Sticky Date Puddings for my Dad.

So my dad has the big C. He's been sick for a couple of years, and has nearly died a couple of times now, he has been so lucky - and every day I'm thankful he's still with us.  He's hanging on, and has gotten his fight back.

My entire birth family has an entirely different food philosophy to me, choosing to adhere to the Standard Australian Diet - consisting of many wonderful and healthy meats and vegetables, but also full of chemicals, toxins, sugar, wheat and refined products.

Mum and Dad are more than aware of how I choose to eat and feed my family, and I've offered them advice in the past, particularly about the sugar, tumour growth research - but it's fallen on deaf ears. It's not my place to tell them what to eat, so I give them any information I may come across, and leave them to it. What I won't do, is intentionally feed them things that I know will make them sick - so when I was asked to bring dessert to tomorrow's bbq lunch - I decided to try to make healthy one of Dad's favourites. Sticky Date Pudding!!

Typically, this has over 400g of sugar in it and is made using wheat flour. I wanted to make the cake itself sugar free, using organic medjool dates and locally sourced honey to sweeten. The toffee sauce has organic black strap molasses (as Dad's blood counts are low, and molasses is rich in iron) and organic rapadura sugar, which contains many valuable nutrients.

I decided to make it grain free as well, and the cake itself is dairy free. I used almond milk and lots of eggs, to make it protein rich, to help improve his muscle tone after weeks in a hospital bed.  So, I hope you like it Dad. (Of course Dad doesn't read this blog - but I still hope he loves it). 

Ingredients

Puddings 

3 egg whites
3 egg yolks
1 whole egg
14 medjool dates (dry dates soaked overnight would also work)
1 teaspoon chia seeds
170g almond milk
50g honey
50g coconut oil
50g butter
50g almond flour
40g coconut flour
1 heaped teaspoon baking powder

Separate 3 eggs, reserve yolks. Put egg whites in TMX bowl and insert butterfly. Whip eggs on speed 4 until they're light and hold form. Remove from bowl and put aside for later.

Put pitted dates, chia and almond milk in TMX bowl, cook for 4 mins at 60° speed 3. Then add all other ingredients (except egg whites) and process for 1 minute, speed 9 or until smooth texture is achieved. Reinsert butterfly and egg whites, and mix for 20 seconds at speed 3.

Cook in well greased muffin pans at 170° until a skewer inserted into centre comes out clean.


Caramel sauce

100g rapadura sugar
90g butter
300ml pure cream
1 tsp vanilla bean paste

Put rapadura in TMX bowl and mill for 20sec speed 9, then add all remaining ingredients. Cook at 60° speed 4 for 4 minutes.

Pour sauce over warm cakes, and serve with custard, cream or ice-cream.

Enjoy, and don't forget, just eat real food!!

Marney x

Failsafe Quiche - and farewell Robin Williams

Today is such a sad day. My heart is breaking just a little bit. As someone who has struggled with depression, my heart breaks for Robin Williams and his family. I empathetically cried today for the heartbreak that comes with losing a husband, a father and a friend. I've also cried because I will miss him. He changed my life. Oh Captain my Captain. Carpe Diem. Gooooooooood Morning Vietnam. You all know what I mean.

The knowledge that depression took him, hits too close to home. I feel blessed that in my darkest moments, I still saw the light at the end of the darkness. I am so sad that he didn't see that.

R.I.P Robin. You will be missed by millions. You made the world a happier place.

Being sad often makes me want to eat - so today I whipped up a few quiches. 

My quiches are so easy - and taste great. There is a base, and you can fill them with whatever you like!!

Failsafe Quiche

sHORTCRUST PASTRY (THERMOMIX RECIPE)

200g Spelt Flour
100g chilled cubed butter
pinch salt
50-60g cold water

Place flour, butter and salt into TM bowl and mix for 10 seconds on speed 6.

Add water and mix a further 5-6 seconds on speed 6 to form a rough dough.  Add water as necessary to bind.

Turn mixture onto floured bench knead lightly.

If you don't have a Thermomix, you can use the same recipe with a high powered food processor, or you can buy shortcrust pastry.

Roll pastry into the dish then add whatever you'd like in your quiche.

I usually put around 100g bacon or ham, with 50g cheese and then  spinach, or kale, or broccoli florets. You can add onion, garlic, any vegetable you like. 3/4 fill the prepared base.

Then, depending on the size of the quiche, use 2 eggs for each 1/2 cup cream.  Sprinkle with cheese and put in a 180° oven until it rises fully and is slightly browned. 

note: The pastry is so easy to whip up, and lasts well in the fridge. Quite often I'll make a double mix and wrap half in the fridge. It makes a super quick dinner if you have the dough pre made.  You can roll it as thick or as thin as you'd like too! 

Let me know how you go with the quiche, if you enjoy it, and what you put in it!

Remember guys, just eat real food.

Marney x 

Lasagne

Two things happened today that made me sad. The first was when I heard on t.v that I should google 'am I pretty' and look at the video results.  There were well in excess of two and a half million results on the web. I was astounded to see there are over 650,000 video results alone!

