Throwing in a Sweetener to get Motivated… and LOVING IT!!!

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

A question for Parents: What spurs your child on to eat their vegetables or meals when you want them to?

Ok, hunger… let’s take that one for granted.

But take two fussy eaters like ours (what did a Foodie like me ever do so badly, to deserve kids who think that a piece of tomato might kill them? or that trying a piece of pineapple or mango is an ordeal akin to torture?)

To be fair, Kiwi Daughter is getting more adventurous and she tried a piece of gherkin whilst we were here (but the grimacing faces she pulled whilst eating such a tiny morsel  probably did make any other  diners who might have been looking our way think that we were feeding her poison)

Getting back to the question… most kids will  co-operate (more than usual at least) if they think that a treat in any form sugary might be on offer afterwards.

In our case the treat that was the object of our children’s desire was in a big cabinet on the end of the long counter, located where you simply couldn’t miss it after your first step inside the door. Strategic… definitely strategic.

Little Mr. was even adamant that he could just this time, even forgo lunch completely and simply skip straight to dessert . Nice try kid, but we have done that one once in your lifetime already http://kiwidutch.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/ben-and-jerrys-jamacian-me-crazy/  and it wasa once in a lifetime occasion so forget any repeats before you reach adulthood.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

So… what is the massive kid motivator on this occasion?  …Ice-cream! an entire cabinet of ice-cream:  the flavours on offer are: Vanilla, Chocolate, Strawberry, Stroopwafel, Apple-Pear, Apple-Cinnamon, Pomegranate, Strawberry-Yoghurt, Stratiatella,  Orange, Catalana, Ferero Rochee, Caramel,  Raspberry,  Cassis (blackcurrant) Royaal, White chocolate, Lemon, Forest Fruits and Bounty.

After closer inspection of what’s on offer, even the adults in the Kiwidutch family are by now highly motivated to do some taste testing. I mean, you can’t give a café a full and complete review without a taste test can you? (sigh) someone gotta do it… life is tough sometimes…   …NOT!

We get two flavours each. Ooooohhhhh,  wow, Wow, WOW!  THIS is ice-cream! what brilliant flavours. it’s gorgeous!

I  go take photos, I ask the smiling lady behind the counter where does she get this amazing  ice-cream from? She grins “I make it myself”  she says.

The Oooohhhhh’s go up a notch… “…wow, all of them?”  I ask.  ”Yes, all of them“. Wow, I am seriously impressed. This ice-cream is seriously impressive. I could keep it a secret, but for the local readers around me… I’m sharing my discovery of a brilliant treasure.  It  truly deserves the advertising.

Even if family Kiwidutch don’t end up walking around the walls of the fortress of Brielle, we will be making a return trip back just for the ice-cream.

Maybe we should hire a refrigerated truck to come here in?  (ok, only joking on that one, but I did  find myself wishing we could somehow fit a freezer into our car so that we could take some home). Methinks any guests who come to stay with family Kiwidutch in the future are going to be forced to see the sights of  Brielle. We need an excuse. Guests are the perfect excuse, right?

Kiwidutch can heartily recommend that Chez André in Brielle should feature as a definite detour if you are passing close by… heck it’s worth a detour even if you aren’t!

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

The only photo I got of what we ate was mine…  I couldn’t get the rest of the family to stop eating theirs!

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Mandy’s “Meatlover’s Pizza”…even with fussy kids watch this dissappear!

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

I’m not normally a big pizza fan, and nor are the family, but we have tried making Pizza at home and our opinion and liking of pizza is slowly rising.

This Recipezaar recipe is one of our homemade efforts and was a hit, especially with Kiwidutch Daughter. (Anyone with fussy children will totally understand how many brownie points a recipe earns when this happens !)

She helped make the Pizza’s as well… Little brother Master Four tried hard to help but got side-tracked into stuffing himself with salami instead, ah well, good intentions little man… LOL.

I had on hand: a very small amount of portuguese chorizo sausage, large rounds of salami and 2 cooked rookworsts ( = large smoked sausages, similar-ish (but better) to frankfurters), the pizza bases came from Ecoplaza (totally organic grocery) it’s the first time I tried these and they taste great!

