My friend Michelle told me this salad was good. She said it always gets cleaned up if she takes it somewhere. I test drove the recipe the other night, and didn’t even get time to take a photo. It was devoured.

So, if you are into your salads, then add this one to your list. A great way to eat healthier food, and feel great at the end of it.

Ingredients

• Small drizzle Olive oil
• Pumpkin – I am using my homegrown butternut pumpkin – diced into 2cm cubes
• 3-4 cloves chopped garlic
• 1/2 red onion, finely chopped
• Bunch of chopped flat leaf parlsey
• 100g crumbled fetta (we don’t each much fetta in our house, if you eat more, add more)
• Fried Bacon bits – this is in Michelle’s recipe, but for the first time in my life, I can honestly say the salad tasted amazing without it
• 1 tin chick peas – strained and dried
• Handful of slivered almonds (or pine nuts) lightly toasted
• Couple of handfuls of Rocket – again, this was in Michelle’s recipe, but mine hasn’t grown big enough yet
• 1 lemon

• Olive oil

What you will need

• Medium sized fry pan with a lid
• Salad dish

What to do

1. Drizzle a small amount of oil in the fry pan, and cook the pumpkin and garlic for 10 or so mins. I use the lid to ensure the pumpkin becomes soft. You can roast the pumpkin and garlic as an alternative
2. Allow the pumpkin to cool (smells delishious!)
3. Add all of the other ingredients except the lemon, nuts and olive oil
4. Add a few squeezes of lemon, nuts and a drizzle of olive just before serving.

Another working mother survival style boring dinner – an oldie but a goodie. This is the sort of meal I often make to tied us over for a few nights. We don’t serve it at dinner parties, unless all of our bogun friends are coming over. But you shouldn’t knock it back just because it isn’t gourmet. As a matter of fact, this dish has ensured I survive some weeks, and the family is fed! The kids love it, and I find most kids do (plus it is too hard for them to pick out the peas, so they just end up eating it) and it’s great for babies to scatter all over the table and chairs and self feed.

This meal can be made ahead of time, frozen, can made at the beginning of the week and eaten with a snag (Aussie slag for a sausage), or fish, or a salad. Dress it up, or dress it down!

I also pack it with veges from the freezer or the bottom of the fridge. It’s a pantry meal to make when other foods have dried up.

Turn up to a BBQ with this, and it always gets eaten.

Ingredients

• 3-4 cups basmati rice cooked (I use the absorption method)
• Olive oil
• 1 or 2 brown onions, diced
• 3-4 rashers of bacon, diced
• 3 -4 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 carrot peeled and grated
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 1 cup frozen corn
• Soy sauce

What you will need

• Rice cooker/saucepan for rice
• Wok

What to do

1. With fried rice, it’s good to have the rice cooked the day before. It doesn’t matter if you don’t of course. I cook the rice using the absorption method in a rice cooker.
2. Heat some oil in the wok until it’s hot. Add the egg and cook until golden brown on one side. Flip over and cook the other side
3. Remove the egg from the wok and cut into 2cm squares. Set aside
4. Brown the bacon in the oil
5. Add the onion and cook until glassy
6. Add the peas, corn, carrot on high heat until vivid in colour
7. Re-add the egg
8. Add the rice and mix all of the ingredients together, ensuring you heat the rice through
9. Add enough soy sauce to flavour 1/2 of the rice, ensuring you can still see white and brown grains. This is to taste of course, but don’t add too much soy sauce. You can always add some later!

Serves 4-5 people for a couple of dinners and lunches.

Anzacs are a great biscuit should you ever want to make ‘special’ cookies – if you know what I mean.

Mum has been churning out Anzacs to the same recipe ever since I can remember. When I left home and started carving a life of my own, this recipe was one of those home comforts I had to go back and ask for. I don’t recall having to grovel down at mum’s feet and beg, which is surprising actually. Mum guards most of her recipes very tightly (something old school, where you kept your recipes like a best kept secret), so I am probably committing some major sin blogging it. I know I would have had to majorly suck up for it. Mummy dearest….kiss, kiss – that sort of thing. Sometimes it’s just worth it really.

I know being part-Dutch you would think that I freely smoke weed and crunch on Oma’s hash cookies as I peruse my weekly newsletter from The Cannibis College, Amsterdam. Unfortunately, I don’t. I am entertained by the concept of it all, but I don’t action that into a reality. I am really a big dag. I have been accused of being so straight that I only cross at the green man. When growing up, I was the girl who was miss goody two shoes class prefect who would report you for smoking in the girls toilets to the teachers. Yep, it’s true.

