WCW Baked Orange Chicken

What's Cooking Wednesday is getting a bit of a facelift this year, complete with a special badge!

I am also going to be focusing on all types of recipes, as this year one of my mini goals is to eat less processed foods. i am hoping that this way of eating will rub off on the boys- they are already pretty good at eating fruits and vegetables but it is hard to get meat into our five year old, who would happily eat ham, salami and sausages every day if I let him but is not keen on chicken, pork or beef.

I love Chinese takeaways, but no-one else in my family is that excited about it, and the family budget doesn't usually stretch to takeaways. To get my Chinese food fix whilst being somewhat healthy, I tried to recreate an orange chicken using the oven instead of frying.

Baked Orange Chicken
3 oranges, juiced and zested
1/3 cup rice vinegar
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup marmalade
1.2 teaspoon minced ginger
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic

2 chicken breasts, skin off, diced into cubes
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup cornflour

Mix the flours together in a bowl, and toss in the chicken.

Mix together the sauce ingredients, including the orange zest, and heat gently in a saucepan or microwave bowl, until the marmalade is of pouring consistency.

Place the chicken pieces in an oven dish and pour the sauce on top.

Bake in the oven at 170 degrees C for twenty minutes.



I served this with pineapple fried rice, which was a delicious accompaniment to the meal, but you could serve it over plain rice or noodles as well.

Linking up with Time For Mom.

What's Cooking Wednesday #15

I love a curry, and I love pumpkin. I would like to share with you today a recipe I made for dinner a few weeks ago that combines all of my favourite winter comfort foods.

Roast Pumpkin and Cashew Chicken Curry
Serves 2 adults and 2 children

1/4 cup raw cashew nuts
1/2 crown pumpkin
400g chicken breasts
200ml coconut milk
2 tablespoons garlic infused olive oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons curry powder

1/2 teaspoon minced coriander

10 grinds fresh black pepper

1 teaspoon ground flaxseed (optional)

cooked rice, to serve

Soak the cashew nuts for at least one hour in boiling water then drain.

Chop the pumpkin into wedges and season liberally with salt and pepper. Spray with oil and bake in an oven at 180 degrees C for 30-45 minutes until the pumpkin is golden and cooked through.

While the pumpkin is cooking, prepare your rice. I always use a rice cooker but the usual method you use for cooking rice is fine.

Once the pumpkin has roasted, leave to cool and then mash with a fork.

Chop the chicken breast into strips. Place in a frypan with some more oil spray and brown. Add the
pumpkin mash and coconut milk.

Place the soaked cashews, coriander, curry, flaxseed, salt and black pepper in a food processor. Pulse several times to break down the cashews then drizzle the oil in and pulse until smooth. The flaxseed is optional- I pulse it into the curry mix for some added fibre. Mix into the pan with the coconut milk, chicken and pumpkin, and add 1/4 cup hot water. This curry mix is delicious with anything by the way!

Leave this mix to boil for 5 minutes, then serve over rice.



You seriously have to try this- the coriander and pumpkin go together so well, and the flavours are divine. Perfect comfort food on a cold winter's evening. My husband even said this was the top dish I have ever made!



Linking up with Wake Up Wednesdays.

Exploring the World through books

I am excited to have my first month as a co-host for Poppins Book Nook.

 This wonderful FREE book club includes a lot of my favorite bloggers, who take a themed monthly topic and select a book that is appropriate to the theme. Then, on the last Monday of the month, we all present our books and something that ties in with the books and present a fun hands on learning opportunity such as a craft, project, diagram, report, collage, etc. directly related to the book on our blogs through the Poppins Book Nook. 

This month's theme is Where In The World?

Since we live in New Zealand, I firstly wanted to feature a book from our part of the globe. 

This book is done to the classic tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It" and has an accompanying CD with the words in English and Maori (two of New Zealand's official languages). It features native New Zealand animals such as a Kiwi, tuatara, penguins, eels and tui. Lucas liked pretending to be a still tuatara- so we made a tuatara as our craft using a green popsicle stick, a green pipe cleaner, some round stickers and craft glue.

Lucas decorated the stick with green spikes using a felt, and we added black circles to the stickers to make eyes. The green pipe cleaner was cut into four pieces then stuck onto the bottom to make legs- and Lucas suggested a tail too with the leftover piece, which was great thinking as tuataras do have long tails!

One of the featured animals is the New Zealand icon, the Kiwi. In the book, if you're a Kiwi and you know it dig for worms! I made Lucas and Adam a special Kiwi lunch, complete with worms.



The next book on our list was Farmyard Jamboree- this is the English version of a Chilean folk song that introduces children to animals and their young as well as counting in multiples of two. This book appealed to me as I used to live in Chile, and it was a great way to talk to my children about my time overseas as well as learn some more about animals.

The farmyard had a chicken and her chicks, so Lucas wanted to make a chicken as he knows I love chickens! We gathered our supplies- a round cardboard circle, a yellow cardstock circle, some googly eyes, a foam orange triangle, and yellow feathers. We started off by gluing the feathers to the base cardboard circle.

