Taking roast dinner as a work lunch

Roast beef with pumpkin, mashed potato and peas

This is the work lunch (dinner) that I am sending with Mr Techno today.

It makes a change from sandwiches, and with the cooler weather, it is warming to have something hot for his meal at work.

It is leftover roast beef pumpkin, mashed potato from the recent evening meal and then I add some frozen peas.

I have found that if I spoon some leftover gravy over the meat, it prevents the meat from drying out when it is reheated at work.

Gravy keeps the meat moist when the meal is reheated.

I put this in Mr Techno’s insulated lunch pack with 2 pieces of fruit and a homemade banana muffin.

Mr Techno’s insulated lunch carrier reminds me of Fred Flinstone’s lunch pack!

Rocket Pesto Recipe (Aragula)

Homemade rocket pesto

I have an abundance of rocket ( aragula) growing in my herb garden. As I mentioned yesterday, I harvested lots of it. It is growing faster than I can eat it!

This rocket has a fantastic peppery flavour. Also, it has grown in my organic garden, so no nasty pesticides. It is grown in soil enriched with my  homemade compost and worm tea.

So I had a kitchen sinkful of rocket leftover. I washed it thoroughly.

Then I set out to experiment making rocket pesto.

Here is the recipe that I ended up settling on.

Rocket Pesto

2 cups of chopped rocket, firmly packed

1/3 cup grated or shredded parmesan cheese

1/3 cup olive oil

1/3 cup almonds

1 clove garlic, thinly sliced

Crush the almonds. I used a rolling pin and put the almonds in a  bag and then hit the bag with the rolling pin!

In a pan toast the almonds with the garlic in a light film of olive oil (extra).

Put the rocket, almonds, garlic, parmesan cheese and the olive oil in a food processor and blend for a brief time, checking until you have the consistency of pesto that you desire.

Put into an airtight container and seal with a little extra olive oil on top. This will ensure that it keeps for longer.

Store in the fridge.

Use stirred through cooked pasta, spread onto grilled meats, use as a pizza topping  or spread on sandwiches.

Simple Lunch

With the cooler weather, I have been making up a soup every week. My lunches have consisted of a bowl of soup, with a handful of shredded organic rocket (aragula) from my herb garden, a dollop of homemade yoghurt, and some freshly cracked pepper.

This is served with fresh homemade bread with a spread of real butter.

 

Homemade Snacks for School and Work Lunches

One of the things that I have stopped buying is prepackaged snacks for school and work lunches. I make lunches and morning teas for my husband to take to work and my daughter to take to school.

I always send a piece of seasonal fruit.  In summer it might be grapes and strawberries, in winter it might be apples and Queensland bananas.

In addition, my husband and daughter like to have a sweet treat , so I have started to bake something each week. I do the baking with my daughter, so that it is a weekly activity that we like to do together.

Here is what we made together last night.

In Australia these are known as ANZAC biscuits. This recipe makes 24 golden biscuits. We love them!

ANZAC biscuits.

1 cup of rolled oats

3/4 cup of coconut

1 cup plain flour

1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate soda

2 tablespoons boiling water

1 cup sugar

125g butter

1 tablespoon golden syrup

In a large bowl mix rolled oats, coconut, sifted flour and sugar.

In a medium saucepan, gently melt butter and golden syrup.

Mix bicarbonate of soda with boiling water. Pour this into the saucepan mixture.  It will froth up.

Pour this mixture into the bowl of dry ingredients.

Spoon dessertspoonfuls of mixture onto a greased oven trays. Leave room for the biscuits to spread.

Bake in 150 degrees Celsius oven for 20 mins.

Allow to cool on tray.

I have a glass cookie jar that I like to keep them in. There is something very comforting about having a jar full of homemade cookies.

The simple pleasure of growing and sharing my own herbs

Earlier this year, I started a herb garden.

I have been enjoying fresh herbs grown in my little herb garden. There is mint, basil, coriander and kaffir lime leaves as well as rocket and lemongrass. I like to cook Thai food and many of these herbs are used in my meals that I prepare. Fresh herbs really give a lift to the simple food.

I have just been outside in the dusk, watering my herb garden. My rocket  (aka aragula) is growing profusely.  We have enjoyed it as a rocket and parmesan salad, on sandwiches made with homemade bread, stirred through pasta with olive oil and lemon dressing and of course with some freshly cracked blacked  pepper.

I picked a large bunch of rocket and passed it over the fence to our new neighbour.

It feels so good being able to share food that I have grown myself.

Homemade Bread

Changes I’ve noticed since we moved to the country

It has been 4 months since we uprooted from Sydney and moved out to the country.

Here are some changes that I have noticed.

My husband started riding a bike to and from work. He has become incredibly fit and has won the weight loss competition at work. He has lost 7.5 kgs and is developing a 6-pack ( abs!) and is very muscular and healthy. He is looking well, has lost the dark rings under  his eyes, and no longer looks exhausted. Cycling is also a good way to manage stress at work.

Our home is becoming a much nicer place to be.

We have space outside for my herb garden, and I have been eating fresh herbs daily, which makes home cooked meals even more delicious!

