Cheap can be cute too!

Something I whipped up tonight:


Mini boxes for sultanas.

I thought these might entice the littlest of my three girls to eat (not spill!) her sultanas, and add a little fun for my eldest who is learning to read. It's truly amazing how much and how quick children learn when they get to school!

You could make your own cute packaging yourself. I have a upperhand of producing packaging as my business so I have the equipment to produce this quickly and cheaply, but you could do something similar too.

Staple folded cards over resealable bags (or tape if you want to reuse your bag!) and decorate with stickers, textas or use leftover wrapping paper for an extra touch.

Lunch notes are cute too and something I will be trying now my eldest is starting to read.

If you sew, why not whip up a patterned fabric lunch bag or sandwich wrap?

Try decorating with food too. Cookie cutter sandwiches, celery sticks tied with thin carrot string, fruit kabobs, or build a good food person from cheese blocks, toothpicks, cherry tomatoes, carrots, celery, sultanas, apple, etc all great for "building" unique food creations!

Simple snacks made super snazzy!


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Dehydrated Fruit Roll Ups

These are great for using up fruit that you've bought on special. They store very well and the kids love them. PLUS, they have barely any sugar and are all natural fruit.
They are great for school snacks or for taking on long trips or camping as they are a quick pick me up and don't take alot of space.

There isn't a recipe per se but here are some guidelines.

If you have a dehydrator, use the fruit & vegetable setting preferably overnight.
You will need a puree tray, more on that and dehydrators in another post.

If you don't, you will need a non stick flat oven tray and a very low oven. The lowest setting possible. Mine is about 90 degress celsius. My dehydrator is about 50 degrees celsuis.

Firstly you will need to puree your fruit.

Pop your diced fruit in a pan with a bit of water (not too much, maybe a quarter covered or less of water) and a bit of sugar. When your fruit is soft, allow to cool and blend until smooth.

Apples are great to dehydrate. They act like a base to the not-so-pulpy fruit like strawberries etc, and they are a great thinner to make the more expensive fruit last longer.

We do about 5-7 kilo of apple to 1.5kg of frozen mixed berry.

When your puree is cooled, spray your trays with cooking spray so they don't stick. You could use anything as long as it was a thin layer and didn't affect the taste.
Pour a 1/5 cm layer of puree on your tray and smooth. Leave to dehydrate over night in your dehydrator or for a few hours in the oven depending on your settings.


When fully dry, cut into pieces and store in an airtight container or vacuum seal.

Try these combos:
Yoghurt (don't cook, just dry until chewy)
Apple & Pear
Apple & Berries
Soup
Apricot
Apple & Banana
Plum

Enjoy!

Keeping school snacks cool

Kids yoghurts are a popular and healthy snack. But they are expensive and wasteful.
We buy tubs of yoghurt and put portions into these nifty numbers :




The lids can be put into the freezer to keep your snacks cold until lunch.

You aren't limited to yoghurt, try putting fruit, salad, or even cold leftovers.

They come in a three pack for under $6 from woolworths. We have two sets for our three kids so we can always have lids frozen properly on the Kindy days.

Enjoy!

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Busy week!

This week is shaping up to be nothing short of a very busy week.

Our eldest daughter has firstly filled it in with social engagements - meeting a friend for the last time to say goodbye as she is moving back to Germany and also a birthday party on the weekend - and the business is very busy this week with back orders, rush orders and new orders.
Adding in not well toddlers that are bit more clingy than usual and pretty much every second this week is accounted for already. I still have to find time to take the social butterfly present shopping and *was* hoping to organize our bedroom and donate our excess clothing but it's not looking too good for personal time this week.
Thank goodness we got the freezer off layby as I was able to freeze some of the baking I did over the weekend which will get us through - here's hoping!

At least busy weeks make you value the weekend even more!
What I wouldn't give for a decent sleep in or to be in bed by 9pm!
(Not going to happen with three growing kids)

What do you do to keep sane when you've got no spare time for sanity? I'd sure love to know.

Chocolate Biscuit/Cookies (Roll Out or Log Style)

Here is a great recipe I made over the weekend.
It's from Epicurious if you'd like to get right into it: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Chocolate-Roll-Out-Cookies-240668

Roll Out Chocolate Cookies



2 1/2 cups all purpose flour (plain flour)
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon (optional)
3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped (About 80g)
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature (250g)
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Sprinkles or other sugar decorations (optional)

Sift first 5 ingredients and cinnamon, if desired, into medium bowl. Stir chocolate in metal bowl set over saucepan of simmering water until melted and smooth. Set aside. Using electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl at medium speed until smooth and creamy, about 2 minutes. Add sugar and beat until mixture is pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add egg; beat until well blended, about 1 minute. Reduce speed to low and beat in vanilla and chocolate. Add flour mixture and beat on low speed just to blend. Gather dough into ball; divide in half. Form each half into ball and flatten into disk. Wrap disks separately in plastic and chill until firm, at least 4 hours. DO AHEAD: Can be made 2 days ahead. Keep chilled. Let stand at room temperature 30 minutes before rolling out.

Position rack in center of oven; preheat to 350°F (180 Celsius) I accidently did 150 though. Whoops! Line 2 baking sheets with baking paper.

Working with 1 disk at a time, roll out dough between 2 sheets of waxed paper to 1/8-inch thickness for smaller (2-inch) cookies and 1/4-inch thickness for larger (3- to 4-inch) cookies. Using waxed paper prevents you from adding too much flour, which will make the cookies tough.

Using decorative cookie cutters, cut out cookies. Cold dough is much easier to work with. If it gets warm as you're cutting out the cookies, place the dough—waxed paper and all—in the freezer for about 5 minutes.

