Learning new skills

It's no secret at our house that I'd rather be sewing than cooking and I'm certainly not a natural in the kitchen. Hubby usually does the fancy baking and cooking and I do the ordinary everyday meals.
So....I've got a new cookbook and it's changing the way I think about cooking!
It's the Country Women's Association Classics and is a mammoth of a book but it's fast becoming the only place I go for recipes and I haven't had a failure yet. They are such simple down to earth meals and baked treats and most have a little note about who's recipe it is and why they love it.
Here's a little something I made for dessert last week.....the pavlova recipe in the book is the easiest I've seen and make the best pav ever, hands down!

Last one...

Here's the last of the recipes I've tried from the 4 Ingredients Kids book that we've been using this week. These were a real 3/3, even a 5/5 as Hubby and I snacked on them too! Real easy, just slices of bread squished in a muffin tin, eggs and veggies and cheese mixed together and poured into the bread cups. A real hit and good way to use up not so fresh bread and the loads of eggs from our lovely chickens!

I'm onto a new book now, one from the Country Womens Association.....lots of lovely family meals which use good old fashioned simple ingredients. My kind of cooking!

Sewing or reading.....

What a tough choice! Our library has a "what's new" monthly sectionon their website and so on the first of every month I'm on there ordering all the new arrivals for myslef and my girls. I picked up this lot this weeka nd it's been such a tough choice whether to sit down and read or to sew!

One book I did curl up with last night was "4 Ingredients for Kids" by Kim McCosker and Rachael Bermingham. 

I've always been a little dubious about the 4 Ingredients series of cook books, it just seemed a little too easy to create a meal with so little......but then again I'm really not a naturally gifted cook so any help I can get is a bonus!

Meals that the girls will be excited about is sometimes a little tricky and finding a variety of things for them to snack on after school and to fill their lunchboxes is a real challenge. 

So I'm going to give some of the recipes in this book a go.....some of them I might miss altogether like chocolate covered Ritz bicuits?!

Here is this mornings effort, they are called "Purple Pikelets". 

The 4 ingredients are SR wholemeal flour, berries, egg and milk. I used froxen mixed berries, blueberries and raspberries and blackberries and I confess I did add a little castor sugar to the batter (just a few teaspoons)

The verdict.....well, mine weren't purple but that didn't matter, they were certainly filling and tasty. I think next time I might use a different fruit, like mashed banana or pear as the berries were a little big and chunky, perhaps I could have mashed them?

Because I have three girls I'll use a rating system that's out of three, if it's 3/3 then all 3 of them loved them! 0/3 means it became lunch for our chooks!

Verdict: Purple Pankcakes is a 2/3! 

One girl loved them and had about 5, another girl had one and said "I think I'll have some cereal" and the youngest loved them but minus the berries. 

Stay tuned for some more recipe reviews