Get involved!

Why not donate your unwanted goods to your local child care centre, or the one your child currently or used to attend instead of donating them to charity?
You'd be surprised at what would be useful to the child care centres!

You could donate your old clothes, toys that your child no longer plays with, plastic jewelry, plastic cups, saucers, plates and bowls, bedding, children's movies, books, puzzles, bikes, shoes, hats and sunglasses.

My mother had a little treasure trove (suitcase) of clothes and props that she'd use for drama, and which I brought along on one babysitting job. The children whom I was look after loved to play with the clothes, the handbags and sword!

Just before we moved from New South Wales to Victoria, we had a garage sale to rid ourselves of 80% of our possessions. As well as selling a good amount at the garage sale, we donated quite a bit of appropriate clothes and things to the local child care centre, at which I also volunteered. Among the things I donated was a big teddy bear.

Remember to keep all things you're donating appropriate to child care and to specific age groups and to remove all small toys, as they're choking hazards.

A lot of parents are always looking for new recipes and foods to try and ways to make their children eat their vegetables and fruit. There are even parents whose children are coeliac disease, which an intolerance to products containing gluten (a protein found in wheat, rye, barley and oats) and children with lactose intolerance. These parents are always looking for recipes that cater for their children/family's needs.
You can always gather parents that you know and share recipes and tips and tricks with one another.
You can gather and share recipes that cater to those allergens and intolerance's  You could even create your own recipes to cater to these specific needs. Parents of all backgrounds will be grateful for this and, depending on their schedules, be willing to participate. You can even put aside one night a week and cook seven meals in bulk and divide them among you, which has been done all over Australia.

You will be able to divide the cookbook among you, and you could even take it to the child care your child attends and have a meeting with both the director and cook, tell them what you've been doing and suggest that they could try one or two recipes out on the children and maybe incorporate them into their daily menu.
The director and/or cook may not agree to this, though, but hopefully they'll think that this is a brilliant idea.
You could even discuss with parents about doing a cooking experience with the children once a week and running this past the director. If the director agrees, she or he would then ask the cook for their opinion.

I made some gluten-free poppy seed and orange cupcakes for my 21st birthday (this was three years back) and they tasted fabulous - even better than the gluten-laden version! This is when I really fell in love with gluten-free products! As it appears, I should be on either a gluten-free or lactose-free diet anyway, but I love my dairy products to damn much to give them up!
Making the cupcakes were easy - I just substituted the plain flour and self-raising for almond meal and something else. Of course, I needed to use a smidgen self-raising flour to make it rise, but not a lot.

A great website that caters for the gluten-free diet is Elana's Pantry; which holds many gluten-free products ranging from breakfasts (muffins, scones, biscuits and cereals, etc.), soups, salads and dinners to desserts (cookies, cupcakes and pastries, etc.), even covering bread!
I haven't yet tried any of her recipes, as I've only used normal cake recipes, which I have molded into gluten-free cupcakes, but I intend to. I want to try the Deviled Eggs.

I have gathered many cake recipes from magazines, books and websites like www.taste.com.au. One cake I got from a book was a marble chocolate cake, which was absolutely scrumptious, if I do say so myself! It wasn't gluten or lactose-free, but it was... magnific!
Another dish I like to make is a chicken, ricotta and lemon pie. Again, it's not gluten or lactose-free, but it is good with spinach! However, I replaced the spinach with silverbeet, which works just as well.

That's all for this post, but if you have any questions or suggestions on anything in this post, please feel free to contact me (comment).

Until next time.

Tokana