Use an offset spatula to peel away the excess dough and transfer the cookies to parchment-lined baking sheets, spacing 1 inch apart. Gather scraps, roll out dough, and cut more cookies, repeating until all dough is used. If not icing cookies, decorate with sprinkles or other sugar toppings, if desired.

Bake 1 sheet at a time until cookies are firm on top and slightly darker around edges, about 9 minutes for smaller cookies and up to 12 minutes for larger cookies. Line baking sheets with fresh parchment as needed. Cool completely on rack. Decorate cookies with royal icing if desired. DO AHEAD: Cookies can be made 4 days ahead. Store between sheets of waxed paper in airtight containers.

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These are great for the kids because unlike most home made bikkies they are still soft and easy to eat. They are great for mum too because a batch only takes about 9 minutes to cook, so yay me!

A few tips to note, You can roll them in "tubes" like the supermarket ones, and chill. Then cut into slices which is very easy. I pressed them with a fork to pretty them up but it is up to you.

I will be freezing batches of the mix in tubes, and pulling out as needed to slice. You could probably do this with most cookie mixes but I really like the taste and texture of these. Not too hard or crumbly.

Rice Chocolate Bubble Bars

These are better known commercially as LCM Bars. These basically look the same and although they taste similar, they are a bit different in taste from LCMs. Very popular with the kids though.

Ingredients
5 cups rice bubbles or similar
1/4 cup cocoa
150g butter
300gm marshmallows (you could get away with a 250gm packet however)
100g Chocolate to top
1 tsp honey
Optional:
Sprinkles
Choc chips
Diced dried fruit

Mix cocoa and rice and any optionals together. Cover a large slice pan with greaseproof paper.
Melt butter and marshmallows in a pan on low heat until a smooth combined mixture. Add to rice mixture and stir quickly until coated.
Add a few cups warm water to the empty pan and put back on heat (this will dissolve the sticky marshmallow and serve as your double boiler for the chocolate.) do this quickly!
Press your rice mix into the slice pan. This is a bit time consuming. Use a spatula to press down. Place slice tin over the water pan to help you work the mix around if needed. When flat and pressed, leave to cool.
Add the chocolate and honey to a metal bowl and melt over the water pan. If the water is boiling remove from heat or your chocolate may burn.
When melted, pour into slice pan and smooth over top. A thin coat is all you need.
Refrigerate to set. Cut into small portions with a sharp knife.
Pack into airtight container between greaseproof paper.

Introduction to home made school snacks

We have one daughter in school and two daughters in day care twice a week. All up that equals 9 lunches a week. Plus snack when they aren't in care.
It works out pretty costly when most shop bought school snacks cost between $3-$7 per box of 8-12 snacks.

I have been making school snacks since we started in prep this year and for the last couple of months I have been making all of the snacks for school and home myself. With the exception of fruit and the occasional packet of chips for my other half.

This has been great for us. I enjoy baking and providing tasty snacks for our family, and although at first I was worried the change from commercial food to personally made food wouldn't sit well with the girls - they've made the change with great ease.
They like to help out with cooking and mixing which gives us time together and the lack of sugars, preservatives and whatever else is put into commercial foods has been excellent for their behavior.

A few tips to note:
* cook in bulk, and freeze what you can in portions. It saves time and effort.
* although being healthy is great, it's not productive if they won't eat it. Don't take this to heart. It's better to have one eaten chocolate cookie than an untouched nut bar and a hungry child. Don't over do the treats though! Work with your kids for a compromise if you have to.
* try to mix it up for the sake of fun. Walking into Kindy and having the teacher recite exactly what your kids are having for lunch before you unpack is probably a point to ponder ( this happened a few weeks ago! Haha!)
* use reusable packaging. Woolworths have great plastics available that is bpa free in great colours. They start at about 99c and are just fantastic. It's a rainbow of excitement for your kids to open their lunch box. They are also easy for kids to use, and have an assortment of sizes.

They are the Kilpo range from sistema.


This whole set would have been about $8

*try to set aside a morning or afternoon for cooking. It's much more efficient than setting up, packing down every time you make a dish.

Have fun!

Birthday fiasco

In less than two months, it's my birthday. The day after will be miss 3s fourth birthday.
Being born on the last few days of the financial year may not seem significant at first, but when you think of how much cheaper gift buying would be in the July sales it seems a shame that my birthday misses out by *that* much.
My birthday has been much of a non event so as not to take away from m3s birthday. This is mostly my choice (because it would be hard on her to spend my birthday celebrations just waiting for hers, and I don't want to spend money on celebrating when miss 3s birthday is so close.)

I like appliances... Okay I LOVE appliances. And gadgets. I have a sandwich grill, blender, dehydrater, vacuum sealer, fairy floss maker, popcorn maker, chocolate fountain, donut maker.... I love appliances. And I use them. Mainly for cooking - the rest are really party or event gadgetry.
With all of my bulk cooking lately in an effort to live within our means, I have my eye on a new little appliance. Well not so little really. It's a kenwood kitchen aid - but I will settle for something similar.



Ideally it needs to have two bowl and for the mixer attachment to detach but the isn't so necessary. As long as the two bowls are large enough to handle my bulk cooking it should be fine.
So.....
I will be having my birthday two weeks after my daughter birthday this year. Her birthday will be well and truly over so I can celebrate mine, and the new financial year sales that are normally AFTER my birthday will mean my other half can buy me a mixer at a great price. Win/win! I'll just have to make do mixing birthday cakes and party food batter with a small beater until then!

Do you make use of the sales to purchase gifts early or later? Or do you purchase gifts cheaply throughout the year?

The Beginning

Welcome to my new blog.

I am to share with you my hints, tips, and recipes - all in aid of being a thrifty & nifty Mumma.

I am very big on DIY, saving money and living bigger on a smaller budget. Looking forward to sharing with you!