We used to call this porridge but now it’s oatmeal which sounds less stodgy and more superfoodbloggy, but don’t let that put you off if, like me, you’ve had a gutful of the superfood thing – it’s incredibly delicious and so easy your dog could make it. I have it every single day and never tire of it.
That’s Gary in the background, a lonely fighting fish.
Chop up a couple of cups of raw oats in your food processor with an optional tablespoon of psyllium husks and a handful of chia seeds. Store in a jar in the pantry.
Toss into food processor your own preferred quantities of nuts (almonds, brazils, etc), seeds (pepitas, sunflower seeds etc), muscat raisins and coconut. Chop so it’s still chunky. You’ve just prepared about two week’s worth of porridgeoatmeal.
Recipe
2 cups oats
some psyliium husk (optional)
boiling water to cover
microwave for a minute
add handful of nut/raisin mix, and a big slug of pure maple syrup
To serve, put about half a cup of your porridge in a bowl, add enough boiling water to cover and microwave for a minute. Stir in a large handful of the nuts mix, and add maple syrup. You won’t think about food again until lunchtime.
The Angry Almond in Perth (Subiaco and Nedlands) has everything you need.
Angry Almond, Rockeby Road Subiaco (conveniently two doors down from Jean-Claude Patisserie)
I wasn’t kidding when I said it was impossible to go wrong with the amazeballs, consequently our recipe here at home has morphed with each making and currently it’s proving an easy winner and looking better than ever before.
Lately I have been leaving out the raw cacao powder for some variety and rolling them in a really lovely desiccated coconut I found at The Angry Almond. Rather than weigh the ingredients into the thermomix (food processor), I sit it on the same shelf of the pantry as the jars of ingredients and just throw them in, hence the measurements in handfuls rather than grams.
Energy/Superfood/Bliss AmazeBalls
3 handfuls almonds
1 handful cashews
2 handfuls pitted medjool dates
1 handful each of gogi berries, chia seeds, sunflower seeds, pepitas, shredded coconut
Big Tbsp coconut oil, small Tbsp coconut sugar if you want extra sweet.
Grind the nuts a bit first then add everything else, form into balls (or press into a muffin tin) and roll in desiccated coconut.
On the advice of a sensible friend who recently quit sugar and has not cried into her vodka soda once about it, I picked up Sarah Wilson’s new cook book in the flesh the other day. I already had her book on kindle but since I decided to catch up on six seasons of Mad Men I don’t even know where the kindle is. There’s nothing like flicking through an actual real life book when cooking.
It’s called I Quit Sugar which I know is going to put some of you off and draw others like a bear to honey. Perhaps, like me, you fit into both categories.
This is a fantastic cookbook although I am not sure about the name. While it will immediately appeal to the anti-sugar purists (I tried and failed this and am now simply anti-purist) it has loads of really gorgeous recipes suited to the committed sweet toother. Some of the really beautiful ‘sweet’ recipes in it that are actually sweet enough on their own, or alternatively lend themselves really well to a few glugs of maple syrup or coconut sugar (my two favourite sweeteners).
This is my own version (very close to the original) of Sarah’s Coco-Nutty Granola as I have made it twice now – the first time it was quite easy, the second time it was ridiculously easy and “ridiculously easy” is a pre-requisite for getting a recipe up here. I’ve linked the title above to Sarah Wilson’s recipe at her website.
These storage jars make finding stuff in the pantry and fridge easy – from IKEA.
2 -3 cups nuts (I used almonds, brazil nuts and cashews)
handful chia seeds
handful goji berries (optional)
1 tbsp spice (cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg)
80g coconut oil
big splash of maple syrup (optional)
1/2 – 1 cup raw muesli (fine without this)
a few apricots
Method:
Preheat oven to 120* C.
Use a food processor/thermomix to chop nuts, apricots – not too fine.
Combine all ingredients and spread on a baking tray covered with baking paper (it doesn’t matter if it’s a little deep).
Bake for 20 mins, toss and turn, keep baking till golden brown.
Sarah’s recipe calls for a total baking time of 20 mins but mine took closer to 40 so just keep an eye on it.
Brazil nuts are a good inclusion if you want to up your selenium intake as they are a very rich source. If you’re having trouble finding unsweetened coconut flakes, try the link in the recipe or here and check out Supercharged Food, it’s a great site for whole-foodies and a flat shipping fee of $10.50.
When I want to paint a room, the only way to do it is buy a big tin of paint and pour some into a tray, roll a roller into it and start painting. I have not left out a single detail. My husband Rob boringly always says “preparation, preparation, preparation” and says it the three times, irritatingly. So now we only use Barry who does all our painting for us. Being in a very old house with a lot of timber there is regularly some painting to be done.