Little Miss smeared the tomato sauce onto the bases, and put the meat onto one while I did the other, and she got busy adding the cheese, more like a blizzard of the stuff then a dusting, but oh well, that’s kids in the kitchen for you.
We also added a little green pepper and these cooked up in no time. This recipe gets plus points for using leftover meats successfully, WITH organic bases successfully, for letting daughter loose in the kitchen and having fun AND getting her to happily enjoy eating the end result.
For me it was simple to make and the 2 pizzas did us great for a weekday meal in a bit of a rush.
This is recipe that is open to many variations of leftover meats as you like, leftover diced roast chicken, those last slices of ham in the packet that need using up, salami, of the sausages left over from the weekend BBQ that you put in the fridge and are now looking lonely. An excellent recipe to reduce needless food waste, and it tastes brilliant too ! Thanks Mandy!

Meatlovers Pizza

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Recipe #299560 20 min 5 min prep
By: **Mandy**

I’ve printed Mandy’s recipe here with her permission and she mentions in her recipe that she got it got it from a “Take 5 Ingredients Book”.

Ingredients:
30 cm pizza crusts, with
tomato sauce

1 cup pizza cheese, grated

2 chorizo sausages, sliced
125 g cocktail franks, sliced
60-100 g smoked ham, shredded
2 tablespoons barbecue sauce

Directions
1. Place pizza base on a lightly greased oven tray, top with half the cheese, then sliced meats and ham followed by remaining cheese.
2. Bake in a preheated oven at 200.C for approx 15 mins or until base is crisp and the top is golden.
3. Remove from oven and drizzle with barbeque sauce to serve.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Easy Farmstand Fresh Cream of Tomato Soup

I had some major dental work done a while back and since I couldn’t eat solid food for a while, Hubby bought me some tomato soup at the supermarket. Yes, it tasted good, but I was rather shocked to see just how many preservatives etc there were in it.

I ate the stuff Hubby bought because I had a face swollen up like a football and pain relief/bed were considerably greater priority’s than food, but now that I think about it (and with the next stage in my dental implant treatment pending) I’m looking to something a lot more organic, and less chemically complicated to help me during my next recovery period.
I’d like to share the Recipezaar recipe that earned 5 stars from me when I made it.  I’ve posted  it here with the kind permission of Zaar member ” Muffin Goddess” and the recipe number is Recipe #170483. (Serves 4)

If you make it, I’m sure she would appreciate a review, here’s the link:

http://www.recipezaar.com/Easy-Farmstand-Fresh-Cream-of-Tomato-Soup-170483

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Ingredients:

2 cups chicken broth
4 cups ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped (approx. 5 large tomatoes)
1/3 cup coarsely chopped sweet onion
1/2 cup coarsely chopped celery (I usually use about 3 large ribs)
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2-1 cup light cream
1 tablespoon fresh basil or fresh dill, chopped (optional)
salt, to taste
fresh ground pepper, to taste

Directions:

1. Place all ingredients except the cream and basil or dill (if using) in a large saucepan.
2. Simmer for approximately 30 minutes, or until veggies are soft.
3. Using an immersion blender, puree the veggie mixture to your preferred smoothness (I like to have some tomato chunks in it, so I leave it a little chunky. If I accidentally over-puree it, I’ll cheat and add a small can of diced tomatoes)
4. Add light cream (start with 1/2 cup and add more to taste — amount will depend on flavor of the tomatoes). Heat soup gently over low heat.
5. Before serving, stir in fresh herbs (if using), and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve soup hot or chilled, whichever you prefer (hot is my preference)

If you can use tomatoes on the vine then I highly recommend it because the great taste difference to other tomatoes is immense. In little less than an hour you could have the best tomato soup in the neighbourhood…. or the province!

Dutch Recipes: Appelmoes … is Apple Sauce !

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

In my favourite second hand shop I picked up a new kitchen gadget…

Well, New to me at least.

