V is for Veggie Mac and Cheese {Childhood 101 Guest Post}

If you follow our blog, you would know that I have been a regular contributor over on Childhood 101.


Here is my latest post on a reworked classic Family Dinner Idea - Vegetable Macaroni and Cheese. And the best part? It only takes one pan!

Click here to read the full post.

M is for More Meatballs

Aaah meatballs.  They are certainly a good thing but are often underrated.  Meatballs are so versatile, think pasta, noodles and even soup.  And most children, including Bear and Bee, are happy to eat them.  I like to make ours on the smaller side so there is more of them and the girls find them easier to eat that way.

This recipe for Chinese flavoured meatballs and vegetable noodles is a favourite in our family. The original inspiration for this dish came from this meatballs recipe on the taste.com.au site.  I have adapted it slightly to suit our family's tastes.  We used capsicum and broccolini as that is what we had available.  You could also try bok choy, green beans, mushrooms, thinly sliced carrot or Chinese cabbage.

Chinese meatballs with stir fry vegie noodles
Download the recipe card here.
Serves 4

Ingredients
1/2 cup hoisin sauce
1 tablespoon low salt soy sauce
1 teaspoon crushed garlic
1 teaspoon grated ginger
500g mince (beef, pork or chicken)
1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs
1 pkt thin egg style noodles, shelf ready
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium red capsicum, thinly sliced or diced
1 bunch broccolini (baby broccoli)

Directions 

1. Mix sauces, garlic and ginger together in a small bowl.

2. Mix together the mince, egg, breadcrumbs and 2 tablespoons of the sauce mixture in a large bowl.  You will find it easier to do this by hand.

3. Take rounded teaspoons of the mince mixture and shape into balls.

4. Prepare noodles according to the directions on the packet.

5. Meanwhile, heat half the oil in a large frying pan over medium heat and cook meatballs for 6 to 8 minutes to until cooked through. Drain meatballs on a plate lined with paper towel.

6. Heat remaining oil in cleaned frypan or in a wok over high heat and stir fry capsicum and broccolini for 2 minutes. Add noddles and remaining sauce mixtures and stir fry for 2 minutes or until heated through.  You may need to add 2 tablespoons of water to keep the sauce liquid enough. Toss through the meatballs and serve.

What's your favourite way of serving meatballs for your family?

F is for Fish Fingers for The Kids Cook Monday

 

Fish is such a good food to include in your child’s diet.  One of my daughters’ favourite ways to eat fish at the moment is fish fingers. They both request them a number of times during the week for lunch and dinner. Not that we have them that often.

To take advantage of this new found liking, I decided to get Bear and Bee to help me make Homemade Fish Fingers for dinner. I prefer to shallow fry the fish fingers in a small amount of canola oil to make them super crispy on the outside but if you would like a healthier option I would suggest spraying them with olive oil spray and baking in the oven at 180^oC for 15 minutes.

Homemade Fish Fingers

Download a recipe card for this recipe here.

Ingredients

½ cup plain flour

¼ cup reduced-fat milk

1 egg, lightly beaten

2 cups fresh wholemeal breadcrumbs

400 grams firm while fish fillets, cut into 1-2 cm thick slices

Canola oil for frying

Directions

1. Place the flour on a dinner plate.

2. Mix the milk and egg together in a shallow bowl.

3. Place the breadcrumbs on a dinner plate.

4. Roll 1 piece of fish in the flour and shake gently to remove any excess.

Dip the fish fingers into the egg mix.

Carefully roll the fish fingers in the breadcrumbs.

5. Dip the fish into the egg mix and then roll in the breadcrumbs.  Place the coated fish finger on a clean plate and repeat steps 4 and 5 with the remaining fish pieces.

Fish fingers ready to cook.

6. Heat 2-3 tablespoons of oil in a large frying pan over medium high heat.

7. Carefully place half of the fish fingers in the oil and fry until golden brown and cooked through.  Depending on how thick you cut the fish fingers this should be about 3-4 minutes per side.

8. Remove the fish fingers when cooked and place on a tray lined with paper towel.  Keep warm.

9.Add a little extra oil to the pan, if necessary, and repeat steps 7 and 8 with the remaining fish fingers

Yummy homemade fish fingers.

10. Serve with homemade vegetable chips, mashed potato and steamed greens or a green salad.

A is for Asian Salad

While the weather is cooling down a little here in North Queensland we don't really get a winter.  Sure the thermometer can hit the low teens during the night but it's not really cold.  It's cold enough for soups and stews but not too cold to enjoy a great salad.  I have been seeing a lot of great salads on blogs in my feedly feed at the moment - a result of the warmer weather in the northern hemisphere I guess. 

