Smoothie Three Ways

Ok, so there's not really much you can do with a smoothie - it's a smoothie! This day I revisited our favourite smoothie recipe for family morning tea.

Mr Loving & Miss M had their smoothie in cups, while Honey & I had our with yoghurt. I layered smoothie and yogurt in a Sinchies before smooshing it all around for Honey, while I swirled some on top of mine. I love that I can serve Honey messy foods (like yoghurt and fruit puree) and she can still self feed by using the Sinchies.

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.
~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Flower Princess Snack Box

 Miss M is going through such a girly-girl stage at the moment and I'm loving it :-) I picked up this little lunchbox from Target in the Back to School sales this year, but this is the first time I've gotten around to packing with it.

Today I packed Teddy Bear biscuits and some silicon muffin moulds filled with cheese, mandarin and grape.

I love how this cheese flower turned out! I got the idea from 'Everyday Bento', a great read from one of my early Bento loves Wendolonia.  Not quite as pretty as the salami one she makes, but still yummy :-)

I am yet to master her mandarin flower though - I think I try to squeeze too much fruit in, but I know it gets eaten so in it goes.

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Slow Cooker Bread & Butter Pudding

Can you believe our giveaway for a Kambrook Quatro Multi Cooker finishes tonight? I can't believe how many recipes I'm finding that I haven't posted yet! 

There are quite a few recipes out there for slow cooker Bread & Butter Pudding. Nourishing Joy has a great list of variations and add ins. This is a basic one I threw together with a fair amount of guess work.

First you need to enlist the help of your minions to butter your dish

Miss M is always happy to oblige. I'm sure it's just so she can lick her fingers afterwards :-)

I used a little over 2 cups of bread offcuts & crusts that I keep in the freezer from Miss M's lunches.

A very generous half cup of strawberry jam. . .

which I heated in the microwave to make it a little runnier

Pour it over your bread

And give it a good mix

Toss in some cubed butter too for good measure

I can't quite remember how many eggs I used - that's just under the 100mL mark, so I'm guessing 2?

And a tin of evaporated milk. (I know a lot of recipes use regular milk in the slow cooker, but the instruction manual recommends only adding it at the end of your cook time, so I've been using this instead)

Mix your custard. . .

. . . then pour it on

That's about a quarter cup of brown sugar

Sprinkled over the top

Then set & forget. I put this lot on mid morning.

And 9-ish hours later. . .

Delish!

Have you entered our competition to win a Kambrook Quatro Multi Cooker yet? 

Just in time for Mother's Day. . . I'm just saying. . . 

Details in this previous post

LAST CHANCE TO ENTER!!

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.
~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Eggplant Parmigiana

Please forgive me as I try to get in a few more recipes and experiments with our Kambrook Quatro Multi Cooker before the giveaway ends on Sunday night.

One of our experiments has been to remake Scalini's Eggplant Parmigiana. Have you heard of this dish?

Someone had posted about it being an aid to inducing labour while I was pregnant and I marked it with a 'someone remind me about this if Honey is overdue. . .' Guess what? Honey was overdue so I tried my hand at it.

This was the first time I made it, and gee it was labour intensive (labour as in hard work in the kitchen, not as in hard work giving birth), but I feel that way about most crumbing dishes, and I would normally have bought a sauce rather than make from scratch. It made a *lot*!

For anyone wondering, we had this for dinner on Tuesday night, and Honey arrived Thursday afternoon, so I guess you could call that a success for Scalini's labour-inducing parma :-)

The next time around I enlisted a little help from Miss M. . .

. . . and our Kambrook Quatro Multi Cooker. Popping the sauce on to cook in the morning while we went off for a playdate in the park really did make a difference for me feeling like the dish was less of a hassle to make.

I also added carrots and next time I think there will be celery too - can't have too many veges :-)

Be warned this sauce has a *lot* of tomatoes.

See what I mean?

And I forgot to buy the fresh herbs (I still haven't gotten around to planting any, not that I'd remember to water them at the moment anyway)

All in the pot and happy to simmer away for a few hours.

I also salted the eggplant before we left for our play date.

Good old production line for the crumbing - and using up old bread crusts from the last term is a bonus too.

This time I thought I'd bake rather than fry the eggplant. Partly for health reasons, partly because I didn't fancy standing in front of the stove for ages with a whingy 8 month old clinging to me. Ahhh, school holidays brings out the best in all of us :-)

I must admit the baking didn't really work as well as I'd hoped. They ended up a bit dry and not really as golden as I would have liked.

Look at that sauce - yum!!

I also forgot to get the ricotta and romano, so we stuck with mozzarella and parmesan. The dish does miss the ricotta.

Baked and ready to enjoy.

It's a bit hard to see, but there's the layers for you.

Making this a family meal, Honey had hers served with a few pieces of sausage. I did keep some of the crumbed eggplant aside for her, but she went for the full dish just fine - happy days!

Turns out I didn't take a photo of Miss M's plate. It looked much the same as mine, only a smaller serve. And her Fred Face Plate is much cuter too

Voila!

Overall I'm thinking I might start making some sauces and I really need to get my finger out and plant some herbs!

Have you entered our competition to win a Kambrook Quatro Multi Cooker yet? 

Just in time for Mother's Day. . . I'm just saying. . . 

Details in this previous post

HURRY LAST DAYS!!

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.
~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.

Steamed Fish Quatro Multi Cooker

Goodness where has the time gone? 

I wanted to show you my first attempt at steaming fish in our Kambrook Quatro Multi Cooker before the competition closes on Sunday night. It looks pretty good doesn't it?

Nice and flaky 

And moist

Served with cheats (aka frozen) store fry veges which I popped into the steamer water once the fish was cooked

I steamed three pieces at a time

And they cooked so quickly! Definitely need to stand by and watch in future, although you could smell when it was done :-)

Have you entered our competition to win a Kambrook Quatro Multi Cooker yet? 

Just in time for Mother's Day. . . I'm just saying. . . 

Details in this previous post

HURRY LAST DAYS!!

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.
~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.