WIAW - Popcorn & DVD night

Happy What I Ate Wednesday!


Today’s post is based on Saturday, as I thought it would be fun to natter about what I do on the weekend, although actually this Saturday was a bit of a quiet one so this might be a relatively short post!

I’ve started going to a spin class on Saturday mornings at 9am. Consequently the children have decided that Saturdays are the one and only day they are going to let us sleep past 7! Gah, dragging myself out of bed when they are still sleeping/being quiet is not pleasant, but the spin class is a really good one so its worth it! My Mum goes to the class too which is nice for a quick catch up, and my littlest sister is going to start as well, she didn’t get in this week as it is such a busy class – you have to book on the Friday morning, 8 days in advance, to get in! My legs were very sore this week as I also went spinning on the Friday night, due to my normal Body Pump class being cancelled, I definitely prefer doing pump one day, spin the next rather than two consecutive spins. It was a one-off though...lesson learnt!

After spinning I came home and enjoyed a big bowl of porridge for breakfast/brunch. Pumpkin porridge with cinnamon, topped with Green&Black’s dark chocolate with crystallised ginger. The pumpkin and crystallised ginger went so well together, and of course chocolate makes everything better - definitely a combo I'll make again during "pumpkin season". Plus a much needed coffee – I didn’t wake up in time to have one before spinning this week!

I ate this outside in the sunshine to make the most of the (rare these days) lovely weather. I must get back into the habit of making porridge again – this was such a treat

I had another, unpictured, coffee mid-afternoon, but apart from that I didn’t end up eating again until dinner time. I’ve not been sleeping too well lately so when the children napped in the afternoon I took the opportunity to do the same, and by the time I woke up and then got hungry again, it wasn’t long til dinner.

Liam fancied greasy freezer food (meat-free sausages & burgers, onion rings and chips!!) which I didn’t fancy at all so I did my own thing, whilst still keeping it easy to prep. A Caribbean sweet potato roast from the freezer (a new product in the meat-free Tesco range, really good) with asparagus, two fried eggs, a little bit of leftover avocado and sweet chilli sauce…

Yum, this was just what i fancied – flavourful without being greasy! The sweet potato roast didn’t crisp up as much as I’d like, but I loved the warm chilli flavour that it had, a nice addition to the usual meat-free frozen range.

Once the children were in bed, Liam and I watched Chalet Girls – a DVD that my Mum had rented and then passed on to us to watch/return to the shop for her! Typical rom com, but quite funny and an easy watch for a Saturday night. Accompanied by two bowls of the most gorgeous popcorn…

I first came across Joe&Seph’s popcorn when Liam and I went to London in July – I had the cinnamon coconut caramel flavour that time. This one was caramel & sea salt and was equally delicious. Even without all the added flavours, I find the caramel itself so much smoother than on other toffee popcorns.

I noticed that Lakeland’s have started selling a few flavours of this – my local one has the sea salt one above, plus caramel with ginger; caramel macchiato with Scotch whisky; and goats cheese with black pepper. I ended up looking on their website on Saturday night though – there are so many flavours I want to try…I’ll be placing an order soon I think!!

What would be your ideal popcorn flavour? Have you ever tried Joe&Seph’s popcorn? I am most tempted by the seasonal flavours – particularly toffee apple, gingerbread and mince pie – and also the peanut butter flavour and the vanilla cream cheese and/or strawberry cheesecake, haha, I could go on but my bank balance might not approve!! They also do quite a few savoury flavours but I don’t fancy them so much, I had (a different brand) cheese popcorn once before but I found it tasted a bit too strong and artificial to me so I think I'll stick to the sweet versions for now. (and yes, I realise that raving about caramel popcorn is pretty much the opposite of yesterday's post...luckily my dentist only thinks to check that I don't use sugar in my hot drinks!!!)

If you live in the UK, don't forget to enter my giveaway for Jordans Granola and Nut Bars - you have until midnight tonight to enter!

Strawberry Muffins with Cream Cheese Frosting {Truvia Review}

People have differing options on zero-calorie sweeteners. I can completely understand the preference for natural sugars but for me, with my sweet tooth, I do use sweeteners every day. Not only because I am still trying to lose weight, but because every 6 months my dentist checks that I don’t use sugar in my tea or coffee. At my last check-up I made the mistake of saying “not usually, but I do when I have coffee at friends' houses” and his response was “some of my patients can get away with having sugar “sometimes” but you are not one of them – if you want to avoid yet more fillings then you must use sweetener instead of sugar!” ooops, that’s me told then!

