Having chooks in our lives has meant a few things for us – firstly we don’t waste any food – the chooks eat all the scraps – dinner plate scraping and vegie peelings – everything – even bacon rinds and the fatty bits from meat. It is very gratifying being able to recycle your leftover food into eggs. And not just any eggs – these eggs are rich and golden and beautiful to eat and cook with. Eggs have become a major part of our diet – we eat eggs for breakfast at least 3 times a week – and when we have an abundant supply we do a lot of baking – sponge cakes, pavlova and lemon butter – yum yum. But also its nice to have eggs to give away – to neighbours and friends – we sometimes swap them for fresh lemons or other garden produce. It feels good to be able to have something worthy to give.

And on top of all those benefits, nothing can beat how much the kids love the chooks. They get so much joy and learning from them. From when they are born to when they die and everything in between – their eggs, their eating patterns and their personalities – its all an important topic of discussion. If you don’t yet have a couple of chooks yet – please get some straight away.

I am on my way to making a crochet blanket – very similar to this one here and using the instructions here – they will eventually be hexagons – but start out their life as circles. I am using beautiful wool from Bendigo wool mills – you get 200gram balls instead of 50gram balls – and it is incredibly soft and yummy. [colours I am using are natural cream, storm grey and grey alpaca and various colours from the luxury wool range - may i recommend purple storm, leaf and lavender.

I am finding crochet to be incredibly relaxing - my parenting tip of the day is when you feel like screaming - crochet instead! Moving the hands by making something seems to do something to your brain - you suddenly focus and everything becomes clearer - you realise that yelling and getting stressed is not the answer - really its not worth it - much better to wind down and go slow and talk softly - all this is possible if you are crocheting. Give it a go. [Hey Jon its good for dads too.]

Cooking apple pie with kids needs a certain attitude – you have to be prepared to let go of any ideas of organisation and minimal mess making. But once you have done that (and closed your eyes to the dough being eaten and dropped multiple times on the floor – just remember its going to be cooked), then making apple pie with kids can be quite a fun and freeing experience.

Once kids peels and cores the apples – with the help of the apple slinky gadget (you need to get one of these), while the other makes the dough – lots of tastings involved along the way and a big mess to clear up at the end. But the joy and bonding that has occurred is priceless! [Jon you have to give this a go - lots of apples get eaten before getting cooked - its healthy!]

On the weekend we spent a good wet few hours making felt. Felt balls were the main occupation – although felt squares and felt bags did also get a look in. Something really quite satisfying about rolling wool around in your hands until it turns into a solid little ball. Once you have made a few of these you can string them up to make a garland or a necklace or even window decoration.

Here’s how:
You will need wool roving (that’s wool that has been carded but not yet spun) and some warm soapy water.

Take a handful of wool roving and wet it in the warm soapy water. Start by gently tossing it back and forth between your hands, not rolling it just yet. When it starts to take shape you can gently at first then more firmly roll it into a ball. It takes about 2-3 minutes of rolling per ball.

This is a book of fun poems for kids. They are all fun to read, and was enjoyed both by Liam (4 years old) and Henry (2 years old), though Henry did walk off towards the end. The poems are accompanied by fun illustrations, and is a good book to read.

When I was a kid my parents never read me books of poems, so I do find myself feeling a little uncomfortable with them. But Liam has found poems to be really fun and has continued to get a lot out of a previous poetry book that I reviewed Big Book of Verse for Aussie Kids by Jim Haynes. I’ve been surprised by how much he enjoys it, and even quotes poems in the bath to Henry (I recommend ‘Inky Pinky Ponky’). He thinks that it is HILARIOUS.

This book doesn’t have anything hilarious in it, but it is definitely fun and it will probably be reasonably popular with Liam.

I have been on a hat making craze, with the sudden chill in the air and the new yarn in my possession I sat on the couch and crocheted. Tea, couch and crochet the perfect remedy for a cold. I made hats for my boys (pictured here) made hats for the nephews (soon to be in the post boys), and spare hats for gifts for friends and family. I tried to make myself a hat three times but each time it was stolen by appreciative family members.

