Posts Tagged With: kids

School Holiday Program 2012

How exciting! We’ve just announced our inaugural School Holiday Program for 2012… Head on over to the School Holiday Program page to see the deets but I can also say we’ll be cooking (and digging!) up a storm!

These are some of the fab activites we’ll be doing:

Rolling hand-made pasta and throwing pizza dough for lunch –

Earning your own Our Kitchen Garden knife licence as we chop, slice and dice the organic herbs and veggies we’ve harvested from the garden –

Meeting and feeding the chooks –

Planting seeds for a take home ‘watch & grow’ project so bring your own plastic bottle destined for recycling or landfill –

Creating your own seasonal, local and organic morning tea and lunch while learning some amazing life skills in the kitchen and garden –

And of course, having fun!

LIMITED SPACES ONLY!

DOWNLOAD Our Kitchen Garden booking form HERE!

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April 5th 2012

And here we are at the last day of term! What a lovely start to the year… some great cooking, fabulous volunteers & creative and delicious children! Thank you to everybody 🙂

This week has seen us celebrate our season with fabulous fat eggs from our five chooks – they are truly settling into their strides with huge beautiful offerings every day: over 50g each, just like in the shops! So in honour, we’re creating a Poached Egg Salad with Tarragon Sauce, Sean’s Sweetcorn Chowder, our version of Torta Pasqualina, a few handmade chocolate truffles – and the ubiquitous but nevertheless yummy hot cross bun (with a difference!) And here below is the recipe… happy holidays and see you next term! Melissa

APRICOT & CARDAMOM HOT CROSS BUNS – Jeremy & Jane Strode

Ingredients:

  • 20g dried yeast
  • 100g caster sugar plus a pinch
  • 100g butter
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ½ teaspoon ground cardamom
  • 500g plain flour
  • 2 eggs
  • 200g apricots
  • 90g self-raising flour
  • 10g skim milk powder
  • Butter & jam to serve

Glaze

  • 1/3 cup water
  • 2 tablespoons caster sugar

What to do:

  • Mix yeast with 200ml warm water & pinch of sugar in a small bowl and leave in a warm place for 5 minutes to activate.
  • Chop the apricots.
  • Place butter, salt, cardamom, plain flour and remaining sugar in the mixer and combine.
  • Add eggs and activated yeast and beat until smooth.
  • Add apricots and when combined, leave in a warm place for 1 to 1½ hours to double in size.

Start of lesson:

  • Line a large baking tray with non-stick baking paper. Punch dough down to its original size. Knead on a lightly floured surface until smooth. Divide into 12 even portions. Shape each portion into a ball. Place balls onto lined tray, about 1cm apart. Cover with plastic wrap. Set aside in a warm, draught-free place for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 190°C.
  • Mix self-raising flour, milk powder and 100ml water together in a small bowl until smooth. Spoon into a small snap-lock bag. Snip off a tiny hole in 1 corner of bag. Pipe flour paste over tops of buns to form crosses. Bake for 20 minutes until buns are cooked through.
  • Make glaze: Place 1/3 cup water and sugar into a small saucepan over low heat. Stir until sugar dissolves. Bring to the boil. Boil for 5 minutes. Brush warm glaze over warm hot cross buns. Divide among serving plates & serve warm with butter & jam.

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March 22nd 2012

Well hello there! Harmony Day in the Cottage kicked off this week with a recipe for Harmony Carrots – our freshly dug carrots roasted with a little honey, olive oil and thyme… we’ve also been harvesting parsley, basil, mint, cucumber and tomato for the Quinoa Tabbouleh; still pounding basil for our warm salad of Roasted Pumpkin with Pesto & Goats’ Cheese; flexing our muscles for the Pizza with Radicchio & Thyme; and squishing into long, thin worms the Rosemary & Thyme Grissini to dip into Roasted Eggplant Relish… so as you can see we’ve been working the students – and volunteers as well!

Last week saw the children rolling pasta too and we have here some lovely shots of the classes – truly awe-inspiring work from our dedicated cooks… it really amazes me that time and time again the children put up fabulous dishes that are delicious and creative and also find time to pack away and help clear! I can’t believe sometimes that we manage to achieve what we do in the time that we have… Also illustrated here are the empty bowls of Radicchio, Gorgonzola & Pine Mushroom salad that got gobbled up in no time – truly grown up flavours?