The second was seeing a commercial for a new TV show called 'Bringing Sexy Back'. The basic premise of the show seems to be people being unhappy with how they look, dreaming of looking the way they do in photos that are decades old.

What is the common theme for today's upset? Beauty. Our society puts such importance on physical beauty, to a point that 9 year olds are asking the world if they're pretty. They're wearing make-up and all the right clothes, but they're still not as pretty as girls in magazines, or other girls at school. They compare themselves with the physical attributes of others, and they can't measure up. Did I mention they're 9 years old?

25 years ago, just before I hit my teen years, I started to notice I was 'fat'. My sister, who was a couple of years older than me was very slight, she was around a size 6 naturally. I was a size 10 - standing next to her, I was huge. I grew up in the 80's in a family that joke to show they care, and compliments were doled out very rarely, to avoid conceit.  My nickname was Norm. Kids of the 80's will remember the Life Be in It advertisements of the day? A big, fat, lazy guy sitting around in a chair. That was me, or at least how I learned to see myself - Norm.



As a teenager, I hung at the fringe. There were others like me, and they'd sit with me in class, sometimes hang out with me in the yard, but for the most part, I was alone. I went further with boys than I wanted to, because I just wanted affection and attention. I wanted someone to love me, to approve of me, to think I was pretty. I ran away from home at 16 to live with a guy I thought was the love of my life, because finally I found someone who thought I was beautiful. I nearly married him for the same reason, despite the fact we weren't good together. 

Years later after speaking to others from the fringe groups at my high school, they felt similar feelings. Alone, unattractive, seeking approval and love, kindness and friendship. Things that weren't given by all those perfect girls, the popular ones with the jock boyfriends that were just so damn hot. They were so beautiful that the boys wanted to date them, not just make out with them behind the building so no-one would see - like they did with me. Oh how I wanted to be them. They had the right clothes, the right shoes, the right hair, and they were just so fucking beautiful. I was ugly, so I had to hide behind a make-up mask and lots of hair.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate pretty just as much as the next girl. I have occasional moments of having my breath taken away by a set of rock hard abs, muscular shoulders or piercing blue eyes. What I'm getting at is that it's not the most important thing. In fact, it's not really important at all. 

So when I see a T.V show that has grown adults striving to look like they did as young adults, it makes me so sad. Beautiful women, many who are loving wives and mothers who hate the way they look. I would never want to go back to who I was then, I'm finally me. I am beautiful. I am happy. I don't need your approval. I don't need things. I don't need the right clothes, the right hair. My body is most certainly not what it was back then, but I don't care. I have housed two humans in there. My body is amazing. It grew two people - made from scratch.

My amazing body isn't what it used to be. It's much bigger. Mostly because of how I chose to treat it.  For the better part of two decades I lived on a diet of toxins. Cigarettes, alcohol, chips chocolates and any other crap I could find. It made me unhealthy and sick. Hindsight tells me I was eating away emotional issues, which gave me very real physical problems. For the last 4 years, I've been studying wholefoods and eating to restore health. When what went in my mouth started to change, my head changed. I stopped being so sick, but I also stopped thinking so negatively. I actually started to like myself.

To my three devoted readers, I ask this of you, teach your daughters that what is on the outside is not as important as what is on the inside. Teach your sons to respect women, and look beyond appearance. Instill a sense of self in your kids that isn't dependant on what other people think of them. Teach your kids that kindness toward other people, a sense of humour, the desire to help people worse off than yourself, intelligence, a social conscience, a love of nature, passion for life and a killer smile are all so much more important than pretty. Also, teach your kids to honour and respect their body. To love it, nurture it and care for it. Don't let them get into their 30's before they start to nourish it. Teach them young. Teach them well. Teach them to just eat real food!!




Now for my lasagne - it's not a recipe, it's a guide. I think a good bolognese is a really personal thing, and everyone tends to make their own version. The way I make my Bolognese has evolved from my mother's recipe, which is chunky and delicious!

Yesterday for the very first time I made the pasta for my lasagne, which I really enjoyed and found to be lots of fun! I made the dough in the Thermomix in about 90 seconds.

Dough

300g flour  (I actually used wheat as it was for someone else)
3 large free-range eggs
15g Olive oil
1/2 tsp salt

Put all ingredients into TM bowl and mix speed 6 for 6 seconds. Then knead for 2 mins. Remove from bowl, wrap in cling film and refrigerate for at least 30 mins. Then using your pasta machine, roll out to desired thickness (that's the fun part!!)


Sauce


2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
500g minced beef
2 carrots
1 large stick celery
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil

1/2 cup red wine
1 tbsp veggie stock paste
1 tin diced tomato (plus 1 tin water)
1/4 cup tomato paste

This section can be done in the TM or on the cooktop. I wrote it for the cooktop - because that is how I prefer to do my sauce.

