Sugar and Spice and all things nice.

Today Miss B is three! In previous years we've kind of gone with a green theme being that it's St Patrick's Day. But now she's at an age where she knows what she wants, everything has to be pink!

So what could possibly be girlier than Rosewater cupcakes with fairies on top?

Gluten and Dairy Free Rosewater Cupcakes:
125 mls rice bran oil
3 eggs
2/3 cup white sugar
1 ½ cups gluten free plain flour (I used white wings)
1 ½ tsp baking powder
¼ cup rice milk
1 tbsp rosewater

Preheat oven to 180C.
With a handmixer, beat together oil and sugar. Keep beating adding one egg at a time.
Add flour, baking powder, rice milk and rosewater and beat until batter is smooth.
Equally distribute between 12 cupcake cases and bake for 25 minutes (check with a skewer, clean skewer = ready).

Decorate as you please, but if you want to ensure they are allergy friendly read decoration packet's carefully.

I simply coloured sugar with pink colouring for the fairy dust beneath the cupcakes. The icing was pure icing sugar, pink colouring, a teaspoon of rosewater and a splash of rice milk. The fairies are from the supermarket and one of the few GFCF things I could find!

Muffin Madness!

In my search to find more things to fill T's lunchbox, I've decided to make a massive batch of muffins. Thankfully, both were a huge hit with all three kids so this should also be a good breakfast for B who is refusing her gluten free cereal. And surely they can't be any less healthy than commercial cereal anyway.



Carrot and Cinnamon Muffins. (makes 12)

• 3 Cups Orgran Plain Flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
  
• 1 Cup white sugar
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 cup of rice milk
• 90 mls rice bran oil
• 1 generous cup grated carrot

Blueberry Muffins. (makes 12)

• 3 Cups Orgran Plain Flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
  
• 1 Cup white sugar
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
  
• 1 cup of rice milk
• 90 mls rice bran oil
• 1 generous cup fresh blueberries
  

Bake for 20-25 minutes at 210 degrees celsius.
Allow to cool on tray for 10 minutes, then they're ready to eat or allow to cook completely and store in an airtight container.

Message Sticks.

"A message stickis a form of communication traditionally used by Indigenous Australians. It is usually a solid piece of wood, around 20–30cm in length, etched with angular lines and dots.

Traditionally, message sticks were passed between different clans and language groups to establish information and transmit messages. They were often used to invite neighbouring groups to corroborees, set-fights and ball games."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_stick

It seems my children have been sending me a rather bizarre message. When they don't eat the food I prepare for them, it is not necessarily the food itself, but the delivery of the food. I like spicy food, and until recently it hadn't been a problem. But then I realised it wasn't the taste of the food they were complaining about. To test my theory I turned uneaten chicken curry into curry chicken patties....and the little buggers ate it. So over the next few weeks, you are likely to be seeing a lot of patties, croquettes, balls, nuggets and sticks!

About a year ago, I went to a barbecue with a group of friends. Two foods stick in my mind from that barbecue - Chickpea Salad and Beef Korma. I grabbed the Chickpea Salad recipe from my friend, but never got the recipe for beef korma. Also, I only had turkey and lamb mince in the freezer, so I did it my way!

Lamb Korma Skewer Sticks:

700 grams lamb mince

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1/4 cup finely chopped mint

1 teaspoon ground cummin

1 teaspoon ground coriander

0.5 teaspoons turmeric

Place the lot in a large bowl and squish until combined. Pop in the fridge for an hour. Use this time to soak your skewers if using bamboo ones, so they don't burn. With damp hands, form sausage shapes and skewer. Grill over medium heat on a griddle sprayed lightly with oil. Enjoy!

Ours were served with cos lettuce, cucumber and aioli.

The Gluten and Dairy Free 1st Birthday Party!

Yesterday Baby E turned one!

