Whole Foods Goodies

My brain sometimes struggles to formulate words for my posts (hence the lack of posting this week - I've been so exhausted so each night I've either spent most of the time relaxing in the bath and/or going to sleep super early!) but today I've got loads to say! I am however still really tired, so I will probably keep this post relatively short and then post again tomorrow...will see how it goes as I get typing!

Despite having a stressful week (loads of important phone calls to make, no baby-free time to make them blah blah is beginning to stress me and cause me not to sleep properly!) today has been really good! :) My Dad came down yesterday...bringing with him my (5 weeks early!) birthday present!! :) he was in London yesterday for a couple of business meetings and I begged him to go health food shopping for me before his train home! The most convenient shop for him to go to was the Whole Foods Market in Soho so this was what he brought me...

I am very impressed and grateful for all that he bought... I can't imagine my Dad in a health food shop!! I had texted him a list of possible purchases, and apparently he went into the store, found a friendly looking shop assistant, showed him his phone and then just followed the shop assistant around the store to all the products!!

All the goodies together...

I was so excited to look through all this!! I wish I lived nearer to London/could afford to visit so I could browse the stores myself, but Dad going shopping for me is a good substitute for now! :) While searching for stores near to where he'd be I also discovered Planet Organic's Website which I think I will be ordering from in the near future...order only needs to be over £30 to get free delivery, which I'm sure I'll be able to manage!!

Back to today's treats though! My main requests (especially as they can't be purchased on Planet Organic) were PB&Co's Dark Chocolate Dreams and Chia Seeds. Sadly the store only sold PB&Co plain crunchy and smooth varieties - boring! Dad did succeed with the chia seeds though - 2 packs so I hope I like them, looking forward to experimenting soon!

In the bag was also a jar of Cacao Brazilnut Bliss (to make up for lack of PB&Co Dark Chocolate Dreams) and a jar of pumpkin seed butter (they didn't have any sunflower seed butter...I'm quite impressed that Dad thought to get alternatives!!)...

I immediately (of course!) tried a spoonful of the cacao brazilnut bliss, it's quite nice but a bit grainy. I haven't opened the pumpkin seed butter...don't want to have finished up everything before my birthday even arrives!!

There was also a big jar of raw honey and a jar of pollen grains...

I randomly added the pollen grains to the bottom of the list after seeing them on a blog, not really expecting Dad to get them, and now can't remember which blog it was or how they used them, but will give them a try soon...got to have at least one random item in there!! :) looking forward to trying the raw honey too, yum.

Another alternative by my Dad (I am so impressed he even went into Whole Foods, let alone think of substitutes himself!!) - I'd asked for carob flakes, which they didn't have, but I'm looking forward to trying this carob powder...

And last, but by no means least...Conscious chocolate bars!! My favourite! :) Mint, Orange and Nutty...yum yum...

I of course had to eat one of these immediately! I chose the mint one...

I love Conscious chocolate. It has by far the nicest texture of any raw chocolate I've tried, and this mint one was no exception, really nice with a strong, but not too strong, minty flavour too :) I was very restrained and kept this in the fridge, just having one piece at a time, which made it last all day, delish!

All in all, a fantastic early birthday present, thanks Dad! :)

Another lovely surprise was that last night my sister and her boyfriend came round to give Liam and I our early wedding present! (2 early presents in 24 hours, bizarre but fab!) the present is from my other sister as well, and is for one night away at a posh country hotel nearby...my sisters thought it'd be nice for us to have a bit of a break before the stress of last minute wedding preparations! The package includes dinner, breakfast the next day, a bottle of champagne, chocolates and afternoon tea on our choice of day, plus full use of the leisure facilities (gym, swimming pool, jacuzzi, sauna etc) and my sisters are going to look after our children while we go...bliss! We've decided to go for the Friday night of birthday weekend (Liam's birthday is 12th May and mine is 15th May so we tend to celebrate together!!) so we can spend the Friday-Saturday relaxing, but still celebrate Liam's birthday on the Thursday and my birthday on the Sunday with the children. Can't wait! :) So appreciative to all my family for being so generous, I'm so lucky to have them!!

Back to the food though...as mentioned earlier, I've been super stressed today. I don't really know why, I've got a super long to-do list and I've just let it all build up until it's too much and getting me really down. I hardly have any baby-free time to do anything in, so when baby napped this afternoon I decided to tackle the financial phone calls, but then couldn't find Liam's most recent payslip which I needed...aaargh!! Rather than acting like a normal adult (!), I headed for the food cupboard to ease my stress!! First a chocolate fudge flapjack bar...

This was ok, but not great. Luckily my semi-sensible brain kicked in and decided that sunshine and a smoothie would be more relaxing...

a simple smoothie of a banana, some frozen exotic fruit (melon, pineapple, mango & papaya I think), cocoa powder and milk, this was tasty. It also made loads - I had another glass then saved the rest for my daughter to have after school, which made her very excited, bless! I only managed about 10 minutes in the sun before baby woke up from his nap, but it still helped, as did sleepy baby cuddles afterwards! :)

After Monday's disastrously chunky smoothie...

