Hospital Stay

This has been my bed for the last 4 nights...

not so comfy...

Turns out our daughter didn't have torticollis at all - when her neck didn't seem to be getting any better, and in fact was more swollen and red, I took her to the doctor for a second opinion on Thursday morning. He sent us straight to A&E! Poor little girl was so brave, she ended up having general anaesthetic for them to drain the abscess on Friday morning, and then Saturday morning they discovered one of the nasties in her neck was Strep A so we had to be moved to a side room and she was only allowed to leave it to go across the corridor to the toilet...she was so bored! We had hoped to get out last night but her neck drain was still oozing, she finally had it taken out this afternoon and we made it home just in time for dinner.

Anyway, this is a food blog so on to the food - apologies if it gets repetitive!! I was very glad that I'd followed my porridge craving for breakfast on Thursday - cocoa porridge topped with peanut butter...

luckily this kept me going as with all the waiting around to be seen in A&E, I didn't get to eat again until 4.45pm! By then I was starving...I gobbled down this egg mayonnaise baguette with crisps added to it...

I have eaten a lot of bars the last 5 days. I won't bore you with details of exactly when I ate each one but let's just say they often counted as "breakfast" and occasionally "dinner" - Liam visited as much as he could - our families were great with looking after the baby so he could visit - but when I was on my own I didn't want to leave daughter, especially as we seemed to spend most of the time waiting for Drs to visit to take blood/change cannula/remove plastic pipes from neck etc...all of which most definitely required her to be sat on her Mummy's lap whilst screaming the ward down!! :( Anyway (I feel this post is going to have many off-track rambles - sorry!!) these were some of the bars I enjoyed...

Liked the dark chocolate in this - shop didn't have any in stock after I bought this one though :(

This was breakfast one day - strange after-taste

Really tasty, although very sticky from all the honey & glucose syrup!

My favourite - full of sugar again, but also lots of big chunks of almonds and brazil nuts, yum...I had lots of these!! :)

I also managed to escape to the canteen on quite a few occasions when Liam or my Mum were there to look after daughter (and no doctors were due to visit!) I drank many many lattes (with 3 white sugars in each, oops!) over the last 5 days, plus some food - mostly covered in stodgy cheese sauce, bleugh.

A scone and a latte mid-morning on Friday with my Mum whilst Liam spent time in the playroom with daughter and baby...

Lunch only 1.5 hours later whilst daughter was in theatre - had to grab food when we could! Sweet potato with salad from the salad "bar"...

This was really nice but unfortunately I didn't spot sweet potatoes in the canteen again, sad times!

A latte and a carrot cake muffin on Friday afternoon before Liam headed home - we'd wanted to take daughter to the canteen as well as she was really chirpy after her op, but the nurses wouldn't let her off the ward to be on the safe side...she was really irritable and wanted to stretch her legs!!

This muffin was really tasty and it was good to have a little bit of time away from the ward before the night ahead of me - the first 2 nights were really hard going as not only was I woken up when daughter had to have her antibiotics drip at 2am, but I was also woken up whenever anyone else on the ward was seen by the nurse...and the Mum in the bay next to me (seperated by a curtain) thought it was acceptable to chat noisily, on a children's ward, until 10.30pm until a nurse came and said they were trying to quieten the ward...grrr!! We got more sleep once we moved to a side room for Saturday and Sunday nights - at least then it was only my own daughter keeping me awake!

On Saturday I experienced the first of the "cheese sauce meals" for lunch - this one supposedly had cauliflower in it - but you had to look hard to find any!!

It was basically stodgy cheese sauce with lumps - there weren't many meat-free options around!! Part of the problem was that I was eating whenever I had the opportunity, not necessarily traditional meal times, so I usually missed out on baked potatoes etc and had to eat from the self-serve hot food that had been sitting around since the last proper meal time...nice(!!)