This BBQ Chicken Asian Salad recipe from Wendy at Vegie Smugglers is a great salad.  Light, refreshing and easy to pull together.  Everything you need in a busy weeknight dinner recipe.  There's lots of opportunities for the kids to help too and you might even get them to try a new vegetable.

BBQ Chicken Asian Salad

Click here to see the full recipe on the Vegie Smugglers blog.

Bear washing the vegetables for the salad.

Bear chopping up the beans using scissors.

If your child is ready to use them, scissors are great for chopping some vegetables and herbs.  We keep a set of small scissors in the kitchen specifically for food preparation.

Bee helped by juicing the lime. A tricky motor skill that needs practise.

Mixing the dressing in a bottle.

Mix the dressing by shaking the ingredients in a bottle.  Kids love this!  Make sure you use a plastic bottle for younger children or if you are worried they will drop it.

We added chopped peanuts and crunchy noodles for extra crunch.

Feel free to swap the vegetables for ones your family likes.  We added strips of red capsicum as Bee has started eating it.

C is for Chicken Soup and Cheesy Flatbreads for The Kids Cook Monday

The seasons change very rapidly here. We are quickly moving from soups and stews to salads and barbecues in our meal planning but I couldn't resist trying this soup recipe when I spotted it in my favourite cooking magazine.

The chicken and barley soup is easy to prepare which makes it perfect for a weeknight dinner. While Bee stuck to helping wash the spinach leaves and preparing the cheesy flatbreads, older children could also prep the potatoes and shred the cooked chicken.

This soup was delicious and I will definitely be adding it to our winter meal plans next year.  You could easily leave out the chicken and add some more vegies for a vegetarian meal.

Chicken and barley soup with cheesy flatbreads

Original recipe from Super Food Ideas

Serves 4

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 large leek, trimmed, halved, thinly sliced

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves

3/4 cup pearl barley

2 litres salt-reduced vegetable stock

2 potatoes, skins scrubbed, cut into 1cm pieces

4 cups baby spinach leaves (the original recipe used silver beet)

1 cup shredded skinless barbecue chicken

2 whole meal pita pockets, halved

1/2 cup grated pizza cheese

Directions

1. Heat oil in large saucepan over medium heat. Add leek and cook, stirring, for 3 minutes or until it starts to soften.

2. Add tomato paste and cook for 1 minute.

3. Add thyme, barley and stock. Cover and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 40 minutes.

4. Add potato. Simmer for a further 7 minutes or until tender.

Bee drying the spinach leaves

5. Remove pan from heat and stir in spinach and chicken. Season with salt and pepper.

6. Meanwhile, preheat a sandwich press.

7. Fill each pita pocket half with some of the pizza cheese.  Cook in sandwich press for 2 minutes or until cheese melts and bread is golden.

8. Transfer to a board and cut into wedges.

9. Serve soup with cheesy flatbreads.

G is for Green Curry and Rice for The Kids Cook Monday

Dinner tonight involved a quick curry and accompaniments made from some basic ingredients and a few good store bought items.  Here in the threefootcooks household we have been getting our house ready for sale so quick and easy dinners have been on the menu each night for the last week. Spaghetti bolognaise, tacos, fish and chips and even takeaway pizza (a good quality one) have been the extent of our cooking with both hubby and myself tired out at the end of each day with repainting the outside of the house, washing walls, mulching the gardens and sorting through the accumulated clutter.

Thai green curry has lots of variations. We keep ours pretty simple and fairly mild too. I am hopeful that one day soon Bear and Bee will be wiling to try this delicious curry as a complete dish rather than just the individual components of chicken, vegies, rice and naan bread.

Thai Green Chicken Curry

Serves 2 adults and 2 children

Ingredients

2 tablespoons green curry paste

400ml light coconut cream

300g chicken thigh fillets, cubed

200g vegetables (we used green beans, peas and shallots but capsicum, broccoli and zucchini would work well too)

1 pkt microwave ready brown rice

4 naan breads, toasted

Directions

The rounded edges on beans make them tricky to cut.  Snapping is a good option.

1. Prepare the vegetables. Bear snapped the beans and Bee shelled some of the peas (yes they are sugar snap peas she is shelling. I know they aren't supposed to be shelled but that's the way Bee likes them!)

