Baking on Mondays.

Yesterday, I made banana muffins, chocolate muffins and fruit buns. Here is the Banana muffin recipe.

Pizza wheels

These have become a family staple. On Sunday I made 48 and there were none left after school on Monday. 

Ingredients:
3 cups sr flour
1 cup lemonaide
1 cup cream.

Mix together to made dough.

Filling:
1 capsicum grated
2 small zucchinis grated
Shredded ham
Pizza sauce
Cheese.

Preheat oven to 220.
Break dough into 4 equal portions and roll out in long rectangle.













Put pizza sauce on and spread over dough.













Put shredded ham, grated capsicum, zucchini and cheese in centre.














Roll up dough and enclose pizza fillings
Cut into 12 pieces and place in muffin trays






Cook in oven for about 15 minutes until golden brown. Place on cooling tray. Can be eaten hot or cold.

OAMC

Today I started getting ready for our big cook for the next 4 weeks.

I have done my menu plan, shopping lists and been through our cupboard to see what we already have.

I have been cooking our meals ahead off and on for a long time now. Over the years I have learnt many things and I am much more efficient at it now.

I start off picking out the recipes I will be doing. I do 9 different meals 3 times each and on the last night, we either get take away or just have some leftovers.

This month we have:

Moroccan meatballs.
Singapore noodles
Teriyaki chicken noodle salad
Tuna patties
Chicken fried rice
Schnitzels
Eggplant Parmesan
Spaghetti bolognaise
Mushroom pasta.

Once I have chosen the meals I put them in a calender and print it off. This way I know what we are having and we spread the meals out.

After the menu plan, I do my list. I put a 3x3 table on a word document and each section has a meal. I then put all the ingredients we need for the meals for each one.

I then go through my list and work out what I need for our cooking day and what we will need to buy each week. I highlight the things we need for our cooking day and then put them into a shopping list. Many things are doubled up but I simply put amounts next to them rather than write the item twice.

Next is the weekly shopping list. I work out what fresh items we will need and put them in a list. For instance, when we have the schnitzels, I want to have salads to go with them. I generally buy this when I do the weekly shop rather than ahead.

Once all the lists are made, I go to my cupboards and see what we have already and cross them off the list.

Then I do my shopping.

Tomorrow I will go into details with my meal prep on the cooking day and how I freeze them.

If any one wants to see my lists, I have put them in google doc's and you can find them here:

Menu list and ingredients.

Weekly menu plan. 

Weekly shopping list for week 4.

Tasty Tuesday: Fruit buns.

This is a recipe I use often. The children and Steve love them and they are pretty easy to make. This recipe is a hot cross bun recipe I just don't put the crosses or glaze on and call them fruit buns.

Ingredients:

1.5 cups milk
7grms yeast
1 tspn caster sugar
1 egg
60grms butter melted
4 cups flour
1.5 cups mixed fruit.
1 tbspn all spice
1/2 tspn salt
2 tbspns caster sugar (extra)

Method:

Heat milk in microwave for about 50 seconds.
Add yeast and 1 tspn of caster sugar
put to the side until foaming.

Put flour, mixed fruit, spice, salt and extra sugar in bowl.

When milk has foamed, add melted butter and lightly beaten egg.

Mix dough together and turn out onto a lightly floured surface.

Knead dough for about 20 minutes. put into a greased bowl and leave in a drought free space for 1 hour or until doubled in size.

Put oven onto 200 Celsius when dough has doubled. Turned dough out onto a floured surface again and punch down then knead again. Break dough into 16 even pieces and put into square tin. Put aside for 20 minutes till they are 2 cm higher than before.

Place in oven for 10 minutes and then turn temperature back to 180 c. Cook for a further 20 minutes until buns sound hollow when tapped.

Serve hot or cold. These taste great with butter.

I have also made the dough in our bread maker but the dough comes out stickier and needs more flour added before you punch the dough down.
Therese.

How to make hot cross buns

How to make hot cross buns: Learn how to master the technique of making hot cross buns for Easter or anytime through the year.

Going to have a go at these buns. I have made them before but this recipe has more spices and fruit in the last one we did.

Tasty Tuesday: Our favourite noodle recipe.

This is a dish we have started to have quite regularly here. It is really yummy.

I have adapted this recipe to make it a bit more to our families taste. 

Ingredients: (to serve 8).

350 pack fantastic egg noodles.

50 grams mushrooms. 

250 grams diced lamb or pork. 

