Monday, 19 September 2011

Risotto Balls...

If there is one thing I can't stand, it's wasting food. That little half serve that is put in a bowl and cling-wrapped after a meal for 'later' only to be put in the bin in 3 days time definitely gets to me. However I was quite happy the other day when I had a bowl of leftover risotto from Troy's and my dinner the night before and decided to make Huddo..Risotto Balls for lunch with the left overs. I normally just spoon feed him risotto but it was a day where I was keen to give the pantry and fridge a wipe down so I thought I'd make a little finger-food friendly meal that would keep him occupied while I did a quick clean and assess dates on herbs, spices, sauces, etc.

Firstly I'll give you the recipe I used to make the risotto itself:

Tuna, Mushroom & Pumpkin Risotto

Ingredients:
180g Tinned Sirena Tuna
200g Sliced Mushrooms
600g Diced Kent Pumpkin
1 brown onion (chopped finely)
250g Broccoli (broken into small florets)
2 cups of Aborio Rice
4 cups of vegetable stock
20g finely grated parmesan.
2 tablespoons of ricotta
clove of garlic (crushed)
1 tsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil

Method:
1)Panfry mushrooms, onion, garlic & pumpkin in tablespoon olive oil and teaspoon of butter until pumpkin is soft and golden
2)Add Tuna and rice and vegie stock. Throw in a splash of salt and pepper to season. Cover with lid and allow to simmer on medium heat. Stir regularly while liquid is absorbed into the rice.
3)About 10 minutes into the rice cooking add the broccoli into the mix
4)Once liquid is absorbed and rice is cooked at parmesan and ricotta.
5)Allow to sit and cheese to cook in on low for 2 minutes. Serve and sprinkle some extra parmesan on top if so desired.


Next day...with a cold bowl of risotto leftovers!

Set yourself up a plate with some flour, breadcrumbs and a bowl of 2 eggs whisked with a fork....

1) Roll a small ball of risotto mix
2) Roll the ball in some flour until covered
3) Dip the ball in egg until covered
4) Roll the ball in breadcrumbs until covered.
5) Repeat steps 1-4 for as many balls as you care to make or until risotto is all done.

I managed to get 12 risotto balls out of my bowl of leftovers and put 6 into a snap-lock bag and froze them. With these 6 I put them into a small saucepan that was about 3cm deep in vegetable oil and on med/high heat and cooked for 90 seconds until golden.

I then let them cool on a plate covered in paper towel so that any excess oil could be absorbed off.

And then gave them to Mr Huddo for his lunch (...as well as a pear sliced into fingers, some saltanas, and a banana)
Which he happily ate and baby-chatted to me while I cleaned the fridge and pantry...
He eats pretty quickly these days so good thing I clean the pantry pretty regularly and there isn't too much to clean and tidy...before I was a stay-at-home Mummy I used to hoard out-of-date sauces, herbs and spices like antiques!!


Sunday, 18 September 2011

Bacon & Egg & Spinach Pie....

I recently downloaded to my iPhone the free Woolworths app. I'm in dorky mum heaven with this thing. Creating my shopping list gradually over the week and by specifying which Woolworths I shop at, it breaks up my list into which isles the foods are in. ...Haven't forgotten anything for 2 weeks in a row! ....(That is a massive thing for me! :) )

Also on this app are hundreds of recipes and I decided to give a few a whirl. Today I give you: Bacon, Egg & Spinach Pie.

Ingredients:
4 rashers shortcut rindless bacon, cut into 1cm slices.
2 tsp olive oil
1 onion finely chopped
250g frozen spinach
1/4 cup of cream
1 sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed
5 eggs

Method:
1) Preheat oven to 220oC.
2) Grease selected casserole dish or pastry flan with bit of butter.
3) Heat oil in a small frying pan and cook onion until soft and browned.
4) Add spinach and cook until liquid has evaporated. Tranfer into a bowl stir in cream and season with a bit of black peppe. Set aside to cool.
5) Line dish or tin with pastry rolling in the excess pastry.
6) Cook bacon in a frying pan for 3-5 minutes until golden and slightly crispy. Set aside on little plate.
7)Place spinach mix in the dish on top of the pastry.
8)Crack eggs on top of spinach mix and sprinkle bacon over the top

9) Bake for 35 minutes.

hmmmmm....I must of been so keen to eat this one....I didn't take an after shot! (I made this last Friday night. It was quite a big hit and there was good leftovers for Troy for brekky Saturday morning while I was at the market that I'm making it again this Friday night....I'll take one then and re-edit this post.) Highly recommend. Good protein in this and also the iron levels in the spinach is great too.

