Fruit = hiccups!

A quick one today as I didn't realise how late it was - I've gotten out of the habit of going on my laptop recently, so was happily reading on my Kindle when I realised I wanted to write a blog post, seeing as I actually remembered to take photos of all of today's foods. Not particularly interesting photos mind, but I've got to start again somewhere!

This morning started with dough balls. Mama Pea's chocolate chip dough balls to be precise...

after eating 5 of these last night, I decided the rest of the batch needed to go in the freezer out of sight! I kept 3 of them in the fridge to eat today though, one of which got eaten before breakfast! So yummy, and almost healthy too! :)

Breakfast was one of my favourites...cinnamon and peach porridge topped with a (smaller than usual) blob of peanut butter...

this is so tasty, I love the flavour of the cinnamon and peaches. The smaller blob of peanut butter was just enough to add a nutty crunch...I'm still trying to keep my calories slightly down to at least stop the weight gain if not start to lose some of it. I've managed to stick to my calorie allowance for the last 3 days so hopefully I can keep at it whilst still enjoying my food :)

Lunch was eaten alone today - Liam and daughter were out at uni/school and baby seems to be having a sleepathon lately! He napped 11.30am-1.30pm then 2.30pm-4pm yesterday, still went to bed at 7pm and slept through til 9.30am (with a quick wake up at 4.30am for milk) then still napped from 11am-2pm today! I wish I could sleep that much and still sleep at night-time too! Meant I got a peaceful mealtime though so no complaints from me! Anyway, lunch was a slice of seeded toast topped with 2 rashers of grilled bacon and a poached egg...

mmm, we hardly ever have bacon so this was a real treat! Liam normally cooks poached eggs for us all when he's home, mine are getting better though...yolk not quite runny enough but I have a "fear" of undercooked eggs so this is an improvement for me!!

Mid-afternoon I got full-on munchies! First I had the last of my dough balls (2nd was eaten before lunch!) and a satsuma...

but I was still hungry after this so had another 2 satsumas and some grapes...

lucky we had plenty of fresh fruit in the house for once! This gave me hiccups, but at least it distracted me from my peckishness! (and provided inspiration for my rubbish post title...its late (for me anyway) and I want to go to bed...figured a random title was better than a blank space, and reflected the rambly randomness of today's post!!)

Then it was time for school pick-up, followed by the usual post-school chaos, so I didn't eat again until dinner. Pearl barley risotto (it's more like a stew really I guess) with the usual base of onions, carrots, leeks and mushrooms, this time with some chorizo added in too...

yum! The chorizo still didn't add much flavour to the overall stew/risotto, which has plenty of flavour of its own, but it was nice to bite into the occasional chunk of smokiness!

After dinner I had a creme caramel pot...

plus a square of dark chocolate snuck from the cupboard when no-one was looking!! I needed something sweet to finish off the day, but that's me done. A really good day for me I think :)

Liam has started making noises about me wanting me to bake over the weekend though...not good! I think I'm gonna try out a recipe for malteser tray bake so watch this space...! I'll make it when he's at work either on Friday evening or Sunday. Friday would be preferable for me as then everyone else can eat it while I'm at work on Saturday (my last shift, whoop, I resigned! It was making me so miserable and the job just wasn't worth that, plus it meant we had no time as a family...children are really looking forward to us all going swimming together the following Saturday!) anyway...back to my sentence...sorry! I will probably end up making the traybake on Sunday though, so that my daughter can get involved - she loves stirring & measuring! So I will just have to resist eating it all on Monday! That was a bit of a ramble! Summary... chocolate malteser traybake = hopefully yummy but not to be gobbled up by me all at once!! I will of course have to try a bit as the chef...for quality control purposes you understand! :)

Phew, clearly time for me to go to bed! Night all!

Pearl Barley Risotto

Whilst I have loved eating Yeo Valley's apple flapjack yoghurt for the last couple of days, this morning I felt the need for porridge. I decided to incorporate both the yoghurt and the porridge oats for an apple inspired bowl :) This is what went into the bowl with the oats and milk (reducing my usual amount of milk as put about 50g yoghurt into the mix)...

So 40g oats, 200ml milk, 50g yoghurt, 100g apple slices and quite a lot of cinnamon...

I've never tried tinned apple before, let alone in porridge. Verdict is I prefer tinned peaches and tinned pear, but the apple version was still good, and an easy way to get extra fruit into my diet :) I topped it with the rest of the yoghurt and some sultanas, to go along with the flapjack theme...

porridge looks so much prettier than my recent breakfasts! Something was missing though...I gave in and added a blob of peanut butter...

yum, everything most things taste better with peanut butter! :)

Baby had been napping whilst I ate my breakfast (we'd been awake since 6am, yawn!), I had to wake him to take him to his one year check with health visitor, can't believe he's grown up so fast! He's on 91st centile for height and just above 75th centile for weight...little big muncher! He was born at 11lbs 3oz though so not particularly surprising!! Poor little guy hates being dressed/undressed so wasn't too impressed at being weighed naked, especially when he'd just been woken up!

Back home and time for lunch. We'd popped in to Tesco on way home and I'd been so tempted to buy a big jar of Nutella to fall into...was literally hovering by the shelf for ages trying to tear myself away! Managed to resist though so treated myself to some ham and smoked cheese instead which, with the leftover egg from yesterday, made up my lunch...

Yummy and filling, I made it into egg mayo and cheese roll-ups :)

Mid-afternoon, 3 Thorntons chocolates slipped into my mouth, whoops!! Plus a couple of skinny lattes to try to beat the tiredness!

This evening's dinner was pearl barley risotto, a really simple tasty recipe that can easily be adapted to whatever food you have in really!

Pearl Barley Risotto
(serves 3-4)

• 170g pearl barley (or more/less depending on appetites)
• carrots (I used 3)
• onions (2)
• leeks (2)
• mushrooms (I used about 200g)
• 1-2 tsp oil
• approx 425ml stock (or boiling water + stock cube in my case!)
• Plus any extras - ham/chorizo/tofu/extra veg etc all work well with this, or it is delicious without any extras

First, prep the veg (or in my case get Liam to do all the chopping!!) - carrots and onions finely diced, leeks and mushrooms sliced...

next, soften the leeks, carrots and onions with some oil in a large pan/casserole dish for about 5 minutes over low heat...

then add the mushrooms and fry for a couple of minutes...

before adding the pearl barley...

I stirred this through and then at this stage I added 90g of shredded ham hock - one of the freebies Liam got from work on Christmas Eve that then went into the freezer :)

To be honest, when I made this pearl barley risotto in the past, I didn't add any meat. I said at the time that it didn't need it as the vegetables give a lovely flavour, and the ham hock didn't even add anything to the dish so next time I would go back to it being meat-free.

After mixing everything through I added the stock - 425ml of boiling water and one stock cube...

bring to the boil and then cover with lid...

lol, pointless photo!! Apart from for the big reveal (!) - after 45 minutes of simmering on a low heat, it should look like this...

this is so yummy...

Liam commented that the pearl barley looks like sugar puffs/puffed wheat, but we were all agreed that this was delicious :) made enough for my portion (above), a slightly bigger portion for Liam, a smaller portion for daughter and 2 baby sized portions...ie probably enough for 3 normal adult portions!

Today has been a really good day. However major chocolate cravings struck after putting the children to bed...I made the mistake of sending Liam out to Spar, and this is what he came back with for me!

all eaten whilst writing this blog...ooops!! Need to convince Liam to only bring me one thing back in future - at least that would limit the damage! Or go myself so I can choose what I get - he likes to bring me a 'choice' back but I inevitably end up eating it all!!