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Homemade Passata

When tomatoes are abundant it's not unusual to find them for $1/kg in the Adelaide central market.  We regularly buy a box whenever we can one for $10, they usually tip the scales at more than 10kg.

I bring them home and cook them up in my big stock pot with onions, garlic, chilli and herbs then we pack them in ziplock bags and stash them in the freezer.  They work out cheaper than canned tomatoes (even at 50c/tin) and you can be sure that your tomatoes are Aussie with no added sugar or salt.  Winning on so many levels.

If you grow them yourself then even better.

Cooking up tomatoes is a simple affair, the trickiest part is making sure that you don't put too many tomoatoes in the pot so that it overflows and makes a mess.  You can whizz it or leave it chunky.  I usually leave it as is and whizz it when I defrost it if needs be.

Pull a bag out of the freezer and defrost on the stove to have an instant, simple pasta sauce or blend it with some extra water and cream for a delicious soup.

Tomato Box Passata

Ingredients

10kg box of tomatoes, washed and green stalks removed

3 red onions

2 garlic bulbs

5-10 small red chillies (omit if you aren't keen on chilli)

Olive Oil

Freshly ground Salt & Pepper

about 5 stems of thyme (or whatever other herbs you can rustle up)

Method

Skin and roughly chop the onions and pop the garlic out of its skins.

Heat about 2-3 Tbs olive oil in the base of a stock pot.  Add your onions and garlic reduce heat to low.

As the onions start to cook quarter your tomatoes and throw them in the pot as you cut them.

Small hands are helpful for quartering tomatoes.  Make sure that they have the right knife for the job and reinforce correct placement of little fingers relative to the knife.

Keep adding tomatoes until your pot is nearing full, as the juices release the pot may bubble over if it is too full but as the liquid starts to evaporate you will have space to add extra tomatoes.  It is easier to be patient than clean the stove top!

Cut the stalk off your chillies, halve them length ways and add to the pot together with your bunch of thyme or other herbs.  Cook until you are happy with the consistency.

Ideally you can now pop it into some sterilised bottles/jars or bags or containers for freezing.  If you are storing in jars you can poke a stem of fresh basil or oregano into each jar before you tip in the sauce.

This is what I use to sauce my meatballs and anything else that calls for tinned tomatoes.

Gado Gado

At BDO 2013 I chose my dinner from Simon Bryant’s Dirty stall, Gado Gado, it was delicious and I have been keen to recreate it at home ever since.  With a forecast maximum of 39C in Adelaide last Monday spending as little time as possible in the kitchen was high on my agenda, so this seemed pretty perfect. 

Gado Gado is essentially an Indonesian salad with peanut sauce, feel free to mix and match your veggies or add some tofu if you wish.  That would have required additional cooking so I didn’t bother, I just added an extra half egg per person to amp up the protein factor.

Gado Gado - Serves 6

Ingredients

4 Carrots, julienned

2 Red capsicums, julienned

Tin of baby corn, halved lengthways

Bag of bean sprouts, washed

250g Green beans, trimmed

Bunch coriander, leaves roughly chopped

1-2 eggs per person, soft boiled

Peanut Sauce

150g roasted, unsalted peanuts

2-3 dried red chillies, depending on how spicy you like it.  Fresh will work fine too.

2 cloves garlic

25g palm sugar (or 2 tbsp brown sugar)

Juice of 1 lime

2 cm ginger

Salt to taste

Method

Blend the peanuts, chillies, garlic, sugar and ginger with a food processor or pound in a mortar and pestle.

Tip the mixture into a small saucepan and fry over medium heat until it starts to smell good.

Add 1 cup of water and mix well, scraping up any caramelisation from the saucepan, leave to bubble and reduce but check and stir often.  Once it is getting really thick add a second cup of water and reduce some more. 

It will thicken more as it cools so be careful not to reduce it too much.  Add the juice of one lime and salt to taste.

Pile all your veggies onto a large serving plate together with the halved eggs and top with the still warm peanut sauce

Dig in

Tatum xx

Six Years - My Breastfeeding Story

72 months, or 6 years, that's how long I breastfed for.  I told my story for World Breastfeeding Week back in 2011.

Let me start by saying that there is so much build up to the arrival of your first baby and so much information about the choices surrounding the birth itself that no one actually tells you that giving birth is, in all reality, the easy bit.