Cheese & Vegemite Scrolls...

Now for any overseas readers...you may have heard about Aussie's love of a product called Vegemite. It is a concentrated yeast extract that is very savory and a dark brown/nearly black looking spread. It is really rich in B vitamins which makes it quite a nutritional staple part of a lot of Aussie diets. Another great food to put it with is cheese! yum. So with that said today's post is a recipe for Cheese & Vegemite Scrolls. A great morning tea snack. Australian's will know that Baker's Delight Bakeries trademark the name Cheesymite Scrolls but these little lovelies are about a third of the size of their scrolls which makes them more portion friendly for little bellies. (And a healthy portion for a morning/afternoon snack for us big people).

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups self raising flour
50g of chopped soft unsalted butter
3/4 cup of milk
1 tablespoon of warmed vegemite
1 1/2 cups of Tasty Grated Cheese

Method:
1) Preheat oven to 200 oC and place baking paper on a tray.
2) Sift flour into a bowl.
3) Add butter and using fingertips rub into flour until well combined.
4) Make a well in the centre of the mix and add milk.
5)Use a spatula to loosely combine the mix
6)Lightly sprinkle some self raising flour onto a clean bench.
7)With your hands work the mix into a ball and place on the bench. Knead well until smooth.
8) Roll out with a pin to about a 25cm x 40 cm rectanglular shape. (mine looked more like an oval but oh well.) :)
9)Spread vegemite and sprinkle most of the cheese.
10)Gently roll up the dough and cut into 12 pieces.
11)Once cut place the scrolls on the baking tray close together and sprinkle on top the remaining grated cheese.

12)Place tray into the oven and bake for 20 minutes until golden.


Yummmmmm... :)

Sunday, 11 September 2011

Keepsakes...Part 5... Hudson's 1st Year Photobook.

To say I'm a little obsessed with photos is an understatement. I take so many it can border on a little ridiculous. But as the final present to our Huddo for his First Birthday I've compiled a story-photo-book of his first year. I have the intention of doing a book like this for him each year and once it has arrived will be sticking inside the front cover a cd-envelope to keep the 'dvd' of all the edited video footage from the year also with it. (I finished the book on Saturday night and ordered it. It will be here in about 10 days which gives me that amount of time to finish the DVD!...I have about 220 minutes of footage that I'm aiming to cut to about an 80 minute DVD...I'm 3/4 of the way there.)

So for anyone thinking they would like to do the same or just curious to see the book.... Click here.

This book was created on the Harvey Norman Photocentre Online site.

Toddler Trifle...

With all the cakes I've been making lately there has been a fair bit of excess, for example when I bake cupcakes, etc. With a batch that made 14 cupcakes I took 2 uniced and I decided to make an after dinner dessert for Hudson.....I'm calling it Toddler Trifle.

The ingedients are pictured below:


2 Apples
1/2 cup diced pineapple pieces
2 vanilla cupcakes
1 sachet of Angel Delight Banana custard powder (has no artificial colours, low sugar...etc)
1 sachet of Aeroplane Jelly Tropical (the range that is made of natural colours & flavours and has 25% less sugar that regular jelly)

Method:
1)Make the jelly in a bowl as per the directions on packet (allow setting time)
2)Once jelly has set, make Angel delight as per directions in a separate bowl. This is made in one bowl in 5 minutes.
3)In a saucepan cook apples (peeled, cored & diced) and pineapple together until apple is soft. Loosely mash fruit.
4)put cupcakes into a plastic ziplock back and crush into crumbs.
5)In little toddler serve containers 1/4 fill with cake crumbs then 1/4 with jelly (about 3 teaspoons), 1/4 of fruit mix, then last quarter top with Angel delight.
6)gently stir in container the mix the layers loosely.

Keep in fridge for up to 5 days. (with this in mind I only made 4 portions) there was a bit of jelly and fruit left so I put the excess fruit into ice-cube trays and into the freezer for brekkys, etc. The excess Jelly....well Troy and I had it with some fruit pieces.   :)

Monday, 5 September 2011

A Toast to the First Year.....