As he had his Maxillary Frenulum Release operation on Thursday, we just had a quiet party for him. Just us, his Dad and a couple of my friends and their kids. As we didn't throw a party for Torin in December, I wasn't too sure on what to have on the menu. But it turned out to be quite easy.

For the grown-ups:
Antipasto - artichoke hearts, roasted capsicum and eggplant, olives, marinated asparagus spears, prosciutto (Hans make GF).
Maggie Beer Pate, dips and King Island double brie with rice crackers, carrot sticks and celery.
Home made california rolls, filled with avocado, cucumber and smoked salmon with wasabi, soy and pickled ginger on the side.

For the kids:
A fruit and veg platter - watermelon, grapes, carrot sticks, celery, rice crackers and corn chips.
Icy poles.
Chocolate crackles (made by the wonderful Donna).

The cake:
Home made by Donna. GFCF Chockie cake.

The Gluten & Dairy Free Lunchbox Trials.

This has not been fun. With Torin being at school five days a week this year (finally) I have concluded he would be bored witless with eating rice and/or corn thins every day. But he's fussy. And there are many lunches we have that need to be served at a certain temperature.

So my evil plotting mummy tactics have been in overdrive. Starting with the introduction of salad. Every night with dinner we have been having salad to get him away from the idea he has to have mashed potato, peas and carrots with every meal. I had been able to replace the vegetables easily enough if they were cooked. Although he STILL refuses to eat green beans??? So I have been buying gluten free sorbet and gluten free ice cream cones to provide incentive to eat dinner. Being that I'm picky about some things too, I've even provided different types of salad vegetables so we can determine what he deems edible. Spinach leaves and ice berg lettuce = FAIL. Cos Lettuce = WIN!

At home I make my own tortillas and finally have a press (which I bought from Monterey Mexican Food for anyone who is after one. They're a brilliant business to deal with). But after a while they go a little hard if not wrapped in plastic and popped in the fridge. And they're not big enough to roll.

So I bought some Old Time Bakery Tannour Bread which works beautifully for wraps. The ones I made for today's successful lunch had gluten free ham, Castlemaine Dips Hommus, shredded cos lettuce and grated carrot. So I finally have one more thing I can add to Torin's lunchbox. Yay!

Peer pressure!

Isn't it funny how over the years peer pressure changes?

Smoking, for example. I always joked that I didn't start smoking due to peer pressure, it was because my Mum smoked AND worked for a tobacco company. But seriously, if it was deemed extremely uncool like it is now, I don't think I ever would have started at all. So my New Years Resolution is to quit. I have just smoked my last cigarette. As a back up plan, I have the name and number of a hypnotherapist in case I fall off the wagon.

Another thing that's changed is New Year's Eve. Unless I have been pregnant (and gone to bed early sulking and muttering angrily at the neighbours all partying on) I have managed to get myself a little bit too happy. Even the year I volunteered to work at Flemington Races on New Years Day. But before kids, you can manage little sleep and downing 30 litres of water to make it through the day and manage to skip a hangover.

This New Years Eve was different. I spent it at a friend's house, having a barbeque, with all the kids in tow. There were my hosts, and their three kids, and another couple, who also had three kids. And my need to sit down and chat to adults and relax and actually have someone else do the cooking for once, completely outweighed my need to get drunk!

Not only that, these amazing friends made it a gluten free event so I could relax without stressing about myself or Bridie geting ill!

And my last point on peer pressure is this. Jeanette has started blogging!
Jeanette was always willing to share recipes and would frequently PM me or write me notes on facebook but now she has a blog!!!! It is here - http://umeboshipink.blogspot.com/ and I have already baked and eaten a slice of her pumpkin bread (mine had garlic, chopped spinach and cummin and is pictured above) and it's awesome.
So she's worth stalking if you need vegan, gluten and dairy free recipes!

The shortcut to Ratatouille!

We went fruit and veg shopping this morning. And I went a little overboard. Rather than decide in advance, we went in without a list and bought everything we thought looked fantastic. I'm still not so great at menu planning. Don't get me wrong. I am a planner. But menu planning seems to get undone by life's little hiccups so it hasn't happened for us yet.

