Lunch at the Craftsman, Cannington

I had the Seafood Skewers. Three skewers of salmon, prawn and a scallop with a nicoise salad. It was delicious! I gave Mum a skewer. The prawns were just gorgeous.

Mum had the Smoked Chicken and Macadamia Salad. The smokey flavour and the macadamias together really lifted the salad to make it sublime.

--
Sarah Lee Parker

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Month of Food--Post 2

Okay, I didn't eat all of this fruit today, it was left over from last nights dinner gathering as I was going to offer it for desert, but we were all stuffed full from the pasta. Since I had so much available I was considering doing a fruit fast for the day but in the end decided not too when sushi called.


Black coffee lovingly made by Mr X. Check out that crema!



Vegetarian sushi for lunch, how could I say no.



Some left over roast veggies as a late afternoon snack.


Steamed veggies with falafel and a little gravy--I use the Orgran gravy mix because it is free of all my allergens, but I believe that good old Gravox is actually vegan too, who would have thought?

Joining the Month of Food

I have decided to join Sarah P in her month of food posts. I find it really interesting that our diets follow very similar rules with the only really big difference being that they are completely opposite in terms of the main ingredients.

I am currently trialing careful food combining based mostly on Leslie Kenton's Biogenic Diet and Donna Gates' Body Ecology Diet. So, just like Sarah P, I don't eat processed foods and I don't combine protein with starches. In addition I only eat fruit on its own and I try and have as much 'living' food as possible i.e sprouts, just picked greens, and fermented or cultured foods--foods high in enzymes and gut friendly bacteria.

The theory behind food combining (or, to be more accurate, not combining) is that different levels of acidity are required to digest different types of food and by only eating foods that require the same environment at any one time we can make the digestion process easier and more efficient and thus help to eliminate a host of digestive problems, particularly those that are related to 'leaky gut syndrome'.

The big difference between mine and Sarah's diets is that I have been vegan for over 2 years now so while many of our diet 'rules' are the same my diet is entirely plant based and much lower in protein foods.

Today's meals:

As suggested by Kenton I am trialing eating only fruit until midday. I find that I need to eat quite a bit for this to work for me. This morning's fruit was 2 apples, a pear, a peach, a plum and a couple of lychees, yum! I eat most of it early on in the day and have a couple of pieces for a mid morning snack.



Lunch today was two slices of sprouted spelt bread (this is sprouted, mushed together and cooked at a very low temperature so it is still full of enzymee goodness, it makes for a very thick, moist and relatively sweet bread) topped with half an avocado, salt and cracked pepper, and baby spinach leaves. I finished it off with a coconut water drink.



Dinner was fettuccine with a rich tomato based veggie sauce. The main flavours were mushrooms, zucchini, and roasted capsicum. I took the picture above just before I added the passata so that you could see what was in it--talk about eating a rainbow!



I had guests over tonight so I was cooking for ten, a great chance to put my new stove to the test :)

Tom Naughton has ideas on the Rise of Crohn and Colitis in Children

Fat Head � Yes, We’re Aware of Crohn’s and Colitis … So What?: Considering that kids are eating wheat products that contain both more gluten overall and mutant gluten with a protein sequence that never existed until around 40 years ago, I think it’s entirely possible that Crohn’s and colitis are on the rise because kids (and adults) are consuming glutens their bodies can’t handle. These are, after all, auto-immune diseases. It’s not unreasonable to suspect that when these strange glutens seep in our systems, our bodies attack them and end up attacking our own tissues at the same time.

Back Up Box!

Starting a Backup Box

I hate shopping. Let me just say that up front and get it out there. I resent the fact I need o spend time buying similar items every two weeks for my entire life. I like to daydream ways to minimise the time I spend shopping!

Today's post is about a backup box. It's for when my re-ordering systems fail me for whatever reason, and I find myself genuinely without an item and I don't want to go to the  shop for a few more days yet. 

Things that mean my household grinds to a halt and I have to go to the shop...

Dishwasher pellets

Milk

Bread

Sandwich fillings

Toilet paper

I think everything else I can put off. So in my backup box I should have...

