Saturday, October 6, 2012

Cooking Class with Ana Schwarz

Ashleigh was excited to go to Ana's parent and child cooking class again these school holidays after having so much fun and making a yummy meal last time.

This time we made Three Cheese Ravioli with Poached Prawns and Brown Butter Sauce for main and Mini Trifles for dessert. As she demonstrated how to make them our mouths were watering, both looked so good.


Then it was our turn. We cooked on islands in groups of four so the other mum and daughter on our island made the Mini Trifles and Ashleigh and I made the Ravioli dish. I just advised and supervised while Ashleigh did most of the preparing and cooking herself. She finely chopped the shallots, mixed the filling, poached the prawns, put half the ravioli together and cooked them. I helped with putting the other half of the ravioli together and making the brown butter sauce.


Once again Ana was impressed with the skill of the kids doing the cooking and she commented on how good Ashleigh's cooked ravioli looked.


After all the hard work in the kitchen we got to sit and enjoy the fruits of our labour and it was so delicious. The ravioli just melted in our mouths. We had three each and Ashleigh surprised my by eating everything on her plate, she must have loved them as much as I did.


And the mini trifles were amazing with the different layers of fruit, biscuits, jelly, chocolate drops and cream. All with special little touches and it came together beautifully. We both loved the trifle but it was quite sweet and filling so none of us managed to eat it all.

Ana did a great job of making it all look so easy and we enjoyed ourselves again so much that we will be signing up for the next one.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Menu Planning Monday

I have been a regular menu planner for many years, with occasional lapses when life gets busy, but I find it really does help with keeping the weekly grocery bill down.

I plan each week from Friday to Thursday as most weeks I do the grocery shopping on Friday. Here is this weeks menu:

Friday: Pizza and Movie Night for the last day of school. Normally it would be home made pizzas but as I hadn't made any bases we had Pizza Box.
Saturday: Sausages and Kumara Salad (this recipe is from Mum and it is delicious)
Sunday: Salmon Cakes with Lemon-Caper Yoghurt Sauce and Salad
Monday: Roast Chicken and veges
Tuesday: Ashleigh has a sleepover and I am travelling so Scott will probably have our go to Calamari Chip Wraps (see photo)
Wednesday: Prawn, Lemon and Leek Risotto from Donna Hay Fast, Fresh, Simple
Thursday: Lime and Lemongrass Chicken also from Donna Hay Fast, Fresh, Simple - love, love, love this cookbook, so easy and simple.



Also, most weekends I do some baking for Ashleigh's school lunches. Last weekend I made mini banana and chocolate chip muffins and mini apple pies. The apple pies are what Ashleigh will have for lunch as she will not eat sandwiches for school lunches, which makes packing her lunchbox most days very challenging. This week is the beginning of the school holidays so no baking this weekend.