The pattern I made roughly follows these guidelines:
Crochet a chain of 3 and make a loop, then single crochet 9 stitches into the loop, the next row increase every stitch, the third row increase every third stitch, and so on – crocheting single crochet round and round, increasing incrementally to keep your round piece flat until you have a circle with a circumference that is approximately 1/3 the circumference of the recipients head. Its a very forgiving recipe, with the crochet stitches stretching quite a bit to fit a variety of head sizes. Once you reach this part, all you have to do it continue to crochet around and around, without increasing or decreasing at all until you have crocheted about 20 more rows – at this point try it on and see if it fits, add a few more rows as necessary then tie it off and weave in that loose end. I like the nubbly texture of single crochet – but some of these hats pictured I have used triple crochet which goes much quicker and adding ear flaps and pompoms are optional.

Some other people’s crochet hat recipes that might help you out:
double crochet beanie
baby beanie hat with ear flaps and very easy directions for beginner crocheters
single crochet hat – this is basically the design I use – so simple to make
here is a good design if you want to add a visor
another super simple single crochet beanie recipe
great skater beanie recipe

The other night I was desperately searching for a cheesecake recipe. My tweeter friends sent me links, I checked out Delia Smith and Martha Stewart, but I was looking for instant gratification. So I opened up my new favourite recipe book by Jamie Oliver. Its not a baked cheesecake (although I do truly love those) and it is not low-fat – no indeed.

This is a quick cheesecake recipe that really satisfies:
Ingredients: Mixture: 3x bars of cream cheese : 1.5 cups of cream : vanilla pod : 3/4 cup of fine sugar : rind and juice of 1 lemon : rind of 1 orange. Base: 1 pack of biscuits (such as cream crackers or milk biscuits) : 1 cup of fine ground oats : 3/4 cup of butter.

What to do:
In a saucepan, brown your oats until golden, then add your finely ground crackers crumbs and the butter and mix until it is all buttery and crumbly. Put into your cake pan (with removable base) (I made 2 smaller ones rather than one big one), and press down until firm. Place in the freezer for an hour to firm up and chill.

In your mixmaster place the cream cheese and sugar, lemon and orange rind and lemon juice. Scrape out the vanilla pod seeds and add them in too. This mix with your paddle attachment until all creamy and gooey. In another bowl whip your cream and then fold this into your cream cheese mixture. Splat into your chilled base pans and smooth over. Then chill again for another hour or so until ready to eat.

Jamie recommends serving with berry coulis (which I made with frozen berries and sugar and then strained the seeds from). But we decided that it was better to have this on the side as overwhelms the subtle vanilla lemon flavour a little too much for me. Devour this quickly – yummy!

You can store the spare cheesecake in the freezer until you are ready to eat it too. As per Jamie’s instructions I am passing on this recipe to my friends, so if you do the same then we can help Jamie in is homemade food revolution. (check out Jamie’s TED video for some inspiration.)

Dinosaurs has a couple of really cool things that together make it great.
First of all it is a popup book, and popups of big, fanged dinosaurs chasing GIANT herbivores makes for a really exciting page opening experience. When Liam first opened the wrapping on this book, we thought “this book isn’t going to last five minutes”, and indeed within (literally) minutes, a scaly bird had been ripped off from one of the pages. But surprisingly it has been very well looked after since, and no other real damage has been done. Still, I don’t expect it to last a really long time in the face of the high usage that it is getting.
Secondly, whenever you turn one of the popup pages, the book makes noises. Scary, Carnivore hunting through the forest noises.
But, for me the best part is that each double-page popup is accompanied by a detailed informational page. This informational page has a solid paragraph on each dinosaur shown in the popup, using big words and potentially difficult concepts. And Liam loves me to read these to him. “Read the Tyrannosaur one to me dad!”. He is also pretty keen on the Allosaurus (the lesser known awesome predator from the Jurassic period). This part is full of information to keep the kids happy and interested. It has text like

Allosaurus was the biggest of the Jurassic meat-eaters: twice the size of Ceratosaurus. Its huge three-clawed hands were as large as a human head, and its razor sharp, serrated teeth were perfect for tearing flesh from bone.

Liam loves that part.

Overall, this book is never going to be a keeper; in fact it is probably going to be a tattered mess in 6 months. But in the meantime Liam is getting immense enjoyment from it and learning something interesting at the same time. I fully recommend it.