Dishwasher powder

Powdered milk

Flour and yeast

Vegemite

Toilet paper

 If I am serious about this, then I should be able to make my fortnightly shop last a proper fourteen days despite minor emergencies. If I really wanted to be hard about this, I would include stock cubes and a packet of dried soup mix so we always have tasty emergency soup too! 

What would you have in your Backup Box? Would you include a main meal backup?

Sarah P

Potato and Eggplant Curry

Potato (2 lg, 3 med or 5 small, in large cubes)
Eggplant (300gs in similar sized cubes)
4 tbsn oil
1 tbsp garam marsala
1 tbsn cumin
1 tbsn ginger
1 tbsn garlic
1 large fat onion
6 tomatoes
Salt

1 can of coconut milk

Use a blender or food processor to mince the onion, garlic and ginger into mush. Fry in oil with salt until it starts to go red brown. Add the garam marsala and cumin and fry until fragrant. Add more oil if need be. Process the tomatoes in the blender until liquid, add to frying pan and simmer until reduced. Add potato and eggplant and any water you might need to almost cover the vegetables. Simmer until sauce is very thick, and vegetables mostly cooked. Add coconut milk and simmer until sauce is at a consistency you like and vegetables are cooked.

Serve with rice!

--
Sarah P

Baking for Beginners: An Introduction to Temperature - Joanne Chang - Food - The Atlantic

The science behind why temperature is so crucial to baking: 

Baking for Beginners: An Introduction to Temperature - Joanne Chang - Food - The Atlantic

Secret Project!

I am working on a secret project!

Ssssshhhhhh!

As any one who follows this know, I love to play with numbers. Income, outgoings, spending, ROI, costs, budgets.... FRUGALITY!

Frugality is no longer 'making do' as we're now in a WORLD OF PLENTY!  Now, frugality making CONSCIOUS CHOICES ABOUT YOUR TIME, FINANCES AND LIFE.

What does this mean??

It means making informed choices based around YOUR LIFE CHOICES before you even spend a cent!

I have a new motto and new plans.

My plan is to provide you, my awesome and lovely readers, with PLANS and SYSTEMS to help you get your home life under control! And in the extra time you save, with the extra money you save, and with the extra LIFE you save, I want YOU to provide JOY!

I will help make your life EASY if you provide the JOY in doing so!

I am so excited! Sarah P's New Secret Project is in the formative stages. Stay tuned for more exciting new snippets and hints to come!

--
Sarah P

Forays into Morrocco - Orange Blossom Carrots

I have been getting random vegetable boxes from Coles for some time now, so I have also been trying out their random fruit boxes. This means an influx of things I am much less likely to know what to do with!

I have never been a huge orange eater. I've never been so in love with the taste or flesh that I have bypassed the inherent messiness and sheer annoyance of having to peel and then segment the damned things. However, with four of the blighters arriving on my doorstep every other week, I had to find ways to cope!

Meet the Moroccan Orange and Carrot salad.


This is actually a pic of the left overs, since we ate it too fast to take a picture. This was lovely, and a fantastic way to use oranges! Yum!

Strangely enough, I don't mind prepping oranges to make salad out of it. I just resent it when I intend to eat it. Yes, I am a bit weird sometimes.


--
Sarah P

In The Raw

In the Raw!

I had a raw meal. I was fascinated by the idea that we could eat RAW PUMPKIN! I was fascinated and a bit hesitant. Pumpkin is my favourite vegetable, and I love it baked, mashed, stuffed, pureed, and growing. Raw... was a bit unusual.


I have been following a friend's blog as she did 30 Days of Raw. Her recipes sounded fantastic, and I always love to try new things, so I tried this one, which is Pumpkin noodles with a sundried tomato sauce.

Unfortunately, I ended up very sick that night, vomiting and feeling very unwell. The food was Ok - I was hoping to really fall in love with it a lot more than I did. It was tasty, but the textures didn't work for me, and then I was sick all night. Not fun. Not raw food's fault either, so when we hit Brisbane I leapt at the chance to try a few more raw foods.

I tried a raw felafel with raw chutney, and that was ... interesting. It needed a damn good cooking if you ask me! Again, the texture of sprouted chick peas or broad beans then ground into a paste and dried didn't quite work for me. I think my preconceptions were getting in the way of my really enjoying these sorts of foods, so we also tried some desserts.