With this tiny new person in the world there are so many more choices and judgements to be made.  This is complicated by the fact that whilst the tiny person is fairly adept at communicating that they want something, they are pretty bad on the specifics.

Before Charlotte arrived I was certain that I wanted to breastfeed her.  Fortunately I am a lucky cow and supply wasn't and never has been a problem for me.  If a hungry newborn arrived on my doorstep tomorrow I am certain that I could produce at least a little something for them.  I have joked more than once that I missed my calling as a wet nurse.  For this I am eternally grateful.

Compared to giving birth no one tells you how hard establishing breastfeeding for the first time really is.  Charlotte was pretty well clued in on how to suck, but as a first time mum I wasn't the best at attachment and it didn't take long for my nipples to resemble mince meat.  My milk came in on day three and it wasn't long before my breasts were each the size of a decent rockmelon.  They were enormous, hot and painful.  Each one was bigger than Charlotte's head.  It was absurd, she'd attach and milk would leak out around her mouth and out her nose.

Each let down was painful and with nipples like mince meat attachment was agony.  I remember sitting on a chair and bracing my feet against Steven's so I had something to push against in a silent scream from the pain of attachment and let down.  I kid you not.  This lasted for at least a week after my milk came in, I honestly don't remember now.  I do know that I considered giving up at this point.  Out of determination I persevered.

Possibly giving up crossed my mind at an earlier point, in that newborn haze I don't actually remember.  I do know that I had different midwives on different shifts giving me different advice.  I do distictly remember one manhandling in a fairly rough way to get her point across.  Talk about lack of bedside manner.

We continued until Charlotte was 15 months old.  I was kind of tricky feeding her around my 6 month pregnant belly.  Breastfeeding is a good contraceptive, until, of course, it's not...and there is no telltale that your time is up until it is!  I remember my Nana telling me off for being pregnant and breastfeeding and possibly not leaving enough for myself.  It was important to me to feed Charlotte past one, and despite a horrid case of Cryptosporidium that left me with vomiting and diarrhea for 3 months during the second trimester for pregnancy #2 we made it.

Like Charlotte, Lil was born with the newborn know how.  My nipples got a little bit red and raw from the newborn lack of technique but the pain was over and done with pretty fast.  I made sure that I had plenty of Charlotte friendly DVD's ready to go before feeding time.

I breastfed Lil until she was 18 months at which point I weaned her because she was simply physically to big to feed comfortably.

Sebastian was born a total breastfeeding pro.  He latched on perfectly from the word go.  He was a fast feeder and despite only ever lasting around 5 minutes on each size he'd achieved a massive 10kg+ on the scales by 6 months.

I was kind of prepared for weaning Sebastian when I had a weekend away when he 15 months and kind of not...my milk was still there when I came home so we continued morning and bedtime feeds until he was 21 months.  After not weaning him I wasn't prepared to give up breastfeeding until we had decided one way or another to try for number four.  Pretty much day we decided number four was a goer I cut him off.

Jasmine arrived and to be honest I remember very little of her being newborn other than she slept alot.  I also know that I would often fall asleep feeding her when she woke during the night.  I guess it is something that happens when you have become so accustomed to breastfeeding.

Feeding was never a great issue and we continued on until she was 18 months at which point I decided enough was enough and it was time to have my body back.  I didn't feel any of the sadness that I thought I would.  Six years spent breastfeeding, is after all, alot of years.

We aren't planning on going down the path of number five but there isn't anything final to say that we definitely won't either.  I am immensely proud of the fact I persevered through the pain way back when and breastfed my babies for as long as I did.

Off the top of my head here are a few things I learnt along the way:

• Establishing breastfeeding is HARD work
• Drink plenty of water, and you will get really hungry sometimes.  Remember that you are still growing a baby.
• Learn to feed lying down.  I wish I had learnt this technique 2 babies earlier, it is so much more comfortable relaxing.
• Watching one of your children 'breastfeeding' their baby along side you completely unprompted is seriously one of the the most adorable things ever.
• After birth with your third is a total bitch.  The midwife told me so...and it was.
• Good lactation consultants are worth their weight in gold.
• Some people just can't breastfeed, don't beat yourself up about it.  Beat up the midwives when they treat you like less of a person, or call me and I'll do it for you.
• It takes longer for your milk to come in after you have had a C section, there are drugs they can give you to get things moving along.