It’s the same with cooking – because I do not want and could never afford to have Barry do all our cooking and food prep, I will spend a day having a Condiment Day, where I make all the things that are so nice added to food like pesto, tomato sauce, béarnaise, mayonnaise, pasta sauce, umami paste and so on. All so that the rest of the time I don’t need to bother with all that.
In light of all that here are two meals that have pleased us all here and are perfect for the busy working/stay-at-home/unemployed mother:
Baked Spuds Stuffed With Whatever’s Handy
No one needs a recipe for this – it’s just more of a reminder.
Bake however many potatoes you like, takes about an hour and can be done the day before if need be.
Once well-baked cut in half, scoop out the soft potato and sit skins on baking tray.
Bake skins to crisp them up a bit sprayed with oil and salt/pepper for 20 mins 180 C
In a pan saute onion and bacon with maple syrup, salt and pepper, then add fresh vegetables, chopped and herbs.
Mix with the potato, stuff the skins, sprinkle with cheese and bake for 15 minutes.
The other one is the result of The Local Grocer. I had a Seasonal Box delivered and with it came two persimmons which I have never before bought or eaten.
I chopped one up in my food processor (thermomix) along with some shredded coconut, gogi berries and chia seeds (superfoods alert!) and it was amazeballs. Try it with a few macadamia nuts as well.
If you’re serious about wasting time there is no better way than following heaps of blogs and there is a site that lets you do it all in one place: Bloglovin’. You just go to the site, type in the names of the blogs you like and each day a summary will be sent to your inbox in a single email with all your favourite blog updates.
Here are some of the blogs the sensible friends are lovin’ right now:
Man Repeller: This is how she defines the title: “outfitting oneself in a sartorially offensive mode that may result in repelling members of the opposite sex. Such garments include but are not limited to harem pants, boyfriend jeans, overalls (see: human repelling), shoulder pads, full length jumpsuits, jewelry that resembles violent weaponry and clogs.” It’s pretty cool.
Who What Wear: Whoever runs this site is a hard worker; it’s updated constantly with fashion trends and style notes. It includes style tips from stylists, what the celebs are wearing, various blogs within the blog, look of the day and product of the day. Fashion mecca.
The Sartorialist snaps uber-cool people on the street and posts them up. I can never even aspire to the level of cool I see in these pages but it’s lovely photography and gorgeous clothes. Today there are gorgeous New Yorker’s in pyjama style clothes. You’d think it would be comical but it somehow is beautiful instead.
Flourish Magazine is one I have mentioned it before but worth another shout and not just because it’s run by my good buddy Jane Willis. I was searching for someone to make a proper party cake the other day and asked Jane for a recommendation. She threw the question onto her Flourish Facebook page and within minutes there were about 14 replies with great local suggestions – the advantage of having a successful, well-connected local blogger on the books. If you want to source something in Perth, just flick Jane a note.
A Subtle Revelry is the go to spot for party DIY ideas, craft ideas (my house is a craft-lover’s wasteland, but it could be for you) and there are some interesting recipes – for instance today is how to make your own bagged microwave popcorn.
Olivia Palermo is a mainstay of fashion blogging but be warned, that sweet little cardi you think you will source for Autumn is liable to set you back eight hundred dollars. For cheaper fashion links look toward The Londoner or Buy Now Blog Later (although if you’re over 40 you also run the risk of becoming the proverbial mutton dressed as….).
Smitten Kitchen is gorgeous and the name says it all. She has a book which I haven’t got but looks lovely. Very popular food blog, like What Katie Ate. I sometimes judge a food blog by how boring/tricky the muffins look (muffins should be simple, delicious and easy) – check these out for beautiful Greek-yoghurty coconutty easy muffins. Beautiful.
Cheating with Bellini is a fairly new local blog by a pretty young mum I run with, Rosie. She has great taste in food and recipes so it’s worth following for those thermomix types who are interested in a variety of interesting tips, hints and dishes such as David Lebovitz’s Fresh Ginger Cake.
Style and Focus is a local Perth blog discovering and showcasing local style and creativity. It is a newish blog by two highly accomplished women, Jo Carmichael, stylist and Jody D’Arcy, photographer with seriously lovely photography, a great eye for beauty and fascinating interviews. These bloggers also have their own sites. They find stuff we all wish we had and post it up…. I think I might need a bar cart for my veranda.
Stockholm Street Style – It’s a little bit like The Sartorialist but it’s Scandinavia, home of the best TV series’, best clothes, happiest souls and my pin-up guy (apart from you of course Rob), Alexander Skarsgard….it’s where I will be born when I am next reincarnated.
My sister-in-law Claire put me onto this amazingly simple and wonderful recipe a few years ago. It’s one that has never failed to impress the kids and a great one to make for someone you want to drop a meal in to (mainly because it’s not casserole or lasagna).
