Giveaway Winner and Pancakes

Hello! Did you all enjoy some pancakes yesterday? I had them twice! First we had traditional crepes with lemon and sugar for breakfast…

Next time I need to make a double batch as both children loved these so much that I only ended up getting one pancake for myself! I made up for it this morning though by making pancakes for the 2nd day running…once Izzy had gone to school so there were more pancakes for me!!

Tuesdays are always a bit of a funny day meal time wise – the children go to Liam’s at 4.30pm and eat dinner/stay the night there, and I have spinning at 7pm. Normally I’d eat when I get home but I had a gym review booked for 8.30pm and wasn’t sure how long it would take - so at 5pm I ate an early dinner of more pancakes. This time inspired by Maria’s chocolate peanut pancakes with caramelised banana…although I managed to slightly burn mine, whoops, they tasted nicer than they looked!!

Topped with caramelised banana and Justin’s chocolate hazelnut butter, delicious!

And now to announce the popchips giveaway winner…

(there were 14 comments but the first two were the same entry)

Congratulations Laura @ A Daisy Chain Dream!

If you could email me your address at porridgeandparsnips@live.co.uk then I’ll make sure your popchips are on their way to you asap!

Thanks to everyone that took the time to enter!

Folk Week Fun

I have way too many photos to share from this week, but I'm a little pushed for time - I'm going away for the weekend in the morning so need to pack, and want to get an early night in too as Liam and I went out last night and had a little bit too much to drink, urgh, I felt so rough this morning but just tired now! Anyway, here are some of the photos my camera and phone have captured from this week - folk week is certainly a lot busier than the other 51 weeks of the year!!

There has been folky dancing...

Circus tricks...

and maypole dancing...

Plus lots of delicious food. Mainly in the form of cheese & sweetcorn pancakes for the children...

with Nutella & marshmallows as a change/treat filling for the last pancakes today...

I also had a pancake when we went out last night...

an Olympic special filled with fresh strawberries and blueberries, whipped cream and golden syrup...

This was divine, albeit very messy to eat!! The rest of the week I have been eating lots of food from the vegan food van - my favourite, I am so glad to see this each year!! On Tuesday I had the pitta bread with 13 ingredient "Goodness salad", falafel, houmous and tahini...

I love this pitta, but it is so difficult to eat that the rest of the week I stuck to having just the salad topped with houmous...

I love this salad so much, it is advertised as having 13 ingredients - grated carrot, raisins, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, sunflower seeds, red cabbage, chopped tomato, at least 3 or 4 different types of green leaves... that makes 10 or 11 ingredients I think so there must be a few other things in there too!

We've also had some nice drinks in the form of lemonade from the fresh lemonade stand...

and a few too many glasses of Pimms and lemonade last night....

Despite feeling slightly worse for wear this morning, we headed into town again today for one last trip to the festival. Pancakes/salads for lunch as above, and then Izzy had her hair braided on the sea front...

This looks just like the braids I used to get done as a little girl - same colours, patterns etc!

We also went to a craft fair type marquee which Mum had told me also had a stall of Italian pastries and other foods hidden in the corner. We came home with bags of chocolate covered honeycomb and sweet chilli peanuts for Liam, a bag of chocolate coated sunflower seeds and 3 little pastries for me and (unpictured) fudge for the children.

Mmm, so good! The filo pastry on the right was filled with lemon cream, and the one on the left - my favourite - was filled with zabaglione (Italian custard). The middle one was a ball of lemon flavoured cake, which was a little dry, definitely not as good as the other two but still quite tasty!

Once we got back from town, the rest of today was spent at home. The children played with the bubble gun that Izzy bought in Butlins with some of her birthday money...

and when Toby had his nap Izzy and Liam painted a clock that Izzy was given for her birthday (thanks Auntie Vicki if you're reading this, so pretty!)...

