food

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• healthy (10)
• lunchboxes (5)
• recipes (35)

articles

• Ginger Bread Men biscuit recipe– easy to make with kids
• Sausages and mash with rosemary onion gravy
• Fish Pie – easy to prepare
• Roasted Butternut Risotto recipe
• Easy Eggless Carob and Almond Cake
• DIY Kids: How to Use Your Car to Make Dried Fruit
• Healthy-ish Halloween recipes
• Use mealtimes to connect & say thanks
• Teach your kids to drink loads of water!
• Good Food and Wine Show reviewed
• Quick easy pasta recipes with chicken and pesto
• Watercress, Bacon and Kumquat salad
• Cheesy Baked Tomatoes
• Cajun Chicken and Greek Salad Wraps
• Dairy Free Frosted Banana Spice Cupcakes
• Super Simple Leek & Potato Soup
• Cantonese chicken soup called Jook
• Chicken soup recipe
• Potato Curry recipe
• Swedish Meatballs
• Summer Salads with papaya & strawberries
• Carrot/butternut & cardamom soup
• Split Pea and Bacon or Feta Soup
• Meal-in-a-bowl Lentil Soup
• Witchy Winter Pumpkin Soup
• Our kiddies pizza party
• Savoury & sweet party snacks
• Lamb & pork recipes with herbs
• Easy recipes with healthy herbs for busy parents
• Would you accept a C- when it came to your child’s health?
• YOU are what your child eats…
• Healthy food tips for your schoolchild.
• Cheese & Onion Drop Scones
• Back-to-school lunch box tips
• Christmas cake recipe – gluten free
• Easy Xmas biscuits I made with my kids
• German Xmas biscuit recipes-my family favourites
• Chocolate Hazelnut Cake Recipe (gluten Free)
• Healthy smoothie recipes
• Healthy kids lunchbox ideas
• Sweetcorn and potato soup recipe
• Veggie soup, simple but yummy
• Tasty Chinese winter soup recipes
• Roast butternut, feta and coriander quesadillas recipe
• Mother’s Day recipe: spinach, mushroom, tomato and béchamel crepes
• Chocolate chip pancakes for Easter
• A meaty issue
• Fast food made healthy
• What is a balanced nutritious diet for kids
• Lunchbox ideas for school
• Healthy family recipes
• Gourmet kids Xmas recipes
• Greenland’s separates the health shop & deli/ eatery!

Supplied by Shakira Sheikh, devoted mom to 2 beautiful boys who loves cooking, crafting and working for Jozikids and Kznkids

This is a brilliant way to get your kids into the kitchen….even if they are boys!! I don’t have daughters so I do a lot of baking with my boys, and  they love it too, as they get to eat what they make.  This weekend we made ginger bread men. What’s nice about making GBM, is that the rolling and patting of the dough is actually good for low muscle tone, strengthening the fingers, and the kids love the texture in the hands, so instead of using a biscuit cutter for the GBM, we made it from scratch, the head, body, arms & legs and decorated them with choc chips. You can also use smarties for eyes if you like, and the end product is yum!

Ingredients:

2 cups cake flour

Method:

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supplied by Geraldine Fynn-Green, Hospitality & Catering lecturer, mom-of-one for now (eek!) and nagging wife to a patient man. Food in our house is always prepared with family in mind and that means no separate meals for our little 15 month old foodie, Gia.

In light of the whole donkey-in-my-meat debacle I would suggest using chicken sausages. Soya sausages especially the “Braai” style would be really great in this recipe for vegetarians or for a meatless Monday meal. If making this recipe for adults only an amazing idea is replacing half of the stock with red wine.  Aah wine…

Ingredients:

8 potatoes, peeled and quartered

150ml milk or cream (very decadent!), room temperature

2-3 tbls butter

Salt and pepper

6-8 chicken sausages

3 onions, peeled and sliced half moon

2 tsp brown sugar

3 tsp balsamic vinegar

1 tsp cornflour

1 ½ cups chicken stock

2 sprigs of rosemary

Method:

supplied by Geraldine Fynn-Green, Hospitality & Catering lecturer, mom-of-one for now (eek!) and nagging wife to a patient man. Food in our house is always prepared with family in mind and that means no separate meals for our little 15 month old foodie, Gia.

