Artwork from yesterday completed

Just wanted to share the end result of the artwork from my children yesterday. The video from artventures.com.au taught them to do two birds, outlined in oil pastels and then painted with watercolours.  Here are their paintings.

From the seven year old:

And from the six year old:

I was hoping they'd get creative with it afterwards though, so left the materials out and gave them another piece of paper each. The six year old continued on to produce two more lovely paintings.

(And by the way, these birds all represent members of our family. The girls have bows.)

Recipe: Lettuce Wraps

I'm not going to write this out as a formal recipe, as it is more of a quick dinner idea then a recipe, and will depend on what you have available.

Cook whatever veggies you have on hand that you'd like to include - I used 3 small carrots and 2 small zucchinis, cubed, and stir fried them in a little Olive oil until starting to brown.

Now cook the tofu mixture:

INGREDIENTS

Olive oil, as needed

750 g block firm tofu (organic, GE free)

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 teaspoons good salt

1 teaspoon chopped garlic

Chopped fresh dill if you like - a couple of tablespoons

METHOD

Heat up a good non-stick fry pan or wok. Add a little oil.

Drain any liquid from the tofu (and I usually rinse it then too). Crumble it directly into the heated fry pan. Cook this until some of it starts to go golden. No need to wait for all of it to, but you want to cook it until the texture is a bit chewier, so don't rush this. Let some go brown.

Add the lemon juice, salt, garlic and chopped fresh dill if you have it. Taste and add more salt and lemon if you like. Cook for a little longer, stirring to mix it all well.

Mix in the cooked veggies from earlier and heat it through.

SERVE with iceberg lettuce leaves (or your choice), trying to keep the leaves as big as possible.

Spoon the tofu mixture into lettuce leaves (like San choy bow), wrap up and eat.

We had this with a bowl of chopped salad veg - cucumber, carrot and grape tomatoes, and corn on the cob. The kids added tomato sauce of course!

Christmas Sewing

My little girls sewed Christmas presents for family.

A doll for her sister - using a screen print that I drew and printed a while ago.

No pics of the final product! These were filled with lavender and tied with bows to make lavender bags for quite a few presents. They loved making these because of how simple they were.

They also made some dolls based on a favourite licenced character for their brother.  These were very complicated and turned out beautifully. (Hoping it is okay to post these pics. They have not been made for sale, and are not taken from any specific picture. The pattern was just drawn freehand.)

My son made cotton pajama shorts for each of his three sisters.

I'm very proud of them all for developing the skills and taking the time to make these gifts.

Art Time

We are having a try at the free "art" lessons on artventure.com.au. Here is painting in progress.

Gluten free Bread

Just made a loaf of gluten free bread from the recipe at www.glutenfreecookingschool.com - best gluten free bread I've ever tried. It's definitely worth visiting this site, owned by Mary Francis Pickett, if you are interested in gluten free cooking.

The loaf has a great texture - I've just tried it untoasted with butter and vegemite and it is certainly up to that. I'm very interested to see what it will be like in a few hours.

Australians note - she does use some tablespoon measurements. US tablespoons are 15 ml and Australian ones are 20 ml. Check where your measuring spoons are from, or just use three teaspoons (from the measuring spoon set). One of the tablespoon measurements is for yeast, and you really don't need an extra 5 ml of yeast.