and the sock gifts continue

Well it was a week or two ago now but we had the birthday of the newest addition to the family, a brother-in-law. I decided that I'd try a sock club pattern the wonderful Nanaimos. Named after a coastal town in Canada (very specific I know) - there is also a chocolate slice native to the region, but it seemed just a little too complex to do fructose free. I'm hoping that my brother-in-law who is excellent at making sweet things will give them a go.

Anyway it's a basic but effective pattern. And the yarn from misti alpaca is sooooo soft. It's a little fuzzy, what with all the guard hairs etc but I think they will make excellent house socks for this winter. I've ravelled these here. And it was an interesting exercise in making a basic modification to the sizing. I would consider these an XL size and the pattern made only up to a large. So I used a thicker yarn at a gauge of 8 stitches an inch (instead of the pattern's 9 stitches per inch) and it worked out perfectly. Too easy.

Now for the June birthdays :-)

easter eggsperiment #1

so... trying to be low fructose at easter time isn't easy. Here's what we've done to mitigate sugar consumption at this special time of year.

1) lower fructose hot cross buns
I used this recipe from taste.com as the basis.
My modifications were:
- substitute dextrose for the caster sugar
- substitute a diced green apple for half the sultanas
- lower the oven temperature to 170 C
It didn't quite taste as good but it was better for us and we didn't feel like we were missing out.

2) lower fructose easter eggs
So this 'eggsperiment' didn't quite work but here goes.
I used the low fructose chocolate recipe from here.
My modifications were:
- substitute dextrose for the regular sugar and add twice as much
(nb the dessicated coconut is 6g sugar/100g which isn't fructose free but not too bad considering)
This chocolate is great if you like it really coconutty and perfect if you don't really like dark chocolate. It doesn't however set very hard so isn't really appropriate for making into hollow eggs.
It did work fine in chocolate moulds so we channelled a northern hemisphere easter and made spring flower chocolates - I particularly liked the daffodils.

Tomorrow we try the egg moulds with dark chocolate. I'll keep you posted.

my birthday ice cream

There are a bunch of great low fructose cake recipes out there. I've made a couple of cakes from The Sweet Poison Quit Plan and they've all been good.

For my birthday this year, however, I made this delicious ice cream and as my gift to you, I thought I'd share my recipe.

my choc mint ice cream

Ingredients:
1 cup milk
1 cup mint leaves (tightly packed), you can use more :-)
1 cup dextrose
2 cups thickened cream
1 tbsp vanilla
30g chopped 85% Green & Black's chocolate

Method:
Heat the milk in a saucepan until it's steaming. Take it off the heat and add the mint leaves. Leave them for half an hour and then blend using a stick blender.
Add the sugar and mix further to dissolve. Stir in the cream and vanilla.
Put in the fridge for as long as you can, and then even in the freezer for an hour to make it as cold as you can.
Churn in an ice cream maker until it's almost overflowing (if you're using a 1.5L machine). Add the chopped up chocolate a couple of minutes before it's finished.
You might still need to stick it in the freezer for a couple of hours - depends on how soft you like it.

In other good news a fair few ice cream cones fall below 4g of sugar/100g, unfortunately it's not the waffle cones.

Enjoy :-)

veggie patch inspiration

We've been the recipient of some lovely veggie patch produce recently. Very kind. I'm loving it. So now searching The Cook's Companion by Stephanie Alexander for some good ideas. Seriously the best asset for the Australian cook. We went back to an old favourite for the zucchini. And everyone loved it (though we had to leave the tomato off for the two little ones). I only have access to a less recent copy at the moment so it didn't have the zucchini slice recipe that I normally use, but you can also find it here, I just added the slices of tomato. So yum. BTW so filling - perfect for staving off any sugar cravings.

We've also been enjoying some beetroot. Although these were a bit fibrous, I think we let them go too far. The interesting thing is that you can use the young leaves as salad leaves. But I was tempted to leave them as table decoration. They are so pretty and tint the water a lovely pink. 

