Home Grown

I woke up this morning to a messy house; the dishes were strewn across the kitchen sink, the boys had dragged half of their room out into the hall, lounge room and kitchen and there were no home made baked goods in the cupboard for school lunches. What with facebook, my blog, work and running around from swimming to football I decided that I have become a terrible housewife!

Feeling quite bad and sorry for my family I decided I'd try to improve...but I had a few emails to answer first. Ok with that done I popped on a load of washing, yelled a lot for someone to pick up the toys and paper floating about the house and then told the boys I would be more than happy to put it all in a garbage bag and toss it in the bin (I have been known to do this so Max wasn't taking any chances before he set off for school) if I trip over another Ben 10 alien!!!

Twelve o'clock hit and I was due at the school for reading groups (this also made me feel better about my parenting duties, never mind the fact that I get introduced as Mrs. Baker and start looking around for my mother-in-law). Once Alex and I return home for lunch which was leftover chickpea and spinach for me and a ham and cheese jaffle for Alex, the sun was shining so we decided to go out the back and soak up a few rays while eating a late lunch. Alex being Alex wanted to push all our fruit scraps into the compost heap we have out the back (something I started when we first moved in but as my housewife skills deteriorated so did the compost heap!).

Making sure he scraped the apple cores and orange skins onto the right place and buried them so we don't get every cockatoo this side of Sydney I noticed green plants all over the compost.

"Dam weeds Alex" was my response but when I pulled one of them out to my surprise there were two little potatoes sitting at the bottom. I was so excited I started to root around trying to find more, indeed we found a large potato just under the surface and Alex and I were beside ourselves.

"Did we grow them all by ourselves mum?"

Yes we did Alex was my response. I decided to leave the others in there to grow a little longer and see what we will harvest in a week or so. I have no idea how long potatoes take to grow, I read in a kids book that the leaves turn brown and die then you get the potatoes??? If anyone knows please let me in on the secret of happy compost gardening.

Anyway I thought after producing my very own potatoes I should be redeemed in the housewife stakes. So what if the ironing is still sitting in the laundry basket and the table has newspapers all over it......I grew my own potatoes!

Burgers of the LARGE kind

My copy of the latest Saveur magazine arrived a couple of days ago and on the front cover is a delicious looking burger. The photo is awesome and got me completely hooked on wanting one of my own. Nic arrived home later in the evening and I saw the drool escaping his mouth as he was flipping through the magazine.

Saveur is my all time favorite food magazine because it is all about food, real people producing real food and the writers travel everywhere and anywhere to bring their readers the best meals, dishes, stories and produce they can find. I have been buying this mag for 5 years and never tire of it.

This months issue is devoted to the burger and what an issue it is, I for one ran out and brought all the ingredients needed for a delicious burger. When shopping I had a bit of a moment and to this day I still can't believe I flaked out but I have the evidence (actually had the evidence, we demolished it last night). I stood in front of the mince meat section at the shops and began trying to find a bargain. I thought I saw organic minced beef for the same price as regular beef mince. I went back and forth with them both trying to find what was wrong and in the end decided Woollies made a labeling mistake and I go home the winner. I popped the organic 'beef' mince in the trolley and began buying other ingredients to make my awesome burger.

Once I got home I bragged to Nic that I was able to buy organic beef for the same price as the other beef, explaining their stuff up. With that said my practical husband picks up the meat in question and says "so why does this say organic minced lamb?"

DAMIT!!!

Sometimes I really could give myself a bloody good kick up the backside. Lamb? but I was dreaming about beef. Don't get me wrong I love lamb but when I think of a burger I am all about the beef. Any who after reading through a few stories in the Saveur I decided the writer was right, you can't really go wrong with a burger no matter what the style you are eating, they all seem to taste awesome (we are talking about the home made variety people!)

Because I had lamb instead of beef I decided to work in garlic to the dinner and I also knew we were going to have oven roasted chips with the burger as it is the best marriage in my opinion so I chopped the potatoes, threw in heaps of garlic cloves and banged them in a really hot oven to go crisp on the outside and soft and creamy in the middle. While they were cooking I worked on our burgers, Nic took the boys off to footy practice while I played in peace.

In the end I decided to caramelize some onions, boil up some fresh beetroots because there is nothing better than fresh beets on a burger and pulled the pickled jalapenos from the fridge. Whilst grabbing for the peppers I eyeballed my homemade BBQ sauce I had made for the ribs a few weeks ago and thought why the hell not!

The boys all rocked in from footy practice, Max and Alex in heaven with the smell of the burgers cooking while I put it all together. Just before pulling the meat patties from the grill I dropped a big dollop of spicy BBQ sauce onto adults burgers followed by the aged cheddar I picked up from the shops (The boys tried it and decided it was to hot for them and they wanted the regular cheese- no worries!). While the cheese was melting I applied lashings of mayo to the bun followed with lettuce, tomato and sliced beets; placed the lamb burger on followed with caramelized onion and chopped jalapenos. I was is heaven, the boys told me I better not photograph their dinners because they were sooooo hungry Oh, and to put on extra chips but keep the caramelized garlic to ourselves- with that said I happy obliged.

