Finally a bit of normality is being restored!

Well we have been living in our new place for 2 weeks now and it still looks like a Tasmanian devil has hit after eating a bucketload of sugar! I am really enjoying having a spacious kitchen. I now have a bread machine so I can easily make low salt and sugar bread which Little Miss seems to love!

I haven't properly finished any new recipes recently but I thought I share how we make our own organic almond milk at home.

We have been loving almond milk for a while now. It is great for hot drinks, cereals and cooking and also doesn't seem to put dairy-drinking guests off as much as soya milk can do. When looking at the ingredients I was a bit disappointed at how many ingredients other than almonds and water there were so we decided to try making our own.

This is our method:

Soak around a cupful of plain "raw" (I think almonds usually have a heat treatment) almonds in water overnight. This softens the almonds.

Drain the water and give the almonds a bit of a wash. 

Put the almonds in a blender with around 4 cups of water. Vanilla extract and/or dates could be added for a bit of sweetness but we usually have it plain.

Blend for a few minutes.

Next you need to strain it. We use cheese cloths which are basically fine muslin but you can get nut milk bags and I actually find a fine sieve gets rid of most of the almond bits. Make sure you squeeze the cloth or bag at the end to get out all the liquid you can.

And there you have it, almond milk! You can use the almondy stuff left over in things like curries or add it to porridge. I have also heard of a fudge that can be made but I haven't tried it yet!

Hope you enjoy,

JULES XOXO

Busy busy busy!

It is actually chaos in our house right now. We start moving at the end of this week so there has been lots of packing, cleaning and stressing!

Most of Little Miss' meals recently have been very quick and simple. I have also been using up my freezer stash.

So I don't have too much of a gap in the blog I thought I'd tell you all a few of the meals LM has been having. There is no real need for recipes for these kind of things as quantities don't really matter and you can make it your own. Some of these have pictures and some don't...sorry!

So, we have had:

Couscous with roasted vegetables:

Spaghetti with tomato, vegetable and bean sauce (I blended the sauce):

Potato cakes made by frying patties of mashed potato, spring onions and grated courgette

Some homemade potato and vegetable fingers. This was a similar idea of shaping mashed potato and cooked vegetables into a finger shape and baking them

Pasta with some tahini, soya yoghurt, chickpeas and tomatoes

We have also had a mild curry with rice, some tortilla wraps with vegetables and houmous and some quinoa and vegetables. 

I hope you have been having some great successes with your baby-led weaning. I will be back soon with some more recipes (and a much bigger kitchen! Yippee!)

JULES XOXO

Sugar free banana bread

I've been looking for recipes for snacks to have in the day other than our staples of fruit, veg and rice cakes! 

I found lots of recipes for banana bread but ended up creating my own using the others as a guideline. It made a lovely moist and dense cake perfect for mini fingers. It has only 5 ingredients. The bananas for this are best if they are very ripe, i.e. lots of brown spots, as they mash up really well and are sweeter as the starch turns into sugars. I cook this in a loaf tin but if you don't have one a cake tin would be fine too.

Ingredients

5/6 ripe bananas

2 cups plain flour

1 cup raisins

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking powder

(You may need a splash of non-dairy milk if your bananas do not make the dough wet enough)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.  

Line and grease a loaf tin/cake tin

Mash the bananas into the flour

Add the other ingredients and stir in well.

If the dough is dry add a bit of non-dairy milk. It should be a very thick dough that sticks to the spoon but still shiny and wet.

Pour into your tin and bake in the oven for around 25-30 minutes. The top of the bread should have gone darker brown and a knife should come out clean when it has pierced the cake.

I enjoy a warm piece of banana bread so no need to fully cool down if you can't wait (but obviously make sure it is cool enough for the babies and children!),

The raisins and cinnamon of this recipe really complement the textures and flavours of the cake. It is lovely and sweet despite there being no sugar in it and the high fruit content means it is pretty healthy.

We enjoyed this for both snacks and breakfast. In our hurry to eat it I never managed to take any pictures. Sorry.

JULES XOXO

Vegetable fritters

I have been trying to do some sort of meal planning this week so have been trawling the Internet for ideas for some nice recipes suitable for all of us. Of course most baby-led weaning websites aren't vegan but there quite a few vegetarian recipes out there. I saw one for butternut squash and sweetcorn pancakes which sounded really good for finger food. I hadn't really considered savoury pancakes like that before.

If you've seen pancake recipes before or cooked non-vegan pancakes you'll know thy then to have egg and milk in. Obviously you can substitute both of these relatively easily (non-dairy milk for the cows milk and flaxseed/banana/egg replacers etc) but I decided to make more of a dense fritter style instead. To be honest this was really because I didn't have any suitable egg replacers in!

Little Miss' daddy doesn't really like sweetcorn much and I only like the kind straight from the cob so I used courgette (zucchini) instead.

Ingredients

100g butternut squash

100g courgette

150g flour (all purpose)

Non-dairy milk (rice milk isn't recommended for babies)

Some vegetable/sunflower/olive oil

Method

Steam the vegetables until soft  (I used a metal sieve over a boiling pan of water with a lid  on top. No fancy steamers here!). 

Mash together with the flour.

