Vegie Smugglers

Crowd pleasers – feeding 4, 14 or 40

April 15, 2011 · Filed under All recipes, Food experiences, News · Tagged brunch, feeding the family, mealtime, parenting, recipe, vegetables, vegetarian

School holidays and my home is abuzz with a variety of children coming and going. After 18 months at school, we are now firmly entrenched in the local community and I’m having kids (with siblings) dropped off for a few hours, then all picked up and taken elsewhere – without tears or clinginess, just excitement and adventure.

It’s a nice contrast to those early baby days, where I was home, alone for 12 hours at a time, barely even knowing neighbours, with a whole long depressing day stretching out ahead of me. Now it’s all action and I love it. A little magic mirror to this time would have made those endless first days of motherhood much easier.

These days my biggest parenting stress is figuring out how many kids I’m going to be feeding each night, which is why I’m sticking to a range of flexible recipes that easily stretch out to serve everyone.

Sneak vegies into heaps of kiddies with ease!

Corn & chickpea fritters

If your kids are chickpea-phobic, blitz them up in a hand-held food processor before adding to the mix.

²/³ cup self-raising flour
1 egg
²/³ cup milk
315g can corn kernels, drained
1 medium carrot, peeled, grated
400g can chickpeas, rinsed, and drained
4 spring onions, finely chopped
Handful of basil and parsley leaves, finely chopped (optional, but recommended)
Black pepper
Canola oil, for frying
Salad and lemon wedges, to serve

Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl. Slowly add the combined egg and milk, whisking as you go to avoid lumps.

Add the rest of the ingredients to the batter and mix until evenly combined.

Heat a large non-stick frying pan over medium heat. Add the canola oil and ensure it is nice and hot before adding ¼ cup amounts of batter to the pan.

Cook for 3 minutes then flip over and cook on the other side for a further 3-4 minutes until nice and golden. Repeat with remaining batter. Drain on kitchen paper.

Serve warm with salad and lemon wedges.

MAKES 10

By the way, do you MAMABAKE?
If you love to make big batches of food for the freezer, don’t forget to track down your local Mamabake group, where you can team up with local parents and have lovely big social cook-offs. Feed everyone AND join in with your local community. Perfect!

You also might like to try these flexible recipes…

Cook the meatballs ahead then stretch the meal with extra pasta

It’s easy to double or triple quantities of these Vegie Dots

Comments (3) »

Fixing “I’m bored” – Easter School holiday ideas

April 12, 2011 · Filed under All recipes, Craft for non-crafty parents, News, Sweets & treats

The grooviest cake in town!

We’re sticking to home these holidays, so it’s time to trawl the web for my round up of good things to suggest to the little lovelies when they mutter ‘I’m bored’. Last October I posted a bunch of good budget ideas, and here’s a few more (with a vague Easter theme)…

If you’ve ever spent ages pondering how to decorate boiled eggs so that they look like scuba divers, then have I found the website for you! Familyfun.go.com has such great Easter craft ideas, bound to keep you busy for ages. There’s a good unisex Egg hunt container to make here and older girls might like to have a go at making this chocolate lip balm. There’s a mix of colouring and educational Easter themed pages here.

On the Youtube disco these holidays, we’re thoroughly enthralled by the Jackon 5’s ‘Can you feel it’ which has enough fire and explosions to keep even Mr Meat & Potatoes dancing. Although he really prefers the 1978 Green Machine commercial. I catch him (with his dad) watching it ALL THE TIME.

And in the kitchen, I’ve introduced the kids to the joys of marble cakes. I like mine bright – there’s no insipid cooking in the VS kitchen. The cake is pretty firm in texture, which transmits the colour well. A nice glossy chocolate icing would be great, but we were too impatient to see the patterns to wait for that. A scattering of icing sugar is a nice understated finish for a pretty outgoing cake.

You'll have a bunch of very eager helpers for this one.

Psychedelic marble cake

200g butter, softened
1 ¼ cups caster sugar
4 eggs
1 3/4 cups plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
Zest & juice of 1 orange
Food colouring of your choice (I used yellow, green and red)

Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease a Kugelhopt cake tin.

