I have lost a lot of energy for many things, including keeping the fridge and cupboards well stocked, due to nearing the end of my pregnancy with baby number 2! So, there is often a night or 2 each week when I try to be as resourceful as possible, with what little might be left in the fridge, so as to avoid going to the shops…….. so that is how I came to make this spanish omelette the other night when all we had was a large potato, an onion, some eggs and herbs. (and bread for toast). It was a successful meal and no one complained, I would definately make it again, in fact David was very complimentary (the ingredients are what I used for 2 adults and a child in a standard sized frying pan.)

• 1 large potato peeled and sliced ( about 1cm thick slices)
• 3-4 eggs
• 1 onion diced
• cheddar or parmesan cheese grated
• fresh herbs if you have them ( i used some sage - parsley might be good too?)
• Black pepper and salt
• olive oil

Fry the potato slices and the onion and sage in olive oil - give the potatoes a headstart. Whisk the eggs together in a bowl and add salt and pepper. Once the potato and onion is soft, add them to the egg mixture in the bowl. Heat some oil in the frying pan and pour all the mixture together into the frying pan, grate cheese on the top and cook the omelette until it is set, but the top will still be uncooked. Place a large plate on top of the pan and turn the pan upside down so the omelette is on the plate, slide the omelette back into the pan to cook the top a little. Remove from pan and serve with toast.

I have been a bit slack with the Goodness Bites posts lately, but actually I do have a lot of dishes to write about, it has just been a matter of finding the time to do it. I am fast approaching the due date of baby number 2 and have been trying to get a whole lot of things done before then.

I will have to start with the food we cooked for Baby Sweet Peas 2nd Birthday Party, which was a couple of weeks ago. I will include the birthday cake recipe we used as well as the pizzas we made as they worked well. We also made chicken sandwiches (recipe in Sweet Peas 1st birthday party post) and I bought chicken nuggets from the local butcher. I attempted merangues, and although they did all get eaten and I am told they tasted good, they were quite brown in colour and extremely brittle so I wont be putting that recipe up here yet. I also put a plate of fruit (mostly grapes, as they are SPs fav) on the table and I offered cranberry juice to the children as that is also SPs favourite.

Baby Sweet Pea loved her birthday party, especially sitting up at the table with party hat on, eating lots of food, singing happy birthday, the candles, the cake, the balloons… I have to admit she didnt eat the chicken sandwiches and was absolutely enraptured by the smarties on the birthday cake.

A Teddy Bear Birthday Cake

One round carrot cake as the bears face, two cup cakes for the ears, cream cheese icing,  licorice nose and mouth, and smarty eyes. (the cupcakes I used were just made with a basic plain cake recipe, but you could try doubling the carrot cake and making cupcakes with half of it?)

Carrot Cake

• 1 /4 cups brown sugar
• 3/4 cup butter (softened)
• 3 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups wholemeal self-raising flour (or plain flour plus 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder)
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 2 1/2 cups grated carrot
• 1/2 cup chopped pecan nuts
• 1/2 cup sultanas

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celcius. Place sugar and softened butter into bowl of electric mixer and beat for 2-3 mins. Add eggs gradually and beat well. Sift the flour, cinnamon and ginger over sugar mixture. Add carrots, pecans and sultanas, and mix lightly until just combined. Pour into a greased and floured 22cm round cake tin and bake for 55 - 60 mins or until cooked when tested with a skewer. Spread with cream cheese frosting when cooled.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Soften 250g Cream Cheese. Sift 1/3 cup icing sugar over the cream cheese and add 1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice (or orange) and mix until well combined and smooth.

Pizza

The following are the ingredients for  making a pizza base. You mix all these together with your hands and knead for about 10 minutes or a bit more, until the dough feels very pliable and softer than it was. Then you place the ball of dough in a bowl and cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise, for approx 2 hours. Then grease a round pizza tray and very gently extend the dough in your hands and press quickly into the tin, pushing it right to the edge.

