At the moment Ryan is quite obsessed by cooking - he cooks dinner (with minimal assistance) 3-4 nights a week and wants to cook cakes etc on the weekend! it's nice having a personal chef ;p

However, a lot of the recipes are not written clearly enough for him to understand and follow. So I'm gradually rewriting the recipes he likes to make them Ryan - friendly (hence kids-friendly and ASD-friendly too). I'll create a new tag for these easy to follow recipes. If i mess anything up please let me know!

this morning's breakfast is these pancakes, which i can't believe i haven't converted and posted yet lol we call them "white" pancakes because he doesn't like the "brown" ones aka buckwheat ;)

I like to add a delcious (red or golden) apple or two into the mix at the end and chop at speed 4, it's delicious!

“White” Pancakes
150g brown or white rice flour
30g tapioca starch
45g potato starch
15g sugar
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon xanthan gum
2 eggs
60g rice bran oil
500g rice milk (or buttermilk)
1 teaspoon vinegar (leave out if using buttermilk)


1. Place flour, starches, sugar, baking powder, salt and xanthan gum into the thermomix. Mix for 10 seconds on speed 4.


2. Break an egg into a cup, if it smells ok put it in the thermomix, then do the same with the second egg.


3. Add the oil, milk and vinegar. Mix on speed 4 for 10 seconds. Scrape the sides of the thermomix bowl down with a spatula and mix on speed 4 for another 5-10 seconds.


4. Heat large frypan over a medium heat. Spray with cooking spray.


5. Pour about ½ cup of batter into the frypan and cook until bubbles form on top. Then using an egg flip carefully turn the pancake over.


6. Cook for a few minutes until brown underneath and serve.

 Photo by Ryan :)

New Grill'd at Belconnen, a photo by brazen20au on Flickr.

We visited today for the first time...

we were curious, and excited, because they said they did gluten free!!!

unfortuantely when we read on it turned out that the gluten free buns were toasted in the same toaster as the gluten buns, so therefore not safe for rora. As it turned out we sat right next to the salad bar / assembly line and there is NO way they are gluten safe, and unfortunately rora won't be having anything except chips and possibly the meat from there (and she didn't like the chips lol). I watched them put too much sauce on a bun, scrape it off, back intot he bowl... put too much  salad on and pick up the excess of the bench (which i hadn't seen them clean) and throw it back into the salad bowls. I guess if she really wanted salad i could insist it not be from the salad bar but it all seems too hard. I also watched the way the girl doing the buns handled the GF ones (there were a few went through) and there was plenty of opportunity for cross contamination out of the toaster, quite apart from the toaster crumbs...

so, geoff had the "front" (something) steak sandwich, i had the "simon says" chicken burger, emelia had the chicken & cheese burger kids meal and ryan had the beef (and bacon instead of cheese) kids meal. I also ordered a regular chips for rora and one for G & i to share. this was a mistake as they were way bigger than i thought and we could have all shared one serve, especially at $4.80 per serve and with rora just licking the (way too much) salt off!

to buy that, with no drinks for G, rora or I was over $50, so a pretty expensive lunch. Ryan and Emelia LOVED theirs and can't wait to go again, G & i enjoyed ours but didn't think they were special enough to justify the price. we'll probably do it again but not in a hurry.

oh, it is worth mentioning that from time of ordering to delivery of food was less than 10 minutes, closer to 5 i think - excellent! they seemed to have great customer service :)

My chicken burger

Geoff's STeak sandwich

The kids' meal in box

and the queue a few minutes after i ordered (i only had one person in front of me ;)), out the door!

Grill'd website

I often stop at the Chifley supermarket on my way to work in the mornings (it's a great little sueprmarket) and have recently become addicted to their pumpkin, feta and sweet chilli quiches ;) mmmmmmmmmm

anyway, i decided to make some for breakfast this morning. i only had GF pastry and that is supposed to defrost for a few hours before use, so went with fritatta. however you could easily make this in a pastry shell - probably shortcrust would work best, with either gluten or gluten free pastry.

it's sooooo easy and delicious!!!

i had a quarter of a small pumpkin left, probably around 400g. peeled and cut into 1.5cm dice.

drizzle with a little olive oil and bake in a hot oven until they are brown around the edges.  remove from oven and let cool a little while you do the rest. turn the oven down to around 160'c

i used 8 eggs because that is what i had and it was about right, though you could get away with less. beat them up with around 1/4 cup sweet chilli sauce and 2 tabs plain flour (regular or gluten free). chop 1/2 block of feta in 3/4cm cubes (or crumble)

grease a quiche or pie dish and sprinkle the pumpkin in. sprinkle feta over. pour egg mix over the top and sprinkle with a tiny amount of nutmeg.

bake for around 20-25 mins until cooked through and serve.

i think some chopped parsley would be great for colour, maybe some braised leeks... and done in cake or muffin tins for finger food would be delish!!!

sorry to say i've had to start approving comments due to the large number of spam comments i've been getting lately :( sorry for any inconvenience

PS: do i have ads on my blog? i just disocvered i had adsense set to go, but due to using firefox ad blocker i don't see any ;)