Photo Day

I just love this picture, Nate is sitting proudly with his sunflower he made.

Dairy Free Pizza

Not too long ago Nate's nursery said he wasn't eating his tea. It didn't take us long to work out why, all of the other children were eating pizza while he had toast with vegemite. They asked if I could think of an alternative so I went home and made special pizza's for him. I use a basic pizza dough, there is one on the BBC website that works well. Once the dough has had it's first rise. I divide it up into small balls and stretch it out by hand.

Once it has been stretched by hand, add a little tomato paste this time I used sun dried tomato paste.

On top of the paste, I added sliced courgette. Normally I get the baby courgettes as they work better on the small pizza's.

Just for a fresh tomato taste sliced baby tomatoes.

Then some sweetcorn and sliced pastrami for this pizza, I've used sliced ham or pre-cooked chicken before.

I freeze them on a slip of greaseproof paper individually on a plate and then after half an hour package them up with cling film and send them up to nursery individually packaged. Nate loves them and if he sees me making them has to have one for his supper that night. They are perfect for a quick supper if we need something for Nate. 

Easy lunch

Today, we didn't know what to have for lunch and were a little bored of sandwiches. I had a quick look in our fridge and we had the jus rol croissants and ham and pasta stir in. That looks like an impromptu lunch with no dairy. 

 First of all I added a little of the paste to the croissant. I only put it on the base of the croissant but you could add more but not all of the way to the tip otherwise it would get a bit messy.

 Then I added a little ham, once again you could add more but I felt this was enough as the croissants are only small. Roll them up, like you would normally.

This is how they came out after 15 minutes in the oven. Yummy!

Jamie's Italian

Our newest food love is Jamie's Italian. The first time we visited Jamie's Italian (pre Nate) we loved the food (especially the polenta chips) but we didn't go back until recently. Nate rarely eats a different meal to us, we normally order for ourselves and then share with Nate. He eats really well like this as he always wants whats on our plates. At Jamie's we had previously tried the Italian Feast (this isn't available in all Jamie's) as it gives a starter and then three different mains (smaller portions). Between Nate and his dad I didn't get a look in at the pasta alla Norma. 

This visit however, it was just Nate and myself so I thought I'd have a look at the children's menu. It looks pretty good as about half of these options are on the adults menu as well. I didn't ask if it was possible to have a children's portion of an adult meal but they are pretty accommodating we had a quick conversation about the no dairy, Nate had the Spaghetti Bolognese and followed it with Elderflower sorbet.

Nate's Spaghetti Bolognese arrives. My starter and Nate's main arrived at the same time and Nate digs straight in. I had a quick taste and it tastes pretty good, not overly salted. The only thing I would improve is the portion sizes for an older child I think the portion may be a bit big but for Nate is was way too big he didn't eat half of it. Maybe have a smaller toddler size meal as well.

Dairy Free cooking

Nate is Dairy Free due to suffering from an intolerance to Dairy along with Soya so we are constantly looking for recipes and ideas. At the moment we seem to be baking biscuits every fortnight, Nate likes to help with the rolling and cutting the biscuits out. I found a recipe for a simple biscuit which is very nice.

Here is our variation
165g Plain Flour
100g Dairy free spread
50g natural caster sugar
1tsp ground ginger

We roll it out to roughly 3-4mm thick use cutters (the fun part) to cut biscuits out and bake at 160C for 14 minutes. Our oven can be fiery so it may be best to check the biscuits often.

Nate cutting out his biscuits

Another thing we love here is rice pudding, we've had to change it a bit for obvious reasons as we used to love it with clotted cream stirred in at the last minute. 

I found a recipe last year that was made with coconut milk, and black rice. I decided to give it a go. 

Nate's Portion in a heart bowl

"Yummy in my tummy"

Now the black rice turns a purple colour and does stain little people so best on a nice hot day when you can strip them down and then pop them in the paddling pool. 

I don't have the exact recipe for this as I have made this different each time. This is the basic outline:

3/4 cup of black rice (we found the black rice in a small local Asian shop)

1 small can of coconut cream

20g sugar (I've limited the sugar due to Nate having it and the coconut cream is also sweet)

1 1/2 cups of Water

Put the rice, coconut cream and water in a saucepan bring to the boil and then add the sugar. Turn down to a simmer. Simmer for an hour, keep an eye on the pan as you may need to top the water up.
Enjoy!

The rice has a slight bite to it but it went down well here.

Little Swim School

When Nathaniel finished swimming with Little Dippers are few months ago, we had high hopes of continuing with his swimming every week. We started well, we went twice in a month the first month to our local swimming pool and then three times since and that was roughly 5 months ago. When I saw the little Swim school was starting lessons a two minute walk from home, I knew we should sign Nathaniel up. We managed to miss the start of term. However, we had our first lesson yesterday and I can't say Nathaniel loved it but as soon as we were out of the pool he wanted to go back in.  I think it might take a little time before he is throwing himself in like he was last year.

British Museum

Midweek we had a day in London when we didn't have to rush back home and there is an exhibition at the British Museum I wanted to see. Crazily I thought it'd be a good idea to visit the Pompeii and Herculaneum exhibition with Nathaniel. As we entered "mummy, dark" "mummy dark in here" and finally "no like it". Thankfully we are British Museum members and can visit again another day, this time it'll have to be nap time.