First Week of Summer

My kitchen currently looks like this...

Icing sugar gets everywhere!!

...so obviously the sensible thing to do is write a blog post, haha, sorry Liam!! ;-)

I can't believe we are already coming to the end of the first week of the summer holidays, and what a gloriously sunny week it has been. We've settled into a nice routine of doing something in the mornings (park, picnic, beach etc) and then coming home in the afternoon. Toby then has a nap, Izzy either has a nap or does some colouring inside, and I sunbathe in the garden. It is way too hot for the little ones to be outside 12-3, but the same rules clearly don't apply to me...I love the sun so am making the most of it while it's still here!

Today as slightly different as we met up with friends at 11.30am and went to the local woodland/river area for a picnic. I took too much food, as usual...

The box contains the best thing - egg mayo sandwiches, my favourite! I was only planning to eat the sandwiches, strawberries and water, but Izzy, Toby and Izzy's friend polished off most of the strawberries between them - I think I got 2! - so I ended up eating a few coconut biscuits instead! I never used to take things like crisps, biscuits etc to picnics but I found that everyone who we met would have these things so then Izzy would spend the whole time looking longingly at them. Today however my friend had just brought sandwiches and crisps with her, but we were happy to share the rest of our stuff! Those My-5 fruit shoot things are a new-to-me find and seem to just be fruit juice and water (?) which I'm ok with as an occasional treat. Toby used to have a fruit shoot whenever we went to Costa (whoops, not great ingredients!) but then they changed the recipe and he seems to be allergic to something - got the full on shakes and head jitters :( - so these were a good alternative that made him think he was having his old favourites!

Anyway, parental self-guilt over, we had a fantastic time today. We met up with my friend, her 13 year old daughter and her 5 year old son (who goes to school with Izzy). It was great having a teenager with us as she took the two 5 year olds (making the most of being able to call Izzy that until her birthday next Wednesday!!!) into the river...something Liam and I would never have done! At first they just dipped their feet in, but then they ended up stripping off to their pants (the 13 year old had a bikini on anyway) and getting soaking wet, such fun!! Toby does not like swimming/the sea/rivers so he just stood a bit away from the edge watching them, which suited me to be honest as whilst I trusted the 13 year old to watch Izzy, if Toby had been in the river too I would also have had to get in, and I much preferred chatting with my friend!

Yesterday, we went to the sea front for ice cream with Mum...

And then I took the children onto the beach. Izzy absolutely loved the sea and spent the whole time up to her knees in it (I wouldn't let her go in any deeper without me!), whereas this was the one and only time that Toby voluntarily got his feet wet - the rest of the time he & I sat close to the water's edge "chucking" stones in!

We have also been to the play park several times, as well as quite a bit of time spent in the garden. This weather makes it so much easier to avoid hearing the children (well, Izzy) saying "I'm bored...!" as there are so many places we can walk to when it's not raining!

I have also been eating more salads...

and bowls of yoghurt...

I made the most of Julian Grave's closing down 50% sale to stock up on a few goodies...

but when I opened the pack of chocolate covered pretzels yesterday, I then ended up eating the whole bag in one go rather than the few sprinkled on yoghurt that I'd planned, whoops! Liam and I are going to the cinema tomorrow night so I'm going to take a bag of chocolate popcorn with me to save some money - cinema snacks are such rip-offs!

Tonight I am off to the Body Pump class I first went to last week - looking forward to it! And then we have a busy day planned tomorrow (*hint* that first picture was a result of early birthday cake making!) so I'll be back after the weekend to tell you all about it.

Have a great weekend everyone! I've now got 20 minutes to clean up the kitchen before my Mum arrives to look after the kids, eek!! ;-)

Summer Holidays Week #5

I can't believe school starts back tomorrow! These last 6 weeks have gone so quickly! My last recap post was a bit too link heavy, but the last few weeks I don't feel I've been posting as much so I still have loads to share with you! So as not to make this post too long, I will only write about week 5 in this post, and I will look back at the week we've just had in the next few days. I'm sure once school has started back I'll need an excuse to reminisce about the holidays! So the last post ended on Friday 19th August, so let's start where I left off.