Pesto or Tomato Parmigiana
Step 1: buy some free range chicken or veal parmigiana (always easy to find Mt Barker chicken parmigiana) and lay it out on a tray covered with baking paper.
Step 2: spread either passata from a jar (pizza tomato paste works very well) or homemade tomato sauce over half the parmigiana’s. Spread homemade pesto over the others.
Step 3 Top with grated cheese or parmesan and bake for 20 mins in a moderate oven.
I wasn’t kidding when I said it would be easy. I severed – I mean served – them with potato fritters and salad and sliced my hand in the process. I haven’t taken a finger off yet but I think even that would be worth working with a good sharp knife.
Happy school holidays to those celebrating the end of endless school lunches and sporting drop off and pickups. I’ll be on the veranda if you need me…
This one is one of those recipes I am just kicking myself I haven’t been doing for years and years, suggested by a sensible school mum the other day. It is so easy and the difference health-wise between this version and Mr Heinz’s is unspeakable…I didn’t ‘fess up that I had been opening the can for years; I pretended I had been making them as below (no particular recipe) forever.
So here it is. You’re probably all doing this on a regular basis already. It’s just ridiculously simple. Next time I will reduce the amount of bacon and onion only because my littlest child struggled with the sudden difference in texture and demanded to inspect the tin.
Baked Beans
Throw in a pan with some olive oil half a big red onion and a few rashers of bacon. Sauté until soft and aromatic. If you have boys the smell of this will draw them into the kitchen for a chat.
Add paprika, basil, salt and pepper, a tablespoon of molasses, about half a big jar of pasta sauce or sugo (I like Five Brothers Tomato) and anything else that you think will go well. I also add a big dollop of homemade tomato sauce/ketchup for extra sweetness.
Cook it down a bit with about half a cup of water. Add a can of cannellini beans, drained.
Pop it on buttered toast for brekky or over a bowl of rice or cous cous for dinner and Bob’s your uncle.
As a grand finale I urge you to have a read of the latest post of my all-time favourite food blog which is written by my whole food pin-up gal, Jude Blereau. Many years ago MSF Ali and I did a four-week whole food cooking course with Jude and there can just be no better grounding in food love than her teaching.
Jude has such a great take on what constitutes a ‘super’ food as well as her famous bone broth recipe which is very similar to that of my other foodie heroine, Sally Fallon who I saw speak several years ago when she headed up the Weston A Price Foundation.
Here is a recipe that you can alter entirely without screwing it up. I call it Amazeballs because thats how you feel when you’re eating them. And they’re balls.
Amazeballs
300g approx of:
nuts/seeds. I used 50g each of walnuts, almonds, pepitas, brazil nuts, pistachios and cashews
Blend the bejeeziz out of it all in your thermomix/food processor. Roll into balls and store in fridge. I sometimes add a bit of protein powder or some maca powder (libido booster anyone?). This batch I couldn’t be bothered with any of that. Also there will be teenagers eating them, don’t want to boost anything but brains and good manners thank you. I only used these nuts because they were in the pantry – you can just use almonds if you like and they are just as nice.
I drove through Australia’s most adorable town on Sunday and thought ‘I have to get a photo of this on my blog’, as you do. Rosa Brook is not far from famous wine and surf town, Margaret River. There’s Darnell’s General Store and about half a dozen houses you can barely see. I always stop there just because I can’t not stop there, it’s too cute:
Here is the view up the road:
….and here is the view down the road:
This is who I parked next to. His mileage is nearly as efficient as mine:
Rosa Brook is quite close to a great olive oil grower called 34 Degrees South which is my favourite olive oil at the moment. You empty some wine bottles (easy!) and take them in and fill them under the vat tap of your choice. It’s worth a visit and exactly like walking into the M.A.S.H 4077 tent that contains olive oil rather than Hawkeye and Radar. There are some slightly scary geese to negotiate on the way in.
When a recipe starts with “put all ingredients in bowl” there is a very good chance it is going to get tried out in my kitchen. Today’s little winner is the Bimby Chocolate Cake. I only have one picture of it as it is so easy to make, it was prepped, baked and half-eaten before I had a chance to whip out my camera.
The other great thing about this recipe is the fact that the it makes either one big cake, two loaf-sized or loads of cupcakes. Today I made two. It is a thermomix recipe but any half decent food processor or a Kitchen Aid will cope with this. I have converted the amounts of everything to suit either. Just make sure your butter is very soft if you’re not using a thermomix. And use nice proper butter.
You can leave out the cacao and make a plain vanilla cake if you like, or throw in some finely grated orange peel for a Jaffa effect (I’ve done this and it is very good). Too easy.