There was a mint chocolate slice, which was very nice, but my big favourite was definitely some avocado chocolate pies we purchased. And it turns out they were low carbs, which was awesome! I was no-carbing at the time. We loved the dark chocolate avocado pie, and so did our 4yo! Our 2yo loves anything that's edible, so we knew he would love it too.

--
Sarah

Five Minute Artisan Bread - Recipe Two

PIZZA!

I made the kids help put the toppings on, there's even tiny mini pizzas shaped by my 4yo. Yum!

--
Sarah P

Stage Two of Worcestershire Sauce

Now we wait for two weeks!

Random sampling at present says "It's not as salty as Worcestershire sauce, but very good."

--
Sarah P

Sprouted Nourishment

Sally Fallon's back to basics cook book Nourishing Traditions is an inspirational guide to old school nutrition. And when I say back to basics I don't mean like the CWA cook book (thought that is an absolute gem in itself) I mean really back to traditional ways of preparing food for maximum nutritional benefit. It is a bit scary to think that to return to the practices discussed in the book would require a complete overhaul of our current popular methods of food preparation.

Now that I am no longer pregnant and the consequences of mildly poisoning myself are not quite so huge I am planing to slowly and steadily introduce these practices into my kitchen.

This weeks adventure into nutrient enhanced food is... sprouts!



I have been looking forward to getting back into sprouting for a while now (sprouts are one of the foods recommended against during pregnancy due to food poisoning risk (I think salmonella? maybe listeria??) Mind you, I do wonder which risk is greater during pregnancy--food poisoning or malnutrition considering how many generally healthy foods are recommended against at this time... but that is another post entirely...)

So, yes, where was I? Oh yes, sprouts. Basically sprouting takes food that is already pretty good--legumes, grains, nuts and seeds--and by letting it do what it does naturally, it decreases the harmful chemicals and increases the available nutrients. Fallon writes:

The process of germination not only produces vitamin C but also changes the composition of grain and seeds in numerous beneficial ways. Sprouting increases vitamin B content, especially B2, B5 and B6. Carotene increases dramatically--sometimes eightfold. Even more important, sprouting neutralizes phytic acid, a substance present in the bran of all grains that inhibits the absorption of calcium, magnesium, copper and zinc; sprouting also reduces enzyme inhibitors present in all seeds.

She also mentions that sprouts are easier to digest than unsprouted grains/seeds as they have an increase in digestive enzymes and a reduction in gas causing complex sugars.

Fallon adds a few cautions, she recommends against the over consumption of raw sprouts, advising light steaming instead, and also recommends against the eating of alfalfa saying that this seed can inhibit the immune system and also contribute to inflammatory arthritis and lupus.

Another great thing about sprouts is that they dramatically increase the volume of your food substance, making them an extremely economical way to prepare the food source. The picture above is of mung bean sprouts--I started with a handful of dried mung beans, soaked overnight then rinsed in clean water twice a day and three days later had a jar full of food.

Also, they are actually incredibly tasty. Even monkey moo will eat them!

Coles Seasonal Vegetable Box

What's in the box??

A few days ago I ordered Coles delivery as I stuffed my knee, and the last thing I wanted to do was wander around a supermarket for 2 hours while hobbling. Since my preferred stupidmarket doesn't deliver to me, I usually go with GroceryZone, but this time I thought I would give Coles a try. Coles only recently started to deliver in my area.

My first hint that this was a well thought out concept was booking a delivery time. A two hour delivery window was $13, a three hour delivery window was $11, and a four hour delivery window was $9. I think 2 hours of my time is definitely worth $4.50 an hour! I hate shopping. Did you know that? I do. I love delivery. I like to do my grocery shopping monthly, and my fresh fruit and veg during the month. I hate shopping so much I'd rather meal plan and get it all done in one big shop so I don't have to do it again. I resent wandering around a stupidmarket, making faces at all the food. I must amuse some people if they notice!

Another thing I liked - when I checked out, it told me that a) my credit card would be debited once the order was picked and packed, and that if I wanted to, I could log in and change the order up until mid-day the day before delivery. I logged in three separate times over the weekend to add 'just one more thing'!

