Lightening Online

And I don’t mean the kind that NSW has just suffered through!!! How awful!

I’m talking about my big day in the kitchen on Saturday. Once upon a time I used to do a bit of a baking session once a fortnight and try to make enough to last the fortnight (that’s getting more of a challenge as the kids get older). But recently I’ve discovered the enjoyment of just doing one thing at a time and I’ve tended to extend that to my cooking. A big baking session often involved having several projects on the go at once and trying to co-ordinate all of that. Just making one thing (whether it be a cake or a batch of biscuits or whatever) seems so much more peaceful and pleasurable in comparison.

But for some reason Saturday I decided I was going to make a number of things. Back to my busy, multiple projects type session. Actually, it wasn’t too bad. Mostly I just worked on 1 thing at a time (other than the bread rolls which take a lot longer).

PROJECT 1: FILL UP THE CROCKPOT WITH VEGETABLE SOUP

My aim was to have this ready for lunch on Saturday but I slept in so things were a little crunchy still by lunchtime. LOL. Not to worry, it was mainly for lunches for this week. Had my first taste test today (we were out all day yesterday - Sunday) and mmmmm….yummo! I have never been a fan of homemade vegetable soup before. But using a tomato base for the “stock” seems to suit my tastes well. I never use a recipe so my soups never taste the same from one time to the next.

Here’s a rough outline of how I made it:

* put jar of passata into crockpot then fill jar with water, shake and add that to crockpot. Add beans (already soaked - I use about half a packet) and a couple handfuls of soup mix. I add whatever I tend to have in the way of pulses to the soup whether it be dried or tinned, beans, peas or lentils (or a combination of). Chuck in some diced onion and crushed garlic (I think I used about 1/4 onion and a healthy teaspoon of crushed garlic). You can add whatever seasonings you like really. We’re fairly basic eaters when it comes to seasonings. I usually let that cook for a little while to get the beans etc going. You wouldn’t need to do that if you were using canned (which are a little more expensive) or if you’ve precooked the beans/peas.

* chop up whatever vegies you happen to have - this time I used carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes plus cut up the smaller stems of the celery and the stems of the broccoli (sometimes I’ll chop and freeze celery and broccoli stems and throw in next time I’m making soup - it’s a good way to use up the bits most of the family don’t usually eat). I also added a couple of generous dollops of tomato paste and topped up with a bit more water. Then leave to simmer away for however long.

I love the way soup is so cheap to make, healthy to eat and hard to go wrong with. It’s such a yummy and comforting food to eat on cold wintery days (just like today!).

PROJECT NUMBER 2: CRUMPETS

You know, I didn’t even know it was possible to make your own crumpets until a couple of weeks ago. DH and the kids love crumpets (I’m not such a fan but will eat them). I tend to buy them occasionally as a treat when they’re on special. I find they work out a fairly expensive way to feed the family so we don’t have them all that often. So when I saw this recipe for crumpets posted on the simple savings forum by Paula (the legend) I thought it was well worth the try. I couldn’t believe how easy and cheap it was. They were a hit with the family (although I’m still experimenting to work out how to make them with holes like the bought ones). Even without holes, they still definitely taste like crumpets (in my opinion they’re nicer than bought crumpets). The most time consuming part of the recipe is cooking them but DH is going to try and make me some rings (by cutting up a fruit tin) so that I can cook more at once which will make things progress quicker.

Here’s the recipe:

Dissolve 1 Tbsp yeast into 3 cups warm water. Stir.

Combine: 4 cups plain flour, 2 Tbsp baking powder, 1.5 tsp salt, 1.5 tsp sugar in a bowl.

Add yeast mixture to dry ingredients and beat to a smooth batter.

Cook in greased egg rings in frypan (3/4 fill each one). Egg rings make them slightly smaller than regular round crumpets. I think the cut up tin will make a better size. If you’re not worried about having them perfectly round you can just add dollops of mixture to frypan.

The original recipe I have suggests cooking slowly for 10 minutes, adding the lid of the frypan for the last 2 minutes (which just finishes them cooking on top). I found using setting 5 on my electric frypan gave me the best number of holes in the top. I’m still experimenting with this so I’ll let you know how I go next time I give them a try.

This made enough for our family for 2 meals (about 24 crumpets in total) served with soup.

* Just a note - you still need to toast these, just as you would with bought crumpets.

PROJECT 3: CUPCAKES

Well I’m sure you don’t really need a recipe for these. The kids did have a great time scooping them into the patty pans. For some reason my kids will eat a cupcake whereas they won’t eat a slice of regular cake. So they make a great lunchbox filler (if any make it until tomorrow to go in the lunchboxes). I can’t believe how cheap they are to make - between 5 and 10c each. There aren’t too many things I can find (except popcorn) that work out quite this cheap as a lunchbox treat.

