Despite my best intentions, I've already fallen off the meal planning wagon for 2016. I tried to be organised. I tried to write shopping lists and stick to them. But all it takes is one busy weekend and I'm right back to where I started, flying by the seat of my pants in the kitchen. I don't mind ...
Busy day dinner – PLT pasta in under 20 minutes
I feel like I've been neglecting the blog of late. The usual story: so much to do, so little time. University is getting to the pointy end of semester, and with two major pieces of assessment still to go, I always feel slightly stressed. Am I devoting enough time to study? To the blog? To the kids? ...
Busy day dinners: chicken saltimbocca
Saltimbocca! Go on - say it with an Italian accent. Don't the words just roll off your tongue? This Roman classic literally means 'jump in the mouth' and that's exactly what it does. Saltimbocca is a dish that tastes even better than it sounds. Traditionally, Romans use veal but I've substituted ...
Busy day dinner: bang bang chicken
Another night, another busy day dinner. This time it's a dish that I've been cooking well since before the children came along and I learnt about the true meaning of "busy". Introducing bang bang chicken - it's a great name, don't you think? Why bang bang? The recipe originates in the Sichuan ...
Introducing the Busy Day Dinners Instagram challenge
The other day I was having a conversation about family dinners with a friend as we watched our kids poke each other with sticks happily explore our local playground. "I just cook the same meals over and over again," she told me. "Whenever I try anything new, nobody eats it. Why should I bother?" ...
Busy day dinner: Minced beef stir-fry with basil
My six-year-old loves to eat. In fact, I sometimes see her mouthing the words "What's for dinner, mum?" as she exits the school gate at 3pm. Like her mother, she thinks about food all the time and is very opinionated about what she does and doesn't like. I love that she enjoys many exotic and ...
Busy day dinner: zucchini, ricotta & lemon pasta
Do your kids pick the green bits out of every meal you make? Herbs, gone. Spinach is spotted no matter how fine I chop it. Florets of broccoli? One of mine almost hyperventilates if I put it on her plate, lest it cross-contaminate other components of her meal. It really gets to me at times. And ...
Busy day dinner: chicken Waldorf salad
I love summer. Give me a choice between hot and cold weather and I'll take hot any day. But there reaches a point in Brisbane, usually in March (or sometimes if we're unlucky, April) where we experience a burst of such unseasonably hot weather that I hit the wall. It's autumn! Didn't someone get the ...
Busy day dinner: Mexican bean salad
I had a Mexican flatmate when I lived in Florence many moons ago. We bonded over our shared love of Nutella and bad reality television in Italian (especially Grande Fratello, aka Big Brother). We both loved to eat, and had a merry time cruising the bars of Florence in the late afternoon. If you ...
Busy day dinner: spaghetti Amatriciana
When I was growing up, my mum used to cook this pasta all the time. Except we didn't know that it was based on an Italian classic, spaghetti Amatriciana. We just called it "Tomato and bacon pasta". Which is exactly what it is. This version is certainly not traditional, but I like to think it would ...
