preferrably overnight.

Preheat oven to 200C, line a tray with baking paper.

Toss the nuggets in breadcrumb mix. Spray with oil spray and bake for 25 minutes, turning once, until cooked through.

Serve with tortillas and your choice of dip, leaves, cucumber, grated cheese and carrot.

SERVES 2 ADULTS & 2 KIDS

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I give you permission to stop (why there’s a difference between being busy and having purpose)

March 13, 2012 · Filed under All recipes, Chicken, News · Tagged chicken, dinner, family, freezer, parenting, recipe, vegetables

A deck worth stopping on.

There’s nothing but sunshine and autumn brilliance in Sydney this morning. It’s a heart lifting respite after a miserable summer and to celebrate I drank a cup of tea out on my glorious and rarely-used-during-the-week deck. Why rarely used? Because, of course, I am usually too busy to stop and enjoy it. Too busy packing lunches, filling book orders, ironing shirts, getting sucked into the internet, marketing my business, hanging washing, trialing recipes, filling in forms, listening to readers, finding new freelance design clients, worrying about finances, volunteering at reading groups, reading my emails, making cookbooks, texting, organizing play dates, being a taxi, doing hair, correcting manners, blogging, chasing bargains, checking my email, viewing blog stats, baking cakes, fixing toys, paying bills, removing stains, networking… STOP! STOP! STOP! STOOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPP! And I complain that my children are fidgets.

I’m a big fan of social researcher Rebecca Huntley. She usually has interesting points to make and she expresses them in such blunt, accessible terms. On the radio talking with Richard Glover on International Women’s Day, she discussed recent qualitative research done with young mothers. Pervading all aspects of parenting was a self-imposed guilt (about everything) and our compulsive need to make ourselves busy. As if busy-ness equals purpose, we never give ourselves a moment’s rest.

I am a prime example of this, but with the recent departure of Mr M&P off to school, I am now confronted with the gap between being busy and having purpose. With a full 5 hours of totally self-directed time in my day I find myself at a bit of a loss. There’s too much thinking time in it. Too much time to contemplate my life, my (increasing) age, my foibles.

In typical modern-day style, I’ve been contemplating a return to the more structured workforce, so that life can return to the maniacal pace that seems more psychologically comfortable. So I can be like all of the other overstressed parents who are so important that they’re never in the playground but have more crucial places to be.

Yes, I know, overscheduling simply postpones the existential contemplation of life, but doesn’t solve it.

When’s the last time you had a true moment of reflection? What did you discover in the process? If you haven’t stopped for a while, today, I’m giving you permission to just sit and think. I’d like to hear how you go – is it easy or difficult is it for you to do?

I know of course, that you’ll struggle to do it when you have SO MUCH TO DO. Therefore, today’s recipe is one to make ahead and pop in the fridge; ready to reheat when you need it. With dinner done, you’ll have a moment to stop and look within and see what’s there.

Anyway, my thinking time is up. Just heard the washing machine beeping… life calls and continues on.

Turn off the TV, just sit and eat in silence tonight. Can you do it?

Vegie & chicken tagine

1 tbsp olive oil
1 red onion, finely diced
1 leek, finely chopped
500–600g chicken thigh fillets, trimmed
1 zucchini, finely chopped (peel if your kids won’t eat green)
½ eggplant, finely diced (peel if you prefer)
4 tomatoes, diced
½ tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp turmeric (for colour)
1 tbsp honey
Large handful of sultanas

To serve:
Steamed couscous
Flaked almonds
Chopped parsley
Steamed peas

Heat the oil in a large saucepan (with a lid) over medium heat. Fry the onion and leek for 4–5 minutes until softening. Add the whole chicken pieces and cook on both sides until golden (it takes a few minutes each side).

Cook the zucchini, eggplant, tomato and spices. Stir well, cover, reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for about 45 minutes until everything is cooked through. Stir every 10 minutes or so to ensure nothing sticks to the bottom.

Add the honey and sultanas. Taste and season with salt and black pepper. Cook for another 5 minutes.

Serve over couscous, topped with almonds and parsley and accompanied by peas.

SERVES 2 ADULTS & 2 KIDS