Food – Page 5 – Nightwolf's Den

Two weeks of Thermomix goodness?

I’m really looking forward to this. For the next 14 days I’m cooking Thermomix main meals. What meals you ask? Well wait no more cause here’s the list…….

Honey Chicken with rice
Potato topped meatloaf & veggies
Moroccan style roast chicken and roast vegies
Teriyaki Pork Meatballs, Steamed Rice and Vegetables
Creamy bacon & basil bowtie pasta (Thermofun 2014 p56)
Creamy Chicken Vol au Vents
honey beef and steamed rice
potato mashies & popcorn chicken
beef strog (EDC)
beef & bacon pasta bake
chicken mornay
devil snags and mashed potato
beef rissoles
beef pies

Won’t be cooking them in this order but that’s what we’re having. Lots of chicken and beef, hubby will be happy.

I’ll be back in a week to give you the first 7 days of recipes, photos and opinions 🙂

Give me 2 weeks and I’ll give you 14 recipes

As you know, I LOVE cooking and baking and I’ve decided to challenge myself to do a few 2 week challenges and then you get the recipes PLUS I’ll be sharing our opinion on whether it’s a yay or nay.

So what are the challenges?

14 days using YIAH in our main meal
14 days of Thermomix main meals
14 days of baking with YIAH
14 days of baking with Thermomix (are you sensing a theme lol)
14 of recipes from Pinterest
????? who knows – I’m open to ideas

Starting on Tuesday I’ll be back posting what I’m cooking for the fortnight starting with using my Thermo for 14 main meals

In the Den Kitchen – YIAH Choc Chip biscuits

You can now find previous In the Den Kitchen posts here or on Pinterest. Clicking Recipes in the menu above will also take you to my In the Den Kitchen Pinterest board. I’m slowly reworking some older posts so they will show up there too.
Links to any Your Inspiration at Home (YIAH) products will take you to my YIAH page. You can shop in Australia, New Zealand, USA & Canada from my page. If you are interested in learning about YIAH jump over to my Facebook page.

Today’s recipe is a yummy snack or a great addition to your kid’s lunchbox 😉

You can make this with any of the YIAH chocolate powders – this time I used Choc Orange and the dark mint chocolate. Chocolate raspberry would be yum, as would Salted Maple or Chilli-Chocolate.

[yumprint-recipe id=’23’]

In the Den Kitchen – Chocolate Cake

Last week I mentioned I made chocolate cake. This is a recipe I’ve made for years and came from an Australian kids cookbook called Clarry’s Kitchen Capers (I think, it was in a blue plastic folder, designed for kids.) The recipe was called Mother’s Day Chocolate Cake. Anywho here is my Thermomix conversion

[yumprint-recipe id=’22’]To make it without a thermomix, chuck all the cake ingredients into a bowl, mix then pour into your cake tin 😉

In the Den Kitchen – First birthday edition

Miss A turned one (!!) last weekend so this week I thought I’d share some of the food I made for her party. We themed it around the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar so food choices were pretty easy (You can read more about the party over at From the Wolf’s Den)

Starting with the egg on the leaf I made Devilled Eggs using YIAH Bay of Bengal Curry dip mix

Then apples, pears, strawberries, grapes (instead of plums), oranges and watermelon on a fruit platter

And the Saturday foods….

chocolate cake and cupcakes (orange and banana) – I’ll be sharing the chocolate cake recipe next week. You can find the orange cake recipe here, I iced them using some YIAH Choc Orange chocolate powder and my banana cake recipe here

Ice cream cones. There’s a bit of a story here… we started off thinking we’d use ice cream lollies, then I found a recipe that was choc filled cones with a marshmallow on top but we couldn’t find mini ice cream cones, so, I trawled Pinterest and saw marshmallow cones. Perfect. Found a recipe for sherbet and a recipe for marshmallow. The sherbet tastes like Wizz Fizz and the marshmallow was soft and fluffy. I did learn a lesson from this adventure – make it on the day you want to serve it otherwise things go soft and the 100s and 1000s loose their colour.

Swiss cheese and salami, a glass full of lolly pops, mini savs for the sausage and mini cherry pies (which were made in paper gelato cups with a square of puff pastry filled with tinned cherry pie filling).

The green leaf was represented by a green salad. Cocoons were made by cutting puff pastry in half then cutting those haves into 2 triangles. Spoon a blob of nutella on the long end then roll up towards the point (like a croissant). Bake for 30 mins in a 180C oven. Butterflies were a last minute decision – fairy bread cut into butterfly shapes.

So there you have it. Food fit for a Very Hungry Caterpillar.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar ate some cake

and mummy went a little mad trying to work out which cake she would make

Untitled-1

Yet again, Pinterest will be the death of me 😉 so many cake options.

Do I do something fancy like these?

The very hungry caterpillar cake and cookies http://butterheartssugar.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/very-hungry-caterpillar-cake-and-cookies.html Elaine's Sweet Life: The Very Hungry Caterpillar Cake with Butterfly. Made with fondant and hand painted.

or something simpler like these?

