Family-friendly meal: Cheesy Porcupine Meatballs

My family has eaten a LOT of meatballs lately, as I’ve made this recipe over and over to test out the ingredients. Luckily, they love it! My mother reminded me a while ago that she used to make these when I was a child, which prompted me to have a go at making them (with hidden vegetables, of course). My kids stick their forks into them whole and eat them like lollipops.

Although the meatballs take a little preparation, the dish is quite easy to cook. The meatballs cook in the sauce, so there’s no standing over the cook-top trying to ‘brown the meatballs on all sides’. I’m notoriously bad at frying meatballs, and usually end up with meat-cubes.

This dish also has a bolognese-style flavour, so if the kids love bolognese (and the adults, because who doesn’t?), but you want something a little different or less pasta-heavy, this might be a good one to try. The Thermomix recipe is also below the regular recipe. Continue reading →

A restorative, turmeric-filled week in Byron Bay

I was incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to enjoy an entire week in Byron Bay recently, with my Mum. When we initially chatted about travelling somewhere together a few years ago, we settled on three weeks in Spain for her sixtieth birthday, which was in April. The reality of my budget caught up with me and we ‘downgraded’ to a week in Byron – which I think I enjoyed more, to be honest! Spain is still on my wish list for another time. It was the type of holiday that only she and I could have had: My kids would have been terribly bored by the slow afternoons, my husband would have been appalled by the lack of red meat, and my dad would have been horrified at the number of turmeric lattes consumed. Continue reading →

Autumn Spiced Hot Chocolate: For your next camping trip (or to keep in the pantry for your next Netflix binge!)

A couple of weeks ago, we went on our first overnight family camping trip. It was also MY first camping trip. The idea of sleeping rough, barely separated from The Elements has never appealed to me. All that dirt. Those uncomfortable stones. The wind, argh! For years, I’ve rejected my husband’s suggestions that we go hang out in a tent.

Then he managed to catch me at the right time. Knowing that I’ve been trying to slow down, to make time to read and write again, he pitched it in just the right way: camping in peace and quiet, free from obligations, sitting next to a fire reading my book and writing in my journal. He finally won me over. We did a night away in a valley just out of Canberra in a quiet camping ground.  Continue reading →