So I thought I'd try and use up the vast amount of chard, kindly given to me by Mum, and given the flavours worked so well with pasta, I thought I'd give risotto a whirl.  When I told 'O' he bluntly told me he'd rather have sausages as he doesn't like chard...  I will not be thwarted by a toddler!

Searching for a recipe on the web proved fruitless so I adapted an age old recipe for a basic risotto.  In my opinion it worked; hubby ate it all and low and behold, fussy toddler ate the rice, the cheese and some veg.  Even 'H' munched a couple of squished handfuls.


1tsb olive oil
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1 stick celery, finely sliced
1 garlic clove, crushed
Dash of vodka (yep, I had no wine or such like in!)
200g arborio (risotto) rice
1pt veg stock
1tsp fresh thyme (yay for summer herb garden)
250g chard, stalks chopped to about 5mm thick pieces, leaves as you like
1/2 tin chickpeas
60g feta

  • Heat the olive oil in a large pan, when hot, add the onion, celery and garlic, turn the heat down.  Fry slowly till soft but not coloured (about 5 mins)
  • Add the rice to the pan, turn the heat up, stir for a few mins, until the rice starts to glisten
  • Throw in a splash of vodka, or what ever you think might add some flavour, I quite liked the nuttiness it added, stir until the vodka is absorbed
  • Ladle in some stock, stir until absorbed
  • Toss in the fresh thyme and the chard stalks, with another ladle of stock, stir until absorbed
  • Keep adding more stock, ladle by ladle, when the rice is almost cooked add the chick peas and the chard leaves.
  • When the rice is cooked, turn off the heat, break up and add the feta, give it another good stir and serve.


All in all, it takes about 40 mins, I found it made enough for two large adult portions, a decent toddler portion and a baby portion.  Yummy, fairly quick and certainly made use of mums garden!



 
Seriously?

Do children that ask 'what's that?' continually eventually ask less 'why?' questions?!!

My day is tormented by my curious eldest constantly breaking every single thought process I might have with the innocuous little question.  'What's that' and 'whachannna doing?'  Well, that is the letter U, T, K, the number 9, a fish, a jelly fish, I'm looking at the rain, I'm cleaning up after lunch, I'm changing your nappy, etc etc!

I love him, he's ridiculously funny, and gorgeous, and how can you even want to suppress such a fantastic little mind?  But just 5 minutes peace would not go amiss!

Today, it's raining.  So we're stuck indoors making the most of a page of stickers and trying to avoid sticking the tele on.