Eggplant and Lentil Stacks

This is a very tasty and easy healthy dinner option, served with either lamb, beef or chicken!

Served here with BBQ eye fillet steak :-p

Ingredients

• 2 large eggplants, cut crossways into 1.5cm slices
• olive oil spray
• 2 cans brown lentils, rinsed, drained
• 4 spring onions, ends trimmed, thinly sliced
• 110g (1/2 cup) semi-dried tomatoes, coarsely chopped
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar (or balsamic vinegar)
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1/3 cup chopped flat leave parsley
• 60g baby rocket or baby spinach
• 120g feta cheese, chopped into small dice. 

Preparation

1. Heat a large frying pan (or your BBQ hotplate) over medium-high heat. Spray the eggplant with olive oil spray, add to the pan and cook for 4-5 min each side or until tender and golden. 
2. Place the lentils, spring onions, tomatoes and parsley in a bowl. Drizzle over vinegar and olive oil and season with salt & pepper. Toss to combine
3. Place rocket or spinach leaves on the plate. Top with 2-3 eggplant slices, hereafter lentil mixture. Repeat layers. Top with feta cheese and enjoy!

Bamya with Chicken

This recipe is an old family recipe handed down from my grandmother to my mum and from my mum to me. It is one of my favourite Cypriot / Mediterranean dishes and for me it is comfort food of the highest caliber.

It uses an ingredient, okra, which is not seen very often in western style food, but it is a widely used vegetable in Middle Eastern/African and Asian (and Cajun style) cooking.

Okra, these ones came out of the freezer - frozen from fresh. The top have been trimmed off these ones.

Ingredients
2 tbsp olive oil
1 brown onion, coarsely chopped
6 cloves of garlic, coarsely chopped
4 Chicken thigh fillets (skin off), cut into 3 x 3 cm pieces (large chunks)
500 - 750 g okra (fresh or frozen)
1 can diced tomatoes
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 - 1 1/2 cups of chicken stock (you can use a stock cube)
1 tsp ground cumin
juice of 1 lemon
1 1/2 cup basmati rice (400 ml)
salt & pepper

Preparation
(for the rice)

1. Add 3 cups of water (800 ml) to a pot and bring to boil.
2. Season with salt
3. When water is boiling, pour in rice and stir once. Put lid firmly on, reduce heat to lowest possible and cook for 12 min. Leave the lid on during entire cook, no peaking.
4. When the 12 minutes is up, check if there is still any water in the pot, if yes cook for a further 2 min, if dry, turn off heat and leave rice to steam under the lid until served.

Preparation for Bamya

1. chop onions, garlic and chicken thigh fillets
2. trim top of okra to remove the stem-like part of the vegetable
3. heat olive oil in a wok or big pot
4. add onions & garlic with a little salt and fry for 2-3 minutes
5. add chicken pieces and brown on all sides
6. add cumin, diced tomato, tomato paste and stock, stir and bring to the boil
7. once boiling, add okra, juice of lemon and salt & pepper to taste
8. simmer for 25-30 min
9. taste and season to taste again if needed
10. serve steaming hot on top of rice

Enjoy!

Okra has just been added to the pot.

Bamya has been stewing for 25-30 minutes and is ready. Notice how the sauce has thickened up as well.

Serve with basmati or parboiled rice - YUM!

Oscar's Dinner Talk - 11 months old

This will be a short post, as I just wanted to post a little video of Oscar who is now 11 months old having dinner. This is the typical dinner conversation we have!

Caroline and Josefine's Holiday in Australia -Part 1

It has been a busy couple of months, as we have had family visit from Denmark and also been overseas on holidays. 

We had really been looking forward to our two eldest nieces, Caroline and Josefine, coming down to visit us, and they arrived in early July in the beginning of their school holiday. 

