From the kitchen

I’ve been focusing on the clean eating, real food side of things recently and there have been these crackers made, fruit and nut whip made from this lovely ladies recipe book (picture taken pre-blitzing in the thermomix) which made the most delicious breakfast. Not to mention some home made granola (ish) stuff to put over yoghurt. And more peanut butter, for toast with banana – little ladies new favourite or for use in satay sauces. Unphotographed were my quinoa flour crepes – which were delicious. And hubbies amazing, made from scratch health version of this butter chicken.

With a child in the mix I find it a careful line to walk. We want to eat good wholesome real food. Things we make from scratch and know each and every part. But in the flip side of that I grew up in a crunchy wholefoods, nothing out of a packet or carton home. And to be truthful it wasn’t always all that fun.

I think that the cookbooks out there now, and the recipes available over the world wide web have made whole foods far more appealing and well known than they were 30 years ago. And thats a great thing. Books like My Darling Lemon Thyme and Quirky Cooking are creating foods that are healthy and fun without rendering the child eating them social pariah.

It has taken me years to accept that actually sometimes, plain white flour is just the right thing for the job. Sugar has a perfectly valid place in my pantry when used with moderation. Those weird fruit string things – kids love them and the odd one on a play date or to take in a packed lunch is not going to hurt my little lady. Its all about moderation. I do not need to feel guilty about it.

My goal moving forward is try try and document better the foods we are trying, the successes (see above) and the failures – I won’t speak of my abysmal baked stuffed zucchinis or the parsnip soup that could have been used to glue paper to walls and tasted no better.

Yes, lets stick to the successes.