I admit that the photo doesn’t look all that appetising, but this recipe is actually quite tasty. And as a bonus it is healthy and quick to make. I would say it is also quite inexpensive, but as someone has poisoned the winter crops up north, tomatoes and eggplants are going to get a little pricey for a while.

Use this as a dip with some toasted Turkish bread or as a sandwich spread. In the photo above, I have spread it on toast with some cream cheese, a nice combo. The recipe makes about 2 cups.

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200°C (390°F).
2. Cut all vegetables into chunks. Place in a large baking dish, drizzle with oil, sprinkle with salt and bake for 45 minutes or until soft (the time will depend on the size of the vegetable chunks. If they are really small, it may take less than 45 minutes).
3. Cool and process in a blender or use a stick blender until just smooth. Add lemon juice and extra salt to taste. I used about 3 Tbsp. Just keep tasting and adding until it tastes good.
4. Store in the fridge, but this pate tastes better at room temperature.

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This is one of our favourite dishes. Mushrooms, paprika, mustard, wine and sour cream – these are a few of my favourite things. This dish is so quick, easy and tasty and most of the ingredients are pantry staples, I don’t know why anyone would want to make this with a packet mix.

Method

1. Toss beef strips with flour, salt and pepper.
2. Heat oil to medium hot and brown the beef in small batches. Remove from pan.
3. Add a little more oil and cook the onion for a couple of minutes until soft. Add the mushrooms and cook for another minute or two.
4. Add the wine and scrape up any flour from the bottom of the pan.
5. Add paprika, tomato paste, mustard and stock and simmer for a couple of minutes.
6. Return the meat and the juices to the pan and simmer for another minute, then add in the sour cream and parsley and stir until just heated through.
7. Serve on rice or pasta.

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2. spaghetti bolognaise
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Why make bolognaise from scratch when you can get it pretty cheap and easy from a bottle? That’s what I thought anyway until I didn’t have any in the cupboard and decided to make it myself. I have never gone back to the store bought bottled pasta sauce.

This makes a very rich, tasty bolognaise. And it’s not that much harder or more time consuming than the bottled variety. It is a foundation recipe, though. You can add anything you like: olives, sun dried tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, corn, kidney beans, extra garlic, fresh herbs, spices… endless possibilities. Or you could remove ingredients that you don’t like or don’t have on hand like the capsicum or mushrooms. A tasty variation is adding a couple of crushed cloves to the sauce. It adds a subtle but lovely aroma to your bolognaise.

Of course, instead of serving this over spaghetti, you could make a simple white sauce, layer with a few sheets of pasta, grate some cheese over the top and have lasagne instead.

Method

1. Brown mince over medium heat, breaking up lumps with a spoon. Remove and drain in a colander.
2. Sauté onion until soft, add in the capsicum and garlic and cook for a couple more minutes then the mushrooms and cook for a minute more.
3. Add in the tomato paste and herbs and cook for half a minute or so to caramelise the paste a little, then add in the mince, stirring.
4. Add the tomatoes, wine if using (use the wine to rinse out the tomato tin), sugar, salt and pepper.
5. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 10 – 20 minutes while the pasta cooks so that the sauce reduces, thickens and the flavours intensify.
6. Serve over pasta with a generous scattering of freshly grated parmesan.

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1. beef stroganoff
2. mince bake
3. Sausage Stew

But for many of us, the question of fresh v frozen is kind of irrelevant anyway. Most of us don’t eat nearly enough plant food to start with, let alone worry about whether it is fresh or frozen.

I want to take a moment to compare fresh and frozen vegetables from a cost point of view. You see, I’ve had broccoli on my mind a lot over the last few weeks. We eat a lot of broccoli. It’s high in nutrients (fresh or frozen) and it’s one of the few greens I don’t have to force feed DH.

But what to do with the stems? I’ve thrown them in the stock pot, cut them up and to put in the stir fry, I’ve even made broccoli stem soup, but mostly the stem gets wasted. This got me thinking about the true cost of fresh broccoli and whether it is better value (from a purely cost perspective) to purchase frozen.

So I did a little weighing and a little calculating.

I purchased a head of broccoli for $4.70 per kilo. Total weight for the piece was 500g so the total purchase cost was $2.35.

The actual yield after cutting the broccoli into florets was only 300g, a 40% loss. After accounting for the waste, the actual cost of the usable portion of the broccoli went up to $7.83 per kilo. Or to put it another way, I would have to buy at least 700g of broccoli (not accounting for the further waste of stem when buying a second head) to get a 500g yield of broccoli.

Now compare this with frozen broccoli. When buying frozen, there is no loss in yield as the stem has already been discarded. The cheapest brand I could find at my local supermarket was selling at $6.58 per kilo, cheaper than the true cost of the fresh.

Now, broccoli is in season at the moment, so the prices are fairly evenly matched and you will probably even find it cheaper fresh over the next few months. When it’s not in season, frozen broccoli will win on cost hand’s down.

