Stressed Mum

Archive for the ‘Cooking’ Category

What better lunch can there be on a cold day than home made soup? Of course it can take a while but not with my new Vitamix blender.

I bought the blender just before Christmas after watching a demonstration at the Good Food Show. It is big and powerful. It makes light work of making smoothies with as much ice as you like. It’s fab for houmous and makes frozen desserts in minutes but the most amazing thing is watching it make hot soup from raw ingredients in a matter of minutes. There is no heating element, the soup is heated by friction from the blades. Take a look at the soup I made today.

I started by washing the raw ingredients and throwing them into the blender, whole or halved. There was a slice of onion, a garlic clove, a couple of small carrots, a couple of baby plum tomatoes, a stick of celery, a slice of butternut squash, a slice of cabbage and a mushroom. With some water in the bottom of the blender, some powdered bouillon, chilli powder and cumin it was switched on and turned to the highest speed.

After five minutes there was steam coming out of the top of the blender and it was switched to a low speed while I threw in a couple of spoonfuls of red kidney beans and sweetcorn. Ten seconds later I switched off and lunch was ready.

The soup was delicious and healthy too! There was hardly any preparation, no stirring and the Vitamix is cleaned in two minutes by running it with some hot water and washing up liquid.

A chilly, damp day in September seemed like the perfect opportunity to try out my new Mermaid pudding sleeve.

The Mermaid website did not contain the promised recipe but a quick google and a look at my recipe books turned up the right combination of ingredients.

I don’t often make puddings, certainly not steamed suet puddings, but this is so simple to make. You need to plan a little in advance as it takes an hour and a half to steam but once it’s made and cooking you can leave it be, maybe topping up the water if needed.

The pastry is a simple mix of 200g SR flour, 100g suet (I used vegetable suet), baking powder and cold water is rolled out, spread with jam, rolled up and placed in the pudding sleeve. Steamed in a few cm of boiling water it cooks beautifully and you have a lovely pudding just crying out for some custard.

My son went to France last week on an exchange trip with school and has returned a complete Francophile.

He now requires French bread for his school lunch so I thought I’d have a go at making my own. I used the French bread dough programme on my bread machine to make the dough.

500g White bread flour
1 teaspoon quick yeast
2 teaspoons salt
320ml warm water

The dough took over 3 hours to make. It would have been quicker to use the Kenwood but I wanted to just leave it as I was busy.

The dough was split into 4 portions. Each was flattened then rolled out to about 4cm x 30cm with plenty of flour.
Each piece was then rolled into a cylinder shape and the join pinched together. The loaves were left to rise covered with a damp teatowel for half an hour.

They were put into a hot oven, 200C for 15 minutes. A bowl of hot water was placed on a lower shelf to provide steam.

The result? Four delicious, crusty loaves to be proud of! They didn’t last long though!

I’m still trying to eat healthily most of the time.

Needing a quick healthy lunch I decided to make a quick butter bean dip to have with pitta bread and carrot sticks. I used a 400g tin of butter beans but if you have more time you can soak and cook your own. I added the juice of half a lemon, 2 generous tablespoons of low fat creme fraiche, a crushed clove of garlic and a heaped teaspoon of curry powder. I whizzed mine in the food processor attachment of my Kenwood Chef but it can easily be mixed by hand. Make it smooth or chunky depending on your preference. A generous handful of chopped coriander finished it off and it made a delicious lunch with toasted pitta bread, carrot sticks and baby plum tomatoes. Low fat, healthy and delicious, perfect.