This is a vintage appelmoes sieve and it has a wooden ball-like piece in the middle to make making your apple sauce easier.

Appelmoes is the traditional Dutch apple sauce.

It’s very simple to make and family recipes differ depending on who you ask.  Everyone has their own recipe that they think is the best.

Some people make it using just the speculaaskruiden which is a mixture of ground spices, usually including nutmeg, cardamom, cinnamon, and cloves.

Many Appelmoes recipes contain one or more of these spices but  ginger, vanilla sugar, appelstroop (apple syrup) and saffron are sometimes included in some recipes too.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

4 apples, peeled, cored and sliced (Elstar or Jonagold are good apple varieties to use)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 teaspoons ‘speculaaskruiden’ (or pumpkin pie spices)
1 tablespoons sugar

Method:
Combine all the ingredients in a saucepan.

Heat gently for 15 minutes or until the fruit is soft and mushy.

Mash well with a wooden spoon. (don’t use a metal spoon or you will change the taste of the appelmoes)

Appelmoes is a firm favourite in many Dutch households, so much so that it’s even counted as a “vegetable” in the main  meal  for many families. Our little Dutch family seems to be an exception to the rule, since we hardly eat appelmoes, but then we don’t follow a “typical” Dutch eating style either.

I do however make my own home-made appelmoes from time to time because  I am trying to find a good vegan cake recipe  for my young niece who has many food allergies including dairy products. Vegan cakes don’t have dairy products like butter or eggs in them and Appelmoes is a good replacement for these ingredients.

Making it yourself  means that other allergy problems like colourants, preservatives and “E” numbers are also illuminated and the added bonus of using appelmoes in cakes is that it has a far lower fat content, so if you are wanting to keep the weight under control, then appelmoes is a good thing to include in your recipes.

This is so very easy to make, and a very handy ingredient to have, a few apples on hand Voila! you can have your own home-made appelmoes  in no time. Enjoy!

Cooking up a storm in Maine.

(photo © kiwidutch)

We are having a great time at Camp…. cooking is one of our hobbies  and we have certainly been enjoying  some excellent food. American style  cooking is very different to European style cooking and we are enjoying the temporary change and new experience of cooking on the big outdoor BBQ, and in the ” summer kitchen” at Camp.

For the Kiwiduch family, living in an apartment  in The Netherlands,  it’s also great for the kids to be outside, swimming in the lake and burning off all their excess energy. Since we have arrived we have had one short cloudburst of rain, and two rainy days. The rest of the time the weather has been fabulous.

We have been very lucky indeed… up until the day we arrived,  Maine had had a rocky start to the Summer, a month and a half of rain preceded our arrival, not the usual weather pattern at all.   meanwhile, back in the Netherlands  for the past month and a half, the weather has been unseasonably warm, we had been enjoying sunny days with long walks to the beach and back, frequent  walks around the city.

We liked to joke that we  packed the sunshine into our suitcases and bought the good weather with us from The Netherlands.. which would normally be a double joke  indeed  even if it were possible, as it’s usually a national pass-time of the Dutch to complain about their lousy weather!

I find cooking relaxing and enjoyable and it’s wonderful to stay with people who feel the same way, needless to say we have been having an amazing time in the kitchen together!

Here are some of the highlights of our home-made cooking frenzies… fresh green beans…

(photo © kiwidutch)

Sweet corn that had still been on the stalks in the field early this morning… my eight year old set a record for eating 7 of these !  Dutch corn isn’t half as good, if she would eat one at home we would be going well ! (or did this have more to do with beating the kids of the family were were staying with in a sweet-corn eating race? …. Kids!)

(photo © kiwidutch)

… coleslaw, a very American dish. Hubby is slowly getting used to it.  I love the stuff.

(photo © kiwidutch)

(photo © kiwidutch)

(photo © kiwidutch)

(photo © kiwidutch)

(photo © kiwidutch)

and of course…    pie !

(photo © kiwidutch)

(photo © kiwidutch)

Cooking local treats,  fresh and in season and with friends… wonderful ! That’s one of the things that really makes a holiday brilliant