Dinner tonight

In the slow cooker at the moment I have a big chunk of lamb, a handful of rosemary, a chopped onion, 3 carrots, potatoes, lemon juice and a splash of white wine. Should be good I think, although I never think the slow cooker gives as a good a flavour as the oven / stove.

Last night we had Indonesian style (allegedly) beef in coconut milk. Even Jeremy said he liked it! (J isn't overly critical, he just doesn't normally notice what he eats - this can be a good thing!) I'm trying to use the slow cooker more after my sister told me it would change my life (or something like that).

More cooking

Since Joanna's coeliac diagnosis I spend ALOT of time cooking. Bought gluten free food is hideously expensive (I'm talking about products that use gf flours, not the stuff that just happens to be gf) and not usually very nice.

In a typical week I now cook breakfast 4 or 5 mornings a week (only boiled eggs or pancakes - nothing too exciting!) and try to plan dinner to have enough left over to do lunch the next day. I go through cycles of being ok with all the extra work (extra when compared to my previous gluten consuming life) and cycles of feeling like I would rather gouge my own eyeballs out with a rusty fish hook than cook anything. ever. again.

I try to keep extreme fed-up-ed-ness away by trying new recipes fairly often. I find that I'm particularly keen to find good recipes to replace foods that Joanna might otherwise not get to have.

We had these burgers tonight with the bread rolls from this book (best gf bread recipe I've found, and boy have I tried a few!) and it was great, except that I'm pretty sure I'm not tolerating the xanthan gum in the bread recipe well. Arghh! The bread still tastes good without it, but doesn't have much spring to it. Looks like we'll have to put up with that though.

I've also cooked a few things from the Women's Weekly Gluten and Allergy free cookbook - the banana bread and the pizza scrolls are really great.

I'm always on the lookout for new things to try - does anyone know of anything that's worth a go?

Cooking etc

I've been getting very fed up with the whole gluten free 'thing' lately.... sooooo much extra work and expense involved for frankly not very inspiring outcomes. Last night though I came across a great blog which has links to heaps of fab looking recipes and I actually started feeling slightly keen on cooking again... hooray!

This morning before heading out to our college wives picnic I made these orange creme cupcakes. I made a few changes as I'm not that keen on xanthan gum and I didn't have any egg replacer and some of the ingredients are American brands. So, no xanthan gum, used about 2/3 cup of orange juice in the cake part and then had to add about 1/2 cup of rice flour because the mixture was so runny. I also used 2 eggs instead of the egg replacer, and used mainly Orgran GF plain flour instead of the sorghum flour. Used Nuttelex in the icing too, instead of whatever she specified.

They were really yummy! A bit dense but fantastic flavour :) I think it helps that we're in the middle of navel orange season at the moment - delicious! Next time I think I'd make the Orgran flour SR instead of plain and see if that added enough extra lift.

Italian Chicken Casserole

... and while I'm on the topic of recipes, here's one of the easiest "having people over, must cook large quantity of food" recipes around. AND it's gluten free and easy on the budget!

Ingredients
Lots of skinless chicken drumsticks or lovely legs
Enough Homebrand Chunky Pasta Sauce to cover the chicken (I use 2 jars for approx 15 pieces of chicken). Homebrand is nicer than Savings in this instance, just so you know.
Pitted Kalamata olives
Grated cheese (check it doesn't have a thickener with gluten in it, or grate it yourself)

Method
Put chicken in a single layer in a big roasting pan.
Tip sauce over chicken
Put in oven (I cook it at 140 degrees for a couple of hours, or 180 for about 45 mins - 1 hour)
Turn chicken when it's nearly cooked, put some olives in the sauce, sprinkle with cheese and crank up the oven to brown the cheese.

Serve with rice and salad or veges.

Yum!

I probably shouldn't have posted this recipe because anyone who comes to my house gets served this dish and I'd prefer them to think I'd spent hours hand roasting my home grown cherry tomatoes for the sauce. Ah well.

Amazingly Yummy Can't-Tell-It's-Gluten-Free Chocolate Cake Recipe

If I say it myself :) Oh, and it's also nut free if you pick the right ingredients! I made this for the kids' birthday party last weekend and it worked out really well. I figure it's easier to share a recipe on my blog than write it out by hand, so here you go Santina:

Ingredients
125g butter
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/3 cup icing sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/4 cup blackberry jam (or other smooth, seedless jam)
1 1/4 cups Orgran gf SR flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp bicarb
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup plain yoghurt mixed with 2 tsp brown sugar

Method

• Preheat oven to 180 degrees C
• Grease a 20cm cake tin and put baking paper on the bottom
• Beat butter, sugar, icing sugar till light and creamy
• Mix jam well with a spoon to break up any gooey bits, add to butter etc with vanilla
• Add eggs and mix well
• Sift flour, cocoa, baking soda and baking powder together
• Fold in 1/2 of flour mixture, then milk, then other 1/2 flour etc, then yoghurt
• Pour into tin, bake 45mins or until a skewer comes out clean.
  
