Beefy's, burritos, burgers and beaches

No baby markets or fresh food markets this weekend. Nope, instead a quick, spur of the moment getaway to the Sunny Coast and some gorgeous family time. Here's what we got up to.

Hit the road and first stop, Beefy's. Angus Steak pie. Skin Thing. Essie's first pair of shipskin uggies. Mooloolaba. Newport Holiday Apartments. 14th floor. Lovely view, great location. The Twilight Market at the Wharf. Children's books, cards, grass fed beef burritos. Sunshine. Swings by the beach. Bacon & eggs. Concious Life Festival. Chocolate and coconut milkshake. New friends. Granny & Pa. Crumbed snapper and chips. Champagne (magnum!). Beach. KD! Rain. Toasted muesli, yoghurt & fruit salad. Packing. Burgers and pistachio, orange and poppy seed cake. Home sweet home.

8 foods we should always buy, apparently!

I am feeling rather bloody proud of myself right now and it's kinda by accident. Apparently, according to Dr Alejandra Carrasco, who I found on Mind, Body and Soul's website, there are 8 foods that we should always buy and without even realising it, this household is doing just that. Read her interesting article here and see how we fare below.

1. Avocados 

In our place, you will usually find avocados - you can't beat a good home made guacamole, although I'm ashamed to admit that I had to throw 2 away today. I went to do an avo concoction for Essie's lunch and they'd gone super soft and brown, d'oh. We hardly ever, ever waste food like that, but they were neglected, due to all of the other new foods we've been eating and trying this past week. Very upset.

2. Berries 

We always have a box of blueberries in the freezer. These are mainly used for breakie - porridge and the odd smoothie. Sometimes as a solo fruit, other times with bananas. Whereas Essie has been eating her berries with apple and rice.

3. Cruciferous veges 

Tonight we had a yummy cauliflower, brocolli, potato, spring onion, caper, basil and feta salad. I also made a cauliflower cheese for the bubba a few weeks ago and always try and steal a few teaspoons of that when I can.

4. Coconut oil 

I really think we must have been one of the last to know about the benefits of coconut oil. Seriously a few weeks ago I had no clue how super this produce was/is. That was then and now, we've started using it loads and practically most days. Can most certainly tick this one on the list.

5. Fermented foods

Well this is a newy and funnily enough a couple of months ago Papa Wolf picked up a tub of kimchi from one of the local Asian stores in the city. This was my first time eating it and we just finished it off last week. Yummmmy rotten cabbage.

6. Leafy greens

 

I'm proud to say, and Popeye would be impressed, there's not a week goes by where we don't buy a big bag of spinach and devour it. Also picked up some kale on the weekend at the markets to try.

7. Eggs

We eat a lot of eggs in this house. As we all know I'm the recipe queen, however eggs or should I say omelette's are the only thing I can do freestylee and I really do whip up a mean one, almost pizza-esque. As a result we have eggy omelettes every week. I was particularly spoilt too this weekend, when Papa Wolf whipped up a a lime and coconut brûlée. Maaaaaan I love eggs. 

8. Turmeric

Have been using Tumeric a lot more again lately, since my book love affair with Wholefood for Children. This week in my Baby Kichari.


8 out of 8, wooohooooo. Knowledge is power hey. What about you?

x

Fresh food markets - don't mind if we do

Baby markets last weekend and fresh foodie one this. Since baby bear came along, we've been even more concious I guess of eating well. I've recently opened up to the world - a whole-lot-more-fully - of additives and preservatives that are currently in so many of our foods and maaaaaaan, it's freeeeeeaking me out. I'm trying not to get too overwhelmed, but it is hard not too. Especially once you start digging.

Anyone who is interested, there is soooooo much info out there. As a little start though, I came across a great read when looking in to vegemite this week (I'd heard the other week that it has some bad stuff in it and wanted to check!) - by A Little Delightful which you can see here. Bianca (of A Little Delightful) has some useful insight and facts in there, as well as some particular additives to especially avoid, plus a bit about her own family's journey.