When I lived in NZ I had a work colleague Aaron who was one of those friends who was my polar opposite in so many ways, and yet we were such great friends. He once told me that thought my being part-Dutch was so cool because it conjured up images of relaxed attitudes to drugs and prostitution (his idea of cool). From that time on I would sign my emails to him ‘Geri, Of Dutch Descent’ purely because it would tickle his fancy. Only on one occasion, after being friends with Aaron for about 4 years did he offer me a draw on his spliff (at the tender age of 28). After sitting there for about 2 minutes nervously contemplating the morals of it all, I finally inhaled. I promptly turned around and simultaneously vomited and had an asthma attack. I didn’t get any special after effects, I didn’t feel good, I felt green, and I wasn’t instantly transformed into ‘cool’.

My husband Tom lived for 20 years in the Netherlands, where using cannabis is legal, and you can smoke it or eat it in special coffee shops. He has never tried it. Not once. Not even been tempted. Why bother he says? What’s the big deal? He has witnessed mostly tourists visiting his country who loose all control and get silly on the stuff – to the extent now where the Netherlands is considering applying some legislation. It doesn’t look very cool to him.

Anyway, back to my story. An old boyfriend and his mate once obtained a stick of ‘special butter’. We were going camping for a 10 days, and these two clowns thought that if transformed into biscuits, this magical butter would make their holiday even more un-memorable. They wanted me to cook them some special cookies when I was focused on making sure we had enough food, tents etc. It was a impossible to do it all, so I left them the recipe for Mum’s Anzacs on the bench top, took out all of the ingredients from the pantry (as I so knew they wouldn’t be able to find them having never navigated a pantry before), and placed all of the measuring spoons and cups, trays etc on the bench. You couldn’t have made it any more straight forward really.

My girlfriend and I went shopping for real food while these too giggled like school girls in the kitchen. When we came home, the house smelt of  ‘aroma of Anzac’, so I thought that they had managed to do well. But on walking into the kitchen, we noticed what looked like an Anzac on steroids lying on the kitchen bench. Each individual biscuit melted together into one big massive Amoeba-like thing on the tray. It had also spewed off the sides and dripped into the oven. What a nightmare! I knew instantly that something had gone wrong. Upon tasting a crumb, it was so bitter that the saliva in your mouth started to foam. We walked through what they did with the recipe. The ingredients called for one and a half ‘tspn’s’ of baking soda. They misread ‘tspn’ this to mean tablespoons.

I had a fabulous time camping. My girlfriend and I laughed so hard watching the two of them impossibly trying to get high on something so repulsive they couldn’t keep it in their mouths. All because they had never read a recipe before. Classic!

So, if you do find yourself with a stick of ‘special’ butter, and in need of a good recipe, then I can recommend mum’s Anzacs. If you can’t read said recipe, then I suggest you just eat the butter, on toast. It’s less risky.

Below, a few photo’s I took from the shop windows when in Amsterdam last year. Yes, these do tickle my fancy!

Anzac Day was yesterday, so I think it is only fitting to post a blog about the connected food item for said day!

Anzac’s are a great biscuit, crunchy on the outside, sometimes a little bit chewy on the inside. Their benefit is that they store well in an airtight container for a long before going off (as they contain no egg). They are also a great addition to a lunchbox, as they don’t contain nuts, so if your kids do end up trading their lunch, no one get’s hurt.

I also can’t understand why you would buy biscuits when you can make them yourself. They taste better, your house ends up smelling great, and you know what’s in them.

Ingredients

• 1 cup rolled oats
• 3/4 cup coconut
• 1 cup plain flour
• 1 cup raw sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons bi-carb soda
• 2 tablespoons boiling water
• 125g butter (Mum’s recipe has margarine, but I wouldn’t touch that stuff with a stick – butter is better!)
• 1 tablespoon golden syrup

What you will need

• Large mixing bowl
• Wooden spoon
• 2 lined baking trays
• Medium sized saucepan

What to do

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C
2. Combine the oats, sugar, sifted flour and coconut in a large bowl
3. Combine the butter, golden syrup in a saucepan over gentle heat, until melted
4. Mix the soda with boiling water, and add to the melted butter mixture. This causes the coolest reaction, and is great for showing your children how cooking is chemistry in the kitchen
5. Stir this into the dry ingredients and mix together
6. Spoon dessert spoon-sized amounts onto lined baking trays
7. Cook for 20 mins or until golden brown
8. Cool on the tray before moving to a cooling rack

Makes about 2 dozen.