2. In a medium sized saucepan, fry the curry paste for 1 minute. This increases the flavour.

3. Pour in the coconut cream. Mix well and bring to the boil.

4. Add in the chicken and simmer for 10 minutes.

5. Add the vegetables and cook for 5 minutes or until the vegetables are tender.

6. Meanwhile cook the rice according to the directions on the packet.

7. Heat the naan bread. We like the taste of the bread toasted so we use the toaster to heat it.

8. Serve the curry with the rice and bread.

If you would like to try making your own naan bread check out our past post N is for Naan Bread.

C is for Chicken and Brown Rice Salad for The Kids Cook Monday

This super easy dinner recipe is always a hit with Bear and Bee.  They both especially love the brown rice. While I love the fact they prefer the healthier type of rice it can be a problem because it takes a lot longer to cook than white rice.  Thank goodness for the invention of microwaveable packet rice.  It is more expensive than regular rice but certainly saves the day when I forget to put the rice on early enough to cook.

This recipe is great for using up leftover rice.  In fact if you were to use a barbecued chicken from the supermarket and serve the dish as a cold salad, most school aged children would be able to complete this recipe on their own.  The marinade would work just as well as a sauce mixed through the rice with the other ingredients.  How good would that be - a night off cooking!

With there still being a little chill in the air at night time at the moment, we had this as a warm salad tonight.  After cooking the chicken, I added all the other ingredients to the pan and cooked it until everything was warmed through. Also, use whatever vegetables you have available.  Grated carrots, fresh asparagus, sliced mushrooms, peas and red salad onions would all work well in this dish.

Chicken and Brown Rice Salad
Serves 4 (2 adults and 2 children)
Download a recipe card for this recipe here

Ingredients
1/3 cup sweet chilli sauce
juice of 1 lime
400g chicken thigh fillets, roughly chopped
1 cup brown rice
1/2 tablespoon olive oil
2 x 125g cans corn kernels, drained
1/2 capsicum, chopped
10-12 green beans, chopped
extra sweet chilli sauce, to serve

Directions

Juicing citrus like limes is a good skill that needs practice.

Making the marinade.

1.  Combine the sauce and juice in a bowl and pour over the chicken pieces.  Place in the fridge and allow to marinate for 30 minutes or as long as you have (in our case it was 10 minutes).
2. Cook the rice according to packet directions.
3. Heat oil in a large frying pan on medium high.  Cook the chicken pieces for 3 to 4 minutes or until cooked through.

Snapping beans into pieces is easier than using a knife.

Cutting up the capsicum strips.

4. In a large bowl, combine the cooked rice, cooked chicken and vegetables.

5. Serve with a little extra sweet chilli sauce.

L is for Lamb Cutlets Crumbed for The Kids Cook Monday

Lamb cutlets are not something we eat regularly in the threefootcooks household. Not because we don't like lamb, we do, but because they can be an expensive cut of meat when you're on a budget.

Lamb cutlets are, however, a great finger food for children and since Bear is becoming a meat eater I want to try dishes that might encourage this.  We do eat meat but since developing their fussy eating phases it has been hard to get Bear and Bee to try anything other than bacon, ham and meatballs.

Crumbing is a great technique for kids to get involved with.  Especially if you have more than 1 willing kitchen assistant.  Bear, Bee and myself normally take turns rolling the cutlets in flour, egg wash and bread crumbs. If your children like helping with crumbing you can make lots of yummy foods like crumbed chicken breasts for chicken parmigiana and crumbed veal schnitzels.

Baked Crumbed Lamb Cutlets
Serves 4 (2 adults and 2 children)
Download a recipe card for this recipe here.

Ingredients
10 lamb cutlets
salt and pepper to season
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon oregano, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
2 tablespoon parsley, finely chopped
finely grated rind of 1 lemon
1/4 cup plain flour
1 egg, lightly beaten
Vegetables or salad to serve

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Line a baking tray with non stick baking paper.
2. Season the cutlets with a little salt and pepper.

3. In a bowl mix together the breadcrumbs, oregano, cumin, parsley and lemon rind.

4. Place the flour on a plate and the egg into another bowl.

5. Coat a cutlet in the flour.

6. Dip the cutlet into the egg and allow to drain slightly.

7. Roll the cutlet in the breadcrumb mix making sure it is well coated.
8. Place crumbed cutlet onto the prepared tray.
9. Repeat steps 5 to 8 with remaining cutlets.
10. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes, turning halfway.  Depending on how well done you like your meat you may want to take them out a little earlier.  Also if the cutlets are thin they won't need this length of cooking.

11. We served ours with green beans and potato mash.

Harvesting the climbing beans.

Bear with the freshly picked beans.

Preparing the beans for dinner.