Foodie market

As much as possible and especially where Essie is concerned we're trying to give her a whole food diet and no processed stuff. This week, we decided to try out the Saturday Rocklea Fresh Food markets and picked up our week (at least) of fresh fruit and veges. They have a whole host of fresh foods, as well as your greens, you can pick up meat, fish, bread, cakes, honey, herbs and flowers. Saw a guy selling some lovely extra virgin, unrefined, cold pressed coconut oil ($17 for a litre) and celtic salt, a musical instrument man, as well as a little live band and lots of yummy eat now food stalls for breakie, brunch or lunch depending what time you get there. Had heard some people say that the food isn't that good there, but we saw a really good bunch of stuff, for pretty good prices. 

Tonight cooked up some yummy sweetcorn soup with the cobs we picked up there, after Granny bear suggested it yesterday.

Sweetcorn soup

For anyone interested it went something like this. 

800mls of chicken stock (made up earlier this week)

Added to the stock and cooked up:

1 medium sweet potato cut very small until soft

2 spring onions

3 corn cobs - kernels shaved - only takes about 7ish mins to cook

Splash of full fat cream at the end

Quick blitz in the blender once above is cooked. If feeding to baby, would recommend transferring to the mouli, to seperate the sweetcorn skin... can get a bit stuck in the back of the throat. Serve as is, or I added some roast chicken that I'd cooked up and frozen from an earlier meal, to give Essie some protein as well. Mamma and papa bear had there's straight though with some freshly ground pepper. Yum. x

This week in food: get your soup on

Been cooking up any yummy foods this week? A few new things on our menu included coconut vege soup, my Grandma's chicken soup - cooked with schmaltz an all (Grandma would have been proud although I left out the kneidlach this time, as I forgot to check for Matzah meal in the local grocery store), a tomato, carrot, celery, pumpkin and courgette pasta sauce and tonight I did a slow cooked chilli con carne, recipe courtesy of Jamie Oliver's America cookbook, but slightly adapted. Bubba bear enjoyed all of the above apart from the chilli, which I didn't give her. Not sure she ready for the HOT stuff yet.

By the way, didn't cook up the dessert in the pic, that was papa Wolf (photo bombing the carne below) bringing us a Friday night surprise home. Glad I not the only one with a schwwweeeeeeeeet tooth around here.

Bargain hunter

Zero to Five bargains.

Have to say, do LOVE a good bargain. Little bear outing this morning and we managed to pick some up at the Zero to Five markets. Was our first time and well worth a check out if  you're near to one. Check out the dates and locations here (just scroll down the page link and you'll see).

It's basically a whole host of mummas selling their second-hand wares for prices starting from 50c a pop upwards. As well as clothes, you'll find toys, books, prams & nursery furniture. There's also some new stuff, including a few hand made pieces. You will have to have a rummage, people do still try and sell stuff with big stains on, so watch out, but there's also some great little pieces to pick-up.

Here are our little finds:

1. Fisher Price activity set

I had one of these when I was little and loved it. It's not the old skool version I had, but the newer one. They had it up for $10, but Papa Wolf got it for $7. Wooohooo.

2. Fisher Price Laugh N Learn Bear

Brand new and haggled for $7.