4 tbspns soy sauce

4 tbspns rice wine vinegar

4 tbspns curry powder

2 tbspns brown sugar.

1 tin coconut milk

1.5 cups chicken stock

200 grams bacon. 

2 tbspns oil.

minced garlic to taste

2 tbspns minced ginger

chillies 

1 brown onion. 

350 grams mixed corn and peas

fresh coriander leaves. 

Method:

Boil water in kettle and pour over noodles till completely covered. Leave to soak while preparing the rest of the meal. Cut up mushrooms and cover with boiled water. Leave aside. 

Mix soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, curry powder, brown sugar, coconut milk and stock. Leave aside.

cook diced lamb in oil till brown. Remove from pan and put in onion, ginger, garlic, chillies. 

Add bacon to onion mixture, once onions are soft and fragrant. Continue cooking till bacon is done. Drain noodles and mushrooms and add to onion/bacon mixture. Add meat, peas and corn and pour sauce over. Bring to the boil and simmer till the sauce has been absorbed.  Serve.

Tasty Tuesday: My new pie maker.

Today my pie maker arrived so we had cheese and Bacon pies for tea.
Ingredients:
Shortcrust pastry
Puff pastry.
1 extra large onion diced
1 kg beef mince
300 grams Bacon diced.
1 cup gravy
Cheese.
Fry onion, beef and Bacon till cooked. Add gravy and stir till gravy thickens.
Prepare pastry to go in pie maker. Put shortcrust pastry in bottom of pie maker. Put filling in pastry and top with cheese. Put puff pastry on top of pie. Bake in pie maker for 6 minutes. Take pies out and enjoy.

Tasty Tuesday: Menu planning.

Since I am going to Adelaide this weekend, I need to get a menu plan for the next 10 days. I already have up until Friday planned so just have to come up with 6 simple meals for next week.

Here is what we will do next week:

Minestrone. I cook this in our slow cooker. I just throw it all together and leave it for 4 hours on high.

Ratatouille. I have wanted to try this for a while. A friend reminded me when she said that she made it with her 9 year old daughter.

Chicken Fried Rice. All of us love fried rice. I thought the chicken would add a nice flavour for a change.

Spaghetti and meatballs. A meal everyone in our house loves.

Butter Chicken. Another favourite.

Pumpkin Soup. With bread rolls. I am going to take Deanne's suggestion and roast the pumpkin instead of boiling it.

Honey Soy chicken noodles. I love Hokkien noodles. I came across this recipe when looking for one to use with them. I am going to try putting them all together in the slow cooker for 5-6 hours on slow. Will let you know how it turns out.

Tasty Tuesday: Pumpkin soup.

Last Thursday, a few commenter's asked for my pumpkin soup recipe so I decided to post it.

My pumpkin soup is very similar to my broccoli soup recipe so you get a bonus recipe too. Two recipes, one post.

Pumpkin Soup:

Ingredients:

500 grms pumpkin diced.

500 grms potatoes diced.

1 litre vegetable stock.

300 mls sour cream.

chives.

salt and pepper to taste.

put pumpkin, potatoes and vegetable stock into a large saucepan.

Bring to the boil and simmer for 20-30 minutes.

When potato and pumpkin are soft, put in food processor with vegetable stock. Once soup is mixed, place back in saucepan and add sour cream, salt, pepper and chives. Heat through and serve.

I usually double this recipe for our family and it will have enough left over for me to have for lunch the next day.

Broccoli soup:

Ingredients.

500 grms broccoli.

125 grms spinach.

500 grms potato.

1 litre vegetable stock.

300 mls cream.

Place broccoli and potatoes into vegetable stock and bring to the boil. (I cut my potato up pretty small for this so that it cooks just as quickly as the broccoli does).

Simmer for 5-10 minutes so that the potatoes and broccoli are all cooked.

Add spinach and watch till it wilts.

place in food processor and mix. Put back in saucepan and add cream. Serve when heated through.

This recipe is usually doubled too.

I hope you all enjoy these wonderful winter soups.

Tasty Tuesday: Self saucing Chocolate pudding.

Today I want to share with you all, a recipe that Vicky from Creating with Wisdom posted on her blog. I haven't tried this pudding yet, but will sometime this week.

Go here to get the recipe.

As I said to Vicky, Chocolate pudding is one of the good things about winter.

Tasty Tuesday: Chicken Vegetable soup

Since it is the middle of winter here, we are enjoying lots of soups. I made up a chicken vegetable soup last Sunday that was delicious.