With my excitement of Huddo's birthday and him reaching this milestone there were a few hugs with Troy and the two of us making the joke of 'hey we survived the first year of parenthood...yay to us!'.
So to all the first time parents of one year olds everywhere I salute you. And for a laugh here is a special post of some rough calculations of  my everyday 'Mummy Stuff' activities...

Nappies changed- 2920
Clothing changes Huddo has had - 1277
Loads of washing- 364
Meals cooked - 416 (this includes separate meals cooked for Huddo)
Times I've done the dishes - 734
Times I've cleaned my food processor - 136
Packed away toys - 320 (this stat starts from about 3 months old)
Toy Audits/ going through and putting away 'grown out of toys' - 4
Baths given - 370
Vacuummed the floors - 289
Cleaned the highchair - 859
Soaked the straps on the highchair in Napisan because they were covered in food! - 148
Swimming lessons - 11
Trips to play at the park - 123
Cakes baked - 9
Muffins baked - 144
Trips to the Supermarket - 55

Number of smiles Troy and Hudson have put on my face in the past year......impossible to calculate... :)

Sunday, 4 September 2011

Hudson's Birthday... Part 2

On Saturday 3rd September we had a little BBQ for Hudson's 1st Birthday. We went with a 'Mickey Mouse Clubhouse' theme as it's Hudson's favourite show. Over the course of the day we had some family and a few close friends visit to see the birthday boy, eat some yummy food and play a bit of cricket and footy in the park. With the ever unpredictable Sunshine Coast weather and the fact we have a rather small apartment we limited who we invited in the event that it was raining and we had to move our BBQ in the park to eating dinner in our apartment. Good thing we did this as it didn't rain but it was exceptionally windy and come 6.30 for dinner once the BBQ was cooked we moved up to our place. It was a little squishy but everyone was much much warmer and we had a great time. Most importantly though Hudson had a great day.

Now to let you know a little about the food......
Some of the Gold Coast family including Hudson's Grandad, Nonna & Uncles came up for lunch so for them I served 2 trays of lasagne that I had made the night before but baked on the day and salad. Then since they were not going to be here for cake I made vanilla cupcakes so we could put a candle in and sing Happy Birthday to Hudson...(Note: For the Mickey Mouse decorations at the BBQ, the little cupcake patty pans with picks & Mickey Mouse lolly bags I got them from Discount Party Supplies on Ebay.



For dinner we served standard BBQ food and a few extras: Sausages, burgers, chicken sticks, another tray of lasagne, garden salad and Cous Cous with pumpkin, fetta and baby spinach.  To say we had leftovers is an understatement. For the last couple of months I've been doing groceries on a Sunday....not this week...we will be having BBQ meats and salad for the rest of the week in this house!

Then after dinner those that were remaining sang Happy Birthday one more time to the Birthday Boy and this time with a candle in his Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cake. He was getting a little sleepy from such a big day but gobbled down a piece of his extra special cake made by Mum Mum.



My best cake thus far and the excitement on Huddo's face was more than worth the hours of decorating and staying up until midnight to not only finish the cake but clean up the massive mess of icing in every colour of the rainbow. For this I made of 5 vanilla sponge cakes (2 rectangular, 2 circular and one small circle for the base of the clubhouse)  with homemade (from a stand at the Eumundi markets) Strawberry jam spread between each layer. The black head of the clubhouse is styrofoam balls I got from Spotlight, pinned together with wooden skewer sticks and painted black. Fondant icing was used to cover the base of the clubhouse and the 4 layers of the cake. Fondant was also used for the blue slide/tail of the clubhouse, the entrance to the clubhouse, the letters to create Hudson's name on the cake, the windows on the clubhouse and the yellow fence. Buttercream icing with vegetable shortening was used for the star-piped grass effect, the flowers at Minnie & Daisy's feet, and the star-piping in colours associated with each character that they are standing on. Black 'writing icing' was used for the grill on the windows and for the door to the clubhouse. Detail-wise I was really happy with my 'drop flowers' I made for Daisy and Minnie! (When I took the pic below Minnie's flowers were still in the freezer getting solid) The second pic was taken by our friend Grant (with his AMAZING camera).


I had a lot of fun making this however, like I mentioned earlier the look on Hudson's face was just priceless and so worth all the effort.

As a final touch for the day and salute to the theme I made some little lolly bags for the kiddies that came along. Inside some Mickey Mouse little plastic bags I just put a couple of Freddo Frogs and two chocolate shortbreads in the Mickey shape piped with mickey's pants...here is one of the 2 trays I made..