...I've been a bit put off using my food processor this week...still intact spinach stems are not good!! I will post more on that tomorrow though... hint: I bought myself a new blender :-D it arrived this afternoon but I haven't even found time to open the Amazon box yet!!! I thought the my food processor would still be able to manage a pure fruit smoothie like the one I had this afternoon though, but it did not like all the frozen fruit - was leaking out round the top of the lid! Hope I haven't broken it - I still need it to make nut butters - but definitely the right decision to purchase a blender for my smoothie making!

Dinner tonight was something I've been meaning to make for a while to use up our huge amount of leeks (buying some the day before some more arrive in the veg box is not good!) I found a recipe on BBC Good Food for Spaghetti with leeks, peas and pesto. I didn't follow the measurements - just used the amount of leeks we had, the correct amount of spaghetti for our family, and just poured peas into the pan - but apart from that I followed the recipe. This made lots!!

Delicious...

I really liked this. It was simple but fresh tasting, I think I would add a bit more pesto in next time though for a stronger flavour.

Right, I think that's me done for tonight! I've got a couple of recipes that I will find time to share at some point over the weekend, and I hope to back tomorrow with some smoothies made in my new blender...can't wait to open it up in the morning!!

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!

Super Saturday

I'm currently waiting for a cake to come out of the oven (will share the details later if it's a success!) so it's the perfect time for a post about yesterday - a great day! It started off with a super green smoothie...

Tropical Green Smoothie

• 1 banana
• 1 pear
• 1/3 of a fresh pineapple
• 2 handfuls spinach
• 60ml vanilla rice milk
• xanthan gum

Topped with toasted coconut flakes...

I loved this! Will definitely be including more smoothies/green smoothies from now on - so refreshing and feels like a great start to the day :) I am however very envious of all of you with decent blenders that can make pure green smoothies - the best my food processor can manage is green with darker green flecks!

Lunch was a quick one as we were off to see her daughter in her dance show. I had wholewheat penne with some peas added for the last few minutes of cooking, served with a "sauce" of sun dried tomato houmous and nutritional yeast...

this was really tasty, and the houmous was such an easy way to make a sauce - I just stirred it and the nutritional yeast through the drained pasta whilst it was still on the hob to warm up, yum.

Then it was time to go to the dance show - daughter was so cute! She was in the second youngest group - the littlies always make the audience go "awww"! & her costume was a bright pink leotard and tiara with fairy wings and a crown, bless! She didn't know all the steps as she'd missed the rehearsals and first couple of performances, but she followed along a second or two behind everyone else...as she had a huge dressing on her neck I hope people wouldn't have thought badly, they all look so cute even if they don't know exactly what they're doing!! Daughter then joined us in the audience to watch Acts 2 + 3, which my sister was in. I was very good and just stuck to water in the intervals - daughter and Liam had ice cream in interval 1 and chocolate in interval 2!!

The reason I managed to resist anything was that Liam and I were going out for dinner to celebrate our anniversary :) We decided to go to a local restaurant we could walk to so we weren't so rushed. For my starter, I had lightly spiced butternut squash...

This was amazing, so thick and creamy, and the spice was delicate but not at all overpowering...I plan to recreate this very soon! :) I also had a mouthful of Liam's starter - roasted pepper and goat's cheese salad (what I would've chosen if the soup of the day hadn't been butternut squash!)...

this was tasty, although piggy that I am, I'd have wanted it to be double the size - my soup was definitely more filling!

For main, I didn't have a lot of choice! When we'd been to this restaurant before, there had been a large choice, with their menu including a pizza section, a salad section and a pasta section as well as more traditional mains. However it had been majorly cut down - to literally 6 items plus another 2 specials - 1 meat, 1 fish. There was only 1 vegetarian option so that's what I went for - artichokes, mushrooms and leeks in a creamy white wine sauce in a puff pastry case...

I hadn't ever had artichokes before and wasn't a fan (I think these were tinned ones which may not have helped?) but the rest of it was tasty, if a bit stodgy. I also had lots of broccoli and mangetout on the side. I was too full for pudding after this (and 2 Pimms & lemonades...summer's on its way!!) but Liam ordered one for himself and I ended up eating almost half of it!! Belgian waffle with fresh fruit and vanilla ice cream...

this was lovely, and lots more fresh fruit than I was expecting - raspberries, strawberries, half a passion fruit, star fruit and a physalis, delish :)

It was so nice to be able to go out for an evening and have conversation that didn't revolve around/get interrupted by the children for once!! And yummy food always helps :)

Today is the opposite - Liam is at work so I am spending time solely with the children - playing with baby, writing with daughter etc, and baking with daughter while baby sleeps...all good fun! :) Yummy smells are now coming from the oven so I better go investigate... have a great Sunday everyone!

Would You Like Some Peanut Butter With That?

This week, my eating has NOT been very structured! What with being in hospital until Monday, and then having decorators in...last night was the first meal in over a week that I was able to cook in my own kitchen! I made it a good one though - Mama Pea's Quinoa Pizza Casserole...

