Sunday Morning = Coffee & Crumpets

On Friday, our wedding presents were delivered! :-D We only had a small gift list as most people chose to give us money or choose a present themselves, but a few people had requested a gift list to give them ideas. We were overwhelmed with everything that we received - our friends and family were so generous! One of the presents we were given was a coffee maker. I was very excited to try it out this morning. Sunday mornings can be a little trying in our house - Liam starts work at 7am, and the kids always seem to wake up even earlier than usual - or maybe it just feels like that because I know that around the country people are enjoying Sunday morning lie-ins! Today's early start was made a bit more bearable by this beauty though...

Mmmm, coffee...

I used this coffee as I had a sample sitting in the cupboard...

but I need to go to Waitrose later to buy some more ground coffee. Any suggestions? It's only the last few months that I've started drinking coffee so I'm a bit clueless!

Breakfast this morning was a good one - my 2nd mug of coffee with 2 crumpets - one with black cherry jam, and one with coconut butter...

Yum. I haven't had crumpets in ages! Both were delicious but I actually preferred the one with black cherry jam. I think I prefer the coconut butter on cold things like smoothies or cereal - I'm not so keen on the claggy/gritty texture it has when melted on warm things - good to experiment though!

The rest of this weekend has been pretty uneventful thanks to the rain - it's so horrible outside! Yesterday I didn't take a single photo of food that I ate...I always know the day's eating hasn't been so good when everything is too random and/or boring to photograph! Last night's dinner was actually delicious, but it was leftovers from Friday night. As per daughter's request, we had "that layered thing" - that'll be roast vegetable & lentil lasagne then!

I love this so much - comforting, but full of goodness from all the veggies and lentils.

Tasty too! Daughter is loving having more control over what we eat for dinner recently - she also chose the pasta bake we ate on Wednesday, and next week she wants cauliflower curry as well as another pasta bake...sounds good to me! :)

As well as receiving our wedding gifts, we also received our fruit & veg box on Friday. We haven't had one for a while as I'd postponed them during all the wedding chaos, being away on honeymoon etc. To be honest, I'd forgotten all about it until the confirmation email came through on Wednesday! There were some great products in this week's box though...

Lots of nectarines, bananas, pink lady apples and a melon...

lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, mushrooms and cucumber...

and finally potatoes, cauliflower, peppers, red onions, broccoli and candy beetroot...

Apparently the candy beetroot has pink and white circles through it when cut open. I like that our veg box provides seasonal produce, but usually puts in one more 'unusual' ingredient - another one I remember having was graffiti aubergine. It's a great way to discover new vegetables!

We've already used the peppers and the mushrooms in the lasagne, so now I need to plan some meals this week to make sure everything else gets used up. I hate wasting food, so find meal planning really helpful - otherwise if Liam had his way we'd live on baked beans on toast & pizza!! It's a good idea to have a healthy alternative in mind for his inevitable "what's for dinner?" question each evening!

Do you write a meal plan, or do you decide on the day what you feel like eating? I write a list on my phone of dinner ideas for the week, but switch it around if I don't fancy what is written down, or indeed if daughter has a better suggestion!

Weekend Highlights

Sure I've used the above title before but hey ho, that's what this post will be - the highlights of a great weekend :) can't post every little thing as we'd be here all evening!

Before I properly start, I have updated the Creme Egg Cupcake post, so you can all see the not so successful insides of this weekend's batch of cakes! Lots of those cakes were consumed by all of us, yum. I had a good deal going on with baby - my favourite part is the icing (sweet tooth!) whereas he only eats the cake as icing would be too messy, so we shared each time we had one...waste not want not!

As I mentioned yesterday, one of my friends was down for the weekend. "Hi Sarah" if you're reading this! :) She arrived late afternoon, plenty of time to play with daughter (she loved all the attention!) before dinner! Dinner was one of my favourites - Roast Vegetable and Lentil Lasagne. I hadn't seen Sarah since I stopped eating meat, but I hoped this dish would be a success with meat eaters and non-meat eaters alike, especially served with some garlic bread. As there were more of us eating, I cooked extra peppers...

pretty bright colours! This did mean that the lasagne filled up the whole baking dish...and overflowed in the oven creating a bit of a mess...whoops. Worth the mess when it came out though...

