All Things Chocolate

I'm not really that much of a chocolate person. I would never choose a chocolate dessert in a restaurant, or chocolate ice cream...there is usually a flavour that sounds more interesting to me than chocolate.

The last few days, however, I can't get enough of it.

Chocolate granola...

Lizi's chocolate granola, coconut yoghurt and raspberries

Chocolate porridge...

Well, grey-looking blueberry porridge in an almost-empty Nutella jar!

Chocolate milk...

With a few drops of peppermint extract...I'm loving chocolate-mint at the moment.

And chocolate mud pie...

Oh yes. Believe it or not, I don't think I'd ever actually had Mississippi Mud Pie before. I remember many years ago I used to have a Mississippi Mud Pie flavoured lipbalm (from Body Shop I think?) but I'd never actually tasted the real thing.

3 different layers of chocolate is really hard to photograph!

Well, today I changed that. This recipe was super easy to make, and the result was fantastic.

When I first peeled the parchment away, I was a bit concerned as the edges looked a lot drier than I'd expect from a mud pie. But not to worry, that was just the biscuit crust. The inside was deliciously gooey. If I'm going to eat chocolate desserts, they have to be fudgy. Dry chocolate cake = a big no no!

Have you ever had Mississippi Mud Pie before? What are your favourite chocolatey desserts, or ways to eat chocolate? As I've said, I would never order a chocolate dessert in a restaurant (I can always try Liam's anyway as that's all he orders!) but I do like homemade gooey chocolate desserts such as brownies or chocolate frosted traybake. I can add Mississippi Mud Pie to that list now! I'd still normally choose to have a non-chocolate dessert though. Or a few squares of good quality dark chocolate. That normally satisfies any chocolate cravings!

Pizza Night and Magazine "Me Time"

I feel like I haven't blogged about a normal days food in ages. Of course, it was actually only a few days ago that I wrote my last WIAW post, but meh, I haven't written a food day post this month and, more importantly, I haven't shown you my new favourite baked good yet!

So this is what I ate yesterday. I started the day with a smoothie - banana, frozen blueberries, spinach, Kara milk and xanthan gum topped with loads of peanut flour sauce (30g peanut flour, agave, milk - I kept adding more sauce as I ate).

I've been having this smoothie quite a lot recently. I love that it feels quite light, but is still really filling. I make the peanut flour sauce quite thick so that it gives the smoothie a bit of 'bite'. Yum.

Despite the fact that we had glorious sunshine yesterday, I'd decided to make soup. Not just any soup though - Cashew Carrot Ginger soup from Mama Pea's book.

This was delicious. Quite spicy, and I loved the flavour of fresh ginger running through it. The cashews gave it a unique texture which I found took a bit of getting used to, but Liam - who didn't know the soup had cashews in - didn't even realise they were in there...result! :)

I also made Emma's Peanut "Popcorn" for us all to snack on while the soup was heating up.

These were quite nice, but I made the sweet version whereas I should have gone with Emma's favourite and made a spiced version - mine didn't have as much flavour as I would have liked. Toby loved  them though - all his!

Yesterday afternoon I took Izzy to the doctors for a final check on her neck. Her blood test results came back all great, but the doctor just wanted to check how the lymph nodes were now. She only found two slightly swollen nodes, but they were tiny in comparison to what they were, so she thinks they are just "reactive" because they are on the site of Izzy's scar. Not sure I entirely understand what she means, but hey ho, as far as the doctor is concerned Izzy is fine, so that's good news :) Thank you for all your well wishes, I really appreciate it.

After the doctors, we met up with Toby and my Dad and headed down to the sea front. The others all had ice cream, but I opted to have a raspberry iced tea from Costa instead.

(recycled photo)

I love this iced tea, but almost immediately after drinking it I got a really bad headache that refused to shift all evening. The iced tea is basically just sugar so I don't know if that caused it, or if I was going to get a headache anyway, but not nice. I ended up going to bed about 9pm!

I wasn't feeling up to cooking so when Liam got home from work he cooked a quick pasta dish for the children, and then once he'd put them to bed he cooked us egg fried rice.

