WIAW - Gingerbread Loving!

Good Morning! Happy What I Ate Wednesday! Wednesday seems to have come round so quickly this week!





Thanks as always to Jenn, it's so nice to be able to see what everyone is eating once a week - the link-up is such a great idea! :)

Today post is based on Monday as usual, for some reason I always seem to struggle with taking photos on Tuesdays - indeed, yesterday I only managed to take photos of two things!

I don't know about you, but I always struggle to get back into the weekday routine on Mondays. I'm lucky that I can come home after the school run, so I don't need to worry about eating breakfast before we rush out of the house. I did find time for a coffee though - a skinny latte with lots of white chocolate syrup:

Whittards were sold out of gingerbread syrup when I went in on Saturday. We don't have a shop particularly close to us so I bought a white chocolate syrup to keep me going, but it is (obviously) not the same. It just tastes sweet and confuses me as it hides the taste of the coffee and makes the drink more like a super sweet, not very chocolatey hot chocolate. Boo, I should have just bought vanilla syrup. I miss the sweet spiciness of gingerbread!

After I got home from dropping Izzy at school, I had planned to eat a proper breakfast. That didn't seem to happen though...instead, this did:

Liam bought me this big, 600g bag of lebkuchen from Lidl on Sunday (I checked - no gelatine - but thanks for the potential warning Maria!) and Izzy and I have already finished them! We ate loads on Sunday and she's been taking three in her lunchbox as her "treat", yum!

We like the white ones best, and the white stripey ones (of which there none left by Monday morning!) so when I saw a bag of just white and white stripey ones in Lidl yesterday morning, I had to buy them! I've managed not to open them yet though...only a matter of time!! I can't decide whether I prefer these or the dark chocolate covered, apricot jam filled ones. I love the crunchy icing on these, but then I love the other ones...a nice dilemma to have!! Last Christmas I only ate the chocolate apricot ones, so I'm glad I have branched out more this year! :)

Anyway, back to Monday! After "breakfast", I went in to the kitchen to make Liam some cheese and chive muffins (he takes two to work each morning for breakfast). It only takes five minutes max to make these, but when I came to check on Toby after putting them in the oven, I found this:

Awww! He carried on sleeping while I changed his nappy and put him into his cot, and then slept until 2pm!

The cheese muffins looked fantastic when they came out of the oven! I managed to resist having any on Monday, but did have one for lunch yesterday. Oops, I'll have to make some more muffins some time this week or Liam wont have enough come Monday morning - we always forget to make them on Sundays!

Lunch was therefore a late one. I'd forgotten to put sweet potatoes in the oven so I cooked up some fresh pasta instead. Ready in 2 minutes = my kind of meal. This was spinach and ricotta fresh tortellini, with ketchup and cheddar...just like my Mum used to do! :)

I love this, such a simple but tasty meal. My portion size was perhaps a bit too big though - the pack is meant to serve two and I was only sharing with a 23 month-old...he does love his pasta, but he didn't eat quite as much as me!!

*Newsflash of the post* - I went to the gym on Monday night! I reckon I hadn't been (or done any other exercise) for about 3 weeks, oops! I didn't work as hard as I could have done, but I reckon an hour at the gym, even only at moderate level, is better than an hour at home eating chocolate!

Chocolate was eaten when I got home though - mashed banana porridge with some dark chocolate salted caramels stirred through...

...served in an almost empty Justin's chocolate hazelnut butter jar:

Mmm, this made dragging myself out in the cold to the gym worth it! I adored the Justin's chocolate hazelnut butter (may have to order another jar soon) and the salty caramels mixed with the sweet banana porridge was perfect! For some reason I haven't been eating that much porridge recently. Last winter I ate it every day, but I suppose it hasn't been quite so cold this year. Well, yet anyway, I'm sure I'll be eating porridge regularly soon enough!

As we're nearly in December (and past Thanksgiving for my American readers)...what are your favourite Christmassy treats? I'm not sure I'd even had lebkuchen before Christmas 2010, but it is fast becoming a favourite! I also love stollen, but my local Lidl have stopped selling the mini ones, much to my dismay, and I haven't got round to making it myself yet! Nearer to the big day I will also start eating lots of my Mum's homemade mince pies with lots of brandy butter, mmm! The shop-bought ones just don't live up to Mum's...maybe I should actually try making my own this year so I can have a constant supply! :-D Unfortunately Liam doesn't like any of the things I've just mentioned, which puts me off making them a bit. I've mentioned before that his family eat chocolate cake on Christmas Day instead of Christmas cake/pudding as a lot of them don't like dried fruit...I'm not sure I'll convert him on this one very easily!! ;-(

Blog Swap Goodies, Blondies and Random Eats!

