I’m back!

New smoothie cup 🙂 it's so pretty

Wow I’ve been really slack with the blogging – sorry about that. I probably still wouldn’t have got around to do anything here if my mum hadn’t bugged me – she’s a slave driver that one.

So….what’s been happening? Saturday was my 25th Birthday so as you can imagine there was lots of food, cake (cake isn’t food, it’s so special it has it’s OWN category!) and alcohol. Since I’m clearly very bad at this food blogging thing no pictures were taken whatsoever. Well…there for a few drunken phone pictures but you don’t really need to see them.

My in laws gave me some money as my birthday present, more in fact than they gave The Husband for his which I think is hysterical. Clearly as a daughter in law I am far more special than him. Above you can see one of my birthday money purchases. A new “take away” cup for my smoothies. I got one for The Husband too because that’s how good a wife I am 🙂 They were from Lakeland and were £3.99 each. A far better price than the branded ones you can get from Starbucks.

So obviously I don’t have many more photos to show you, but I fear for my health if I don’t put something here and entertain my mum, so for mum, here is this mornings breakfast:

Guess what I'm making for breakfast?

The blue knife is another birthday money purchase, I really live the high life huh? My old knives were way past their best and no amount of sharpening was going to save them. I don’t have the money for an amazing set right now, so I’m building up one at a time. I figure while I’m at it – why not get pretty knives 😀 The Husband thinks I’m crazy but I don’t care.

The finished product:

Oats in a Jar!!

MMMM Oats in a Jar. My new favourite food. Luckily peanut butter is so popular with my men that there is an empty jar every week. I just have to be careful The Nephew doesn’t throw it out in an attempt to tidy up – the horror! This was 50g oats (recommended serving but FAR too much!) 150ml water/100ml choc soya milk topped with some type of apple – it was red, that’s all I know. I managed to eat about 3/4 and gave the rest to The Husband to finish off.

Another Smoothie Post

Another smoothie post, can you tell how much I love my new blender? I promise tomorrows post will show some actual solid food as well 🙂

This was yesterdays breakfast smoothie:

In the mix: frozen berry mix, banana, spinach and 1 cup chocolate soya milk (yummy!)

"Look mummy it's going around and around!"

The finished product, not the best looking photo but it sure tasted yum!

I didn’t take any pictures of this mornings breakfast because well….it looked like this but with vanilla milk instead. I think I have an addiction to “green” smoothies.

My new toy

I was going to post at the end of the day when I’m finished with all my eats but I love me new toy so much that I’m going to post about it now 🙂

This is my birthday/mothers day present. My birthday is 26th March and Mothers Day in the UK is 3rd April this year so it made sense to request one big present – which of course I just had to have early. I don’t like waiting for things.

My new toy 😀 a blender from http://www.lakeland.co.uk

The toddler wants to help make the first smoothie. Banana, vanilla soya milk, spinach

The Toddler wanted to take the lid off during blending = bad move! Luckily I managed to stop him in time!

Watching the smoothie blend!

The finished product - I've finally achieved that lovely green colour thanks to the new blender! See the blender int he picture, it's just that good I needed another photo of it 😉

More green goodness 🙂 yum.

This is the first green smoothie that The Toddler has tried. He wasn’t exactly raving about it but he seemed to like it well enough. I tried to get a picture of his green moustache but he kept wiping it away before I could. The Toddler is very keen to “help” in the kitchen these days. As soon as he hears me banging around in there, he runs through, grabs a kitchen chair and shoves it against the counter so he can take part. The trouble is at 22 months there isn’t all that much he can do.  Sometimes he mixes dry ingredients for me or pushes the buttons on the processor/blender but on the whole I find it best to give him the mixing bowl with a wooden spoon and some dried herbs – that keeps him quiet while I cook.

Oh and the calories for the above green smoothie = 225 with fat = 4.1g and according to my calorie counter that I use online it is 32% of my five a day.

Still here

I’ve been so bad about updating this blog, sorry about that. In fact, I’ve been bad at taking pictures of anything because well frankly no one wants to see the junk I’ve been eating for the last few days 😦 bad me! I do have a couple of photos to share, they are floating around somewhere on my computer, let me go find them.

My "I need to leave the house now" breakfast. A green smoothie (shop brought obviously!) orange and banana

Contents of my smoothie - it's more fruit than anything else. Really tasty but too expensive to buy on a regular basis

New museli made by Dorset cereals

and a juicy sun blush orange to go with it!