It has been a while since my last post. Life has been busy, and stressful. I have been ill and one of my daughters involved in a car accident, fortunately she is ok just a broken ankle.
I decided it was time to get back to my blog and back to baking so this post combines the two!
Latest fun thing for me to make is bagels. I have to follow a low fat diet at the moment and they are great for that. I have tried out different types of flour and different toppings and decided that I like fennel seeds as a topping and 75% white, 25% wholemeal mix for the flour (although all white is good too!).
I use 450g flour, 1tsp quick yeast, 1Tabsp sugar, 2 tsp salt and 300ml warm water to make the dough. My trusty Kenwood Chef makes short work of the kneading and then I leave the dough to rise for an hour.
The fun aspect is dropping the bagels into boiling water with three tablespoons of sugar dissolved in it. After the dough has risen and the bagels shaped (twirling them round the handle of a wooden spoon is quite fun too!) they are dropped, 3 or 4 at a time into the water. They rise up to the top and you turn them over. After a couple of minutes you lift them out, drain off any water, sprinkle them with yummy seeds if you like and then bake them for 25 minutes. Delicious!
Check out my photo and give them a try, they really are easy. Let me know how you get on

We are all aware that we should be eating at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day for the sake of our health. So how do you persuade your fussy children to do the same? Here are a few suggestions that have worked for my family, try them and see if you can turn your faddy eaters into healthy choosers.

The most important thing is to start with what they like. Don’t make too many changes at once and try to add to the foods they are already happy with rather than giving them completely new foods. You may have adventurous youngsters who love to try new things, I’ve heard they exist, your little one may refuse to eat anything except chicken nuggets and marmite or, most likely, you’ve got something in between. It doesn’t matter. Start from where your child is and make the changes small and gradual.

The best way I found to give my finicky eaters more of what I wanted them to eat was to hide it in something they already liked. When my daughter was six she decided to become a vegetarian. I couldn’t argue with this, as I am a vegetarian myself. The trouble was she didn’t really like vegetables! While she was at school the food processor came out and in went onions, mushrooms, butter beans or chickpeas for protein and any other things she wasn’t too keen on. Then I made a casserole with potatoes, carrots, peas and sweet corn and incorporated my healthy puree into the sauce. She had no idea how healthy her tea was. It is easy to do the same with a tomato sauce for pasta, add in some red lentils which cook down to nothing, carrots, onions, courgettes, broccoli and herbs and whiz it up in the blender. You can spread this sauce on a pizza too.

A great way to incorporate vegetables into meals is to make soup. Even the cheapest stick blender will hide any number of vegetables beyond recognition. Onions, carrots and potato fried gently then cooked with some stock and herbs and a tin of tomatoes will blend into a sweet, tasty soup most children, and adults, will enjoy. Lentils can be added to any mixture of vegetables and stock to give a more substantial soup. Serve the soup in bowls as part of a meal or in mugs to drink after school in the winter, filling, warming and good for you too.

When it comes to packed lunches and snacks you can have lots of fun. Make sandwiches tiny or in fancy shapes, my youngest daughter had a duck shaped cutter she loved when she was nursery school age. Make them appeal to the child’s taste, a wizard’s hat for your Harry Potter fan, chicks and Easter egg shapes, Christmas trees and stars, horses or cats. There are lots of cookie cutters available so make lunchtime fun. Children as young as one or two can easily cut out shapes with a little help. When it comes to fillings you really want a little protein and plenty of vegetables or fruit. Peanut butter, cheese spread or hummus make good fillings with salad vegetables. Don’t worry if they don’t like salad; add crunchy carrot and cucumber sticks, bags of mini carrots and grapes, satsumas or little apples into their lunchbox. When they need a drink or snack make that healthy too. Banana milkshake, strawberry smoothie, mango smoothie or fruit salad are always popular. If your children love their desserts then make some fruit puree to pour over ice cream or stir into natural yogurt. Stewed apples, pears or rhubarb are good with ice cream, yogurt or custard too and don’t forget that old favourite bananas and custard.

When you really want to introduce them to new foods you can hide them at first in sauces as above. Then try chopping the food up really small so it’s difficult to distinguish and only when they’ve accepted that should you move to bite size pieces. This may take several weeks or even months but it is worth the effort. Of course they may still resist but does it really matter? Think of any foods that you’re not keen on; there are probably a few. Does it affect your life or health if you don’t eat these foods? Probably not, so don’t worry if your children don’t like the same foods as you. As long as their diet is healthy most of the time and they get a variety of foods and nutrients during the week one poor meal won’t hurt them. You can always make a game of eating new foods too, a three year old can be allowed to have three spoonfuls of a new food before leaving the rest, moving up to four after a birthday.