For the topping I just spread tomato paste, some dried oregano and then various grated cheeses on one pizza, and on the other I also added sliced mushrooms. Cook in a fairly hot oven (about 220) and take the pizza off the tray for the last 5 mins so as to crisp the underside of the base.

• 200gm plain wholemeal flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon yeast
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
•  approx 150 ml warm water (maybe less - do a bit at a time)

Gillian has a 19 month old daughter who enjoys a broad range of foods and who eats most of her meals at the table with her parents.

Gillian writes;

We order a mixed organic vege box each week. It’s great quality and value, and it forces me to think of different things to cook to use up the varying range of vegetables. Our box this week included an eggplant and some spinach, so I took the opportunity to make an old favourite, Eggplant Mykonos, a Greek vegetable stew. I usually serve the stew on couscous with feta cheese, but I’m pregnant and wary of soft cheeses. So this time I added (cooked) chick peas to the stew (when I was adding the crushed tomatoes) and served it on brown rice (which improves protein intake when combined with the chick peas). My 19 month old daughter was very keen on the dish; she also loved nibbling on olives while I prepared it.

Eggplant Mykonos
2 med onions, chopped
2 garlic cloves, pressed
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 med-lge eggplant (6 cups cubed)
1 lge red/green capsicum
3 cups undrained tinned whole tomatoes
1/2 cup unsweetened apple juice (or water)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground fennel (I sometimes use whole fennel seeds)
2 tbsp chopped fresh dill (or 2 tsp dried dill)
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
3 cups chopped fresh spinach
salt and ground pepper to taste
Saute onions and garlic in oil until translucent. Cut the eggplant in to 1 inch cubes and add them to the pot. Slice the capsicum in to 1 inch square pieces. Crush the tomatoes. Add the capsicum, tomatoes, apple juice or water, salt and fennel to the pot. If using dried dill, add it now. Cover the pot and simmer, stirring frequently, until the eggplant is completely tender (about 15 mins). Stir in the fresh dill, if used, and add the lemon juice and spinach. Simmer for another minute or two until the spinach wilts but is still bright green. Season to taste.

Leisa has 3 children, the youngest being an 8 month old baby girl. 

Leisa writes;

Poor Baby Bear (child number 3) is always being fed in a hurry.  She sits up in her chair watching me cook the other kids dinner between offering her spoonfuls of her own.  As parents we are officially outnumbered at the dinner table now (by the kids) so I find it easier to have fed Baby before we start.  She still sits up at the table though, and chews through a rice biscuit or piece of soft fruit while watching the floor show!

This is Babies favourite meal at the moment.  I think the consistency really agrees with her, not too mashed but nice and soft in her as yet toothless mouth.  

I love seeing her enjoy it – the little pinches of spices giving her taste buds a feel for things to come!  It would be good for bigger kids too although my other two have identified it as baby food and as a “Big Girl” and a “Big, Big Boy” they wont touch the stuff.  In retrospect I should have fed it to them first!

Spinach and Lentil Dhal

20g red lentils
15g long grain rice
1tbs oil
Pinch of tumeric
Pinch of ground coriander
200 ml water
15g spinach, finely chopped
1/2 tomato, without skin or seeds and finely chopped.

Put lentils, rice, oil, spices and water in a pan.  Bring to the boil and simmer for 25 mins.  Stir occasionally.  If necessary add more liquid.

Add spinach and tomato and cook for 2 mins.  

All done!  Easy to freeze too.

• Leisa writes the blog Down with the kids, anecdotes on Australian family life.

The past 2 weeks have not been very eventful with regard to Sweet Peas dinners…. she is talking well now and negotiating anything, but what is in front of her.  Shrugging her shoulders and raising  her hands in the air she asks “Any blueberries here today Gina?” She then moves through her favourite fruits, icecream, biscuits and then the current flavour of the month “moo cow cheese” which she asks for several times a day.

I had some success tonight with a lean lamb cutlet crumbed in crushed weetbix and fried in olive oil (sometimes I bake them in the oven).  We also had a good dinner of Amelias Vegetable Pasties (with cumin powder for flavour instead of gravox) last night, and on monday night the lamb and chickpea stew which we all enjoy.