My second attempt at a green smoothie, still needs more spinach but it sure made an interesting colour! This was just spinach, banana, milk and ice

Same smoothie with a few blueberries added in.

My meal plan for this week, I'm already a day behind *sigh* so we had trout tonight. I also had to modify it, instead of new potatoes we had sweet potato fries! Nom. The Toddler loved them!

So that’s just a few random snapshots. I do however have a new toy in my kitchen which I shall reveal to you tomorrow 😀 I’m very excited about it!

 

Alas, my crazy bad looking pancakes

 

Somehow I got it in to my head that today I just HAD to have pancakes. A little early for pancake day (March 8th) but hey – they taste good all year round. Over here in the UK our “pancakes” are usually more of the crepe variety – very very thin. I didn’t want them, I wanted the thicker American style pancakes. Yeah. The pancake batter and pan didn’t agree with me – they both wanted crepes. So I ended up with some weird looking things. Never mind, they still tasted good.  I used just egg whites to reduce the calorie and fat content of them. I think The Husband was a bit dubious but was plenty surprised and declared “I didn’t miss the yolk at all”. I also included mashed banana in the batter but you couldn’t taste it all that well so I think I need to put 2 bananas in to the mix next time. Top with half a banana and a drizzle of Agave nectar = super yum breakfast!

 

More falafel

 

It’s official – falafel is my new favourite food 🙂 I used the same recipe as last time but made them smaller. The Husband had three, I had three and there are three in the fridge for tomorrow. I might spilt them with The Toddler for our lunch. I served them on some couscous cooked in veggie stock. The meal came out a bit beige – could have used some more veggies to make it look nicer 😉

 

Needs more colour!

 

Pudding was:

 

Pear and apple with a sprinkle of cinnamon!

From tomorrow the meals on the blog will also include the calorie and fat values – feel free to ignore, it’s more for my benefit really. Also expect some talk re: The Gym. We are joining a new one Tuesday so stay tuned!

 

“Green” Smoothie

This morning I tried making a smoothie for the first time. It was pretty successful. I just made the husbands with berries and soya milk, he wasn’t up for anything more than that but for mine I did throw in a handful of spinach in. I wasn’t brave enough to put loads in but it was a decent sized portion. Unfortunately my food blender isn’t that powerful so the smoothie was more bitty than smoothie. Since there were tons of berries and only a little spinach mine still had a rather pleasing pink colour too it. I am keen to try a green smoothie that looks green – I always think the colour is so pretty. Anyway despite a slight lack of smoothness this was really yummy and a great start to the day.

 

Excuse the very bad picture, I had already tried some when I remembered to take a photo. Bubble gum pink smoothie 😀

 

I had lunch out and forgot my camera, plus my friends might think I’ve gone slightly made if I whipped out my camera to take a photo of my meal, I haven’t told them about this blog…yet. Anyway it was a rather uninspiring cheese baguette with side salad at the local play den.

Dinner was another first for me. Falafel. I’ve been eating it recently when I’ve been out in restaurants and it is seriously nice and very filling. Chickpeas are a new thing for me in the last few months and they are a big hit in our house, all my boys love them too, so of course the falafel went down a treat. I used some harissa paste in it and that gave a really nice little kick to it. The cumin flavour was really strong which I loved.

 

Falafel: 400g Chickpeas, 2tbsp flour, 1tsp cumin, 1tsp coriander, 1/2tsp harissa paste, 1tsp parsley, 1 red onion, 1 glove garlic. Blend until smooth

One each for me, The Husband and The Toddler. The Toddler managed about 1/2 of one.

The Nephew was out when I made this, we eat early at 5pm so The Toddler can join us and at that time today The Nephew was out at work. I made another batch when he got home and must have made the patties a little smaller because I ended up with four instead of three. I was going to give two to The Nephew and put the others in the fridge for lunch  but they’re all gone he ate the lot. Big thumbs up to falafel.

 

Vegetarian Day

Starting the day off right 🙂

Today I managed to photograph all my main meals – that has to be a first for me. Sadly I didn’t remember to take photos of my snacks. Breakfast this morning was a lazy option because I couldn’t be bothered making much. 1/2 banana (The Toddler had the other half), grapes, apple and some granola for added crunch.

Lunch: houmous wrap

One of my favourite lunches 🙂 low fat houmous with spinach, pepper, lettuce and radish sprouts – I never tried radish sprouts but they were a good addition to this wrap. I’m looking forward to using them on my salads in future.