I had a second cheese sauce meal on Saturday - an early dinner of mushroom & herb pasta bake...

this was actually quite nice...I was pleasantly surprised!! :)

Sunday lunch was the worst of the cheese sauce meals - we'd been waiting all of Sunday morning for a Dr to visit, and whilst Liam was there, we were hoping the Dr would remove the neck drain (she decided it wasn't ready to come out in the end) so I didn't want to leave daughter. I gave up on getting lunch about 2pm and made myself a couple of slices of plain buttered toast from the parents' kitchen (the only food we had access to) and of course the Dr turned up as soon as I'd finished eating it! So as I then wasn't hungry for lunch, Liam went to the canteen and had carvery. I eventually went to eat at 3.30pm so this had been sitting around on the hot plate for a while...a big serving of cheese sauce with soggy cauliflower and broccoli in it...

this was enough to put me off eating any more hot meals in the canteen!! Luckily I did stock up on the yummy nut bars :)

I did make one more trip to the canteen - this afternoon when Liam was packing up the room and we were waiting for paperwork to be filled out - I had a major headache so a latte and the cake that has been tempting me all weekend was needed - Dime Bar cake...

this was so yummy - a layer of cake, topped with caramel, peanuts and chocolate...

Yum, this almost made up for the fact that I didn't have peanut butter the whole time we were in the hospital - a tiny jar of bog standard pb cost £2.49 in the shop!!

Luckily, to counteract all the stodge, I have also had some nice food brought in by relatives. My Mum sent a delicious fruit selection in on Saturday...

daughter and I shared most of this on Saturday afternoon, then I polished off the leftovers at 10pm whilst waiting for the Dr to (eventually) turn up to change daughter's cannula and take blood...poor child was so traumatised to be woken up for that experience - both nights since she's been tossing & turning and shouting in her sleep :( the fruit was nice though (!)...

I never thought I would crave fruit and veggies so much! Not surprising though - I failed to find any vegetables (except salad) that was not over-cooked beyond recognition, and the only fruit available were apples and bananas. Healthy cravings also probably amplified due to the over-consumption of chocolate - every visitor seemed to bring daughter a box of Thornton's chocs, many of which were sadly consumed by me!!

Back to the healthy stuff though...my Grandma & Grandpa visited yesterday afternoon and brought with them a welcome gift of food from Marks & Spencer...

My Grandma, unfortunately, spends a lot of time in and out of hospital so obviously knows what type of food would be welcomed! The egg sandwich and (amazing!) lemon curd yoghurt served as last night's dinner, and I had the fruit salad for breakfast this morning...

much better than the leftover cold toast I've been eating from daughter's breakfast tray the other mornings!!

As I said, we did finally make it home today :) the doctor came round to look at daughter this morning but he felt her drain was still oozing so much, so he came back about 3pm and luckily decided it was ok for us to come home. He had to first take the drain out of her neck though - this was horrible to watch - she was already traumatised by the doctor's visit on Saturday night, so she started screaming before this doctor even touched her. In the end 2 nurses had to hold her down on her bed while the doctor pulled the drain out, my poor baby! :( She soon bounced back though and packed up her stuff ready to go home, I'm hoping she's young enough to forget about the more horrible aspects of this experience!

When we got home, we were all too tired to cook! Liam and daughter ate ready meals - spinach & ricotta cannelloni and macaroni cheese respectively - both too stodgy and cheese-sauce filled for me! I had the same thing I'd eaten before all this started - cocoa porridge (this time with banana in) topped with peanut butter...

I missed my porridge even more than fruit & veg I think!