It was a very fun week and I couldn't get over all the amazing presents Hudson got. So I took a photo with all his presents put it up on my facebook and tagged everyone on their present....
The final present from Mummy & Daddy that is yet to come is his photo-story book that I have made for him about his 1st year. I wanted to add a few pages of photos from his birthday. I've also nearly finished editing a DVD with all the video footage we've taken over the first year.  I will put up a link in a post when I finish it for those that are interested. How he's grown. To think when he was born he was just over 5.1kg (11lb 6oz) and 55cm. Now he is 14kg and 84cm.
What a year! What a kid! Troy and I are so happy and feel so blessed to have such an awesome little man.

Huddo's 1st Birthday....part 1

On Hudson's 1st Birthday and I really couldn't get over how excited I was. I knew naturally I would be excited for my son in reaching this milestone, but I was sooooo excited for him to open his pressies from Troy and I.

Leading up to his birthday there had been the great present debate. How much do we spend? What type of things does he need? What is he interested in currently? and all the time being consious of the fact we don't have much space in our 2 bedroom apartment. With this being our only child's first birthday we wanted it to be special. The main thing with Hudson is that he's all about activities and thanks to The Wonder Weeks we used this to look at what toys he had and what stimulating things to get for his mental development. Also as much as we like for his toys to be things he enjoys it's great to be able to play things with him. So we got him a box of 150 megablocks (on special for $18), a pack of 5 wooden toddler puzzles ($23), 2 new pair of shoes from Our Shoes ($40) and a kiddy gold set ($10). He LOVED all of his new pressies and had so much fun making a big mess in the living room with all the blocks and wrapping paper.




After we played with the pressies it was time for lunch and with a banana and chocolate muffin with a candle in it Troy and I sang Happy Birthday to our son. To be honest as much as this was Hudson's 1st birthday he's no stranger to this song as every Saturday for the past year (he was born on a Saturday) I would sing him 'Happy __ week birthday'. I probably should stop that now so I don't confuse the poor fella. 



Hudson's birthday was on Sunday 28th August however, the night before was his Auntie Jenny's 40th birthday party so we made his little party for the following weekend since a big portion of the family live on the Gold Coast and with us being on the Sunshine Coast and promoting responsible driving we didn't want to encourage our family to come up and visit when they would've had a big night the night before! :)

Wilton Cake Course: Week 4....

So for the 4th and final week of the cake course we had to bring in a cake and decorate it however we liked using techniques we had learnt over the previous 3 weeks. Keep in mind that this was the week leading up to Huddo's birthday party so I was much more excited about making his birthday cake in a few days time than putting all my energy into this final cake. But I wanted to practice some rosettes and also I learnt how to make a rose and this process alone took me half an hour and the class was only 2 hours. So my final cake for the class was a bit nothing to say the least.

However, I made a lemon sponge cake the day before and inbetween the two layers was lemon curd. In hindsight putting lemon essence in the sponge with the lemon curd was a little strong but oh well. I finished the course and got my certificate. And most of all was feeling pretty confident in what I had to do for Huddo's birthday cake.

Here are some pics of the final cake:



 

Friday, 2 September 2011

Week 3 Wilton Cake Decorating Course....

Ok, well before I start this post I have to say to anyone following this blog sorry for 2 weeks of NOTHING! ...Basically there has just been so many 'somethings' going on that I've gotten way behind but hey since this blog is titled Mummy Stuff surely any mums know that there is going to be a lapse from time to time because well I'm busy doing....Mummy Stuff! :)

So onto the post. For week 3 of the course we had to come to clast armed with iced cupcakes, so using my Planet Cake cupcake recipe I mentioned in a previous post I went along to class with these little guys....


We learnt different flowers such as a rosette, 'shaggy mum', pom poms, drop flowers and leaves. When I went home from class my white cupcakes now looked like this....
My fav of the night was definitely this little one...
(like this one so much I thought I'd do a bit of 'Instagram' to it!)
To anyone that is interested in creating these themselves. I really do believe that the trick to these effects is majorly in the tools you have. The 'Wilton Tips' are great.

The only thing I would say is that there is A LOT of icing on these cupcakes and makes them quite sweet but I really do stand by this cupcake recipe  itself of Paris Cutler's. It is the best cupcake I've ever had. yummmm.....