My daughter is becoming much healthier. She can play outside now with her netball, and practise her cartwheels outside on the lawn, and she seeks to go outside to play. She has started to play netball and dance class at the local School of Arts with some of her school friends. She has settled well into her new school, has a great teacher, catches the big yellow school bus to and from school with her school buddies, and has the neighbours children come over to play several times a week. Her social and physical life is thriving. And yet there is still loads of down time, baking cakes and cookies, reading, watching movies and seeing family, as well as planting flowers in the garden and waiting for them to grow.

I have been slowly decluttering. I realise this is a slow process and it will take some time. I feel like we have slowed the bringing in of “STUFF” to our home, although there was buying of stuff around the bike for my husband and his cycling peripherals.

I have been exercising almost every day. My exercise consists of a variety of running, walking, yoga or the exercise bike. In the first few months following the big move, I was also swimming every second day, but now the weather is colder, I will restart swimming again in October. I have lost about 2kg since the move.

I am cooking almost everything from scratch. We are eating so well. I am baking my own bread, making yoghurt, trying to buy the freshest wholefood ingredients that I can. The amount of processed food that we buy and eat has decreased substantially. I thought it was low before we moved, but now it is even lower. Our food bill has decreased from $140 to $120 per week for 3 people.  Nine years ago before my daughter was born and we were both working full time the food bill just for the 2 of us was around $200. And that was without including food for bought lunches.

The two downsides of this is that cooking from scratch is very time consuming.  The second downside is that there is so much more washing up to do! However, I do enjoy cooking and I like healthy food and its benefits, so it is totally worth it to me.

 

 

 

 

 

Creating my little herb garden

Now that I no longer live in a townhouse since we left Sydney, I have been keen to start a herb garden.

I’ve tried the herbs in pots thing. In the past giving me something to grow in a pot was the kiss of death for the poor plant.

As we are renting in the short term, I thought a modular raised garden bed might be the best option.

I bought a purpose built raised garden.

Modular pieces are assembled using wing nuts.

Modular raised garden bed is assembled. I have placed it next to the rainwater rank so it can be easily watered .

Lemongrass, Coriander, Basil, Mint, Rocket, Rosemary and Parsley (which turned out to be Celery!)

My herb garden is now complete!

.

I chose mint, basil, coriander and lemongrass as I love to cook Thai food and these herbs are used in Thai cooking. Also Rosemary for my favourite roast lamb and other lamb dishes. I love the peppery taste of rocket in salads and pasta dishes.

I am looking forward to being able to provide my herbs for my cooking picked fresh from my garden.

Cookie baking

Barbie Girl and I love to bake together.

We baked cookies together this week.

Check out the cross eyed grumpy one , top left corner. He was the favourite and Barbie Girl chose to have that one first for afternoon tea.

These cookies were huge. I was anticipating making small delicate bite sized ones, to make around 50 small cookies.

Barbie Girl had other ideas. We put the ball of cookie dough in the fridge for 30 mins to chill. I went off to have a shower, and when I came back down, Barbie Girl had already rolled out the dough and made 13 huge kid sized cookies.

So into the oven they went. We mixed up blue and red icing and tried out the piping set for the first time.

These are a favourite now.

I’m a big Donna Hay fan. Love your work Donna! Below is a recipe we have tweaked from Donna Hay, Modern Classics 2.  However our version bears no physical resemblance to her delicate vanilla snap cookies. Here is the recipe.

Smiley Face Cookies

185 g butter

1 cup caster sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla essence

2 1/2 cups plain flour

1 egg

1 egg yolk extra

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius

2. Mix butter, sugar and vanilla in mixmaster  or food processor until smooth.

3. Add the flour, egg and egg yolk and mix again to from a smooth dough.

4. Knead the dough lightly, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 mins.

5. Make balls of dough in size you would like and flatten.

6. Place on baking tray on top of silicone baking sheet or baking paper.

7. Bake for 10-12 mins, or a little longer until golden.

8. Cool on wire racks.

9. Pipe on icing or dust with icing sugar.

Enjoy for morning or afternoon tea!

Food shopping and meal plan this week

Each week, my aim is to cook healthy, fresh meals from scratch wherever possible for my family of 3 for under $150. This is $50 per person per week.  The food bill includes packed lunches for everyone, snacks, breakfasts and dinners, and a dessert, biscuits or cakes as a treat sometimes.

(My food bill prior to my simpler approach  was in the vicinity of $250 per week. 10 years ago when my husband and I first married, our food bill was $220 per week).

Above is a photo of this week’s food shopping.

Fruit and vegetable market $81.76

Butcher $23.56

Grocery Store $40.22 ( I had to purchase 2 extra 3 litre milk containers and coffee after this photo this week).

Total Food shopping $145.54

This weeks meal plan:

Breakfasts

coffee, milk drink, juice

homemade bircher muesli

porridge

Bran cereal

scrambled eggs with toast

fresh fruit

Lunch

salad with tuna

soup

Dinner

Wednesday – stir fry- chicken, noodles, mushrooms and zucchini and broccoli

Thursday- fish patties with steamedvegetables including pumpkin

Friday – Family Celebration- dinner out

Saturday- Chilli con carne with potato and broccoli on the side

Sunday- selection of leftovers

Monday- Beef curry with side of spinach and onion

Tuesday- Penne pasta with aubergine and chilli

Homemade treat

Banana and oatmeal muffins

Snacks

• cut up carrots
• cut up celery
• slices of cheese
• homemade yoghurt
• pears
• apples
• mandarins
• oranges
• kiwi fruit
• walnuts
• almonds
• tea
• coffee