A fun end to folk week. It'll be interesting to see which part Izzy remembers most. At the start of the week her main memory from last year was the cheese and sweetcorn pancakes. Last year me, Izzy and Toby shared one pancake and one falafel pitta between the three of us for our lunch, so on Tuesday we naively thought that Izzy and Toby would share a pancake between them. No chance! They had a cheese & sweetcorn pancake each on Tuesday and Wednesday, day off yesterday and then the chocolatey ones today! Liam had a Nutella, marshmallow and biscuit pancake last night - which probably wins the prize for messiest pancake - but the rest of the week he has mainly chosen to have the pittas with salad and falafel...further proof that they are truly delicious!! :)

Anyway, enough rambling - I need to chuck some clothes in a suitcase and then get some much needed sleep! Have a great weekend everyone!

Raspberry, Lime & Coconut Pancakes {recipe}

Happy Shrove Tuesday! Do you remember last year when I ate pancakes for every meal? I wasn't planning to eat that many again this year, but I've eaten 2 batches of these pancakes so far as the first batch was too thin/spread all over the pan into a, still tasty, mess. Just for you (!), I changed the recipe and made them again...and I'm so glad I did as the 2nd batch was perfect! More pancakes this evening, which I'll come back and tell you about later, but for now - go make these!

Raspberry, Lime and Coconut Pancakes
(serves 1 - makes 3 pancakes)

• 75g self-raising flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 20g desiccated coconut
• 15g sugar
• 1 egg
• 15g oil (or melted butter)
• juice of half a lime
• 30-35ml milk
• 12 raspberries

1. Place a small amount of oil in a frying pan and place on a low-medium heat.
2. First combine all the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, coconut and sugar) in a bowl.
3. Add the egg, oil and lime juice and mix.
4. Add the milk slowly - you want enough milk to "wet" all your flour etc, but you want the batter to still be quite thick.
5. Place the batter into the pan in three sections. Put 4 raspberries on top of each pancake and press down gently.
6. Cook the pancakes until they start bubbling. This will take a few minutes - be patient! Cooking the pancakes slowly gives a nice fluffy inside without a burnt outside.
7. When the pancakes start bubbling, gently flip them over and cook on the other side for another minute or two until golden brown.
8. Serve with more raspberries and coconut, and syrup if you'd like. Enjoy!

I'm not having much luck with my pancakes so far today. As I said above, the first batch I made spread all over the pan - the batter was way too runny so I ended up with 1 giant pancake mess! I adjusted the ratios for the second batch and these were perfect, but only 2 of them successfully survived the flip. Oh well, they tasted amazing. I'm not overly happy with any of the photos I took but they'll have to do - I'm way too full to consider eating any more pancakes until Izzy gets home!!

I suppose the third pancake wasn't too ugly - looking at these photos, they all seem to be rather misshapen anyway! Haha, taste over appearance, right?!! ;-)

These tasted perfect - all fluffy on the inside and crispy on the outside. They reminded me more of biscuits than breakfast! The tang of the raspberries and lime juice cuts through the sweetness though - delicious. They were loosely based on my strawberry and coconut pancakes but I didn't want oats in these so I changed the recipe around a bit. That's where I went wrong with the first batch really - oats seemingly absorb a lot more liquid than flour so I had to increase the flour and decrease the liquid in second batch. These are great now though, and you could change up the flavours with different fruits etc. My go-to pancake recipe when I'm only cooking for myself now I think! :-)

Have you had any pancakes yet today? Or are you planning to? I've already had texts from a couple of family members this morning - my littlest sister ate 8 crepes before going to school and my Dad had American pancakes with bacon and maple syrup in a cafe. I didn't have time to make the children pancakes before school (I don't know how my Mum does it!) so I just gave them shop-bought Scotch pancakes and will make "proper" ones later. Izzy's having pancakes for pudding with her school lunch today too...we'll all be pancaked-out by the end of today...just how it should be!! ;-)

Pumpkin Pancakes with Chocolate Chips

The other day, I made Chelsey's Fill Me Up Blueberry Pancakes. They were delicious, and indeed very filling, but presentation wise I messed up. Ever since, I have been craving pancakes. In part to prove to myself that I can make them look vaguely decent, but mainly because I just love pancakes.

