helpful tips

helpful tips for ...

Why not let the kids create their own meals?

Although I don't have children myself, I was once a young child too, and I have younger cousins, so I know 'the struggle' of trying to get your children to eat something, let alone trying to find meals that they like every single night of the week. But, did you ever think that maybe if you let them create something fun with their own meals that they would actually want to eat the food. This can be done for a meal at dinner time or a simple little snack during the afternoon.

For example, why not turn a simple cucumber sandwich into a playful owl?
Make your child a sandwich of their/your choice, like a chicken mayo or ham and cheese sandwich. Cut the bottom left and right corners of the sandwich into slits in the shape of wings for the owl. Cut some cucumber and a small piece of carrot and place them on to the sandwich to represent the eyes and nose you the owl. Cut a few more rings of cucumber and put them in to the shape of an animated tree. Put a few pretzels underneath the cucumber to represent the stump of the tree.
This is such a fun, quick, easy and affordable way to jazz up your menu for the kids.

 

I mean really? Have you ever seen something so simple, yet original and completely exciting.

It's no secret that children love to eat artsy, decorated food, and here is the perfect example of how to make that happen. Add some of your children's favourite snacks and garnishes and boom, there you have a fantastic snack that your child will enjoy eating.

 



 

Another fun idea which I love, that I actually got from my auntie trying to feed my younger cousins, is marmite snails. Maybe not the most appetising thing you've ever heard of but I guarantee the kiddies will love it. This dish is so much easier to prepare than one would ever think.

 

All you need to do is take a piece of bread, white or brown, whatever your child's preference is.

Butter the bread with marmite, and cut the slice of bread into thin strips about 2-3cm wide.

Curl the bread up into a spiral shape, but instead of spiralling it all the way, leave a piece at the end uncurled, to represent the face of the snail. You can put it on a bed of rocket or lettuce to let it represent the vibes of nature, let your children decorate the snail however they like using other sauces and garnishes and boom, bam. There you have a perfect, fun, creative and tasty treat that your child will absolutely love to eat!

 

 

 

Your snack should look something like this, except at the end where the bread is curled in, leave it curled up a bit at the end to look like the head and face of a snail.

NB. You can you Bovril, marmite or even chocolate spread. 

 



You see, creativity plays a role in nearly every area of your life, and can help you, better you and inspire you on a daily basis, so stay with me for more helpful creative tips, facts and activities.

Heston's honorable twist on the modern day cullinary arts.

English (3) Michelin star chef Heston Blumenthal has made quite the breakthrough.

For those of you who aren't ride-or-die fans of Masterchef Australia, you may not even know who Heston is. For those of you who are, you probably only know him as the guy with glasses who sets the absolute hardest challenges using the most advanced looking technological cooking tools.
But I can tell you now, Heston is known to be so much more in the culinary world. Heston Blumenthal is the guy who combined 21st century cooking with 21st century technology and more importantly, science.

Inventing recipes for triple fried chips, and soft centred scotch eggs using the help and understanding of science, is the kind of thing that got Heston recognised as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and honourable degrees from Reading and Bristol.

His creative curiosity in the arts of food and science is the reason he was able to make a success of combining unsought of things, like caviar and chocolate. If Heston had no desire to play around with creativity and no creative curiosity, he never would have made the discoveries and breakthroughs that he did.

Heston doesn't only use science to make his food creative and original, he also uses simple foods, combined in creative ways. And for me, that is what its all about. Simplicity, food and creativity.

 

The video above shows how Heston has a magnificent skill of combining the strangest ingredients together, such as chicken fat and white chocolate, to create the most fantastic and animated dishes, that are fun, extremely original but most of all, creative. 

 





Heston Blumenthal's ideas inspire me because a lot of the things that he does are based on his love for a particular topic. For example in the above video, he combined his love for food, and the modernisation of food, with his love and memories of Jack and the Beanstalk, from when he was a child. I think that is what inspires me the most about him and his extreme creative tendencies, they all come from passion and recreating something close to him, pleasing himself, and that really is the most important thing about creativity is it not, do and using what you love and are passionate about.

Heston can get very technical, and if you can get your hands on the ingredients and equipment you need to do this dish, why not give one of his yummy ice cream recipes out yourself.

 

A lovely example of Heston's innovative cooking.

Here is a wonderful dessert that may even be simple enough for you to try at home.

 

 



 

Heston's creative passion has lead him to create some of the most abstract and beautiful dishes.

