Our news
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Beautiful Crystal Bay Prawns
Prior to Christmas I had read on one of the Facebook forums about Crystal Bay prawns. Most prawns are soaked in Sodium Metabisulphite as soon as they are caught. So even if you can tolerate amines, these are not suitable if you are trying to avoid preservatives. Crystal Bay prawns are the exception. They are available…
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Last Minute Christmas Baking (and my final post for the year)
Four more days until Christmas! Are you ready yet? It’s been a bit of rush here, on top of moving, organising for our house to be demolished and finalising our building contract (the thought of my new kitchen keeps me going 🙂 ). We had a street party last week (our old street) and I…
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Christmas Gingerbread House
Last weekend Oscar and I made our Gingerbread House for Christmas. We made one last year for the first time and he loved it. The dough can quite easily be made without spices, making it FAILSAFE (we use only cinnamon) and can be decorated with suitable lollies or plastic decorations. It is suggested that the…
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Teaching Oscar (and his teachers)
Oscar starts school next year, and the thing I worry most about is the “food issue” – mostly the effects of peer pressure and how the school will manage this, including: To address the issue with Oscar we created some posters together: Always Foods, Sometimes Foods, Never or Rarely Foods and Healthy Foods to Test…
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Rye and Spelt White Choc Chip Biscuits
This is my favourite biscuit recipe at the moment. Since I cut down on eating wheat, I’ve found that I can’t eat very much at all. Even 1 biscuit gives me terrible pains in the stomach (I guess I’m “food intolerance” as Oscar says!). These biscuits are easy and very filling, so even though I…
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Simple Halloween Cakes and Biscuits
It will be Halloween in a few weeks time. This isn’t an Australian celebration, but it is becoming more and more a part of our culture. We’ve had kids knocking on our door at Halloween for years, although until Oscar started going to Day Care I usually had no idea when it was and had…
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Three Easy Desserts/Snacks for Kids to Help Make
Lately, Oscar has been showing an interest in helping in the kitchen to prepare the evening meal. It’s a great way for him to learn about food and we talk about the different ingredients we use. He’s learning how to chop vegetables, squeeze lemons, whisk eggs and stir things on the stove. These are three…
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Pumpkin Rings with Mashed Potato and Steamed Bok Choy
This is a very simple moderate chemical (amines & salicylates) meal – baked salmon, mashed potato, pumpkin and bok choy. To make it a bit more interesting I made roasted pumpkin rings topped with mashed potato. The bok choy recipe I found on Martha Stewart’s site,
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Beef Koftas with Saffron Yogurt
This is an easy week night meal, that keeps our household sane when Oscar suddenly asks for (demands ) “dinner on sticks”. The saffron yogurt is nice change from using plain natural yogurt.
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Simple Spelt and Rye Biscuits
Oscar is a real biscuit fiend, he loves eating and making all sorts of biscuits, but he particularly likes making them with biscuit cutters. I’m always try to find ways to make biscuits “a bit healthy” and with rye and spelt flour these are. They are easy to make and taste great. I modified a Swedish…
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“Totally Awesome!” (Avengers Birthday Cake and Super Hero Party)
“Totally Awesome!” – that was Oscar’s response when he saw his completed birthday cake. Even before his fourth birthday party Oscar had chosen the theme for this year’s party – Spider Man. It only changed slightly in that time to “Super Heroes” when he discovered The Avengers on ABC 3. Oscar chose everything himself this…
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Fluffy Spelt Pancakes
It’s Oscar’s birthday today, so for his special day he will be having pancakes for breakfast. We make our pancakes with spelt flour now and they are much nicer than with regular flour. This recipe is based on my Fluffy Breakfast Pancakes recipe, with a few additional variations. You don’t need to have these for…
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Not-Quite Japanese Gyoza (Gluten Free)
Well, these are almost gyoza – I don’t think baking them really qualifies. I was trying to make pot sticker versions, but being too lazy to make my own wrappers I decide to try using rice paper instead. There were many such recipes on the Internet so I thought it would work. Unfortunately my first…
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Baked Chicken Tenders
Thank you to Damien who submitted this recipe on my About Us page some time ago. These chicken tenders are easy to make and the crumb is a nice change from coating chicken in plain bread/rice crumbs. The cooked chicken pieces can be frozen and added to lunch boxes, they would also make great party/finger…
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Making My Own – Vanilla Essence and Baking Powder
Vanilla Essence is very expensive, especially when you need to find a brand without preservatives. I finally decided to try making my own, and even using good quality organic vanilla beans and vodka I’m saving almost $2.50 per 50 ml. There a numerous recipes on the net for making vanilla essence and they really only…