PROJECT 4: BREAD ROLLS

I use my breadmaker to make the kids bread rolls for school. They give them a nice break from sandwiches and work out quite a bit cheaper than 2 slices of bread. One lot of dough in the breadmaker gives me 12 rolls which works out to around 10c each (might be a little higher now that everything seems to have gone up). The cheapest loaf of bread I can buy here works out to around 30c per sandwich (just under).

PROJECT 5: PITA BREAD SNACKS

My DS has decided that these are the best thing since sliced bread! They’re pretty easy to make and don’t work out all that expensive. I buy the pita bread when it’s on sale for $1.99. I know in the city it’s sometimes possible to pick up a pack for as little as 99c which would make this recipe even cheaper to make! The main thing I like about it is that it’s a lot healthier for the kids to crunch on than chips. You just cut the pita bread up into pieces (whatever size and shape you like) then separate each slice in half and place on an oven tray with the cooked side down. Spray the whole tray with some cooking spray and then sprinkle on seasoning of choice (I use a chicken seasoning). Cook in the oven until crisp. One packet of pita bread makes quite a large container full.

PROJECT 6: CREAM OF MUSHROOM SOUP

Well I wore myself out completely on Saturday so project 6 had to wait until today. DH has been picking quite a few mushrooms from the paddock. Just recently I’d seen a recipe for “Cream of Anything Soup” (thanks to the same Paula who provided the crumpet recipe). With free mushrooms (and DH had already eaten some so I knew they were safe) I decided to try my hand at making cream of mushroom soup. I use the tinned variety when cooking steak in the crockpot as a kind of gravy and it comes out yummy, yummy. Again I couldn’t believe how quick and easy this recipe turned out to be. I now have what I’d estimate to be 10 tins of cream of mushroom soup (which I will freeze when it has cooled) for the cost of around 2 cans (on special).

CREAM OF ANYTHING SOUP
4 cups powdered milk
1.5 cups cornflour
0.5 cups chicken stock
4 tsp onion flakes
2 tsp dried thyme
2 tsp dried basil
1 tsp pepper

Mix together and store in an airtight jar. To make up soup use 1/3 cup of mixture in 1 mug hot water.

As I tend to do with recipes I just adapted the above idea to suit what I had on hand and what I wanted to do. I used 1/4 fresh onion chopped up since I bought some cheap recently (and it didn’t matter as I didn’t need the recipe to stay dry as is the intention with this recipe). Then I shook in some mixed herbs as that’s what I happened to have in the cupboard. I added 12 cups water and chopped up some mushrooms and threw them in. Then cooked on the stovetop until it thickened. I’ll freeze it in margarine containers ready to be thrown in the crockpot whenever I need it. With not having to pay anything for the mushrooms, I’m estimating that each “tin” of this soup has cost me around 25-30c to make.

Thus endeth my big cook up. After having DH’s grandfather and 2 aunties visit this morning (which was lovely I might add) and being out all day yesterday, I’m a bit on the tired side. So this afternoon is “take it easy” time.

DH tells me that this morning when he packed the kids off to school they were most excited about their lunchboxes. It’s funny isn’t it how at times we can go to a lot of cost or effort in wanting to keep our children happy. Some days it feels like it doesn’t matter what you do, you can’t keep them happy. Well this morning my kids were happy. What were they so happy about? Popcorn in their lunchbox!!!! LOL.

Popcorn is one of those things that has a cycle in this house. I make it for a while then stop and forget all about it. It’s not like it’s all that hard to make. I have a popcorn maker that DH bought me for my birthday many years ago. It’s not like it’s all that expensive either. Quite the opposite in fact. I can feed all 3 kids a snack for around 20c. It’s just something I don’t always think about.

My 9 year old DS had complained a couple of weeks ago that the youngest was getting popcorn while they were at school and “how come we never get any”. I think it might have something to do with the fact that the 3 year will ask for popcorn whereas with my 9 year old it can very much be out of sight, out of mind. My memory is about the same at the moment. So with the popcorn maker and popping corn tucked away in the cupboard - it doesn’t always get thought about.

So finally yesterday, when the 3 year old asked for popcorn, I made a full batch with a sprinkle of icing sugar on it and then when it was cool I packed up half a dozen snap lock bags (which we do reuse in this house - further to my rubbish challenge) for the kids lunch boxes.

Their reaction this morning just goes to show me that often it really is the simple things in life that are the best! LOL.

It’s been a tough week this week so I haven’t quite made it back to talk about how the Vegetable Lentil Loaf went on Saturday. Sorry about that.