After making this oh-so-super-easy homemade tomato paste you are never going to buy any ever again. Even if you don’t grow your own tomatoes all you need to do is go to the market and buy a box of over-ripe tomatoes and some locally grown garlic and you are set for the most amazing smell to waft throughout your house.

I use this tomato paste as a flavouring in soups and casseroles and stews – yes its fantastic for that. But also its perfect for pizza, for dips and even sandwiches. Use it anywhere you need a tomato tapenade or extra burst of flavour.

Make a few jars of this and stash them in your fridge – they make cooking a whole heap quicker – for a bonus … here is a Jamie Oliver one-pot chicken dish that is my go-to dinner when I can’t think of anything else. This is a slight variation on Jamie’s dish – as it uses my tomato paste instead of fresh herbs and garlic.

Quick tomato and chicken one-pot dinner:

Take a few chicken thighs (depending on how many you are feeding) and chop them into large chunks, fry them in your oven safe casserole dish with some olive oil. Meanwhile peel and boil a few potatoes (one per person as a rough guide) – drain the almost cooked potatoes and toss them in with the browned chicken. Take it off the stove and add a few spoonfuls of your homemade tomato paste (with garlic), and then add in a few roughly chopped fresh tomatoes, a pinch of salt and another splash of olive oil. Bake in a medium oven for 20 minutes. Serve with a fresh salad. (if you don’t have any homemade tomato paste then you will need a handful of fresh herbs such as thyme and oregano and some chopped garlic gloves)

But here is my recipe for my homemade tomato paste…

You will need as many overripe tomatoes as you can get a hold of – cut them in half and lay them open side up on a baking tray. Splash or spray good olive oil over the tomatoes, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Then peel a few garlic cloves and throw them in with the tomatoes (I used our homegrown garlic here) – use local garlic without all those terrible chemicals sprayed all over them. Bake in a medium/slow oven for about an hour. You want the tomatoes to have shrunken and browned a little but not be too dark.

Take your roasted tomatoes and garlic and put them into your food processor – if you don’t have one you can use a stick blender, pestle and morter or even a potato masher – and blend until you have a lovely paste. Now you can add a few different flavours – its up to you – some ideas include: anchovies in oil (just a couple), salted capers (rinse the salt off first), pitted marinated olives, roasted capsicum (adds sweetness), roasted chillies (add a bit of spiciness), or even roasted eggplant (adds a smoky flavour), also add some more olive oil.

Put your paste into clean jars that you have sterilised with boiling water, and pour a layer of olive oil over the top. Seal with your lids and label. The jars will keep in the fridge for about a month like this. Alternatively this freezes very well too – so if you do have a huge glut of tomatoes in your veggie patch why not make enough paste for the rest of the year!

I don’t know about you, but mornings in our house are a chaotic rush – getting the kids motivated to get ready on time, and then getting them to eat a good breakfast is a pretty tough call. A new year called for a new method, so we called in the big gun – negotiation! After a family meeting we discovered 2 things – 1. the kids don’t like surprises for breakfast (they like to know what they are getting in advance) 2. we all agree that a hearty breakfast is a good thing and we don’t want to ditch that.

So with those 2 things in mind we designed a breakfast menu for the week, and agreed that 1. the parents would get up early to get breakfast prepared and 2. the kids would get up and dressed and get ready for school in time without fussing. One week and it is working so far. We lapsed one day and we (the parents) slept in and so the kids got cereal for breakfast and everyone was late.

Here is our breakfast menu:
Monday:eggs how you like it (some like them scrambled some like them fried)
Tuesday: sushi (not such a big deal – just have to get up early to prepare the rice – and its great to have some left over to send to school) [here is a recipe - but we use a sushi flavoured vinegar + then fill with leftover chicken breast marinated in soy+mirin for 5 minutes, sometimes we do a quick omelette, and sometimes its avocado + cucumber - whatever you have available - the only essentials are the sushi rice, sushi flavoured vinegar and nori sheets]
Wednesday: Muffins (2 kinds – berry and double chocolate – see recipe below – and again these are great to take leftovers to work and school)
Thursday: eggs how you like it (yes again – we have chooks so having eggs on the menu is a must)
Friday: French Toast (again sounds fancy but it actually super easy – served with cinnamon sugar or maple syrup) [here is a recipe, but you don't need fancy bread - just any day old thick sliced farm break will do]
Saturday: Crepes (again these are easy to make – take a bit of practice but are yummy served with lemon and sugar or even filled with fruit and yogurt) [here is a recipe - you can even make the batter the night before and cover and keep in the fridge]
Sunday: lazy day - get your own breakfast – I am sleeping in.