I had a baked egg last year in a cafe in Bondi and then I saw a recipe for them in the paper recently. I brought it up with my mum and a friend of hers and they knew all about baked eggs…. So now I have added baked eggs to our repertoire as  they are a delicious lunch or simple dinner - especially in cold wet weather!And, it is an alternative to a boiled egg. I started to worry that Baby Sweet Pea was going to get tired of having boiled eggs all the time! Also we have a little Peter Rabbit ramekin with a silver lid that is perfect for making a baked egg in. A conventional ceramic ramekin is also perfect (doesn’t need a lid). (ramekin is a deep round dish about 7cm diameter, used to bake individual puddings or souffles in, or to serve dips etc.)

Simple Baked Egg for a child

•  1 egg
• dash of tomato sauce
• dash of cream
• a little grated cheese on the top (optional)

Preheat oven to about 190 degrees C. Put a dash of tomato sauce (like just a teaspoon) in the bottom of the ramekin, then a tiny dash of cream. Crack the egg into the dish on top of the sauce. Then pour a small film of cream over the egg to just cover it, and top with a very small amount of cheese, if you like. Place in a hot oven for 7 or 8 minutes, until the egg whites are all cooked but the yolk is still runny. (each oven is different so you may need to do a few test runs before you get it right - some recipes say10 or more minutes but I found it was 8 minutes for our oven.)

Baked Egg with mushrooms (serves 1 in a ceramic ramekin)

• 1 egg
• dash of tomato sauce
• dash of worcestershire sauce
• handful of mushrooms, sliced and lightly fried
• dash of cream
• pepper
• grated cheese for the top (optional)

Same method as for the simple baked egg (above) but add worcestershire sauce, pepper and mushrooms on top of the tomato sauce.

We all moved over to my mum and dads place last week as I am 5 months pregnant and have developed quite a bad back. My mum has been wonderful with Baby Sweet Pea as always.

Mums standard lunch for Baby SP is a boiled egg with toast soldiers. Baby Sweet Pea is so used to having boiled eggs for lunch at Grannys house that she asks Granny for a boiled egg around 11.30am. (Before that she asks for Playschool all morning until 9.30am).

Sweet Pea’s Granny takes the egg out of the fridge to get it to room temperature, then submerges the egg in a small saucepan of cold water. She then brings it to the boil with the lid on, and then when it starts boiling, takes the lid off, reduces the heat a little (the water still bubbling), and counts to 140.

Warm buttered wholemeal toast, with crusts off and cut into fingers, is served beside the eggcup. Sweet Pea’s Granny helps Sweet Pea to spoon the egg out onto the toast.

This is an excellent recipe. We all enjoyed this stew(or hearty soup). Sweet Pea had a little friend over on the night that we had this meal, and both of them had 2 helpings! Also, we withheld the addition of the coriander and lemon juice for Sweet Pea and her friends’ serving - I just wasnt sure about complicating the flavours for them - but maybe it would have been fine….

Note: start cooking this about 3 hours before you want to eat it (although it doesnt need your attention during all that time). OR you could make it well ahead of time up until the addition of the coriander and lemon juice.

• 1 cup (200g) dried chickpeas (or a tin) 
• 20g butter
• 2 medium onions chopped finely
• 2 trimmed celery stalks chopped finely
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 4cm piece fresh ginger grated
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• pinch saffron threads
• 500g diced lamb
• 3 large tomatoes chopped coarsely
• 2 litres (8 cups) hot water
• 1/2 cup (100g) brown or red lentils
• 2 tablespoons plain flour
• 1/2 cup white long-grain rice
• 1/2 cup coriander leaves
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice

Place chickpeas in medium bowl, cover with water, stand overnight, drain. Rinse under cold water, drain.

