Author Archives: Lucas Lifestyle

NUT MILK

By | | ,
Leave a comment

Ingredients

 

1 Cup nuts

4 Cups water

 

You can use whatever nut you like, I use blanched almonds because after I have made my milk I then have almond meal to use in my baking. This would apply to whatever nut you were to use.

Soak you nut for at least 1 hour, I tend to soak mine overnight. By soaking the nuts you are removing the enzyme inhibiters and making them more digestible.

 

Rinse the nuts well and place them in the Thermomix with the fresh water.

Blend for 30 sec / speed 8 or 9.  Allow the milk to settle for about 1 min and repeat the process.

Pore your milk into a jug through a nut milk bag or cheese cloth to catch the meal this way you won’t have chunky milk and you also have meal to use in your baking.

Don’t have a Thermomix but you do have a good quality food processor. Just apply the same principles.

COCONUT MILK / CREAM

By | | ,
1 Comment

Ingredients

100g organic shredded coconut

1200g water

 

# Place all the ingredients into the Thermomix bowl and cook on 100 deg / 8 min / speed 4

# Blend for 30 sec / speed 8.

# Pour your mixture through a nut milk bag placed into jug to catch the coconut.

# Squeeze out all the liquid from the nut milk bag. You may find using a pair of clean kitchen gloves handy as the coconut is hot.

 

Place you coconut milk in the fridge to cool. I leave mine overnight and then scrape the coconut cream of the top.

 

For those who don’t have a Thermomix I’ve been thinking of a way that you can make your own coconut milk. I haven’t tried it myself so any feedback would be great.

I was thinking you could put the same amount of ingredients into a wok with a lid or a sauce pan with a lid and heat on your stove till it comes to the boil. Then carefully pour the mixture into your blender and blend. Hope this helps you out.

FISH

By | | , ,
Leave a comment

Hello every one I haven’t dropped off the planet, I’ve just been really busy with traveling this wonderful country of ours and not having much Internet service or time. I’ve also been attempting to teach our 3 wonderful children.  The good news is though I have been working on a few recipes and special posts in this time so more is coming your way.

Since my last post we have traveled from the bottom of W.A to nearly the top of W.A and seen some most amazing sights. Exmouth and Karajini would have to be my most favorite spots so far.

 

 

Well this blog is about food so I better stop rambling on about where we have been and start talking about the wonderful food that we have been eating. As we have been heading north we have been staying in a lot of free camp sights and unpowered sights, so Thelma (the Thermomix) hasn’t been coming out of the cupboard very often. When we stop at a powered sight I replenish all my flours, milk and mayo, and cook up a few cakes and things like that for the next week.

While in Exmouth for a few days Matt was lucky enough to go out fishing with friends of friends. He didn’t catch much but as a boat they caught a nice amount, so our Engel is now a freezer with lots of fish fillets in it. As a result of the fishing we have mainly been eating fish for dinner in every way possible. We as a family have decided that fish bites (nuggets) are our favorite (I will add a quick recipe for these at the bottom).  Our second favorite would have to be the easiest way to cook fish but it is so yummy, you simply get your fillet and some fresh garlic and cook it in your fry pan.

 

FISH BITES

Fish fillets of your choice cut into bite size pieces

Rice flour

Egg

Coconut milk (or milk substitute)

Crumbs (we used corn flakes)

 

Lightly dust your fish bites in rice flour. Mix together your egg and milk and then coat your floured bites in it. Place your crumbs in a zip lock bag and once your bites are coated with the egg and milk place them in the crumbs, zip the bag and shake to evenly coat them with crumbs. You are now ready to cook them. We shallow fry ours in coconut oil,  we also do them in a few batches to keep a good hot temperature so that they turn out nice and crispy.

THERMOMIX

By | |
1 Comment

Oh my have I been busy of late!!  A few weeks ago I purchased the BEST kitchen appliance ever. I’m so in love with my new purchase that I think I spend more time with it than my family (they do like sampling what I make with it though). I purchased a Thermomix, a little on the expensive side but for us it is well worth it. I did a few quick calculations and by just making my own coconut milk/cream and nothing else I would pay it off in 2 years. That’s not bad for a machine that is in the vicinity of $2000. We as a family go through around 6 to 7 400ml cans of coconut milk/cream a week so for us it is a wonderful purchase. We now also know what goes into our coconut milk/cream, before when we were buying cans you don’t really know what’s in it like BPA’s, thickeners and such, but now we do.  All that goes in is organic shredded coconut and water, no BPA’s, thickeners or chemicals. Another bonus to making my own coconut  milk/cream is the flavour and the extremely thick cream that sits on top is quite yummy.

 

Some of the delicious things that I have been making are soups, biscuits, cakes, steamed veg, steamed bread (my favorite at the moment) and tapenade.  Once I have some great recipes for these I will post them. But for now you are going to have to put up with some links to some of my favorite websites.

