Dairy free lasagna

When my daughter was an infant, she was diagnosed as being Cows Milk Protein Intolerant. She grew out of it at about 18 months of age, but for what seemed an eternity (as I love my dairy) I was making dairy free meals and snacks. A few days ago I made this for a friend who thinks that her newborn baby may also be cow milk protein intolerant.

I'm not going to reinvent the wheel here by giving a full recipe for making lasagna, as it's really only the white sauce that is different from ordinary lasagna. So make the sauce for the lasagna the usual way.

When making the white sauce, substitute the butter or margarine for a non-dairy alternative, such as Nuttelex. You can also substitute the milk for rice milk. I tried using oat milk and almond milk but found rice milk to be the best. Note that as the soy protein and cows milk protein are very similar in structure, so often people who are cows milk protein intolerant are also soy protein intolerant, so don't use soy milk if that is the case for you.

30g Nuttelex
2 or 3 tablespoons plain flour
350ml rice milk

Melt the butter. Add the plain flour, stir until combined and "cook out" the flour (the flour will go pale in colour). Add the milk slowly and stir until there are no lumps. Cook until mixture thickens. You may find this takes longer to thicken than ordinary white sauce and even when it has thickened I find it is still a bit watery. I do this process in a microwave safe jug and it takes about 7 minutes.

Layer the lasagna in the usual way. I put a thin layer of white sauce in the middle layer of mine and then put the rest on top. As there is no cheese in this recipe, to give the topping a bit colour I sprinkle on some paprika.

I won't look as yummy as ordinary lasagna but will still taste good.

Best ever Christmas Fruit Mince Pie recipe

I know it's a bit late, now that Christmas has passed, but I finally have a few minutes to type up the Fruit Mince Pie recipe that I make. It's actually a combination of two recipes. The fruit mince is my mum's recipe and the pastry is a Maggie Beer recipe that I got from the Women's Weekly magazine. For years I used a different pastry recipe, but found this one had the right amount of "crumble". I love a crumbly pastry on my fruit mince pies...not too crumbly but not too leathery either.

The fruit mince recipe makes a lot of fruit mince, much more than the pastry recipe does. I would recommend either making 3 times the pastry recipe if you want to use all the fruit mince or, alternatively, freeze the fruit mince so you can make some more pies later on and that way you always have fresh fruit mince pies available.

So here goes, shame I didn't take a photo of them before they were all eaten up!


Pastry

1.5 cups (225g) unbleached plain flour
half cup (75g) self raising flour
one third cup (55g) icing sugar
150g cold butter, chopped
1 free-range egg yolk
2.5 tablespoons iced water

Process the flours, icing sugar and butter in a food processor until well combined and the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the egg yolk and iced water and process using the pulse function until the mixture starts to come together. I find that at this stage it is quite crumbly and I need to bring it together by hand. Shape the pastry into a disc and wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.


Fruit Mince

1 grated apple
grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
125grams chopped dried apricots
1 cup sultanas
1 cup currants
1 cup sugar
half cup water

Place all ingredients into saucepan. Slowly bring to boil. Simmer for 10 minutes or until liquid has reduced to a thick syrup. If it is too watery, it will make the pastry soggy. Allow to cool before filling in the pastry cases.

Pre-heat the oven to 210 degrees celcius (approx 420 degrees F if you have an old oven like me!). Roll out the pastry until 3mm thick. Using a biscuit or scone cutter, cut circles large enough to cover the base of your muffin tray. Don't forget to prepare your muffin tray first if necesary. Line the holes with pastry circles and put spoonfuls of the filling in the cases. Cut slightly smaller circles in the pastry and place these lids on top of the pie filling, pressing down on the edges to bring it together. Cut a cross into the tops of the pies to let the steam out.

Bake for about 12 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown. All to cool in the trays and serve dusted with icing sugar.

These are absolutely delicious. The pastry recipe has been copied from the Australian Women's Weekly magazine, November 2012 edition.

You get what you pay for...my research on trampoline brands

We are looking to get our kids a trampoline for Christmas. I have been searching Gumtree and Ebay everyday for a 2nd hand trampoline, but have also been researching brands on the internet and reading lots of reviews. Basically what I have found is the old saying of "You get what you pay for" is largely true.