A while ago I started using stevia as a more natural alternative to the artificial sweeteners, which I ordered from the US, via iHerb. However that can get quite costly, so it was great timing when – just as I was coming to the end of my last bottle of vanilla stevia drops – I was contacted to see if I’d like to try out Truvia, which is a brand name for stevia. I’d seen that stevia was now being sold in the UK but hadn’t had a chance to try it out yet.

I was sent a tub of Truvia, and also a little purse containing a couple of sachets. The sachets are perfect for keeping in my bag for coffee at friends’ houses – I’ve already been out and bought a big box of them to re-fill the purse as they are just so convenient.

Over the last few weeks I have enjoyed many coffees with Truvia in, and I’m pleased to say that there is no unpleasant after taste that you sometimes get with artificial sweeteners, in fact every coffee you have seen on the blog has contained Truvia. I’m still working on filling all my shelves with blue mugs!!

I was also asked to try out one of the recipes from the Truvia site, and chose to make the berry muffins. I used strawberries instead of blueberries as that was what I had in, and organic semi skimmed milk and a real egg, instead of skimmed milk and egg replacer respectively. I was a bit worried as the batter was a lot runnier than normal muffin batter, but they came out of the oven looking great!

As you can see in the above photos, the tops did sink a bit once the muffins started to cool, but that was solved by whipping up a bit of cream cheese frosting. I just made a small amount – 50g of (full fat) cream cheese with 5g Truvia and a splash of vanilla, which was enough to thickly top two of the muffins. The rest I am planning to freeze so I didn’t want icing on them.

Delicious. I had previously been a bit unsure about baking with Truvia, but you couldn’t taste it at all. The muffins were mildly sweet with a lovely light fluffy texture. The cream cheese frosting again tasted great. It did had a slight "crunch" from the Truvia but that was because I'd just quickly mixed it in a bowl with a spoon - I'm sure if you were making a proper batch and followed the instructions to whisk it there would be no problems!!

What do you think of sweeteners? Do you use them? I don’t use the artificial ones like Splenda, but I do like stevia/Truvia. It keeps my dentist happy and it still pleases my tastebuds! I do still use products like agave and maple syrup from time to time, plus some sugar in baking – indeed these muffins do have some sugar in them, the Truvia just helps to reduce the amount. For my coffees though, I am definitely a Truvia convert! I think I even prefer it to my beloved vanilla stevia drops as this has a completely neutral taste so I can enjoy the coffee more. When using Truvia (as with most sweeteners) it is so important to make sure you don’t use too much. The first time Liam made me a coffee (despite it saying on the tub that 1 tsp sugar = 1/3 tsp Truvia!) he used 2 full teaspoons of Truvia – not at all nice!! 1/3-2/3 tsp or just one sachet when I’m out adds the perfect sweetness to my coffee without leaving any detectable after taste.

Thanks Truvia for sending me these products to try out!

Giveaway Time! Jordans Granola & Nut Bars

Well, as I promised you yesterday – it is time for a giveaway! Especially helpful if, like me, you need a little help with eating healthier breakfasts. Sometimes I just don’t have the time or the energy in the mornings to make some of the more “fancy” breakfasts that I love, and instead want something that takes less time without compromising on taste. When that happens I turn to an old favourite – cereal.

Jordans are one of my favourite brands when it comes to breakfast cereals – I love all of their granolas, especially the tropical fruits – perfect for when you are wanting to pretend you are eating breakfast on a beach somewhere, despite the cold British weather outside! I’m also a big fan of their mueslis and crisp cereals, so when I was contacted to see if I’d like to offer my readers a giveaway of some of their newer products, I jumped at the chance!

Jordans are offering to send one of you a pack of Super Fruity Granola…

and also a box of Absolute Nut Luxury Bars which sound perfect if you need a “to-go” breakfast option…

To enter the giveaway please do one or more of the following. Each one counts as an entry so please leave a separate comment for each:

• Leave a comment on this post with your favourite breakfast ideas
• Like my Facebook page
• Follow me on Twitter and tweet about the giveaway
• Link back to this giveaway on your own blog

Don’t forget to leave a separate comment for each of the above actions to let me know that you have done them, I’d hate to miss any entries! This giveaway is open to UK residents only (sorry to all my International readers!) and will close at midnight on Wednesday 10th October. Good luck everyone!

WIAW - healthier breakfasts needed!!

Hello! Happy What I Ate Wednesday!


I have finally remembered to take photos of a whole day so that I can take part in WIAW this week. These are my eats from Monday, no spooky snacks were eaten unfortunately, but I did talk about Halloween treats yesterday bizarrely, so check out that post if you've already started making plans for the end of the month!!

I have been trying to get back into eating breakfast – it used to be my favourite meal of the day, but recently I’ve only “had time” to eat it at weekends On Monday I managed a bowl of Curiously Cinnamon – not quite a healthy breakfast, but I guess it’s a start!