OK, I admit that Florentines and Sustainability, or living more healthily aren’t words that you would associate together, but let’s face it, if I am going to be bad, then this would have to be my choice of thing to be bad with. What’s more, if you make it yourself, then you know what’s in it, and it can’t be anywhere near as bad as those treats that have 51 different preservatives and colourings.

The blister in law Rose gave me this recipe for Florentines after I begged her by holding onto her ankles and sobbing. It worked. I have adapted it a little, and because I don’t measure things too carefully, it’s different every time (but always delicious).

I am really proud that I have abstained from making Florentines this maternity leave until now. Last child was breastfed on these and Coconut chocolate brownies alone. I have lasted for a whole 7 months without succumbing…but now I have lost control and well…let’s just say, eat one, eat the whole lot.

I hope you enjoy them!

Ingredients

• 110g butter
• 1/2 cup soft brown sugar
• 4 teaspoons golden syrup (or honey)
• 1 cup flaked almonds
• 4 tablespoons chopped dried apricots
• 4 tablespoons chopped glace cherries (as these have preservatives in them, their addition is truely optional)
• 4 tablespoons mixed peel (again, optional for those who like mixed peel)
• 2/3 cup plain flour, sifted
• 120g dark chocolate, melted

What you will need

• Saucepan
• Wooden spoon
• Double boiler (or microwave) for the chocolate
• 2-3 large lined baking trays

What to do

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C
2. Line baking trays
3. Melt the butter, sugar and golden syrup in a pan
4. Add the nuts, fruit and flour to the mix, and combine
5. Place level tablespoons on the trays, and flatten slightly with the spoon
6. Bake for 10 mins, or until golden
7. Cool slightly on the tray, and then place on a cooling rack
8. Allow to cool completely
9. Turn over and smear dark chocolate onto the back of the biscuit
10. Allow the chocolate to set before devouring!

Last weekend we picked some olives from Uncle Bob and Aunty Marg’s tree. It was so laden with fruit that the 5kgs we took didn’t even make a dent.

My olive tree (which I have had for 7 years) only this year fruited for the first time. It must have known I was going to gift it to someone else if it didn’t perform. Anyway, I was keen to use these olives, but only 3 actually ripened, so I don’t see images of myself cold pressing bountiful amounts of olive oil.

I am going to pickle these olives using a long pickling method you can use for ripe, part or fully coloured olives, and hopefully down the track use these olives in things like sourdough bread (I sadly live with people who don’t love them. Only me). The recipe has been handed down by Uncle Bob. I need to soak the olives in a brine for 6 months before I do anything else, so that’s pretty straightforward.

So, here they are, and in 6 months time I will continue the story and give you an update on their progress.

Ingredients

• 5 litres of water
• 300g cooking salt (I use rock salt for no reason other than I have a 25kg bag of the stuff, that I also use for hams and bacon)
• 2kgs of ripe, part or fully coloured olives

What you will need

• Big cooking pot

• Big container with a lid (I have glass, but food grade plastic is fine)

• Small cup or plate to submerge the olives
• Dark cool spot (my laundry is perfect for this)

What to do

1. Heat the water in a pot, and add the salt, stirring until the salt dissolves. Allow to cool
2. Add the olives and brine into a container
3. Use a plate to unsure the olives are submerged below the brine
4. Cover with a lid
5. Sit in a cool dark place for 6 months

Uncle Bob assures me that during this time, the water will go mucky, and a horrible scum will appear on top of the olives, and all of this is normal. This process removes the bitter flavour from the olives. To tell when the olives are ready for the next step, taste the olives (in 6 months time), and if they only taste of salty olive, then we can move to pickling!

Will update this blog mid-October.

This meal is one my mum used to make (with a white bechamel sauce), and I have adapted it to make it even easier, as I don’t have the patience for bechamel sauce, nor do I think feeding my family on butter, flour and milk in large quantities is good for you, unless it’s for dessert (and then it’s awesome).

This dish is an emptly larder dinner – ie one of those dinners you can always make when all the rest of the food has run out. I never measure it, and so it’s different every time. So take my measurements here as approximations. If you have more, add it. If you have less, substitute something else it.

I make the dinner into two meals, and freeze one for later. I find this dish costs almost nothing, and the kids love to eat it. Furthermore, it tastes great even after being frozen and reheated. I ususally get a few meals, and some lunches out of this. Gotta love that! And for the cost of a tin of tuna, coconut cream and other things that we always have in the freezer, it beats any take-away hands down.