I served it with brown gravy in an attempt to “disguise” the lack of meat. It went down okay with DH and I although we’re still struggling to get used to the texture (a bit like the chickpea patties). The kids were a little bit less than impressed. My 9 year old’s comment during the dinner conversation was “I’m going to be the healthiest kid in my class”. It was said in a way that suggested being healthy wasn’t his most favourite thing in the world. LOL. I told him I’d be quite happy for him to be the healthiest kid in his class. As I’ve been introducing new foods I’ve been talking to the kids about the importance of eating healthily and having a wider variety of foods in our diet.

DH has suggested that I use some mince in it next time to kind of disguise the texture a bit. While it will then no longer be vegetarian, we both feel it’s more important to increase our intake of beans and legumes and reduce our intake of meat, rather than strictly try to eat vegetarian meals. So we need to find ways to do this that we’re all going to enjoy, rather than “suffer” through. Personally I think it’s just a matter of adjusting our taste buds. But slowly, slowly is the way to go here so I don’t have a revolt on my hands. LOL.

There was a little bit left over and I had a couple of slices cold for lunch the next day. It was delicious cold!!!! DH tried it cold but wasn’t quite so impressed. He did heat up a couple of slices and had it with a plate of salad for lunch though - so obviously he didn’t really mind it. There was one thin slice left so today I diced it up and chucked it into a pot of soup I’m making.

In case anyone is interested, here is the recipe. It is my own adaptation of a recipe that was posted on one of my yahoo groups. I seem to have this problem with making a recipe exactly as written - always have to change it a little bit to make it “mine” (or to suit our tastes).

VEGETABLE LENTIL LOAF

3 cups green lentils (the original recipe says brown but I couldn’t find any)
2 carrots, grated
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 cup breadcrumbs
200g tomato paste
1/2 onion, grated (if you like chunks of onion you can dice it)
1 egg, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 180C
Grease loaf pan
Process/blend half lentils until smooth (I just stuck my stab mixer into the whole lot a few times so they were partially blended)
Mix ingredients together
Press into tin and bake 30-35 minutes
Leave to stand in tin for 5 minutes before turning out

This week I also cooked up some diced steak in the crockpot. I added a tin of beef and vegetable soup I had in the cupboard plus some gravy mix and cornflour. The first night we had a steak pie (by adding a sheet of puff pastry). I then added some red kidney beans (some that I’d prepared earlier lol) from the freezer to stretch it a bit and made some of that into shepherds pie. The kids didn’t bat an eyelid at the beans in the shepherd’s pie. DH proclaimed that one a success! I really quite enjoyed it. So we’ll do that one again.

Today I’ve been making up a big batch of vegetable soup in the crockpot. I started with some yellow split peas and added a tin of pureed tomatoes that I had in the cupboard as well as some onion, garlic and mixed herbs. Later I added some chopped carrot, potato and sweet potato which were the vegies I happened to have on hand. I added another frozen container of red kidney beans and also wanted to add a can of chickpeas. When I grabbed the can of chickpeas and opened it, I discovered it was a can of cannelinni beans. So they went in as well as the can of chickpeas. Taste tested some this afternoon. It is delicious!!!! Such a comforting thing to have for lunch on a cold day. And is filled with lots of goodies. The crockpot is almost full so that’s about 6 litres of soup. Will freeze some I think. Haven’t worked out how much it cost me to make but I’m guessing not very much.

Can you tell I’m having lots of fun finding ways to add beans, peas and legumes to our daily diet? I’ve almost used up all that I bought last shop so will have to stock up again soon.

I have discovered a great combination of foods for a dessert that I LOVE and is fairly healthy too. Cut up apple (green apples work best but it’s still nice with whatever apples you have), several dollops of natural yoghurt and a drizzle of honey. It’s such a great mixture of flavours and textures. I’ve never really been a big fan of honey but have been using it more in my attempts to reduce the amount of white sugar we consume. I think it’s kind of growing on me as a “sweet treat” and because it really is very sweet, you don’t need to use very much.

My other favourite food at the moment is celery pieces with cheese. No idea why I’m craving celery but at least it’s a real food. It actually seems to be quite a good substitute for my chipaholic cravings.

With Easter having just past, I can’t say my attempts to keep white sugar out of my diet are going all that well. Chocolate chip hot cross buns - way too yummy for my waistline!!! LOL. But I figure the most important thing with improving our health through diet is to keep learning and trying new things.

My next experiment will be to find a bean or legume that I like cold to have on my lunch time salad. That will be interesting as I’m a fairly new convert to eating legumes and beans much at all, let alone eating them cold. Coming into winter we’ll probably eat more soups for lunch and they’re much easier for including beans and legumes. If I get game enough to try them cold, I’ll let you know how it goes.