3. Clothes 

Cute little second hand cardis and one pieces, $1 each

4. Hair clips

Essie's first little hair clips. These were hand-made by Vee's Clovee, $5 for the pair and I LOVE them

5. Sleeping bag

Second hand - 2 tog - Grobag, $11, got them down from $15

6. Books

Set of Doctor Seuss books, $10 - an old fav of Papa Wolf's

So there we have it. I think we did good, or should I say baby bear did. :)

Sweet & sour Saturday

At our local grocery store this week, they had some lovely bunches of rhubarb which I picked up. A fruit... although actually I think it's a vege, that Essie hasn't yet tried. Had a little search on the net this arvo on the best way to cook it up for bubbas - rhubarb can be quite sour and tart and many recipes call for a fair amount of sugar, which I wanted to avoid. I thought by using another fruit, like sweet apples, would be a good way to combat this. After reading a few cooking suggestions online I came across The Veggie Mama for the first time - love her site and her stewed cinnamon, apple and rhubarb..Yummy! I didn't have any rapadura (unrefined) sugar though and so substituted this for some organic maple syrup. Essie LOVED it and I figured why do babies have all the fun, so before freezing the rest, I scooped up a couple of portions for mumma and papa too. Schwwweeeeet Saturday. x

LFW's mumma-to-be reading list

One of my old besties Campus, asked the other day, for a friend of hers, any must read pre-bubba/pregnancy books. I've kept the reading list short cos you can totally be overwhelmed with info and if you don't feel like reading anything, don't bloody bother. But just in case, here's my little low-down in no particular order:

Kaz Cooke's Up the Duff

I loved Kaz Cooke's Up the Duff, as well as having some useful info, it will make you laugh out loud. This is 'The Real Guide to Pregnancy'. It features everything from weeing and bosoms to nausea and stretchmarks. You won't get inundated with too much blurb, that goes in one ear and mostly out the other (baby brain is real you know!). It has a great week by week guide, so you can read it as your preg/baby bump progresses. You'll be sharing your pregnancy with Hermonie - The Modern girl's diary. Hermoine is part Kaz, part other people, part me and probably part you to be. Good fun + informative read = winner!

Juju Sundin's Birth Skills

Next up is Juju Sundin's Birth Skills. I'm not sure if anything really prepares you for labour. It is one of those big unknowns really, until you're there doing it. We're all so different and it could pan out any way. The key I think is, try not to worry, be open and just go with it. Yeah yeah Little Feather Wolf, easy for you to say... so don't listen to me, I've only done it once, but maybe listen to Juju. I found this a really empowering book. From it you'll learn what happens to your body during labour (good to know what's going on), techniques to get you through and how to turn the frightenedness (it is a bit scary quite frankly) in to a positive action...'good pain'.. yes such a thing exists apparently, plus info for your birthing partner.. make them read it too.

Bruce Lanksky 100,000 Baby Names

Everyone needs a good baby name book. We had fun reading Bruce Lanksky's 100,000 Baby Names. This is a super fun activity, I think. With soooooooooo many names out there, where to start, where to start? A good name book can give you inspiration and it's fun reading all the meanings.

If you want something really cool though, check out the net.I mean, how original is Flompy G, Sharkman, Tulip Teeth and Blunt Gordon. Papa Wolf found these beauties when we were looking. Luckily for our little bean Esme, we chose Esme, although Tulip Teeth Feather Wolf does have a gorgeous ring to it, don't you think?

Tizzie Hall's Save our Sleep

Tizzie Hall's Save Our Sleep is a bit like Marmite (English Vegemite). LOVE it or HATE it. Although saying that, I'm a bit more down the middle - so there goes that theory - but I do veer towards a strong like. In the book you'll find sleep routines from birth to 2 years of age, for breast and bottlefeed bubbas, advice on weaning, case studies and answers to questions you may find yourself asking. A great little sleep and routine guide, we found, to the big wide world of unknowness you enter, at the beginning of (and whole of!) parenthood. Sure we can attribute Essie's super evening sleep routine, which is bed at 7pm everynight and has been since she was teeny weeny, to the tips we got from this book.

Selection of mama and bubba mags

If you don't feel like doing the whole book thing, you can always pick up some good mumma and bubba mags, put your feet up - good excuse too - and enjoy a light read. Might pick up some useful info too, not that you'll remember it. Keep some by the loo as well, you'll be spending a fair amount of time there over the next 9 months!

HAPPY READING CAMPERS x