cooking

cooking, cooking with kids, crafts, education, Uncategorized

Chaos writes:

RococologoI had recently been singing the praises of Rococo Chocolate on twitter, as earlier this month I had wolfed down a couple of delicious ‘grown-up’ birthday bars (all to myself)….
As a designer by trade, I’ve always loved the packaging, with the repeat patterns of the old chocolate moulds – There’s just something so appealing about the classic blue prints.

Achica

You can imagine my delight when the chaps at Achica invited RedTedArt and I to spend the morning with them at Rococo’s Motcomb Street, Belgravia store.

We were welcomed by Julie Rosenberg, the events manager for Rococo, with delicious hot chocolate, and were given a really informative ‘lesson’ on how cocoa is grown, and becomes the chocolate we were then to try.

Julie led us down to the kitchen (which we had spied through the glass window in the floor!) and our Chocolate School continued, with egg decorating, and the fun bit of gluing the two halves of our eggs together!

It’s such a great idea for a birthday or hen party….have a chat with Julie for more info…there’s a Half Term Children’s Chocolate Bar Workshop coming up which looks great!

So, we even got to take home the eggs we had decorated (yes, mine IS supposed to be an owl!)

Joining in the fun too were the very creative TorieJayne, Lizzie Me and My Shadow, and Jen from love chic living, glamorous glutton and lish concepts, and hannah in the house too.

A big thanks to Julie from Rococo for making it such a super morning, and to Achica for inviting us along and making it such a memorable morning!

belgravia

cooking, cooking with kids, create, kids, life

Chaos writes:

SquidTagliatelleKidsChaos
We have a lovely recipe for Squid with Fennel…. 10yo LOVES it and requests it ALL the time. Trouble is, last time we made it together, 8yo cried the whole way through the meal… So, 10yo and I have come up with a compromise, and have replaced the fresh fennel, and fennel seeds with rocket. So cooking with kids has a new recipe for you….And 8yo was so delighted by this option, he offered to make it all himself!…. Using his beloved Sheeplands Farm Bamboo chopping board (his favourite Christmas pressie can you believe?) check out this speedy easy recipe:SquidTagKidsChaos

INGREDIENTS: (serves 4)

400g dried tagliatelle
600g frozen squid rings (calamari)
couple of handfuls of rocket leaves
1 lime
3 cloves garlic (finely chopped)
2 tablespoons fresh parsley (finely chopped)
olive oil
sea salt
ground pepper

Heat the olive oil, and gently fry the garlic. Meanwhile, pop the pasta on to cook in a large pan of water. Add the squid rings to the fried garlic (make sure they are defrosted) and the zest of the lime, and half of the lime juice, and the chopped parsley. Drain, and add the cooked tagliatelle pasta, and the rocket too, and give it a good stir.

Season to taste, adding a little more of the lime juice if needed.

We like to grate some parmesan over it to serve (although, according to the OH, this is ‘against the law’ of no cheese with seafood… don’t ask) which is delicious!

Want a speedy pancake pud to follow? Click here for the quickest pancakes in the history of the universe.

This one’s great for the school dinner packed lunch flasks for the next day if there are any leftovers!

For more Cooking with Kids recipes, join my community over on Google+ here.

Oh, and I’m on twitter.com/MoreKidsChaos too… Erm, and funnily enough onGoogle+, Facebook and Pinterest! Pop over to say hello x Like it? Pin it!

Ali also writes over on AGreenerLifeforus.com
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cooking, crafts, create, google+ hangouts, key stage 2, kids, monster

Chaos writes:

BottleLidMonsterKidsChaos

8yo wanted to personalise his book bag so that he can spot it, at a glance, amongst all of the identical school book bags, piled high on the playground floor. So we made the most of the oven being warm from a baked potato supper, and positioned some plastic bottle lids on some foil on a baking tray.