Phew! I hope to get back to more interesting food soon - can't wait to start cooking again! As if staying in hospital for 4 nights wasn't enough, on Friday I got a phone call from our landlord's brother saying he'd be in at 8.30am Monday morning (today) to re-do the bathroom and paint most of downstairs...was meant to be done a week ago but they got held up. Our bathroom currently has a toilet but no sink or bath (these will be put in tomorrow but we won't be able to use them the bath/shower until Wednesday) and for at least the next 2 days the house will not be very baby friendly...Liam has to go back to uni tomorrow but I'm planning to spend most of my time at my Mum's house round the corner - daughter can recuperate and watch TV in my Mum's bed and I can do my best to entertain the baby!!

Right, this post is nearly over - I need to catch up on some sleep! I hope this hasn't been too dreary or dis-jointed, I'm so relieved that daughter is ok - being in hospital has been really boring and at some times pretty miserable, but it has also made me realise how lucky we are - at least our daughter will make a full recovery and just be left with a little scar, some of the other children in there won't be so lucky :(

To end on a brighter note, the main thing that kept us sane was our visitors, in particular my Mum. She did her best to give me a break and keep daughter amused - one of those ways was by making fruit faces...I'll leave you with a fruit smile...good night!

Blender Beware!

Over the last week or so, I have proved to myself that I should not be allowed near my food processor when trying to lose weight...at least where nuts are concerned!

It started when I made dark chocolate almond butter...

250g gone in 36 hours anyone?! It doesn't help that Liam dislikes recipes that include nuts (but will eat them on their own, odd) so anything I make tends to get eaten only by me, unless I fob it off on the children/other relatives!

Despite the addictiveness of the chocolate almond butter, on Sunday I decided to make Maple Walnut Butter. This was partly inspired by Maria's recent post about Maple Peanut Butter and partly by my love of Maple Walnut Coffee...

Unfortunately I only had 100g walnuts in (this was a sudden craving!) so my food processor wasn't too happy - it prefers larger quantities. Combined with about 25g maple syrup (after blending the walnuts for as long as I could take!) it still managed to produce this...

not quite nut butter consistency, but delicious nonetheless...it reminded me of the filling for treacle tart, yum. However, with the nuts alone being more than 700 calories, it really wasn't a good idea to eat the whole amount at once. Yet that's what I did, atop toasted soda bread and drizzled with honey - despite the maple syrup, the walnuts still tasted a little bitter...

Delicious, but the bread + the walnut "butter" + the honey almost doubled my calorie intake for the day...why do I keep sabotaging my weight loss efforts??!! I seems to manage one or two days of controlled eating where my weight goes down, then have at least two days of eating everything in sight so my weight goes shooting right back up again...this constant yo-yoing can not be good for my body!

Monday was another self-sabotage day...I decided to make Averie's White Chocolate and Mango Cookie Dough Bites. These were so tasty...

and even better with the recommended melted white chocolate on top...

Amazing! I loved the texture of the "cookie dough" and the chewy mango provided a great contrast. I don't have white chocolate often, usually preferring dark, but the sweetness of white chocolate went really well. These were extremely moreish...a couple of hours after making them I was down to my last six...

and by the end of the day (with all eaten by me except one by my Mum and one by my daughter) they were all gone! Why do nuts, which are so delicious and so versatile, have to be so high calorie?! :(

My food processor also made Katie's Naughty Girl Fudge on Saturday, this time with raisins added (which I partially rehydrated by soaking in boiling water for 5 minutes before adding to the cocoa "fudge" mix)...

but as all but one piece (tasty!) of this went to my Mum, it wasn't too dangerous!

So the conclusion of this post? I can't be trusted around blended nuts! I can't be trusted around whole nuts either - I've developed the habit recently of grabbing almonds & Brazil nuts from the cupboard whenever I go into the kitchen...but that's a different issue! I must try to stay away from the food processor unless I'm making something the whole family can enjoy or something more "meal" like, e.g. a smoothie, at least until I'm back to a weight I'm happy to maintain!

