Author: Bill Hutchison

Help Prospective Mothers in Papua New Guinea

The Mommyhood Memos Bloggers for Birth KitsSometimes it’s amazing how much you can help, through something so little…

In rural Papua New Guinea one in seven women die in childbirth! Yep, that’s right, 1 in 7 women die in childbirth! That’s a shocking statistic to say the least. To give birth to a child a mother has a 15% chance of dying, can you imagine?

A friend of mine, Adriel Booker, in Australia works with YWAM Ships, a ministry that is currently working on delivering medical help into Papua New Guinea. She is a Mom, blogger and fellow YWAMer who has a strong passion for helping other mothers in need. To help expectant mothers in Papua New Guinea she has started a program called Bloggers for Birth Kits to help reduce maternal mortality in rural Papua New Guinea.

The way to help is so simple that anyone can do it…

For as little as a $2.00 donation you can purchase a Birth Kit. The Birth Kit is very simple, but according to the Birthing Kit Foundation can greatly help to reduce the incidence of infant and maternal mortality and morbidity. The kit includes:

  • 1 plastic sheet to provide a clean birthing surface
  • 1 bar of soap for clean hands during the birthing process and to clean the umbilical stump
  • 1 pair of plastic gloves for clean hands
  • 1 sterile scalpel blade to cut the umbilical cord
  • 3 cords / pieces of strong string to tie the umbilical chord
  • 5 gauze squares to clean the baby and mother

The kit is simple, yet effective. Adriel made up her own (which you can watch on the video at the bottom of this post), but I think the most effective way for us to help is to donate.

If you do want to help with this great project, and for only $2.00 who wouldn’t want to help, you can read more about it at Bloggers for Birth Kits.

This post was originally posted on my personal blog at Help Prospective Mothers in Papua New Guinea – Bill Hutchison

Australian ANZAC Biscuit Recipe

History

ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps whose soldiers were known as ANZACS. The biscuits were sent by wives to soldiers overseas because the ingredients did not spoil easily and they kept well during the long travel on boats to reach them.

Recipe

Ingredients:

  • 1 heaped cup rolled oats
  • 1 heaped cup desiccated coconut
  • 1 cup plain flour
  • ½ cup sugar
  • 1 tbsp. golden syrup
  • 2 tbsp. boiling water
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • 125g butter

Instructions:

Mix oats, coconut, plain flour and sugar together. Stir in melted butter. Mix golden syrup, boiling water and baking soda together. Combine with butter and dry ingredients. Place teaspoons of mixture on a greased tray and lightly press down with a fork.

Oven Temp: 140 C / 284 F (convection), 170 C / 338 F (non convection)
Bake Time: 15-20 mins.

Note: Pull out of oven before thoroughly cooked if you prefer a softer style biscuit, as they will harden slightly upon cooling.

Make Shift Roasting Rack

Tonight’s dinner plans for a BBQ rotisserie ham got a bit messed up by rain, yes it’s raining here in Calgary in January. A bit hard to use the BBQ in the rain.

I figured that I would bake the ham as that is a common way for people to cook hams. The problem that I ran into though is that I do not have a roasting rack yet for the bottom of my roasting pan.

After racking my brain for a few minutes, and even considering using our baking cooling racks which didn’t end up fitting, I came up with this idea…

I took the forks from the rotisserie and stuck the in the sides of the ham, leaving the bottom tongs on the forks under the ham so it would be elevated slightly.

It’s not elegant, but it works…

The ham is roasting now and I’ll be doing an orange glaze on it for the last half hour of roasting.

Super Easy Slow Cooker Pork Rib Recipe

Pork ribs were on sale last week so I thought that I would try out some in the slow cooker. They came out amazing and I will definitely be doing them again sometime soon.

Here is the recipe for my slow cooker pork ribs:

Ingredients:

  • 2kg (4 pounds) pork ribs
  • 1 onion
  • 1.5 cups of your favourite BBQ sauce
  • 1/4 cup of honey
  • 1 teaspoon ground mustard

Instructions:

  1. Cut 2kg (4lbs) pork ribs into portion size and put in the bottom of your slow cooker
  2. Slice the onion and put on top of the ribs
  3. Cover with 1.5 cups of your favourite BBQ sauce (I used President’s Choice Smokin’ Stampede Beer and Chipotle BBQ Sauce)
  4. Drizzle the honey over the top of the ribs
  5. Sprinkle a teaspoon of ground mustard on top of it all
  6. Cook on low for 8 – 10 hours

About half way through I stirred the ribs and covered it again with the sauce. Before serving I took the ribs out of the slow cooker and drained off the fat then added the ribs again to the sauce and stirred it through.