Put all ingredients in bowl. Mix at a good speed for a minute (TMX sp6 1min). Bake for 45 mins at 180 degrees celsius in two tins or about an hour in one big tin.
Thanks to the wonderful Forum Thermomix for this one and especially to forum her “I Love Bimby” who kindly let me republish this here.
I did make a version of this recipe and simply left out the cocoa/cacao and it was just as good. I never got around to icing it before it was gobbled up:
Just for fun – here’s a photo of Tendercrisp doing what she does when out free ranging:
Lunch at the newly renovated Cott Hotel with two sensible friends last week and the conversation turned to the movies. One of them gets free tickets to Luna Palace films and often asks me along. This is because I am a very agreeable movie date:
I scoff my choc bomb before the main feature comes on, or I eat nothing, so there’s no crunching of the end of the cone during awkward quiet bits. I don’t talk at all during the film, not even an ironic glance. Unlike one of the clever men I know I also don’t drink from a water bottle which then creates a little vacuum, making a popping noise as air is returned to the bottle once the drinking has finished (there was no easy way to write that bit).
Sensibly, we decided there were some people with acute attention to detail and others without and how one behaves in the movies is a pretty good yardstick.
The chatter moved seamlessly from movies to parking (aren’t we the fun girls?) and again bewilderment at some people’s lack of attention to detail.
When you’re headed to your car and you can see someone is waiting to pull into your spot, you skedaddle into your seat, put your seatbelt on as you’re pulling out and hot-foot it out of there ASAP so the person behind you doesn’t have to wait for too long, holding up traffic and getting annoyed. Although you will never see them again in your entire life, you don’t want them thinking ill of you.
So why when the situation is reversed, do you find yourself sitting there with your indicator on while the person in the car leaving ambles over, hops in their car does God knows what for two or three minutes then reverses out slowly, visibly surprised to see you waiting there for their spot. Then while they are half out of the spot, slowly put on seatbelt, make another call, chat to child in back seat for a while….This isn’t reserved to beach parking – there’s the shopping centre, the theatre parking, Napoleon Street…
Lets not even go there with the pick up lane at the kids’ schools and the mothers in front chatting from car window to car window when their little one has been belted in already for a full three minutes.
Holier than thou Toyota Prius
At least I can sit smugly in those queues knowing I am helping save the world in my Prius (let’s just forget the fact I am driving when I live less than one kilometre from the school gate).
Many of my sensible friends are celebrating this week: kids back to school, house staying cleaner, no longer haemorrhaging money on a daily basis. In my family we have two landmark years with one daughter in Year 1 and the other daughter in Year 12. In the middle a son in Year 10. We’re at the pointy end of the education system, but hysterically it’s both pointy ends. What fun.
Have you, like me, been wondering what to feed the kids for brekky? Sensible friend Jane suggested an easy breakfast that avoids the cereal trap (cereal is easy but as you know, nutritionally so poor there is no point in it at all): Good quality yoghurt – we use Mundella (because it’s good quality and locally grown and owned by dear friends), some nuts roughly chopped, and some fresh fruit. It’s SO simple and so healthy. Maybe some nice homemade or Gaby’s Muesli and maple syrup spooned on top.
Yoghurt with fruit and nuts
Below is a recipe I have adapted for the Thermomix and altered so it is almost completely Superfoods (superfoods I tell you!). It was originally a Curtis Stone recipe from a friend who dropped a slice of it in yesterday.
Don’t be alarmed by the number of ingredients, you just throw in what you have in your pantry. If you’re not a thermomixer, it’s basically a cup of flour and a couple of cups of ‘bits’.
Superfood Slice
130g coconut flour/other flour
100g muesli
30g each of sunflower seeds, goji berries, shredded coconut, chia seeds, coconut sugar, dates.
50g coconut oil
50g sun warrior protein powder (or whichever brand you like)
20g maca powder
40g honey (I used the McCall’s honey from the Margaret River Farmers Market!)
20g molasses
1tsp baking powder
1 or 2 eggs depending on how dry your mix is.
Throw it all in the bowl, mix it up speed 5, and press it into a brownie tin. Bake 180 for 20 minutes. For non-TMX’s just throw it all in a big bowl and mix it up.
This version happens to be gluten-free but I have also made a batch with normal wholemeal flour and it was fine. Don’t expect it to be more than luke-warmly received by the younger kids, its ‘healthy’ tasting: No it doesn’t taste nearly as good as a Tim Tam okay? You could try melting some chocolate and butter and spreading it on top to dress it up, or add 30g cacao powder to recipe to turn it into a chocolate slice.
Silver Linings Playbook
Back to movies – you know who to ask if you want a movie date! It’s probably my most favourite thing to do. If you haven’t seen Silver Linings Playbook or Argo, do. Especially Argo.
