Kitchen Cook Up

Hi Everyone,

Hope you all had great frugal fun day. As for me it was a long day... I returned to work, after 4 weeks of recreation leave. It was hard getting my brain focused on the job. I can't believe 2011 went by so quickly and my 4 weeks off went even quicker. I didn't do all the jobs on my To Do List. I actually hardly did any of them at all as I dashed from one activity to another for Dolly's enjoyment or experimented daily with procrastination.

Last night was a hive of activity in our home. Dolly, The Rambling Expat and I cooked as a family. We made potato and bacon frittatas for dinner. We've never made these before but wanted to see if Dolly would like them in her school lunchbox. While Dolly cracked the eggs and stirred, The Rambling Expat and myself chopped and grated to keep her bowl topped up with all the needed ingredients. Once in the oven Dolly and her Papa got onto to the business of playing.

While they played I chopped up left over choice pieces of chicken from the previous nights dinner. I added chopped tomato, cucumber and a dash of mayonnaise, salt, pepper. Mixed and stored in the fridge for the next days lunchtime sandwiches.

Lunch Prep

I placed the left over chicken bits and carcase in my slow cooker with water, ungrated potato ends from the frittata making, celery tops, 1 spring onion, 1 brown onion and a dash of salt/pepper. After 6 hours it was ready to be divided. Half went into a pyrex dish as stock to cook rice this week, the over half in another dish to be eaten as chicken/veggie soup.

Slow Cooking Stock and Soup.

Stock and Soup

Playing over, table set and the frittatas were sampled. They were a hit with the three of us. Unfortunately we used muffin baking trays which I did not grease beforehand so the frittatas stuck, causing angst in getting them out and Oh the drama of cleaning the trays. However as we made double quantity, half of the mixture was placed in a glass pyrex dish and into the oven. These slid out beautifully, no waste and cleaning was a breeze. So I think we will stick to using our pyrex dishes in the future.

Dolly's Dinner, Sampled and Loved. She ate it all!

I Love My Pyrex. Easy Cooking, Storing and Cleaning

2 hours of cooking and cleaning has resulted in 4 dinners and 1 lunch for us three. 2 frittata dinners (just add salad), 1 chicken soup dinner (just add carrot and beans), 1 chicken lunch filling (just add bread) and 1 chicken flavoured rice meal (just add rice).

One happy frugal productive evening :-)

How about you? Any additional cooking lately? Have you been bulking? Cooking any new meals?

Dolly Made Dinner

Sunday afternoon was unpleasant as I have had a red puffed up irritated eye. I was hoping to just relax at the nice cool clean library while Dolly played and looked at books. But I had asked Dolly early on in the morning if she wanted to cook in the afternoon and she happily shouted "Yes!" So the library was ignored and cook she did!

I gave her the ingredients and talked her through the process. She rolled, cracked, grated, measured, stirred and poured. (The Brazilian Spinach from our garden was placed uncooked in the mix).

All Mixed and Ready to Bake.

Mmmmmm, Dolly on Her Way to Master Chefdom.

 2 hours from her commencing, we ate and it was delicious. The spinach leaves peeking out of the quiche were thin and crackly. Just divine.  The best part is she said to me "I don't like spinach". To which I replied "But you LOVE spinach quiche you make yourself" and to that, my influenceable daughter replied "Oh yes, that's right" and gobbled it all up :-)

It then rained, so to end our day we went puddle jumping and umbrella twirling. It was so much fun. Loving the simple things in life and the changes in weather. The library was not missed. My eye was irritated either way and my 4 year made our family the most yummy frugalicious dinner. I am living the good life on days like this and Dolly is skilling up for life.

Do you have tricks to get your family to eat their greens? Any skills your children are eager to learn? Have you been jumping in puddles lately?

Let Them Eat Cake

Our Dolly turned 4 a couple of weeks ago. The party was postponed until today due to crazy weather and other activities. We invited 5 of her special friends to a indoor playground full of small balls and slides. The cost was high but our flat is too small for a bunch of active 4 year old and the weather has been rain and more rain, putting off throwing a party in our garden or in a public park.

I am not a talented cook but was determined to try and make a wished for cake for my favourite girl. We looked at You Tube cake videos and she chose a castle, even though she is REALLY into fairies. So I combined the castle with a enchanted garden to give her a princess-fairy theme. I started mixing and baking at 10:00pm and finished decorating at 4:00am! Boy was I exhausted! And then I realised I had forgotten the towers that the cones are supposed to sit on. Ah well, that's to bad...

The cake's green base is chocolate mud cake and the castle is a butter cake. The icing I made was frustratingly hard to manage in the tropical heat. It just sled off!

Throughout the year I had kept an eye out for Fairy items for her party. I found the small tinkerbell and friends dolls at half price about 9 months ago. We had also found a New packet of Fairy party hats at an op shop for $2 but forgot them at home :-(

I purchased bowls of hot chips, chicken nuggets and cold drinks for kids and adults as I wasn't allowed to bring my own food/drinks except for the B-day cake. However I snuck in a BIG fruit bowl of nectarines, plums, pears and grapes - no one said anything.

We stayed for 2 hours instead of 1, when I went to pay.. the man was very kind and only charged 1 hour per child. So once again I was lucky and grateful.

The budget was 120$ for the party, I roughly spent $130 which includes everything. A bit over budget but my little girl who is growing up so fast was thrilled to bits.