But when looking at the pile of delicious vegies sitting on the kitchen bench I was inspired to try something I kept meaning to try... which also happened to be a summer vegetable dish. Ratatouille!

So this is my spin on Ratatouille with a little bit of a time saver involved ;)

Roast Vegetable Ratatoille

1 medium sweet potato, cubed
1 medium eggplant, cubed
1 ear of corn, with kernels cut off
2 medium zucchini, cubed
7 cloves of garlic, whole
7 spears of asparagus, trimmed
olive oil (about 2 tablespoons)
cayenne pepper (about a teaspoon)
and the shortcut ingredient - a jar of salsa. I used Maloa House Lecsó (Hungarian Salsa)

Preheat oven to 230 C. Place vegetables and garlic (excluding asparagus) into an casserole dish. Sprinkle with cayenne pepper and drizzle with olive oil. Toss. Lay asparagus spears on top and roast for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and spoon salsa over the vegetables. Combine gently with a spoon. Pop back into oven for 15 minutes. Serve on a bed of brown rice.

This turned out fantastic and with plenty of leftovers to make omelettes for breakfast or quesadillas for lunch!

Real Men Don't Eat Quiche.

Or do they???

In fact, I've never met a man who doesn't but then I've never really been around men that read books!

But call it what you will - quiche, tart or flan - the fact remains they taste great!

Ours was simple. We had success again with Maggie Beer's GF Pastry recipe and the filling was simple, and as follows:

• 250 grams shaved ham, torn up
• 5 cherry tomatoes, quartered
• 5 mushrooms, sliced
• 6 eggs, whisked
• 1/4 cup rice milk
• 1/4 cup grated cheese
  

Basically, after lining the pie dish with the pastry, I assembled the quiche in that order. Baked for 30 minutes at 220C and there it is.

I'm having trouble with the GF blogs I follow. Most of them are based in the US or Canada so they're cooking gorgeous autumn and winter dishes and I have to remember Spring is almost over and Summer is on it's way. Although it's easy to forget when it's chilly and raining like today. But quiche is great in that it can be eaten cold with salad. So I'm back on track.

Ice Ice Baby - a Summer Treat

And with a new season on it's way in, our gluten-free, dairy-free journey has taken another step. Different foods on the menu, mean more items to be closely examined in the supermarket.
So Good soy ice cream is safe if it's Vanilla. But not if it's chocolate. Nestle Icy Poles are safe (and now marked gluten free on the package) but I've never really forgiven them for that bad thing they did.

So before investing in an ice cream maker and doing it all myself, I thought I'd give sorbet a go by hand first.
When I spotted Kiwi Fruit on special, it was all the inspiration I needed. But having never made sorbet before, I had a lot of research and reading to do.

My first port of call was my friend Skipper. She had loads of wonderful recipes on hand but hers contained egg. As Baby E hasn't had egg yet, I kept looking. And I stumbled across a familiar place - the blog of Pig in the Kitchen, another Mum with an allergy child! And even better, a starting point on how to make sorbet!
I particularly liked how her recipes were more rustic (so many recipes demand you force the fruit through a strainer).

Kiwi Fruit Sorbet.
250 grams white sugar
600 mls water
9 kiwi fruit, [peeled and roughly chopped
0.25 teaspoons xantham gum
1 teaspoon citric acid

In a medium saucepan, dissolve the sugar in the water. When dissolved, throw in the fruit and remove from the heat. Allow to cool. Pour into a blender. Add citric acid and xantham gum. Blitz until smooth. Pour into a metal tin (I used a cake tin) and freeze for an hour. Remove from freezer and beat with a handmixer. Put into freezer containers and re-freeze.

Pumpkin and Pine-nut Risotto.

This is a simple dish and one that everyone seems to adore.

