Healthy Chicken parmesan

Ready to go in the oven :) 

Serves: 2

Cooking Time: 30 mins 

Ingredients 

2 Chicken breasts

2 slices of Wholemeal 400g bread crumbled and blended into breadcrumbs 

1 egg beaten

2 Laughing Cow triangles extra light 

28g grated cheese 

Method 

1. Preheat Oven to 200
2. Wrap the chicken in cling film. and bang with a rolling pin to flatten. 
3.  Dip chicken in egg and then coat in breadcrumbs.
4. Place in the middle of the oven on a tray lined with foil and bake for 25mins. 
5. Remove and cover chicken in Laughing Cow. Place under frill for 2 mins
6. Sprinkle with grated cheese and place under a grill until it is melted. 

Homemade Turkey Burgers

I love getting my children involved when it comes to making tea. They always sit around the dinner table grinning from ear to ear, proud of what they have accomplished.
Here is a healthy Turkey burger recipe that is simple, quick, and fun for children to make.

To make 6 burgers you will need:
500g lean turkey mince 
1 onion finely chopped
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp mixed herbs 
1 egg beaten 
season to taste with salt and pepper

Mix all the ingredients together and divide and mould into 6 burger shapes. 

Grill on a medium heat for 6-7 minutes on each side. 

We Love... Greedy Gorilla

Encourage healthier eating in a fun way. Use the healthy food cards to create nutritious meals and post the junk food into the gorilla's mouth to make him burp, but don;t forget to say "Excuse me!"

Greedy Gorilla is a lotto game based around healthy eating. Each player starts with a menu board showing pictures and the word for six ingredients they need to find to make their nutritious meal. The use of pictures and words is great for language development and spelling. The pictures are also great for younger players. Drew is 30 months old and gets really excited when he can match a tile to his menu board. 

There are 24 healthy food tiles and 8 Junk food tiles.  The cards are jumbled up and placed faced down on the table. Each player takes in turns to pick up a tile and try match it to their board. The first player to fill their board is the winner. 

If a player picks up a junk food tile they have to feed it to the greedy gorilla to make him burp.  This is a big hit with the kids they get really excited and squeal with delight when they get to feed the gorilla. When the greedy gorilla burps the children have to shout excuse me. 

Orchard Toys recommends this game for 4 - 8 year old which is about the right age to be able to play without any help. My boy has been playing this since he was 2 and he loves it. He needs a little help but it does not disrupt the game. He understands he needs to wait his turn and he can match the tiles to the images on his board but sometimes needs prompting.  Sometimes he will go on greedy gorilla duty. He will turn the cards looking for the junk food to feed to the gorilla. Other time we use the tiles as flashcards and we will say what item of food is on the tile and then feed it to the gorilla. This not only expands his vocabulary but helps him easily distinguish tiles when playing the full game. 

My daughter is 4 and she also adores this game. She can play with no help at all and has a good understanding of healthy and junk food. She sometimes relates her own food to the game. If she has a ice cream she says I cant have too many mammy because I will be a greedy gorilla.

Yummy Mediterranean Lamb

We had Mediterranean Lamb for tea last night. Its one of my children's favourite meals and it is also super healthy. 

Serves 4    

Ingredients

700g lean lamb fillet chopped into bite size pieces
2 red onions, peeled and cut into wedges
1 courgette thickly sliced
mushrooms thickly sliced
400g can chopped tomatoes
2 tsp dried oregano
salt and ground black pepper

Hedgehog potatoes

12-16 small potatoes
rosemary (or herb of choice to flavour potatoes)
sea salt and ground black pepper
Low Calorie cooking spray

1. Preheat Oven to 200 °C
2. Place all the ingredients in a ovenproof dish and stir to jumble everything up 
3. Add 200ml of water. Cover and place in oven 
4. Reduce oven temperature to 160 and cook for 1 hour.
5. Check half way through. If there is a lot of liquid cook uncovered for the last 30 mins

Potatoes

1. Place a potato in the bowl of  a teaspoon and slice down approx 3mm intervals, slicing down until you get to the spoon. This should slice nearly all the way through so that the potato is still whole (together)
2. Spray potato with low calorie cooking spray and season with salt and pepper
3. Poke rosemary into the slices or season with herb of choice. 
4. Bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes or until soft and golden.

The Tiny Turnip

My children love  The Gigantic Turnip. It is one of their favourite story books.  I used this book as inspiration for last nights meal. It is very important to me to teach my children about healthy eating  but I try do it in a subtle way. My children watch and help me cook.  Its part of everyday discussions and I try to include it in some of our activities.

I read the story then asked my children to find a turnip in the fridge. They were very disappointed that it was very tiny unlike the gigantic turnip in the story.

'We can call ours the tiny turnip' - Macey

I don't like to just tell them fruit and vegetables are good for you I like to give them a reason why so I usually pick one item from our meals and give them one example of why its good for them. In tonights meal I told them the tiny turnip has lots of fibre to help our tummies digestive system run smoothly. 

On a fine March morning, the old woman sat up in bed, sniffed the sweet spring air  and said,

'It's time to sow the vegetables!' So the old man and the old woman went into the garden. 

They sowed peas and carrots and potatoes and beans. Last of all they sowed turnips.

We used the same vegetables that the old man and woman sowed in our recipe. We added peas and carrots with some mince turkey, parsnips, and vegetable stock and plopped some mini dumplings on top. We made turnip and potato mash and served with green beans. 

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