Sadly, the blueberries in my fridge are all gone. But that's ok, because I've been craving pumpkin recently anyway. I know, I know, it's not pumpkin season yet, but with this weather it may as well be! Plus I have 7-8 tins of pumpkin sitting in the cupboard, and Liam gets a bit irritable when I start hoarding food so it will please him if I start using them up!!

So here it is - vaguely based on Chelsey's pancake recipe - as in, I used the same amount of oats and flour. Her recipe is vegan, gluten-free and quite healthy, mine...is not.

Pumpkin Pancakes with Chocolate Chips
(serves 1)

• 30g plain flour
• 30g oats
• quarter tsp baking powder
• cinnamon (I used half tsp)
• ground ginger (again, I used half tsp but you could use more for a stronger flavour)
• 1 medium egg
• 60g tinned pumpkin (or a mix of pumpkin and milk - see 'edit' below)
• 5ml oil, plus more for frying the pancakes
• handful of chocolate chips (optional, but recommended!)

Toppings:
I used coconut butter and golden syrup (we're all out of maple, annoying!) but these would be great topped with anything!

EDIT: The second time I made these, I used 40g pumpkin, 20ml milk instead of all pumpkin, and it made a much lighter, fluffier pancake...I recommend!
Mix all the dry ingredients together (except choc chips), and then add in the wet ingredients and mix. The mixture should be quite thick - as in it wouldn't fall off a spoon easily.

Heat oil in a pan (important: wait for oil to get quite hot, that was one of the mistakes I made last time).

Add pancake mix to pan in 3 dollops. Sprinkle chocolate chips on top of the pancakes.

Once the pancakes are bubbling, flip them over (or when you think they're ready to be flipped - mine didn't bubble today as I think the mixture was a little too thick, not that I'm complaining). Try not to be put off by the lurid yellow colour of the underside!

Cook second side for a little bit (sorry not to be specific, I tend to cook whilst doing several other things so don't do exact timings, but probably only a minute or two more) and then serve.

These were very dense, which I loved, but I guess if you substituted some of the pumpkin for milk it might make them a little lighter.

Top with whatever takes your fancy - in this case coconut butter and golden syrup :)

Delicious! I'm so pleased these turned out so well! It's completely normal to go straight to your laptop to write a blog post after an exciting breakfast right?!! :-D

Pancake cravings subdued...for now! Good thing too as we're off to a food-filled wedding tomorrow, so I think I'll be needing a slightly lighter breakfast or I won't have room to fit all the later food in!

What is your favourite type of breakfast? And your favourite pancake variety? I love all breakfasts - porridge, smoothies, yoghurt bowls, pancakes, french toast...french toast usually wins as my indulgent breakfast, but I've been loving pancakes recently! I only started making American style pancakes since starting this blog - before that we always used to eat crepes with lemon juice and sugar, but I love all the extra variety you can make with big fluffy pancakes. I'd love to hear all your favourites to give me some more ideas!

Two Months To Go!

Today is exactly 2 months until Liam and I get married - 2nd July 2011, I can't wait! Although we still have sooo much to do -