 

 

To find out more about Heston and his creations check out the link below where you can view his biography on the inspiration and methods behind his courageous inventions, or download the podcast for a more intimate knowledge.

http://www.thefatduck.co.uk/Heston-Blumenthal/

So long my sweet foodies, until next time.

Set yourself a 31 day challenge

"Be creative".

People say it all the time. But how many of us actually know what it means? Not too many I don't think. I myself still don't quite fully understand what it means, but I challenge myself every single day to find out who I am, creatively.

An unknown author wrote: "Creativity. The state or quality of being creative. The ability to transcend traditional ideas and to create meaningful new ideas."

I think that this is the most perfect way to describe creativity. Creativity is thinking of and creating new ideas to better original, "seen before" ideas. It really has very little to do with colouring in pencils and pretty glitter glue like we are taught in primary school.

 

 

I like think that the only way to achieve greatness in something, is to practise. Just like the only way to better yourself, and your skills, is to A) challenge yourself, and B) practise.

 

Since this blog is all about food creativity which I absolutely love, and I'm guessing so do all of you, I think that the perfect way to challenge yourself creatively is by taking the '31 day food creativity challenge'. This is a great little challenge that I learned about through Red Hong Yi.

Hong Yi is an artist-architect who is all about creative design. A lot of people know Hong as the artist who loves to paint, but not with her paintbrush. She is a true inspiration to creativity and artists, and highly recognised by the media, such as The Daily Press and CNN.

 

The 31 day challenge, in which she displays pieces of art created with food on the same white plate done everyday in March 2013. Displays her true bravery when it comes to creative challenges. This series has been covered by media internationally.

 

 

One of Hongs creations in her 31 day challenge.

 



 

 

On one of the days of the 31 day challenge, Hong used red onion to create the image on an owl.

 

 

 

The image of a lady in a dress made out of red cabbage.

 

 

 

To find out more about Red Hong Yi's 31 days of food creativity challenge, check out her webpage.

http://redhongyi.com/portfolio/31-days-of-food-creativity/

 

As far as us and challenging our creativity goes, maybe we can't go to this degree to challenge our creativity but we certainly can use Red Hong Yi's work as a wonderful example. Maybe you don't even have to use food, maybe you can put another one of your areas of interest to challenge, like a 31 day gardening creativity challenge, or a knitting creativity challenge, or hell, maybe even a fashion challenge, whatever it is, do it. Get your creative juices flowing. What's the harm?

 

I think we all feel that creativity is an earned title, but that is complete and utter unadulterated bollox.

We all have creativity within us. It's just a matter of how we express it. In our art, our work, our make-up, the way we dress and even the way we talk.

 

Challenge yourself, and never, ever, ever, under any circumstances, doubt your creativity.

 

 

 

 

 



grow yourself something delicious

Orgasmic organics

What does organic mean?

I know we all run around on a daily basis going on about how we should all eat organic food, when a lot of us don't even know what that means. Well I'm here to tell you all that organic vegetables are simply just vegetables that are grown without the use of pesticides or other chemicals that are harmful to our food, and the reason it is important to eat these organic vegetables is simply because pesticides and nutrients draw the important nutrients we need from our vegetables.

Why grow organic vegetables?

I feel that it is quite important to encourage you all to work with your hands and get all in on growing your own organic vegetables. It is such a fun and hands on way assure you are eating vegetables that are completely organic.
I really think growing your own vegetables, is a really fun idea. Its not expensive, its a hands on way to be involved in assuring your food is the freshest and healthiest it can be, and it is a cheap and easy thing to do.

Our culinary hero's do it, why shouldn't we?

Jamie Oliver, who is one of my favourite chefs because he is all about using food to make a difference and cooking with and eating organic and clean foods.
He, himself has an absolutely wonderful organic garden, and there is a video below where you can check out his garden and also discover how many vegetables and fruits you can grow yourself, organically.

 

In this video, Jamie garden boy, or the man who sees to his organic growing's, is giving a tour to someone of Jamie's Organic garden. A nice sneak peak at the limitless world of growing organic food.  

How can you grow your own organic vegetables?

All you really, really need to successfully grow your own organic vegetables is a decent, sizable piece of land. You don't need aches upon aches of land, you can decide on how much land you need and how many vegetables you want to grow.

 

This garden is a reasonably sized piece of land for organic farming. It is all about your accessibility to land and other resources that controls the size and success of your vegetable garden.

 

 

You do need some healthy soil, and that is a given. If you do not have nutritious and healthy soil to use on your garden, you simply can not grow anything, organic or not.