We had a few longer day trips planned, but also had day trips into Melbourne on the itinerary. They arrived Thursday 9th July in the morning, and as we thought, after breakfast, they went to bed to catch some zzzz. I then woke them up in the afternoon, while there was still some sun out, and we all went for a walk around the local area so that they could get some fresh air and sunshine to turn their clock around to Melbourne time.

Friday, Kasper still had to go to work, so all the girls (including Julia) and Oscar then planned a trip to Melbourne to see QVM (Queen Victoria Market) and do some other shopping in Melbourne. 

After a quick cafe pit stop for Oscar's breakfast, we went on to explore Queen Victoria Markets. The market stalls were the most popular and we spent quite a bit of time browsing all kinds of things. We then proceeded into the food area of the market and first had a look at all the fresh fruit and vegetable produce before we went into the deli hall and the meat hall. The girls were gobsmacked at all the massive cuts of meat and large fish everywhere. At one entrance, a fishmonger were doing chargrilled octopus, and Caroline was game enough to try a piece with me (Yasmin). YUM. 

Cafe breakfast for Oscar, and coffees and hot chocolate for the rest of us!

When we were done exploring QVM, we then proceeded to Melbourne Central shopping centre in Melbourne City. We also had a nice lunch here, as it had become lunch time. 

Melbourne Central Shopping Centre, where we had lunch

After some browsing in some of all the stores, we then took the tram back towards docklands, and got off at Etihad Stadium, so the girls could see where we were going to the footy later in the week. 

We walked along the water on dockland pier back to Harbourtown Shopping Centre, where we again went browsing/shopping, and ended up at the coffee club for another hot chocolate before the drive home in peak-hour traffic!

On Saturday, unfortunately Caroline's cold had taken a turn for the worse, so she stayed under her doona all day on the couch getting familiar with James Bond :-)

While Yasmin and Oscar stayed home with Caroline, Kasper, Josefine and Julia went for a walk in Werribee Gorge. I even think they did a bit of "rock climbing". Some pictures below from their trip.

Smart girl brought an umbrella

"off road" rock climbing

Tour Guide "Bear Grylls" :-D

Kasper and Josefine

Julia and Josefine

5 red parrots

Fun in the Jolly Jumper

In the last couple of weeks, Oscar has started moving around a bit more - he is now rolling by himself from his back to his tummy and from his tummy to his back. He uses this technique to roll closer to toys that are out of reach. And when on his tummy he kicks around his little legs in order to try to move forward, so we are excitedly waiting to see when he will start crawling...

He also likes to stand up, so he can look around a bit more. One of his favourite things to do is go in the Jolly Jumper and walk/jump around on his little feet and look at his surroundings. Here is a video of Oscar in the Jolly Jumper:

Last weekend Kasper was on daddy duty during the afternoon, and I heard this out of control laughing coming from Oscar's room, so went in with the video camera to check out what they were doing... sometimes it really is the simple things that keeps Oscar amused :-) Enjoy!

Best Ever Coleslaw Dressing

Last week we tried a different type of coleslaw - as you do when you have leftover cabbage originally used for a Minestrone Soup to use for something else... This coleslaw is called a green coleslaw and is made with savoy cabbage. However, it is really the dressing which is amazing, and I'm sure I'll use this fantastic dressing in the future for all types of coleslaw!

The recipe is for 4 people

1/4 savoy cabbage, finely shredded
3 celery stalks, leaves reserved, stalks finely chopped
1 Lebanese cucumber (or 1/2 a cucumber), halved lengthwise, thinly sliced

Dressing
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 lemons, juiced
1 tablespoon sugar (white)
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 tbsp whole egg mayonnaise

Put all dressing ingredients in a container with lid, close tightly and shake all ingredients together. Pour over coleslaw ingredients and mix through.

Sorry, forgot to take a picture :-(

An Eventful Week

The past week has been quite eventful. 

