Visit From Izzy’s Godmother

Izzy's Godmother arrived yesterday morning to spend a couple of days with us, much to Izzy’s excitement! Sarah is from Cornwall, so I thought it only fitting that we had some Cornish chocolate as one of snacks (!) I bought this at Exeter Food Festival back in April...not quite sure how it's survived in my cupboard for so long!

This was ok, but the apple flavour wasn’t really there. It was just normal milk chocolate with crumbled biscuit and “apple” pieces (which were really apple juice, lemon juice and way too many other ingredients) on top. I still managed to eat the whole 100g, minus the one row that Sarah ate, in less than 24 hours, haha, oops!

Sarah and I went out in the evening for dinner. We went to a new-ish restaurant in my town that I hadn’t been to before and it was fab. The menu was really clear, with lots of gluten free, vegetarian and vegan options clearly labelled. I had a couple of glasses of Pimms and lemonade…

We shared the mezze platter to start. Sarah is avoiding gluten at the moment, so we had this with gluten free bread and I ate the couscous (they had said they’d put it on a separate plate for us but must’ve forgotten. Sarah has only been avoiding gluten for a week so far anyway so wasn’t bothered as it wasn’t touching anything else, but I’m sure they’d have sorted it for us if we’d asked, the staff were all really helpful)

We both agreed that the cheesy baked mushroom was our favourite, but it was all delicious. My plate…

Couscous, roasted veg, green salad, mozzarella, baked mushroom, houmous and gf bread…delicious!

For my main I chose the filo parcels that were stuffed with feta and sundried tomatoes, served with salad and new potatoes.

This was nice, but not as good as the starter. The filling was a bit too rich for me. I often find that problem in restaurants – they use too much goats cheese/feta!

Sarah and I were both super full, but we fancied something sweet to finish off our meal. We shared a bowl of ice cream – 2 scoops of pistachio, one scoop of honeycomb.

Divine, I loved the slightly more unique flavours that they had on the menu!

This morning, we all started the day off with a smoothie – frozen banana, strawberries and raspberries plus Kara coconut milk, a little agave and some coconut butter. Sarah really enjoyed this and I’ve inspired her to make smoothies for her weekend breakfasts now, yey!

Izzy was a bit upset that we were going out for dinner last night, as she’d remembered me saying a while ago that we might be able to have mac n cheese n peas (using gluten free pasta) – her favourite! So we had that for lunch today, plus Mama Pea’s Thai Fried Quinoa for lunch yesterday…I don’t normally cook full meals at lunchtime but I kind of liked it. The children ate so much better/more at lunchtime than they usually do in the evenings, although I’m not sure Liam would be impressed if I stopped cooking dinners!

Before Sarah left this afternoon, I had one new thing to introduce her to – my favourite brand of raw chocolate! I love this.

All too soon it was time for Sarah to leave. I was really impressed with Izzy though – normally she cries and/or strops whenever someone has to go, but she said bye to Sarah happily with lots of cuddles!

This evening I have been to a new-to-me Body Pump class which was fantastic!! The Friday evening class that I usually go to has been cancelled until September as the instructor is pregnant, so I went to a different sports centre within the trust, about 25-30 mins drive away. I’d never driven to that town before, so that was an accomplishment (for me!) in itself, and then the class was brilliant…really upbeat and I felt stronger than usual, ha, great start to the weekend!

Do you have any plans for the weekend? Any tips for decorating cakes? Not such a random question, honest…I will be doing lots of baking on Sunday/Monday as it is Izzy’s (late) birthday party on Tuesday. I’d originally planned to order a rice paper topper with Disney princesses on it (her request!) which would have made for an easy cake, but I forgot until too late, so annoyed with myself! So today Mum bought me some bits from Lakeland – a couple of sets of little cutters and some coloured roll out icings. I’ve never done anything like that before so we will see how the cake turns out…I’ll share the photos on Wednesday either way!