The Kiwi Mental Kitchen

What a roller coaster life has been over the last few months. My health got progressively worse for a while then and my household went into coping mode. Dinners became simple and sometimes even straight from a "gasp" packet but we did what was needed to get through the day to day. It has been nearly a month since they finally got my medications right again and I'm still working my way though destressing from it all. As such, I still have limited amounts of energy for cooking but I am starting to make the basic things more interesting again. In some ways, I'm turning into my mother when it comes to cooking. I now understand why she served us mixed frozen vegetables so often growing up. They are quick, easy and rather cheap, though I must admit they are nicer boiled than microwaved. Much cheaper than buying fresh veg and not getting around to cooking it, which was a common occurrence in the coping mode we have been in. I never really liked them growing up and to be h...

My husband's favorite dish is Toad in the hole, which is sausages cooked in Yorkshire pudding. He requests it most weeks so tonight I made my first attempt at change a recipe I currently use to better fit with the 10 Rules . In New Zealand I am lucky that it is easy to get sausages without preservatives or other nasties, they still have quite a high amount of fat so I am trying to reduce how often we eat them, but I do not see a need to cut them out entirely. While it was a great success I will probably continue to make more changes as I try more variations in the future. For example, I would like to try moving to non-dairy milk and whole wheat spelt flour. I want to make only one change at a time so that I know what works and what does not. Tonight my one change was replacing standard white flour with white spelt flour. Toad in the hole Serves 4 8 Sausages Oil 3 cups of white spelt flour 3 cups of milk 3 eggs Salt to taste Grease a Large casserole dish with the oil...