That weekend, Liam and I went to Torquay for our friend's wedding. When we got back on the Sunday, I ate two English muffins with blue cheese, plus an apple for lunch...

Yum. I adore cheese - it always makes me miserable when I try to give it up!

We were all pretty tired by evening so dinner was a quick one - meat free "chicken" fillets, pasta and corn on the cob - this is our version of fish fingers, chips and sweetcorn that my Mum used to cook for me when she was in need of a quick dinner!

Plus lots of butter and ketchup, of course!

On Monday 22nd we went to Crealy. We also met up with my Auntie and Uncle in the morning, who were visiting, so I made a batch of lemon drizzle cupcakes.

I love these - love the crunchy lemon sugar drizzle under the butter icing!

I used my Tuesday as my WIAW post so you've probably already read about that. On the actual Wednesday, I made Oreo cheesecake and we ate baked Camembert for dinner. For breakfast I had scrambled eggs, a crumpet with raspberry jam, and a chopped nectarine. Random, but delicious!

Oh, and Toby sat in a "big boy's chair" to eat his breakfast...noooo! My baby's not allowed to grow up!!! :(

He's been climbing out of his cot the last few days as well, sad times, I want him to stay a baby as long as possible! He's 20 months old, and has always been big for his age (11lb 3oz at birth) but he still doesn't speak so it's easy to still "baby" him. I'm sure it wont be long before he's chatting back to me as much as Izzy does though!

Lunch on Wednesday was another random meal. Liam wasn't at home, so I decided to make the most of eating things he wouldn't want. It's not so much that he wont eat these things (although he's not keen on avocado) but he wouldn't have considered it a proper meal. The children and I were happy though - raw mushrooms, avocado and goats cheese, plus balsamic vinegar for me.

Yum. I adore avocado, Toby liked the mushrooms and Izzy loves goats cheese so we all swapped bits of the meal...a good combination of favourites!

On Thursday, I had a bit of a bad start to the day. Or good, depending on how you look at it. Breakfast was most of the bowl of chocolate cashew butter...

Plus a coffee, whoops.

There was then an incident with Toby chucking his cereal all over the kitchen floor.

So, understandably I feel (!), I took myself back to bed when the children had their morning nap (as much to stop me carry on eating chocolate as anything else!) and started again at lunchtime.

Lunch was a good re-start - mashed avocado and nutritional yeast on top of seeded toast, topped with pumpkin seeds...

Izzy liked this combination too, but Toby wasn't impressed by the mess the mashed avocado made. He's the boy who hates getting sand on his hands/feet when we go to the beach. He's sometimes better with food now, but when he first started eating solids it was really difficult, as every time he went to grab something, he'd then insist we wipe the muck off his hands, so he never actually ended up eating anything!

For dinner, I tried to make Mama Pea's "Cheese" Stuffed Bean Burgers however they didn't exactly work - they fell apart in the pan, so the "cheese" filling oozed everywhere. They still tasted good though, re-shaped onto bread rolls and served with corn on the cob...

This is one of the reasons why I like cooking meat-free meals - less chance of giving me and the family food poisoning, I hope!

On the Friday, I posted about Fudge Babies! I did eat some regular food as well though - a smoothie for breakfast which Toby wanted to get his hands on!

A baked sweet potato with goats cheese for lunch:

and my favourite roast vegetable lasagne for dinner:

I love this - so many flavours! Izzy and I also shared a piece of Oreo cheesecake for dessert, deliciousness in mini form!

My sweet tooth wasn't satisfied though, so I also had the last lemon drizzle cupcake once the children were in bed.

Last Saturday I posted about here, and last Sunday and Monday were covered in my Bank Holiday Sunshine post. I will write another post about Tuesday through today soon...I'm finding this post a bit long now, so I'm sure you all are too!

