Fun Weekend

Evening everyone! How were your weekends? I'm happy to say that I've had a great one! :-)

Yesterday was my little sister's birthday, so in the morning we went round for cake...

The brownies were the most fudgy I've made so far - success! :)

In the afternoon, Olivia requested a girly spa session. My Mum, Olivia, my other sister Sarah and I went to the local spa for an hour or so. It was quite small - just a mini pool/jacuzzi, a sauna and a steam room, but it was nice to relax and catch up.

In the evening, we all went out for dinner.

After a few photos (!) it was time for some food. I'd pre-ordered my starter and main from the Christmas menu. To start, I had a goats cheese tart with beetroot salad...

and for my main (which I was most looking forward to!) I had a cauliflower and sweet potato curry, mmm!

I didn't order dessert myself, but I did have a few tastes of Olivia's. This was advertised as a "taster dessert to share between two", but in reality it was a full-sized portion of nearly every dessert on the menu!!

Even with all of us helping out, my Mum still ended up taking quite a few desserts home wrapped up in foil!! It was a really nice meal, and evening. I hope my sister had a nice 16th birthday!

*****

Today, we didn't have any fixed plans...but we still ended up being busy!

When Toby had his morning nap, we finally got round to filling the photo album we'd given Izzy for her birthday back in August! I'd printed out lots of wedding photos for her to use, eventually narrowing it down to her favourite 25!

I'll have to take some photos once she finishes the album. It looks great - as well as the photos there are lots of decorations - stickers, sequins, mini pom poms etc!

Once Toby woke up, we all ate lunch. A random snack plate of things that needed using - grilled asparagus, Indian party selection, mozzarella sticks, raw mushrooms and caramelised onion houmous.

I love snack plates for trying a bit of everything, although this was a bit too much food - I was uncomfortably full after this!

I resisted the urge to lie on the sofa groaning though (!), and instead we all wrapped up warm to head outside.

First on the agenda - kite flying! My Grandparents gave Izzy this kite for her birthday, but many excuses later, we only finally got around to using it this weekend. Izzy had such fun!

After we'd done flying the kite, we made a quick stop at Costa to warm up - I had a gingerbread latte, my favourite - before walking along the seafront...

Such a lovely day - cold, but clear and dry :)

and stopping off at the play park on the way home...

I love days like today :) So nice to be able to do whatever we wanted and suit it around Toby's nap/Izzy getting tired etc. I just hope the rest of the holidays are this relaxing...somehow I'm not sure we'll manage it every day, but hopefully some!

How have all your weekends been? Do you feel prepared for Christmas? 1 week to go!! I'm pretty much ready. Made easier by going to Liam's parents' for Christmas lunch - so I don't need to worry about buying loads of food. I still need to bake some last minute gifts, and I haven't bought much for Liam yet - but I'm planning to take the children shopping on Tuesday for that...wishful thinking that it won't be super busy?!! ;)

Bank Holiday Sunshine

I hope everyone in the UK has been enjoying the bank holiday weekend? We've had fun the last two days, enjoying the sunshine. Saturday was a bit miserable (which I solved by making caramel sauce!) but yesterday and today have been wonderful!

Despite my sweet tooth, I've been waking up fancying savoury breakfasts recently, specifically eggs. Yesterday I had two slices of seeded toast with raspberry jam, plus two scrambled eggs...

This morning I also had two scrambled eggs, with one slice of seeded toast + pure spread, and an avocado nectarine 'salsa'...

These were both delicious, I love the egg-jam combo, and this morning's avocado was so creamy, delicious!

Lunches have also been great. Yesterday, Liam had a long shift at work so had requested a "light" lunch as he's usually too tired to eat much. I aimed to please with a summery salad (plus it meant I could spend more time in the garden before starting to cook!) - spinach, quinoa and basil tofu, plus mozzarella for the others...

This was really tasty, warm quinoa with cold spinach and tofu was a great combo, and it was filling without being too heavy. I also drizzled a little sesame oil in the quinoa for extra flavour, yum!

Today Liam had the day off work, so we went out for lunch. I had a sweet and sour vegetable stir fry with noodles...

...plus a bowl of sweet potato fries for everyone to share...

The sweet potato fries were, of course, amazing! The stir fry was nice - the vegetables were really fresh - but there was a bit too much sauce for my liking.

After lunch, the others had ice creams on the seafront...

but I went to Costa instead and got a iced vanilla soy latte...

Mmm, real coffee! I switched to decaf coffee a week or two ago as every time I had a latte I was getting horrible making-me-double-over stomach pains. However, when it started happening after some of my meals as well, I started to realise that it usually occurred when I had a lot of dairy. So the last few days I have been using non-dairy milks, avoiding cheese etc (although still eating trace amounts of dairy in cakes and chocolate chips!) and I am pleased to report that, so far, I've had no stomach pains. And (more importantly!!!) this coffee caused no problems, so I can start having caffeine again, yey!! :-D

I haven't really eaten proper "dinners" the last couple of days - yesterday I had lots of snacks during the afternoon. Including, but not limited to, several coconut cakes topped with raspberry jam...

and an Alpro Soya vanilla dessert with pb & chocolate chips...

So I ended up having dinner pretty late, and still fancied something sweet. Enter porridge made with a mashed banana and peanut flour, topped with Julie's peanut butter granola...

I think I should have cooked the granola for a minute or so more as it didn't get very crunchy, but it was still so addictive - I ate the whole batch over the course of the evening!

Delicious, I want to try baking lots of different types of granola now - so easy to make, I can't believe I haven't done it before!

This evening, I haven't actually had any dinner yet. We didn't end up eating lunch until 3.30pm as Izzy was awake at 4am so had a 2.5 hour nap in the middle of the day! I have made muffins this evening, but I will wait until I can take photos in better light to share that recipe tomorrow. I ate one of those straight out of the oven though, and will go and get more food once I publish this, I just don't know what I fancy/can be bothered to make!

We have made the most of the sunshine to go to the play park lots over the last two days. Izzy had been desperate to go for days but the weather kept preventing us, so as soon as we saw the sun was out yesterday, we knew what we had to do! Yesterday, my sister and her boyfriend joined me and the children - we went at 9.30am on Sunday morning, so the park was still nice and quiet!

Today, Liam and I took the children to the park twice. Being a bank holiday, it was much busier, but we still had fun. We first went this morning...

We had then planned to go straight for ice cream, but both children were very tired (aka grumpy!) so we went home for them to both have naps. We came back to the park on the way home from lunch later on...

I'm so glad we managed to fit in lots of fun this weekend! I doubt the sunny weather will be around for that much longer (it is already quite chilly even when the sun is out) and Izzy goes back to school next week anyway. She's really looking forward to going back, but I'm a bit sad - it's been fun to have her around more and not have to stick to the routine of the school run!

How has your weekend been? Did you do anything special today if you had a bank holiday? Oh, and I wanted to say 'have a great time' to all of you that are meeting up in Manchester tomorrow - I've been reading all your tweets and wishing I could be there...if only it wasn't so far away/so expensive to get there! I look forward to reading all about it on your blogs though! :)

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!