Heat butter in large saucepan/crockpot, cook onion, celery and garlic, stirring, until onion softens. Add giner, cinnamon, pepper and saffron, cook, stirring, about 2 minutes. Add lamb, cook, stirring, about 5 mins or until lamb is browned.

Add chickpeas and tomato, cook stirring until tomatoes soften.

Stir in the water, bring to boil. Reduce heat, simmer covered, 45 mins. Add lentils, simmer covered 1 hour.

Blend flour with 1/2 cup of the slightly cooled cooking liquid in a small bowl, stir into lamb mixture with the rice. Cook, stirring, until mixture boils and thickens(about 15mins). Stir coriander and lemon juice into stew just before serving.

Alyssa has made this carrot and thyme tart a few times for her family of 3, including her 20 month old daughter who loved it. So I have requested the recipe from her as it sounds so good. I will give it a try this week. Alyssa suggests to use a food processor to do the grating, if you have one, as it saves a lot of time.

• 4 large carrots, peeled and grated
• 1 large onion, peeled and grated
• 2 cloves of garlic grated
• 80g of cheddar cheese grated
• some sort of green vegies such as grated zucchini(courgette) or peas.
• 3 eggs lightly beaten
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• pepper
• 1 tablespoon of fresh thyme leaves or 1 teaspoon of dried thyme.
• 1/2 cup (75g) of wholemeal self-raising flour (I usually use ordinary self raising flour)

Grate carrots, onion,garlic, cheese, zucchini (if using).  Beat together eggs, pepper, nutmeg, thyme in a large bowl. Stir in the flour until well combined, then add the carrot mixture - add peas at this point if using them. Pour into a round baking dish and bake for 45mins at 180 degrees C, till golden brown and cooked through.

Ok I have written about a lot of fritters, i know, but they really are a hit with Baby Sweet Pea. What I like about fritters is that they contain so many good ingredients and so Baby Sweet Pea is getting a good range of food-groups; egg, meat and a variety of vegetables.

Last night we had roast chicken. It was absolutely delicious and all three of us sat up together and enjoyed the dinner. The vegies I cooked alongside included onion, parsnip, sweet potato, beetroot, potatoes, peas and then a green salad with avocado. Baby Sweet Pea discovered roasted onion and kept asking for more. We also gave her some gravy with her chicken and I gave her the most tender pieces of chicken and she seemed to enjoy it - I was very pleased about that as she is sometimes not keen about eating meat.

Tonight I made Chicken & veg fritters for Baby Sweet Pea with the leftover roast chicken and various vegetables. Baby Sweet Pea loved them and ate so many, I felt sure she would explode - see the recipe below.

For the Frugal Cooks out there, Roasting a chicken is a great meal - a whole chicken is around Aus$15, and vegies maybe another $7 -$10 and that means a hearty dinner one night, plus yummy chicken sandwiches (bread $3) for the next 2 lunches for all the family, plus the carcass makes about 2 litres of delicious chicken stock which can be used for casseroles or soups, plus you can make Chicken & Veg fritters for baby for the next night or two! So say you also buy half doz eggs ($3) …..you could have a roast chicken on the 1st night, cheese and herb (herb from garden) omelette with salad on the 2nd night (adults), chicken & veg fritters for baby on 2nd night and lunch), pumpkin soup(using your chicken stock) on the 3rd night,  and chicken sandwiches for 2 adults for lunch on 2 days = all for around $30

Chicken & Veg Fritters

• 1 egg whisked
• 1-2 tablespoons of diced up leftover roast chicken (or cooked chicken)
• 1/2 onion
• 5 or 6 button mushrooms
• 1/3 corn cob- kernals cut off(optional- i didnt use - but would have if i had some corn)
• 1 cup peas
• 1/4 carrot diced
• 3-4 tablespoons flour
• dash of milk (1-2 tablespoons)
• grated cheese (about a tablespoon)
• Butter and olive oil for the pan

Cook the vegies whichever way you prefer. Place the cooked vegetables in a bowl with the egg, flour, cheese and milk. Mix with fork. Heat up frying pan and fry in batches, turning when golden.