Filling Tummies with Yummy Wraps

I wrote recently in a blog post about going along to listen to Sue Dengate speak when she came to Tassie. As the weeks have gone by I have been processing all that Sue talked about and I have found one thing has really stuck very firmly in my mind. Sue told us that fruit and vegetables are in no way equal in their vitamin and mineral content and that our bodies really do need considerably more vegetables than fruit. While fruit certainly does contain goodness, it is vegetables (particularly those like cabbage and brussel sprouts) that we should apparently be chowing down on. The old "five serves of vegetables and two serves of fruit each day" slogan really seems to hit the nail on the head.

This was really interesting to me as I can remember taking our eldest son to a clinic nurse when he was eighteen months old to discuss my concerns that he really disliked vegetables and just wanted to eat fruit. The clinic sister told me not too worry as the goodness of fruit and vegetables was much of a muchness and it was just great he was eating healthy food. I can remember at the time that didn't sit well with me because I was worried eating too much fruit would upset his tummy and would lead to an overly sweet palate. I am so glad that we pushed on so much with the veggies now, especially in light of what Sue discussed. It also helped greatly when little number two came along and had a good role model for veggie eating. :-)

So packing more veggies into our day (and also reducing our fruit), has been a focus of mine this week. We still have a big fruit smoothie for breakfast each day with a small wholegrain crumpet or muffin and sometimes a banana for a snack throughout the day, but that is basically it for our fruit. I am trying to bump up our lunches with more veggies and we are enjoying soups, veggie wraps, flat bread pizzas, creamed corn on toast, salads and jacket potatoes. I am also trying to incorporate cabbage and brussel sprouts into our diet while they are still available and reasonably fresh. The boys aren't really keen on either, but I will keep trying different ways of cooking them and hopefully find a couple of recipes they like - or tolerate. Coleslaw is definitely out (sigh)!

I mentioned earlier that we have been enjoying salad wraps. My friend gave me a great recipe for chapati-style wraps that I have been using quite a bit lately (thanks SB!!). They stay fresh and pliable for a couple of days and will be wonderful for lunch boxes next year. My friend told me that the oil content can be reduced a little and some wholegrain flour can be substituted in if the wraps are going to be eaten that day. The recipe uses spelt flour, but I'm sure could be made successfully with plain wheat flour. Perhaps try using 20% more water though as the liquid ratios are a bit different with wheat.

Spelt Chapati Wraps

Ingredients:

250g unbleached spelt flour
100g water
50g organic extra virgin olive oil
pinch Himalayan salt

Method:

Place all ingredients in TMX bowl and knead for 1 minute on interval speed.

Tip out on bread mat or lightly floured surface and knead into a ball. Cut into 6-8 pieces (depending on the size wrap you require) and roll into little balls in your hands.

Heat a fry pan on the stove (I use medium heat). Roll each ball out as thinly as possible into a circle shape and then place in the dry fry pan. Keep a close eye on the wrap as they can burn easily and turn when the spots turn brown.

Tips:

They will puff up a little, but just press the air out gently with a spatula.

Take care not to overcook. It is better to remove them a little early from the pan than overcook them.

Filling Tummies with Golden Syrup Dumplings

I had to laugh when I just read through my last blog post. I can't believe I actually wrote that gardening was getting easier now that the boys are a little older. I really did jinx myself!!! After that lunch time post we headed out into the garden for the afternoon and my little man had such a bad crash-bang that we ended up going to hospital in an ambulance. His deep forehead cut was thankfully glued up quickly and he was of course back to his normal mischievous self before we had left the hospital. Oh the joy of raising adventurous little boys! :-)

Anyway, with all of the excitement and drama at our house lately there hasn't been a great deal of time spent in the kitchen beyond meals and basic baking. I did manage to get a tray of golden syrup dumplings in the oven earlier in the week though and I can tell you they were greatly appreciated. Pure comfort food! I used golden syrup, but they can be made using a combination of maple syrup and rapadura sweetened apricot jam to avoid the sugar. Here is my Mum's recipe (converted for the TMX, but still easy to do without):

Golden Syrup Dumplings

Ingredients:

300g unbleached spelt flour (try 250g plain wheat flour?)
2 tsp baking powder
100g cream
120g non-homogenised milk
pinch Himalayan salt
golden syrup (copious amounts :-))
270g boiling water
2 tbsp desiccated coconut

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees and boil kettle.