Ingredients

• 1-2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large tin tuna
• 1-2 large brown onions
• 1 can coconut milk or cream
• 1-2 cups frozen peas
• 1-2 cups frozen corn
• 1 – 2 tablespoons curry powder
• 3-4 cups rice, cooked
• Salt/pepper to taste
• Enough cheese to grate on top (we use anything left over in the fridge)

What you will need

• A saucepan or wok
• 1  or 2 baking dish’s (this is up to you. I use glass Pyrex baking dishes, and then you can pop them in the oven or freezer)

What to do

1. Cook the rice (it’s amazing how often I forget this really important step)
2. Heat the oil and then brown the onion
3. Add the tuna, peas and corn
4. Add the coconut milk and curry powder
5. Add salt and pepper to taste
6. Heat enough to defrost the vegetables, and mix the ingredients, and then turn off
7. Spread the rice on the bottom of the baking dish to half the height
8. Spread the tuna mix on top (I make 2 dishes with this mix)
9. Cover with grated cheese

I then cover these, one goes into the freezer once it has cooled and the other into the fridge for one evening’s dinner

1. To cook, make sure it has defrosted (yes, you will need to take it out of the freezer on the morning you wish to eat it)
2. Bake in a warm oven (180 degrees C) for 1/2 an hour, or until the cheese is golden

For us, this serves two dinners for 4 people, and often a few lunches as well.

As today was back to work day for this chicken, I am devoting a few hours today to getting ahead on this weeks dinners – otherwise I might be tempted by the restaurant strip outside the door, which is not only not good for me, but expensive too.

You know the kind of dinners I am talking about – the ones that you can pre-prepare, and are not costly, are mostly healthy, and you can even freeze half of them so that you are way ahead for next week!

These meals have been around our house for a long while. It’s not the sort of food I would ever serve you if you came for dinner (unless your name is Anna or Vincent, and then I treat you like one of the clan and it’s nothing fancy).

I will start with my tuna casserole (which the kids call White Lasagna – because it is nothing like lasagna, but it is white). Hope you enjoy!

My cousin Freya has left a cumquat tree at her folks place, and it WAS covered in cumquats. But not anymore! That’s what you get coussie bro for not talking all your stuff with you when you leave home!

We went over to my Aunty and Uncle’s place today to shake a few olives out of their tree (I just sat inside having a cup of tea actually while Tom, Jasmine and Uncle Bob did all the work), and noticed a big jar with amber-looking fluid full of fruit, and it was these – brandied cumquats. So a few minutes later, the once fruit laden tree was bare, and I had me a big jar of cumquats!

Now I know I could make some kind of marmalade or jam with these, but stuff that – the brandied ones sound like way more fun! Firstly you can eat the cumquats (sounds delish), but then you can also drink the liqueur! Sounds like the dish that keeps on giving.

The recipe is from the ABC website, and it seems pretty simple. Only problem is I have to wait 6 months before I can sample the produce. It had better be good!

Thanks Freya for your cumquats! I will be sure to let you know if they are nice or not.

Ingredients

• 500g cumquats
• 375g sugar (I use raw)
• 1 bottle of brandy (70oml) – I bought a brandy that was on special, but cost $28 – when it comes to buying brandy, there are different types (some authentically flavoured in oak, some not) If it has a VSOP on the bottle it has been aged for about 5 years in oak.

What you will need

• A big jar
• A tooth pick

What to do

1. Prick the cumquats all over with a toothpick. How many pricks? No idea. Tom went for lots of small ones, I went for about 6 big punctures per cumquat. We shall see what works best in about 6 months time
2. Place the sugar in the jar
3. Add the brandy
4. Turn for the next 10 days to dissolve the sugar
5. Leave and wait patiently for 6 months

I will keep you posted on the outcome (have set a diary date for the 10th of October to try the cumquats!)

In an earlier blog I wrote about how disheartening it is to hear that perfectly good food is wasted by the major supermarket chains as it isn’t deemed to be of the quality they want to be known for (No rotten bananas… the price for being so picky).

Can I just say, today I am a very happy customer, and wish to applaud the small but significant change I have witnessed occurring in our Woolworth’s supermarket.

In the last month I have started to notice marked down fruit in bags next to the ‘perfection’ so many customers must be demanding. I am pretty happy with the quality of the marked down food – to me this is perfection. Perfect food for a fraction of the price. I am excited! Most of the bananas are absolutely perfect, and if we end up with one or two rotten ones at the end of this, I can just smell the Banana loaf coming on!

And, I believe that we should encourage these small but very significant changes. Woolies, I never thought I’d see you do this. Please keep the rotten banana’s coming.