Below is a summary of the pros and cons of frozen vegetables:

Advantages of Frozen Vegetables

• Tests have found that frozen vegetables are just as healthy than fresh vegetables and if the ‘fresh’ vegetables have been sitting in cold storage for quite some time, the snap freezing process can mean that frozen vegetables are higher in vitamins than fresh.
• Local climate conditions may mean supply of fresh food dwindles or is very expensive during the cold months.
• Cooking with frozen vegetables is easy and saves time when cooking. There is no preparation, just boil or steam and serve.
• Having some frozen vegetables in the freezer means that you always have some vegetables on hand to make a healthy meal.
• Frozen vegetables aren’t going to go mouldy if you forget about them, so there is less chance of waste. Also, the sorting for quality has been done for you, so you don’t have the problem of cutting into a carrot and finding it rotten at the core.
• As shown above, frozen vegetables can be cheaper.

Disadvantages of frozen vegetables

• Whereas you can choose to avoid plastic when buying fresh vegetables, frozen vegetables come packaged in plastic. Try to avoid the single serve wrapping to reduce plastic waste.
• Frozen vegetables are often transported over great distances, increasing the ‘carbon footprint’.
• Fresh vegetables can often taste better.
• The blanching process prior to freezing can result in some loss of nutrients, so the best choice is organic, fresh picked. Obviously this isn’t an option for all of us, so fresh vegetables come in second place and frozen are a pretty darn good third place.
• Frozen vegetables can come from overseas rather than be grown here is Australia. Check where the vegetables are grown if you’re concerned about buying Australian grown.
• There is (usually) less of a variety of frozen vegetables than there is fresh.

So buying fresh v frozen, what do I think? We buy mostly fresh vegetables, mostly ‘local’ and mostly in season from a greengrocer. While I would love to buy organic, it’s way out of our price range, so the only way we’ll be eating organic is by growing. (By the way, the Environmental Working Group has released a guide on which fruit and vegetables to buy organic, and which non-organic ones are lowest in pesticides.) We supplement our fresh vegetables with frozen peas, corn, beans and broad beans for convenience (and maybe broccoli in the future). For us, that’s a good balance.

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The wonderful thing about living in this part of the world is that despite being winter, the strawberry season has just started and will continue until November. Even the early strawberries are tasting great, the ones pictured came farm fresh from a local grower not far up the road.

This recipe was one bought to my attention by a friend and the original can be found at the Taste.com website. As their recipe suggested, I substituted lemon juice with liqueur (I don’t need much prompting to use a bit of grog in my cooking) and I also changed the granita biscuits for choc ripple. I made the cheesecakes the day before and the biscuits went a little soggy, but in a good way, the choc flavour mellowed and went really well with the strawberry filling. I also use raw sugar (I think it tastes way better than white sugar). To make it ‘castor’ give it a quick wizz in a coffee grinder or blender.

The recipe is for six, but I found I could get eight out of this recipe, nine if I hadn’t licked the spoon, although I think I used regular sized muffin tins. I don’t have electric mixers, I found this recipe only takes five minutes even beating with a wooden spoon.

Method

• Mix the strawberries, liqueur and sugar well, dissolving the sugar. Set aside in the fridge to macerate.
• Preheat oven to 180°C. Line 6 large muffin holes with a paper patty case each.
• Beat cream cheese, sugar, vanilla and liqueur until light and creamy. Beat in eggs one at a time.
• Place a biscuit at the base of each muffin hole, pressing down firmly. Top with cream cheese mixture.
• Bake for 20 minutes or until slightly risen and just beginning to crack on the surface. The cheesecakes will sink a little on cooling.
• Set aside to cool completely. Refrigerate for one hour or until chilled. Top with strawberries, a drizzle of the marinade liquid and serve with a dollop of cream and a dusting of icing sugar.

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Kekap Manis is a sweet soy sauce. Along with the lime juice, it makes a nice combo of salty, sweet and sour. I like to cut my vegetables into matchstick shapes, but it takes longer to do it this way and isn’t necessary. Alternatively, you can use frozen stir fry veggies making this a very quick dish to prepare and cook. Use whatever vegetables you like, substitute the water chestnuts for unsalted cashews for a different flavour.

I usually buy topside beef in bulk and slice and portion the lot before freezing it, which saves a couple of minutes at dinner time. To get tender stir fry meat, cut the meat against the grain, fry it quickly and briefly and in small batches at high heat until just browned (you don’t want it to stew in it’s juices and it will continue to cook once removed from the heat, so no need to over do it), and don’t let it boil in the sauce when you add it back at the end of the cooking.

As far as the oil goes, use one that cooks well at high temperatures. I use macadamia nut oil because it is grown and cold pressed locally and I have a cheap supply. Rice bran oil also has a high smoke point and is good for stir fry – just don’t use olive oil because it will burn.

