WIAW - Lunch In The Sun

Morning! Happy What I Ate Wednesday! I have another busy day planned today, but am feeling unusually full of energy this morning so decided to write this post before my friends come round at 10.30 - I'll no doubt be too tired again later! Anyway, this is WIAW so no more rambling...let's focus on the food! :)


I love the design for this month's WIAW - Jenn does such a great job! I didn't squeeze as many veggies in as I'd have liked this week, but I will definitely try to improve over the rest of the month!

This week's WIAW is based on Sunday. My friend, Sarah, was arriving at lunchtime so the morning was spent doing lots of housework! I can't actually remember what I had for breakfast, and can't find any photos of it, oops, so let's skip straight to lunch!

When Sarah arrived we decided to head straight out to make the most of the sunshine. We went to a local pub that has an outside seating area, and all had "pink" drinks! Pink milkshakes for the children...

...and pink ciders for us...

Strawberry and Lime cider - love this glass!!

As well as being my friend, Sarah is also Izzy's Godmother, so Izzy of course insisted on spending the whole time attached to her side. Haha, cute??!!

There weren't many vegetarian options on the menu (they'd even got rid of the brie and caramelised onion chutney sandwich that Liam and I both used to love) so I had a super cheesy goats cheese and red onion pizza...

This was ok, but a bit too weighed down with cheese. Not exactly the summery lunch I was after!!

After lunch we went for a walk along the seafront...

Well, a dance in Izzy and Sarah's case!

It was such a lovely day on Sunday - such a shame that the weather has changed for the school holidays, but at least we got to enjoy it while it was here!

We were planning to go to the park on the way home but it was sooo busy that we saved that (and ice cream!) for Monday. Instead we went home and relaxed for a bit, and then had dinner.

Butternut squash and goats cheese risotto...

Waitrose didn't have any butternut squash this time, so I used coquina squash instead. It was a much brighter orange colour, but it was also much sweeter than butternut. A bit too sweet really, but luckily the goats cheese provided a bit of sharpness to balance it out.

Sarah and I (once I'd checked that she wanted to keep the chai syrup as her birthday present) decided to try out the raspberry iced tea syrup alongside our dinner...

Another pink drink! This was lovely, and so simple to make - just ice + syrup + water. Makes me wonder why I pay so much for it in Costa - I'll definitely be glad to make this at home over the summer! :)

Once the children had gone to bed, Liam, Sarah & I opened the ice cream! I'd bought one tub of Ben & Jerry's raspberry white choc, and one cookie dough. Sarah chose to share "Liam's" cookie dough one, which meant that I ate the raspberry one myself over the course of Sunday eve and Monday, whoops! This was what was left after Sunday's eating anyway!!

Not a great photo, but delicious ice cream. The chocolate fudge core in the middle is really dark and bitter, then sweet vanilla ice cream with white chocolate chunks, and slightly sharp raspberry ice cream...perfect! :)

Do you eat differently depending on the Season? What foods do you like in Spring/Summer? Heavy cheesy pizza is definitely not spring like to me! Nor is risotto really but that is quite a "safe" option to give to meat-eating guests. Raspberry ice tea and fruity ciders in the sunshine however are perfect! After quite a high calorie weekend, I've been trying to eat a little lighter the last couple of days. Lots of yoghurt messes, wraps, salads, stir fries etc - more the type of food I like to eat when the weather is warm anyway. However, today the weather has turned cold again (luckily, as our fridge is broken, so all our dairy products are currently being stored in a cool box outside the back door!!) so I think I'm going to go make myself a bowl of porridge now, yum! Have a great Wednesday everyone!

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! :)