Mother's Day 2012

Well, this post is a day or two late but I still wanted to share the lovely day I had on Sunday. I took Sunday completely off - from blogging, from cooking, even mostly from photographing - Liam cooked all our meals for the day, and photographed most of them as well. Thanks Liam! :)

Yesterday was mostly spent attached to my Kindle. Have any of you read The Hunger Games? I'm sure some of you have as I first heard about it on blogs. I started and finished the first book on Sunday, read all of the second and 75% of the third book yesterday, and finished the third book off this morning. Whoops. I love reading, but now remember that when I'm absorbed in a book I'm pretty useless at doing anything else except the essentials!!

Back to Sunday though, as well as lots of reading, I did manage to do some other fun things that day! Liam and I have our birthdays three days apart in May, and with Liam being in a new job now, this will be the first year we haven't taken the week off work. Liam's birthday falls on a Saturday anyway, but mine will be a boring school day Tuesday, so Liam and Izzy (well, and Toby but he didn't really know what was going on) made an extra fuss of me on Sunday to make up for it. No complaints here!!

I slept in until 9am when I woke up to the smell of cooking downstairs. Liam brought me up a tray with breakfast on, whilst a very excited Izzy bounced up after him!! French toast with banana, raspberries & maple syrup, plus my usual latte:

Liam took photos before bringing breakfast up, and he liked the look of the maple syrup on the raspberries!

After breakfast it was time for presents - it really was like my birthday! As with breakfast, Liam took photos of the presents before bringing them upstairs...

Love all the artwork Izzy made at school, and Toby made the blue hands at toddler group last week!

Purple tulips are my favourite flowers :)

Pretty earrings that Izzy chose :)

Love this bowl and mug set (with Monday's breakfast) - so cute!!

So many lovely presents, thank you Izzy and Toby!! (& Liam for helping them shop!)

Mid-morning the children had a nap, which is when I started reading the Hunger Games, and before I knew it it was time for lunch! Liam cooked again, such a treat to have a day completely "off" from cooking! I do enjoy it, but it's nice to have an occasional break too. He cooked this sweet potato and egg salad (minus the chorizo) and it was delicious!

I'd cooked this once before, but it must have been over a year ago as I used chorizo that time. Just as good without - griddling the sweet potatoes with garlic added lots of flavour, and I did add a bit of ginger-mandarin salad dressing to the leaves.

After lunch it was time to meet up with more family - my Mum, Grandma and sister Sarah - to go for a walk...

and then it was time for cake! I made a lemon drizzle cake (sandwiched with lemon buttercream, topped with lemon sugar drizzle and lemon glace icing - same as for Toby's birthday and Sarah's work leaving do) as this was the popular choice, but bless Izzy - she got Liam to buy a carrot cake as well as that is mine, my Mum's and my Grandma's favourite.

I had a slice of each. The carrot cake was pretty good for a shop bought cake (it was the one from Waitrose's fresh section) but could've done with more icing, and the lemon cake is always a crowd pleaser!

I also gave my Mum a couple of presents:

A voucher to have a manicure or pedicure, and a mug I ordered from Photobox with a photo of her and her daughters on it. I was really pleased with the mug - it arrived really quickly and seems to be good quality too. The photo isn't stretched or anything which I was a bit worried about.

Back home, the children were getting a bit tired and grumpy, so we chilled out on the sofas - them watching a DVD and me reading more on my Kindle (it was addictive I tell you - a sign of a good book!), and Liam cooked dinner! He insisted he didn't need (or want) any help in the kitchen so I left him to it, bliss. He chose to cook a meal that he has cooked once before - butternut squash and goats' cheese risotto:

Yum. I never really fancy cooking risotto, but whenever I (or someone else) do cook it, I really enjoy it. Must remember that for next time!

Once we'd put the children to bed, Liam and I finished off the day by watching a DVD (Liam's choice - Green Lantern - pretty good) and sharing a cider (apple with vanilla and cinnamon - Liam thought it tasted like bubblegum!) and finishing off the cake - there was only one slice of lemon cake left sadly but I was happy to polish off the carrot cake instead!

A really great day, thanks to all who were part of it! I couldn't remember how we spent the day last year, so I looked back at my blog post from Mother's Day 2011. Liam worked 7am-5pm, I was too tired to make myself breakfast, only managed cheese on toast for lunch, and we had meat-free burgers, chips and corn on the cobs for dinner. This year was definitely a huge improvement, although both years did include time with family...and purple tulips...win!! ;) In all seriousness, Liam and I are both really lucky to live close to the majority of our immediate families. It's so nice to be able to get together for coffees, chats, walks etc on a regular basis, and days like Mother's Day are a nice reminder of that...with extra cake added in as a bonus!! :)

How did you spend Mother's Day this year? Or what did you do this weekend if you didn't celebrate it? (the US don't celebrate until May I think?) I can't really remember what we did on Saturday. Not much I don't think. I made the lemon cake while Liam took the children to visit his Mum and Nan, but I can't even remember whether it was sunny enough to go out or if we stayed indoors in the rain. One of the reasons I like recording things on my blog - my memory is rubbish otherwise!!!