The recipe below is for two people, about 100g of meat per person is good for a stir fry and just increase the vegetables and add a little more lime and kekap manis.

Method

1. Heat wok until hot. When your wok starts to ‘smoke’ it will be hot enough. Add a little oil and then toss the beef quickly in two batches until just browned. Set aside.
2. Add the onion and toss for a minute or two. Add the garlic, ginger, chillies and vegetables and stir fry for a few minutes.
3. Add the water chestnuts, lime juice and kekap manis and toss for another couple of minutes or until the vegetables are cooked to your liking. Taste and add a little more lime juice or kekap manis as you prefer. Add in the beef and toss to heat through.
4. Serve on rice or noodles.

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An oldie but a goodie. This version is easy to throw in the oven and forget about for an hour or so. I read a recipe recently that included vegetables in the actual sauce, but I find it easier to add them to the rice when boiling it. My mum used to make this without the sour cream, so if you don’t want to add it, the apricot chicken will turn out fine without it. I just really like creamy dishes.

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200°C (390°F). Place chicken in an oven dish.
2. Whisk together the nectar and soup mix. Pour mixture over chicken and bake for approximately one hour or until the chicken is cooked through, turning the chicken in the sauce half way through the cooking.
3. About 20 minutes before the chicken is ready, bring a pot of water to boil and cook rice for approximately 10 minutes. This is one time that you don’t want to use the absorption method for cooking rice as you need a bit of water to cook the veggies.
4. Add the veggies and cook for another 3 minutes or so, until the veggies and the rice are cooked.
5. Remove the chicken from the baking dish and stir in the sour cream. Serve the chicken over the rice, spooning the sauce over the chicken. 

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This is another recipe I got from the net about 10 years ago now, that I’ve translated back into ‘real’ food. The earthy flavour of the cumin balances the sweetness of the carrot and sweet potato, although I always think a little cumin goes a long way. Despite this, cumin is probably the spice that we go through the most of. This recipe is a little different, while still being quite cheap.

This is nice garnished with carrot chips. Just run a potato peeler down a carrot and fry the strips in hot oil until crisp.

Method

1. Sauté onions and cumin in oil over medium heat until onions are soft and translucent.
2. Add sweet potato and carrot and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Add the wine and the stock and bring to the boil. Simmer covered for 15 minutes or until the vegetables are tender.
4. Add the coconut milk. Puree until smooth, season to taste and serve.

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This dish was inspired by a recipe I read on an American cooking website a few years ago. I had to convert the dish back into real food, however. Real onion instead of onion powder, real cheese instead of slices of plastic cheese, and I threw in some vegetables to make it a bit healthier.

You can add whatever vegetables you have in the crisper. Sometimes I will also throw in some kidney beans and some chilli or paprika for a different taste. Also, a splash of wine is always a welcome addition. If you prefer, use ready made passata or pasta sauce in place of the paste, tinned toms and herbs.

Method

1. Boil rice according to packet instructions (This can be made ahead of time).
2. Defrost peas and corn in a bowl of boiling water
3. Brown mince. Remove from pan and drain in a colander
4. In a little oil, sauté the onion, garlic, carrot and zucchini until softened. Add the mushrooms and sauté for a further two or three minutes.
5. Return mince to the pan and add peas and corn and stir in the tomato paste, herbs, tomatoes, sugar and salt and pepper. Simmer for 10 minutes until reduced slightly, the vegetables are cooked and the and flavours have developed.
6. Stir in rice. Pour into a gratin or baking dish and and top with cheese. (You can make the meal ahead to this point leaving off the cheese. It can be frozen or reheated later).
7. Bake at 200°C (390°F) for 20 minutes or until the cheese is melted and golden.

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This slice is very sweet (anything that involved a can of condensed milk is going to be sweet), but quite moorish nevertheless. And it got gobbled up before I got a chance to take a picture.

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C (360°F). Grease and line a 26cm x 16cm lamington pan
2. Combine butter, vanilla and brown sugar in a bowl, sift flour and baking powder and mix with butter mixture.
3. Press the mixture into the pan with your fingertips. Bake for 12 minutes or until golden. Let cool for 5 minutes.
4. Roughly chop the chocolate. Sprinkle chocolate and almonds evenly over the cooked base.
5. Drizzle condensed milk evenly over chocolate and almonds.
6. Bake for 18 – 20 minutes or until golden. Cool completely and cut into squares.

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Creating Hours: Time Management For Busy Parents

Creating hours isn’t the usual time management strategy of calendars and schedules. Instead it provides tips and tricks that help you gain control over your time so that those extra minutes here and there add up to extra spare hours over the week, spare hours to read, relax, do hobbies or whatever you please. More than that, this downloadable eBook is tailored to parents who have to deal with the ‘unscheduled’ everyday little emergencies that happen when raising children. For more information click here.

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