A week of freezer: day 7

Zucchini lasagna

One of my favourite recipies. It is from Bill's food and is so quick to put together. I used lasagne sheets from the freezer, zucchini from the garden, spinach that needed to be used up and tomatoes left over from our felafel dinner. Healthy and delicious.

A week of freezer: day 6

Felafel with fresh tomatoes, beetroot relish, tzatziki and spinach

I bought Larder Fresh felafel at the market. They are very yummy and are free from almost everything: preservatives, dairy, gluten, wheat, chickpeas... joking.

5 minutes in the oven and they are done. I reckon dinner took me 15 minutes to cook and that includes chopping up the tomatoes, make the tzatziki and put everything together.

A week of freezer: day 5

Rustic winter soup

In summer. I gave #1 two chicken nuggets for lunch (from the freezer of course!) and after putting them infront of him, he turned to me and said 'can I have soup too?'. Now, for those of you out there who have children who hardly ever eat, you'll know how I feel when I say - this is music to my ears. So one little container of soup promptly defrosted. Win-win. One more thing in his tummy and one more thing out of my freezer.

A week of freezer: day 4

Spaghetti with spinach pesto and prawns

When we went to the market a lovely lady from Verde Provedores gave us two containers of spinach pesto. She saw that we had a newborn and figured that cooking great dinners wasn't really a priority for us right now! She suggested that we pop the pesto in the freezer and stir it through pasta when we needed a quick meal. I decided to go a little up market and team it with some prawns and mushrooms. I pan fried the prawns and mushrooms in a bit of butter and then scattered some basil from the garden over the top of the dish. It was definately the nicest freezer meal we've had this week. If you see the Verde pesto's around, I recommend them. The spinach one is delicious.

A week of freezer: day 3

Image from Grill'd

Another day, another freezer meal. Today we had homemade hamburgers from patties I'd frozen a few months ago. And quite fittingly for Australia Day, we made them on the BBQ. This pic is not the burger I ate. It is a representation of what I made but ate too quickly to photograph. My all time favourite burger is the Mighty Melbourne (with beetroot) from Grill'd. It is absolutely delicious and I wish there was a Grill'd in Northcote so I could get my fix a little more often.

A week of freezer: day 2

Pancakes with lemon and sugar

The Mr is the Pancake King. His pancakes are rather legendary. #1 is a very keen helper now too (egg cracking seems to be one of his favourite things to do). We have a lemon tree in the backyard that is FULL of lemons but all of them are green at the moment. Luckily I had some frozen lemon juice in the freezer.

A week of freezer: day 1

My freezer is bursting at the seams. We are at the point where you put something in and close the door quick smart before everything comes tumbling out.

I've decided to post A week of freezer. Every day this week I'll be making a meal using frozen ingredients. The aim is to have lots of room in the freezer by the end of the week!

Day 1 was soup. I had three different vegetable based soups in the freezer left over from a big winter cookup. Popped a container of each in a saucepan and voila! Dinner done.

Can't stop eating

I blame the breastfeeding. Actually, I don't blame the breastfeeding - I thank the breastfeeding. Bring on the sweet food I say! This is one of Nigella's christmas cupcakes that I baked with my 2 yo. Mmmm cranberries are gooood.

Piklets!

My mum used to surprise us with piklets. We'd get home from school on a rainy day and she'd have the electric fry pan out and piklets would be bubbling away. My sister and I loved these tasty treats.
The other day I thought I'd surprise the Mr. It was raining, he was riding his bike home from work in the cold and wet. So when he got home, this is what was waiting for him. The three of us munched down on the whole batch.
Want the recipe? Commonsense cookery book has the BEST piklet recipe. So easy.

Little surprise

Today I had to work. Yuck, work on a Saturday means no playing with the little one or the Mr. I got home this arvo, put the boy to bed for his arvo sleep - then the Mr and I went straight to bed. Don't be getting the wrong idea...it was purely for sleep purposes. We are both uber tired - perhaps due to the fact that the little guy woke up for 2.5 hours the other night. I wish I could make him understand that 1.30am-4.00am is not playtime.

Anyhoo, back to the story. Both boys are sleeping (still!), after an hour of snoozing I woke up and decided to make (or actually, bake) them a surprise.
This is what is waiting for them.
Stephanie Alexander's blueberry muffins. The best.
They are super easy and don't require a mixer or a food processor:
- 220g plain flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 125g sugar
- 3/4 cup oil (I use melted butter instead)
- 3/4 cup milk
- 1 egg
- 200g blueberries (I use half blueberries, half dried cranberries)

Put flour, baking powder and sugar in a bowl. In another bowl, mix oil (or melted butter), milk and egg in another bowl. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix (quickly - don't overwork the mixture), add the berries.
Put into muffin pans and bake at 200 degrees for 25 mins. Voila!
This great recipie is from Stephanie's book, the Cooks Companion. I love that book.

The worst looking soup...the best tasting soup

Mushroom soup...my favourite.

The train...in progress

Train masterpiece

Herb turned one earlier this month. The Mr and I stayed up very late creating this awesome cake. My friend Sara Lee made the cake (tip to all other parents - Sara Lee slab cake is really easy to ice and cut) but we constructed, iced and decorated. It was such fun.
When I was little, my sister and I looked through the Women's Weekly Birthday Cake book over and over and over. Lots of weekends - especially those rainy ones- were spent poring over the book trying to decide which cake we'd have for our next birthday. Can I get a few things off my chest?
1. Who would want the duck cake? The popcorn and the potato chips would go soggy from the icing. Plus the cake to icing ratio is way too high.
2. I wanted the sweet shop so badly...and never got it.
3. How did the crew at WW make sure that the paper on the typewriter didn't get oily from the icing?
4. Did I mention I love butter icing. Like, realllllly love it.
Ok, that's all. For now.

Meanwhile, the train cake was sooooo good. I think we'll do the helicopter next year.

Frenchy

Today we went to the In-Law's for lunch and had French Onion Soup. Although I had my bread on the side which I am fully aware is against the spirit of FOS but I can't stand soggy bread. Anyhoo, it reminded me and the Mr of the BEST FOS experience we've ever had...think Paris, think small tiny cafe that we can't remember the name of.
So the story goes...we were going for a wander around the Opera Madeleine area and found a little cafe (I think there may have even been red checker table cloths) so we sat down at a street table and there was approx 5 cm seperating us from the couple at the next table. While we were looking at the menu, the smell of the guy's dinner was wafting over our way and it was AMAZING so I asked what he ordered and he said FOS - infact he said that FOS is his favourite soup of all time and he believed that this particular bowl was the best he'd ever tasted. So we both ordered a bowl and were not dissapointed. It was mind blowing. I wish we could remember the name of that cafe.


I think Amelia PS's version of FOS looks pretty good.

Scrounging around

Don't you just love making a recipe that uses all those odds and ends in your fridge? I did it tonight with Christmas food: I managed to use up the last of the Christmas ham, a bit of left over red wine, some shallots, 2 leeks and some cheese. I whipped all of this into a rather tasty (but purplish looking) risotto.
On another cooking related note, my mum gave me a mushroom bag for Christmas. It looks like it is made of calico with a black meshy lining. It is pretty cool, haven't tried it yet but fingers crossed that it keeps my mushrooms fresh as daisys.