Comforting Cocoa Porridge

When I went to bed last night, I'd planned to wake up in the morning and have a refreshing green smoothie for breakfast. However, turns out that when I went to bed was actually 3-4 hours before I finally managed to fall asleep (yawn) so all I fancied when I woke up was a big bowl of porridge...

Comforting Cocoa Porridge:

• 40g oats
• 20g cocoa powder
• 1 banana, thinly sliced (mine was about 75g after baby stole some)
• 90g frozen blueberries (to feel like I was at least trying to nourish my body!!)
• 220ml milk
• some form of sweetener, to taste (I stirred in 25g maple syrup after cooking - my body always craves sweet things when I'm feeling lousy)
• Topped with 30g crunchy peanut butter

Mix all the ingredients, except the maple syrup and peanut butter, together and cook as usual (I use the microwave to make washing up easier). Sweeten to taste and top with a big blob of peanut butter. Enjoy!

This was perfect, just what I needed. I was a bit worried it would be overly sweet (I'd accidentally tipped in more maple syrup than intended!!), but it was just right. The peanut butter went all melty, and I loved the bites of blueberry in each mouthful, providing a juicy contrast to the rich cocoa. Yum!

Now I've just got to work out how to get through the rest of the day with 2 irritable children, on only 5 hours sleep. Coffee may be in my very near future!!

Getting Back To It

Do you ever find that if you leave it too long in between blog posts, it's really hard to get back into it?? It's not that I don't want to write, I do, and I think about my blog way more than is probably good for me (!) - I'm still taking photos of all my food, thinking of what I'll write about the food as I'm eating it. It just gets hard to get back into it, you know? Even after deleting all the "bad" photos I've taken and getting it down to the bare minimum, I'm still left with 43 "blogworthy" photos that I've taken since I last posted on Thursday! I don't want to bore everyone with them, or indeed take all night to write one post, so I will just have to accept that some photos will get missed and post the highlights of the highlights - it's not really going to affect anyone's lives by not seeing a photo of a bagel or a smoothie that I've eaten is it! So...stop rambling and start talking about food! :)

First though, I just want to briefly talk about the London Marathon. I'm not a runner, nor will I ever be a runner, but I made sure to watch it this year because my Mum and her partner were both running it! It was my Mum's first ever marathon (and I think last from what she's now saying!!) and she found it so hard. She did it though, we're all so proud of her! She didn't manage it in the sub-5 hours she was hoping for - coming in at 5 hours 43, but she made it, and ran about 80% of it as well, yey! :) For my Mum's partner, it was his 3rd Marathon - he did Dublin in 2008 in 3 hours 53 minutes, then London 2009 in 4 hours 4 minutes, so he desperately wanted to at least come in under 4 hours to beat his previous London time. He came in at 3 hours 50 minutes - his personal best! :) So proud of them both. My Mum especially is very glad it's over though, they both did so much training, and whilst she will still keep running, she can now concentrate on over things...like planning my wedding!! That's next on her list - only 2.5 months to go, it's come round so quick! :)

Ok...food. I've taken even more photos than usual since Liam came home from uni with a DSLR camera...got to make the most of it before he has to take it back in a week! However most of my foods seem to have been snacks, so I'll start with the few main meals there have been first.

On Friday morning, I finally made it back to the gym!

It had been way too long since I'd last been - glad I made it back though. I was only there an hour - 40 minutes cardio plus free weights and weight machines - but it felt good! When I got home, I enjoyed a tropical green smoothie - this one didn't contain pear - just spinach, banana, pineapple and milk, topped with coconut - and was much smoothie than the last version thanks to my new blender!!

I forgot to put the xanthan gum in this so it was soupy/foamy rather than thick, but delicious nonetheless!

On Friday lunchtime, everyone else ate corned beef hash that my Mum had made for us (she needed to use up her potatoes before going away for the weekend!) which meant there was no arguments over who got to eat the leftover roast vegetable lasagne, yey, all the more for me!

This was still delicious, I love the combo of the roast peppers and the lentil sauce so much. The broccoli went really well too - the only thing the lasagne is missing is green veg & I do love my broccoli! (one of my sister's doesn't like it/refuses to eat it - so odd!!)

Friday dinner is always a bit of a mission to motivate myself to eat properly as Liam is at work and the children tend to be tired from the week so eat early. This Friday was no exception - I ended up eating my last two peanut butter cups...

and a bowl of granola...

a bit random and perhaps not the healthiest of dinners, but certainly tasty!

I woke up Saturday morning fancying a bagel...a peanut butter and mashed banana bagel...

so good...

I love the texture contrasts and the sweet banana with salty peanut butter, plus the doughy cinnamon raisin bagel, delicious!

Saturday lunch was what I should have made for Friday dinner if I'd had the energy - I'd been having major egg mayonnaise cravings. In wholemeal pitta breads with some diced cucumber mixed in...

I love egg mayonnaise, I normally just have it in a regular sandwich but it was even nicer in these pittas. Bit of an excess of bread for the day, but hey ho!

Despite being quite full from lunch, I couldn't resist going out for a walk with the family and stopping in at a cafe. I had a Luscombe raspberry lemonade and a chocolate rum truffle...

I can never resist these when I see them...thankfully for my waistline (!!) I hadn't spotted one since Christmas, but it was worth the wait...

rich cakey chocolatey deliciousness with a few raisins thrown in as well...so good!!