Add the diced butter into a large mixing bowl. Use electric beaters to cream the butter for a minute, and then gradually add in the caster sugar. Don’t rush. Take your time until it is all light and creamy.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each one.

Sift over the flour and baking powder. Fold through. Stir through the zest and juice.

Divide the mixture into quarters. Keep one plain, and then use the food colouring to make the others whatever colour and however vivid you like. Take turns spooning the different colours into the tin. Drag a skewer through to ‘marble’.

Bake for 35 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.

Dust with icing sugar.

Comments (2) »

Learning their shapes

April 7, 2011 · Filed under Craft for non-crafty parents, News

Because a circle is always MORE than just a circle

Just a quickie today – a PDF download to help toddlers and preschoolers learn their basic shapes. They can practice their tracing skills and then colour them in. Or if you’re feeling creative, show them how the shapes become other objects – draw a ribbon and bow on the square and VOILA – a present, turn the circle into a sun with a smiley face and the triangle into a piece of pizza… you get the idea, I’ll leave the others up to you!

If your child has trouble holding the pencil correctly, check out Draw your world, for some good advice (the whole site is interesting), and there’s good practical advice for a pencil holding trick here.

I’m off to get organised for Billycart Markets this Saturday (April 9). I’ll be giving away bite size versions of my Oaty Banana Pancakes… and I always love a chat. Come and astonish me with tales of what your kids will and won’t eat! See you there…

Hmmmm, I'll be at the stall that smells great!

Comments (2) »

What a lovely pear

April 5, 2011 · Filed under All recipes, News, Sweets & treats

A lovely pair?

Yes, I know, it’s the worst fruit joke in the world but I just couldn’t resist.

And you’ll have to forgive me – I’m looking for jokes and a bit of cheering up at the moment. Each year around this time, I start to get the seasonal blues. They increase with the cold and dark, turn a slight corner after the winter solstice, but don’t evaporate entirely until mid-August.

I have strategies in place to deal with it – regular yoga practice helps. Getting enough sunlight too. And just trying to enjoy the passing seasons and the particular pleasures they reveal.

Which is why I’m preoccupied with pears this week. Especially these cute mini ones from a market in the Southern Highlands. Apples are good at the moment too. My favourite type is Gala, and they’re freshly picked and filling the shelves right now. They are a happy part of Autumn.

Combine them together and (of course) wrap them in pastry to create a delicious wee snack that warms the toes. This recipe includes prunes, with a hit of fibre that does us all good. Although you’re welcome to omit them and be really naughty and add a dollop of Nutella to your mix instead.

I know they smell great, but try not to burn your tongue!

Apple, pear & prune squares

3 sheets frozen
puff pastry
1 apple (Granny Smith or Gala), thinly sliced
1 pear, thinly sliced
½ cup pitted prunes, finely chopped
½ tsp vanilla essence
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp almond meal
1 tsp caster sugar
1 egg, whisked, for sticking and glazing
Caster sugar, for sprinkling

Icing sugar, for dusting, to serve

Preheat oven to 180C. Line an oven tray with baking paper.

Before the pastry thaws too much, use a sharp knife to score each square into two rectangles. Snap apart. Then score each rectangle into 4 pieces (so each sheet yields 8 rectangles). Break apart and leave to thaw.

In a large bowl, mix together the rest of the ingredients except the egg and caster sugar. Dollop 1 tsp of mixture at one end of each piece of pastry, leaving a 1cm border. Brush the edges with egg, fold over and press the edges together. Brush the tops with egg and sprinkle with a little caster sugar.

Transfer to the oven tray and bake for 15-20 minutes until golden. These will be HOT when they come out of the oven. Dust with icing sugar. Serve plain or with ice-cream.

MAKES 24

———————
And check out these other Vegie-Smuggling pastry recipes…
Chicken sausage rolls
Beef Triangles
Traffic light swirls
———————

Comments (2) »

Ahoy me hearties!

March 31, 2011 · Filed under Craft for non-crafty parents · Tagged craft, ideas, kids, parenting

toilet paper roll craft pirate and wench

Don't ask why, just accept what is.