Five minutes later, and as the ‘monster’ started to melt, we added some Hama (or Perler) Beads for a bit of colour, and they melted in beautifully. Bringing it out of the oven to cool (warning, it does get super-hot) we positioned the googly eyes (don’t do that too quickly as the eyes will start to melt too!) I pierced a hole with some scissors, and we added a key ring and out Bottle Lid Monster is complete and ready to adorn said book bag with pride!
KidsChaosRedTedArt-screen-grab2We also thoroughly enjoyed a Google + hangout with this one too, featuring Maggy’s redtedart‘s bottle lid stamps, and ladybugs. Adele from Playful Learners bottle top Easter art, Anthea at Zingzingtree‘s bottle top flowers and people. Also Cerys’s beautiful bottle top owl, and a first – our anonymous blogger with Spanish Marbles, plus Kath’s KnittyMummy’s beer bottle photo badges.

For more Monster ideas, click here and for other bottle lid ideas click here. And for a fab Despicable Me Perler Bead classic click here.

Oh, and I’m on twitter.com/MoreKidsChaos too… Erm, and funnily enough on Google+, Facebook and Pinterest! Pop over to say hello x Like it? Pin it!
Ali also writes over on AGreenerLifeforus.com

cooking, education, kids

Woah… try this, take one Fairtrade banana, mush it up with a fork, add two free range eggs, mix vigorously…for this quick pancake recipe
quick pancake recipeMelt butter in a little non-stick frying pan (ooh, you know how much I ‘heart’ my little orange Le Creuset (this is not a sponsored post!)…

 

this article and the recipe, has now moved to www.incredibusy.com/the-quickest-pancake-recipe/ 

thanks for stopping by!

 I also write over on aGreenerLifeforus.com  and now incredibusy.com and have found I quite enjoy Instagram too 🙂

cooking, education, kids

Chaos writes:

You may have been following our latest ‘growing’ kitchen fun on twitter; we’ve been overwhelmed by this amazing phenomena – growing our own mushrooms on the kitchen windowsill…

This fabulous invention, the Espresso Mushroom Kitchen Garden has been the talk of our kitchen – This little ‘garden’ uses recycled coffee grounds and we grew our own oyster mushrooms in just two weeks.

Both kids have really enjoyed the experience of spraying the mushrooms with water, and rushing in from school to see how they’ve grown. 8yo even wrote a recipe (pictured) which we duly followed, when our mushrooms were ready to harvest –  fried them up, served with chopped parsley on a couple of slices of toast. De-Lish-ious….

We had been talking to Alex at Espresso Mushroom about just how much we wanted to tell the world about their mushrooms, and have joined forces with them and our friends at Cafédirect to offer you the chance to win this fab prize. We have some tasty espresso coffee from Cafédirect and an Espresso Mushroom Kitchen Garden gift voucher, so you can WIN and grow your own Pearl Oyster Mushrooms – it’s such fun!

This prize draw has now closed, thank you for all of your entries, the lucky winner is Eileen from Staffordshire. 🙂 xx

How to enter:

1 – Comment below to tell us how you’d cook your mushrooms

2- ‘Like’ KidsChaos on Facebook and tell us what you’d cook with your mushrooms!
and comment below to tell us you’ve done so.

3 – ‘LIKE’ Espresso Mushroom on Facebook and comment below to tell us you’ve done so.

4 – For an extra entry, Add KidsChaos into your circles in Google + and comment below to tell us you’ve done so.

5 – And another add Espresso Mushroom into your circles on Google + and comment below to tell us you’ve done so.

Terms and Conditions

– Entrants must be over 18 and in the UK
– By entering this competition, the player assigns to KidsChaos.com all exclusive rights to reproduce and represent the copy related to this competition on any media (both online and offline)
– Entries close Midnight on the 20th of December
– The winners will be notified personally
– KidsChaos’ decision is final and no correspondence will be entered in to and no cash alternative will be offered
– This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook or Google+

cooking, food, google+ hangouts, kids, life

Chaos writes:

I seem to spend my whole time impressing other people’s children with my culinary skills…. little do they know! Tonight’s a case in point, 10yo has a playdate. Playdate says: “mmm, delicious pizza, is this HOME-MADE?!”

