Inspiration Needed....

I have hit a wall and have lost all creativity with Riley's food. Each week I think to myself I need to get him some more food, more variety, but every time I'm doing the groceries I don't buy much different. In fact, I think I am buying less and hes actually eating more.

I have lost count the number of times he has had baked beans this month. I know I tell myself at least it counts as a vegetable but once he has had it for dinner 2+ nights in a row I think its time to rethink that. Oh and for the record hes having it again tonight. . . I might mix in some left over fried rice tonight, which he actually had last night for a change, shock horror!

I know I need to make him some more food to store in my freezer stock pile, but laziness has come to visit and each time I pull some mince out I don't get around to use it for him and instead cook it up for dinner, because ironically enough I have forgotten to get something out for dinner.

Don't even get me started on the number of mini muffins he has had this week too. In my defence I did make them and I have a heap out of the freezer that NEED eating, and a heap in the freezer waiting. But I guess when your other "fillers" are rice cakes and corn crispibreads its nice to get something that actually has a nice taste.

Things aren't all bad though in our joint. He still eats a lot of fruit. I have even had to start getting the tins out of the cupboard because I'm running out of fresh each week. This week hes decided he doesn't like the grapes I bought him and all the bananas are gone. Blueberries were expensive so I bought some frozen that haven't left the freezer yet (Freezer at work doesn't actually keep things frozen, so I keep leaving them home). I got sick of buying avocados because I went through a stage of getting all crap ones. He ate all the paw paw Grandma had brought over for him, but none of the cherry tomatoes because I don't know what to do with them and feel funny about giving them to him whole (Tomato hater here! - me).

On a plus, for breakfast each morning hes also been having cereal . . . Honey O's or Coco Bombs! Not the healthiest but again at least its something different, or so I keep telling myself. He is still having the token prune which he eagerly eats 1st, although he doesn't have to because its just in the bowl with his cereal and sultanas (which he has decided he doesn't want to eat either this week). So I guess things aren't all bad but when you get to the end of the week and feeding your child sugary cereal, tinned fruit, mini muffin after mini muffin, plain rice cakes and crispibread (which I have now taken homemade jam (thanks again Grandma) up to the shop to put on them) followed buy a nice healthy bowl of baked beans things are starting to look a little dire. Ah some days I just wish to be able to give him a Vegemite sandwich, a chunk of cheese, an apple or - wait for it - some take away, anything where I don't have to think about whats in it 1st.

Holidays!!!

Who would of thought! Chris has 3 weeks off from his fulltime job which means I get a bit of a break from the shop. YEAH!
I'm already into week 2 of his break and already I feel so much better. Today is the 2nd, that's right SECOND, day I have decided not to get changed out of my PJs, ahhh bliss. Note: I have put on a bra though. lol.
Apart from catching up on much needed sleep, I have been trying to do things I wouldn't normally be able to or fit in my days. Not only have I caught up on washing, I have been baking new/different things for Riley.
Today I plan on making some cookie dough, of course gluten and dairy free. I also made carbonara from scratch for lunch, but my eyes were too big for my stomach, so Chris has some lunch tomorrow now.
Last week, I had lunch with the girls from the cafe near work.  We went to the sports club, meanwhile I left Chris at the shop with Riley. It was great. We took our time eating lunch and enjoyed chatting about various things, followed by a little flutter on the pokies. Time flew, before we knew it we had been there for 4hrs, :o and only 1 phonecall from Chris, and that was just asking if I could bring him back some lunch.
I tried to organise a meet with the mother's group I was active with before we opened up the shop, they still meet weekly and so many new little siblings, however couldn't attend because Ri had a stomach bug. Bugger! Maybe another week.
We have done quite a bit of colouring in, with actual textas. Yeah for Riley! and we have also done painting. Wow did we make a mess. So glad we have a large tiled area because about 2sq metres was covered in paint. But I did manage to get some lovely hand and foot prints I would like to frame and hang with the ones I did when he was 2 months old.
This week I would love to catch up with one of my closest mates. She has been very supportive of me, with the shop and Riley and just life in general. She has spent many hours keeping me company up at the shop and also taking Riley for many walks to give me a break. So I would love to get out and up the coast on her day off and enjoy spending a day with her, just the 2 of us.
One thing I wont be able to do this break is take a road trip to visit my mate. I was really looking forward to being able to catch up with her but unfortunately I wont be able to make the 9hr drive. :( However she might be this way in the next couple of weeks so hopefully we can get a chance to catch up still.
So far my break has been relaxing, I'm not looking forward to it ending and having to slog it out again till the next lot of holidays. . .

Play-doh!

I thought making playdough was easy, oh how wrong I was.  I printed off a recipe from the net and thought great I will just substitute plain flour with GF (gluten free) plain flour. Why did I not think to google a GF playdough recipe.

I get home and set about my way to make what I thought would be a super easy mix. I start well, I get the flour, oil, water, colour - Blue, and salt ready...a cup of salt, What the..? I thought there was meant to be cream of tartar in here somwhere...no recipe doesn't want that.

I follow the recipe and I end up with this bowl of sticky goop. Well thats not what I wanted. I add more flour, it wasn't helping. So I thought wait maybe I need xanthan gum (to replace the gluten), Quick Chris I need reforcements, come help. Out he trotts giving in to my every demand until I decided this just isn't working. My hands, bench, bowl and glass cutting board are covered in this blue goop that is meant to be playdough. At my demand he goes to the study to google "Gluten free playdough recipe". It says boiling water but mine said cold...lets microwave it. Back to the kitchen we go. "Hold the board while I scape it off" "easy don't pull it off the bench", It was like glue. finially we get a good portion of it into the bowl and in the microwave. EWW its drying out. Oh well. Chris goes back to google more. We saw slight improvements after microwaving it but really had little faith we were on a winning track. This is no longer an individual task! I decide it now needs the cream of tartar, I know it should be there, google tells me 4 table spoons. In they go....slight improvement again.... in goes more flour, last of that box. I keep trying to knead it in hope it will come together, it isn't so back in the microwave, this time for longer. Its now hot, all crusty and dried out on the top, but workable. I can knead it. I work the dry bits in and they disappear...wow this isn't too bad. We had managed to rescue what we thought was beyond hope. I did add a little more oil, which ended up everywhere too, oops. The end result is something that quite resembles playdough.

Ingredients:
As Per Recipe
2 cups plain flour
1 cup salt

1 cup cold water

1 tablespoon oil

2 drops of food colour.

Mix dry ingredients, then add wet, wella!

What else I added

~1 cup more of GF flour
4 tablespoons Cream of tartar
1 tablespoon xanthan gum
1 tablespoon oil.
More food colouring, 2 drops didn't give very much colour at all.

The result.
It's quite tough, I wonder if this is the xanthan gum.
It's very grainy, prehaps next time I will desolve salt in boiling hot water 1st.
Its taste is discustingly salty worse than I remember it as a kid (We all know you have to try recipes when you make them :S ), so next time I might use less salt too.
Here it is.

. . . Riley better like playdough!