Pumpkin and Pine-nut Risotto.
Half a butternut pumpkin, peeled, cooked and mashed
2 cups arborio rice
4 cups vegetable stock
nutmeg to taste *optional
small handful of pine nuts, lightly toasted
oil for cooking

Heat oil, add rice and stir through until translucent. Add stock one cup at a time until completely absorbed. In between the 3rd and 4th cup of stock, stir through the mashed pumpkin (and add nutmeg is you like). Add last cup of stock. Serve garnished with toasted pine nuts.

Ok. So some of mine were a little more than lightly toasted. Feel free to turn a blind eye!

Three Jars Full!

Well there will be three, but currently there is only two.

I've put my food processor to hard work this morning and have already made Pesto (sans cheese) and Macadamia Nut Butter. To complete the trifecta, I will be adding Hommus once the chick peas are all soaked.

Please excuse the shocking photo. It's from my phone as I can't find my rechargeable camera batteries.

Dairy Free Pesto is super easy. I can honestly say I think I have only ever bought pre-made Pesto once.
All you need is Fresh Basil, a little garlic, some pine nuts and olive oil (which isn't even really necessary in my opinion). I pick 3 handfulls of basil leaves. Process in food processor. Add 1 handfull of pine nuts, lightly toasted (I pop mine under the griller for a very short time). Process a little longer. Add one clove of garlic, crushed. Process until you're happy with it. Add oil if you wish. But remember if you use pesto for lots of different things, it doesn't always need to be "oily" so you can add the oil later if you need to.

Even simpler again, Macadamia Nut Butter. Take one 250 gram bag of natural macadamia nuts (not roasted not salted, just plain naked). Add a handfull at a time to food processor until the consistency you prefer. If they get dry, add a little oil (I used rice bran oil). And there you have an awesome spread for your toast!

And yes. In realise it looks like someone has been stuck into the pesto. I was hungry and I can recommend it with cheese in an omelette!

Potato and Lentil Patties with Satay Sauce.

I am SO utterly bored with food right now. And to top it off, tonight we were GOING to have meat. But alas! I forgot to take it out of the freezer so last minute eeeek! what shall we have for dinner!!!

So time to scan the pantry (yes, it's becoming a habit) and I spot potatoes and lentils. Then I *sigh* because how utterly boring can you get? Resigned to my fate of cooking the most boring dinner in the entire universe, I wander over to tidy up the bench from lunchtime and spot the peanut butter.

And then one of those weird little light bulbs appeared above my head. LOL!

Potato and Lentil Patties

4 medium potatoes, cooked, mashed and cooled
1 cup red lentils, cooked in two cups water
2 tablespoons No Egg beaten into 1/4 cup cold water
OR 1-2 eggs lightly beaten

Scrunch it all together. Form into patties and shallow fry. Easy!

Satay Sauce
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 large tablespoon oil (I use rice bran oil)
1 generous teaspoon ground coriander]
1 clove garlic, crushed

Pop the lot in a small pan. Stir until mixed and runny.

I am grateful it is Friday. I plan to ignore the dishes and put my feet up!

GF Banana Pikelets for Baby!

I had to share this recipe. The little kids had it for lunch. It lasted about 4.7 seconds. I even had a bite (which is a big thing for me because I loathe banana) and they were good! Really good! Very quick and easy too.

GF Banana Pikelets
One large banana, mashed
1/4 cup orange juice
1/2 cup GF flour

Stir banana and orange juice together. Beat in flour (I used a handmixer and it took no time at all).
Drop spoonfulls into a hot frying pan. Fry until brown on each side. Allow to cool and serve.

This made 7 wee little pikelets. See photo below so you get what I mean.

Grilled Eggplant and Vegetable Nachos.

We're back into routine! Hooray! After driving Torin to school, the littlies and I went to the green grocers. And Bridie was allowed to choose a vegetable and she chose a rather massive, shiny eggplant. So I thought about what I could do with it all the way home.

