Sunday, September 25, 2011

This week in the kitchen...lots of recipes!

Like every week, we cook almost everything we can from scratch. I also try to not use my oven everyday but when I do I always make a loaf of bread with the oven dish or I make a batch of cookies while something else is cooking. We also do not eat puddings every night but on some nights we just HAVE to!

Each of my older children have also each taken over the dinner meal and clean up one night a week so I have 3 nights off. It's also my sneaky way of building up their repetoire of meals. I hope to make them each an "heirloom" cookbook of all I teach them for when they have their own families one day - yes, even my sons!

So in no particular order, here are some of the things we cooked this week:

Cinnamon rolls....I made a sweet dough in the bread machine and left it to rise while we took our Friday morning walk in the forest. When I came back I rolled it out, spread it with melted butter, muscovado sugar, cinnamon and raisins. Rolled it up, cut off circles and baked. Hot sweet and sticky!

My son made rootis for us with bunny chow for dinner on Thursday.

I am reading a series of books on the Amish and I kept seeing this pineapple upside down cake...so I made one up! Peel and chop up 1 pineapple, then saute it in butter and sugar (about 1 T of each) until softish. Set aside. Mix up a sponge batter 2 eggs, 1 cup sugar, and 1 cup softened butter, add 2 cups flour, 1 t baking powder, 1/2 cup milk. Do not over mix. In a deep baking tin (I use one that has a loose bottom) place the pineapple chunks and juice, spoon batter over. Bake for 30 mins. When just cooled ease it out of the tin by running your knife around the edge and putting a dinner plate on the top. Flip over onto the plate. Eat warm!

I bought 5kgs tomatoes this week from my veggie man and we converted it into my standby tomato-veg sauce which I use in soups, stews and pasta dishes. Wash and chop tomatoes into quarters, grate 6 carrots, chop 6 pieces of celery, place in a big pot and cook until soft. Add a T of garlic. Last night after the family got home from rugby I had made some fresh pasta and we topped it with this tomato sauce and parmesan. Delish!

I made two batches of cookies this week. Oat cookies and choc-chip-coconut cookies.

200g flour
1 t BP
200g butter
75 g rolled oats
100g unrefined white sugar
50g brown sugar

Mix together and spoon out onto baking sheet bake for 10mins @ 180C
(For the choc chip ones - cut buuter in half and use coconut oil and instead of oats add choc chips and 40g coco powder)

I have found a new raw milk source! I had a friend with a cow but both she and her cow moved away :( Then I was buying from Ethical Co-op at R23/l...not sustainable. On Thurs I heard of a woman who runs a small herd about 20mins away...she sells her milk for R6/l....I bought 8 litres today...It has been made into yoghurt.

On Wednesday my little guy and I made chicken schnitzels. I have saved the end crusts of our homemade wholewheat bread and I blitzed these up in my machine, added 1 cup of milled rolled oats, some grated parmesan, lemon zest and dried Thyme. It made a delicious crumb for the chicken.

So that's about it for this weeks kitchen adventures....

6 comments:

Lois Evensen said...

It all looks soooo good! :)))

Rose said...

Wendy I checked through your sidebar for the titles of the Amish books but couldn't see them. Would you let me know? I'm quite fascinated with the Amish.

Your week of cooking looks delish.

Urban Homestead South Africa said...

Hey Rose, nice to see you here. I am not reading any theological book about the Amish, it's simple bedtime reading - Beverley Lewis's books..."Abram's Daughters".

Zikhona Tefu said...

Hi Wendy

I've been following your blog since May. I am so inspired by you and your way of life (simply because you are living my dream). I really never thought it was possible, thank you for your commitment. Your green living and homeschool websites are are both so informative. You have inspired me to make everything I can, I started planting a garden (if you can call it that, considering that its as 1.5m by a 4m wide balcony)! I know I can hardly feed a family of? I also made my first batch of soap 2 weeks ago... Thanks to you. Please advise which area do you live in. I would like to get my hands on that R6/L milk. I cant find raw milk anywhere, even markets.

Thank you for making a difference in my life.

Urban Homestead South Africa said...

Zikhona, I am truly moved by your comments, thank you.

You can get the milk from Lou Docke in Noordhoek. 0217891248.

Linda said...

Thank you for everything you have shared here Wendy, you are an inspiration:)
Warmly
Linda