Thank you Liam! :) This was tasty - just brown rice, peas, sweetcorn and eggs - simple but comforting, just what I needed.

After eating this, I suddenly felt really hungry. This is where my "favourite baked good" came in. A couple of days ago, I decided to bake Averie's Fudgy Nutella Brownies with Cream Cheese Frosting. The brownie part of these was so easy to make - no whisk required.

My Nutella swirl wasn't as neat as Averie's, but as it was soon to be covered up by cream cheese frosting, it didn't really matter! They still tasted divine! The brownie is probably the best I've ever eaten - so rich and fudgy without being sickly, delicious! At first I wasn't sure the icing layer was necessary, and said that next time I'd just make the brownies on their own. But now I'm not so sure. The brownies are indeed amazing with or without icing, but the sweet frosting layer has grown on me too!

So I ate one of those last night after dinner. Delicious, but still not enough to shift my headache, so that was when I called it a night and headed to bed.

*****

Today has been a relaxed day. This morning, I ate Strawberry Coconut Pancakes for breakfast.

For lunch I ate Happy Healthy Mama's Avocado Egg Salad, on top of some Rude Health multigrain thins...

This was really good. I loved the crispness of the multigrain thins, and as avocado and egg are two of my favourite foods, I was bound to love the topping! The avocado is also a good substitute for mayonnaise, although to be honest I've already given up on avoiding dairy. I haven't got a clue what my body wants. It was fine with the, clearly full of dairy, cream cheese frosted brownies, so for tonight's dinner I decided to go along with what all the family wanted - pizza from Waitrose.

We had one caramelised onion and feta pizza (our favourite!)

and one spinach and ricotta pizza...

Yum. I had two slices of each pizza, plus two slices of garlic bread. This plate x2...

This has caused my stomach some pain, but no where near as bad as when I had burritos the other night, yet this meal had way more dairy in it. Confused.com. As some of you suggested, I really need to go to the doctor rather than keep guessing what is wrong with me...time to let the professionals do their job I guess!

As we had to go to Waitrose to buy the pizzas, I also bought a couple of treats for me - 'Cook Vegetarian' magazine and a new-to-me chocolate...

Saturday afternoon "me-time"! :) Well, I only had time to flick through the magazine quickly so I will read it properly again soon. Quite a few recipes caught my eye though :) The chocolate was only ok. I normally prefer dark chocolate, but was drawn in by the coconut layer. It wasn't coconutty enough for me though and the whole thing was just really sweet. I would have much preferred to have some Lindt dark chocolate with sea salt!

What is your favourite type of chocolate? Milk, white, dark, flavoured? Like I said, I normally eat dark chocolate, and love Lindt's Sea Salt bar. I do always eat a few squares of Dairy Milk caramel when Liam has that though! Let me know if you've tried any "interesting" flavoured bars that I might not have heard of as well!

Weekend's Meals

Hope you've all had a good weekend! Can't believe it's the end of half term already! Well, daughter not back to school til Tuesday but Liam back to uni tomorrow.

Anyway, this weekend I have pretty much eaten 4 meals each day - breakfast, lunch, dinner and chocolate...chocolate counts as a meal category right?! I stocked up on chocolate in Waitrose yesterday, although all the bits I've eaten this weekend have actually been a bit disappointing...means the best is yet to come though! :)

First up, Saturday, breakfast. Amazing cocoa-raspberry porridge topped with fresh coconut...

Yum. I did sweeten this with a little Sweet Freedom, but there was still sharpness in the raspberries to provide contrast to the creamy cocoa porridge and fresh coconut. I love fresh coconut. I should really have it more often. A pain to open though - I got Liam to deal with it. In our old house we had a concrete step he used to smash them on, but this house only has wooden decking so first he tried a smashing with a wooden rolling pin, before eventually getting one of the holes open with a corkscrew, and then more rolling pin bashing! It was funny to watch but he wouldn't let me take photos!! The end result was good though...

So good!

After breakfast we went to Waitrose. As well as the usual grocery shopping, we hit the chocolate aisle. This was my haul...

Geo Bars 25% off, Green & Black's 2 for £3, Reese's peanut butter cups I had never tried before, and the little bars of Divine and Montezuma I thought would be good for portion control!