I hate Coles. I have always found their vegetables to be awful, and the range to be uninspiring. Coles is not the cheapest, and it doesn't have what gourmet items I do like, so Woollies has always received less ire from me. I don't like it, but I hate Woollies less than Coles!

And Coles has Seasonal Vegetable Boxes! I was so excited! I love random boxes of fruit and veg, and have been a part of a couple of co-ops, and also companies which deliver boxes of random F&F many a time. Some just stopped delivery for some reason, or others let their quality slip, so I was ecstatic when the Armadale Farmers Market started up recently. So, I ticked the box, and waited with great excitement.

Getting boxes of random vegetables are a great way to expand your recipe repertoire, and also to make sure you EAT MORE VEGETABLES. Getting the fortnightly boxes FULL of vegies meant that we also had a deadline! These days we're much better at it, but sometimes we slip.

I am impressed. I am very impressed. All of the vegetables were top quality, and there is heaps.

1 x whole cabbage
1 x medium zucchini
4 x onions
4 x carrots
4 x potatoes
2 x broccoli
1/4 punkin (Like I need more. I still haven't bothered to catalogue the ROI on my single pumpkin plant)
1 x red capsicum
1 x green capsicum
1 x punnet of mushrooms

I love the fact there's basics as well as more exciting items. I love the fact there's a red capsicum and a green capsicum. I love the fact there's a mix of stuff that will last quite a while and stuff that needs to be used ASAP.

Coles, I hate to say it, but I'm impressed. Now I'm all sad because WOOLLIES SHOULD HURRY UP AND FOLLOW YOUR LEAD! And give me Rewards points too LOL

Also, for those who do the Flybuys thing, Coles will put your flybuys onto your account with online shopping.

So I would have to give Coles an 'AWESOMECOOKIES!' rating for their home delivery service. If they had a partnership with Qantas, I'd totally be all over them.
--
Sarah

Five Minute Artisan Bread

Simple Savings also brought this amazing idea to me - Five Minute Artisan Bread. I was amused by my bread section in my home made recipe book - 24 Hour Bread, One Hour Bread, and then Five Minute Bread.

The theory behind this bread is that you whip up a batch, let it sit for 2 - 5 hours, and then stick it in the fridge. When you need bread, you pull out as much as you think you will need, shape it, let it rise and then cook in a very hot, moist oven, and tada! Five minutes is the shaping time.

This bread can be used to make Naan bread, pitas, flatbread, loaves, frybread, fougasse, buns, baguettes, and pizza.



There are now a couple of books on these breads. This is a standard slow rise bread, and the authors recommend re-using the dough remnants to make the next batch develop the sour dough style flavours faster. The dough keeps in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. Another bread is a brioche style, using a dozen eggs to enrich the dough, and also has a shelf life in the fridge of 2 weeks.

The books are now available on Amazon, and a number of people have had success asking their libraries to find them copies. Once the basics are down, this seems like a very handy, and very easy, thing to have in your fridge at all times.

More information:
http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/



--
Sarah P

Home Made Christmas Gifts Part One

Home Made Worcestershire Sauce

This is yet another recipe from Simple Savings. Oops, looks like I forgot the bottle of treacle from the pic! Ah well.

The original recipe is for 2 litres of vinegar, but since I only had a half a jar of treacle, this worked out well, so I halved the recipe. I don't use a lot of Worcestershire sauce, and since this is an untried recipe I didn't want to make gallons of it. I have a couple of pretty bottles ready to go, plus I have a planned trip to Plasdene to look at what sort of options we have. Christmas this year is going to be awesome!

So far the recipe has used stuff I already had in the cupboard, or else provided by friends. (Lemons) so has been very frugal indeed. I have had the treacle for a long time now, and wasn't sure what to do with it. Yay, I have that space back!


So now I stir it once a day for six days, and then we see if it's any good! I'll post the proper recipe when I post the finished product, and a review.

Vegie Win!

Tonight's dinner was awesome! Chesh and I have a couple of favourite Japanese restaurants - the kind of places where we always order exactly the same thing every time. One of these places is Mr Samurai, who does an amazing Tempura B special, which is tempura made of julienne carrot, potato and onion with a drizzle of a sweet and soy sauce, rice, and kara-age. That's what I have every time I go! Chesh has the beef rice bowl, which I believe I have already mastered!