Add non-dairy milk until a thick batter forms (still sticks to the spoon but is quite gloopy).

Heat up some oil in a frying pan. About 2 tablespoons will probably do.

Fry spoonfuls spread into small discs (ours were about 4cm across). They will probably need just a few minutes each side until they are golden brown.

Let them cool down on some kitchen roll to absorb some of the excess oil.

This made about 12 small fritters. We each had 4 each (LM didn't consume all 4 but 4 were needed for the obligatory "throw some on the floor" and "mash some on my head" purposes". LM's daddy and I had some extra vegetables and sweet chilli sauce with ours.

These went down a storm with everyone and were perfect for a weekend lunch all together. They would work with so many other vegetables so give them a go and tell me how yours went!

JULES XOXO

Barley "risotto"

Little Miss' daddy "doesn't like rice" and yet risotto is a staple favourite in the household along with curry. I think this is a bit like his "I don't like coconut" and yet he eats and likes everything I give him with coconut in it! 

We probably have a risotto every couple of weeks so to mix it up a bit we made it with pearl barley tonight. Barley is full of nutrients and brings a bit of a nutty flavour to the risotto.

I tend to put whatever vegetables we have in the fridge into the risotto. Tonight it was marrow, mushrooms and tomatoes.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons oil (we uses sunflower)

Half a large onion, diced

1/3 of a marrow/a whole courgette, cubed

300g mushrooms (about 8-10 closes cup mushrooms), chopped

1 1/4 cup dry pearl barley

A baby vegetable stock cube (I.e. very low/no salt)

3 largish tomatoes, chopped

Method

Fry the onion for a few minutes in the oil then add the marrow and mushrooms and cook for a further 5-10 minutes so they are softened.

Make up the stock according to package instructions.

Add the barley to the saucepan.

Add half the stock and stir intermittently until the water has been absorbed.

Add in the rest of the stock and continue in the same manner.

The pearl barley pack instructions seem to vary but tend to say to cook the barley for an hour to an hour an a quarter. It should be soft; a sort of pasta consistency. You may need to add in some extra water if it all gets absorbed and needs more cooking.

Add in the chopped tomatoes about 5 minutes until the end.

This made enough for all 3 of us to have for a meal as well as a couple of extra baby portions for the freezer.

Excuse the bad phone picture!

I like mine with a little bit more seasoning but added at the table to keep it baby friendly.

Enjoy!

JULES XOXO

Arriba! Fajitas!

Sorry it has been an absolutely ridiculous time since I posted anything on the blog. I have been taking photos of Little Miss' food but we have had so much to do as we are moving! However, being a mum I am always busy so I just need to find the time to write even if it means writing on my phone like I do now. 

A few weeks ago, Little Miss' dad and I fancied fajitas, something we used to have a lot before LM was born. We have ours really spicy so we adapted it to make it less spicy and added more spices after.

I wasn't organised or skilled enough to make my own tortillas this time so they were ready made and the rest of the recipe is really simple. You can use most vegetables in this but we tend to go for the usual peppers, onions, tomatoes and mushrooms with a side of beans.

For the 3 of us (although I made extra for next day's lunch) I probably used 2 peppers, one small red onion, six mushrooms and 4 medium sized tomatoes. These were sliced and fried in some olive/vegetable oil with the onions going in a few minutes before everything else. 

In a separate saucepan I cooked some red kidney beans with some chopped tomatoes (about half a 400g pack/tin), mashing the beans up as I went.

For us I added in some BBQ sauce/liquid smoke into the beans and spices into the veg but left it out for LM.

Simple as that! I would recommend guacamole with it but I am allergic to avocados (boooooo!) so we don't have it. Some soya yoghurt and/or vegan cheese are also nice additions.

We ripped LM's tortilla into smaller strips to make mini fajitas and she also grabbed some of the mixture in her hands just to eat by itself.

I love fajitas so was very happy to find LM  enjoyed them too.

JULES XOXO

Creating simple sandwich spreads

I make Little Miss' dad lunch most days for work. Sometimes it is extra dinner left over but often it is sandwiches. We have always struggled to find more inspiring things than different forms of houmous with salad/roasted veg (although we love houmous and there were quite a few variations. 

Sandwiches are a great thing to take out for Little Miss if we are having lunch on the go but I didn't want to end up in the same situation of only having one proper sandwich filling. 

A few posts ago you may remember the sandwich I made with spinach and mushrooms (among other ingredients) which didn't look particularly appetising but was delicious and liked by Little Miss. This week I decided to try a different vegetable filling and realised the possibilities are pretty endless! Any vegetable/pulse/herb can be used to create delicious spreads perfect for sandwiches.

This makes enough for at least 5 thickly spread sandwiches (probably more as I kept eating it off the spoon!)

Ingredients

Whole aubergine (eggplant)

1 cup cooked lentils (any colour)

Half a sweet potato

One red onion

Method

Roast the vegetables in the oven until soft and browning.

Meanwhile cook the lentils as per instructions on the packet

Blend with stick blender/in food processor until quite smooth but some lumps are fine and I think actually add to it.

It is so simple and just shows one example of what can be done.

Enjoy creating any spread you fancy and experiment!

JULES XOXO