Looking at trampolines that my friends have bought and what I have read on reviews, it seems as though if you buy your trampoline from a department store (eg Target, Big W, Kmart), you are getting a product built to a price rather than a standard. The reviews on brands sold by these stores, such as Gametime and Action Sports all complain of the same things; mats/padding/nets not even lasting a year, customer service difficult to deal with, assembly instructions inadequate or translated from another language into English. One website I found yesterday gave an in depth report on the structure of the Action trampoline, how it moved about while being jumped on, the uneven bounce of the mat which may result in injury and the author said they felt it wasn't very safe. Many review websites feature complaints from people vowing never to buy those brands again. Occassionally some say they are happy with their purchase. Most trampolines are kept out in the weather, so there will always be some wear and tear, but from what I have read, the better brands last longer as they have better UV and rain protection.

Trampolines bought from a trampoline shop or on-line trampoline shop fare much better in the reviews. If you are looking for a trampoline, look out for ones that say the mat is made in the USA or Australia, as these seem to be the best. The mats last years compared to cheaper ones, even when kept out in the weather. I have read good reports on Oz Trampolines, Vuly and Jump Start.

99.9% of the trampolines I have seen on Gumtree have been bought from one of the above mentioned department stores. All of those are only a year or two old and need bits replacing. I found one that was bought from a trampoline on-line store with a mat made in the USA. The padding and net need replacing but the owners have had it for quite a few years and their girls still jump on it everyday. Only getting rid of it to buy a bigger one. I can get replacement padding and nets relatively inexpensively from Oz Trampolines and Jump Start. My husband is planning to go and have a look at it on Saturday to see if his opinion of it is the same as mine. If so, then we will probably buy it and get the bits replaced. The mat is in excellent condition. If it works out and all goes to plan, we should have a good quality trampoline (with new net and padding) and it only costing us less than $200.

Ours will also be out in the weather.

Microwave herb drying

I read an article recently in the Grass Roots magazine about how to dry herbs in your microwave. I had a go with Corriander and it worked really well. Here is how it goes:

The article is written by Carol Fletcher and she suggests picking the herbs early in the morning when they are fresh. If you water them the night before, you probably won't need to wash them when you pick them, as all the dust and dirt will have been washed off them with the watering.

Pull the leaves off and Carol suggests putting the leaves in piles of similar sized leaves. Although I found it worked ok putting different sized leaves together, just refer to my tip a bit later in this piece.

Place the leaves on paper towel and place another piece of paper towel on top. Put this carefully into the microwave. If your microwave is 1100watts, microwave on high for 2 mins, longer may be needed if your microwave is not as powerful. Carefully lift the paper towel with herbs out and flip it over. Place back in the microwave and give it another minute on high.

Take them out again and remove any leaves that have gone crunchy. Any that are still damp, put back in the microwave and give them 20 second burst until they are crunchy. If you put in different sized leaves like I did, smaller ones will go crunchy first. Each time pull out the ones that have gone crunchy so they don't burn.

Carol suggests that each time you dry herbs, use fresh paper towel so you don't transfer the tastes. So if you are doing basil followed by parsley for example, you would change the paper towel.

Store them in air tight containers. I picked a heap of corriander and dried them for use when my corriander is out of season. I found it is a quick way of drying herbs when you only have fresh herbs but the recipe you are making at them time requires dried herbs.

Lazy gardening tip: let it go to seed

There's an old saying; one years seeds, seven years weeds. Well, the same could be said for my gardening technique. A few years ago when I was setting up my vegie patch, my mother-in-law planted some spinach in a pot for me. Each year I let it go to seed and watch with interest where it takes hold. I do the same with my parsley and lettuce. The only assistance I give them is occassionally when I am walking past I will grab a handful of seeds and scatter them somewhere else in the garden. I have much more luck with this lazy form of gardening than I do with seeds that I have planted according to the instructions on the packet.

In this photo I am standing next to my spinach and silverbeet which is going to seed. On the left of the spinach and silverbeet are some parsley, also going to seed.

Picking produce grown from plants that have self seeded is the closest thing to having a free lunch. I water the plants and put some seaweed extract and organic fertilizer on them, and that's pretty much all the attention they get from me...apart from picking the snails off them.

I find that the plants grow very well, perhaps it has something to do with nature deciding where they will grow best in the garden rather than interference from me. That's the way I prefer my garden to grow.

Teaching our children to speak...and avoid the speech pathologist!

On my daughters last visit to the pediatrician, he was impressed with the size of her vocabulary and that she was already talking in sentences. This was normal for me, as my son had an equally large vocabulary at the same age. The doctor commented that he is seeing an increasing number of children requiring a referral to a speech pathologist. So why is this so?

Now, I'm not a speech pathologist, just a parent who had two children considered early talkers. I never set out to have early talkers, I just wanted to help my children communicate their needs. So, I'm not an expert, but here is what I did.

