Cheap and Cheerful: I Quit Sugar and Waste

Facebook keeps reminding me that I have't on my page for quite some time. So I thought I would share this with you, and my Facebook page, then that should keep Facebook happy for awhile. I've been a bit too busy lately to keep my blog up to date.
I've made a few changes in my life. I've started regular exercise and changed what I eat. I have borrowed a heap of Leslie Sansone Walk at home dvd's from the library, and am an I Quit Sugar (Sarah Wilson) convert. Consequently in the last 3 or 4 months I have lost 6 kgs, a total of 8kg over the last 12 months.
I recently bought Sarah Wilson's Simplicious cook book and love it so much it lives permanently on my kitchen bench, never making it to the shelf where the other cook books are kept. She has a fantastic website, the link to her website I Quit Sugar is under my Recommended Blogs. Scroll down the page and you'll see it on the left hand side. In the book is a recipe for Chicken Pot Au Feu. I made this the other night and the shredded chicken from it was delicious. One of the things I love about her cook book is her suggestions on what you can use the leftovers for. After making this chicken dish, here are the things I have made with the leftovers.
Four Ingredient Green Chook shred up Abundance Bowl - from the recipe book.
I discovered the stock/liquid makes a lovely thin soup or chicken stock. Freeze the excess in the ice cube tray for later use in other dishes.
I blended the left over vegies and made the following two dishes. Both have been big hits with my children, who usually veer away from vegies. There are no measurements (sorry), I just keep adding ingredients until the mix looked right.
"Yorkshire" style pudding:
Blended vegies, two eggs, gluten free self raising flour. Pre-heat oven to 200C/400F and place a little oil in the bottom of each cup in a muffin tray. If using a silicone muffin tray, omit oil. Mix all ingredients together until a thin batter has formed. Pour into muffin tray until 2/3 full. Place in oven and cook about 15mins.
Vegie muffins: Blended vegies, 1 egg, self raising flour (gluten free or normal), grated cheddar cheese. Preheat oven to 180C/350F. Beat all ingredients together until you have a cake mixture consistency. Pour into muffin tray. Cook until golden brown on top (approx 15-20 mins).

I've now used up all the chicken meat and vegies, but still have some of the stock left. This has been a very economical way to get so many dishes out of one meal. Thank you Sarah Wilson and the I Quit Sugar team! And to top it off, I used the offcuts from the vegies to make Sarah's vegie stock in my slow cooker. Nothing was wasted! Once I had finished with the vegie scraps after making the stock, they went into my compost heap. The only thing to make it to the bin was the plastic the chicken (free range) was wrapped in.

Zucchini and Prosciutto quiche with gluten free pastry in the slow cooker

I wanted to make this recipe but it's too hot to have the oven on today, so I adjusted things a bit to make it in the slow cooker as well as make a gluten free pastry.

Zucchini and Prosciutto quiche with gluten free pastry.
To make the pastry: 3 cups gluten free pastry flour, 5 tbsp margarine or butter, 1 cup water. Combine ingredients to a smooth consistency. Roll out dough on lightly floured board to desired thickness.
Line sc with baking paper. Place dough into sc so it goes up the sides a bit.
To make the filling: olive oil, 150g prosciutto, 1 onion chopped, 3 or 4 zucchini (depending on size), 4 eggs, 2/3 cup cream, 1/4 cup milk, 1/4 cup grated parmesan.
Fry prosciutto in olive oil until crispy. Remove from pan and drain. Fry onion until soft, then remove from pan. Fry zucchini until soft (add more oil if required). Whisk together the eggs, cream, milk and most of the cheese.
Layer the prosciutto, zucchini and onions into the pastry and then pour the egg mixture over it. Top with remaining cheese. Cook on high for 2.5 to 3 hours with tea towel under the lid.

Saving money with chicken

I saw a link to this video on Facebook yesterday. After watching it, I went food shopping and bought a price-reduced free-range chook ($11.60) and followed the instructions on this video. From one chook I made 6 cups of chicken stock, 2 large chicken breasts, 2 drumsticks, 2 thighs and 2 wings. Apart from the savings dollar wise, I'm also happy with the reduction in packaging that I would have had to throw away if I had bought these products separately. No stock packaging, no meat trays wrapped in plastic for the chicken portions, just one lot of plastic packaging that was wrapped around the chook to have to deal with.
So if you're looking to save money and packaging for chicken portions and stock, and don't mind spending a few minutes cutting them up yourself, give this a go. I chucked the backbone and any other bones and skin that I removed in my slow cooker with a carrot and onion and some parsley, with enough water to cover the carcass, for 4 hours on high. Put it in the fridge to cook and then skim the fat off before putting into containers to freeze.
Also, I put the chicken portions into reusable freezer safe containers and labelled them.
http://www.nytimes.com/video/dining/100000002155362/cutting-up-a-whole-chicken.html

Gluten Free Fried Ice-Cream

Following a visit to a Naturopath, I've been cutting gluten out of my diet. On the weekend I wanted to make Chinese food. I have a Chinese cook book, but the recipes aren't gluten free. So...I just substituted ingredients containing gluten for the gluten-free alternatives.
The whole meal was a big hit, but the fried ice-cream was a big winner. So here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
2L full cream good quality ice cream.
gluten free flour
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
rice bread crumbs (or you could use ordinary gluten free bread crumbs)
Oil for deep frying

Put a baking tray in the freezer until it is very cold.
Using an ice cream scoop, scoop the ice cream into balls and place on the baking tray. Place in the freezer until hard.