Mother's Day

I hope you've all had a great day if you've been celebrating! Mine has been spent mainly with my children, and then this afternoon we took a cake over to my Mum's to share with my Mum, my Grandma and my sister...I love having my family all in the same town, makes getting together so much easier! :)

Liam left for work just before 7am this morning, and unfortunately the children got me up soon after...no breakfast in bed for me! I did however get a present that daughter had made at school (yey for her going back just for Friday morning - looks like that was good timing for making Mother's Day things!!)...a card with a rhyme and a gingerbread lady cookie...

I tried not to think about all the 4/5 year olds' hands that had gone into making this!! We shared it after breakfast (well, a latte for me, I was too tired to eat proper food) and it was actually surprisingly tasty :)

Once baby went for his nap, it was then time to bake... As Liam and the fussier of my sisters weren't going to be there this afternoon, I decided to make a slightly more adventurous cake than I'd usually be able to, and I'm relieved pleased to say it turned out brilliantly!! Parsnip and Maple Syrup Cake... I followed the recipe exactly except I used cinnamon instead of mixed spice as I wasn't going to buy a jar just for 2 tsp! Feel free to skip to nearer the bottom if you don't want to see step-by-step photos...not sure why I'm posting them (yawn!) except I took the effort to take them so may as well make use of them!!

First it was time to prepare the add-ins...

there was a lot of grating! Grated parsnips, grated apple, zest and juice of the orange, and chopped pecans...

*Note to self: next time grate the apple last so it doesn't go brown...not that it mattered for the cake, but it didn't look as pretty for the photo!!!

I then melted the butter, brown sugar and maple syrup...

in the microwave, to make washing up easier!

before whisking in the eggs and adding the flour, baking powder and cinnamon...

all stirred together...

then tip in the parsnip, apple, orange and pecans...

all mixed together, looked so good...

Into the sandwich tins...I didn't actually measure them as they're the only sandwich tins I have...they were a bit too full though so I'm thinking they're maybe a bit smaller than 20cm!!



and into the oven for 45 minutes...

The recipe is confusing as there are 2 different times in it, but as the comments suggest, 45 minutes is definitely the right one! So after 45 minutes they looked like this...

I think I should have let them cool a bit more in the tin before turning them out as they fell apart a bit, still salvageable though! :)

It was then time for lunch while the cakes cooled. Liam came home on his lunch break but we were both too tired to cook properly so just had cheese on toast...

I obviously had twice this amount!

Liam also brought home some flowers for the children to give me which I wasn't expecting at all - with daughter being in hospital etc we haven't been very organised lately so were just pleased she'd made something at school!

Tulips are my favourites, so pretty! :) apparently Liam was standing by the flowers being indecisive about colours - purple are my favourite and one of the checkout assistants suggested that orange would go well...I can't decide if she was right or not?!!

Obviously they haven't stayed on my cooker! Instead they're sitting on the dining table making the room look pretty, yey, I love having flowers in the house!

Liam also got my some Nak'd bars from him (I think he was feeling guilty for not having arranged anything earlier!!) a bit strange as I'm clearly not his mother, but hey, I won't complain about being given Nak'd bars! :)

I'm actually quite impressed that he bought me these rather than a standard box of chocolates...he obviously does occasionally pay attention to what I eat!! :)

Anyway...back to the cake...

In my hurry to get it ready, I actually forgot to take a photo of the filling! It was really simple though, just a 250g tub of mascarpone mixed with 3-4tbsp of maple syrup...

I was a bit worried that the mix would be a bit too runny to fill the cake, but actually once it was on the cake it was much sturdier than it had seemed in the bowl...

Ignore the dip bottom left - baby managed to grab a chunk out of it while it was on the counter!!! Still looked good enough to eat though...

I dusted it with icing sugar just before taking it round to my Mum's...managing to make a bit of a mess in the process!

Worth it in the end...

This was really tasty. My little sister (who I thought was less fussy than my other sister!) refused to try it, but everyone else - my Mum, Mum's partner, my Grandma, daughter and baby - really enjoyed it...

it didn't taste of parsnip at all, but had a lovely texture, next time I would put more pecans in it to give extra crunch. I was a bit worried about the maple-mascarpone not being sweet enough, but it went really well, yum. Although at 697 calories per slice (1/8th which is pretty much what most of us had) it's not one to be made too often!! When Liam finished work he came round and, slightly reluctantly, agreed to try it (he doesn't like carrot cake so wasn't expecting to like this) and actually liked it so much that he brought some of the leftovers home with him...success!! :)

Dinner tonight was nothing really worth writing about - we didn't get home from Mum's until past the children's bedtime so they had cereal and then we had meat-free burgers, chips and corn on the cob...

Healthy eating starts again tomorrow??! On a more serious note, I must start going to the gym again - I haven't been since daughter became ill about 3 weeks ago! Her antibiotics course finished this morning and her dressing came off her neck this evening so no more excuses. Liam oh-so-subtly pointed out the other day that seeing as I don't seem to be able to stick to a lower calorie allowance because I love food too much, I need to earn more calories by doing exercise so I can eat more. So true!