Tatum xx

Spinach Triangles

This is a recipe that Mr S 'taught' me after learning it a kindy a couple of years ago.  They remain a firm favourite with the kids.  This is my original blog post from From Somewhere In My Imagination about them.  These days I often line a baking dish with sheets of filo and bake it as pie instead but one way or another it is always a winner.  Enjoy.

They have a beautiful vegie garden at Sebastian's kindy and last week they made some spinach and cheese triangles.  Sebastian really wanted to make some at home so I bought the appropriate ingredients and on Tuesday we made some for lunch.  I've always been a huge fan of spinach and cheese type pastries but I am particularly impressed that the cooking activity at kindy has turned my son into a huge fan of the leafy green vegetable!

We talked about the ingredients on the way home from kindy. 'We need 2 white cheeses and 1 yellow cheese mum' ...sounds like the knew what they were doing at kindy ;)  They are great for an after school snack and also make a good lunch popped into a lunchbox and eaten cold.  They would even make a nice spring dinner with some salad.

Spinach & Cheese Triangles - Makes 20

Ingredients

500g (2 packets) frozen spinach (they used fresh at kindy but unless you come by piles of spinach or grow your own frozen makes it more accessible year round)

250g Feta Cheese (we used danish because it is nice and creamy and not too salty)

1 cup grated mozarella cheese

1/2 cup ricotta cheese

2 eggs (I was going to just use one but Sebastian insisted we needed 2)

Bunch of spring onions

5 sheets puff pastry

Milk to brush

Method

Defrost frozen spinach and put in a big mixing bowl.  The biggest one you can find.  If mum is being too slow to help jusy get started on your own, that will get her moving.

Clean spring onions and chop into little pieces.  Make sure you are really careful of your fingers.  Put them in the bowl with the spinach.

Cut or crumble the feta cheese into little pieces and put them in the bowl too.  Try to stop your little sister from stealing it all and eating it.

Tip in the grated cheese and ricotta.

Crack the eggs into the bowl.  Be really careful to actually get the eggs in the bowl.  I don't know about yours but my sister will actually eat the eggshell, that's kind of gross.

Grind in some pepper.

Mix it all around.

Take a pastry sheet and cut it into 4 squares.  It is actually better if mum does this bit even though I really wanted to do it myself.

Put a big spoonful of mixture in the middle of each square.  Brush the edges with milk and fold over to make triangles.

Use a fork to squish down around the edges and put them on a baking tray covered with paper and brush more milk on the top.  When the baking tray is full get mum to put it in the oven.  The oven needs to be really hot, 220C, so that the pastry puffs up lots.

They take about 10-15 minutes to cook.  You will know that they are done because they will be brown on top.  Before you eat them get your mum to cut them in half and leave them to cool down a little bit so that you don't burn your tounge.

Hope you enjoy Sebastian's spinach & cheese triangles.  I know that they will be a regular on our lunch menu.

Tatum xx

All About Me

The Basics:

My Name is Tatum

I am married to Steven

We live near the ocean

We have with four beautiful kiddos

We work hard in many aspects of our lives

We are lucky

We are happy

A bit more:

Steven and I met at uni, we are both mining engineers.

We moved to Mt Isa, bought a house and a dog and got married.

And then there was Charlotte.

And before we knew it there was Lillian.

My career continued to flourish and I was a full time working mumma of 2 little girls.

Next came Sebastian and I was ready to be a full time stay at home mum.

So we moved to Roxby Downs and it was Steven's turn for his career to flourish.

I spent plenty of time cooking, scrapbooking and sewing.  A bit of time running.  Above all being a mum is what consumed my days.

Finally there was Jasmine.

In December 2011, after 12 years away, it was time to move home.

Now there has been another shift.  Three days a week of work have been thrown back into my juggling act.  Mining engineer is a title I have never wanted to completely remove from my bio.

We are enjoying city life.

I am still enjoying the crafting type things that I have always enjoyed but cooking, running and fitness have become bigger priorities.

I am spending 2012 rediscovering many aspects of myself and striving to attain a new balance for myself and my family.

I hope you will join me with my musings on a wide range of topics about the things I love.