Take the ice cream balls out of the freezer and working quickly, coat the balls in the flour. Shake off excess flour, dip in combined beaten eggs and milk, then in breadcrumbs. Place back on the tray and back in the freezer until hard.
Repeat the egg/milk and breadcrumbing until you have a firm coating. Freeze until hard.

When it comes time to fry the ice cream balls, place ice cream balls two at a time in deep hot oil. Fry until golden, about 30 seconds. If you leave it too long, the ice cream will melt and disperse into the hot oil. Place on absorbent paper to drain the oil. Serve immediately.

I found the rice bread crumbs gave the finished product a super crispy coating and was delicious. The kids had chocolate sauce on theirs, but I loved mine with my home made lemon and lime curd, which was a surprisingly delicious combination with the fried ice cream.

Recipe adapted from The Australian Women's Weekly Home Library Chinese Cooking Class Cookbook, published 1995.

Need some inspiration in life? Join the club.

I admit...I use Facebook. It started off as just a means to communicate with friends and relatives interstate, but now I'm connected to people I haven't met before but we have something in common. That is, we've joined a group.

I've joined a few groups recently and both are giving me some renewed enthusiasm in life. I have an interest in designing and building environmentally friendly homes, so have joined a group demonstrating and promoting building with straw bales. I haven't built one yet, but would love to give it a go one day. Another group I joined is called Aussies Living Simply, and some of the ideas on there match perfectly with what I am trying to achieve with this blog. If you're a follower of this blog, check out their Facebook page.

However one group that I've joined that I have been able to put into practice and amazed by the results is Slow Cooker Recipes 4 Families AUSTRALIA ONLY. I've learnt many more recipes and have been astounded by what can actually be done in a slow cooker! On the weekend I made pavlova in the slow cooker and would certainly do it again. Today I made cheese and vegemite scrolls and they were so simple and worked out well. Check out the recipe under the photos section of the groups Facebook page, however if you're not on Facebook and have a slow cooker, here's the recipe.

2 cups self raising flour
1 cup yoghurt.


Line slow cooker with baking paper. Knead ingredients together to form a dough. Roll out and spread with vegemite (or in my case, Dick Smith's Ozemite which tastes better - much like Vegemite was when I was a kid) and grated cheese. Roll up and slice. Lay slices on paper in slow cooker. Place a tea towel under the lid of the slow cooker to absorb the moisture (otherwise you might end up with soggy dough). Cook on High for 1.5 hours. Turn scrolls over for the last 15 mins to brown on top.

The advantages of using the slow cooker for me are: I have solar panels, so this uses the energy I produce rather than the gas oven. The slow cooker is up on the bench out of the reach of little hands that might get burnt, where my oven is down low. I could've put this recipe in the slow cooker, then go out and do something, like pick up kids from school or run an errand, where I wouldn't do that with the oven on. Admittedly, the instruction manual probably says not to leave it unattended, but many slow cooker owners do.

I'm planning to make a pie in the slow cooker tomorrow night after seeing it in a recipe book. Thanks to the group I joined, I'm trying new things with the kitchen equipment I've already got. Maybe I'll take a photo of it and upload it to their page with the recipe!

Oh, Pauline's Tips has a page on Facebook as well. Check it out and feel free to join and invite your friends to as well!

Macadamia Milk scones

I had some Macadamia Milk left over in the fridge from making my Feijoa and Macadamia Milk ice cream. So I decided to try it in some scones.

Ingredients:
2 cups self raising flour
1 cup Macadamia milk
approx 30g butter.

To be honest, I'm so used to making scones, I don't actually measure the butter out anymore. I just cut a bit off the block and think "that will do."

Preheat oven to 400C or 200F. Line a lamington tray or deep sided baking dish with baking paper or use a silicone baking sheet.

Sift flour. Rub in butter. Add milk. Using a knife, 'cut' through the ingredients in the bowl until they are blended enough that it is starting to look like a dough. Knead lightly. Don't do it too much or your scones will be tough instead of light and fluffy.

Roll out to desired thickness. Cut scone shapes using a cookie/scone cutter and lay in tray with scones gently touching each other. This way the scones will be forced to rise up instead of out. Place tray on top shelf as they need the hottest part of the oven.

Brush with some more of the Macadamia Milk and bake in oven for about 15 mins. Scones should sound hollow when tapped.

Once cooked, cool on a rack and separate the scones so they don't sweat.

These taste delicious on their own and stay quite moist.

Feijoa and macadamia milk ice cream

A few months ago I saw Macadamia Milk in the UHT section of the supermarket. I had previously made a very yummy rice milk ice cream, so thought Macadamia Milk would be delicious in an ice cream.

Here's my Feijoa ice cream using Macadamia Milk. One day I'll get around to trying the dairy free version, the same way I make it with rice milk, and see how it turns out. If it's any good, I'll blog it.

Ingredients:
1.5 cups feijoa pulp
3/4 cup Macadamia Milk
2/3 cups caster sugar
1.5 cups cream
1.5 tsp vanilla essence

Blend the pulp until it is smooth. In another bowl, blend the milk and sugar until the sugar has dissolved. Add the cream, feijoa pulp and vanilla and blend until thoroughly mixed in.

Place into an icecream maker and follow manufacturers directions. I don't have an ice cream maker, so I put mine in a freezer safe plastic container with lid, and freeze for a few hours. Take out and beat until smooth. Put back into container and freeze again. Do this until you get the desired frequency.

My husband isn't a big fan of feijoas, but even he says this ice cream is delicious.