WIAW - Wintery Treats

Morning everyone! Happy What I Ate Wednesday! Thanks Jenn :)





Sorry for my absence over the last few days - not really sure what happened there, the days just slipped away from me and I hardly took any photos on Sunday or Monday!

This post is based on yesterday's foods. I've been trying to keep my meals quite simple to help me stay on track with my eating, but inevitably some unpictured chocolatey treats have snuck in!

The day started with a good breakfast though - mashed banana porridge, homemade raspberry jam in a not-so-empty Dark Chocolate Dreams jar...

This was delicious - the jam, which is a bit too thick to eat cold, went lovely and melty. Only slight "ooops" was that this breakfast was over 700 calories - turns out there were still 80g of nut butter in the jar, but I didn't find that out until I'd already eaten breakfast!

As I had a bigger breakfast than planned, I kept lunch quite light - steamed asparagus with two poached eggs, alongside my 2nd coffee of the day...

Yum. This is one of my favourite "healthy treat" meals.

There was no chance of me going hungry with a yummy afternoon snack planned. Yesterday morning I made a batch of Averie's Fudgy Brownies (without Nutella or frosting) for my Grandma and her friends to enjoy tomorrow afternoon. Very sad we couldn't keep them all as they were my best brownies so far (I decreased the sugar a bit further to 375g and added an extra 20g flour as my Grandma wanted them to be slightly cakey). Still plenty fudgy, but with a slightly "smoother" texture. Anyway, my Grandma had said I could keep one or two, so I saved one for Liam and snuck a corner piece for myself - delish!

After enjoying my brownie, Toby and I set off in the rain to pick Izzy up from school. We got soaked! But that's ok because horrible weather = hot chocolate!

I was also very excited yesterday afternoon to find these!

These are some of the things I received in a blog swap ages ago - Liam had placed another fruit bowl on top of this fruit bowl so I hadn't known where they were!! Yipee, nut butter sachets back in my life! :-D The larabar was gone instantly - Toby and I shared it as an extra snack! I liked this flavour better than the other ones I've tried - the other ones were too salty for me whereas the salt wasn't really noticeable in this one so it was just like a Nakd bar, yum.

Dinner was a meal we all like and have regularly - grilled tofu (which I marinated in a soy sauce-brown sugar mix this time) with brown rice and roasted red kabocha squash.

I roasted the squash with a little maple syrup and cinnamon, and I added a some soy sauce to the rice - love the salty-sweet combo! I have some leftover squash to eat for today's lunch as well, can't wait!

Yesterday evening I ended up eating quite a few Lidl-brand 'Guylian' chocolates - I bought the box as a "just because" present for Liam, but he sat next to me on the sofa and shared...I have no willpower!!!

What was the best thing you ate today/yesterday? Have you started any winter traditions yet? Hot chocolates with whipped cream is rapidly becoming a tradition here - whenever it's cold or wet on the walk home from school, Izzy asks for them! We had quite a few last winter, but only once the snow had started...no complaints for the early start this year, I love hot chocolate...and love the whipped cream even more!!

Weekend Highlights - Pumpkin & Brownies

Hello! Have you all had good weekends? Mine has been nice - quite relaxing but with some fun thrown in as well. On Saturday, I took Izzy to gymnastics for the first time...she loved it! She looked a bit lost at first, amongst all the other children confidently doing forward rolls, but she soon got the hang of it and had a great time.

My reward for sitting on a wooden "school gym" bench for an hour watching her? A trip to Waitrose afterwards, for the first time since Liam started his new job 4 weeks ago! Best find...pumpkin!! They didn't have any tinned pumpkin on the shelves, but Liam asked one of the staff and they found it downstairs. I stocked up with half a case!

£1.39 a tin, but hopefully these 12 will last me a while!

As well as shopping, I have also eaten some tasty food this weekend. Breakfasts are always great. Yesterday's breakfast was a delicious mini version of Averie's Microwave Bluberry Banana Oat Cake, topped with peanut butter...

and this morning was French toast topped with strawberries and peanut flour sauce (peanut flour, agave, milk)...

Amazing! We normally have French toast with sliced banana and golden syrup, but this strawberry and peanut flour sauce combo was definitely a winner!

Lunches have been pretty standard (fried egg sandwich yesterday and leftover root veg with avocado and houmous today) so I won't bore you with yet more photos of those. Dinners have been good though! Last night I made a meal from the latest Waitrose magazine. I'd been planning to make it on Friday, but when I realised how much slicing of veg prep work it involved, I decided to wait until Liam was home to save my fingers! The meal was worth (his) effort though - garlicky baked mushrooms, and root veg boulangere...

It's so annoying that the dark evenings keep ruining my photos. It probably doesn't help that more than half the light bulbs in our kitchen have gone as well, oops! This was really tasty though - the root veg bake was meant to be celeriac, parsnips, carrots and potatoes, but I accidentally picked up a swede instead of a celeriac so we used that instead. It worked really well though, my favourite bit was the crispy potatoes on top! A bit like a lighter version of potato dauphinoise - this just uses veg stock instead of cream to cook.

I followed this up with some dessert from the freezer - Averie's Caramel Apple Bars - I was too impatient to wait for them to defrost before taking a photo!!

Love these. I've only got a couple left in the freezer so will have to make some more soon!

Tonight's dinner was a simple one. Simple but delicious, the best option for Sunday nights. I picked up some fresh gnocchi from Waitrose which gave me a head start on a quick meal. Combined with cream that needed using, tenderstem broccoli I picked up cheap, and a little cheese - a quick dinner that was ready in no time...

This was tasty, but I cooked way too much. I always forget how stodgy and filling gnocchi can be!

Another highlight was this afternoon, when Liam decided he was "craving" chocolate and "needed" us to bake. I tried to sway him towards cupcakes or cookies, but in the end we went for something that would give us quick, but great, results - Averie's Fudgy Nutella Brownies. I made them without Nutella or frosting this time. They are so quick to make and are absolutely delicious. The only thing I would say is make sure you use dark chocolate. It doesn't need to be great quality (I just use Lidl 74%) but it does need to be dark - Liam made them last time with milk chocolate and they just ended up being big squares of crystallised sugar!! These ones were much more successful though, love the cracked top, always a sign of a good brownie I think!

Yum. I've "only" had two so far, but I think another one will soon be in my future! This is the 3rd time I've made these brownies and my favourite end result. Batch #2 was not so good because of the milk chocolate, batch #1 were great, but a bit too rich for me with the icing. These are perfect. I reduced the sugar from 450g to 400g - still loads, but now the brownies are chewy round the edges, but soft and dense inside. Love. I think these definitely win the "best brownie ever" title, and so easy to make too! I gave a couple to my Mum and sister this evening and, as I'm writing this, my Mum is sending me texts saying these brownies would make great Christmas presents...we definitely have some brownie fans in our family!
Edited to add: I've just remembered I made this batch of brownies with gluten free flour (Dove's I think?) as I'd run out of regular plain flour. As you can probably tell from the above praise, it seems it worked just fine!!

What have you been up to this weekend? Any particular highlights? The weekend always seems to go so much quicker than the week, but this one has been a nice relaxing one. Izzy only has school Monday-Thursday this week and then it's half term. Yey. No school run = more relaxed mornings = more time to make breakfast special! :-D