Place the first five ingredients in TMX bowl and mix for 2 seconds on speed 5. Then knead for 20 seconds on interval speed or until the dough just comes together.

Tip the dough out onto a bread mat or lightly floured surface. Gently pat out into a rectangle (approx 20x30cm).

Spread the dough with a generous layer of golden syrup and roll into a log. Cut the log into 9 slices (they should look like scrolls when turned on their side).

Pour the boiling water into a square 18x18cm glass dish (or similar size dish) and mix two tablespoons of golden syrup into the water.

Stand the dumplings in the dish of water in 3 rows. Sprinkle with coconut and bake for 25-30 minutes. Serve straight away with cream or ice cream.

Tips:

Don't let the dumplings stand for too long before serving as they will absorb all of the yummy sauce. I learnt this the hard way as my photo shows.

Hunter Gatherer - Happy Days in the Garden!!!

Sorry folks, not too much cooking going on around here at the moment. With all of this beautiful spring sunshine we have been outside in the garden at every opportunity. We have an established garden with lot's of shrubs and trees, so I have been busy getting some pruning and planting done before the spring growth sends everything crazy. Last spring we employed a gardener for a couple of hours each week, but this year we are trying to do it all ourselves. Gardening was a bit of a nightmare last year with our youngest son (a lovable but busy toddler), but this year it is much more easy and actually quite enjoyable to be outside working in the garden together.

(photo from last spring - I'm too busy this year for photos)

Today I am looking forward to planting out a small herb garden near our kitchen door. I planted herbs in the veggie patch last year but it was too far away from the house to be convenient for each meal time. Later in the week I am hoping to sow some seeds in the veggie garden which is quite bare aside from some spinach and a few spring onions. A couple of weeks ago I fed the veggie patch with compost from our compost bay (which worked brilliantly by the way through winter) so it is ready to go. There are so many sowing and planting guides out there, but I like this simple cold climate one from Peter Cundall.

Happy Gardening! :-)

Filling Tummies with Injera and Doro Wat (TMX style)

Recently we celebrated Ethiopian New Year with the celebration dish Doro Wat (spicy chicken stew). I accompanied the dish with injera (sour pancakes). Yum, yum, yum! I was so happy with the authentic taste of the dish and will be making it often for our family. I was really thrilled that our eldest son (Ethiopian-born) enjoyed the dish as he is normally not overly keen on Ethiopian food (oh the irony :-)).

It was the first time that I had ever cooked chicken drumsticks in the TMX bowl and I was really thrilled with the results. They were all intact and cooked to perfection. Such a clever little machine (sigh)! The injera was my best effort so far - even my Hubby (a huge injera fan) was a teeny bit impressed. Injera is tricky to make without teff flour and without the lengthy fermentation process, but this was definitely on the right track. The photo below showed my first experimental injera batch with all unbleached flour. My second batch with milled buckwheat were much more authentic in colour. The surface of the injera is full of holes - like a crumpet.

Ethiopian Doro Wat and Injera

Injera

The injera batter can be made and set aside until the stew is cooking.

Ingredients:

75g buckwheat (preferred) or spelt/wheat grain
225g plain flour
3/4 tsp bicarb soda
1 tbsp organic apple cider vinegar
500g soda water

Method:

Mill buckwheat for 1 minute on speed 9. Add plain flour and bicarb and mix for 10 seconds on speed 3.

Add vinegar and soda water and mix for 20 seconds on speed 3-4. Add more soda water if necessary to make a thin batter.

Pour the batter into a crepe pan that has been heated on a medium heat and lightly oiled. When pouring in the batter take the pan off the heat and swirl around ensuring that the entire pan is evenly covered. I used 1/3 cup of batter in my 20cm crepe pan. Wait until the injera has completely cooked on top (don't flip it) and then slide onto a plate. Repeat until mixture is finished.