For our beetroot salad I used roasted beetroot, mixed salad leaves, blanched asparagus, roasted pine nuts, perino tomatoes, goats cheese and my new favourite dressing. I also served it with roast beef.

But can I go on about my new favourite dressing? Yes I can. I was recently was given a beautiful bottle of roasted walnut oil from the Loire Valley. So I searched for some dressing recipes since walnuts go fabulously with beets so I loosely adapted this one found here. Seeing as I'm loathe to add another speciality vinegar to my vinegar collection, my recipe is as follows:

Walnut Oil Dressing
1/4 cup walnut oil
2 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp seeded mustard

Whisk together. Yum.

Finally, we're trying this one tonight so I'll have to report back. But this sounds fantastic. A gratin recipe using the stalks of your silver beet. It also has cream and blue cheese so it's bound to be delish. This is another Cook's Companion recipe. And it makes good use of the bits I don't use so much anyway. I made a silver beet and ricotta pie with the leaves. Here's something to try with the stalks. Brilliant.

Actually one more thing. This evening we're trying mint ice cream with a bunch of fresh mint leaves from the back yard. The mixture is cooling as we speak and should be ready for churning tonight. Mmmmm.

a sugar-free update

Well, we've been largely fructose free for 2 weeks now. I'm still addicted to sugar. I still crave something sweet with my coffee. I haven't caved yet though :-)

I've finally started reading David Gillespie's book 'The Sweet Poison Quit Plan' and it's been thoroughly motivating. Plus I've lost a kilo and a half, which is helpful too. Feels weird to lose weight while bumping up your intake of chips, cheese etc. while riding out the addiction phase...

I'm still enjoying being less food focused. But I haven't adjusted to my hunger signals being more finely tuned. I forget to dish myself less and still eat too fast. The result has been a few evenings where I have just felt uncomfortably full even though I've eaten less than I used to. It really is quite amazing and I'm hoping that I can stick to it.

It's still hard for the kids. Giggi keeps asking for pieces of fruit. But I've got more savoury snacks on hand. And the other day when the dr was handing out lollipops we went to a cafe and had a mineral water instead. Giggi wasn't ecstatic about it but he wasn't devastated either. We'll keep persisting.

Here's the largely fructose free cake I made for Rene's birthday:

You can find the recipe here.

BTW he wasn't turning 2, it's just that it was 2 people's birthday. It really wasn't very sweet. I think I would add some sweetness to the 'biscuit base' or maybe use a more sweet nut such as cashews. But the filling was delicious.

"micro" a must have

Our branch church had their fair last Sunday. There was a remarkable display of amazing quilts, baked goods and all sorts of things. The bargain of the day however was some of the beautiful local produce. For $4.50 I managed to score 8 parsnips, a brocolli and half a shopping bag of micro pea shoots. Now I'm trying to muster all the salad recipes I can to make use of the pea shoots. I must admit to being a masterchef tragic, as soon as they said "micro" I was resolved to give it a try.

This was last night's attempt:

Ingredients: the micro pea shoots, coriander leaves, orange segments, avocado, radishes (of course), and a dressing made of juice of half an orange, 2 tsp grainy mustard and a splash of extra virgin olive oil all whisked together.

 

I served it with chicken drumsticks roasted without the skins for 90mins at 180C.

Mini-mods: no salad leaves or dressing and a dinner roll.

Verdict: everyone enjoyed it and it was a lovely fresh take on roast chicken.

an easy yummy lunch

One of our favourite lunches at the moment is baked asparagus on bread with poached eggs. My poaching could do with a little perfecting but it was still yummy.

 

We had some delicious swiss bread in the freezer. Thanks Z.

And the asparagus is sensational at the moment. Seasonal produce at its best.



Roasting the asparagus is pretty straightforward. Drizzle asparagus with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Bake at 180C for 10mins or if really thick like these ones more like 20mins. Then sprinkle with parmesan when finished.