Friday evening Julia and I (Yasmin) were going to the footy so that Julia could experience Australian Football at the MCG - the biggest stadium with room for more than 100.000 spectators. Of course we had picked a game where St Kilda was playing so that I could go and watch a live game of my team. 

Unfortunately, we arrived a bit late because we had to wait for Kasper to come home from work to look after Oscar before we could leave. However, when we arrived, St Kilda was actually in front (they were playing against Collingwood), so we were quite excited!! Unfortunately, once the 2nd quarter started Saints quickly lost their lead and Collingwood ended up winning :-( 

St Kilda scored a rare goal

But it was fun for Julia to experience the "game day" atmosphere at the stadium, and she was quite excited by the game and the antics of the spectators. As she said, there was lots of action and it was definitely not boring to watch a footy match compared to soccer :-) So I think there is a chance we might go and see a few matches while she is here!

Saturday evening Karina, Shayne and Oliver came to visit to see our new house. We had a nice Mexican themed dinner party with everyone participating - Karina brought a starter platter, then I made chicken and beef fajitas for main, and Julia made some strawberry quesadillas with ice cream for dessert. Good to catch up before Karina is due to give birth again at the end of May and also get the latest news on their new house which they are building at the moment.

Saturday night I felt a little like I was getting a sore throat, and Sunday I was really bad with stuffy nose, coughing and fever - hello stupid flu! So Kasper ended up being on Oscar duty Sunday, follow by Julia on Oscar duty Monday and Tuesday before I was finally in a condition to look after Oscar again Wednesday. However by Wednesday, Oscar had also caught the cold - poor little man! 

Wednesday we were booked in for our passport session at Denmark House in the city. I needed to get my passport renewed, and we needed to get a passport for Oscar. So this was Oscar's first trip to the big smoke - Melbourne City! When a child gets a passport, both parents have to show up, so Kasper met us at Denmark House. Luckily, he was attending a conference in the city on Wednesday, so it was just a short tram trip for him to meet Oscar and I there. A thank you to Daniel is in order for magically fixing up a photo of Oscar we could use for the passport photo! 

Oscar's passport photo :-)

After our applications had been handed in, Kasper suggested we have lunch before he went back to the conference. So we found this nice Japanese restaurant where Kasper could get a nice curry and wifey could get some sashimi and sushi - YUM!

Oscar and daddy at lunch (and some of mummy's yummy food)

After lunch, Oscar and I went shopping in H&M and GAP to find some new clothes for Oscar as he has now grown out of all his 3-6 months clothes, and desperately needed some new bodysuits. Luckily we found some very nice stuff before we legged it back through the city to Crown where we were parked and went back home just in time before peak-hour traffic started!

Oscar with mummy on shopping trip

Then on Friday, Oscar and I AGAIN had to go to Melbourne to see the art performance Rain (for babies) at Melbourne Arts Centre. We had booked a time with 2 other mums/babies from our mother's group, so it was a nice little catch up as well. We left home in good time to have a nice stroll along the Yarra river and have a leisurely lunch before the performance at 1.30PM. 

Here is a link to the performance 
The performance lasted about 45 minutes, and was very fascinating for the babies! Scenary was set up to resemble "rain", and there were 3 performers singing and playing while moving around and touching the babies. During and after the performance all the babies were allowed to crawl around and play with the props (big balloons filled with a bit of water they could push around + stuff hanging from the ceiling that they could play with. Lighting was also a factor with dark surroundings and some "glow in the dark" features. Unfortunately, Oscar got a bit grizzly at the end because he was getting tired, so we left quite quickly as he sleeps best in the pram when it is moving.

By the time we left Melbourne, it was unfortunately well into peak hour traffic, so we were parked for about 15 min just to get onto the freeway :-( That made for one very hungry and screaming Oscar most of the way home in the car.... 

Friday night, and Julia and Kasper now both have a sore throat, so it seems the whole family ended up catching my cold despite my best efforts to avoid giving it to anyone!