Over the weekend I went to a lovely Hen's Night in a Japanese resturaunt, and one of the many many tiny entrees they served was a tempura fried eggplant with a dollop of tonkatsu sauce. Since I happen to be giving away eggplants more often than I am eating them, I was excited to find a new way of serving it. And it was good, but the other tempura was definitely the star of this dinner!

Mr Samurai Tempura

Batter
1 egg
1 cup flour
1 cup icey water

Vegetables - all in similar lengths and widths, julienned (matchstick size)
One small onion
One medium potato
One carrot
One eggplant, other vegies, or even a couple of prawns.

Drizzling Sauce
Honey
Soy sauce
drop of sesame oil

Method
Slice and dice your vegies. I chunked the eggplant up, and used the above batter for all of the vegies in this recipe, and the eggplant. I wanted thick chunks for the eggplant to provide a bit more aesthetic appeal, and to be able to withstand uncertain frying. I'm still learning the ins and outs of frying, but after tonight I am very happy!

Make the drizzling sauce by mixing the three items together. I microwaved it for 20 seconds to loosen the honey up.
Put the rice cooker on.
Start the oil heating for deep frying.

Make the batter last. It should still be cold when you are frying. This gives it the tempura lightness and crispiness. You just mix it up. It should still be lumpy.

Do the eggplant or extra vegies first, dipping them into the batter and then dropping them into the oil. If you are doing prawns, do them last. Also, if you want the traditionally straight prawns, you need to use a skewer with each prawn.

Once that is all done and cooling, chuck in the julienned vegies. I dried mine a little with a tea towel first, since I had kept them in water, and then used a hand to mix them up and then put small handfuls into the oil.

When all done, serve with steamed rice, and drizzle the sauce over the top! We served the eggplant with a homestyle tonkatsu sauce.

How simple, and yet awesome, is that? All I need now is some sesame icecream, and life would be perfect!

--
Sarah

Zucchini and Eggplant Stirfry

Ingredients
- Trio ginger/garlic/spring onions
- Oil
- 100ish grams of beef mince

Vegies
- one smallish/medium sized eggplant in one inch cubes
- one zucchini in one inch cubes
- can water chestnuts, drained

Sauce (mix up ready to go)
- 125 mls chicken stock
- 125 mls chicken master stock (or just use normal chicken stock)
- 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
- 2 tablespoons kecap manis
- 2 tablespoons CHILI BEAN IN SOYA OIL
- 1 tablespoon Chinese vinegar

- Cornflour slurry to thicken

------
1) heat wok, add oil, add trio, fry for ten seconds, add beef mince as
crumbled as possible. Let it fry for a bit until it's mostly brown,
and then start tossing it about a bit to make sure it's all done.

2) Add vegies and stirfry for a few minutes, tossing around. Add sauce
and bring to boil with lid on. Maybe 5 minutes? Then take lid off and
check it out. Eggplant should be mostly done, so stir it around a bit
more to release more water from the sauce and finalise cooking.
Eggplant should be in cubes still, not turned into mush. (I have
learnt a lot about cooking eggplants LOL)

3) Add slurry, stifry until it's thick and done, put in serving plate.
I had fresh chopped spring onion greens on top, but I think a drizzle
of toasted sesame oil would be the perfect trick. Chesh also suggested
toasted sesame seeds instead of oil.

--
Sarah P

Autumn Harvests

Autumn seems to have brought a sudden new lease on life in the garden. The eggplants have started to produce waves of fat black globes again, the watermelons now have three babies, and the pumpkins are getting very excited about the cooler weather. I'm still not sure when I am
supposed to harvest all these produce, but I'm learning.

Sarah P

Semi Dried Tomatoes

I had a whole lot of tomatoes in left over from my weekly veggie box last week, a mix of lovely little cherry tomatoes and some beautifully sweet black russians. One of the fun things about the random veggie box is thinking of things to do with the produce that you might not have normally gone out and bought. We are not huge tomato eaters in this family, owing mostly to their high salicylate and amine content, so while I have used a few in stews and sauces I still had plenty left over.Washed and chopped and into the dehydrator they went.


Several hours later I put the shriveled little red lumps into a jar and drowned them in olive oil and added a few cloves of garlic...


Yum!