Regular readers will know that I need little encouragement to indulge my love of craft with toilet paper rolls. There’s been Gary & Ivana, The Christmas Fairy and Scary Snake, all within a few months. And all it took was ONE comment from Laura requesting MORE and voila, here you have Swashbuckling Steve & Wench Wendy.

Steve is your regular sort of pirate guy, a lover of the high seas, wild adventure and wilder women. Wendy is your typical sort of a wench and offers Steve the regular wenchly things (I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination).

Click to start your high-seas adventure.

As you construct these (with or without your kiddies), don’t forget to soundtrack your life. There’s an eclectic list of pirate song suggestions here. Don’t forget the more traditional song lyrics and I DARE you to not play this and have a bit of a smile and a jig! But for me, the best pirate song is Dreadzone’s dub-meets-sea shantie, Captain Dread.

While you’re at it, don’t forget Talk Like a Pirate Day. You can visit their official website here, which has a handy countdown underway (172 days, 04:08:32 when I looked). And isn’t the internet a fantastic place. Where else could Rob Ossian’s Pirate Cove exist? It covers all things pirate, including a ‘complete list of every pirate movie ever made’.

_______________________

Like this project? You can find it, along with 39 other boredom busters in the ‘Craft for non-crafty Parents’ e-book. There’s a stack of silly fun stuff, projects that encourage healthy eating and a bunch of worksheets covering preschool education and school readiness. Email me (vegiesmugglers@gmail.com) if you’re interested in grabbing a copy (I no longer run an online store, but I still do private sales!).

128 pages, 40 projects, 85 pages of printables…

Comments (3) »

End of term fatigue (and the rot sets in)

March 29, 2011 · Filed under All recipes, Fish, News · Tagged feeding the family, parenting, recipe, rice, tuna, vegetables

As we saw in NSW over the weekend, all good things must end. And before they end, they will usually become corrupt, festering things, self-interested and spoilt. And so endeth the first school term of Miss Fruitarian. Without checking the calendar, I knew when week 8 had dawned.

The mornings have been getting progressively tougher. Teeth brushing is taking a good 15 minutes, even with me keeping a watchful eye over proceedings. Uniforms are being put on back-to-front, school hats left in the car and the reading folder is never ready for return on time.

The exhaustion comes like a wave and finally crashes down to shore. Today, Miss F has collapsed and is in need of a day at home. Luckily, being a WAHM, I can accommodate it. In the olden days it would have been tears all around as I forced her into a uniform and off to early morning care. These days, it’s just tears on my part as I try to get work done around a complaining patient who has perked up considerably since I announced she didn’t have to go to school.

Dinner tonight needs to be something comforting yet healthy, that I can make whilst being constantly interrupted. This baked rice dish fits the bill – and it uses up the last of the eggplant and basil from the garden.

A more-ish, pick-me-up dinner for tired kiddlies

Baked tuna & tomato rice

Butter, for greasing
4 cups chicken stock
1½ cups arborio rice
2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 finger eggplant, very finely diced
1 medium zucchini, grated
500ml passata (bottled tomato puree found in the supermarket near the Italian pasta sauces)
½ cup boiling water
150g cheddar cheese, grated
125g can corn kernels, drained
185g can tuna in oil, drained
Handful of basil leaves, torn
Black pepper

Parsley sprigs, to serve

Preheat oven to 180C. Grease a lasagne or casserole dish.

In a saucepan over medium-high heat, bring the stock to the boil, then add the rice and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring a couple of times until par-boiled. Drain.

Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook for 2 minutes. Add the garlic and eggplant and cook for 3 minutes, stirring regularly to avoid sticking.

Add the drained rice and zucchini and cook for a minute or so, stirring. Add the passata and water. Stir until well combined. Add the cheese, corn, tuna and basil and mix thoroughly. Season to taste and remove from heat.

Spoon into lasagne dish and bake in the middle of the oven for 20 minutes until the top is golden. Top with parsley sprigs and serve with green salad.