Saturday night dinner was another favourite in our family - butternut squash risotto. I followed the same recipe as before except I added in some pesto mixed with a little oil as one of the (many!) toppings, as inspired by the risotto I had out on my Mum's birthday.

All the ingredients go so well together in this, and the pesto was a great addition, yum yum.

On Sunday morning, daughter and I made a smoothie from her magazine - slightly altered to include the ingredients we had, this was a simple banana, frozen pear, milk, yoghurt and honey combo...

This was ok, but nothing amazing...luckily as baby drank most of mine!

He had a big foamy moustache afterwards, cute! Unfortunately this meant I didn't really eat a proper breakfast on Sunday, and consequently spent most of the morning snacking, oops! We went for lunch at my Grandparents, where I had some egg mayonnaise sandwiches...

as well as unpictured grapes, cucumber slices, cubed cheese and a delicious lemon curd yoghurt to finish.

Sunday evening, I made Mama Pea's Quinoa Pizza Casserole, which I topped with roasted pepper slices and cubed goat's cheese... this was delicious, however the photo has got lost in the unknown that is Liam's laptop, and as he is currently working on his dissertation with a deep frown on his face, I think it's best not to disturb!!

Finally (well apart from many snacks!) on to today, and another early morning gym visit! I find it so much easier to go to the gym as soon as I wake up, unfortunately for the next 4 days that will not be possible as Liam will be at uni/work. After the gym, I really fancied porridge. I had no bananas to bulk the oats out, so used some jarred apple sauce instead. Oats, apple sauce, cocoa powder and milk, topped with a drizzle of maple syrup and a blob of peanut butter...

this definitely hit the spot. Despite the sunny weather, I was in the mood for something warm, chocolatey and gooey...

So good :)

No lunch for me today as, by the time I got back from the gym, breakfast was a late one, and then we had to go to the dentist (boo!) early afternoon, but I made up for it with a ginger icecream after the dentist...

Does anyone else feel they "deserve" a sweet treat after a dentist visit (presuming no local anaesthetic from fillings of course) or is it just me?? Probably the reason the dentist felt the need to tell me to avoid all sugar (incl fruit etc) except at mealtimes, oops! He said similar to my Mum and sister when they went, and clarified it with that they should only eat 5 times a day to limit the acid attacks on their teeth. I think I've managed that today...just... 1) porridge, 2) icecream, 3) random tofu picking, 4) dinner, 5) cocoa pudding...but normally I eat way more times that that each day!!

Anyway, onto dinner. The others had meatballs and I'd planned to make myself lentil ragu, but in the end was too tired to cook. Leftovers made dinner simple for me though - leftover quinoa pizza casserole with goats cheese and the last of my sesame smoked tofu mixed in...

easy and tasty! :) and finally for today - Jemma's Choco Pb Nana Pudding - I made it before I sat down to write this post, leaving it chilling in the fridge for a while - and am enjoying it now - so good!

I really love this - so glad I discovered the idea on Jemma's blog! It's even better once it has set in the fridge for a bit too - goes all rich and fudgy...very filling too!

Well, that's all of my main eats over the last few days...nearly finished now I promise!! I have also eaten lots of snacks, but I will limit the photos to just a couple of favourites. First up, medjool dates stuffed with peanut butter. Nothing special here I know, but I have always failed to get decent photos of this gorgeous snack with my regular camera, whereas the DSLR did a pretty good job!

So sweet and filling, although sadly, despite being what I'd consider pretty healthy for a "treat", they still fall under what the dentist would consider to be "evil sugar"!!!! It seems silly to eat other things as well as a couple of stuffed dates to make it a "meal", so I will just try to stick to the eating 5 times a day thing I think. I rarely eat between breakfast and lunch anyway, so, at least when my eating is relatively under control, I should be able to manage it - 1) breakfast, 2) lunch, 3) afternoon snack, 4) dinner, 5) evening snack. Sadly the dentist also includes drinks, so if I want a latte, or even a no added sugar squash (apparently this is still sugar?) then I have to only drink it with a meal. Grrr. Stupid rules!!

Anyway, there were no other particularly noteable snacks consumed over the weekend. I did however make the mistake of stocking up on some more "luxury spreads" at Lidl...

2 coconut spreads (delish), 1 mocha spread and 1 hazelnut & chocolate spread. I thought the hazelnut & chocolate one would be like Nutella, so this was intended for Liam/daughter, but in actual fact it was like Ferrero Rocher - full of hazelnut bits - yummy to me, but not Liam's cup of tea...luckily I didn't like the mocha version so we swapped! He has way more self control than me - he still has loads more mocha left whereas all 3 of my jars are now empty!!

Sadly I would have to agree with the dentist on these jars - looking at the ingredients list, in no way are they healthy for me, or my teeth!

Sugar and vegetable oil as the top two ingredients anyone?! Must not buy anymore!!

Right, I think that's me finished for this post. Apologies for the rambling! Tomorrow Liam is back to uni, so whilst I'll be back to using my regular camera, at least I should be able to get back into some form of routine, and have a greater chance of avoiding a trip to the icecream shop!!

Oh and if you haven't already spotted it, Jemma at Celery and Cupcakes is holding a great Pulsin' Giveaway - closing date 1pm on 22nd April, go check it out! :)

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!