Personalised Muesli Slice

I've made this muesli bar slice since the day I found it about 2 years ago. During the last 3 weeks or so I've bought some different ingredients and formulated a fruit and sugar free (not sweetener free) recipe so that PC can have some energy snacks on hand that won't give him a hypo due to his DNA quirks.

Muesli Bar Slice                                

1 cup rolled oats

½ cup wholemeal SR flour  

½ cup desiccated coconut

½ cup chopped almonds

¼ cup pepitas

4 tbsp sesame seeds

2 tbsp linseed meal

4 tblsp sunflower seed

 ½ cup rice malt syrup

 125g coconut oil

 2 tbsp honey              

• Place oil, honey and rice malt syrup into a saucepan and melt until the ingredients can be mixed together reasonably well
• Mix all dry ingredients in large bowl
• Add oil mixture to dry ingredients and mix until sticky
  
• Press evenly into a greased slice tin. Use a potato masher to flatten out
  
• Bake @ 180c for 20 - 25 minutes until golden
• Cut into bars / squares when cold
• Keeps for 5 - 6 days in airtight container

As it is the sweet taste of sugar that triggers an unfavourable reaction with PC this recipe has been altered specifically to suit his individual needs. 😀 They are very filling and because of the content of dry ingredients they are a slow release energy.

Cheers,

RobynLouise XO

Home Made Sausage Rolls

I've had this recipe for a few months and I finally tried it. 

Beef and sausage roll

Few people can resist the lure of crispy pastry! Add the savoury succulence of a herby sausage filling and you are onto a winner with the family. Sausage meat can be fatty and all meat is expensive. This super stretcher recipe combines lean beef mince with the sausage meat for a healthier option and stretches 500g of meat into 8-10 serves.

      250g sausage meat

      250g lean beef mince

      1 tsp mixed herbs

      1 onion, chopped

      2 medium potatoes, scrubbed and boiled till tender

      ¼ cup tomato sauce

      ¼ cup chutney

      2 sheets of frozen puff pastry or a block of pastry (home-made short crust will also work if you have no frozen pastry)

      1 egg for glazing - optional

Preheat the oven to 220°. Prepare the pastry by brushing a little water along one edge. Overlap the wet edge with the second sheet of pastry and press firmly (I roll over the join a few times with the rolling pin). If using block or home-made pastry roll it out to roughly 50cm long and 24cm wide.

Chop the onion and combine with the sausage meat, beef mince and herbs, this can be done in a food processor. Slice the cooked potatoes into ½ cm slices. Combine the chutney and tomato sauce.

Brush a little water down one long side of the pastry. Spread the sauce mixture over the pastry not quite to the edges. Form the meat mixture into a sausage shape down the middle of the pastry, flattening it slightly so it is compact. Place the potato slices on top of the sausage and carefully wrap the pastry around the filling. Stretch the pastry a little if you need to, to accommodate the filling. When you have joined the pastry along the length of the roll as best you can (don't worry if it's not perfect) carefully lift (using a long spatula) or slide the roll onto a greased baking tray, you may need to place it diagonally. Beat the egg lightly and brush over the pastry, then use a serrated knife such as a bread knife to cut slashes into the pastry top at 1 ½ - 2cm intervals. Bake in the preheated oven for 25-35 minutes or until pastry is a rich golden brown. Slice and serve hot or cold with vegetables or salad.

Cook's tips:

We get at least 8 adult serves (2 slices per person) from this when we serve it with side dishes. If you are feeding little people you'll get even more. If you don't want to waste an egg on 'glazing' the pastry, just brush it with milk.

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However, I'm a bugger for changing things around to make them more healthy, and doubling recipes so I'm not forever cooking, so I added a few veges, popped in a half a cup of finely ground oatmeal to compensate, mixed all the ingredients together and made them regular sausage roll size.

The filling turned out a little soft, even though I let it cook for a bit longer so maybe I should have added more oatmeal but possibly it was the sausage mince was too fatty.

