Most people come home from work too tired to cook a meal from scratch, anything that takes longer than half an hour causes most of us to pick up the phone and dial-a-something to be delivered instead.

In Australia it is relatively cheap to eat out as compared to parts of Europe. The sale of chilled food in English supermarkets are worth millions due to the fact that most people think chilled food is fresher with less additives than it’s frozen counterpart. Here is an article from the Guardian that will make you think twice about chilled food being more superior.

I like the therapeutic effect of baking and as a plus you get to eat the end product, a win-win situation, though not for my waistline! Freezing cookies also removes the “Oh I better have another one otherwise they’ll go stale” temptation.

In case you are wondering frozen cookies straight of the freezer will not break your teeth, I think the butter and sugar in them prevents them from going rock hard. Instead, you will be sinking your teeth into a chewy crunchy texture of a fresh cookie that’s a little bit cold.

For lunchboxes, I make small cookies about 2-3cm in diameter and store them in the freezer. My kids then get a treat, albeit a small one rather than one of those pre-packaged bags and I know what ingredients are in them.

When Nick met my Chinese family for the first time, my brothers took great delight in feeding him foods they thought a Caucasian would not be able to manage. Amongst some of the offerings were hot chillis and salted fish (the “blue” version which smells rotten and should have been thrown away two months ago) both of which we ate regularly so it wasn’t much of a challenge. I think if Nick had been offered turtle or dog meat then my brothers would have encountered some resistance.

Weirds Foods from around the World is an interesting site detailing delicacies people in different countries eat whilst others would grimace and back away from.

The next time we visit my family, Nick will be taking a big block of the ripest blue cheese to continue the challange. I know for a fact my family will recoil in horror at the thought of eating mould…. each to their own, I suppose.

I am a tea drinker, hardly surprising as I grew up mostly in England. There are many camps in the tea drinking world, I like mine strong whether it’s Chinese Tea or English breakfast. Come to think of it, I even like herbal teas well stewed. My neighbour, on the other hand, claims the amount of leaves I use for one pot would last her a week! Let’s just say we BYO whenever we get together to have tea.

Here is an interesting article from a food blog called Chez Pim I regularly tune in to, it is a very detailed write up comparing and contrasting different types of loose leaf tea and tea bags. Depending on which country you are from, some of the brands will not be familiar but the gist of the article is loose leaf is the way to go. My kids bought me a teapot for my birthday that has a removable middle, think beaker with lots of little holes, it takes care of the whole drama of getting the used tea leaves out of the pot.

I often have a jar of this in the fridge and I have used it to liven up everything from dhall to a grilled eggplant salad. In our house we have a six year old who does not eat chilli, a four year old who likes a little and grown ups who love the stuff. This way, you cook one meal and everyone can add Sambal to adjust it to their level of heat.

We are fortunate enough to have access to really good vine ripened tomatoes from the local farmer’s market in Byron Bay. The reason I’m telling you this is I’ve tried making this with ordinary not too special tomatoes from the supermarket and found the Sambal lacked flavour.

This is not a strict recipe as I’ve adapted it to how we like it, feel free to adjust the quantity of ingredients to suit your taste.

Ingredients:

• 500g ripe tomatoes
• 2 cloves garlic
• 10 birds eye chillies
• 1tsp salt
• 1tbsp sugar
• 1tbsp shrimp paste
• 60ml vegetable oil

Method:

1. Put everything but the oil into a food processor or blender, blend until you have a thick-ish sauce.
2. Heat oil in a pan, I find a high sided pan useful in keeping the spitting contents inside. When the oil is hot (not smoking) stand back and gingerly tip the liquidated stuff in.
3. Turn the heat down to maintain a rolling bubble and stir continously for ten minutes. Don’t be tempted to walk away as you don’t want this to burn.
4. You’ll know it’s ready when the oil separates and rises to the top.
5. Put in a sterilised jar, it will keep in the fridge for about a week.

Warning

I do have to warn you that whilst this is cooking, it is advisable to open windows and doors. It is very likely that other members of the house will wander into the kitchen and go, “Phew, WHAT is that smell?” All I can say is raw shrimp paste is very different to how it tastes cooked in a dish. Everytime I make this, which is pretty regularly, Nick will complain about the smell but oddly silent when he’s liberally dousing his food with it.

You know the packs of pop corn that you buy that are especially for the microwave? Personally, I don’t like the flavours they come in never mind what they put in it to create those tastes.

For ages I was popping the corn in a microwavable container until one day, in my effort to pop ALL the corn, I burnt a hole in the bottom and had to throw contents and all out.

I have since discovered you can make pop corn in an ordinary brown paper bag in the microwave. Put in a brown paper bag aprroximately three tablespoons of corn, fold the top over a couple of times to keep the contents in, microwave on high for about 2-3 minutes or until there is a two second gap in between pops.

The great thing about this is you can control exactly how much you need, enough for snacks in a lunchbox, adding flavour or not.

The amount of corn you use will be dependent on the size of the bag (bearing in mind size of lunch bags will be different between countries) and the time it takes will depend on your type/wattage of oven. Don’t be tempted to put too much raw corn in the bag, you’ll be surprised how much a few tablespoons of corn will pop into. Let’s just say, I’ve opened up the microwave with overflowing popcorn much to the delight of the small peoples I was making it for.

This is a gadget called cup-a-cake that I found a little while ago, particularly useful if you like cupcakes getting to their destination without ending up partially crumbed and the icing slightly rearranged.

There’s been some concerns about the vinyl used to line lunchbags testing positive to lead, levels that are unacceptable in Kid’s paints. Have a look at this article Lead Free Lunch Bag Product Questions.

It seems many have an opinion about this subject but the bottom line, for me anyway, is I’m not prepared to put my Kids’ health at risk. Besides, some of the lead-safe bags are fun and that’s got to make the lunch inside taste good, if we are working on the law of packaging.