Once the feathers were stuck down, we placed the yellow piece down and added the eyes and beak.



The last book on our list for this month is a book in Spanish called Casas del mundo- Houses of the World.

I count myself very lucky that my boys are bilingual, and so it opens up a whole lot of book opportunities! This book talks about different types of houses in different parts of the world, and ends with the question- "what type of house would you like to live in?" This was a great opportunity to work on Lucas' vocabulary and imagination, and we wrote down his ideas.



He decided he would like to live in a Snow House
-buried in snow
-TVs with lots of computers and video games
-concrete floors with carpet on top
-medium sized
-the house would have a scarf, hat and mittens to keep it warm because there would be no sun (I thought this was very clever!)
-there would be forts outside to play on and it would be red
-people would still sleep in beds

I love his imagination and the ideas that he came up with were rather funny!

I hope you will join us over at Poppins Book Nook this month.


   

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

Enchanted Homeschooling Mom ~ 3 Dinosaurs ~ To the Moon and Back ~ Planet Smarty Pants ~ Farm Fresh Adventures ~ Growing in God's Grace ~ Chestnut Grove Academy ~ Faith and Good Works ~ Learning and Growing the Piwi Way ~ The Usual Mayhem~ Preschool Powol Packets ~ Monsters Ed Homeschool Academy ~ Adventures in Mommydom ~ Teach Beside Me ~ Life with Moore Babies ~ Kathy's Cluttered Mind ~ Are We There Yet? ~ Our Crafts N Things ~ Hopkins Homeschool ~ ABC Creative Learning ~ Joy Focused Learning ~ P is for Preschooler ~ Laugh and Learn ~ A Mommy's Adventures ~ Inspiring 2 New Hampshire Children ~ World for Learning ~ The Kennedy Adventures ~ Ever After in the Woods ~ Golden Grasses ~ Our Simple Kinda Life ~ A glimpse of our life ~ Journey to Excellence ~ Happy Little Homemaker ~ Little Homeschool Blessings ~ Simplicity Breeds Happiness ~ Raventhreads ~ Water on the Floor ~ Learning Fundamentals ~ Tots and Me ~ As We Walk Along The Road ~ Stir the Wonder ~ For This Season ~ Where Imagination Grows ~ Lextin Academy ~ The Canadian Homeschooler ~ School Time Snippets ~ Peakle Pie ~ Mom's Heart ~ A Moment in our World ~ Every Bed of Roses ~ Finchnwren ~ At Home Where Life Happens ~ Suncoast Momma ~ The Library Adventure ~ Embracing Destiny ~ Day by Day in our World ~ Our Homeschool Studio ~ A "Peace" of Mind ~ Thou Shall Not Whine ~ SAHM I am ~ eLeMeNo-P Kids ~ Simple Living Mama

Clip art by Melon Headz

Poppins Book Nook Giveaway!

Every month the Poppins Book Nook group will be offering readers a chance to win a brand new storybook that ties in with our theme for the month. This month one lucky entrant will win a copy of Where in the World!  The winner must reside within the United States. This giveaway is brought to you by the company Enchanted Homeschooling Mom, who is owner and founder of the Poppins Book Nook. By entering this giveaway you are also acknowledging that you have read and agree to all of the Rafflecopter terms & conditions as well as Enchanted Homeschooling Mom's disclosures found here {http://enchantedhomeschoolingmom.org/disclosures/}.  Just enter the Rafflecopter below to win:
a Rafflecopter giveaway

What's Cooking Wednesday #1

One thing I love receiving is recipe books- I have post it notes all over them with recipes I want to try.

Well, this year I have decided to bite the bullet and make one recipe a week that I have flagged in my recipe books. I trawl Pinterest and food magazines a lot, but some of my recipe books have great tried and true recipes and it is time to find some new favourites.

My first recipe comes from Annabel Langbein's cookbook The Best of Annabel Langbein This is one of my go-to cookbooks but there are lots of recipes in here I have yet to try. I wanted something light but filling for a hot summer evening, and the Grilled Chicken and Crispy Noodle Salad looked amazing. I was intrigued by the combo of bananas, avocados and pesto with chicken and bacon in a salad, but since my family enjoys all of these ingredients I figured it was worth a try.

I got all of the ingredients together (minus the pesto, which was in the fridge!)



You marinate the chicken in lemon juice and pesto with whole lemon slices- it smelt so good. The recipe called for grilling the chicken, but I had already diced it so I just cooked it in the pan.



Then it was a matter of tossing all of the ingredients together...



And adding the crispy noodles to serve. Yum!



The salad was surprisingly filling, and the combination of flavours worked well. I would happily make this salad again, and wouldn't change a thing.

I really recommend any Annabel Langbein books to any cook wanting a fantastic book for reading as well as recipes- the food photography in this cookbook is so vibrant and it makes me want to cook every time. She is a great New Zealand writer and a lot of her recipes adapt well for busy families.

Linking up with Wake Up Wednesdays.