Newborns and leftovers

A current theme in our house since we had kids is leftovers.
So last night we had leftover meatballs which I froze a few weeks ago, and leftover potato salad plus a hearty cup of baby spinach on brown rice.
I know I wrote it in the last post, but I really do like this potato salad. Maybe it is the chorizo, or maybe it is because I don't feel like I have been drowned in mayo.

You might think these portion sizes are enormous!! They are pretty big but I am breastfeeding and we eat at 5/5:30pm as to eat with Isadora, so they need to sustain me to 10pm at night, otherwise I snack on chocolate.

2 nights ago dinner

Me: Marco, what do you want for dinner?
Marco: Potatoes and we need some meat.

Always the answer with my gorgeous husband. He just loves potatoes. He tells me he likes them mashed, boiled, fried, baked, roasted, any way...he just loves them!!!

So two nights ago, for dinner we had a steak (which I cooked for too long, as Isa poured water on the ground mid cooking!!) and a makeshift potato salad with steamed potatoes, lightly steamed carrots and broccoli and pan fried chorizo and spring onion. It was actually really yummy and a lighter option to my standard potato salad which has heaps of mayonaiise and egg too.

For dessert we had sweet delicious watermelon. How I love summer!!

Do you like our new plates and cups from my mum for Chrissy. I thought plastic plates and cups would be a good idea considering we are a 'family' now. I would prefer we eat with the same cutlery and plates, so that the kids learn how to eat properly and as a family unit.

 

Along with mangoes, cherries and nectarines...watermelon is summer! 

Christmas lunch

No piccies, as we were too busy eating it all...but what did you have for Christmas breaky/lunch/dinner?

We had pancakes with lemon and sugar for breaky; cold ham, turkey with sage and pistachio stuffing, roast veggies, green pea and bean salad with almonds, a tomato, cucumber and red onion salad followed by plum pudding and vanilla and pistachio homemade semifreddo. Oiiieeee!!! It was only Mum, Dad, Marco, Isadora, Maya and myself so very low key. For dinner we had mangoes, cherries and panforte!! What a day of food!!
I also had some of my first alcohol for a very long time!! Cant resist a clean New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc or a fruity sparkling Shiraz. Hope Maya didn't mind too much!!

Merry Christmas to everyone. Love Mandy xx

Christmas pancakes

I read about this great idea from the blog A little delightful. The lady who writes for this blog, Bianca, has such great ideas for her family, whether it be creative craft, food, organising or art...she is very inspirational and I love her blog.

So this morning we did it, we made Christmas tree pancakes and they were very delicious. I was a little nervous about using a decor bottle to squirt my mixture onto the pan...

but it was super easy...

And although we didn't go to the next level with decorations and the likes...

they were pretty darn delicious with raspberry jam and maple syrup!!!

Might have to make something like this for Christmas breaky on Sunday. Isadora is so excited about "Christmas tree", which is actually anything Christmas related, whether it be Father Christmas, an Elf, an actual Christmas tree or even a ball ball decoration. Little Maya is not overly concerned as such...hehehe.

What's for dinner this week Mandy?

This is a short week as we are off to my parents for Christmas on Friday...this week, our dinners will be:

Tonight - Black beans with chorizo, rice and salad

Tomorrow - Homemade fish fingers (first attempt but I think Isa will love them and the bought ones are pretty gummed up) with roast veggies

Wednesday - Morrocan inspired lemon chicken with a cous cous salad 

Thursday - Meatballs and mashed potato (this is a wierd one but I asked Marco what is one thing he wants to eat this week and his response was "Mashed potato". 

What are you having for dinner this week?

...and now we are 4

Our gorgeous little Maya was finally born in a mad dash of 2 hours...and now we are 4. It is so amazing to have two little girls in your arms. Even more amazing how much Maya looks like Isadora did when she was a wee one. 

So now we need to be even more inventive in the way we eat a) to have food ready with a house full of little people b) prepare food when you have had 4 hours of broken sleep a night c) prepare nutritious meals that a toddler will also eat!!! Kind of frightening really!!! 

For lunch we had a picnic in a Moroccan inspired tent...well really just a cubby house. 

And then tonight we had a pretty throw together meal of tuna sauteed with eggplant, chickpeas, broccoli and tomatoes a long with fried polenta.

I love chickpeas. Actually I love legumes too.

What are you having for dinner tomorrow night? I think we will have black beans a la Brasileiro with some meat off cuts and salad and rice.

