Folk Week Fun

I have way too many photos to share from this week, but I'm a little pushed for time - I'm going away for the weekend in the morning so need to pack, and want to get an early night in too as Liam and I went out last night and had a little bit too much to drink, urgh, I felt so rough this morning but just tired now! Anyway, here are some of the photos my camera and phone have captured from this week - folk week is certainly a lot busier than the other 51 weeks of the year!!

There has been folky dancing...

Circus tricks...

and maypole dancing...

Plus lots of delicious food. Mainly in the form of cheese & sweetcorn pancakes for the children...

with Nutella & marshmallows as a change/treat filling for the last pancakes today...

I also had a pancake when we went out last night...

an Olympic special filled with fresh strawberries and blueberries, whipped cream and golden syrup...

This was divine, albeit very messy to eat!! The rest of the week I have been eating lots of food from the vegan food van - my favourite, I am so glad to see this each year!! On Tuesday I had the pitta bread with 13 ingredient "Goodness salad", falafel, houmous and tahini...

I love this pitta, but it is so difficult to eat that the rest of the week I stuck to having just the salad topped with houmous...

I love this salad so much, it is advertised as having 13 ingredients - grated carrot, raisins, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, sunflower seeds, red cabbage, chopped tomato, at least 3 or 4 different types of green leaves... that makes 10 or 11 ingredients I think so there must be a few other things in there too!

We've also had some nice drinks in the form of lemonade from the fresh lemonade stand...

and a few too many glasses of Pimms and lemonade last night....

Despite feeling slightly worse for wear this morning, we headed into town again today for one last trip to the festival. Pancakes/salads for lunch as above, and then Izzy had her hair braided on the sea front...

This looks just like the braids I used to get done as a little girl - same colours, patterns etc!

We also went to a craft fair type marquee which Mum had told me also had a stall of Italian pastries and other foods hidden in the corner. We came home with bags of chocolate covered honeycomb and sweet chilli peanuts for Liam, a bag of chocolate coated sunflower seeds and 3 little pastries for me and (unpictured) fudge for the children.

Mmm, so good! The filo pastry on the right was filled with lemon cream, and the one on the left - my favourite - was filled with zabaglione (Italian custard). The middle one was a ball of lemon flavoured cake, which was a little dry, definitely not as good as the other two but still quite tasty!

Once we got back from town, the rest of today was spent at home. The children played with the bubble gun that Izzy bought in Butlins with some of her birthday money...

and when Toby had his nap Izzy and Liam painted a clock that Izzy was given for her birthday (thanks Auntie Vicki if you're reading this, so pretty!)...

A fun end to folk week. It'll be interesting to see which part Izzy remembers most. At the start of the week her main memory from last year was the cheese and sweetcorn pancakes. Last year me, Izzy and Toby shared one pancake and one falafel pitta between the three of us for our lunch, so on Tuesday we naively thought that Izzy and Toby would share a pancake between them. No chance! They had a cheese & sweetcorn pancake each on Tuesday and Wednesday, day off yesterday and then the chocolatey ones today! Liam had a Nutella, marshmallow and biscuit pancake last night - which probably wins the prize for messiest pancake - but the rest of the week he has mainly chosen to have the pittas with salad and falafel...further proof that they are truly delicious!! :)

Anyway, enough rambling - I need to chuck some clothes in a suitcase and then get some much needed sleep! Have a great weekend everyone!

WIAW - Back to Smoothies

Hello! Happy What I Ate Wednesday! Thanks as always to the lovely Jenn for getting us all together! :-)




I'm basing this week's WIAW on yesterday, although there were quite a few snacks (banoffee cupcake, Lindt sea salt chocolate etc) that went unphotographed. I think I got most of it though!

Despite the cold weather, I've been craving a smoothie for breakfast for a while recently, and yesterday I finally dusted off my blender and got round to making one. This was a banana, about 250ml milk, 80g frozen raspberries, a couple of handfuls of spinach, a pinch of xanthan gum and a few drops of vanilla stevia. I've had smoothies before where I've made a thick paste out of peanut flour to go on top. I decided to do the quick version today by just sprinkling peanut flour on top...hmmm, still tasty but not so pretty!

I had this bowl x2 and there was lots more peanut flour stirred in under the surface. I'd forgotten how filling smoothies were!

Lunch was another meal I'd been planning to make for a while. A Food Doctor pitta filled with tahini carrot salad, falafel and houmous...so good!

Despite being a satisfying lunch, the snacks I mentioned at the start still occurred after I'd picked Izzy up from school/while I was making dinner. Mid-afternoon munchies = seemingly a difficult habit to break!

After I ate dinner yesterday, I immediately blogged the recipe - it was that good! Vegetable cottage pie with sweet potato mash, mmm!!

The above photo doesn't really do the meal justice. I loved this so much. I've never really been that much of a fan of potato topped meals. My other cottage pie recipe was liked by others, but it wasn't my favourite. This one however = new love! The sweet potato makes it so much more flavourful, definitely one to make again!

After dinner, I was clearing space in the freezer to put the extra portions in, and came across these...

