Semi Free-form Kangaroo Meat Pies.

Yay! I managed to get meal prepared for the October challenge Vittoria is hosting.

There is one disadvantage to being Australian and it's culinary. Our country doesn't have a long history, unless you consider the Aboriginal people. And, sadly, a lot of their history is lost, or handed down by word of mouth. The other difficulty was that they lived on the land and we kind of use kitchens to prepare meals.
*sigh*
So I thought about this for a long, long time until I could find a way to bring all of Australia to the table.

There is nothing more Aussie than a meat pie. Granted Australia is not the only country who eats meat pies, but ask any Australian what is an "Aussie" food, in amongst the Vegemite and beer, someone will mention meat pies.
But that alone, wasn't Indigenous enough for my liking. So I figured no other country has Kangaroos! We're going to whip up a Kangaroo meat pie to die for! On top of that, it's gluten and dairy free!

For the pastry, I again used Maggie Beer's Gluten Free pastry recipe. As usual, I replaced the butter with Nuttelex dairy free spread. I have called them "semi free-form" because I did use pie dishes but I rolled the pastry out to a larger size and just kind of gathered and tucked the extra over to form the tops. I filled each with my delicious kangaroo filling and baked in the oven (220 C) for 20 minutes.

Kangaroo Pie Filling (makes about 4 small pies)
400 grams kangaroo steak, cubed
1 tablespoon rice bran oil
1 Massel Easy Onion cube
1 teaspoon dried sage
1 cup vegetable stock, hot
1 tablespoon cornflour

Heat the oil in a saucepan. Brown off the meat and stir in the sage. Crumble in onion cube and add hot stock. Pop lid on and lower the heat, allowing to simmer for 30 minutes. (This is a good time to roll out the pastry).
Remove the lid, stir and add cornflour. Turn the heat up and stir from time to time until a gravy has formed from the liquid. Then it's ready!

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!

Pasta Spirals with Creamy Tofu Sauce.

I'm still on a mission to eat less meat. I'm also wanting to ensure the children have an adequate intake of iron and calcium. So the perfect food seemed to be Tofu! And my evil plan was to turn it into something the kids would eat. We've had it in the past in dishes such as stir-fries, but they always seem to spot it and leave it aside. I don't even think it's because they don't like the taste. I just think it looked weird.

So tonight I tried a different (and successful) tactic.

Pasta Spirals with Creamy Tofu Sauce.
375 gram block or organic tofu
1 cup soy milk
2 garlic cloves, crushed
12 button mushrooms, sliced
12 baby spinach leaves
Oregano and basil

Pop Tofu into a blender with the milk. Blitz until creamy. In a small amount of oil, gently fry the mushrooms, garlic and spinach. When soft, pour the tofu mix in and stir through. Add as much or as little oregano and basil as you like. Serve over cooked pasta spirals.

I have to point out something too. For some reason, the tofu mixture takes a while to heat up. So do check it's really nice and warm before serving. It doesn't seem to retain the heat very well and cools quickly. I CAN say, however, that it makes a great nutritious baby food. Edan was very impressed!

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 :)

Nettles - Another Cordial Experiment.

With the drought, the taste of the water here is getting worse and worse. I know I need to drink water, but even after boiling it and cooling it, it tastes kind of sulphuric. Blerk!

So rather than buying bottled water or buying cordials to disguise the taste of the water, I've resorted to using what I have on hand to make cordials. I went through a weird phase of trying to use herbs to heal myself of what later turned out to be coeliacs symptoms. So at last the shelf full of dried herbs in my pantry can be put to use, because frankly as teas they were scary.

So today I thought I'd try and concoct some Nettle Leaf Cordial.
I put the following into a medium saucepan:
2 cups water
1 cup white sugar
1 cup dried nettle leaves

I brought to the boil. I simmered for 15 minutes. Strained through muslin into a bowl. Stirred in one tea spoon of tartaric acid.
Allow to cool. Bottled and refrigerated! Tasted quite refreshing in a very green kind of way.

Fools rush in...

...where angels fear to tread.
And leave their big stompy footprints all over the environment for following generations.

So I'm going to start listing the little things I do to try and reduce my family's impact on the environment to show people how simple it is.

1. Buy energy saving light bulbs. They're a little more expensive but they last ages and your power bills will be smaller.
2. Replace something disposable with something reusable. Use handkerchiefs, cloth nappies, cloth pads or Diva cups.
3. Try and buy recycled. I have no idea why people insist on having luxury toilet paper. You are wiping POO on it! If you're that sensitive see #2 (point two, not secret code for poo) and make some reusable botty wipes.
4. Walk instead of driving. It's refreshing to go for a walk. Stop being in such a rush and go meandering with your kids.
5. Nothing on TV - turn it off! Read a book, bake a cake or paint your toenails.
6. Try not to leave appliances on "stand by". Switch them off at the wall and save yourself money.
7. Never run a washing machine or dishwasher until it's full. Or better still - wash dishes by hand once a day and buy a front loader washing machine with a good water rating.
8. Use an environmentally friendly laundry powder, and then use a grey-water hose to run the water onto your garden bed or lawn.
9. Invest in some super glue, a sewing kit, elastic bands and string. And next time something breaks, try fixing it before binning it.
10. Try and choose items from the supermarket with reduced packaging. I know the rice cakes we buy are only inside one packet whereas others have a packet inside the packet which is just wasteful in my opinion.

Some links with info about the suggestions I have made:
Cloth Pad Shop.
Information about cloth (reusable) menstrual pads and shops to buy them from.
One Less Disposable.
A blog about how using just one cloth nappy a day can help.
Planet Ark.
Environmental news and information.