 

Thermomix http://www.thermomix.com.au/

 

Coconut milk  http://www.superkitchenmachine.com/2011/13419/thermomix-coconut-milk-recipe.html

 

The Spunky Coconut http://www.thespunkycoconut.com/

The spunky coconut is my favorite website and she gives me the inspiration to do what I’m doing. You will find that a lot of the recipes that I post are similar to hers, this is because she has the best of everything and I just alter it a little to suite my pantry and tastes.

EASTER FUN

By | | , ,
Leave a comment

Carrot Balls

I dont have a recipe of my own but just finished making carrot balls but changed them slightly to suite a friends nut allergy.  In placement of the nuts I used Pine Nuts and for the nut butter I used tahini.  They turned out realy well.

Hope you all have a great Easter

http://urbanposer.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/raw-carrot-cake-balls-giveaway-upgrade.html

PASTA ROCKET SALAD WITH FIG

By | | , ,
Leave a comment

I would like to ask you this question.  Whose kids love to cook and create their own food?  Mine do, our eldest loves to cook. I think she gets this from her granny and a little from me, our middle daughter just loves food and our youngest is just coming of age to do most things by herself. With three girls into food and cooking means I don’t have to prepare all the family dinners, and as of late our oldest daughter has been making us the most simple yet delicious pasta rocket salad. I think she got the idea from a supermarket website and changed it a little to fit into our diet.

Going off the salad topic for just a little bit. It will fit in eventually but this story needs to go back a few days so that I can catch you up on the full story. FIGS!! I just love fresh figs. My husband and children just don’t share my enthusiasm for them but they do like them (not everyone can be as good as me). Well where we are staying at the moment there is a big public fig tree (what a find) and it is fig season (even better find). So every couple of days we have been going down to this tree and picking fresh figs. Everything we have been eating has figs in it which gets me back to Natalia’s pasta rocket salad (now with fig). What a great taste match, rocket and fig. I hope you all try this recipe it is so fresh and easy.

 

Pasta rocket salad with fig

 

GF pasta

Rocket

Cherry tomatoes halved

Chicken

Figs

DRESSING

Sweet chilli sauce

Lemon juice

Crushed garlic

 

First you need to cook your chicken I use any pice of chicken with no bones and cut it into strips or dice and season with Herbamare . Set your chicken aside to cool and cook your pasta as per their instructions.

Add the rest of the ingredients into a salad bowl. Once the pasta is cooked and you have drained it add it to the salad bowl and mix well without breaking your pasta. When you are ready to serve, drizzle with your dressing and enjoy.

I was thinking that instead of figs you could add mango, or even spiced poached pear.

So simple yet really exquisite. Hope you all enjoy it.

PANCAKES

By | | ,
3 Comments

We have been road testing this recipe for some months now and I’m happy enough with it to share it with you all.

Pancakes are loved by most kids and most kids at heart and I’m no different. When we turned gluten free this was one breakfast that I was missing. We use to have pancakes at least once every 2 weeks and then I had to go cold turkey. I tried many recipes but none turned out quite as good as this one that made up from a couple of other recipes.

 

PANCAKES

 

1/2 cup coconut milk

3 eggs

1 tbs coconut sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 cup coconut flour

1/4 cup GF self raising flour

 

Combine all the ingredients and mix well. Cook the way you would normally cook pancakes and then watch them walk off the plate.

I always double this recipe if all 5 of us are eating pancakes. I have also tried a few different flavors.

Banana – mash a banana and add to the mix and if desired a little cinnamon.

Chocolate – 1/4 cup cocoa powder and up the coconut milk to about 3/4 cup (my favorite)

You could also try berries or apple pieces.

 

My children’s comments on this recipe (Yummy yummy !!!!!!❤ What a great recipe).

We tend to eat them all before I get to take a photo.  Sorry for that folks!!!

NIBBLES

By | | , ,
Leave a comment

Time flies when you are having fun. Not only have I been enjoying the sights of the Margaret River region I’ve also been busy trying out new recipes. Trying new recipes has been a little tricky with Matt working night shift and the girls and I having to relocate to the local library during the day while he sleeps. All the recipes that I have been trying still needs some more tweaking before I’m willing to share them with you. Just so you keep your appetite here are a few things that I’m working on, Sweet potato slice, Flat bread and Bagels.

There are a simple things that my family and I enjoy on a regular basis and I would love to share it with you. There is no set recipe just amounts of what you would like to eat.

NIBBLES

 

Nibbles, how much more info do you really need. This is so easy to prepare and is always a winner in our house. My girls love to have a choice about what they are eating and when I serve up a table full of carrot sticks, celery sticks, cucumber, sun dried tomatoes, olives, artichoke harts, egg plant, smoked oysters, crackers and a dip of any flavor, they don’t know what to start with. We always find that every time we have nibbles there is always one thing that gets finished first but it is never the same thing every time. Other nibble ideas are capsicum, cherry tomatoes, boiled eggs, apple, nuts and even chips (home made are the best).