• Leave in tin for 15 mins then turn onto a wire rack to cool.
  
• Ice with something yummy (eg vienna cream).
  

I made 4x this mixture for the party and it was huge! Too big for my jumbo mixer, and too big for JoJo to stir (she gave up after one attempt!).

There's lots of time for baking....

... when a certain somebody wakes you up at 5am. I made chocolate muffins, fruit loaf and focaccia today - I think I'm the new Nigella Lawson.

Something's telling me that my eyes would be able to focus on the computer screen a whole lot better if I'd had a teensy bit more sleep though.

Some more pics...

A photo of X with Grandma at the park the other day. I'm sure Grandma found the demonstration of how to pour water very helpful!

We made muffins for Jeremy to take to work and the kids were very keen to help (ie lick / eat everything!). The photo is of JJ trying to kiss X to make him feel better after he had been crying (it was his own fault - he was pulling JJ's hair and she was understandably unimpressed!).

JJ and some friends at the playgroup morning tea at the park yesterday. We had a great time until X hurt his arm - he was really sore and I was pretty worried about him. Dad was able to work out what the problem was when I rang him, and he told me a magic trick to fix it - much to Xander's and my relief!

It's been ages since I last posted... how did that happen? Actually I do know. We had a pretty foul weekend (JJ got an ear infection, just to liven things up a bit and I was rostered on to teach sunday school which is normally fine, but the lesson wasn't that inspiring so it was a bit stressful and the whole weekend was generally pretty down and yuck). We did do a couple of fun things... went to a pizza restaurant with Alex and Katherine, which was fun, and had dinner with Mum, Dad, A and K on Sunday night as well. Mmmmmm I'm still thinking about mum's pistachio - stuffed lamb roast.

Anyway, I'm still trying to pick up the pieces from the w/e, but feeling a bit better (except for the cough that I"m getting... arghhhh!!!!). Oh and some of my wool fell on the laptop, so now I have no e or s key and I have to t press the wierd little knobbly bits to make it type!

Went to the park this morning with Grandma and Grandy + mum, Lisa and Kate. The kids enjoyed it - lovely weather!

I'm trying a new recipe for roast chickpeas - they're in the oven at the moment, so we'll see how they go. Hopefully well since I put 4 cans of chickpeas in! I've been buying chick pea snacks at the supermarket, but if this works out it will be a cheaper option for a very healthy and yummy snack. ETA they're quite nice but not actually crunchy, and probably end up costing about the same as the others (at least by volume). Not sure if it's worth it... might try one more time with dried chickpeas since they're cheaper than the canned ones. :)

What else? I've been getting a tad obsessed with a particular method of dyeing that I've been using to make some rainbow bits and pieces. I'll put up a pic of part of a special pair of small longies that I'm making to sell when I get enough things together to restock properly. I wish I could have made these when JJ was little! I told J we'd have to keep having more kids until we have another girl just so she can wear them. He seemed convinced! :0

Tee hee I've just realised that the pic I attached looks like a freaky pregancy test - no I'm not trying to tell anyone anything!! :P

Mmmmmmmm......

I've been meaning to post a recipe that I made tthe other day so I don't forget it, so here goes....

Curried Roast Vegetable Pie
1 onion, in wedges
2 small zucchini, in chunks
2 capsicum, in chunks,
small broccoli florets, approx 1 cup
small potato, in small chunks
tin lentils
med sweet potato, thinly sliced
2 sheets puff pastry
couple of tbsp korma curry paste
oil
milk, to brush pastry

Heat oven to 220C. Put onion, zucchini, capsicum, broccoli, potato in baking tray, add 2 tbsp olive oil and some salt, stir around. Bake approx 35min.

Line square tin with baking paper, put one sheet pastry in bottom - put in oven with veges for about 10 mins, to cook a bit.

Remove veges, stir through lentils and curry paste. Reduce oven heat to 200C. Layer sweet potato slices over pastry in tin, add other veges and cover with other sheet of pastry. Brush with milk and bake approx 30 mins. Yummo!

*I've adapted this recipe from the "Roast vegetable and Hummus Pie" in the April 2008 ABC Delicious magazine.

I took some photos of the pie but they looked foul so I won't post them... I don't think I have a career in food photography ahead of me!