Weekend Highlights

Hello! Good weekend? We have mostly stayed inside sorting things out for the house move (well, sorting through things we won't be taking really - lots of too small clothes etc!)...at least the rain has forced us to make a start!

Despite the horrible weather, I have been craving smoothies/yoghurts/ice cream etc recently, I have a bit of a sore throat so that's probably why. This morning I satisfied the craving with an amazing milkshake - it might be a bit too cold for frozen fruit, but it's never too cold to blend banana, milk, cocoa powder, peanut flour and agave nectar...

A-mazing! Luckily I made double quantities of this with 2 bananas etc - I normally get 2 glass fulls when I make myself smoothies, but the children loved this choco pb banana milkshake so much that, despite making double, there was only enough left for me to have 1.5 glasses.

I've also been soothing my sore throat with some yoghurty snacks...

Alpro caramel dessert with tropical granola

Rachel's Pear & Plum yoghurt (really good!) with granola

And of course chocolate makes everything better...

This was yesterday. Today is probably the first day since Easter that I haven't joined in with the 'sharing an Easter egg in the afternoon' activity which seems to have become a tradition around here. I did sneak in some unpictured hazelnut chocolate though. And we do still have 4 Easter eggs left, so I'm not completely out of the woods yet!

There have also been some "proper" meals around here too. Delicious lunch on Friday - meat-free burgers, goats cheese, red pepper houmous, salad & pitta bread...

This was really good. I'd thought up the combo on Wednesday and had been dreaming about it ever since! It was super filling though, I could have probably done with just one burger and half the goats cheese.

We had more pitta breads for Saturday lunchtime. This time as a DIY, use everything up, meal with egg mayonnaise, basil tofu, goats cheese, houmous and unpictured cucumber which was added upon Izzy's insistence...I'd completely forgotten about the need for veg!

Yum, I love these type of meals. Egg mayonnaise and houmous did not go well together, but everything else was great.

We've also spent a bit more time on dinners this weekend. Things got a bit hectic last week so we ended up relying on pasta etc more than I'd like. I made paneer and pea curry for dinner last night (with white rice as Liam reckons he's "allergic" to brown rice and I didn't feel like dirtying an extra pan!)...

I love this meal, pretty quick to make too using curry paste and chopped tomatoes. The paneer wasn't as "squeaky" as usual as I'd had to stick it in the freezer when our fridge broke, and the defrosted version was a lot softer than usual. Still good though, and certainly better than wasting it.

Finally, Liam cooked dinner tonight!! Inspired by Amy's meal a few days ago, he made falafel burgers and sweet potato fries:

Yum! I was just about to write that the burgers could have done with a bit more spice, but we've just realised that Liam forgot to had the harissa paste which probably would have solved that problem!! We never manage to get oven-baked sweet potato chips to go crispy either...any tips? Still tasted amazing though, and such a treat to be cooked for, thanks Liam! :)

What was the best thing you ate this weekend? A toss up between the chocolate peanut milkshake and the falafel burger with sweet potato fries for me. Luckily I will be able to repeat both tomorrow - I've already pencilled in the milkshake for breakfast again, and there were enough leftovers tonight for me to have a repeat for lunch tomorrow - win!

Sunny Weekend

Hello! Have you all had a lovely weekend?

My weekend started with more Mississippi Mud Pie...

I was channelling memories of our honeymoon with this chocolate and cherry breakfast!

I was worried the rest of the day wouldn't be able to live up to this lovely start, but it did pretty well! ;)

My Dad was visiting for the weekend, and took the children to my Grandparents' for lunch. Liam and I made the most of the peace and quiet by going out for lunch ourselves. I started with a latte...

and then had goats cheese and caramelised onion on toasted sundried tomato bread...

and some chips to share with Liam...

This lunch was tasty, but I was a little annoyed. The goats cheese dish was the only thing on the menu that was vegetarian, it was marked as vegetarian on the menu, but when it came out it was drizzled with pesto that wasn't mentioned on the menu. And let's face it, in the little town I live in, the pesto probably wasn't vegetarian. I still ate it - the pesto was mainly on the tomatoes which I don't eat anyway - but I did mention it to the waiter when he collected our plates. Mainly so that they could either change their menu, or just not put the pesto drizzle on the next time. He said he'd check in the kitchen and came back into the room - but not up to our table - and just kind of shouted at me "you're ok" with a thumbs up sign. That annoyed me. I didn't make a huge deal about it or anything, but it just felt like he was really dismissive. Meh. We still had a nice lunch, it just irritated me a bit.

Rather than spend money on dessert, we walked home and had (another) big slice of mud pie. This stuff is so good! This was my piece which, admittedly, is rather huge...but Liam's was even bigger! I'm jealous of his ability to eat anything and everything without gaining any weight! ;-)

The children both had a nap when they got back from spending time with my Dad, so Liam and I got to sit down with our chocolate cake and watch a whole DVD in peace...bliss.

For dinner, I was lacking energy and inspiration so Liam went to Waitrose and bought some ready meal curries. They didn't have my usual cauliflower curry or lentil daal so Liam got me some aloo gobi saag (potato, cauliflower and spinach) plus the usual rice and naan. He did also get me chana masala but I gave that to the children - I don't do beans or chickpeas unless they are mashed/blended!

Yellow but tasty!

*****

Today has been mainly spent outside. We did a quick shop in Waitrose as soon as it opened, and then Liam to Izzy swimming while I stayed at home with Toby. I'd planned to take him for a little walk, but he was mega tired/grumpy, so he went for a nap and I got to spend time in our sunny back garden painting my toe nails! Bliss - definitely appreciating the child-free moments this weekend!!!