Question(s) of the day: If you have children, do you feel you "baby" the youngest child/other children? Or if you don't have children, did your parents try to "keep you young" when you were growing up? My sisters and I always felt that my Dad wanted us to be/treated us as younger than we were when we were growing up (he preferred the toddler stage to grumpy teenager stage I think!!) and I used to hate it. But now I am doing the same to Toby! It makes me sad, the idea of not having a "baby" baby anymore, but I will have to accept that he's growing up one day! I think once he starts talking I will start calling him a toddler, but, as I say to Izzy, they will both always be my "babies" really!!

Summer Holidays Weeks #3 and #4

Last week I forgot to post a re-cap of Summer Holidays Week #3! The weeks are going by so fast! :( I will try to cover both weeks in this post...apologies in advance if it gets super long!

I've already written about Week One here. And the last post was Week Two. Now onto Week Three...

My Week Two post ended on Thursday 4th August. On Friday 5th August we went away for a long weekend to Woolacombe. I wrote about the first part of the holiday here, and the second part in this post.

Our first proper day at home was Tuesday 9th August - a fun day at the beach that I covered in my What I Ate Wednesday post.

On the Wednesday, Liam was lovely - bringing me flowers and making me a smoothie. I was so surprised by Liam's kindness that I didn't post about the rest of the day. It was pretty standard, but some yummy food was involved. A cereal bowl with lots of blueberries and nectarines for breakfast...

and a delicious spinach, mozzarella and pesto quesadilla for lunch...

Izzy and I also snacked on some frozen grapes, sitting outside in the sunshine whilst Toby napped.

I love frozen grapes for a summer snack, so refreshing!

Thursday started with Izzy and I making a repeat of the smoothie Liam had made for me the night before. Lunch was a poached egg and jam sandwich...

The jam is a good substitute for ketchup, but egg sandwiches are always better with fried eggs. Liam prefers poached though, so sometimes I have to compromise!

For dinner we had egg fried rice with peas, soya beans and grated courgette...

Simple, but really tasty. The courgette released a lot of liquid whilst cooking, so this took a lot longer to cook than usual, but it was still really good!

Friday 12th August was Liam's brother's 21st birthday. We all went out for a meal at a Mexican restaurant, which was delicious. I love Mexican food, but had never been to this restaurant before - definitely one to visit again.

On Saturday I went to my friend's hen do, and on Sunday I had a few messy kitchen results, but some yummy food too!

It seems I've written more posts than I realised this fortnight! I don't want this post to be all about links back to old posts. The rest of this week is less covered though as my laptop broke on Monday night. So annoying, but luckily I was able to get it fixed over the phone, phew!

I did cover Monday in my What I Ate Wednesday post - I had a hospital appointment, so Liam and I had lunch out at a vegetarian restaurant first, delicious!

On Tuesday, we went to Costa for a treat. It's still a novelty as our town has only had one for a few weeks! I had an iced peach tea...

Nice, but not as nice as the raspberry version. And a mini pecan and banana bread...

I actually ended up having two of these as Izzy's bottle of Innocent smoothie filled her up so much she couldn't eat her banana bread. And, like my Mother before me (no offence Mum!), I am the human dustbin - eating any of my family's leftovers!

We did have a nice walk home to burn off a few of the calories though...

On Wednesday, I gave chia seeds another try. I prepared a half portion of Laura's Vanilla Chia Seed Pudding the night before, and in the morning topped it with peanut flour sauce and fresh plums...

I tried to like it, but I just can't. It's the texture that I dislike, so I guess there's not really any way to disguise that! I ate the plums and a bit of the top layer of the pudding (ie the peanut flour!) but there was no way I could finish it.

Luckily I had lunch plans on Wednesday so I knew plenty of food would be eaten before long! I went for lunch with my Dad, as well as the children of course. I chose a vegetable curry which came with rice and a poppadom...

and I also ordered a side of sweet potato fries! I  know they don't really go with the curry, but I was so excited to see them on the menu - a new addition since I was last in that pub. Everyone shared them anyway so I only got to eat about half of them though - next time I go there I think I'm just going to make up a meal out of different sides, yum!

