Look what my son made for me!!!

My lovely boy, Ben, (12 years old, soon to be 13 in 3 weeks time), has been doing food tech at school recently, and was tasked with bringing in his own recipe and cooking it at school on Friday.

The dishes they have made up until now have been packed full of sugar and flour and various things I would prefer not to eat, although I have of course been a good Mum and tried little bits; the things he has made has taught him all sorts of the same methods that I also learnt at school at his age so it’s all positive, but what he really wanted to do was cook a dish that I would like to eat. So I took into account what I had in the house and in the fridge and set him the task of making me a vegetable curry.

People often fear making Indian food because they think it will be complicated, or they feel it requires too many ingredients; I think you just need to be fully prepared, have all of your ingredients ready and follow the steps of the recipe until you feel confident enough to go it alone. This is the task that I set Ben; I provided everything he needed, I measured out all of the spices and made sure he had a clear recipe and method to follow.

I found him this recipe for Gobi Matar (cauliflower and pea curry), added a few extra steps for him (i.e. Step 1: chop up the cauliflower..) and replaced the tomatoes with tomato purée, and replaced the oil with coconut oil. The recipe is from a blog I had never visited before and proved to be a perfect level for him, thank you, Kanan.

He enjoyed making it so much that he texted me from school after the lesson full of excitement! His teacher thought it looked great and his dish was awarded second best in the class, the first place being given to a leek pie with gluten free pastry. He didn’t get time to fully cook the cauliflower so we put it on the hob, cooked it through and added the garam masala and coriander once it was ready.

I can absolutely honestly tell you that it tasted absolutely fabulous! He did such a brilliant job 🙂

I was so proud of my lovely boy, and he was so proud of himself. He now wants to cook it again and again for everyone we know! My budding chef in the making xx

Check back on Wednesday to see what the wonderful Sonal has created for this week’s ‘What would you feed me?‘ post.

Time for some goodness snacks (and how to make them!)..

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any of my goodness goodies, I make different ones every week, but don’t always share them – I don’t want anyone to get bored!!!

Last week I read two different recipes on two different blogs, one for making your own coconut butter, and one for making your own sunbutter…so that’s what I did, I made them, then used them in some bars.

To make coconut butter you literally just throw raw coconut into your nutribullet and whizz it until it becomes liquid. After a while it then solidifies and becomes butter. The same with the sunbutter – whizz up sunflower seeds with coconut oil (I used my newly made coconut butter), it liquefies then sets more solid.

I wanted to make some goodness bars that were nut free, so the sunbutter was perfect for binding the bars. I just threw various seeds and dried fruit into a blender and chopped it all up, mixed it with the liquid sunbutter plus some extra coconut oil, then left it to set. I made some with nuts at the same time..

I also threw together some others with a mixture of unsulphured apricots and mixed nuts, almond butter and coconut oil (more details at the end of this post)..

I have recently discovered two new fabulous products which I used in these, Pip&Nut almond butter and Lucy Bee Coconut Oil:

Both very very nice products, and I’ve tried and used many and various nut butters and coconut oils, and I can tell you that these are both rather lovely! (This is my opinion as a consumer, I have not been asked/paid to write this).

There are lots and lots more versions of my goodness snacks in my recipe index, but to give you the basics of making any of these, here is what I do..

I just chuck whatever dried fruit/nuts/seeds I have or fancy into my small bowl blender and chop them up to a fair sized crumb.
Then mix a good couple of tablespoons of nut butter of your choice and coconut oil together and melt them together in the microwave, usually takes 60-90 seconds, then stir this through the mixture, mixing well through the fruit and nuts. You basically want a good coating on everything.
I then use a silicone ice cube tray, fill each cube up and press it down with the back of a spoon, then freeze for 30 mins.
Press them out and store them in the fridge.
Et voila!

Enjoy xx