My plate...

I honestly can't remember if I had any garlic bread with this. I don't think I did. I know I wasn't intending to. I remember saying to Sarah that I wasn't having any. Yet a small part of me is niggling at me that I did have a slice in the end. Gah. My memory is getting worse. We didn't even have any alcohol! The lasagne was delicious anyway. That much I remember!

We also had pudding - something I'd been saving since the Exeter Food Festival...

Sticky Chocolate & Walnut Pudding...yum! Annoyingly this photo didn't turn out too well...

...but the taste was amazing! Slightly disappointingly, I only had one small bite of walnut, but the rich chocolate flavour and lots of fudgy date pieces made up for it! So good.

After dinner (and daughter's super late bedtime!), Sarah and I decided to rent a DVD rather than go out - we were both in need of a relaxing weekend. We watched The Rebound to make up for the lack of chick flicks on my birthday. It was pretty good, certainly the easy-to-watch type of DVD we were looking for, although I don't like how open they left it at the end...I want to know how the story actually ends!

While renting the DVD, I also picked up some cheap strawberries. Which leads me nicely onto this morning's breakfast. A change from the usual smoothie. Seeded toast with crunchy peanut butter and sliced strawberries...

This was really good. The strawberries were super sweet and juicy, a great contrast to the crunchy pb and bite in the toast. My new favourite plated breakfast combo I think (not to be confused with smoothies in a bowl which are still my current favourite breakfast over all!)

Lunch was something I'd been meaning to try since I came across it recently - Red Head Recipes' Bacon and Sweet Potato Frittata, minus the bacon.

I should've served this upside down so the sweet potato slices were visible. But I didn't think of that until after eating of course. Served with tiger bread (and more once the photo was taken!), mmm...

This was really tasty - I love the sweetness of the soft sweet potato. And a new, much better, method to cook frittatas! I've always previously just cooked them in the frying pan, and ended up having to grill them to cook the top as the bottom cooks quickly but takes ages to cook all the way through. Usually resulting in a burnt, stuck to the pan bottom too. But today's recipe said to cook over a low-medium heat with a lid on the pan. Duh! Why didn't I think of that before! The frittatas cooked much quicker and were perfectly set all the way through, and came out of the pan in neat slices easily, yey!

This afternoon, when Liam was back at work, Sarah and I took the children for a walk, to the play park and along the seafront. Some much needed fresh air! :)

Dinner tonight was a random selection of leftovers/food that needed using up. Tiger bread + leftover sweet potato (roasted) + sesame smoked tofu + some pesto to bring it all together? Yes please. I ended up having it as open sandwiches as there was so much of the filling.

This was delicious. I loved all the different textures and flavours :)

Predictably, there have also been lots of coffees and cupcakes consumed this weekend. However I'm feeling a little sick right now - a combination of over-eating and a cold appearing out of nowhere last night - so I won't include any photos of them in this post! Let's just say they were delicious at the time but I'm really looking forward to having a refreshing smoothie tomorrow morning!!

Hope you've all had great weekends too! What was the best thing you did and/or ate? For me the best thing was catching up with my friend, and the best food was probably the strawberries & peanut butter on toast. So good. All my other meals were really good too, but that was probably the lightest and therefore the most appealing right now! I just realised I ate bread at all three meals today, plus quite a bit of cake, eeek, no wonder I'm feeling so bloated!

Daughter's Request for Dinner

I have had the major munchies today!!

I started off great with Une Vie Saine's Blueberry Pancake Bake...

topped with a blob of peanut butter...

This was delicious, the peanut butter went all melty and the pancake bake was sweet and filling. I think next time I need to find a smaller dish as the pancake bake was so spread out/shallow that the blueberries filled the whole depth! Not that that is a bad thing, delish! :)

Lunch was a bit rushed as we spent the morning in town and by the time we got back everyone was super hungry. A perfect excuse to have a quick sandwich - peanut butter and blueberry jam...