I can't believe I haven't written a blog post since Thursday! Things have been so stressful around here in the run-up to the wedding (only 1.5 weeks to go!) I'm not sleeping well so at the weekend I made the most of Liam being here by having 3 hour naps when baby napped! & most days I'm not finding time to eat until mid-afternoon, not good! I'm making up for it in the evenings though! It's weird - I don't mention it often on the blog but I'm a daily weigher - most of the time my weight fluctuates on a day to day basis (normal) but for the last 7 days it has stayed exactly the same. I guess I must being eating what I need even though I don't have time to keep that close an eye on my eating at the moment!

Anyway, on to the photos... My meals haven't exactly been very structured recently so this might be a bit of a random assortment!!

Oh actually, first up, I received my blog swap package yesterday!! :-D Thanks to Jemma from Celery and Cupcakes for organising it all!

My swap partner was Megan from Simply Megan and she sent me some amazing goodies!!

Lots of nut butters:

I haven't actually tried any of these yet - I think I'm 'scared' to waste them as my meals have been a bit random since I received the parcel! I'll have to make a big bowl of porridge to sample some soon :)

I also received some bars:

Yum! I love that Megan chose all the peanut butter flavoured Larabars to send me!! :) I ate the peanut butter and chocolate chip Larabar yesterday and the Pure chocolate brownie today...both were delicious! I'd heard of Larabars before obviously, but had never heard of Pure bars - I think that was my favourite - dates, agave nectar, cocoa powder rice protein and a variety of nuts made a delicious fudgy brownie with pieces of walnut through it, amazing!

Megan also sent me gluten-free honey rice Puffins!

I've recently seen a few UK bloggers talking about peanut butter Puffins, so it was great to be able to try the gluten-free version! I had a bowl last night with sliced banana and the last of my Chocolate-Coconut-Brazil Nut Butter ...

So good! Thanks so much Megan, I hope you like all the things you receive from me in return! :)

In other 'important' news, I finally made Katie's Chocolate Chip Blondies on Sunday!

I made them whilst Liam was at work so that he wouldn't know the ingredients (!!) and was pleasantly surprised when he came home on his lunch break and liked them!

He didn't pick out the chickpeas at all, but he did notice the peanut butter! Luckily it wasn't too overpowering so he still liked them, yey! I kept quiet about the ingredients list until we'd finished off the rest of them Sunday evening. Between me, Liam and my Mum, this tin's worth of blondies soon disappeared!

When I did eventually tell Liam about the chickpeas in the blondies he was fine with it. He'd seen the chickpea skins in the food bin and was worried I'd put some kind of fish or frog spawn in them!!!!! He clearly hasn't understood the concept of 'vegetarian' yet, or indeed acceptable ingredients to put in delicious baked goods! With chickpeas not fish though, I'll definitely be baking these again - healthy + delicious = success!!

Final note-worthy thing that's happened over the last few days...baby had his first ever haircut on Friday (well apart from when I disastrously chopped his fringe, but that doesn't count!!) He went from this...

to this...

Not too much hair cut off (I was very attached to playing with the long hair at the back of his neck!!) but enough to make a difference - all smart ready to be pageboy at our wedding! :)

As I keep suggesting, most of the food I've eaten since I last blogged isn't worth mentioning. There were a couple of good meals though...

Tropical Baked Oats with pineapple instead of mango, served with fresh strawberries...

This didn't turn out of the baking dish well - it could've done with a few more minutes in the oven but because the dish was so full it was bubbling over...it still tasted delicious though, I do love baked oats more than regular porridge at the moment...the extra cooking time is worth it!

Chocolate Raspberry "Pudding" Smoothie topped with Eat Natural gluten-free muesli...

Mmmm, this is always so good! The muesli was a great addition too, the raisins were super juicy and provided a great contrast to the crunchy almonds!

After looking through all the photos on my camera, I think the above are the only ones worth showing! What can I say, breakfast foods are far superior to other meals! :-D The rest of the time I've been pretty much living off roast vegetables with gf pasta/quinoa and cheese/poached eggs etc on Genius toast!

I will be back tomorrow with a WIAW post - I'm hoping it will keep my meals a bit more structured tomorrow knowing that I'll be posting everything I eat! As well as all the running around for the wedding, I did also go to circuits again. As tough as last week - this new set-up is so much harder than the previous one!

Hope you're all doing ok! Apologies for the lack of commenting recently - I have been reading your blog posts, but usually on my iPhone while I'm lying unable to sleep in the middle of the night...my iPhone doesn't make it easy to comment at the best of times, let alone when I'm half asleep!!