a balanced lunch box and a muesli bar recipe

I seem to spend a considerable amount searching for balance in my life.

• balancing cost – is it cost effective for me to make/grow something?
• balancing time – is it time effective for me to make/grow something?
• balancing health – Is it healthier for me to make/grow something?
• balancing convenience – Is it more convenient for me to make/grow something?

As you can tell – with all this balancing I don’t need to bother with yoga…

On balance it is easier to go to the supermarket and buy most of what we need (want….whatever). No one ever told me the simple life would be this bloody complicated. So I do grow veggies, I do mend clothes and I do cook most meals from scratch (if opening a can of tuna counts as ‘from scratch’ – I don’t farm tuna in the backyard pond)…but sometimes I wonder if I am actually saving anything. Until I perv in other peoples shopping trolleys and marvel at what they will pay for and eat – a small pack of ready-to-cook potatoes with herb ‘butter’ for $5 – Good Grief!

School lunch box ‘treats’ are another area I marvel at. This whole idea of lunchbox ‘treats’ drives me bonkers; it’s LUNCH for goodness sake. Where did this idea arise that kids deserve TREATS every day? Goodness -when I was 10 I thought it was a treat if mum actually made me a lunch and I didn’t have to do it myself. A TREAT was bread that wasn’t three days old (I would have walked to school barefoot in the snow too, except I went to a Catholic school and you got in trouble for taking off your shoes, and well…it didn’t snow in Kiama anyway). If my mum had packed me a lunchbox with a pre-packaged muesli bar, a mini pack of sultanas, a plastic cheese-stick wrapped in plastic and a bag of potato chips for lunch, plus a lolly for a TREAT – I would have assumed she’d gone mad(der).

Tom (8) tells me he has the healthiest lunchbox in his class. This is a kid who refuses to take fruit to school (cue whinging voice: it gets squishy/soft/brown…blah, blah, blah) and takes a piece of cake or a biscuit every day for morning tea. He doesn’t complain about his lunch – he is rather more gobsmacked that other kids are actually allowed to eat such crap. They have a ‘brain break’ prior to morning tea (the school has decided morning tea should be 11 am and lunch 1.30 which means the little poppets can’t survive from 9am to 11am without a SNACK. Jeez.) when they have a ten minute nibble on something healthy – he is the only one who can eat anything he wants from his lunchbox because it is all homemade.

So, apart from the occasional lapse into supermarket purchases, I tend to make healthy-ish cakes, biscuits and slices. They also have to be quick, easy, cheap, and include nothing I have to go out especially to buy. This is my muesli bar I adapted from Nigella Lawson’s Breakfast Bars (I wouldn’t eat them for brekkie, but hey, whatever floats your boat)

• I can condensed milk
• 250 grams rolled oats
• 75 grams shredded coconut
• 100 grams dried fruit
• 125 grams nuts
• 125 grams seeds (sunflower, pumpkin, sesame)

method:

1. Put condensed milk in large bowl and microwave until warm (or heat on stove in saucepan and have two things to wash up).
2. Add dry ingredients.
3. Mix well.
4. Press into greased (I line with glad-bake paper, but that’s the sort of environmental vandal that I am) slice tin
5. Bake at 130C for about an hour. Leave for 15 minutes, cut into slices. Keeps well.

This is a fairly forgiving recipe. I sort of guess the quantities now. I have cooked it for a shorter time on a higher temperature and vice versa; I have half burned it and undercooked it. I even turned the oven off by mistake halfway through and it seemed to work ok. That is: I think the kids still eat them. They must eat them – they sure as hell can’t get any kids at school to swap lunches with them.

While on a lunchbox rant – since when did kids’ lunches have to be gourmet bloody extravaganzas? What’s wrong with a vegemite or peanut butter sandwich and a piece of fruit (yeah yeah, I know – it goes squishy etc)? I have bowed to the pressure and occasionally make chicken or tuna with mayonnaise and lettuce – in a ‘WRAP’. Oh, and I include carrot and celery sticks in lieu of fruit – but that’s just me, and sometimes the chooks have limp celery and carrot sticks as an after school snack.

Plus, when did it become de rigueur to include a love note to one’s children? Apparently I am one of few (at least in the lower grades) who does not include an ‘I love you!!!!!. xxx J!!!!’ note (plus lolly) with lunch. Whose stupid idea was this? After Tom told me this I included one in their lunchboxes as a joke. Jimmy was horrified. Tom said he doesn’t want the note, but he wouldn’t mind the lollies.

Strawberry Jam

Strawberries are in season, and the local greengrocers had 2.5 kilos of locally grown strawberries for $10. A bargain; so yesterday I made strawberry jam. One of the best things about living in Brisbane is that strawberry season is in winter, which means jam making is pleasant.

The recipe is from the back of the Fowlers-Vacola Jamsetta pack (pectin).

• 1.5 kg strawberries, washed and hulled (I also chopped them up because some were huge)
• ¼ cup water
• 50gram Jamsetta
• 1.5 kg sugar
• 4 Tbs lemon juice

Step one: sterilise jars by washing in hot soapy water, rinsing, boiling for 10 minutes in a stockpot, and drying in a low oven until ready to use.

Step two: place strawberries, water and lemon juice in large pan and cook gently, uncovered, until fruit is soft.

Step three: add warmed sugar (warm in the oven with the jars) and Jamsetta and bring to boil, stirring to dissolve sugar

Step four: boil 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Test, by placing a spoonful of jam on frozen saucer; if it wrinkles when you run your finger through it it’s set. (Take the jam off the heat while you do this, so it doesn’t turn to toffee).

Step five: remove jam from heat, stand for 10 min. stir and then bottle into warm, dry jars.

Step six: seal while still hot. I used the Fowlers-Vacola Kleerview covers, and then the lids.

Step seven: enjoy on toast (or Scottish oatcakes) for afternoon tea, while panicking about all the sugar rotting the kid’s teeth.

This made 7 largish jars of jam, with a kilo of fruit left over for eating fresh, so I estimate the jam cost about $12 to make – less than $2 per jar. Pretty good value.