“Until I discovered cooking, I was never really interested in anything.” ― Julia Child

This recipe is easy to prepare with minimal prep work (besides the mash and sauce). While better suited to slightly cooler weather it can be served with a beautifully light and crisp salad in summer. To increase the decadence use fish like salmon, increase the amount of prawns  (and more cream!).  

Ingredients:

1 box frozen hake fillets, skinned and cubed

1 large smoked haddock fillet, skinned and cubed

350g prawns, shelled and deveined

2 carrots, chopped

1 medium onion, sliced

3 bulbs garlic, roughly crushed

1 cup frozen peas

Salt and pepper to taste

2 cups white sauce

½ cup cream

Potato mash made with 8-10 medium sized potatoes

1 egg, room temperature

Method:

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supplied by Geraldine Fynn-Green, Hospitality & Catering lecturer, mom-of-one for now (eek!) and nagging wife to a patient man. Food in our house is always prepared with family in mind and that means no separate meals for our little 15 month old foodie, Gia.

“Until I discovered cooking, I was never really interested in anything.” ― Julia Child

While this method for preparing risotto may not be very traditional it frees you up from standing in front of the stove throughout the cooking time. Time better spent watching ANOTHER episode of Teletubbies or getting splashed on during bath time.

Ingredients:

300 g diced butternut

80 ml olive oil

2 garlic cloves, roughly crushed

2 cinnamon sticks

1 onion, chopped

2 tsp roughly chopped parsley

375 ml risotto rice

1 ½ litre chicken stock (if using stock cubes or powder use one with low sodium if you can find it)

2 tbls butter

Method :

Various additions can be made i.e. adding prawns, mushrooms and even roasted peppers.

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supplied by Nicole Sartini, fabulous mom, Jozikids helper, student, baker and so much more

This is a very easy and versatile recipe – make it for a vegetarian or vegan* friend if you aren’t one yourself!  Eggs and dairy are a standard in most homes and commercial baking, denying many veggies the opportunity to partake in much cake eating.  This is a delicious cake that everyone can enjoy, so stop excluding your chicken, cow and tree hugging friends from your dinner table today!  It is also so easy your kids can help you mix and decorate it.

Group 1:
2 c vanilla yoghurt / milk /soya or rice milk*
2 T vinegar / lemon juice

Group 2
1 c oil (canola / coconut)
1 ½ c brown sugar
1t ground vanilla bean
½ t ground nutmeg
½ t cinnamon

Group 3
½ c carob powder, sifted
¼ t salt
2 t baking powder
1 t bicarb
1 c cake flour, sifted
1 c polenta
1 c ground almonds (or mix almonds and walnuts)

1. Mix the first group of ingredients together in a large mixing bowl.

2. Add the second group of ingredients to the mixing bowl and mix briefly with a wooden spoon.

3. Combine the third group of ingredients well before adding to the wet mixture.

4. Mix well, but quickly and pour into a greased and floured roasting pan.

5. Bake at 180’C for about 30 minutes or until a knife inserted comes out clean.

CAKE  TOPPING

For cake toppings I prefer sauces which are quick and easy to make and also look good.  For this cake prepare the topping when the cake is about to come out of the oven:

Group 1
½ c butter / coconut oil*
3 T carob powder, sifted
A pinch of ground vanilla
or vanilla extract/tsp vanilla essence
A pinch of nutmeg
A pinch of cinnamon
1/3 – ½ c brown sugar

Group 2
¼ – ½ c coconut milk
3 T cornstarch

Group 3
¼ c ground almonds and or toasted coconut

1. Mix the first group of ingredients together in a small saucepan over a moderate heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar.

2. Mix the second group of ingredients together and pour into the saucepan gradually, then raise the heat and stir continuously until the sauce thickens.

3. Pour over the cake (either in the pan or having removed it and placed it on a serving dish).

4. Sprinkle with ground almonds or toasted coconut (have fun – make patterns!) and cut into squares.

I often add fresh flowers (what have you got growing at the moment in your garden?), mint and berries as decorations and you could substitute the carob powder for cocoa powder if you prefer, but the flavor won’t be as subtle and you might want to add extra spices if you do.

For a wheat free cake you can use the cake flour in the Nature’s Choice range – I love and use their polenta often.

Shannon Walbran Niebuhr is our DIY Kids columnist.  She is a mommy blogger who also offers creativity classes for parents, teachers, and nannies to encourage more effective play with children.