Bit of a random post, but I hope that by writing it down I will remember to step away from the food processor!! Plus I wanted to share the photos of the especially yummy maple walnut butter and mango white chocolate cookie dough bites! :)

A Week's Worth of Food

I can't believe it's been a week since I last posted! My daughter being off school has completely thrown off my routine! She is better now (temperature back to normal, tummy pain gone etc) but has developed a swollen neck on one side. I took her to the doctor on Monday and apparently it is torticollis...she also saw a physio on Monday who gave her a few exercises and said it should go away on its own, but in the meantime it is very sore! She did go back to school yesterday, but they phoned me about 2pm to pick her up as "her neck was swollen and she looked grey" !! So today she only went in for morning + lunch, and tomorrow she is staying home as the whole school is going on a trip to the zoo and, understandably, her teacher doesn't want to take her in case she droops part way through the day. Poor little girl, we'll have to do something fun tomorrow to make up for her missing the zoo trip! I'm also a bit worried as her 2 week ballet show (only happens every 2 years so quite a big deal) starts on Monday, with on-stage rehearsals on Friday and Saturday...I hope she's well enough to take part!

Anyway, enough of me spilling my thoughts onto the page...lets talk about food! Now that the weather has been warmer, I have been loving having yoghurt for breakfast. In fact I haven't had oats once in the last week, shock, no wonder I was craving porridge today...will have to fix that tomorrow morning I think! I have been enjoying Total 0% Greek yoghurt (I love how thick and creamy it is!) with strawberries and honey...

with fresh mango, desiccated coconut and agave nectar...

and with 2 chopped nectarines and honey...

All delicious... fresh fruit + yoghurt = the start of summer to me! :)

I've also enjoyed a couple of smoothies. Fresh mango and frozen tropical fruits smoothie topped with desiccated coconut...

and cocoa-banana-blueberry smoothie topped with lots of crunchy peanut butter...

Yum.

I've also had many snacks, most avoided the camera (a handful of nuts most times I enter the kitchen, a small pistachio ice cream shared with baby this afternoon, a couple of blender creations I will share in another post etc etc) plus lots of my new favourite snack - medjool dates filled with peanut butter...

so tasty and surprisingly filling!

I also opened my box of Booja Booja Ginger Wine truffles tonight...

whoops, so much for my aims for Lent...these had been sitting in my cupboard, patiently waiting until Easter, but then I happened to look at the back of them today, saw that they should've been stored in the fridge, panicked and decided I needed to eat them straight away to save throwing them away!!

these were all gone in about 20 minutes!! Nice, but as with the cognac banana truffles, these tasted more of alcohol than ginger.

I have also eaten many main meals. Lots of easy things like scrambled eggs on toast, but also some slightly more interesting food...

Sesame & almond smoked tofu, brown rice, peas and sweet chilli sauce - simple but tasty...

Mama Pea's quinoa stuffed peppers this has become one of our favourites...

Pasta frittata with orange pepper, broad beans and goat's cheese on top...

Pearl Barley Risotto - this time with smoked tofu added rather than ham hock...

Takeaway Indian when I was too tired to cook. This is the first time I'd had a takeaway since eating meat-free, I spent ages looking at the menu! In the end I decided on Gobi Bhaji (cauliflower, really nice), a side dish of Tarka Daal (lentils, a bit bland, I can make better!!!), Mushroom Fried Rice (tasty and a good way to bulk up the meal) plus some Naan Bread. Yellow but yummy...

Delicious roasted butternut squash with goat's cheese - I bought a pack of ready to roast wedges that were on offer for an easy lunch...

Roast Vegetable and Lentil Lasagne - I did have garlic this time, and topped it with a mix of mozzarella and cheddar - so yummy, seconds were eaten! :)

and finally tonight was a quick spinach & ricotta tortellini with tomato ketchup and grated cheddar - very easy and reminds me of my childhood - my Mum used to give us this a lot!