Chocolate Samoa Fudge Babies. There were actually 5 of them in the box when I took them out the freezer, but 3 of them had "disappeared" before I thought to take the photo!

What was the best thing you ate today? Do you feel you're "back to normal" after Christmas yet? I'm slowly getting there. Now Izzy is back at school and Liam is back at work, I'm able to get back into some sort of routine with my meals but there are still too many chocolates around tempting me into unplanned snacks!!

WIAW - In The Sunshine!

It's What I Ate Wednesday again! :)




I was really glad to see today come round for the blog, as, with Izzy's birthday etc, I feel the I haven't been writing enough about food recently, so an excuse to focus on food is good by me! Thanks Jenn! :)

Today started off with lots of coffee...

For some reason, when Liam's alarm went off at 6am I felt wide awake so came downstairs with him...I could've had an extra hour's sleep!! So two of these were consumed before the children woke up.

Then it was breakfast time. Izzy requested a smoothie - "a white one this time please" - so I did my best to please her...

Tropical 'White' Smoothie
(serves 2)

• 1.5 bananas
• 150g pineapple, frozen
• splash coconut extract (Maria - I bought this from iHerb)
• 200ml milk
• 1 tbsp coconut butter

Izzy topped hers with desiccated coconut & Lizi's chocolate granola...

Whereas I opted for one chopped medjool date, desiccated coconut and a tsp of coconut butter...

This was so delicious - I love the pineapple coconut combo, and the dates provided chewy contrast whereas the coconut butter hardened up in the cool smoothie and gave a nice bite. Yum!

Once Toby had woken up from his nap, I took the children down into the town. Got to make the most of the sunshine while it lasts! We first went to the recently updated play park...

And then we headed over to the food vans for lunch. Course #1 - a cheese and sweetcorn pancake...

Rather than get lots of food that might go to waste, I just bought one thing at a time and shared it with both children (Liam was at work)...this pancake was really good :)

Course #2 was the same falafel pitta that I had on Friday night...

This is so delicious, but really messy to eat - I got tahini all over my skirt! The salad apparently has 13 different components, yum, there were (of course) leaves, grated carrot, plump raisins, at least 2 types of seeds etc, much more interesting that you're standard pitta!!

After lunch, we walked along the sea front and stopped to watch some of the folkie stuff...

before heading to the beach...

No more photos from the beach as I was too busy keeping an eye on the children! There were 4 adults to 7 children which shouldn't have been too difficult, but when there are 3 babies (10 weeks, 12 months, 19 months) plus a 2 year old, 4 year old, 5 year old and 6 year old it makes a bit more tricky - the older ones wanted to go into the sea (with Izzy being a little too confident for her own good!!) whilst the babies needed to stay in the shade,and the 2 year old kinda wandered in random directions!! It worked fine though, was just busy. Busy but good fun! :) Apparently it's going to rain tomorrow so I was determined to make the most of the sunshine whilst it was still here!!

On the way home from the beach, we stopped for ice lollies. I had a cider lolly for the first time in years!

As the package says, it was very refreshing!

Once home, iced coffee was needed!

Three of these were consumed in quick succession! Ice + cold coffee + milk + vanilla stevia drops = bliss!!

I thought dinner was going to be a fail, and was planning to post about what we ate last night instead. But actually, for an experiment, it turned out surprisingly well!

Curried Butternut Squash & Cauliflower Burgers
(makes 10-12) (adapted from Choosing Raw's Sweet Potato Edamame Burgers)

• 1 butternut squash (mine had 500g flesh once cooked)
• 1-2 tbsp oil
• 1 small cauliflower (mine weighed 375g once cooked)
• 200g quinoa flakes
• 40g curry paste, to taste

1.  First, slice the butternut squash in half, scoop out the seeds and drizzle with oil. Roast at 180C for 45 minutes.
2. Chop the cauliflower into small florets and boil for about 5 minutes.

3. In the food processor, blitz together the butternut squash flesh, drained cauliflower, quinoa flakes and curry paste, with a little water if necessary. (I had to do this in 2 batches due to the size of my food processor)

4. Mould into burgers on lined baking trays (or just splat tablespoons on if you're me!) I used two of these trays...

5. Bake at 170C for 30 minutes, turning half way through.

I just served ours with fried sesame smoked tofu, as we are on operation use-up before going away on Friday, but we all agreed it would have been better if there had been some green on the plate!!

Liam is a self-proclaimed cauliflower hater, but he declared that these were "really yummy" (that's when I knew they were a success!!) and both he and Isabelle went back for seconds! They had a lovely sweet flavour from the butternut squash, with a slight hint of curry. Delicious. Ignore the fact that they were served with sesame tofu - it went ok, but I only really cooked it because it needed eating, they'd have been better with some green veg and some sweet potato wedges, or in the curry direction, Liam called them "a healthier version of onion bhajis" so I guess you could go with that!!

After dinner, we couldn't resist opening the 2nd layer of Izzy's birthday box of chocolates...

I had a strawberry crush and a lemon meringue...a (very!) sweet treat to finish off the meal!

And that was my Wednesday! What is the best thing you've eaten today? Mine would be the falafel pitta I think, the salad especially was so flavourful!