If, like me, you need help eating a healthy breakfast, come back to the blog tomorrow…I have a giveaway that might be perfect for you!

Same as yesterday, I had some baking to do on Monday…this time for my Mum. Gingerbread loaf topped with lemon icing…there was some leftover icing so I spread it onto a couple of biscuits for a snacky treat about 11.30am…



Delicious, but it did mess up my eating schedule for the rest of the day as I was too full for my planned lunch! This is the cake I gave my Mum anyway – apparently it went down well!



Instead of a proper lunch, I ended up eating three toasted teacakes, spread over the space of a couple of hours. The first with real butter…



But then the next two with spread (I’d given up photographing them by the 3rd!) as the butter was unsalted – good for baking, but not for flavour! I love toasted teacakes, but I proved to myself that I really can’t trust myself to keep these in the house – think I need to keep these as a Costa treat in future!!



I had Body Pump on Monday evening, and my pre-exercise snack ended up being 4 squares of this new-to-me chocolate…



Love the coconut in this, so good!

Body Pump was a bit different this week. My usual instructor is on holiday in Florida for two weeks (lucky him!) so the class was taken by a different instructor. She isn’t Les Mills trained so it was just her own weights routine, and to be honest it reminded me of aerobics with a bit of weights thrown in! Not brilliant, but better than nothing. My Tuesday and Friday classes that I also usually have with the instructor who is on holiday have been cancelled this week because they haven’t managed to arrange any cover, and it looks like next Friday’s will be too, boo, I really need to find replacements rather than not exercising at all as I did yesterday!!

After Body Pump I made a quick dinner of raw courgette using my new julienne peeler…



Topped with a quick “ratatouille” – just roasted peppers mixed with passata and sweetcorn, and then topped with nutritional yeast…



This was really good, the courgettes worked really well as a noodle replacement (and a way to get extra veggies in after eating none until dinner!!), although next time I would warm the courgette first – I ended up zapping this in the microwave halfway through as the cold courgette cooled the sauce down too quickly!!

For dessert, I ate two of Maria’s pb crispy squares, divine! Ignore the markings on the fudge topping – I ate these straight from the freezer!!



How do you deal with your exercise routine unexpectedly changing? Do you find new ways to fit in exercise, or do you take an extra rest day? & have any of you tried a class like Cardio Attack? (I'm guessing it might be a non Les Mills version of Body Attack...) I normally take a different class instead – when the Tuesday spin class was cancelled a couple of weeks ago I went to a Total Body Workout class that is on at the same time. However, a) I didn’t really enjoy that replacement class, and b) I had a million things to do last night so was quite glad for an extra evening at home. I really need to find a different class to go to on Friday though – my little sister looks after the children so that I can go to my normal body pump class, so can’t waste an offer of childcare!! I don’t really enjoy going to the gym on my own anymore – I definitely prefer classes – there is Cardio Attack at one of the gyms on Friday, a bit later than my usual class but still do-able for a week or two so I might give that a go! Would love to hear any experiences of it though as I'm a bit nervous of going to a class with absolutely no idea of what to expect!!

Pumpkin Ginger Cakes and Chocolate Apples - Baking Mad Review

A little while ago I was contacted to ask if I’d like to take a look at the bakingmad.com website and recreate a recipe. There are so many great looking recipes on that site, and after emailing ideas back and forth, they suggested that I take a particular look at the Halloween recipes. There were several creative recipes within that section of the website. I like the look of the Halloween cupcakes and will probably make some of them nearer to October 31st, but for today I decided to try out a fun activity with the children – Chocolate Dipped Apples…

The children were so excited to be making these straight after school today – as evidenced by the fact that there was “no time” to change out of uniform/coats!!

We had slight issues with dipping the chocolate covered apples in the sprinkles, so we ended up sprinkling directly from tub to apples in the end. Job done!

While the apples were setting, the most importing “job” of eating the leftover chocolate happened…

We ate these after dinner tonight – cute and tasty!!

With all the tempting recipes that are on the site, I couldn’t resist making a couple of others! This recipe wasn’t actually from the Halloween baking section, but it sounded quite “Halloweeny”/Autumnal to me! And of course it featured my favourite ingredient for this time of year... Pumpkin and Ginger Cupcakes…

I did make a couple of changes to the recipe. As you can see in the above picture, I used tinned pumpkin instead of grating fresh pumpkin (same weight, turned out absolutely fine, a lot easier!) and as I knew I wasn’t planning to make the icing (because I’ve frozen most of these for Izzy’s packed lunches), I added the equivalent of 100g milk chocolate chips to the recipe. I actually only made half the recipe and used smaller cupcake cases instead of my usual muffin cases – 13 cute mini cakes!