SERVES 2 ADULTS & 3 KIDS

Comments (17) »

You look like a monkey (or Rembrandt)…

March 25, 2011 · Filed under Craft for non-crafty parents · Tagged craft, ideas, parenting

Next step, the Archibald Prize!

In the footsteps of Dutch painter Rembrandt, we’re heading for the world of High Art (note capital H & A) this week.

Sit the (clothed) kiddies down in front of a mirror and get them to draw what they see, and create their first self-portrait. I’ve made it super easy with my Self-Portrait template, which already has the skull drawn and guides for where the eyes and mouth might go. Kids can add all the fun bits – eyes, hair, mouths and tongues. If you’re having an uber-parent day, you can go crazy with glue and wool for hair (or spiral pasta for curly-haired offspring).

Or leave the kids to it, sneak off for a sit-down, and see what they can come up to all by themselves…

The best way to smuggle… beetroot

March 23, 2011 · Filed under All recipes, News, Red meat, The best way to smuggle... · Tagged dinner, feeding the family, recipe, vegetables

So, since we can’t have the beetroot brownie too regularly for dinner, I guess I’ll move onto recommending this delightful pink meatloaf as a way of getting beetroot into your kiddies. Using fresh grated beetroot gives it a definite pink tinge, which is perfect for little girls with a meat aversion (like Miss Fruitarian). A 225g can of beetroot can be substituted, but boring brown will prevail.

Apparently (so you’ve told me on Facebook), meatloaf is a bit popular. It IS a perfect easy-cook, that can sit in the fridge all week and be easily reheated or put on toasties or spuds. And an egg-free meatloaf recipe was requested, which is why you’re getting this snippet recipe from the second Vegie Smugglers cookbook (buy the digital cookbook here).

All hail the photographers and stylists who can make meatloaf look good.

Pink meatloaf

500g beef mince
1-cup fresh breadcrumbs (about 1 slice of bread)
1 onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic
1 zucchini, chopped
1 beetroot, peeled, quartered
1 carrot, peeled, chopped
3 tbsp tomato sauce
1 tbsp Worcester sauce
Salt & pepper

Preheat oven to 180C. Spray a 10x18cm loaf tin with canola spray and line with baking paper.

Add the mince to a large mixing bowl.

If you have a hand-held food processor, use it to make the breadcrumbs from a slice of bread. Add to the mince. Pulse the onion and garlic, add to the mince. Pulse to chop the zucchini, then carrot, then beetroot (use gloves to avoid staining your hands), adding to the mince mixture each time. (NOTE – A grater will work perfectly for those of you without small kitchen contraptions).

Pour over the sauces and season really well. Use your (gloved) hand to mix everything together really well, then press into the loaf tin.

Bake 45-50 minutes until cooked through.

SERVES 2 ADULTS AND 4 KIDS

Comments (10) »

Dear DOCS, I can explain everything…

March 17, 2011 · Filed under Craft for non-crafty parents, News

A couple of weeks ago, in yet another champion-mummy-moment, I inadvertantly exposed Mr Meat & Potatoes to porn.

Not sure where that fits on the crap-parenting scale, but I suspect it’s well above not packing any warm clothing in their daycare bag, but below dropping them on their head in the park.

We were having a lovely mummy/son day, full of laughter, songs, funny sound effects and craft. He loves nothing better than to colour-in, and while the things I draw are good, he is much more dedicated to cool-boy-stuff subjects, mainly Ben 10, Ironman etc. So we were doing a bit of online searching and printing. My google image search revealed a thumbnail of THE COOLEST IRONMAN COLOURING EVER. He was ‘awwwwwing’ and pointing, too excited to talk. We clicked the image and then….. well it loaded into some kind of spammy template with porn images all around the edges. The ‘awwwwing’ stopped abruptly and I saw his little head tilting as he tried to make sense of it all. Perhaps luckily, it was all super scary-closeups that are pretty abstract to a 3-year-old. He couldn’t make head nor [ladygarden] tail of it. I breathed calmly and hit the back button, vowing to spend a bit of time bookmarking a few legit colouring sites that wouldn’t make me feel all icky.

Did I mention that he only likes to colour with green & blue?

Sorry Mr M&P, mummy didn’t mean to.