When it comes to family meals no one wants to make several meals to give everyone their own choice. Try to make the choices part of the meal and your children may surprise you by trying things you may not usually offer them. A pasta bake can be made quite basic (with hidden vegetables in the sauce maybe) and then served with separate bowls of tuna, sweet corn and roasted vegetables for everyone to help themselves.

So, the general advice is to make the changes small at first. Try again after a few weeks if they resist change. Make mealtimes fun, relaxed mealtimes are pleasanter for everyone. Let the children get involved in choices and preparation. Lead by example, you may be so busy with the family you forget about yourself, so make sure you are getting plenty of fruit and vegetables too and eat a healthy snack at the table while the children eat tea if you are eating later.

Finally, don’t worry, faddy young children often grow up to be health conscious teenagers and adults, so don’t give up, have fun, enjoy your children and your food.

Back to the old catering problem again. The menu planning is working a treat combined with online grocery shopping but the plan is tending to be a little repetitive. I have however discovered a new way to cut down on the cooking. Get someone else to do it! This may seem obvious and other people in my household do know how to cook but don’t often wish to share their talents with the rest of the residents. Daughter 3 and her boyfriend often cook for themselves but he now wants to learn more dishes, especially Italian, so I have provided ingredients, recipes and assistance where needed and this week he has produced spaghetti Bolognese and shepherd’s pie. Tonight he is making chicken and bacon tagliatelle and on Sunday plans an Italian style roast chicken. He is also pretty good at Thai Green curry! I will soon be redundant in the kitchen! Not yet though and last night’s macaroni cheese was wonderful, especially with the addition of my home grown cauliflower.
Current favourite healthy snack is guacamole made with an avocado, large tablespoon of Philadelphia light, lime juice (or lemon if I’ve run out!) and a few Peppadew sweet peppers all whizzed together. Perfect for dipping freshly picked courgettes and carrots from the garden. Speaking of the garden, the sun is shining, previously mentioned cook/boyfriend is jet washing the patio (yes I’ve trained my girls well!) and my cup of tea and I might just wander out for a spot of light weeding.

Home made pitta bread

Eccles cakes

Gone a little mad these last few days. Baking mad. Made Eccles cakes, my husband’s favourite, and doughnuts, very popular with son and daughter (and me!). My favourite was the pitta bread. These were really easy and they looked and tasted at least as good as the bought version. Lovely with some houmous and salad for tea.
All of this baking means I have not done as much of my English as I would like so today is dedicated to working on that. No baking allowed, except maybe some naan bread to accompany the curry tonight! As well as my English I need to catch up with the laundry. A couple of days of rain stopped me washing as I have been using the lovely free fresh air to dry but I still have plenty of ironing staring at me, pleading to be smoothed out and put away. I’ll save an hour of that as a treat after some work on my assignment!

Hot, fresh doughnuts. Delicious.

Tasty Tiger Bread

The bread making has been going well. I made Tiger bread this week. My children love Tiger bread but I did not think I could make it at home. It has taken quite a bit of research and trial and error but I have finally come up with a recipe that works. The trick is in the paste made with rice flour, yeast and sesame oil which you coat the bread with before the final rising. Rice flour does not contain gluten so the paste does not rise with the bread but cracks to give the characteristic appearance of Tiger bread; the paste also browns more than the loaf when cooked.
I used a basic recipe for a white loaf, using sesame oil in place of the olive oil I normally use when making bread. During the first rising I made a paste with 100g rice flour, ¼ tsp salt, 1tsp sugar, ½ tsp quick yeast, 1 Tab sp sesame oil and 150ml warm water. When the loaves and rolls were shaped I spread the paste over them and put them to rise again then baked as normal. The results were very tasty but short-lived!
If you try this yourself please let me know how you get on.