Here is the recipe I used but I changed a few things around with the vegetables we already had. I also used a whole chicken rather than chicken legs and made my own stock with the chicken.

Ingredients.

1 tbspn oil.

2 leeks.

1 medium onion.

1 garlic clove.

3 carrots.

3 zucchini.

3 celery sticks

8 cups chicken stock.

1 whole chicken.

1.5 cups split peas or soup mix.

1 turnip diced.

Start making chicken stock by putting the chicken in water. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 3-4 hours, skimming often.

heat oil in frying pan and add onion, leeks and garlic. Cook until leeks and onions are transparent.

When stock is cooked, remove chicken from stock and take meat off bones.

place chicken, vegetables, split peas and stock into saucepan together. Bring to the boil then reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with bread rolls.

Tania's pumpkin Tea Cake.

Today I made a pumpkin tea cake. Tania gave me the recipe in my last post.

This cake looks delicious. I would tell you how it tastes but I am taking it to share for supper tonight. Our parish is having Kathy Evans talk about her healing from brain and lung cancer through the intercession of St. Mary MacKillop.

Here is the recipe:

Pumpkin Tea Cake:

25ogms butter
3/4 cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon grated orange rind
2 eggs
1/2 cup mashed pumpkin
1/2 cup desiccated coconut
2 cups self raising flour
3/4 cup milk

Icing:

60gms butter
1 cup icing sugar
1 tablespoon milk
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Mixture:
Beat butter and sugar together. Add grated orange. Add eggs 1 at a time. Add mashed pumpkin and coconut. Stir in sifted flour alternately with milk. Grease a deep 20cm round cake tin, use greased paper on bottom of tin. Pour mixture into cake tin and cook in a moderate oven (180 -200C) for 1 1/4 hours.

Icing:

Mix all the ingredients together in saucepan in stove. Ice cake and sprinkle with coconut.

Sausage Casserole.

Here is the recipe I use for Sausage Casserole.

Ingredients:

1 tbspn olive oil
2 onions
1kg of sausages.
500 grms mixed frozen vegetables.
1 425 tin diced tomatoes.
2 cups gravy.
dash of wistershire sauce.

fry onions in oil. When they are going opaque, add sausages. Cook until sausages are done then transfer to crock pot. Add tomatoes, gravy and Worcestershire sauce. Cook on high for 3 hours. Add in vegetables and cook for another hour.

If I am organised enough when I do the shopping for the oamc, I cook the sausages and onions ahead and freeze them. Then when we have the meal, everything is ready to go in the slow cooker.

I also have done this recipe with baked beans but now I get too many complaints when they see them. I think it really adds to the flavour but my children think baked beans are the most gross thing on this earth.

Butter Chicken.

Ingredients:

1 medium size onion
700 grms chicken fillets
1 425 can coconut cream.
1 cup natural yoghurt.
1 - 1.5 tblspns thai curry paste.
1 - 1.5 tblspons tomato paste.
1 tspn garam masala.


Directions:

dice onions and chicken fillets.

place all ingredients in crock pot and cook on high for 3-4 hours or low for 5-6 hours.

You can fry the chicken first but I just throw it all in the crock pot. The chicken is a bit drier this way but everyone here still enjoys eating it.

Olives.

Today Steve, Tom and Christopher went olive picking. They got three buckets full of olives. Steve, Christopher and I all really love olives so I hope they all taste great when they are cured.

To cure them, they are soaked in water. We will change the water twice a day for a couple of weeks. After that we will put them in jars with salt water.

Will let you all know how they turn out.

Some OAMC recipes.

Here are some of the recipes I use when I prepare meals ahead.

Fish Parcels. We haven't actually made these since I posted the recipe. I just don't get to our fish shop much and the supermarkets don't have fresh fish often.

Pasties.

Schnitzels.

Tuna Mornay.

Spaghetti sauce:

2 onions
750 grams mince meat.
1 tin tomato soup
1 tin diced tomatoes
salt, pepper, oregano and any other spices you want.

Dice onions and cook till transparent.

add mince and spices and cook till mince is well done.

Add tomato soup and diced tomatoes.

Once sauce has boiled, remove from heat.

Allow to cool to room temperature and put in freezer.

I remove from freezer and defrost in the fridge for 24 hours. I cook our spaghetti for about 5 minutes and then do a layer of sauce, a layer of spaghetti and a layer of grated cheese. I finish with a layer of cheese and bake in the oven till cheese is melted. Usually about 15 minutes.