I used to LOVE grilled eggplant on foccacia in the days before coeliacs. So that was the obvious choice. So I sliced it into slabs about 1 centimetre thick and grilled it in the griddle. I found the pan had to be well oiled or the eggplant tended to just char. It cooks quite quickly though, so then I put it aside and did some more wondering.

I'm trying to cut down on our meat consumption. It's not environmentally friendly. It's not a VITAL part of our diet. And it's expensive. I can buy so much more food from the greengrocers if we just skip the meat. So with this in mind I did some fridge and pantry gazing (I seem to do that a lot, hey?) and decided I COULD do vegetarian nachos. I could even do VEGAN nachos! And the bonus is the preparation time can be broken down into steps (see, I've already grilled the eggplant) and assembled when you're ready to cook and serve.

Grilled Eggplant and Vegetable Nachos.
1 large eggplant, sliced and grilled
1 medium zucchini, grated
1 medium carrot, grated
1 handful baby spinach leaves
1 tin of kidney beans, washed and drained
1 packet Burrito seasoning
1/4 cup water
A little oil
1 packet corn chips
Grated cheese (Ours is still Vegan. We use Vegan soy cheese)

Place zucchini, carrot, spinach leaves and kidney beans in a saucepan with a dash of oil. Cook over low heat until tender. Add seasoning and water and stir though. Once thick, put aside.

Preheat oven to 180C. Scatter corn chips over an oven tray. On top of that, place circles or strips of grilled eggplant. Then make a layer of your seasoned vegetable and bean mix. Top with cheese and bake for 20 minutes.
Enjoy :)

Sweet Potato and Tuna Patties.

Wow!
These were so unbelievably good. Honestly, I'm normally pretty *meh* about food. But these patties hit the spot and were so easy!

Sweet Potato and Tuna Patties.
1 large sweet potato (peeled, cooked, mashed and cooled)
1 bunch Pak Choy (sliced finely)
1 425 gram tin of tuna in olive oil
1 egg
Cornflour to coat.

Mix sweet potato, tuna, pak choy and egg until combined. Scoop up fistfulls (the mixture is quite "wet"). Coat in cornflour and gently fry until browned on each side. These could probaly also be done in the oven if you preferred.

The kids loved them! Always a plus ;)

Chicken and Corn Risotto.

It appears that Miss Bridie may have fructose malabsorption on top of Coeliacs! So I've had to revise my weekly shopping list.

So I decide this week we'd get a few things we don't usually get. Ears of corn was one of those things.

Chicken and Corn Risotto
1 cup arborio rice
1 chicken breast
1 ear of corn
4 cups warm vegetable stock.
Oil (for cooking)

I used the same method as I used for the Garlic Chicken Risotto but made a few changes.
I used half as much rice, but the same amount of stock. This is because I shaved the kernels of corn of the ears and added them to the risotto after the second cup of stock. This gave them a nice cooking time and allowed the risotto to have a true corn flavour.

Perfect Potato Curry - Slow-cooked and Kid-friendly

INGREDIENTS:
3 tsps cumin seeds
3 tsps coriander seeds
0.5 tsp brown mustard seeds
5 curry leaves
1 tsp turmeric
0.5 tsp chilli
1 Tbsp ground ginger
2 cloves garlic crushed
1kgs spuds
2 tsp sea salt
2 cups hot water
1 cup peas/spinach
1 tin of crushed tomatoes

METHOD:
Grind up seeds (mustard, coriander and cummin) in your mortar and pestle.
Throw everything in slow cooker, except peas/spinach.
Stir so spices evenly coat everything.
Turn slow cooker on and walk away!
One hour before serving, add peas/spinach.
Stir again to mix vegetables through.
Have a cup of tea.
Serve.

If gluten and dairy are ok - I'd suggest naan on the side and natural yogurt on top.
If gluten and dairy free - pappadums (made from lentil flour) and coconut milk to taste.

My kids even eat this. It's a very mild flavour, absolutely delicious.