“Yes” I answer, “of course it is!”
“Wow, it’s the most delicious pizza I have ever had. My mummy is so lazy, she BUYS ours”. (apologies to all mums and dads who BUY their pizzas, seriously, I do that too….)

So, this is basically the easiest thing, bung all of the ingredients (300g flour, a tsp of dried yeast, tbsp sugar, 30g butter, 2tbsp milk powder, 1 tsp salt, 420ml water) into the breadmaker at 3pm, go on the school run, come back from school run, break the pizza dough into six pieces, shape into balls.

Make three pizza (I have proper pizza bases, nice and thin and crispy) couple of spoons of pasta sauce, rip up mozzarella ball, grated cheese, couple of olives if you’ve got them….

Freeze the extra three dough shapes, and use them in about a fortnight! (kids get bored of having pizza TOO often believe it or not…)

job done. Nigella, beat that. 🙂

britmums hangout vegetarian

2014 UPDATE for this recipe…. temporary glitch with the breadmaker (it started spewing out black smoke!) so we’ve been experimenting with using flatbreads and wraps as makeshift pizza bases – and these are SUCH a winner – spoon a couple of tomato pasta sauce, mozzarella, a few slices of mushrooms and some grated cheese, and pop in a hot oven for about seven minutes – sprinkle over a handful of rocket, and TOTAL WIN!

I joined Britmums to talk about vegetarian meals, both simple and fancy – click to watch the google+ hangout above.

Ali also blogs over on aGreenerLifeforus.com and is a new lover of Instagram too… pop over and say hello!

This post is part of the #FaveFamilyRecipes Competition with BritMums and Tilda Rice. Every pack sold will provide a meal to an expectant mum in need in support of the World Food Programme’s Mothers Helping Mothers initiative in Bangladesh

baking, cooking, cooking with kids, crafts, kids

Chaos writes:

So, as these boys have got bigger, so the cakes have got simpler….

yet… THIS cake has so far been the most popular amongst 8yo’s peers…. “Wow! Your Mum Is AMAZing” apparently, so I will be attempting an alternative version of this next week for 10yo’s birthday sleepover – so, see, I do make an effort, and don’t always BUY the cool cakes that turn up in our house!

I thank the invention of Pinterest for the inspiration, such a great place to pull together visual triggers!

Any ideas of what we could do differently next time? Perhaps jelly babies instead of Smarties? what would we use to hold them all in, instead of #Fairtrade KitKats??? Answers on a postcard, (or below if you like!)

Other ideas for the top, not so colourful, but we DO like the odd Malteser in our house too, especially now they are Fairtrade!

Click here to read more about Laura Dockrill and Maltesers (the calming of the Angrosaurus that is ‘Darcy Burdock’) and for a chance to win a signed book!

Click here to read more about CAKE! And Fairtrade Coffee….

cooking, crafts, key stage 2, kids

Chaos writes:

What a lovely half term we’ve had – 9yo and I went to the Canal Museum over near Charing Cross. He’s in year 5 now, Key Stage 2, and studying Victorians… they could not have been more helpful and enthusiastic, John showed us how to make icecream, and Jay took us on a canal boat trip, which 9yo LOVED – so inspiring, he beamed the whole time we were there, and learned SUCH a lot – I cannot recommend this enough to you!

baking, cooking, create, halloween, kids

Chaos writes:

So, I normally leave any unnecessary “decorated” cake making to neighbours (!) – saving my skills for special occasions such as Birthdays, and um, Birthdays.

So, chancing upon some amazingly simple cupcakes today, in our local cafe – the Gooseberry Bush, I thought I’d share these with those of you who can’t make it to Wimbledon in the next few days!

Be inspired, be VERY inspired! x