I topped mine with grated cheddar, roast peppers and basil smoked tofu, with some salad on the side...

This was sooo good! Loved by all - I had thought I'd have some leftover's for today's lunch but Liam went back for seconds and polished it all off!!

Until last night though, I have been eating more snacks than meals! I spent most of the week at my Mum's house (luckily she lives just round the corner!), we did have a few meals such as pasta with roast vegetables and pesto...

and baked sweet potato with broccoli, roast asparagus and grilled pepper Philadelphia...

the green veggies I'd been longing for!! :)

However there were also many many snacks! A lot of these were peanut butter based - I seem to be making up for the lost peanut butter time from when we were in hospital!! There were Oreo cookies, with peanut butter...

Apologies for the rubbish photo - I was too busy eating - delish!

There was also a Dairy Milk chocolate bar, with peanut butter...

A good combo, but would've been even better with dark chocolate...obviously lots more peanut butter was spread on this after the photo!

And in the same "snacking session" a banana was also spread with peanut butter...

I have also this week eaten six packs of, unpictured, Reese's peanut butter cups, less 2 cups that Mum ate, so 16 peanut butter cups total!! They were reduced from 60p to 29p in Waitrose on Tuesday so I bought 3 packs, then on Thursday they were reduced further to 19p so I bought the last 3 packs...looks like Waitrose won't be selling them anymore :( I know I can make much better quality versions though, I ended up popping these in one after the other...too addictive!!

* To avoid any possible confusion, I have clearly eaten more than the above the last week - there have even been some other meals - muesli, soup, toasted teacake out with my Grandma etc - but less photos have been taken than usual due to disrupted routine!

****

Today I had it all planned out that I would get back to normality. Daughter was back at school for morning + lunch today (thank you so much for all the well wishes, she's much better now, she started improving as soon as she had the op, so we're just glad they finally realised what was wrong with her!) and I had planned to go to the gym. That was until we snoozed the alarm for 45 minutes and ended up having to rush to get daughter to school - got out of the morning routine habit! I just had no energy this morning, had been awake in the night blah blah blah, and couldn't face the gym. After taking daughter to school, I settled for a healthy breakfast instead...

This was a bit of an "eat up fruit that's been forgotten about while we've been out of the house" smoothie - 2 small overripe bananas, 2 overripe pears, spinach, frozen cherries, vanilla rice milk and xanthan gum. Topped with toasted coconut flakes and, of course, peanut butter...

this was fantastic! My smoothies can be a bit hit or miss (especially if I add protein powder, bleugh, not a fan of the texture!) but this was divine :) I have to admit it though that it pretty much just tasted of banana and peanut butter...but that's fine with me!! :)

Lunch today was a simple poached egg on seeded toast...

I was doing so well! Then Liam went to work and the peanut butter jar started calling to me from the cupboard!!

Medjool dates stuffed with peanut butter...

and then peanut butter based fudgy oaties inspired by Oh She Glow's Frosty No-Bake Glo Cakes. I simplified it down a bit, just mashing the last small overripe banana (55g), then mixing in 45g peanut butter, 20g maple syrup, 8g cocoa powder and 35g oats. I wanted a fudgy pudding so I didn't freeze the mix, in fact I only managed to put it in the fridge for 10 minutes before I could wait no longer! Topped with chocolate chips...

I shared this with my daughter for a tasty afternoon snack, it reminded me of something but I can't put my finger on what it was (annoying!) but it was super yum, lovely and gooey and chocolatey :) It also kept me going until after I'd fed the children, put them to bed and had time to make my own dinner.

The original plan for dinner was roasted butternut squash wedges thanks to Mr Waitrose...

but after spending some of the afternoon browsing Oh She Glow's Recipe Page, I found a way to add some peanut butter into my meal! Parsnips...

with yet more peanut butter, in the form of Peanut Butter Crusted Parsnip Fries...

with the addition of lemon & coriander houmous from this trio...

all cooked and put together...

this was delicious and, despite appearances, really filling. I'd been a bit worried that the parsnip fries wouldn't crisp up because the butternut squash took up a bit too much space in the baking tray, but these were perfect! I love the crunchy crust that the peanut butter formed :)

2 hours later I'm still full up, so hopefully that'll be me done eating-wise for today!

This weekend has the potential to be a bit food-filled - today is Liam & I's anniversary, but he has to work (boo!) so we're going out for dinner tomorrow night. Then Sunday is Mothering Sunday and I'm baking a cake to take round to my Mum's in the afternoon...details will be shared once made if it's a success!! I must just try to eat as healthily as possible - I feel so much better when I do - not sure where peanut butter falls in that though - it seems to have replaced my old addiction to Nutella!

Hope you're all looking forward to the weekend! It's going to be quite a busy one here - as well as the foodie occasions mentioned above, I'm also meeting a friend for coffee tomorrow morning, and going to see daughter (she's well enough to be in it, yey!) and my little sister in a dance show in the afternoon. Should be a good one :)