I ended up cooking the ribs for the full 10-hours and they turned out really well.

This is one meal I will definitely be doing again. It was very easy to put together and tasted great.

Shepherd’s Pie Recipe

Ingredients:

  • Vegetable oil
  • 400 grams (1 pound) Ground Beef / Mince
  • 1 medium brown onion
  • 3 cloves garlic
  • 4-cups mixed vegetables (I usually use 1 cup frozen corn and three cups of mixed frozen peas and carrots, but beans are also good)
  • Pinch of salt
  • Pinch of fresh ground pepper
  • 3 teaspoons dried thyme
  • 3 teaspoons dried rosemary
  • 4 large potatoes mashed (about 3-cups)
  • Grated cheddar cheese

Instructions:

Pre-heat the oven to 180C (350F).

Brown the beef and onion in a pan with the oil.

Add the garlic and mixed vegetables. Continue to stir the ingredients until the vegetables are tender.

Mix in the salt, pepper and other herbs and stir it all together.

Pour the mixture into a 6×9” casserole dish that’s been either sprayed with oil or buttered. Cover the mixture with the mashed potato and bake it until the edges are browned, which is about 30-minutes.

Optional:

My wife’s preference for this recipe is to cover the shepherd’s pie with cheese before baking. The cheese melts and browns during baking and tastes great.

The last time I made this recipe I poured some brown gravy over the Shepherd’s Pie before serving and it added a great richness to the meal. Next time I make this I will probably add the gravy again.

Healthy Oatmeal Cookies Recipes

Finding a healthy cookie at the store to add to my kid’s lunch or snack box is pretty much impossible. Our kids can’t have certain preservatives, which eliminates a lot of options, and most of the cookies that you can buy at the store have a lot of sugar or sugar substitute. The best way for me to provide healthy snacks for my kids is to make it myself.

Healthy Oatmeal and Raisin Cookie

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup whole wheat flour
  • 1/2 cup white flour
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 6 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/2 cup cooking oil (olive or canola)
  • 1/4 cup low fat milk
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1/2 cup raisins or chocolate chip (raisins are obviously more healthy, but chocolate chips are always nice)
  • 1 1/2 cup oatmeal (not instant)

You can add 1/2 pecans or walnuts, but the kids school is a nut free school, so I have left that out of the ones I’m sending to school with the kids.

Instructions:

Start pre-heating the oven to 375F (190C).

Put the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and cinnamon in a mixing bowl and stir it all together. Add the wet ingredients to the bowl and mix it all together.

After it’s all mixed well together then add the raisins or chocolate chip, and the oatmeal and fold it all together.

Put down parchment paper on your baking tray and drop teaspoon size clumps of cookie dough 1” apart on the tray and bake it for 10 – 12 minutes.

At the moment our oven is dead, so I did this in a toaster oven and it still worked out pretty well. It would probably also work on a BBQ like I did my Aussie Damper recipe, but it’s always hard to regulate the temperature.

Links:

The original recipe that I based this recipe from can be found here.

A Modern Aussie Damper Recipe

Since I arrived here in Canada I have definitely been missing some of the Australian food. A classic recipe that we’ve been having a lot is a modern variation on traditional Aussie Damper.

Cooking Aussie Damper on a Pizza Stone on the BBQOne problem that I have had with my old recipe from Australia is that one of the ingredients that we had in Australia is not available in Canada. I’ve turned three lots of damper into raw lumps of burnt, uncooked damper dough.

Here is a version of damper using ingredients that I can get here in Canada, so that I can finally stop wrecking damper and disappointing the family.

Ingredients:

  • 2 Cups of Flour
  • 4 tsp Baking Powder
  • 2 teaspoons Sugar
  • 1/2 tsp Salt
  • 1 – 1.5 cups Milk
  • 1/4 Cup Butter

Preparation:

  1. Mix all the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, sugar, salt) together in a large mixing bowl.
  2. Using a pastry cutter cut the butter into the dry mixture. You use the pastry cutter so that you can get it to fine crumbs instead of creaming the butter.
  3. Slowly add the milk into the mixture so that it forms a soft dough.
  4. After it’s a soft dough then dust the dough with some extra flour and knead the dough until it is smooth and then form it into a round loaf.