Today’s project is something completely different, but it will make sense to all of you who have been sweltering in our summer’s heatwave.  What do you say when you’re stuck in the car? “This feels like an oven.”  Exactly!

This project teaches kids about where food comes from and how most of our processed food could be replicated at home if we just had enough time and skill.  For this project, we certainly have both.

What You’ll Need:

Step 1:  Cut your fruit into thinnish pieces.

Step 2: Lay the fruit out on a cutting board.  It’s OK if the pieces touch, as they are going to shrink in the heat.

Step 3: Park your car so it’s facing the sun.

Place the cutting board full of fruit on the dashboard.

Step 4:  After 4 to 5 hours, check to see that the sun is still shining directly on the dashboard.  If not, move the car.

Step 5: You can leave the fruit in the car overnight.  Our tray took 2 days to dry out.  But we even overdid it a bit, and the pieces were very crispy.

On the second day, or after 8 hours of sunshine, be sure to check the fruit and see if it’s dried to your liking.

Ours was so yummy and so much cheaper than buying dried fruit!  It was a great lesson in solar energy as well.

Please leave a comment below to let us know if you try this recipe!

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Supplied by Catherine Speedie, owner of  Gingko Good Food, an organic, wholefood restaurant and deli with a garden and kids play area in Parkview

 JACK O’LANTERN SMOOTHIE

 Cut a jack-o-lantern face out of black paper and tape it onto the tall glass to give it a true Halloween look. For the smoothie blend the following until smooth:

Ingredients:
· 1/4 cup cold water/organic milk
· 1/2 cup organic plain yoghurt
· 1 tblsp almonds
· 1/2 cup pureed pumpkin (unsweetened)
· 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
· 1 tblsp honey
· 1/4 tsp cinnamon
· 5 blocks ice

Makes one large smoothie

 SPOOKY SPIDER CRACKERS 

Ingredients (per ‘spider’):

2 round crackers
peanut or any nut butter – almond is good
8 egg noodle noodles
2 raisins

Directions:

Smear a small amount of nut butter onto the inside of one cracker. Place 4 chow mein noodles on one side of the cracker followed by 4 more on the other side. Place the remaining cracker on top. To make the ‘eyes’: dab two spots of peanut butter near the top of one crackers to ‘glue’ the raisins into place.

CHOCOLATE BAT CUPCAKES 

Ingredients:

Cupcakes (baked from your favorite recipe)

Directions:

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by Mia Von Scha, Transformational Coach, motivational speaker, children’s author, student to two Zen Masters (aka kids), avid cloud watcher and lover of life.

There is a really important tradition that seems to be slipping away in modern households – the tradition of saying grace. Now you may think that this is just a Christian tradition, but in fact it extends in some form or other to almost every culture and religion. There is certainly something to be said for giving thanks for the food we are about to eat. The more consciously you eat your food, the more slowly and lovingly you consume it, the more likely you are to eat less and only eat what nourishes you.

Grace can take many forms – thanking the spirit of the animal you’re about to eat, giving praise to a higher power, a small statement of gratitude that you have food on your table, or a hearty thanks to the person who made it!

In our home we use mealtimes as a chance to connect with each other, to notice the good in our lives, and to appreciate what we have, and it looks something like this…

We’ll start by checking in with everyone how their day was. Regardless of how good or bad each person’s day was, we then go around the table and each have a chance to say what our favourite part of the day was – one thing that we can be grateful for. I personally do this for myself in the evenings and find as many things as I can to be grateful for each day, but with little kids it’s easier to just notice one or two things  – the point is more to help them to notice the good even in a bad day, and to develop the habit of gratitude and looking for the positive. My husband and I will do our best to model for the kids the ability to see joy in the little things in life – the rainbow in the sprinkler, seeing the kids when we got home, a laugh we had with a friend.

We then say our form of “grace”, a little song that I made up for the kids to include positive affirmations as well as gratitude for the meal. We sing it to the tune of Frere Jacques and the kids call it The Truck Song. It goes like this:

I am happy

I am healthy

I am strong

I am loved

Thank you for the food I eat

And that I have hands and feet

Let’s gobble up

My tummy’s grumbling like a truck!

Use ours, use a traditional one from your religion or culture, or make up your own. The point is to appreciate everything that you have, to truly appreciate having a wonderful meal, and then to eat it with this feeling of gratitude and not just gobbling it down without a second thought.

by Joy Dembo, married, with an 18 year old son and a 25 year old daughter.  Addicted to the www, particularly Twitter. Recruitment Response Handling Consultant and Freelance Copywriter, vegetarian and animal lover. Visit her blog.