• haven't even thought about flowers yet! 17/05 Booked one of Mum's colleagues, who also works in a florist shop, to make bouquets/button holes etc night before, and then decorate venue morning of wedding
• going to phone bakery tomorrow that I came across at Exeter Food Festival to see if they're free to make our wedding cupcakes (do have a back-up option if not) 03/05/11 - phoned bakery and they're free to make cakes, yey! Going to see them on Friday (06/05) to discuss in more detail 06/05 Cakes all sorted, very pleased! :)
• also need to phone hairdresser to discuss details and about her possibly her also doing my make-up (trial run of hair booked for next week - tick!)  Had hair trial (details here, although not 100% happy yet) and make-up trial booked for 28/05 so will also discuss hair again then
• going to registrars tomorrow to give notice for our marriage 03/05/11 - met with registrar, although do need to go back again 2-3 weeks before wedding to finalise ceremony details
• need to find, agree on and buy shoes for bride/bridesmaid (a big issue - I have really tricky feet to buy shoes for, and little sister and I have different opinions on heel height for bridesmaid shoes!!) 07/05 - have bought my shoes, still got to agree on some for little sister! 16/05 - mine and sister's shoes sorted...phew!
• still need to sort out male outfits - Liam's got his suit but needs shirt, tie and shoes, and ordered baby page boy outfit today but will need to check it, and get shoes 27/06 bought Liam's shirt, shoes etc last week and baby tried on his outfit yesterday so Mum's friend can turn trousers up...nothing like leaving it until the last minute!!
• meeting with caterer on Saturday but hopefully food is more or less sorted 06/05 met with caterer and discussed food, she's even going to experiment with quinoa to make quinoa salad! :)
• need to research and book a hotel to stay in for our wedding night 08/05 Mum has booked a room for us that my Grandma is paying for as our wedding gift, thank you both!
• lots of little bits like book for guest to sign, cushion to tie rings onto for baby to carry down aisle etc
• plus probably zillions of other things I've forgotten!
• ... some of which are:
• Buy wedding rings 20/06 Ordered wedding rings a few weeks ago and picked them up today, phew!
• Get my engagement & eternity rings adjusted (too big at the moment so constantly swivelling round on my finger!)  14/06 Got my rings back today, yey, I missed having them on my finger!!
• Make and send out invites (Liam in middle of doing this at moment) 09/05 - invites sent out - post here
• Choose songs & readings for ceremony, plus song for first dance - 03/05/11 - asked sister & Liam's sister, but not chosen which readings yet! 13/06 Readings chosen and we confirmed them with registrar today.
• Sort out table plan once RSVPs are back (stressful!!) - 03/05/11 - was awake at 4am worrying about this (!!) so have now provisionally planned all the tables, although will obviously have to adjust if some guests can't make the wedding 27/06 We are still waiting on a couple of RSVPs so haven't been able to do table plan yet...stress!!

EDIT 03/05/11: I thought of some more things to add to the list during the night, so I've added them to then end. I will probably keep updating this list, crossing things through as I go along, to use as a working list to help keep me vaguely on track! 

We have at least got our honeymoon booked (the weight loss challenge did not happen in the end due to lack of motivation time if you do read that post!) and we've also got the venue, photographer and DJ sorted...we got the big things done early, but loads of smaller things still to do!

As if all the above wasn't enough, today we had a dress(es) change of heart! I tried my dress on today for the first time since the middle of November, and eek, you can tell I've gained weight!! I just checked back and I was just over half a stone lighter then than I am now, and unfortunately all the extra weight seems to have settled back on my tummy :( I can, luckily, still fit into my dress but I struggle to breathe!! That's ok - healthy eating mission back on track, I can lose half a stone or so in 2 months if I focus. There are also a few adjustments I want to make to the dress, so Mum is going to phone the local dressmaker tomorrow. Can't give details at the moment unfortunately as Liam reads this blog and don't want to ruin the surprise, but I'm really happy with how I think my dress is going to turn out :)

The more costly issue is the bridesmaid dresses - turns out our daughter's flower girl dress (ivory with purple sash & other details) is a completely different "ivory" to my dress! And my little sister's dress, which is all purple but from the same range as daughter's, has never been one we were 100% happy with as it's a bit too formal/structured. It's nice, but not perfect. I did recently come across a dress I love for my sister though...

(source)

More the floaty look we were hoping for. So, new plan is to order the Coast dress; if it suits her and we all like it etc then we will send both the original dresses back and buy daughter a new dress in the right shade of ivory and accessorise it ourselves with purple sash etc. Phew, think my Mum is feeling the stress more than I am - not sure how much more her nerves can take!!!