Also who here orders their food online? I am going to have to start doing this. Too hard with two kids shopping. I have hubby for a few weeks of leave but still think I may endeavour to order online. I don't love Coles/Woolies produce much, not the freshest, so am thinking to use someone a bit more local like Vegies to your door.

Waiting for the baby

Puft, you dont want to know what we have been eating over the last couple of nights.
Actually that is not so true. Dinners have been good, my Mum is here and Hubby is picking up a lot of slack as well. Actually for Marco, slack is an understatement, he made fresh gnocchi the other night and it was amazing!!!
I mean more with food in general. Mangoes for lunch, chocolate for morning tea, mineral water non stop. I just don't feel like anything in particular at the moment and a whole lot of everything. Being 39 weeks pregnant is such a frustrating thing. Even more frustrating is having to feed a toddler who has decided she doesn't like certain foods at the moment.
So what have I eaten today....weetbix, a mango and some chocolate and it is only 1030am!! Ahhhhhh. No photos in this post that's for sure.
I just hope this baby hurries up so we can get back to normal and get this body and appetite back in control.

Christmas shortbread

My grandmother, Gran, use to make the most beautiful shortbread. In fact she use to make beautiful a lot of things. She baked so much that her rings were full of flour and butter.
I love Christmas and am really enjoying doing some Christmasey things with Isa. Today, her Advent calendar activity was making shortbread with me!! We used a pretty simple recipe and used some Writing Icing from the supermarket to decorate and voila!!! Yummy, buttery shortbread. Actually Isa ate so much of the mixture, she didn't really want the cooked product....heheheh, just like her Mama!!!

Isadora measuring out the caster sugar

The finished product!! Yum!!!

Quick dinner

I can blame a lot of things, being 38 weeks pregnant, Marco not being home, Isadora liking it. Yet it always seems the days that Isa is in childcare, I am even lazier when it comes to dinner. I get sidetracked 'relaxing', cleaning or catching up with adult conversation.
So dinner last night was packet pasta. I pretend to myself that because it has spinach inside the ravioli it is better for you. But I tend not to read the ingredient listing because it might bring me into labour.
Coming off a month of trying to be unprocessed with our food choices has also seen me kind of binge back into packaged foods. I am even thinking about frankfurters for dinner tonight!!!! Eeeekkkkk, the idea freaks me out but the salty goodness of all the additive numbers is just delicious.

Lucky lunch with the hubby

Love it when Marco is home for lunch and in the mood for cooking. He loves savoury pancakes a la Brasileiro style. We used the leftover mince from last night's dinner with mozzarella cheese wrapped in a delicious crepe like pancake. Salad on the side and chopped up sushi style for Isadora, everybody's happy!

Filo wonderland

I love filo pastry as a handy way to get rid of leftovers. Admittedly, the mince and veggies inside are not actually leftovers tonight, but they are still a quick and healthy option for a family. I 'hide' grated carrot, zucchini and chopped broccoli into my minced meat to get some veggies into Isadora and she picks and pinches at the meal using the pastry almost as an eating utensil.
I love baby spinach as you will see, it's easy and full of vitamins and I am loving this gold capsicum for contrast. Capsciums are another saviour for toddler vegetable consumption.
This meal also pacifies my hubby as he can 'dip dip' (like Isa) his meal into his revolting America Masterfoods Mustard, yuck!!!

"Poppy's" breaky

I love this blog because I do believe in the phrase "you are what you eat". Not only from a health connotation, but also the story behind it. I will aim to give you a little glimpse into our world through our meals, cooking and food stories. 

This is what we call in our house "Poppy's Breaky". We used to have porridge in the morning but now Isadora loves to have Poppy's breaky every morning. This is because Poppy (my Dad), has stayed a few times recently at our place and he normally eats the prepackage porridge sachets with some added fruit and flavour, where as we just have the normal "Quick Oats" variety. So my fussy father would prefer to have standard Weet bix then have to deal with making oats. Since his last visit about, 2 months ago, Isadora has woken up, jumped out of bed and asked for this straight away. 

She doesn't like to have honey, I do, and she likes to break her biscuits into little pieces before she gets the milk. She has 1, I have 3.

How about the milk...what does that tell you about our little family. I think it tells you that Isadora is over 2 and we have graduated to lower fat milk, although we are a family on a budget so don't get lite white or the equivalent. I don't love that we get supermarket branded milk, but since we go through quite a bit, the added saving is worth it at the moment. Unfortunately cost makes a huge difference in family choices.

First post...test

I love food, I love family. Together we have great meals and this is what life is about. I wanted to have a simple blog about what my family loves to eat and how I try to make it semi nutritious....so this blog is about what Mandy, and our family, are having for dinner!