Despite the rather large lunch-time meal, when my Dad said he was going to order pudding I couldn't resist. I chose a slice of banoffee pie...

Not the best banoffee pie I've ever had, but I still loved it. Izzy was too full for dessert, but just like her Mother, didn't want to miss out. So she ordered sticky fudge ice cream. I don't think she was expecting it to be quite this big!!

Luckily, as you can see in the background, Toby was more than willing to help out!!

By the time we walked home from lunch, it was raining hard. Toby doesn't really understand the concept of his pushchair's rain cover...

Haha, makes me laugh every time! Normally he sticks his head properly out, and then complains when he gets wet!!

Dinner on Wednesday was everyone for themself. I can't remember what anyone else ate, but I had some dips Mum had given me with various things to dip in them...

I didn't end up liking the dips (the sweet potato one and the guacamole were too spicy, and the cannelini bean one had an odd texture) and Izzy ate most of my pepper, so this ended up being a very light meal. So it was no surprise, as shown in the post about my new hair cut, that I ended up eating half a tub of Ben & Jerry's ice cream that evening!

Thursday was also covered in the above post, so I'll move quickly on to Friday, which is actually my today. Liam and I are away for the weekend at a friend's wedding, so I am writing this post on Friday, but will publish it on Sunday.

Friday started with some wonderful pumpkin pancakes. I didn't really have lunch - instead snacking on various little things, like these peanut crackers that I picked up at the oriental grocery store on Monday...

These are so addictive - the peanut butter filling is really creamy and sweet. My kind of snack! I also had a couple of unpictured iced lattes.

Once Liam finished work, we all headed outside to make the most of the sunshine. We went down to the seafront where the others bought ice cream. I resisted as it was only an hour or so before dinner, very proud of myself!! Although of course this is how I should behave most of the time!! Despite being sunny, it was so windy on the seafront...the sea still looked great though.

We then went to the park on the way home. Liam loves the park as much as Izzy does!

For dinner I made a recipe from the Vegetarian Living magazine I read on the train on Saturday. Spicy (or not so spicy in our case) cashew and mushroom rice, with a blob of sour cream dip on top...

Despite the less than attractive photo above, I thought this was really tasty. As did Izzy - she ate all of her portion plus Toby's leftovers. Liam, however, has decided that he no longer likes cooked mushrooms, so spent the meal picking through the dish looking glum. I know he is still a much more willing/adventurous eater than a lot of people, but I really really hope this isn't the start of a slippery slope into fussy eating!!

Do you live with anyone who doesn't eat the same way as you do? Any tips with how to deal with it? Do you cook separate things for them or persuade them to try "your" food? I'm really reluctant to start cooking separate meals as that is what my Mum did when I was growing up - she ended up cooking 3 or 4 variations each mealtime, and both my sisters and my Dad are still quite "fussy" to this day (although one of my sister's is getting better due to her boyfriend cooking lots of vegetables for her!!) Plus I'm lazy, and cooking separately seems like more work. Liam does sometimes cook for himself though - when I go to exercise classes in the evening he'll use meat that's been in the freezer since January (!) to cook for him and the children, it's just not very often as I don't exercise very often these days! I think I'll go back to cooking vegetarian meals I know he likes - nachos, Mama Pea's sloppy josephines, Mama Pea's quinoa pizza casserole etc for a while to ease him back into my cooking!!

Summer Holidays Week #2

Last week I posted a re-cap of the first week of our summer holidays, so I decided to do the same again this week. It's a good way for me to remember all the things we have done - if the summer holidays continue at this rate, they'll be over way too soon!! The re-cap is a bit early this week as we are off on holiday this morning! :-D We'll be back on Tuesday, and I've set up a couple of auto-posts for while we're away, so hopefully they'll work!!