Ah well, they taste nice and one half of the mix is curried so there's a bit more variety :)! Shame the poor light doesn't make them look as good as they taste.

Cheers, Rob xo.

Pumpkin Scones, strange bugs and a Guarden Cat

Finally made the pumpkin scones and remembered to take a photo. Recipe is on the recipe page. Apologies about the photo, these were the last 4 of the unfrozen ones and the late afternoon light doesn't do them justice.

Whilst rearranging the garden beds I came across this little fellow and as I don't know if it's a friend or a foe I took a photo of it. It's a bit bigger than a lady bug and could even be a type of ladybug. Google images and various entomology and insect identification internet sources have not come up with anything like it's patterning so I still don't know what it is.
I'd be really pleased if someone could help with identification as I've never seen a bug with this patterning before.

Of course I had my chief guarden (yes, the misspelling is deliberate) assistant out there keeping the birds, field mice and other predators out of the pumpkins and other vegetables. She's not quite blending with the garden decor as the leaves aren't turning orangey colours yet but she is camouflaged enough to startle a thieving bird when she moves to a more comfortable position :). She won't be happy when I remove the last of the shady weeds from her spot under the orange tree! Other people put up bird stands but I think I'll have to erect a cat one as the vege garden is the tubby tabby's favourite daytime place.

Cheers,
Robyn xo

Homemade healthy snacks

It's surprising how much energy a farm girl can burn up when she returns to school! Must be all those flights of stairs she has to traverse to go to and from classes. Her father has been buying packets of cream biscuits for her to take as snacks but they disappear as quick as yesterday's vege pie did and have much less nutrition.

The Down to Earth forum I am a member of has recipes for all sorts of healthy food and I found some homemade muesli bars that contain rolled oats, nuts, seeds, coconut and dried fruit held together with a can of condensed milk. OK, so the condensed skim milk has 60.9gm sugar, which is the equivalent of around 12 teaspoons of sugar, however, as a 250g packet of orange slice biscuits has 30.5g of sugar, about zero nutrition and little fibre it makes the muesli bars at around 900gm , full of fibre, vitamins, minerals and Omega 3 & 6, sound absolutely terrific even with the can of condensed milk in there!

I had to taste test one for breakfast and they are very yummy and very filling. I'll be good though and not be tempted too much as I don't know the kilojoule/calorie count on these :). The farm girl grabbed one for breakfast and ate it on the walk up the driveway to catch the bus. She likes them too.

Would you be tempted by these?

Cheers,

Robyn xo

Snacks for the week

I haven't done any baking for the last fortnight as I didn't want to cough my germs all over everything so DH has been buying biscuits, NOT at my request though. He has these binges every so often but it's his money he's spending, not mine, so I don't comment.

I was feeling like something nice to eat for afternoon tea yesterday and I had some zucchini I wanted to use up, so I'd already decided to make zucchini bread, and I thought I'd also try the easy and cheap biscuit recipe of Paula's, that I'd copied from that thread, on the Down to Earth forums. 


My goodness, did it make a bunch of goodies!!

 30 choc chip biscuits and the same of sprinkles ones.....

....and 24 fat jam drops....Well, there were before the two legged mice dived into them!!

The biscuits are about twice the thickness of bought ones and 2" in diameter and the jam drops are roughly 3" in diameter. When cooled the biscuits went in the freezer but as I'd cooked the drops with the jam already in them they have to be eaten. **Note to self - cook drops jamless in future so they can be frozen!

I made the zucchini bread with wholemeal flour this time, as I used it for the biscuits, and it tastes wonderful. The recipe makes two loaves so I froze one loaf and gave half of the other (and some bikkies) to DH's niece as she and her two little ones have been ill and I thought a little treat for afternoon tea would be nice  ; ). It's a bit more-ish and I'm ashamed to say I've eaten quite a lot of the remaining half, with butter.

As I usually have a cup of tea around this time in the afternoon I think I'll have another piece of zucchini bread. Anyone want a slice...with butter or without?!

Cheers,

Robyn