Doro Wat

Ingredients:

4-6 eggs
3 large red onions - peeled and quartered
50g butter
1/2 tsp berbere or to taste (see notes)
1/2 tsp ground ginger
8 chicken drumsticks (skin and ankles removed)
100g tomato paste
100g red wine
430g water
1-2 tbsp cornflour (optional)

Method:

Place eggs (whole) in varoma dish. Set aside.

Place onions and butter in TMX and chop for 3-4 seconds on speed 5. Cook for 30 minutes on 90 degrees, reverse speed 1.

Add berbere and ginger and cook for 5 minutes, varoma temp, reverse speed 1.

Assemble chicken drumsticks around blades (mine were standing up around edge of bowl) and saute for 5 minutes, 100 degrees, reverse soft speed.

Add water, wine and tomato paste and cook for 7 minutes, 100 degrees, reverse soft speed.

Set varoma in place and continue to cook for 20 minutes, varoma temp, reverse soft speed.

We like our stews nice and thick so at this stage I removed the varoma and added 2 tbsp of cornflour and cooked it off for 2 minutes at varoma temp, reverse soft speed.

Place the eggs in a bowl of cold water to cool and then peel them.

To serve the meal place an injera on each plate and top with doro wat and an egg for each person. Place an extra rolled injera on the plate also. The meal can also be placed on a big platter and shared (which we will do next time) - very fun!

The injera is used for scooping up the doro wat (no cutlery allowed folks) and remember to only use your right hand. I won't go into what the left hand is used for. :-)

Notes:

I buy Ethiopian-made berbere from our adoption support group's online store here. Check out the shop because there are some lovely items for sale and the profits go to wonderful charities and organisations in Ethiopia.

If you would like to make your own spice blend there are some recipes online. They are not the same as the genuine Ethiopian blends, but still very acceptable.

If you do buy some berbere just check the "heat" before you add the blend to your onions. I generally put a tiny pinch on my tongue and immediately know how much to add :-). With some blends I need to add 1 tbsp, but with this blend 1/2 a tsp was more than enough.

Happy Enkutatash Everyone!!!

This is a rather belated post as Enkutatash (Ethiopian New Year) was actually on the weekend! We all had shocking head colds however and couldn't join fellow Oziopian families with the planned festivities, so we are celebrating today. I am converting our favourite Ethiopian recipe for dinner (Doro Wat - Spicy Chicken Stew) and if it works out well in the TMX I will post the recipe soon.  Yummy!

I thought a nice way to share our special day with you all is to post some photos that we took on our first trip to Ethiopia (before we adopted our son). The countryside was so lush and green in Northern Ethiopia at that time, it was just stunning. Ethiopia is often portrayed as being a dusty desert-like country (and those parts certainly do exist), but there is so much more to the country. It is a place of great untouched beauty. It truly is breathtaking!

 

 

 

 

Filling Tummies with Choc Berry Self Saucing Pudding

This is a yummy recipe that I found online and converted for the TMX. I included whole grains in the recipe and also added a soaking step for the extra health benefits. It is both easy and delicious and providing you mill the grain with sharp blades you would never know that there were whole grains in this recipe!!!

You will probably notice one ingredient in my list that I haven't used in quite a while - organic raw sugar. We have started a refined sugar reintroduction program for our son who has a mild intolerance to it and I now need to use a little refined sugar in my baking occasionally. Such a revolting food to be reintroducing to him I know, but one we felt he would want to consume occasionally throughout his life. We had to sit back as his parents and weigh it all up and at the end of the day we decided it really is enough for him to be black and living in a predominantly white community. He doesn't need anything else to set him apart from his peers and certainly doesn't need to take his own special food to birthday parties and school events down the track. So refined sugar it is - occasionally and in small doses though. Surprisingly the program is working and his system is gradually coping with refined sugar better.