And we’ve had even more new volunteers come to support us – I can’t stress enough how valued you all are & how the program benefits so much from your presence… thank you! And to all those considering coming along… yes, it can be daunting and chaotic at times (!), but is so much fun, AND you get to eat together at the end! And I’ve not yet had a group NOT put a delicious bowl or plate of something fab up yet.

And with that, hope to see you soon… Melissa

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March 7th 2012

Autumn – bang! And it’s here – the definite chilly mornings & nights, and crazy weather patterns of rain, rain, floods and more rain… and all the banging and thudding going on in the street outside makes me glad to be huddled inside the cottage with the ovens on, throwing pizza dough!

We’ve had such a great response from the wonderful volunteers so far this term – both connected to the school and also from the wider community – and so we’ve been able to make loads of delicious dishes with the children, and in smaller manageable groups. They love being with their mum, dad, gran, auntie, next door neighbour, best friend’s mum etc in the class, and amazingly, even cheeky behaviour suddenly seems to stop! And the mums themselves have been shocked to find that their allergic-to-vegetables child is wolfing down the autumn salad and the eggplant dip!

With loads of requests from the students to pair the pesto with some pasta I felt compelled to dust the pasta machines off & we’ve been rolling, rolling, rolling this week in one group, whilst another pounds the pine nuts, parmesan, garlic and basil for the pesto; we’ve been baking the little Lebanese eggplants and parsley to make a spicy & garlicky dip and then using our knife skills to create beautiful and neat crudités with which to dip; the potatoes that we pulled up at the beginning of the term have been put to use on our crispy potato & rosemary pizza with landcress and wild rocket; and our now Autumn salad has been garnished with the last of the cucumbers, crunchy dwarf beans and the addition of brilliant-yoked (boiled) eggs the chooks are providing now that they are laying! They must be very happy in their new palace… Alas for them though the children eat pretty much everything on their plates!

So thank you to all the lovely students, let’s hope the rest of the year is as dynamic and inspiring! And thanks too for all the superb volunteers who are giving up their time to make our Kitchen Garden classes such a success in 2012! I look forward to seeing you all soon,

Yum! Melissa

PS I’ll have the coffee on in the cottage by 9.30 (at the latest…!) on Saturday if you’re dropping in to help with the garden working bee… and might even rustle up some banana cake too 😉

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Sunday: cooking with four-year-old Ava

A cup of Earl Grey and an Anzac biscuit, perfect

It’s a beautiful sunny day out there but there’s a frrrrreezing cold wind… Steve has sneaked away for forty winks and Olly has finally gone down too. Ava not so! She’s bouncing off the walls after allowing me to while away some time on the laptop. Now she wants action! How to amuse her quietly and let the others have their siestas? Let’s bake biscuits!

Ava rolls Anzac biscuits

Whilst it’s not Anzac Day here (not even close – 25th April?) I never need an excuse to make Anzac biscuits. And un-Australian as it may be – apologies to those purists out there – we add some orange zest. Because we’ve some fantastic oranges in the fruit bowl and we feel like it.

Ava is funny, she keeps bending down to hide her head under the table: she’s sneaking bits of raw oat & flour mixture and doesn’t want me to see… I tell her that the more she leaves now, the more biscuits we get to eat later but I think she likes the game of subterfuge… She loves rolling the little spheres of goo in her hands and asks me every time if the ball’s the right size. She lines them up neatly to one side of the baking tray, all rubbing together, and doesn’t really understand that they’ll all spread. They’re all different sizes, but I tell her that’s ok: some will be chewy and some crispy, but all will be delicious!

The smell of the orange zest wafts out of the oven mingling with the toasty biscuit/ Golden Syrup yumminess, mmmmm.

Best thing about these bikkies? They only take 15 minutes or so to cook! Just enough time to clean up and pop the kettle on.

Anzac biscuits done!

Ava’s Orange Anzac Biscuits

 1 cup rolled oats

1 cup plain flour

1 cup raw sugar (or white, or half brown, half white)

¾ cup desiccated coconut

125g butter

2 tablespoons golden syrup

½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 tablespoon boiling water

1 orange

 Preheat oven to 150°C.