Monday:
Our daughter's 5th birthday. We had such a great day - relaxing in the morning, and then a trip to Crealy in the afternoon. Izzy seems so grown-up, especially since she started school in January. It was weird to compare similar photos - on Monday she rode a pony at Crealy, just as she had 3 years before on her 2nd birthday!

August 2008 - Izzy's 2nd Birthday

August 2011 - Izzy's 5th Birthday

Liam is pretty sure it was the same horse as well!

Tuesday:

One of my friends came round for brunch on Tuesday, bringing lots of croissants and pain au chocolats with her! I ate two croissants with blackcurrant jam, and some blueberries. Plus coffee of course!

Izzy insisted I took a photo of her as well, haha, I think she's getting too used to me blogging!!!

In the afternoon, I took Izzy to the doctors, and then Liam joined us after work for us all to go get late-lunch. We forgot the camera so I'll have to rely on Instagram photos...they don't do this meal justice!! A delicious butternut squash & goats cheese lasagne from the 'Posh' food van...

This was so full of flavour, I will have to try to recreate it when we get back next week!

On the way home we stopped at Costa - it only opened in the last week or so, so still a novelty - where I had a raspberry iced tea...

Loved this! Quite sweet, but I found it even more refreshing than iced coffee! They do a peach flavour too which I will try out next time!

Whilst I was cooking dinner on Tuesday, Izzy played in the garden (overlooked by the kitchen) - bubbles in mis-matched pyjamas anyone?!!

Dinner was inspired by Mama Pea's Thai Curry Fries but majorly simplified - I will have to try the real version some time!! As I've never seen pre-bought sweet potato fries in the UK (anyone??) I had to chop them myself - not so pretty and the knife gave me a blister on my finger - but still as tasty!

I coated them in a mix of coconut oil and curry powder...

and baked them for 30 minutes at 180C.

I also cubed a pack of paneer...

and fried it for about 5 minutes in a mix of coconut oil and (a little too much!) curry powder.

As with yesterday's dinner, I'm loving curry flavours at the moment! I also made a sauce by mixing a pot of Total Greek yoghurt, yet more curry powder, and a little agave nectar...

and served all the curry components with some simple broccoli...

This was so delicious. I adore sweet potato fries of any description, and the yoghurt sauce was great for dipping!

Wednesday:
Was covered pretty thoroughly in my What I Ate Wednesday post! The only thing I didn't share was a photo of daughter's hairstyle, so she wants me to post one now - pretty plait complete with new hair ties that she got for her birthday!!

Plus a new headband added just before we left the house...

Thursday:

My Grandma's birthday. We were meant to be meeting her in the morning, but as it was pouring for rain, we postponed until the afternoon, as I posted about here. After I wrote yesterday's post, Liam and I went out for the evening with my sister and her boyfriend.

We went for food first, and I couldn't resist getting the falafel and houmous pitta for the last time...

and Liam was persuaded to get the same too!

This is so delicious. I took a photo of the salad for those interested...

The way they served it, it was actually only 2 salads - the bottom layer had grated carrots, super plump raisins (Liam reckons they were too big to actually be raisins) and sesame seeds, then the top layer had leaves, red cabbage, poppy seeds, tomato...and presumably a few more things I missed to get up to the 13 advertised ingredients! Delicious!

After our pittas, we made room for some brownies that my Mum had recommended. We shared one pot between us...

These were so dense and filling - more like fudge than brownies! And with clotted cream too :-D

We then met my sister and her boyfriend. It was so busy at the pub where the band was playing that we ended up buying our drinks at a pub just along the seafront, then going back to the pub with the band to listen to them play! I had a few of these...

I was very impressed by all the add-ins, most pubs just add citrus to their Pimms, but this pub had bought in mint, strawberries and cucumber specially for this week, yey!

Ok, time to hit publish now! I'd already written most of this post yesterday, so just quickly added in the details of last night as we're now off on holiday!! I've got a couple of posts scheduled to auto-publish, so hopefully they'll work! If not, I'll "see" you on Tuesday...have a great weekend everyone!! :)