Shearer - Mamabake Book

Michelle For my Grandmother, Doris Bird. Karen For my Father, Ken Swan. CONTENTS MamaBake began in April 2010, after the birth of my second child, Alby. One afternoon when picking up my older daughter, Mia, from school, I was greeted by a close friend, Bec, bearing an Esky. In that Esky was a huge family-sized lasagne for dinner that night. I took the lasagne home and realised dinner for that evening was done.

I didnt have to think about it; I didnt have to pull something together! I went surfing instead of rushing around trying to get food on the table. I wanted to reciprocate Becs kind gesture, which got me thinking about how hard it can be sometimes as a mother to receive assistance, kindness and help from others. I felt like I needed to give back to Bec, which is natural; but I wanted all mums to experience the freedom that comes from not having to think about, prepare, cook and clear away dinner every night and wondered how that might happen in todays frantic world. And, so, I came up with MamaBake a baking community where mothers get together in their local neighbourhood to cook one big batch meal each and then share the dish with the others, resulting in everyone going home with a weeks worth of freshly cooked, homemade dinners. No funky feelings about receiving something just a lovely, big group cook-up, where everyone pitches in and swaps their wares. Simple! The first-ever MamaBake group started in Lennox Head, NSW, with me, Naomi, Jodie and Bec.

We each went home with Chicken Stew, Chilli Con Carne, Sushi, homemade rye bread rolls and soup. It was a brilliant result and so easy. The following week, the group doubled and eventually grew so large that we eventually had to divide ourselves up. Soon after, Karen Swan, a devout MamaBaker based in Canberra, took her newfound passion to another level and joined me to run the ever-growing MamaBake movement. MamaBake went online in May 2010, and numbers went up and up as more women tuned in to the concept. The media soon discovered us, and MamaBake groups started springing up across Australia, Europe and the United States.

Free time and community aside, the other benefit from the MamaBake baking sessions was that the kids all got to spend time together, as well as getting involved in the food prep and cooking. New, lasting friendships were formed, experiences and woes were shared and eased sharing the cooking turned into sharing childcare, helping with house moves, gardening, laundry. Together, we created a beautiful, tightknit community around sharing our daily work, which significantly lightened our load, and connected us strongly to other mothers in our neighbourhoods. Michelle MamaBake is all about you, the Mum (or Dad!): youre at the helm of the family, you think about whats for dinner, whats going in the lunchboxes, why that sandwich didnt get eaten, what youre cooking next week so you know what to shop for. Along with all the other responsibilities that come with motherhood, feeding our families is relentless. And of course, as with all families, there are times when we are exhausted, uninspired and plain old just dont feel like cooking.

Except, often there is no alternative to providing the family meal. Well, not always, but lets be honest, it happens a lot of the time! And so, enter MamaBake stage left. MamaBake, at its very core, is about mothers getting together to bake big batch meals to share out, so everyone has freshly cooked, homemade dinners ready to go for the week ahead. MamaBake groups bring mothers together in our local neighbourhoods. Working side by side, up to our necks in egg and flour, we cook up big batch meals while the kids play around us and help prepare the ingredients. Once the meals are cooked, family-sized meals are shared out and we go home to fill the fridge or freezer.

However, our busy lifestyles and circumstances might mean that its not possible to gather a group of mums and their children to cook together for a few hours. This book acknowledges our different situations and subsequently is designed not only for the individual MamaBaker but also for members of an active MamaBake group.

We all know the dreaded witching hour at the end of the day: the kids are going ballistic and we are done.

There is no better feeling in the world than knowing that you have back-up in the form of a homemade, delicious family meal in the freezer, ready to go. And heres the wrap with MamaBake: when you get together with others youre not just going home with a box full of homemade meals for your family and a week off from cooking, youre going home full of smiles, shared experiences and knowing that we are all truly in this together. Storage Does your freezer look like mine used to? Enough ice coating the sides and top to give you the impression youve just opened the door to an Antarctic ice cave? Random bags and containers with barely recognisable solid lumps of something or other, stashed away because really, you had no idea what to do with it? Quite frankly, there have been years in my life when the only recognisable consumable in my freezer was a bottle of vodka and a tray of ice cubes! As tempting as grabbing that bottle of vodka may be in the early, hazy days of motherhood, what we need from our freezers is a well organised, well-labelled bounty of homemade meals that require little-to-no effort on our part other than to defrost and reheat. On those evenings when your baby is seemingly attached to you with Velcro, your other children are running amok and youre delirious with sleep deprivation, a well-stocked freezer the MamaBake way will be a lifeboat on the stormy seas of Motherhood. Whether you decide to refrigerate or freeze the meal will depend on when your family will be eating it. There are refrigeration and freezing instructions with each recipe.

Generally speaking most meals can be kept in the fridge for around two days.

Thawing & Reheating This can be the biggest hurdle when it comes to frozen meals: how to safely defrost and reheat food without fear of poisoning your entire family. To reheat safely, whether you use a microwave, oven, or stovetop, its vital to ensure that the food is thoroughly defrosted and heated through evenly. Dont rush the reheating process! Theres nothing worse, and potentially dangerous, than a dish that is steaming hot on the edges, and cold and gluggy in the middle. Containers & Labelling I used to have one night a week that I called, Freezer Surprise! night, where I would remove a container of what I thought might have been soup, but was most likely Bolognese sauce, from the depths of my freezer, and that would be dinner! These days, I am more organised and have learned that a clearly labelled container or zip lock bag listing whats inside removes any unfortunate guesswork. Labelling the date on the container also ensures that once defrosted and reheated, your food will retain its texture and taste because it wont have been over-frozen and therefore inedible. The right container or wrapping can make or break the freezing process. Badly stored freezer food will likely dry out, burn and get covered in teeny icicles.