 Combine oats, sifted flour, sugar and coconut in a large bowl. In a small saucepan, melt the butter and golden syrup over a gently heat. Mix the bicarb soda with boiling water, add to melted butter mixture and add this to the dry ingredients. Finely zest the orange and add the zest to the mixture. Stir until combined.

 Take a teaspoonful of mixture at a time and roll into small balls. Place these on a lightly greased oven tray and allow room to spread. Cook for about 15 -20 mins, until lovely and golden. Allow to cool on the trays and then eat!

Makes about 30. Try not to eat all in one setting like we did.

Proof of the Anzac is in the eating...

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Little cakes for our friends the fairies (and gnome)

What to do on a long weekend where there’s nothing but rain, rain, rain? My thoughts turn, as always, to food! With Ollsy asleep, we gave daddy a well-earned nap on the sofa watching sport on the telly & apron’d up in the kitchen for a little fairy cake escapade…

Fairy Cakes

 Ingredients
110g self-raising flour
110g butter, softened
110g caster sugar
50g sultanas
2 eggs, lightly beaten

 Method
Pre-heat oven to 180°C
Cream the butter and sugar until soft and light
Add the eggs a little at a time
Sift the flour and gently fold into the mixture
Fold in the sultanas
Place 24 paper baking cases into mini muffin trays & spoon in  the mixture
Bake for 12-15 minutes,  until well risen and golden brown
Eat in garden with fairies
Makes 24

A perfect public holiday Monday afternoon: Steve & Olly woke to a house of yummy cake smells & Ava got to do some important mixing & spooning, licking the bowl and even to do some washing up –  me, I bit my lip and ignored the floods of soapy water cascading onto the kitchen floor…

Such delicious little morsels! They almost made up for the lost playground opportunities over the three days with the early spring downpours – a great thing for the garden as all the green stuff has EXPLODED! I’ve got some lovely photos for my next post –  in the meantime, as they say: the proof is in the pudding, hmm-mm!

So, with that the weekend was over and it was time to think about finishing our little holiday – back to work, school and the week ahead with all its stresses and worries. Well, maybe after just one more tasty little morsel? And still enough cakes left to hide one in the garden for our little friends…

…and one last thing!

Good old Collingwood forever!
We know how to play the game
Side by side we stick together
To uphold the Magpies name
Hear the barrackers are shouting,
As all barrackers should!
All the Premierships a cake-walk
For the good old Collingwood!

Congratulations to the fearsome Magpies, winners of this year’s AFL Grand Final

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Heirloom Tomatoes

Olly graced me with a second sleep today of two hours, which allowed me to dig the composted cow manure & lovely rich new soil into the cleared garden bed, and plant my new heirloom tomato seedlings. I’m so excited that I managed to achieve it as I usually would procrastinate & not get around to it, and leave the pots out until the little plants fried in the hot spring sun… When I worked at Sean’s Panaroma in the summer they used to make a very simple tomato salad, but the tomatoes were so delicious that you couldn’t believe the flavour in your mouth… I’m going to attempt to grow some of the same crazy ones I saw there: Black Russian, Green Zebra, Black Krim and Lemon Drop as well as Grosse Lisse and Principe Borghese. I hope to have some fabulous looking photos up here by Christmas!

It’s  a lovely feeling, to be making use of the vegetable beds, as I remember when we moved in almost two years ago and I felt such worry to be taking on another person’s established organic garden, with lots of vegetables I couldn’t identify. And I can fully understand how gardening is reccomended to people suffering from depression as it really does uplift the soul – especially when you see your seeds show their little green heads for the first time, and your seedlings flourish.

So, in anticipation  of a bumper crop of huge tomatoes in a few months’ time, here is my recipe for a wonderful and sneaky tomato/veggie sauce – perfect for pasta & rice, for kids big and small…

Sneaky Tomato Sauce
6-8 ripe tomatoes
a stick of celery
a carrot
a zucchini/some broccoli/whatever else!
half an onion
a clove of garlic
a few basil leaves
olive oil & salt
2 saucepans & a hand-held blender

Start by filling up one of the saucepans with water & setting over high heat to boil. In the meantime, chop up the onion and start to fry it off in the other saucepan with quite a good glug of the olive oil. After a minute or so add the chopped up carrot & celery and fry them off on high for a few minutes too. Then drop the heat to simmer, sprinkle a little salt over the top and sweat with the lid on while you do the next stage.