PB&J sandwiches are sooo good, even with cheapo bread!

Unfortunately, despite also eating half of baby's cheese & cucumber sandwich, this wasn't very filling...it wasn't long before the afternoon munchies hit...

In the end I decided to have a couple of medjool dates stuffed with peanut butter instead repeating lunch...

One of my favourite snacks, but I soon gave in to the white bread temptation with a quick crisp sarnie...

Thankfully this, finally, kept me going until dinner...hate it when I just eat, eat, eat for the sake of it...always seems to be in the afternoon...boredom? Not enough food for lunch? Gah.

Dinner was worth the wait though. Daughter had been asking me all week to cook "the thing with layers" - for those of you who don't speak "4 year-old" this translates to lasagne...roast vegetable lasagne no less, yum.

I have shown this recipe before here, but I've decided to set out the recipe a bit more clearly today, a) because Liam brought an SLR camera home from uni so the photos are hopefully slightly better, and b) because I might actually get round to setting up a recipe page on my blog some day soon! So with no further waffling...

Roast Vegetable Lasagne
(serves 4-6)

• 4 peppers
• 2 red onions (optional, I didn't use today)
• 5g coconut oil (or other oil to roast veg in)
• 500g passata
• 2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
• pack of mushrooms (approx 250g), chopped quite small
• 400g tin green lentils (approx 265g drained weight)
• 40g butter
• 40g plain flour
• 350ml milk
• 6 lasagne sheets
• 70g cheddar, grated

First up, roast the peppers (and onions) at 190C for 30 minutes, turning half way through...

While the peppers are roasting, get started on the tomato sauce. First simmer the passata with the garlic...

I used this time to chop the mushrooms - I like them chopped quite small so that they become almost indistinguishable from the mushrooms in the sauce...

When the peppers have about 15 minutes left to cook, add the mushrooms to the tomato sauce and continue to simmer...

and then add the lentils just before the peppers are ready...

During this time you also need to make the white sauce - I do this between adding the mushrooms and lentils above. First melt 40g butter...

before mixing in 40g plain flour and cooking for a minute or two...

finally add 350ml milk and keep whisking to ensure a smooth sauce...

All the hot ingredients ready for layering...

and the cold...

I won't completely bore you with step by step photos of the layers (for that see original lasagne post!) but it goes: roast peppers - tomato sauce - lasagne sheets - white sauce - roast peppers - tomato sauce - lasagne sheets - white sauce - cheese. A couple of the prettier layer photos...

and the final layer of cheese before putting in the oven at 200C for 30-35 minutes...

after cooking...

This is so tasty...

I love it much more than meat lasagne - the peppers give it more substance - you get veggies to bite into as well as the slightly smoother tomato sauce, yum!

and best of all (!!) baby was too tired to stay up and have dinner with us, so I managed to save a portion to have for my lunch tomorrow, yey!

After dinner, I fancied something sweet so decided to make Averie's Peanut Butter Cups. I tried to make these before but they were a bit of a fail - only cheap milk chocolate available when I had the urge to make them, not enough chocolate and not enough patience to let them set properly. Today was different, I had dark chocolate and I forced myself to have patience...

I'm glad to say they were definitely worth the wait...

and I made 6 of them so if I can stop myself from going back to the fridge I have more to eat tomorrow! :)

A high note to end the day with! :) Indeed, looking back at this post, I've just realised that, with the exception of dinner (and a couple of unpictured lattes), every single thing I've eaten today has included peanut butter...yum :)

Oh and finally, just to write it down, I will be going to the gym tomorrow morning, ok? I haven't been for about a month, which is just ridiculous when I pay gym membership, and Friday mornings is the easiest time of the week to go (Liam at home to look after the children) so I will charge my iPod, get out my trainers and go do some exercise! & then I can eat more peanut butter cups afterwards!! :)