Crush garlic, dice onion, carrot, celery. Add oil to large fry pan on medium heat. Gently sweat off garlic carrots celery and onion until the onion is translucent. Turn heat up to high and add minced beef oregano and basil. Stir until meat is browned.

Add wine, stock paste tomatoes, water and tomato paste, reduce heat and simmer for approx 30 mins.  Once cooked, refrigerate until cold  for a better lasagne!
In the thermomix, make sure you remember to have the blade on reverse so the meat and veg aren't mushy - or cook them in the basket.



Bechamel sauce

This part is so easy in the Thermomix and I hate doing a bechamel on the stove!

In the TM bowl combine

400ml milk
30g butter
pinch salt
pinch pepper
pinch nutmeg
20g corn flour
1 large free range egg

Mix at speed 5 for 3 seconds. Set timer for 8:00 temp 90 speed 6

I like to add a handful of grated cheese and cook for another minute to melt the cheese - this is totally optional.
100g cheese - grated. Please grate cheese yourself or use your Thermy. Commercial shredded cheese has anti caking agents that are toxic. Fresh is best!




Essentially once you've rolled out your dough, the process is exactly the same as any lasagne. Layer sauce and pasta, then pour over bechamel and cover with cheese!

It's just as easy to make a double, or even triple batch of the sauce and make several lasagnes, as they freeze really well! 

I hope you enjoy, comment if you make this to let me know how you go. Don't forget to just eat real food!

Marney x

Helping out.

My Dad has cancer. It really sucks. Mostly because he is 64 and may or may not see another birthday. He probably won't be around to see my beautiful children get married or have children of their own, and that breaks my heart. 

When you are a grown woman, who has a parent with cancer, you feel helpless. All the time. Life is busy, and between the farm, family and the day to day of life, I'm not as much help to Mum as I want to be. Spending huge amounts of time with them is hard, as often he's too tired for my kids energy and he's away for treatment a lot. 

My mother is a very capable woman. She amazes me every day with her strength, and her ability to cope under the pressure of watching her husband get sicker.  On top of caring for Dad, she is also carer to my Uncle, who lives in a flat behind their home. He is a lovely guy, with a heart as big as Phar Lap, who would do anything for anyone. But he's hopeless! He needs looking after and hedefinately needs help with cooking. He's in his late 60's and has never left home, and never really needed to look after himself.

Mum rarely asks me for help, but she asked me yesterday if I could cook a couple of meals for my Uncle to have while she's away. The meals need to be easy to reheat and cater to his simple palate. So since I've been feeling useless I embrace the opportunity to help. I know that if his freezer is full, it will be one less thing for Mum to have to worry about.

I began yesterday, with curried sausages, a quick pasta which I refrigerated overnight, a pasta sauce. That gave me the foundation for a great lasagne. The dough was simple, 300g flour and 3 eggs in the Thermomix for 90 seconds. Never fear non Thermy owners, you can mix the flour and eggs together and knead it on the bench for 10 minutes, and it's the same! 

I must admit, I've never made pasta from scratch before. The kids enjoy it so much, that I always just let them do it for me. I found it to be a lot of fun, and very therapeutic!  Anyone can make pasta, you just need a benchtop and a pasta machine (which are really cheap at homewares stores).

After I'd made a couple of lasagnes, I had plenty of sauce and pasta left over. I decided to make some fettuccine. It too was a lot of fun to do, and so very easy. I was having all kinds of fun, right up until the rolling pin fell off the bench, onto my toe (which I think is now broken). Suffice to say, a break was taken from the kitchen to tend to my foot! 

The Thermomix really made my job a lot quicker today, from making the shepherds pie base, the mash, the steamed veg, onion gravy for the sausages, pastry for the quiches - it really simplified the process.  I quite often had mega cooking sessions pre-Thermy, and would spend 2 straight days cooking. I consider myself a great cook, and I am pretty much able to make anything with a knife, wooden spoon and a pan.

My Thermy is great, but it's just an appliance - I'm the cook. My appliance though really made it easy to do so many meals in such a short time span.  The cheese took around 7 seconds to 'grate' - the bechamel sauce took 2 minutes. I could have done these things without Thermy, but it would have taken so much longer. 

One of the things that also really made today run smoothly, was stacking the Thermy. Using the bowl, with something in the basket, and things steaming in the varoma does require planning, but it cuts down on time and energy. 

 

All up I think I ended up doing about 28 meals in around 5 hours. All from scratch using whole food ingredients. There was quiche, fettuccine bolognese, lasagne, beef korma, curried sausages, chicken risotto, salads, shepherds pie, sausages with onion gravy and veg, 2 pizzas and some steamed veggies. Not bad for 5 hours in the kitchen!!

My Uncle was so happy to see all the food, and his freezer is now chock-a-block. It's one less thing for Mum to worry about, and now she can concentrate on Dad. As it should be. 

If anyone wants recipes for anything they see, comment below, and I'll see if I can help out.

Hope everyone is well and happy - and don't forget - Just eat real foods.

Marney x