Phew, lots of food!! I'm hoping to find the energy to start blogging more regularly again so that all my photos don't build up! I've still been thinking of things I want to write about during the days, but by evening I've just been too tired to even open my laptop - I fell asleep at 8.30pm a couple of days ago, bizarre!! Hopefully tomorrow will be a fun, but relaxing, day...it's what my daughter needs, and so, it seems, do I!

Choc Chip Pancakes with Homemade Chocolate Almond Butter for Dinner... Yes Please!

On Tuesday, I finally got round to getting out the reduced bag of peanuts I'd bought. Luckily I checked the packet before I put them in the blender...these were dry roasted in paprika!

Not ideal for the nut butter I had planned!! Luckily a quick switch to almonds saved the day...

Inspired by Angela at Oh She Glows, I decided to make dark chocolate almond butter. I put 200g almonds in my blender...

and was ready to go! It took my little blender 20 minutes to turn the almonds into almond butter, with much side scraping...

and breaking up of a big almond dough ball after about 15 minutes...

the wait was finally over...and so worth it...

this was delicious as it was, but I added 60g dark chocolate, melted in the microwave with a tiny bit of coconut oil...

to make dark chocolate almond butter...

Ah-mazing! It should've made about 250g, but only 180g made it into the jar!

I plan to make many more nut butters in future :) maybe next time I need to make one Liam will eat though - I only made this yesterday morning, and the entire jar has been eaten, only by me, by this evening...oops! It tastes even nicer once it has been in the fridge for a bit...similar to Nutella, yum yum yum!

I enjoyed some on top of banana porridge (with a scoop of vanilla protein powder in which made it all bubbly!) this morning...

delicious, but the best way to enjoy it (apart from by the spoonful!) was tonight's dinner...

Pancake recipe from here, I followed it except I used 3 tbsp liquid egg whites instead of 1 whole egg as I have a couple of cartons that need using, and I dropped some chocolate chips on top once the batter was in the pan. The first pancake was a bit mis-shapen...

but I soon got the hang of it! As well as the chocolate almond butter, I enjoyed these with maple syrup...

Gorgeous! Perhaps not the healthiest of meals, or indeed the quinoa stuffed peppers I had planned, but it was needed!!

I have had a horrible couple of days! (I realise my problems are nothing in comparison to the suffering of people in Japan etc, I feel guilty stressing about my problems when such horrible things are going on in the world) However...daughter is still off school ill, it's been a week now! I phoned the doctor yesterday but he said it's probably just a virus and we have to wait it out...poor little girl is so not herself, barely eating (which is not at all like her!), high temperature, sleepy, majorly swollen glands etc...not good. She seems to perk up a bit in the fresh air, so yesterday we took her for medicinal ice cream (!) I had a scoop of raspberry ice cream and a scoop of mango yoghurt...

how can I complain when I get to enjoy this by the seafront?!

Yum. Frozen mango yoghurt is my absolute fave, and the raspberry went really well, very summery. Liam was home as well - nice to have his company but that's hassle number two - on his way to uni yesterday morning the car broke down - turns out the whole engine would need replacing and basically the cost of repairs just weren't worth it - a write off. My poor car! If someone had told me a week ago that we'd have been happy to get £100 scrap money for our reliable family-friendly Ford Focus I would not have believed them, sob! So now Liam is hunting for a new car so he can get back to uni...and any hopes of buying an SLR camera anytime soon are now firmly out the window! :( Not the end of the world in the grand-scheme of things, but pretty unexpected and unwelcome for us!!

Anyway, moan over. Having Liam and our daughter home the last few days has sent my eating all over the place! Today especially - I managed my porridge breakfast but, as already mentioned, dinner ended up being pancakes, and lunch was vegetable crisps dipped in houmous and guacamole...

supplemented by many handfuls of Brazil nuts & almonds whenever I went into the kitchen! Tasty, but not what I'd planned!

Fingers crossed for a better day tomorrow! Or at least daughter feeling better, I hate seeing her so poorly and not being able to do much to help her! :(