Other breakfast menu options include: pancakes, rice pudding, toast with tomato/ham/cream cheese/avocado/, toasted cheese sandwich, fruit smoothies (add frozen fruit, banana, LSA, yogurt, egg, honey, nuts), oatmeal (porridge), omelette etc… [our parameter are - 20-25 minutes max to cook/prepare, healthy - high in fibre + protein + energy to get us through the day]

Recipe for easy no-need-to-weigh-anything muffins

1 cup regular cake flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder
4 tablespoons of powdered milk (could substitute coconut or soy powdered milk)
4 tablespoons of LSA (finely ground linseeds, sunflower seeds and almonds, is full of fibre, magnesium, omega-3 fats, vitamins E, D, B1 (Thiamin), B2 (Riboflavin), B5 (Pantothenic acid), biotin, calcium, phosphorous, potassium, zinc and numerous other micronutrients.) You could substitute ground almonds as it has a similar texture.
4 tablespoons of quick cook oats (not instant – these are finely sliced oats and cook quicker than regular ones – if you use regular ones – let them soak in warm water for 20 minutes before using them so they break down a bit)
1/2 cup of white sugar (you could also use a combination of brown sugar + honey for a different flavour)
1/2 cup of melted butter
3 eggs (or 2 is fine but I like to add extra eggs where I can for added nutrients)
1 cup of water
pinch of salt if you like

Mix all the dry ingredients together
Whisk the wet ingredients together
Mix them both together (should be a medium batter – not to runny not too stiff)

This makes 12 good sized muffins – take a 12 muffin pan try and line with paper muffin cups – spray with spray oil. Spoon in the muffin mix and sprinkle with brown sugar – bake for 15 mins on medium/high heat.

Because some people in our house like berries and others don’t, I make 6 with berries and then add some extra ingredients to the other half of the batter for a different version:
Version 1 with berries: Spoon these 1/4 full of muffin mix and then spoon in a few frozen berries into each one – then fill the muffin pans 3/4 full of the mix and bake (top with a sprinkle of sugar if desired).
Version 2: chocolate muffins – add 4 tablespoons of milo powder or other powdered chocolate, and a few spoonfuls of choc chips to the mix.
Version 3: add dried cranberries and flaked coconut to the mix
Version 4: add mashed banana and peanut butter to the mix (substitute for some of the liquid)
Version 5: (if you are not a sweet person then omit the sugar first) then add grated cheese and chopped fresh herbs (like parsely).
Version 6: add a cup of muesli instead of oats to the dry batter.

If you mix up the dry ingredients the night before then this takes only a few minutes to get in the oven and you have a good breakfast in 20 minutes.

Homemade Muesli:

Lately I have been making a big batch of homemade muesli too – sometimes we have our hot breakfast then a bowl of muesli with yogurt to follow – sometimes I take a plastic container filled with muesli to work and add milk for a very nice lunch. Often the kids will have muesli for an after school snack – again this is such a versatile recipe and so easy to switch up and mix up to suit your own personal tastes.

Bag of organic 5-grain (rolled whole whoatseat, rye, oats, flaxseed, barley, and triticale) if you can’t get 5-grain – regular oats are fine too
Handful of dried cranberries
Handful of chopped dried peaches and pears
Just a few chopped dried strawberries (just a few of these luxurious treats chopped up make for a tasty hit)
Other dried fruits of your choice (we are not big on sultanas so we leave them out – but other dried fruits could include dried blueberries, dates, figs, apples, apricots etc)
Cup of mixed seeds – (pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds)
Cup of puffed rice (we added sweetened puffed rice to ours for a sweet hit every now and again)
Cup of whole almonds

other options to add include:
coarse LSA (ground linseeds, sunflower seeds and almond), coconut flakes, Wheatgerm, soy grits

Mix all this up and store in an airtight container – serve up with milk (we like with rice milk) or yoghurt – try adding some fresh fruit too.

mmm… enjoy