Firstly, when pregnant with my first child, baby signing was recommended to me as a way of teaching children to communicate to avoid them having tantrums when they can't express what they want. My husband and I bought a book and read about it. We did read that children who do baby signing usually end up being early talkers, but that still wasn't our inspiration. When our son was born, we started doing baby signing from day one. For those of you not familiar with baby signing, you do "signs" for a few basic words (eg; milk, change nappy, drink, hot, dog) and use these whenever you are talking to your child. You don't actually teach the words as a lesson, just use them in context. For example, the action for milk is the same as milking a cow, so when you ask them if they would like some milk, you do the action at the same time you say the word.

Eventually they start to do the signs, and quickly learn the word that goes with them. Once they learn to say the word, they drop the signing as it's no longer required. They then want to learn more words and signs to give more meaning to their communication. They go from wanting to tell you they can see a dog while out walking to wanting to tell you it's a big dog and they want to pat it.

Both of our children did their first sign at 7 months. I can't tell you how much of a relief it is that a child can sign "milk" when they aren't well and grizzly and you are trying to work out what to do to stop them crying! I remember one night getting up to my son in the middle of the night to him signing "hot" and "milk". I took his temperature and he had a fever. I gave him some panadol and a breast feed and he settled back down quickly. I wonder how long it would have taken me to work out what was wrong if he couldn't sign, as he couldn't yet say those words?

Secondly, as my son was approaching toddlerhood, I read a book about Neuro-Linguistic Programming as a method of avoiding the terrible twos. I didn't know at the time, but was told later by a speech pathologist that I met, that one of the activities I did from the book contributed to him learning to speak. The book advised that each time an instruction is given, keep the wording brief, as otherwise all the child will here is blah, blah, blah instead of the important words. So "Your nappy's wet, let's go and change your nappy'" becomes simply "Change nappy." (I would also do the baby sign for change nappy).

A game you can play with your child is put three objects in front of them, for this example I'll use farm toys. Pick each item up and simply say its name. Then pick each item up one at a time and say "Mum pick up cow" then using the child's name say "(name) pick up cow". Once they pick it up, give them positive feedback (yay, clap hands). This activity was in the NLP book and also mentioned by the speech pathologist.

I found that once they learn to talk, other concepts start to fall into place. My daughter is 20 months and can name colours and is learning to count. My son was the same and consequently learnt maths very early on (and now is a little obsessed with numbers). With my son I was constantly stopped in the supermarkets and asked why he wasn't at school, and usually the person asking was surprised when I said he wasn't old enough. I can expect the same for my daughter as she gets a little older as she talks just as much.

The other day my husband took the kids for a walk. When they returned my daughter said "Walk dad, I see pussycat, I see dog walking with lady."

The upside to having children who are early talkers are that they find it easy to communicate. The down side is that once they start talking....they don't stop!

Tips on using scrap material to make new clothes

Do you have a pile of scrap material in your sewing stash? I have, and am endeavouring to reduce the size of the pile to make more room in my cupboards! Included in my scrap material stash was some lovely "vintage" material given to me by my best friend. I sorted through my patterns until I found something I wanted to make, then sorted through the scrap material she sent me until I found a piece big enough to make the pattern.

Here are my tips for using scrap material when sewing:

1. When I laid the material out, I found that the selvedge on one side was missing. To make up for the missing selvedge, I folded the material in half lengthways and using my measuring tape, carefully measured the width of the material. The width of the material needed to be equal all the way along. Mark a line along where the existing selvedge lays along the material and cut off the excess. This new cut edge becomes the missing selvedge.

2. The grain line. If the pattern piece you are wanting to trace onto your material has a grain line, and you are missing one selvedge, measure the grain line (on both ends of the line) from the one selvedge that you do have.

3. Don't have enough to make the pattern? Considering using a contrast material. Fortunately for this pattern I had enough material.

4. What else is in your stash that you can use? I looked in my sewing supplies and found some iron-on embroidery that matched perfectly, as well as cotton and buttons the right colour and elastic for the shorts. The only things I didn't have (a good excuse to go to Spotlight - not that I ever need an excuse!) was some matching trim and overlocker thread in the right colour.

Now I have a gorgeous outfit for my daughter and can't wait for her to try it on. The only mistake I made was sewing the trim on in the green cotton that was already loaded onto the sewing machine, I should have used white. I hope it is a little on the large side when she tries it on so that she can get two summers out of it. It's a shame to make lovely clothing for children to outgrow them in a few months. Oh, and if anyone has scrap Peppa Pig material, send it my way!

And when did I find the time to sew with two small children around! Well, the house hasn't been cleaned for the few days while I made this and the children have entertained themselves to some degree. Fortunately the eldest had kindy today and the youngest is having a daytime sleep!