Broken Laptop

My laptop died on Friday!! Just after I had transferred the day's photos from my camera to my computer, grrr!! I have tried to write a post today on Liam's Mac, but I am not getting to grips with it at all - every time I try to add a photo it puts it right at the top of the post and then I have to drag it down, but for some reason it will only let me do that with one photo...after that they all get stuck at the top! :( I'm hoping the laptop problem is just a problem with the charger so (for the 4th time since having this laptop!) I have ordered a new charger and it's already been dispatched so fingers crossed it gets here soon!!

As I've already written it, I'll give you a brief, photo-less, re-cap of Friday...

I started off by making Jess' carrot cake breakfast bake...it was amazing! I'm so annoyed I lost the photos of it! I pretty much followed the recipe, except I used all flour instead of oat bran/flour mix, and all milk instead of coffee. I topped it with a coconut sauce (coconut flour, agave, milk) and a few walnuts. Delicious!

Liam, baby and I then went for a walk along the sea front. It was another beautiful day - sunny with a crisp chill in the air! We walked further along the sea front than baby & I had the previous day - I'll have to put some of the photos up if I ever get my laptop working again to retrieve them! We stopped for lunch at a cafe on a hill overlook the sea. We even ate outside! :) I had a huge jacket potato with cheese, coleslaw and salad. I was then 'persuaded' by Liam to have cake as he want to try the most amazing looking caramel shortbread! I had a piece of carrot cake which was huge and delicious - it had mashed banana in it as well as the usual ingredients, really tasty! Completely unnecessary though - I felt overly full and bloated for the rest of the day after that, unpleasantly so, and didn't eat again until evening when I just had a 9bar. The first time I'd had one, it was the nutty version I think, yum.

The rest of the weekend has also been good. Last night we went out to see Liam's cousin's band play which was good fun. I only had a few drinks but that combined with a later than usual bedtime (we normally go to bed at 10pm, but last night we were in the kitchen eating peanut butter on toast at 11pm!) and Sunday's early start has meant I've been super tired today! I didn't make the gym this morning as planned and have generally been eating lots of carbs and sugar - started well (when I was still planning to go to the gym) with a berry smoothie, but since then it has been baked sweet potato with maple syrup & goat's cheese, home-topped pizza (aka bought a base!) for dinner with peppers, mushrooms, mozzarella and more goat's cheese, plus things like fudge, chocolate covered dates, a 9bar and Brazil nuts dipped in peanut butter in between!!

My one "allowed" photo for today's post though? I think it'll have to be yesterday's breakfast...

having lost the photos of Friday's breakfast bake, I just had to do another version yesterday morning!! :) Based on Jess' Carrot Cake Breakfast Bake with my own twists...

ABC Baked Oats

• including Apple, Banana and Carrots
• topped with Apricots, Brazil nuts and Coconut sauce

The toppings weren't really necessary, but I'd warmed to the alphabet theme by then!
This is what I used (after much googling to convert cups to grams - there must be a simpler way?!)

• 25g oats
• 30g flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 30g sultanas
• 15g desiccated coconut
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 apple, diced (about 75g)
• Half a banana, mashed (about 75g)
• Most of a carrot, grated (about 50g)
• 2-3 tsp agave nectar
• 75ml milk

Toppings:

• 40g dried apricots, chopped
• 20g Brazil nuts, chopped
• Coconut sauce - 10g coconut flour, 5ml agave nectar, 50ml milk

I followed Jess' method of mixing the dry, mixing the wet, then combining, and baked in the oven at 200C for 30 minutes.

This was so tasty. I can't believe I'd never had baked oats until this weekend! Super filling (and unfortunately very calorific) though...perhaps I should try to keep it as a once a week or so treat rather than every day!! Both children liked it too, it has a bit too many "weird" combinations for Liam - but then he doesn't like carrot cake or apple cake so I'm hardly surprised! The apple chunks were really nice in it too, lovely and soft and comforting!

The rest of yesterday was also good. We went shopping in Waitrose where I picked up (among many other things!) some basil smoked tofu and some almond sesame smoked tofu, as well as some Total split pot yoghurts and a couple of big pots of Rachel's Greek yoghurt - coconut and ginger flavours. Looking forward to trying these soon, I've had the coconut one before but the ginger is a "special edition" version.

I then had 2 lunches (blush!) - a fried egg and cheese sandwich first, but as Liam didn't fancy that I also joined him in some cheese on toast, whoops!

Dinner was this Swede and Parsnip Bake with broccoli and feta cheese (meatballs for the others), a good way to use up veg that I was close to past it, but I should have made myself some lentil ragu as originally planned - it was a bit "all one flavour" without.

Sorry for the disjointed post, it's gone a bit back and forth between the days, especially hard going to read without any photos to break it up I think! Hopefully I'll be back on my regular laptop before too long - Liam's Mac may be much "better" than my laptop, but at least I know how to use mine!!

Hope everyone's had a great weekend, can't believe it's Monday again tomorrow already!