Ok, wedding stuff over for now. Food! Looking at today's meals, you wouldn't know I was trying to lose weight!! Although, in my defence, a) I only ate twice due to getting up later/being super busy during the day, and b) I'd already bought dinner before I tried on the dress and truly realised how urgent the weight loss issue is!!

So first meal of the day, after the children miraculously gave us a nice lie-in - brunch - I ate this about 10.30am so, with all the running around to supermarket, dress trying on etc, this counted as lunch too. As it was a bank holiday, daughter had requested pancakes which worked perfectly as we were completely out of frozen fruits and bananas for smoothies/porridge (horror!! hence the need for supermarket trip!) American-style chocolate chip pancakes (recipe I followed here) topped with PB&Co Dark Chocolate Dreams and lots of maple syrup...

Mmm, so good. I had two huge pancakes, although I felt full after only one! I kept going though, sharing some of my second one with baby (who'd already had most of a pancake of his own! His little belly was solid afterwards but he doesn't seem to know when to stop - I thought babies only ate when hungry/stopped when full??) and finished it all...maybe I need to change my "must eat everything on my plate" mentality?! After this I felt a bit bloated and overly full, whoops.

Next up was a trip to Waitrose to pick up lots of fresh and frozen fruit & veggies. We waited for baby to have a nap first, so by the time we got back from the shop it was about 2.30pm, no one had had lunch and I was meant to be at my Mum's to try on my wedding dress! I decided that as I still felt full from the pancakes, I would have lunch later, but by the time we were done it was 5.30pm so I figured I could wait until dinner.

Dinner was a good one. On Saturday at the food festival, I'd eaten a Pie Minister pie which was delicious, so I kept an eye out for them at Waitrose. No luck. But then I was checking out the reduced section at the end and spotted a Pie Minister Matador Pie - beef steak, chorizo - perfect for Liam! I was just about to go off to re-hunt for the rest of the range when I spotted a reduced Heidi Pie too - result!

Liam ate his for "lunch" while I was at Mum's, and then he and the children had tuna sweetcorn pasta mayo for dinner - quick & easy! I had my Heidi Pie with some broccoli for dinner - sweet potato, goat's cheese, spinach, pastry - what's not to love?! Although at 608 calories just for the little (to me!) pie, it's a good thing I bought this before I tried on the dress!!

I love this. I'm not always a fan of pastry, but this one is great. I also love the texture of the sweet potatoes, and adore the strong goat's cheese flavour...

when I came across a big chunk of goat's cheese I couldn't resist taking a (badly lit) photo!

Mmmm, so good. It was delicious at the food festival, but even better at home - fresh out of the oven, on a plate instead of in a cardboard box (!) and with some green veg on the side, delish. Plus, despite the (to my eyes) small size of the pie, this was super filling so has kept me going all evening. I'll have to remember that tasty, slightly higher calorie food, is usually a better bet than bland, low calorie food. Hopefully for the next 2 months (and beyond!) I can discover lots of equally tasty foods that are a little lower in calories though...a happy medium!

I also need to start exercising again - remind me/tweet me/give me an occasional kick up the bum please? I have gym membership so it seems silly not to make use of it. The membership also includes use of the local pool. I used to go semi-regularly in the evenings, once the children were in bed, but got put off by having to walk home with wet hair in the cold & dark. Now the evenings are lighter again, I must re-start this...exercise that I enjoy is rare so I should really stick with it!!

Need More Sleep + Pancakes

I have been awake since 3.30am. Not good. Especially as the children didn't wake up til 7am so I have no one to blame but myself. At 5am I gave up, went downstairs and made the first of two (so far) maple walnut lattes, mmm, caffeine.

What could make my morning better?

Fluffy American-style pancakes with chocolate chips?

Good. But even better when covered in sliced banana, peanut butter and copious amounts of maple syrup (I poured more on after every few bites!)...

Oh yes.

My mood was also improved when the postman rang the doorbell.

This rather plain looking box contained several goodies which I will post about later. For now it's enough to say it contained a few jars of this...

Maybe my day won't be so bad after all. But I'm off to have a nap now just to make sure. Night!