With the 1st pan of water boiling, drop the tomatoes in for 3 or 4 minutes. In the meantime chop up the zucchini or other veggies & add to the onion, carrot & celery. The tomatoes by this time should be ready to be pulled out to cool slightly – the skins now should be easy to peel off, if not put the tomatoes back in for another minute. Once all are peeled chop them up roughly and add to the veggies, with the crushed garlic & half a cup of water. Now bring up to the boil and then immediately turn down to simmer for at least 20 minutes, stirring every so often.

If I’m in the middle of a hundred things, I leave the pot with the lid on, to rest until I’ve got time to add the basil & whizz it all up to a smooth sauce, and then pour it all into containers to freeze or chill or eat.

Que aproveche!

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Safe bath stuff for all the family?

Continuing on in my quest for good & sane products for my children and us, available here in Australia…  (see previous posts on sunscreen and chemicals)

I’ve been reading so much about the potential ill effects of fragrance, phthalates, petrochemical byproducts, SLS etc and cannot believe that some of the most trusted companies (Johnson & Johnson, Pantene, Nivea, l’Oreal et al – actually pretty much everything on a supermarket shelf) include these potentially carcinogenic or hormone/endocrine-altering chemicals. Unfortunately due to our arcane labelling laws, just because a product might be freely available here doesn’t mean that it is totally safe! It is time to start deciphering labels, however painful that may be. Luckily, you have me for that.

With this info utmost, I’ve come across some lovely stuff from the billie goat soap company. Listed on the bottles is this:

“Our products do not contain: Sulphates, Parabens, Propylene Glycol, Silicones, Phthalates, Mineral Oils, DEA, Ethoxylates, Petrochemical cleansers.”

What they do use is mainly fresh goats’ milk & essential oils, with a few other skin-friendly ingredients. I’ve already used quite a few of their products: 

Billie Baby Milk Baby Body Wash (great for Olly’s sensitive skin)
Billie Goat Soap Moisturiser (rubs on white but soaks in quickly, very light and leaves little residue) Billie Goat Soap Hand & Body Wash (very gentle: my hands are really dry from all the constant cleaning and wiping and washing up – it’s helping to prevent them looking like lizardskin) 
Plain Goats’ Milk Body Bar (a natural soap that lathers rich & creamy but beware! you need to keep it dry between washes or it mushes).

Hooray! I love them… they don’t use colour or synthetic fragrance. Do yourselves a favour and check them out. Available from Healthylife stores across Australia.

www.billygoatsoap.com.au
www.healthylife.net.au

ps I’ve just read that they were recently on national telly – is that a good thing or bad?!

Categories: Health | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Spring veggie planting

Today Olly and I planted our first Spring vegetable seeds. Since it has been so lovely and warm I’m hoping that the seeds will think it’s spring and not the winter that it truly is… sweetcorn, silverbeet and green dwarf beans, along with basil and oregano to go with the skerricks of tarragon that survive from last summer. There is so much hope with planting – in my case the results rarely live up to the expectation – and the fabulous feeling of actually having got out there and pulled the weeds out of the bleedin’ beds first. A tick off the to-do list, hooray! I will be smugly satisfied for a while now every time I look out of the kitchen window to our green-thumbed work…one big bed down, now only one small one to go…

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Sunscreen 2

So I have followed Friends of the Earth’s advice and got some Woolworth’s Select Kids Very High Protection Sunscreen Lotion – this one also says, ‘Not suitable for children under 18 months’ but the active ingredients & preservatives still seem to rate low to moderate on the EWG potential calamity scale. One unusual ingredient is:

Diazolidinylurea:
This ingredient may be derived from animals. From PETA’s Caring Consumer: Excreted from urine and other bodily fluids. In deodorants, ammoniated dentifrices, mouthwashes, hair colorings, hand creams, lotions, shampoos, etc. Used to “brown” baked goods, such as pretzels. Derivatives: Imidazolidinyl Urea, Uric Acid. Alternatives: synthetics. Source: http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com

Mmmm, lovely. At least they’ve removed the awful loo cleaner smell that it had last year.

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