Try these colouring resources…

This US government site is guaranteed porn-free, but with page titles like “E is for Environment”, the kids may only stay absorbed for a short time… There’s a great range of stuff here, but to avoid printing out tonnes of guff, you have to download the image then print it out yourself. There’s Transformers colouring for boys and for older girls, you can’t miss these Royal wedding paper dolls! Religious folks will like these bible-based colouring pages. There’s cute, simple pictures for toddlers to enjoy. Crayola (as you’d expect) has good quality pictures with a print functionality that actually works. Top Aussie kids may like these local topics at Kidspot and there’s a bunch of dog breeds to choose from here. And of course, you can never beat reliable, local content at the ABC playground and at the BBC CBeebies site.

Happy colouring, may your children remain porn-free until they’re much older than mine.

Comments (2) »

Because wrapping stuff in pastry makes it yum

March 15, 2011 · Filed under All recipes, Red meat, Vegie smuggling techniques · Tagged cooking techniques, dinner, feeding the family, kids, parenting, pastry, recipe, vegetables

vegie smugglers beef triangles with vegetables and puff pastry

Yum.

There are several universal truths when it comes to raising Australian children.

1. Getting them into and out of cars is going to be a painful and long-winded exercise. Shoes will be missing; toys lost and drink bottles astonishingly empty (and car seats wet).

2. The more disgusting the public toilet that you find yourself in, the longer your contented child will wish to languish (“the poo is almost here mummy”). And the bigger the incident, the fewer tissues you will have handy.

3. If they are to be struck down with a sudden and violent episode of projectile vomiting, it will be between 3-6am, usually just before you are due to do some incredibly crucial work thing.

On a brighter note, it is also true that things covered in pastry are yummier and much more likely to be eaten by your delightful youngsters.

Which is why the Vegie Smugglers cookbook features quite a few recipes making the most of the adored, yet not exactly healthy stuff. Being a mum, not a dietitian, I have the advantage of not freaking out at the idea of utilising some less healthy ingredients for the greater nutritional good.

Puff pastry though, is very high in fat – even the 25% reduced fat stuff. Use it occasionally and make sure that you make the most of it by cramming in all sorts of good ingredients – like my sausage rolls, which are full of mushrooms and lentils. (In the book I’ve got salmon pots full of broccoli and a fruit treat jammed full of apples, pear and prunes – which may help speed up your public toilet visits considerably).

Today’s recipe is a glorious Indian-inspired dish. Just a hint of spice gets the kid’s palettes keen for more exotic flavour and opens the door to a whole new cuisine (unless you’re Indian, in which case you might prefer a bolognaise or lasagne for a bit of cross cultural goodness). This mince filling is also good on baked potatoes and freezes perfectly for a couple of months.

Beef triangles

1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
500g beef mince
1 tsp curry powder
1 carrot, peeled, grated
1 cup frozen peas, thawed
½ red or yellow capsicum, deseeded, finely diced
½ cup beef stock
1 tbsp soy sauce
Black pepper
5 sheets frozen puff pastry
1 egg, whisked, for glazing

Fruit chutney, to serve

Preheat oven to 190C.
Heat the oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook until onion is soft. Add mince and brown, breaking up lumps as you go. Add curry powder and all the vegies and mix well.

Add the stock and soy sauce and simmer vigorously over medium-high heat until most of the liquid is evaporated and the vegies are soft. Season with pepper.

Cut each pastry sheet into four squares. Place 2 tbsp of mixture in the centre of each square. Fold diagonally to create triangles, pressing firmly on the edges to seal well.

Brush with egg and bake on oven trays lined with baking paper for 10-15 minutes until golden. Serve beef triangles with chutney.

MAKES 20

Vegie Smugglers

Crowd pleasers – feeding 4, 14 or 40

Fixing “I’m bored” – Easter School holiday ideas

Learning their shapes

What a lovely pear

Ahoy me hearties!

End of term fatigue (and the rot sets in)

You look like a monkey (or Rembrandt)…

The best way to smuggle… beetroot

Dear DOCS, I can explain everything…

Because wrapping stuff in pastry makes it yum

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