Lasagna:

I make the same sauce as the spaghetti and also make a cheese sauce. On cooking day, we do layers again but with instant lasagna noodles. I really hate lasagna sheets that need to be pre cooked. I just cannot work with them.

Tasty Tuesday: The perfect Pepperoni roll.

The perfect Pepperoni roll.

A friend posted this link last year on DCF forums and I was going to make them.

I book marked it but never got around to making them. I wanted to make some pizzas and remembered them. Since we have re installed windows since saving the page, I didn't have it anymore. At first I couldn't remember what they were called but after a search at DCF I came to the page. I am going to make them today so will let you all know what we think of them.

I am not only going to do pepperoni. I will also do some with sundried tomatoes, onion and cheese.

Recipe Swap.

I have been invited to a recipe swap.

When the email arrives, you have two people on a list. The idea is you send a recipe to the first person on the list, move the second person to first place and put your name in second place.

Then you send this email to 20 people.

I have done all this but 4 emails bounced back to me and another friend is too busy to do it so I have 5 more people to send the email too. I thought I would see if anyone who reads here is interested in being a part of this

If you are interested, my email is on my profile page.

Send me an email and I will forward the details to you. For your hard work in sending out the 20 emails, you should get 36 recipes.

Tasty Tuesday: Home made mayonnaise.

I think one of the delights of summer is having salad with mayonnaise. I love mayonnaise on salad rolls, chicken schnitzels and just to make some lettuce more appetizing.

I decided this weekend to try and make some myself. I looked for a recipe on the net and found this one.

I got all my ingredients out and realised we had no vegetable oil. I decided to use all olive oil. What a big mistake. The mayonnaise was awful. It had such a strong oil taste that I was gagging as I was eating it.

I then went surfing the net and found this little video:



I decided that I couldn't make myself or the children eat it so the chickens had a big feed of the olive oil mayonnaise.
I bought some vegetable oil last night. I haven't tried the recipe yet but I think I will try it tomorrow and see what it tastes like. Maybe Tom and Amelia will have a lesson on emulsifying.

Nasi Goreng.

This recipe brings back such fond memories for me. I remember my mother making it on a regular basis when I was a teenager. I haven't ever made it for my children but was reminded of it this past week so looked up the recipe.

This is the recipe I am using. It can be found here.

Ingredients:

• 400g (2 cups) long-grain white rice
• 1 tbs vegetable or peanut oil
• 2 (about 275g) chicken thigh fillets, excess fat trimmed, cut into 2cm pieces
• 1 175g pkt shortcut bacon (Primo brand), thinly sliced crossways
• 5 eschalots (French shallots), thinly sliced
• 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 1 carrot, finely diced
• 1 celery stick, trimmed, finely diced
• 200g small cooked peeled prawns
• 40g (3/4 cup) loosely packed finely shredded Chinese cabbage
• 80g bean sprouts
• 2 tbs bought fried shallots (Maesri brand)
• 2 tbs kecap manis
• 1 tbs soy sauce
• 4 eggs

Method

1. Cook rice in a large saucepan of salted boiling water following packet absorption instructions until tender. Drain. Spread over 2 baking trays, in a thin layer, and set aside for 2 hours to cool completely.

2. Heat a large wok over medium heat. Add half the oil and heat until just smoking. Add half the chicken and stir-fry, for 3 minutes or until brown and just cooked through. Transfer to a bowl and repeat with remaining chicken. Add the bacon to the wok and stir-fry for 2 minutes or until brown and crisp. Transfer to a bowl.

3. Add remaining oil to wok and heat until just smoking. Add the eschalots and garlic, and stir-fry for 2 minutes or until eschalots are soft. Add the carrot and celery, and stir-fry for 3 minutes or until carrot is tender. Add the prawns and stir-fry for 2 minutes or until heated through.

4. Return cooked chicken and bacon to the wok with cabbage, and stir-fry for 3 minutes or until cabbage wilts. Add cooled rice, bean sprouts, half the fried shallots, the kecap manis and soy sauce. Stir-fry for 2 minutes or until heated through. Transfer to a large bowl. Cover with foil to keep warm.

5. Heat a large non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat. Crack 2 eggs into the pan and cook, uncovered, for 2 minutes or until the white sets and the yolk is almost set (for a soft yolk) or until cooked to your liking. Transfer to a plate and repeat with remaining eggs.

6. Spoon nasi goreng into shallow serving bowls. Top each with a fried egg and sprinkle over remaining fried shallots. Serve immediately.