Cooking:

BBQ  Cooking with a Pizza Stone (My usual method):

  1. Preheat your BBQ to about 375F
  2. Dust the pizza stone with flour
  3. Place the round damper loaf on the pizza stone and cook for 30 – 40 minutes, until the damper sounds hollow when tapped.

Oven Cooking (I do this when it’s raining)

  1. Preheat oven to 375F
  2. Dust baking tray and place damper on the tray
  3. Cook for 30 – 40 minutes until the damper sounds hollow when tapped.

Campfire Cooking (I haven’t tried this method yet)

  1. Grease a Dutch / Camp oven and dust it with flour
  2. Add the round damper loaf and cover
  3. Place the camp / Dutch oven in the fire and cover with the coals and hot ashes and cook for about 30-minutes
  4. Take the oven out of the fire and test the damper by tapping on it to find the hollow sound

Eat It:

The damper is great for dipping into hardy soups or stews and I love it with home made chilli.

Our favourite way to eat it though is smothered in golden syrup. Because of the butter that is added when it’s being made we don’t have to add more butter to it.

Healthier Option:

Normally we use white flour, which gives the best flavour, but for a healthier option I sometimes use whole wheat flour instead. The whole wheat flour makes for a denser loaf of damper so I usually have to use a bit more milk when making the dough and increase the cooking time by 5 or 10 minutes. If you find that this burns the outside of the damper then you can try decreasing the temperature slightly.

Links:

Here is the original recipe that I used. It used self-rising flour, which they don’t have here in Canada and was causing me all the grief.

Dilmah Ceylon Tea Review

Normally I am a coffee drinker in the mornings, but in the evenings I usually switch to tea. I will sometimes enjoy a flavoured tea, but a standard black tea always hits the spot, sometimes with a bit of honey and sometimes not…

This week I was sent a box of Dilmah Ceylon tea to review.

Dilmah Ceylon tea is a single origin tea that comes from Sri Lanka (formerly called “Ceylon”). They claim that the tea is very fresh, unlike many other “blended” teas on the market. They also claim it to be “the finest tea on earth” because of the freshness and the single source for the tea.

I must say that after trying out the tea I was very impressed. The tea has a nice full flavour and a pleasant aroma. It is very smooth and manages to avoid any “sharpness” of flavour.

One of the things that I enjoyed the most about the Dilmah tea was that it was not bitter and did not leave any aftertaste. Some of the cheaper “store brands” of tea often suffer from that.

The Dilmah tea was very easy to enjoy without adding any milk, honey or sugar because of the nice clean flavour. I will very likely be purchasing Dilmah tea in the future, once I’ve worked through my bulk pack of tea from Costco …

To find out more about Dilmah Tea here is a video of it’s origins:

Free Jamie Oliver Food Toolkits

As part of Jamie Olivers’s Food Revolution he has recently released some free toolkits. The toolkits are designed to help you start the food revolution in your home, school and local community.

The four free toolkits are:

  1. Learning how to start to cook
  2. Cooking with your kids
  3. Facts about flavoured milk
  4. Start changing your school’s food

You can download these four free toolkits on Jamie Oliver’s web-site here.

Free Martha Stewart Summer Grilling Cookbook

Right now Martha Stewart is giving away a free cookbook. The book that she is giving away is the Martha Stewart Living Radio’s Summer Grilling Cookbook.

Martha Stewart does a weekly radio show on Sirius/XM Radio. They made this cookbook specially for this coming BBQ Season.

You can download the free book over on the Martha Stewart Living Radio web-site here. One nice thing about the download is that you don’t have to register or provide an email address, it actually is free.

There are a few good looking recipes in there that I might look at trying out this summer. Here are a few that look pretty good:

  • Grilled Corn with Cheese and Chile
  • BBQ Pork Ribs
  • Grilled Chicken
  • South African “Burned” Coffee

We’ll see how we go this summer, but I am definitely looking forward to this summer BBQ season.

In case you missed it, you can download the Martha Stewart Living Radio’s Summer Grilling Cookbook here.