Once Liam and Izzy got home, we had lunch. I'd been looking forward to these for a while - crisps & dips!

Toby didn't quite manage to wait for the others to get back before he got stuck in...!!

His favourite was the sour cream dip, Izzy and I love the guacamole and Liam had no choice loves the salsa - perfect!

After lunch we headed back outside for a walk - it was too sunny not to really! Izzy took her scooter...

Rare photo of me for no real reason...

Playing down by the river...

We didn't walk too far as we'd chosen not to take Toby's pushchair, but it was nice to get out and stretch our legs.

Now we are all having a sit down before thinking about cooking dinner, getting everyone ready for the week ahead etc. This weekend has gone slower than most, but the two days still always go by too quickly!

What have you done this weekend? Is it spring yet where you are? Hopefully I'm not going to bring the bad weather back by saying it, but I wore flip flops today, yey! Definitely a sign that summer is on it's way to me! :)

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?!! ;)

Weekend Things - Meal Out + Lots of Chocolate

I'm sure I use first part of that title most weeks but hey ho! How were all your weekends? Good I hope. We had quite a quiet one which was nice.

My Dad was down visiting, so after Izzy had been to gym club on Saturday morning, he had Izzy and Toby for a few hours so that Liam and I could go shopping.

We had lunch first, obviously. We decided to go back to Giraffe, after we had such a nice lunch there a month ago. It is much easier when there are just two of us - we were seated inside immediately! I decided to have a "Hippy Hippy Shake" for my drink - a smoothie of pineapple, passion fruit, mango, banana and pomegranate juice.

Really tasty. I drank this way too quickly, but then stuck to tap water.

I actually ordered the same main as last time - a Farmers Market Vegetable Burrito - love this!

As we had the luxury of knowing that our meal wasn't going to be interrupted by the children getting bored, we decided to share a couple of sides as well. More like, I persuaded Liam to share so that I could try more things. It works. We, of course, had some sweet potato fries.

These came with chipotle aioli which was delicious, and the sweet potato fries were the best I've ever had - crispy on the outside but soft on the inside, yum.

We also shared some corn on the cob with red chilli butter.

These were ok, but could have done with being hotter. All in all, a great meal though. We were both too full to even consider looking at the dessert menu!

The main reason of the trip was to take back the dress I bought last time (nothing like leaving it until right at the end of the 28 day return period!) and to try to get my iPhone fixed (fail, it's out of warranty but apparently might be helped by updating the software...if only my laptop didn't take 2.5 hours to get only part way through step 1 of 5 of backing up I might be able to try this out!). We also made a trip to Hotel Chocolat, where I wanted to buy everything in the store. I managed to exercise some restraint though (!) and only buy two things. I let out a little squeal when I saw dark chocolate salted caramels, and fruity Christmassy pretty chocolates sounded great too!

I haven't actually opened the Christmas Mess chocolates yet (what is wrong with me?!!!) but the salted caramel ones, as expected, taste delicious.

At the end of our shopping trip, we went to Marks & Spencer. We had a gift card so decided to use part of it to give us an easy dinner. I opted for a Super Wholefood Salad, which I've seen raved about on several blogs.

I have to say, I actually didn't like this. The peppers tasted really vinegary, and the lemon dressing was too strong for me (even though I only used half of the pot). The butternut squash was also not cooked as much as I like - it was still really quite hard to cut. I ended up just eating the asparagus and broccoli.

Luckily, Liam had chosen a chocolate brownie dessert which made up for it - yum!

On Sunday, we met up with a friend who we haven't seen in ages. She has a son the same age as Izzy so it was nice to catch up. I had a quick breakfast before we went of spiced apple yoghurt with cider apple butter...

Delicious, but not overly filling. I was starving by lunchtime!

I woke up yesterday morning with the most awful shoulder/neck pain. I don't know what it was, and luckily it had gone when I woke up this morning, but it was so painful. I couldn't twist my neck at all and even sitting, let alone moving, hurt. Luckily Liam has had similar pain when he's trapped nerves in his neck, so he was quite sympathetic.

Therefore he took over lunch duties yesterday - he made tuna quesadillas for everyone else, and made egg mayonnaise and avocado (my request, not something he randomly came up with!) for me. He even chopped it all up so I could eat it one-handed, and photographed it too - thank you Liam! :)

I love this combination. I've been craving egg mayonnaise for days, and avocado is always a great accompaniment!

Dinner didn't really happen last night as we were all tired and I was still in pain. Luckily there was a mini pizza lurking in the fridge that fed the children, and Liam and I had unpictured peanut butter on toast, and then lots of chocolate! Perhaps not the healthiest or most exciting "meal", but it did the job!

What was the best thing you did this weekend? Any exciting plans for the week? We are off to Bath next weekend, which I am really looking forward to, I love going to the Christmas Market there. I'm also looking forward to having Izzy at home on Wednesday when the school is closed because of strikes - we've got plans to make muffins when Toby sleeps, and possibly go out on her scooter once he wakes up, depending on the weather - I can't wait! :) It will be nice to break up the week with a relaxed day - I hate the rush to get her to school each morning!

Edited to add: My brain keeps going back to the last paragraph of this post (above) so I thought I'd better add a disclaimer! Not that I can get what I want to say straight either...fuzzy brain!! I didn't mean to sound like I was trivialising Wednesday's strike at all. Obviously the strike is not "fun" and I really feel for the teachers and everyone else who is striking. I was simply talking on the surface level, that I'm looking forward to having an unexpected day at home with Izzy.