Anyhoot, enough about us. Here is the recipe:

Choc Berry Self Saucing Pudding

Ingredients

220g spelt, wheat or khorasan grain
250g non-homogenised milk (or your milk of choice)
1 tbsp organic apple cider vinegar

80g butter
50g rapadura
25g organic cocoa
2 tsp homemade baking powder
150g blackberries (fresh or thawed)

25g organic cocoa
80g organic raw sugar
460g boiling water

Method:

Mill grain for 1 minute and 30 seconds on speed 9. Pour into a bowl or jug and sit it on top of the scales. Weigh in milk and measure in vinegar. Mix well and leave to soak for 12-24 hours.

After the soaking period preheat oven to 180 degrees and grease a medium sized pudding basin (6 cup capacity).

Add butter and rapadura to TMX and cream for 1 minute on speed 3. Add 25g cocoa, vanilla and soaked flour and mix for 20 seconds on speed 3.

Add baking powder and blackberries and mix on reverse speed 3 for 10 seconds. Scrape batter into greased pudding basin (scrape bowl out well and there is no need to wash before next step).

Place 25g cocoa, raw sugar and boiling water into TMX bowl and mix for 20 seconds on speed 2. Pour carefully over pudding batter (pour over the back of a spoon) and bake for 45-50 minutes.

Stand for 10 minutes before serving. Enjoy!

Notes:

Feel free to use all rapadura or all raw sugar in the recipe. Both will work well.

As with all self-saucing puddings take care not to overcook or you will loose all of the lovely sauce.

Filling Tummies with Megan's Yummy Salad Dressing

I hope all of the Dad's out there had a wonderful Fathers Day yesterday!

We had a rather leisurely day which we really appreciated as we have been busy working in our gardens lately. In the afternoon I cooked up a couple of things to take along to a family dinner last night. I did a lasagne from the Thermomix Everyday Cookbook, an apple berry crumble and a garden salad with yummy homemade salad dressing. I was searching on forumthermomix for a salad dressing and noticed Megan's recipe which she described briefly in a thread. With a little interpretation to fill in the gaps we enjoyed a very yummy dressing. Thanks MJ!

Here is my interpretation of Megan's yummy salad dressing recipe:

Ingredients:

Equal quantities of balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil (I used about 1/2 a MC or 50g of each)
1 rounded tsp seeded mustard
1 tbsp organic raw honey
1 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
Salt and Pepper to taste

Method:

Place all of the ingredients into a bottle and shake vigorously for several minutes until well combined. You could put them into the TMX and whizz them up, but of course that's no fun for the kids! :-)

Store in fridge.

An evening with Sue Dengate

On Monday night I headed over to Burnie with a friend to listen to Sue Dengate speak. Sue is the author of Fed Up and the Failsafe Cookbook. For those of you who haven't heard of Sue and her approach before, she basically believes that learning difficulties, behavioural problems and minor chronic illness in children and adults can all be the result of intolerance to food chemicals.

I went along expecting to hear all about the nasty synthetic additives in food that are causing children all sorts of difficulties and to a certain degree I was right. I did get a bit of a shock though with what else she discussed during the evening. I had no idea that certain "healthy" foods can be just as bad as foods containing man-made additives with regard to children's behaviour and that salicylates (a group of natural chemicals which occur naturally in many fruits) can cause many of the same behavioural problems that synthetic additives cause. We consume a lot of fruit in our household so this was a real shock for me. I will definitely be giving this area some more thought and even though I don't think we will be doing the full elimination diet, I will definitely be reducing our consumption of salicylates.

I have to be honest and say that a lot of Sue's Fed Up approach didn't sit well with me. I talked it through today with my friend who is a Dietitian and we discussed how the approach needs to be considered as a behavioural approach rather than the general health and well-being approach that it is sometimes thought to be (and advertised to be). For those parents who have children in desperate need of learning or behavioural intervention then this is one approach that certainly has proven results. For my own children though I could never accept or fully implement an approach that promoted the consumption of refined white sugar, particularly when as a nation we are battling sugar addition, obesity and tooth decay. Why give a recipe for homemade cordial (a very sweetened and refined cordial recipe) when you know full well that children should only be drinking water or milk? I realise that they have a target audience, but really!!! I guess it is the same with all of these types of things - you have to take out the elements that apply to your family and that match your belief-system and let go of the rest. :-)