Lunch was simple poached eggs on seeded toast...

followed by the peanut butter cups...

I had 2 and gave my daughter the last one as they were quite sickly! (that sounds awful palming off my unwanted food to her, she was more than happy to accept though!!)

I can't decide if I like these or not. I think I like the concept, but the actual result is a bit artificial tasting... I will just have to make my own instead following Averie's recipe...looks great and a nice simple ingredient list! :)

For dinner, I decided to make bean burgers from The Vegetarian Cookbook...

a bargain I found for £3.99 in The Works in Taunton...I was even more pleased when I went into WHSmith after and found it "on offer" for £7...I do like a bargain! :)

The bean burgers were apparently meant to look like this...

but I decided to serve ours with sweet potato chips and broccoli instead of the bun. The recipe was surprisingly simple. Mashed kidney beans (don't mash so hard that you crack the bowl like Liam did!!)...

plus a mushroom/onion/spices mix...

= bean burgers! (plus a little flour to help shape them up!)

I also had sweet potato chips cooking in the oven whilst I was prepping the burgers...

all served up...

slightly burnt, but really nice! Considering I don't like kidney beans (yes, I was the awkward child who couldn't, and indeed still can't, stand baked beans, yuck!) I wasn't sure I would like this, but it was delicious.

Not surprisingly, as its main flavours are cumin and ground coriander, it tasted a lot like falafel...yummy!

On to Sunday. I started the day with a smoothie - banana, tinned peach slices, passion fruit, a date, coffee (Sunday mornings = 6.30am start = coffee needed!) and xanthan gum, topped with more passion fruit seeds and fresh coconut...

I'm loving fresh coconut at the moment! I liked the taste of this but wasn't too impressed with the passion fruit seeds - my teeth didn't like the crunch!

Mid-morning my Mum came round to look after the children while I went to the gym. It was quite busy but I still managed to do 50 minutes cardio - rowing machine, cross trainer, wave and cross-wave. I was planning to do some weights but my session was cut short by a text from my Mum saying "baby needs his Mummy!" so I quickly stretched and rushed out, texting as I left to say I was on the way, only to receive a reply saying "he's ok now" grrr! He'd just woken up a bit disorientated but was absolutely fine by the time I got home!! Oh well, I still got a good workout and the children had a great time playing with their Granny! :)

I got home from the gym about 11.30am and lunch was going to be just after 12.30 when Liam was on lunch break, so I didn't really know what to do in terms of eating. I ended up just having a Dairylea strip to tide me over...

(boring pic!) and then lunch soon after was a baked sweet potato with goat's cheese...simple but tasty...

Yum! :) Once Liam went back to work, I put the children for a nap and then munched on some chocolate!

This was nice but I was a bit disappointed - for some reason I'd expected it to have the lovely bubbly texture of Conscious raw chocolate, when in fact it was just solid dark chocolate. Good dark chocolate, but just plain solid chocolate nonetheless.

I then went for a nap myself to keep me out of the kitchen!! I slept for 1.5 hours, daughter slept for 2 hours and baby slept for 2.5 hours...a good afternoon!! :)

Dinner was another new recipe. Mama Pea's quinoa stuffed peppers. These were gorgeous...

topped with homemade guacamole. I just blitzed up an avocado, some lemon juice and some sweet chilli sauce. I normally mash this, so it was a lot smoother than usual (must've been having a blonde moment!) but still delicious...

the quinoa-tomato mix inside was so tasty too...

Both dinners this weekend have been added to the must make again list :) I'm loving trying out new recipes, and pleasantly surprised that the rest of that family are eating them too! (I did add bacon bits to the others' peppers tonight to appease Liam, but the had the bean burgers same as me)

Despite dinner being really filling, I still had a third, unsuccessful, attempt at chocolate...

nice taste of chocolate but owww the chilli burnt the back of my throat! I tried for 3 bites but couldn't even manage to finish it!! Annoying as I ended up eating half of Liam's 100g bar of Green & Black's milk chocolate, plus a Geo Bar instead...grrr, an uncontrolled end to the weekend!!

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!!