I could not get the insides of these to photograph clearly, so ended up eating 3 of these in the process, a delicious mistake!! Straight from the oven…

1.5 hours later when cool…

And an outside photo shoot too!!

These are absolutely divine! I will definitely be making this recipe again many more times throughout “pumpkin season”, and next time I’ll be making them bigger…for me!! I’ve already passed on the recipe to my sister-in-law and promised my Mum that I’ll save her one for when I’m seeing her on Thursday! I love the little chunks of stem ginger running through these, and found that the spices were a lot stronger once the cakes had cooled. The tinned pumpkin didn’t add a huge amount to the flavour (I always find the spices are the dominant flavour in pumpkin recipes anyway) but gave the cakes a lovely moist texture, no dryness in these cakes!

Finally, as I knew that Liam wouldn’t eat the pumpkin cakes, I decided to make him some rocky road…

To be honest, I’d been planning to make these for a while anyway, but as I was on the bakingmad.com website I decided to use their recipe for quantities. Their recipe contains brazil nuts which sounds lovely to me, but Liam is very fussy doesn’t like nuts combined with chocolate so I just used 150g biscuits and 150g marshmallows…the benefit of using marshmallows is that at least this is one baked good that I won’t eat!!

Thank you Baking Mad for introducing me to your website and letting me try some great recipes, I’ll definitely be coming back for more inspiration!

Have you ever used the bakingmad.com website before? What is your favourite Halloween, or Autumnal, treat to make at this time of year? My Mum's pumpkin pie is always a winner for me, but I do love trying out new recipes too!

*I was reimbursed for the ingredients used in this post, but all opinions on the website and the recipes I made are my own.*

Foodie Penpals September 2012

Hello! Happy October 1st! I’ll be back tomorrow with some pumpkin talk, but for now let’s take a quick look back at September, and last month’s Foodie Penpal swap. I sent a parcel to Jessica who, as she doesn’t have her own blog, kindly took some photos and wrote about the things I sent her…

This month was my first to join the foodie penpals group, and I was excited and a little bit nervous. After we received our matches I contacted the person I was sending a parcel to, and waited for my penpal to contact me.

Lucy’s email was lovely to receive - apologising for being late (it had only been a couple of days!) because she’d been snowed under with back to school stuff. I replied back with a few guidelines about what I would and wouldn’t like to receive, as well as a few general foodie things I was interested in to try to help her figure out what I might like.

I asked Lucy to post my parcel to my work address because it’s easier for me, and on the day I was due in to the office I was greeted by my lovely foodie penpal parcel. Lucy had really hit the nail on the head by choosing to pack my box with a selection of naughty and nice treats - I’m a complete snackaholic and LOVE trying new things! Her hand-written card explained why she’d chosen what she had.

Fudge’s florentines: these were opened when we had family drop by for a cup of tea, and they were an indulgent treat that went down very well :-) I shall definitely seek them out in shops local to me.

Lindt dark chocolate with sea salt: Lucy described this as one of her favourite chocolate bars and I think it might well be mine now too! The salt went perfectly with the chocolate, which was not too bitter at all.

9 bars: labelled as gluten free and dairy free I wondered if they would also be taste free, but I was completely wrong. These were delicious, and quite filling too - they made the perfect snack when you want something healthier but not bland.

Urban Fruit dried raspberries: I generally like dried fruit, but had never tried dried raspberries. However, these were a little sour for my palette. I’m planning to put them in a cake to balance the sweet/sour taste.

Humdinger veggie snack mix: I thought I would like this, and I did. A fab mix of toasted, salted veggies including wasabi peas which I adore. They didn’t last long!

So, thank you Lucy for a fantastic parcel full of interesting things to try - they were all new to me. I’m already looking forward to the next foodie penpals match.

I received a parcel from Louisa who writes at Loupy Lou's Blog. She was going on holiday to Wales and let me know that she’d be sending my parcel a bit late so that she could include some Welsh treats. My parcel arrived on Friday, so I haven’t managed to try everything yet, but I immediately tucked into the Welsh Cakes – love them!



I also used the mushroom ketchup in the mushroom risotto I made on Friday evening. I didn’t eat any (it was for Liam, my little sister and the children while I was at Body Pump) but they reported that it was tasty! Has anyone eaten Laverbread before? I’m not quite sure what to do with it! One of the suggestions on the pack is to spread it on toast and then top with scrambled eggs and grilled cheese, so I might try that? I’ve also never had smoked sea salt before so I’m looking forward to giving that a try!

Thanks Louisa!

If you want to take part in Foodie Penpals, head over to Rock Salt’s blog and fill in the form. The lovely Carol Anne keeps us all organised each month (thanks!), and I love swapping emails with different people and thinking up things to send…great fun!