After 10 days away from home and about 1 million hot chips later, we are all most ready for some home cooking and NO MORE HOT CHIPS. Well, maybe that’s just me. I feel revolting after eating and drinking way too much, so this week it’s time to get back into the swing of normal life…bring it on!
Here’s some of our favourites that always get eaten at our place…and will be rolled this week for sure!
Pita bread
Sesame hoisin chicken
Sunshine rice
Wonton soup
Anyone else looking forward to some routine this week too after the holidays? Hope you all have a great week.
these look great thanks beth!
glad you are home safely from your trip!
love m:)X
Thanks for this post, I made the rice and the hoisin chicken tonight ( with a bit of honey ) everyone including the fussy 6 year old wolfed it down. I always stuff up rice, even with a rice cooker it becomes all clumped together and horrible at the bottom so this was great. Thank you.
Needed this. What about a collection fir getting more veggies in winter? Store looks so unappealing these days and kids are getting scurvy ….
Hi Jilly! A lovely reader Claire wrote me a long email with suggestions that I thought I would share with you!
I have 4 children from 23 down to 12 and I used to be a Dietitian-Nutritionist so feeding us all well has always been a priority for me (along with good cheese, chocolate and wine!!).
My winter favourites which are easy, use lots of vegetables and were/are popular with my children are;
Soup. Sometimes a stock or stock cube base, a can of tomato soup is also a great start. I add to this lots of diced or grated vegetables, maybe potato, carrot, pumpkin, celery, onion, garlic, capsicum, zucchini, broccoli, cauliflower, any other root veg, frozen peas , canned corn even a can of baked beans is good. Any leftover Ham or salami. Chicken or other leftover meat if it will all be eaten straight away. Cut up leftover sausage is good too. A can of cherry tomatoes is pretty. It could be topped with croutons, or be served with bread and a cheese board. I often make it with minimal or no meat so the cheese can be the star of the meal. Have recently bought bigger soup bowls as I noticed that my children eat as much soup as they are given in the bowl and then fill up on bread and cheese, so bigger bowls, more vegetables. My business sells beautiful cheese so I had to find a way to enjoy it without eating too much. The soup only needs to simmer for about half an hour but would work well in the slow cooker for a few hours as well I think. When the children were small we crumbled up bread into their bowls to make a thick mixture that they could manage on a spoon. We visited Hampton Court Palace when our oldest was 4 and heard that this was done in Tudor times and called sops. We told our girls that it was what princesses ate and they were convinced.
Mornay. I use leftover cooked veg or steam/microwave and add to cheese sauce. I usually make cheese sauce with cornflour (about 1 tablespoon per cup of milk) not a roux to reduce the saturated fat. I also find it easier and get stressed about a traditional white sauce…I tend to make it lumpy. Sometimes I fry some bacon and onion to add to the mix. Can be used to finish off all kinds of cheese if you get sad leftover bits. Put in a baking dish, top with breadcrumbs (uses up leftover bread too0 and cheese and bake to heat and brown. If you have a timer on your oven you can make this much earlier in the day, refrigerate and set it to cook while you are out doing the soccer/piano/hockey etc run
Fritters. Also a great way to clean out the fridge. I grate or finely chop what ever veg need eating. A similar mix to the soup but maybe not celery, it might be a bit too crunchy. It’s good to have some which makes a soft/moist cooked texture eg potato, zucchini, sweet potato. Even finely sliced silver beet works well including the stalks. Then add a couple of eggs and a couple of tablespoons of SR flour (preferably whole meal) and mix well. You need enough batter to just coat everything and not enough to make pancakes. The batter is to bind the vegetables, not the main event. Then some grated cheese or chopped bacon or salami or maybe some toasted pine nuts or pecans. I then shallow fry tablespoonfuls in olive oil, just a small amount.
All of these need to be seasoned as suits your family, would be great with some herbs added and can be made gluten free if needed.
Cooking when you get home from a holiday is my favorite! Back in my own kitchen, all my ingredients and favorite pots and pans!! It’s bliss!
I really want to be able to make gluten free dumplings and wantons but then part of me just doesn’t fuck. You know?