Menu Plan #2

Chicken Potato Pies

Here's the dinner menu for this week:

Monday: dinner out at parents' place
Tuesday: kid's dinner - fish with vegies; adult's dinner (with guests) - Chicken and Chick Pea Curry
Wednesday: Homemade Pizza
Thursday: Spaghetti Bolognaise (from the freezer from last week!)
Friday: Chicken Potato Pies (from this Friendly Food recipe book) and vegies with Apple Pie for Dessert (will post recipe soon!)
Saturday: Lamb cutlets and vegies (my husband is out for dinner so we could afford to buy for 3 of us!)
Sunday: Homemade hamburgers (Daughter's bun from Choices)

Chicken and Chick Pea Curry is a fabulous meal that can also be frozen and given to friends who need a meal or just saved for the next week. I will blog an allergen free version soon.

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It is on the right of the screen just below my introduction. Hope it helps you too.

Yoghurt

 photo from here

Soy yoghurt is an essential part of my daughter's calcium intake. She has it every night, as long as she has eaten enough of her dinner (vegetables specifically - she's such a carnivore!) because, apart from milk, it's her only big calcium product in her diet. Click here for other calcium ideas.

We currently use Soy Life Yoghurt, either vanilla or blueberry. You can get mango/apricot but she didn't like it. They come in 2 packs and tend to last us 4 nights. A tub is 26% of Recommended Daily Intake for Calcium. The other option is Kingland Yoghurts (not a great website unfortunately) that come in a 4 pack. They are good but not as economical for us at this stage.

Breakfast again

While we were in Japan we could only get cornflakes for the children to eat and even though I had brought rice porridge for my daughter to eat, she ended up eating the cornflakes because almost 2 year olds want to eat the same as the other children around them.

Now that we are home, we have bought Freedom Foods' version of corn flakes because they add fibre (in the form of psyllium) and they are low in salt. She is eating more breakfast than she ever has so we will stick with this for a while. She also has a slice of toast (from Choices) after the cornflakes. We might try the rice porridge again in winter time.

Chinese Noodle Salad

This is such a yummy salad and it can be done gluten free thanks to this product:

Here's the recipe


1/4 large Wombok/Chinese Cabbage, sliced thinly
1/4-1/2 bunch of shallots (green onions), sliced
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1 packet Chang's Gluten Free Fried Noodles, prepared as per instructions

Mix cabbage and shallots in a bowl. Roast the sunflower seeds in a frypan or in the oven until turning golden and put aside until ready to serve salad. Prepare dressing as per below.

Dressing:
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon soy sauce

Mix the dressing ingredients by shaking together.

When ready to serve, mix cabbage with seeds, then add noodles and at the last minute the dressing. Mix well and enjoy.

Note: If your family can have nuts, you can roast some slivered almonds as well and add them to the mix. They make it really yummy but it's not an option for us.

This week's menu

I thought I would write out my menu plan for the week every now and then. Here's this week's:
- Spaghetti bolognaise (made with veal & pork mince, mushrooms, zucchini and corn)
- Steak on the BBQ done in this marinade with rosemary potatoes, chinese noodle salad and vegies
- Homemade fish & chips
- Autumn Spicy Rice
- Chicken nuggets and vegies
- Lamb roast with roast vegies.

I've just planned 6 so as to use up leftovers where possible and in case we have a night out. I usually find this works for us.

Planning to post our recipe for the Chinese Noodle Salad so stay tuned for Friday's post!

From the archives: Chicken marinade #2

We had this the other night and I took a photo of the chicken in the roasting tray. They are a family favourite so I thought I would post it again.

This is a Chinese marinade that I adapted from a Chinese cookbook I have. It is probably the best marinade I've ever had. The change I had to make was not using peanut oil and making sure the soy sauce is gluten-free.

90ml soy sauce (I buy Fountain brand)
60ml rice bran oil (or canola or vegetable etc)
1 Tbsp Chinese wine or dry sherry
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp finely grated fresh root ginger
2 tsp five-spice powder

Mix everything together well. Add chicken (there is enough to marinate 1.5kg chicken pieces, maybe a larger whole chicken) drumsticks/wings/whole chicken and coat completely. Cover and marinade for 1 hour or more.

Place in roasting pan and spoon some of the remaining marinade over the chicken. Roast in moderate (180degree C) oven for 45min-1 hour (until chicken is brown and crisp). Baste every 20mins (if you remember!).

Different chicken pieces will take different amounts of time. Wings ~45min, drumsticks ~45-55min, thighs ~1hr. An average whole chicken will take about 1hr 45min, but check the packaging.

It is delicious hot or cold. My kids had it cold the day after I cooked it and devoured 2 large drumsticks each.

Choices Muffin Premix Review

 Choices Bakery have a muffin premix and so my daughter and I made them yesterday to take to a morning tea with a friend. You have to add milk (we did soy), oil (we did rice-bran), egg replacer (or 1 egg), and your favourite flavour - we added dates and a bit of brown sugar.

They turned out really well - popped out of the tins easily and had a great cake-y texture and a pretty nice taste. The other 2 year old we visited ate 4 mini muffins and wanted more! My daughter, it seems, only likes the muffin top... hmmm.

We might try blueberries in it next time!

Back again Brownies

Hello again! I hope 2011 is going well for you. I am back from our various holidays and ready to get into this year looking for healthy and fun ways to cook for my kids with allergies.

Here's a holiday food that we experienced while we were away. Packet mixes are so good when you are on holidays. This one required you to add eggs/replacer and butter/margarine/dairy-free spread which you tend to take with you. It was very yummy.

Looking on Melinda's website, they have some fabulous things to check out.