On Thursday evening I was quietly folding laundry and watching Hawaii 5 O, and minding my own business, when I suddenly felt an excruciating pain in my right side, accompanied by waves of nausea.

I threw up every bit of the awesome dinner my kids had made, much to my daughter’s disgust, but the pain just kept intensifying, and I kept telling Gav that I was dying and I got most annoyed with him when he had the cheek to say that I wasn’t.

Eventually I had to admit defeat and gingerly walked (crawled) down the stairs and agreed to let Gav take me to the Linksfield Clinic.  I was crying like a baby by this time and Gav had to stop twice for me to be sick.  Shame, poor people whose houses I threw up outside…nasty surprise for them in the morning L

The doc took one look at me and said he thought it was a kidney stone, so he gave me a cocktail of painkilling drugs through an intravenous drip and off I went for a CAT scan.  The cocktail didn’t do much for the pain and the CAT scan and abdominal x-ray were a bit of a blur as I concentrated hard on not dying or throwing up all over that expensive machine!

Once the stone had been confirmed, the doc said they were going to admit me and hopefully I would pass the stone naturally, as it was quite low down.  I didn’t want to stay but he asked me whether I was able to manage the pain at home, and I decided to take the pethadine injection and be admitted like a good little girl.

Thankfully, the pethadine had me flying 1st class around the world, with no pain for a few hours.  Although I was sieving my urine (don’t even ask!!!), I didn’t see the stone pass, but miraculously at about 3 am the pain disappeared.

I saw the doc in the morning… gorgeous, young, thin, brainy (do u want to see someone like that when u look like hell after not closing your eyes once the entire night, and having no make up or even a brush with u!)  Anyway, she said she would send me to have another x-ray and if the stone had passed I could go home. The alternative, if the stone had not passed, was too horrible to contemplate, so I won’t go into detail!

Anyway, thankfully, the stone was not visible on the x-ray, but “Dr Barbie Doll” decided to keep me in the hospital for another 24 hours just be sure <groan>

The lesson here?

Drink gallons and litres of water!  You honestly don’t want to go thru’ the fun times I went thru!

Reviewer  Daniel Janks: actor, creative director, writer, cynic, father, husband. He was born in 1977 and has still not died. He loves many things, chief among which are his mythic wife and odd girl-child.  Visit his website

An afternoon’s worth of free fudge, but not much else

The Good Food & Wine Show at the Coca-Cola Dome is chock-a-block full of stalls selling everything from avocado oil to zoo biscuits. If you’re looking for some speciality ingredients for baking or cooking, wanting to stock up on larny utensils or kitchen appliances, or fancy seeing a cooking demo by some great international chefs, then head to the Dome.

For the beginner cooking enthusiast there’s a lot to see and a lot to buy, but don’t expect to gorge yourself on endless free tidbits or try any gear. It seemed to me, a dedicated foodie, that the show’s emphasis is firmly on allowing exhibitors to try and sell as much stuff as possible, rather than trying to give the customer the best experience possible.

There’s the usual supply of homemade fudge and marinated olives. But with the growing foodie focus in most of SA’s supermarkets and the emergence of gourmet markets in most big cities, there’s little a show like this has to offer real food lovers and serious cooks. 

Having said that, I did manage to catch Adam Liaw’s hour-long cooking demonstration, and it was great. Adam is the winner of the second season of the Australian MasterChef series and he’s a great mix of humble, whip-smart and a great cook. He showed the audience how to cook some quick, easy Asian stuff and shared some of his philosophies and cooking knowledge. The food looked, and smelled, amazing and I learned a good few things I didn’t know before. Who knew it was so easy to make teriyaki sauce?

A definite plus to this year’s show is that any old body can watch the cooking demos for free. Your general admission ticket will get you into the Samsung Chefs in Action Theatre on a first-come-first-seated basis. You may have to do some queuing, but it’s well worth it.

So, my conclusion? There’s lots to see and buy. Some of it interesting; most of it not. If you’re a foodie you probably know where to get most of the stuff already and a trip to a Neighbourgoods Market and an outing to the Culinary Equipment Company may be more up your alley (and easier on your wallet). But if you like exhibitions in general and you’re looking for an afternoon surrounded by food, wine and LOTS of people, check it out.