School Holidays Sewing - Making Cushions

My girls have cushions on their chairs at school and they wanted to personalise them. We got this fabric and the insert from Ikea and purchased some matching felt to applique the letters on.

I love the colour with the roses in the backgroud. They are from my 87 year old Grandmas garden.

We machine sewed around each letter before adding the zip and sewing up the side seams of the cushion.

                     Here is a close up of the stitching on Miss 12's cushion.

           I think the girls did an amazing job, with a little help from Mummy!

Winter Veggie Soup

This is the simplest soup to make and so good for you. All of the vegetable ingredients, except one onion, are fresh out of my winter veggie patch. Cooking with organic veggies that are only a few minutes old can't be beaten for flavour and making the most of all those nutrients.

Here I have Kale, Celery, a small Zucchini and Silver beet. All high in vitamins and iron.

Add the Chopped onion to a saucepan and brown off with a small amount of Olive Oil (about a tablespoon).

Then add the chopped celery and zucchini and continue to stir for approximately 5 minutes.

Then add 4 cups of room temperature water and two teaspoons of stock powder to the saucepan, or stock powder to taste.

Cook for about 10 minutes or until the Celery is soft. Then add chopped Kale and Silver beet just before turning off your soup, the heat in the liquid will cook the leaves quickly. This stops the leafy green veggies from over cooking and losing their beautiful colour and vitamins.

Then you can eat this soup as it is, nice and chunky, or blend it in a food processor, or blender, for a smoother thick soup.

Winter Themed Birthday Parties

Both of my daughters have recently had their birthdays and they both wanted to take their friends Ice Skating so we decided on a winter theme for both parties.

We made an Igloo Cake for Miss 12 and a Snowman for Miss 10. They both were made from two basic Basco Gluten Free Cake Mixs and cut or baked in a bowl to suit the shapes. The icing included is obviously already Gluten Free and the Marshmallows we used from Pascals are now Gluten Free.They didn't seem to have any packets with just white so we had lots of pink ones left over for lolly bags!

Miss 12's Igloo

Icing the shape after cooking the cake in a ceramic bowl.

This is Miss 10's Snowman. Her big sister made the scarf from scraps of wool.

These are the items we used to cut out the Snowman shape.I baked the cake the day before and then just cut around the shape with a sharp knife before applying the icing.

A few weeks earlier we made the invitations by cutting out white card into shapes and then we drew the design, we found on Google Images, in glue and sprinkled them with glitter to look like snow flakes.

Fruit on Display

I have talked before about using simple greenery instead of flowers. I think fruit in a bowl makes just as good a statement. It is an inexpensive way to make a house feel warm, inviting and lived in. You can coordinate you fruit to match your decore, it is inexpensive to purchase but best of all you can eat it too.

I often use limes, and green pears or apples because I love green. Other ideas are lemons, red apples, artichokes and various nuts in their shell look great too.

Gluten Free Dried Pasta

Before being Gluten Free my girls would eat allot of pasta. Mainly because, as a parent, I found it easy to add healthy ingredients into the Bolognaise Sauce that went with it. Also they liked pasta and it was easy to make and serve over two sittings.

When we had to go on a wheat free, Gluten Free, diet dried pasta was one of the first products I had to find to replicate what we had already been eating. I tried several brands and found mostly they were very stodgy or would fall apart whilst being cooked.

This brand is now our favorite. It is called BUONTEMPO, BUON APPETITO, RICE SPIRALS. $3.14 at my local Coles Supermarket for a 500gm bag. It is made in Australia and is 88% Rice and 12% Maize (Corn). This brand also offers Penne but I find that the Penne is too easy to over cook, where it will fall apart and not hold it's shape.

If you are cooking two different pastas for your family you will need to start cooking the regular gluten pasta approximately 4 to 5 minutes before the Gluten Free Dried pasta as the Gluten Free pasta cooks quicker. Also drain the Gluten Free pasta first before adding back to your pot to cook out the moisture and add olive oil. If you drain the regular pasta first you may contaminate the Gluten Free batch next. Unless of course you have two separate strainers or particularly like washing up!

I find this brand and variety so good that you may find, like our house, that eventually you will all just end up eating one type of pasta together. Gluten Free Foods are however more expensive than regular brands even for a cheap product like pasta. So if you are watching the budget or have allot of people to feed just keep them separate.