I have to say dinner was one of the best flaky moments I have had in a long while and I am now wanting to go on a all burger diet, alas my thighs will not be thanking me, nor will my cholesterol level, so bring on moderation, make a burger with all your favorites and enjoy every mouthful....oh and don't forget the oven roasted chips!

New toy #3

I am so happy and excited, I bought myself a new toy........ actually I brought it for my sanity! My day begins with the words "I'm hungry" and then they roll into "I'm starving" and then I am lucky enough to have Alex at home with me 5 days a week continually telling me these phrases over and over and over again until I want to throw him from the house.

Living with two active and sporty boys has given me a new out look on feeding a family. Max is at the stage of hoovering up anything in his path without to much questioning. Alex is continually hungry (or so he says) BUT will still question everything that is put in front of him and for this reason I have no problems starving him (this is what he tells me I am doing when I won't feed him 50 minutes after a massive lunch).

To help me in my quest of keeping the boys from fading away I have brought a jaffle maker. I love these things, we use to have one when I was a kid and the list was endless as to what you put inside; baked beans and cheese, bacon and eggs, spag bol and cheese etc, etc... The jaffle maker is also going to be my number one tool for moving leftovers in the house (there is only so much I can eat). Because the Baker boys are so turned off by leftovers I simply pull out my trusty jaffle maker, butter the outsides of bread, fill the inside with whatever is lurking, add some cheese for the melted effect, put the top slice on and let it work it's magic.

Before the boys can tell me they are waisting away I have two jaffles made and sitting in front of them ready to be devoured AND if I happen to have leftover mince and cabbage from the night before, all is shoveled in before the realization hits them.

Bellies full, I'm not getting nagged to death and leftovers gone- bring on the teenagers.

HAPPY DAYS!

Aussie spinach and chickpeas

My cooking radar has been a bit low of late. I have managed to spend more nights out at dinner time than in, thus my slack blogging record of late. I was going to blog about the chicken wings I popped under the grill a few days ago but to my horror I forgot to recharge my camera battery and all I had was one very blurry shot before the whole thing shut down. I did contemplate waiting a bit and shooting but Max had a mate over for dinner and I didn't think waiting for Mrs.B to shoot the food was something the boys wanted to introduce to outsiders, especially not their friends; I decided to recharge and feed them all while the food was still warm.

Last nights meal was a bit of a slap together and see how it turned out kind of dinner. Nic wanted curry, I didn't know what I wanted and the boys were after pizza, burgers or anything that resembles fast food (we are entering the phase of everything MUST taste better because we have to buy it from a store, something I am hoping won't last very long!).

I had a can of chickpeas, some Aussie spinach (I've always known it as silverbeet), four new potatoes and a tin of whole tomatoes. I started on the idea of curry but then slowly changed my mind and produced a vegetable stew with ginger, garlic and lemon flavours.

Starting the meal I sauteed onions (quite a lot, about 2 large ones) in a knob of butter with the lid on and on medium heat for about 10 minutes, allowing the onions to get really soft, sweet and caramelise. Then I added chopped garlic and ginger; I wanted a more gingery flavour so I tossed in a tablespoon of chopped ginger to about 2 small garlic cloves. After a few minutes I added sliced, raw new potatoes about 1 cm thick; stirring to combine I then threw in the spinach. I washed it before so the remaining water would help remove the tasty bits on the bottom of the frying pan. Silver beet can take a bit of cooking to produce a soft vegetable, especially when you leave a little of the white stem attached with the green.

When I cook vegetables on a low-medium heat I love the flavour of citrus to develop through the dish so I squeezed in half a lemon to the dish, after squeezing I throw the whole half in the dish for extra flavour, add chopped tomatoes (not the liquid it sits in) give it a stir and put the lid on and leave it for about 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Last but not lease I drained the tin of chickpeas and added them to the dish in the last 5 minutes of cooking just to heat through so they kept their shape and texture.

The end result was really tasty and to give it another dimension I added some roughly chopped coriander (cilantro) just before serving to compliment the ginger and lemon flavours (and chopped chilli for Nic and I). When I came to serve the dish there was no way the boys would of eaten it as is, so I got out some tortillas and made theirs into burritos while ours were served on the side and we used the tortilla to mop up the stew. A great combo, Max enjoyed it, Alex enjoyed picking out the chickpeas and potato while seething at the spinach and Nic and I enjoyed every last mouthful.

Note: Because we have a hideous electric oven and stove I had to come up with a quick and simple way to heat the tortillas (they were a last minute idea) so I threw them on top of the stew with the lid on for 1-2 minutes to soften and warm them. It did the trick and saved me on dishes!