But seeing as this is just a cheaters guide to growing organic vegetables, I'll inform you all on how to get the most nutritious soil. GET IT FROM YOUR LOCAL NURSERY.

 

I do have a couple of tips on how to make your soil extra nutritious.

 

Collect all your veggie peels, fruit skins and peels, egg shells and all other natural waste products over a period of time, maybe even ask your friends too. Although this will smell (I suggest you keep it outside), it will act as an absolutely wonderful manure to scatter over your soil. Not only will this add nutritional value to your food, but the smell of the self made manure will act as a pesticide within itself too.

 

You need some seedlings too. These you will obviously need to purchase from your local nursery or you could order them on line where the cost is higher but the options are limitless.

Taking care of and germinating your seeds and seedlings can give you and your garden such an advantage.

 

The last piece of advice I can give you on this topic, is you have to be dedicated and you have to make time for this 'hobby'.

 

Now on a serious note, you've heard my 2 cents on this matter, but here's your chance to learn the ropes from people who are truly educated on the matter and can give you crazy tips to growing a successful organic vegetable garden.

 

Check out Mercola.com for all you need to take control of your vegetables.

 

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/05/23/edible-garden.aspx

 

Until next time, use your hands, get involved, get healthy.

 

I love em!

The Masters Of My Inspiration

I did a project for my varsity this year that brought in to question who my inspirations are in life. Now as you all probably agree, that is a very ambiguous question. So I had to narrow it down to a category or theme that I could relate my inspirations to, and as you may have noticed by the theme of my blog ladies and gents, I chose food as my category. In the culinary industry, there are so, so many people who can be classed as inspiring, but for me, the choices were as easy as pie. I am not going to tell you their life stories as I'm sure if you cared you would look their stories up yourselves, I am however going to tell you all why they are masters of inspiration to me when it comes to food creativity.

Who are they?

Buddy Valastro.

Buddy Valastro, better known to most as the wonderful and inspiring 'Cake Boss' is most definitely up there as one of my biggest inspirations! Buddy Valastro has an exceptional skill when it comes to designing and the presentation of cakes. I think that he has a valuable skill of adding an aspect to his product that no other similar product has, and he does this by adding creativity and creative techniques to his cakes, especially when decorating them.
By playing around with a form of icing commonly known as fondant, Buddy is able to create cakes that brake the boundaries of the norm. Cakes in the shape of dinosaurs, trains, lions, handbags and glamour accessories, or even a cake that is designed as a city can be custom made for anybody that can afford to buy them. Yes people, is said "afford". Of course these cakes can be charged at ridiculously high prices because of the skill and time needed to create the cakes, as well as the fact that the huge hype about these cakes are so extreme people will literally pay anything for the 'cake boss' experience.
I think that is what inspires me the most about Buddy, he combined food with creativity, passion and imagination together and it resulted in ultimate success, and really, what is more inspiring than that?

 

A cake that is designed as a burning building that Buddy Valastro and his team made in honour of the local firemen. This is the perfect example of the skilful and creative cakes that the Cake Boss team custom make for their customers.  

 

 

To see more of Buddy's wonderful specialty cakes, check out his 'Carlo's Bakery' website:

http://media1.break.com/breakstudios/2011/8/1/firetruck-cake.jpg

Heston Marc Blumenthal.

Heston Blumenthal has left his mark in the culinary world, in my eyes at least! A lot of people aren't familiar with him or his work, hell, I wasn't either until I saw him in an episode of Masterchef Australia a couple of years ago! He really, really intrigued me when I saw the challenge that he gave to the contestants on the show! It was cooking on a whole new level. Cooking meets modern day science. Genius.
In my eyes creative is the only word I can use to describe the work of Heston. His imagination and passion for food and science has enabled him and the rest of the world to discover an unimaginable approach to food. It is a culinary and scientific breakthrough and to me, Heston and his work are a great inspiration.

I'm not going to say too much more about Heston right now because I have a feeling that I have a few more posts about him to come!

 

Here's a little sneak peak of some of Heston's fine work, just so you can see what all the fuss is about.



As you can see, both of these men are extremely clever, hardworking, and straight up inspiring on so many levels.

These are just my inspirations, though. Everybody has their own influences and inspirations and when thinking creatively or even attempting to, it really is important to put your mind and soul into discovering and appreciating  who and what inspires you, and why? What can you steal from them to help you do something great? What have they got to offer? These are kind of things that one should take into mind when exploring creativity.



Well, until next time!