Very Hungry Caterpillar Cake, fondant fruit around base A Very Hungry Caterpillar Birthday Party - Rainbow Cake by Made With Pink, via Flickr Google Image Result for http://betweenthepagesblog.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a5924ef0970b017ee74a0ae7970d-pi The Very Hungry Caterpillar Cake by Relznik, patacake-parties via Flickr

or something really simple like a cupcake caterpillar?

Very Hungry Caterpillar cake! #birthday #party #cake Gives tips on how to swirl the frosting colors to resemble the colors in the book.

What we’ve chosen will be a secret til the day of the party 😉

Save

A very hungry caterpillar went looking for some food

and found sooooo many ideas on Pinterest it wasn’t funny. Seriously, how many ways can you do food that is themed to the caterpillar?
I’m keeping it simple, mainly cause Miss K has soccer the morning of the party and I need to make it as easy as possible!
How much more simple than taking my cues from the story!!
In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf – devilled eggs on a bed of lettuce leaves

it's me, andrea.: A "Very Hungry Caterpillar" birthday party.

For Monday (one apple), Tuesday (2 pears), Wednesday (3 plums – thinking we might do grapes), Thursday (4 strawberries) and Friday (5 oranges) – a fruit platter
Saturday…

chocolate cake – brownies
ice cream cone – maybe small ice cream cones filled with something not ice cream or ice cream lollies
pickle – not sure about this one
Swiss cheese – and biscuits
salami – maybe some twiggy sticks
lollypop – mini lollipops?
cherry pie
sausage – mini savs
cupcakes
watermelon (on the fruit platter)

Sunday The Caterpillar ate through a nice green leaf – a salad
The cocoon – these nutella ‘cocoons’

"cocoons" for caterpillar bday- Nutella and cinnamon inside for Caleb's 1st birthday. "A Very Hungry Caterpillar" party.

A beautiful butterfly – butterfly sugar biscuits
I’d like to do something like these

butterfly cookie favors. how can these be so perfect?

but it will most likely be something like these
98057d377a70b9d76fa8bcc52bdbe763
And somewhere in there I’ll do sandwiches. That look like this.

Oh and the cake, but that I’m saving for next time.

You can check out my ideas on my Very Hungry Caterpillar birthday Pinterest board

Save

Healthy food choice for the little people

This post is brought to you in collaboration with Heinz Australia.

There can be so much confusion over when to introduce solids and what are suitable types of solid food for babies. What ARE healthy baby solid foods?

All babies will be different, but when Miss A turned 6 months we decided that it was time to slowly introduce her into the amazing world of solid foods. Well truth be told, she decided she wanted to eat solid foods, grabbing food off my plate or out of our hands. We started on purees of vegetables. Sweet potato was an instant hit, other vegies, not so much. Fruit was another success. One thing that we found great was the Heinz pouches designed for 6 months +. Easy to use and full of yummy fruits, vegies and meats – Miss A loved them. Great to keep in the cupboard and grab and go (especially when paired with the Heinz soft twist top spoon tips). Downside of the pouches – no awesome little jars to keep things in – seriously baby food jars are awesome storage for crafty bits or nails/screws/bolts etc. Bonus tip there for you all 😉

So why do we personally pick Heinz over other brands the majority of the time? For us it’s not just about price, it’s about knowing what goes into the product. Something that is nutritious and something that is good for my infant. For example, did you know Heinz source their apples, pears and peaches from Goulburn Valley, and pumpkins from country Victoria? Ingredients are delivered to the Heinz baby food facility in Echuca, where they are lovingly prepared.

clip_image008

Creating a diet for our kids that has low to no nasty numbers is also a big thing for me. We have a few different allergies in our families and I’ve seen how numbers can effect behaviours. Heinz infant meals are steamed cooked and after cooking, all of the Heinz infant jars, cans, and pouches are heat sealed, locking in all the delicious flavours and preventing the need for preservatives! No nasty numbers or preservatives. Heinz infant meals have no artificial colours, no artificial flavours, and no preservatives.

I totally love that Heinz infant meals grow with your baby too, providing meal options and snacks from babies from 4 months (if you decide to start introducing solids from this age) through to 12 months +. Miss K (who is 5) still loves snacking on the Heinz Little Kidsfruit bars and sharing the Heinz Nutrios with her sister. AND who can go past the good old Teething Rusks, they were a teething staple when I was young and we’ve used them for both our girls.

TheGoodStuff

In the Den Kitchen – Mars Bar Slice

So what do you do when you want something a little (hell who am I kidding – a LOT) sweet. Maybe something like Mars Bar Slice (YUMMO!) BUT, oh no, no Mars Bars in the house 🙁 and the shops are closed/you can’t be bothered going out 🙁 🙁 Well don’t despair! You can make Mars Bar Surprise Slice!!

This wonderful recipe I found one night while reading a great little book by the name of The $21 challenge. My whole family loves it and when my daughter asked me to make it for school the next day, just as she was going to bed I thought I’d see how well it converted to Thermo. So here it is – Thermo Mars Bar Surprise Slice (if you want the original non Thermomix recipe go here – page 6)

[yumprint-recipe id=’21’]

From the Den Kitchen–Marbled Chocolate Cheesecake Slice

This is a family favourite slice. I have fond memories of my Godmother or my Mum cooking it when we went away for family holidays.

[yumprint-recipe id=’20’]