Lunch Lady

One day when I was “working” I stumbled across Eleanor’s blog, I instantly fell in love. Her images are so beautiful and delicious and her writing, friendly and honest. So we asked if she’d like to share some of that with us, and you! Today Eleanor is sharing her knowledge of edible flowers, we’re big fans of those pretty little things.

Thanks so much for sharing your time, talent and yummy recipe with us! x

A chat with Maureen Vazquez, mother of four and founder of Pipsticks Sticker Subscription Club (one of our rad foundation sponsors).

When did you start Pipsticks?
I launched Pipsticks September 1st, 2014.

We’re entering the last week of the school holidays! I don’t know about you, but I have run out of activities, food and energy. The only things left in the pantry are things I bought for some recipe I might try one day and never got round to.

A chat with Jacqui Ma, founder and designer of Goodordering (our new favourite maker of backpacks)
When did you start Goodordering?
It was 2012 at the same time I had my son, while we were living on top of a family bike shop in East London.

This recipe is super flexible. You can make one with whatever summery berries you have in the kitchen. You can also swap the slivered almonds for any nut you have in the pantry – pistachios are a winner. Serve it hot, straight from the oven, but room temperature is best. Leftovers, cold, straight from the baking tin brighten sleepy mornings.

These summer holidays we took a road trip up the East coast of Australia. With the whole Brady Bunch-esque family in tow, each of the ‘grown-ups’ had to drive their own version of adventure mobile.

This recipe, from my nonna, is vedura (meaning any green vegetable) stewed in tomato passata. She would serve it with potatoes, stale bread, or pasta.

When we were 13, my friend Anna and I started skateboarding. We cruised downtown after school, went looking for empty car-parks in the holidays, built slalom courses down the middle of Anna’s street, and tried our best not to mow down old ladies and policemen.

As the weather gets cooler on the other side of the world, our friends at Kid & Coe asked us for a recipe to warm their bellies.

The seasons have finally started to turn (where we live it can take a while, it snowed one Christmas), the freezing cold winter has finally left us and summery days are making more than an occasional appearance. But, for our friends on the other side of the world, they’re now heading into those snuggly cooler days and soon will start to fill our instagram feeds with snow, fires, gumboots and plenty of baked goodies.

This is one of my ALL TIME favourite wintery recipes, it fills the house the best smells and nothing beats a sweet warm pudding on a freezing cold day.

Imagine if someone said to you, “hey, bread is a vegetable and you can eat it for every meal”, wouldn’t that be the greatest news of your life? It would be in my top 10 for sure. But it isn’t. But sweet potato IS a vegetable AND you can make toast out of it.

I have been whipping up these creations for a little bit now, and I thought it would be a really nice thing to share with you guys. It’s great for any meal and you can make them either sweet or savoury. I just made a sweet AND a savoury for lunch. 🐷 Here’s what I made.

So, it’s official, we’re now in our second year of Lunch Lady. With us launching issue four and FINALLY waving goodbye to issue five, we see the second summer Lunch Lady complete. And while we manically finished pages and moved stuff around to make it the most perfect issue it can be, we were juggling kids on school holidays, endless requests for snacks and managing activities so it wasn’t all about the screen.

In between all that, we had a birthday in the house. I thought, this time I’d make a birthday cake I could pig out on too. Just when I thought I had run out things to search for on the internet, I find out I can’t eat gluten or fructose. A whole new world of google opened up before me! New cakes, bars and other weird looking stuff presents itself to me!

This week’s bestie is one of my GIANT lady crushes. She’s so clever, inspiring and a giant spunk. I love watching everything Tai gets up to, ever since she bought a coffee at my cafe 11 years ago. Thanks for sharing with us Tai (check out her AMAZING kid’s books, my girls and I LOVE them to bits). x