The Bolognaise sauce of course is the same as it is Gluten Free if made the traditional way. I will blog my version of Bolognaise Sauce another day. Also use caution if you use powdered Parmesan Cheese as some brands have flour (wheat) added to the cheese to stop it clumping together. Traditional Parmesan Cheese, you grate yourself, is Gluten Free.

Gluten Free Bread

Gluten Free Bread. It is the number one comment I hear from people about being Gluten Free. "How do you eat that bread?"

The truth for me is I had unknowingly weaned myself off bread years before I became a Coeliac, and found out I was allergic to wheat, because I rarely ate the stuff. Now this does sound amazing and made more unusual by the fact that I grew up in a bakery, my Mum is a pattisier and I worked in the bakery for years as my first job.

I think if you are going to eat Gluten Free you can not ever compare regular fluffy bread to Gluten Free bread. It is the gluten in regular bread that helps bread have the texture it does.

Some people I know who go Gluten Free don't have any bread in their diet for an extended period of time and that helps them go back to Gluten Free bread later. They have crackers and other alternatives for lunch. For me I like toast and can't eat a poached egg with out it.

I find that the Country Life brand above toasts very well. I buy it in the bread section at Coles and they have different types to choose from, White, Wholemeal, Low Gi, and I have seen Fruit Bread too. This is Gluten Free White. It is by Country Life, made in NSW, Australia and costs $5.68. They all freeze well. Please be very careful when buying this product not to get mixed up with Country Life's other Low Gluten Bread varieties they sell as these are not Gluten Free. Their Gluten Free bread is smaller and clearly says Gluten Free on the front.

If you sharing a toaster in your family with other people who eat regular bread then please allocate one end of the toaster for your Gluten Free bread so as not to get any of the crumbs from regular bread on your toast.

A tip to keep in mind with Gluten Free Bread is that it takes much longer to toast than regular bread and I often have to put it back in the toaster twice. If I am using it for a toasted sandwhich, in a press, then I toast it once in a regular toaster before adding fillings and toasting in the press.

I have also found other bread alternatives and am always looking for new and improved loaves and rolls, but to date I have found this the easiest to buy and use every day.

Keep Calm and be Gluten Free

As I have mentioned before I am a Coeliac and one of my daughters is also a diagnosed Ceoliac. This means that we are very allergic to Gluten and must be on a Gluten Free Diet for the rest of our lives.

I was diagnosed via a blood test and an endoscopy at the beginning of 2010 and Miss 12 shortly after that. Coeliac (Celiac) Disease runs in families and if one member of the family has been diagnosed then it is recommended to have other family members tested as well.

Miss 12 was 9, turning 10, at the time and very small for her age. Her younger sister 7 at the time, was about the same height and people would regularly mistake them as twins. She was a good eater but frequently complained of stomach aches, especially after eating. Since she has been on a Gluten Free Diet she has grown to be more regular in height and in proportion to her sister by age.

Through out my Blog I will be cooking and posting Gluten Free Foods suited to adults and children. All our children's birthday parties are Gluten Free and obviously we eat Gluten Free every day and night with some variations for my Husband and Miss 10 who can still eat gluten.

Gluten is found in Wheat, Barley, Rye, Spelt and Oats. We can have Rice, Corn (Maize), all Fruit and Vegetables, Meat, Tofu and Potato.

When I was first diagnosed I found the prospect of learning all new products and foods I could buy and eat quite daunting. But over time I have managed to try, and find, the products I like the best. So as well as having recipes on my blog I will also be doing GF Product Reviews. I hope it helps those of you who also eat Gluten Free and shop in Australia.

Greenery Instead of Flowers

I love Greenery Instead of Flowers. Partly because flowers are expensive and never seem to last but mainly because I just love the look of greenery inside.

 

I often pick Viburnum Odoratissimum but this is Lilly Pilly from the hedge in our front garden. Even if you don't have a garden you can buy greenery for inside. It lasts so much longer than flowers. Viburnum will last months indoors and even starts to grown roots inside the vase if it is in a light room. It is a favorite of florists for this reason.

These leaves are Gymea Leaves and I bought these at the Florist. They will last approximately 4 weeks or more depending on how fresh they were when you bought them. I love these because they give great height to a low lying area like our TV cabinet. 

Gymea Leaves are often used as the height element in floral arrangements and look great with flowers around the lower area but I also like them just by themselves in a tall vase.