Tag Archives: food

Meatloaf: Success!!!

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My son is not a bad eater but he has foods he loves and food he hates – there seems to be no in between. Our biggest problem is vegetables. I can easily list the vegetables he will eat:

  • raw baby carrots with ranch dressing
  • corn on the cob
  • fresh tomatoes diced on pizza
  • pasta sauce
  • potatoes, sliced or as wedges homemade baked fries and also white mashed potatoes (god forbid if we use yukon gold potatoes)

and that is about it. One thing he is good about is trying the new food – he will at least take one bite but, that one bite will determine his love-hate relationship with that food.

As an attempt to broaden his favorite meals, help me stop cooking two meals and provide healthy meals, I tried out a new meal. The meal was Meatloaf with a ketchup sauce, homemade mashed potatoes ( I say homemade, as my husband was a box mash potato person before I came along) and frozen peas and corn (to keep it simple).

The recipe for the meatloaf includes carrots and zucchini. This was not an attempt to hide vegetables in his food, I want him to know how to make good choices later on. So, after the first bite I showed him what was in it.

The meal  was a huge success for all of us….my son for the first time turned to me and said “Mummy can you make this again, soon”. I was beaming when I replied “of course”.

Recipe (modified from Weight Watchers Magazine September/October 2006 edition)

3/4 cup uncooked oatmeal
1/2 cup 2% milk
1/2 cup organic chicken broth
1/2 cup carrot, grated
1/2 cup zucchini, grated (1 small zucchini)
1/2 onion, grated
2 garlic cloves, grated
1 large egg, lightly beaten
2 tsp whole seed Dijon mustard
Pinch of salt
Pinch of coarse ground pepper
1-1/2 tsp fresh parsley
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1-1.5 pound ground beef (5% fat or less)
1/4 cup ketchup

  1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F. I use a silicon loaf pan (5 x 9 in.), you can line this with foil if you wish.
  2. In a kitchen whizz, I grate the carrot, zucchini, onion and cloves.
  3. In a bowl, combine oatmeal, milk, broth, grated vegetables, egg, mustard, salt, pepper, parsley and oregano.
  4. Gently mix in the ground beef to this mixture until just combined. I use my fingers to mix in the ingredients.
  5. Spoon mixture into the loaf pan and level out.
  6. During baking at the 45 min mark, I pour of some of the excess liquid and spread the 1/4 cup ketchup over the top.
  7. Bake for 1 hour or until the internal temperature of the meatloaf is 165 degrees F. Remove from the oven and let stand 10 minutes.
  8. Slice and plate with the mashed potatoes and cooked peas and corn.

As there are only 3 of us, I made one left over meal for my husband’s lunch and the rest I wrapped and placed into the freezer (once it cooled) for a future meal.

Summer Herb Pesto

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The basil in our garden went chaotic this year and I needed to find a good use for it. Everyone suggested Pesto. I found a great recipe on allrecipes.com. I am not a huge fan of pesto – it is a little too strong, but the spinach and other herbs in this recipe complement the taste and makes the pesto a little more subtle. All the herbs came from our garden.

  

I made two batches and it looks like I will still have a third batch before my basil is done :-). I froze my pesto into 2 inch ice cubes (this large ice cube container I found at Crate and Barrel but it is now available at West Elm as well). I plan on defrosting them into small glass containers for Christmas gifts.

    

We also used the fresh pesto to make tortellini pasta with a pesto sauce, and a chicken pizza with pesto sauce. Both were great but I preferred the pizza.

  

Never fail cupcakes

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I am still recovering at home from my sinus surgery. This week has been a little more painful than usual, which makes it a little hard to do all the things I wanted to accomplish this week. I have wanted to make updates to posts, with regards to craft projects and the new backyard project, but first I have to finish them somewhat to take photos. After all a photo speaks a thousand words and that is not happening this week unfortunately.

So in the meantime, its been a week or so since I posted recipes. I have recently been trying out some recipes for cupcakes – one specifically for my son’s 5th birthday. Cupcakes, I find a lot of fun as you you can experiment a lot with them and usually end up something all will like.

I have a never-fail recipe I use as a batter starter and from there I get creative. This recipe is very easy to double if you want more than 12 cupcakes.

Vanilla Cupcake Batter (from New Zealand Edmonds Cookbook)

125g butter
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup milk

Cream butter, vanilla and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs  one at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift flour and baking powder together. Fold into creamed mixture. Stir in milk. Place 12 paper cupcake cups in a muffin tray. Spoon mixture into the paper cups. Bake at 375 degrees F (190 C) for 15 minutes or until the cakes spring back when lightly touched. Transfer to a cooling rack. When cool decorate as desired.

Chocolate cup cakes
Omit 2 Tbsp of flour. Replace with 2 Tbsp of cocoa (unsweetened).

Here are some of my creations using this batter.

Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

Use the Vanilla Cupcake batter above. Once cupcakes have cooled, use a corer (like an apple corer) and take out the center. Fill the center with lemon curd. To make the Lemon cream cheese frosting:

Mix in a bowl, 2 Tbsp of melted butter, 1/4 cup cream cheese, 1 cup icing sugar (confectionary), 1/2 tsp grated lemon rind, 1 tsp lemon juice.

Frost the cupcake.

Dinosaur Cupcakes (my son’s 5th birthday party cupcakes)

For this recipe, I again used the vanilla cupcakes but I switched out the all purpose flour with white whole wheat flour and added 1 cup of milk chocolate chips. This made a chocolate chip cupcake.

 

From there I made vanilla frosting and sprinkled that with green sugar or chocolate frosting with hundred’s and thousands (colored sprinkles). I purchased little dinosaur cupcake toothpicks for decoration.

  

By the way, I loved this double cupcake tin from Crate and Barrel – it provides a way of carrying 24 cupcakes.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Cupcakes

For this recipe, I used the Chocolate flavored cupcake batter above. I placed the batter into the cupcake cups and before baking pushed a mini Reeses peanut butter cup into the center, then spooned ~1 tsp of batter over the peanut butter cup. Bake following the directions above.

Frost with Peanut Butter Frosting. Freeze 12 mini Reeses cups for 10 minutes. Use a fork or a rolling pin and break up the mini cups. Top each cupcake with one of the broken peanut butter cups.