Close up of the Radish Sprouts

The whole meal: that was one huge wrap + side of pear and grapes

Today was a vegetarian day in our house so Dinner was a vegetable jalfrezi – recipe courtesy of Jamie Oliver 🙂

Vegetable Curry: Peppers, sweet potato, cauliflower, onions, chickpeas, garlic, root ginger. There's basmati rice mixed in there too

Because I wasn’t sure how hot the curry would turn out I gave The Toddler a portion of fish pie that I made yesterday. He really liked it – even if he did rub the last handful in his hair – he only ever seems to do that with fish pie. I wonder why. Pudding for him was grapes but apparently grapes are only worth it if he can eat them straight from the packaging!

Dinner at our house: Your hair must be styled with fish pie, you must have one arm out of your t-shirt and grapes HAVE to be eaten straight from the packet!

Ingredients Lists

I’m trying really hard to eat proper home cooked meals, start putting more vegetarian meals in to our weekly meal plan, count calories and to also cut back on the amount of processed rubbish I eat, so as you can imagine, I have my foodie hands full at the moment 😉 luckily I have three men in my house (inc. The Toddler) and they are all great eaters so that makes life so much easier.

I’ve also been cutting back on my dairy consumption, I’ve been pondering it of late and it seems a little bit funky to drink the milk of another animal. Hence the different milks in the last post. With that in mind while I was wandering around my local health food store today, I stumbled upon some Carob and have to give it a try, I was also mightily impressed by how short the ingredients list was.

3 ingredients! Still need to watch how much of this I eat!

The Toddler LOVED this. He couldn’t get enough. I opened it while we were at the barbers waiting for The Husband to have his hair done (on a side note: he looks very nice with a short back and sides!) and after trying a square didn’t think The Toddler would be that interested. To me it has almost a slight burnt taste. Although it isn’t at all unpleasant I though The Toddler might reject it because it looked but didn’t taste like chocolate. He ate 4 squares and would have had more if I had hidden it from sight. I also picked him up some of these:

Dark chocolate rice cakes

he really likes these too and they are a nice treat for him without having too much chocolate. His friends don’t seem to like them – maybe because it is dark chocolate and therefore quite bitter. No one can say The Toddler doesn’t have broad tastes.

Breakfast was much the same as other mornings – Rude Health Porridge made with half water and half vanilla soya milk, topped with rasperries.

Mid morning snack looked like this:

Grapes and Strawberries

The Husband made lunch which was some sort of rice and chicken concoction. However, by the time I remember to take a photo, this was all that was left:

Husbands lunch leftovers

And finally….

Ideas for what to do with this marrow! I put it on the online shop because it was on offer and now have no idea what I can cook??!

Rude Health

My new favourite breakfast 🙂

I’m not a vegan but I am really loving milk that isn’t dairy. I’ve tried out a few of late. I think my favourite is alpro soya especially the vanilla flavour, though the plain is fine too. I tried oat milk the other day – that was yuck. It looked horrible even after I’d shaken it all up, very thin and watery. It was ok in a cup of tea but I wouldn’t want to pour it all over my cereal in the morning. In my last shop I got the above – Rice Dream chocolate flavour as a treat 🙂 This milk is super yummy. So on Wednesday I decided to make chocolate and fruit porridge for our breakfasts. The toddler had his little friend Thing Two (I call him Thing Two when they are together as in Thing One and Thing Two!) stay over night so he was in on our breakfast and he can be a little fussy at times but he loved it 😀 he ate the whole bowl full which encouraged The Toddler to finish his off too. This was the first time I have tried the Rude Health Morning Glory Porridge and it was super tasty and very filling!  Inside of just being porridge oats in includes: Barley Flakes, Rye Flakes, Golden Linseeds, Sesame Seeds, Pumpkin Seeds, Sunflower Seeds, Buckwheat Flakes, Poppy Seeds, Quinoa Flakes.

On the hob cooking: two adult sized portions (50g recommended on the packet) and 50g to be split between Thing One and Thing Two. I used 200ml water and 300ml of rice dream milk

Breakfast for four

In the mix: 50g Rude Healthy Porridge, water and rice milk, handful of raspberries and blackberries (on offer while shopping online with Ocado! I ❤ Ocado for offers!)

Milk!

Monday Night Dinner: Couscous and chicken cooked in veggie stock (I had no chicken stock!) onions, garlic tumeric and garam masala

Last nights dinner was chicken thigh and cous-cous one pot. That’s what recipe said it was, I’m not sure you could call it a one pot meal considering the number of times I had to get that chicken in and out of the pot. I guess you can say I have “rediscovered” cous cous of late. I used to eat it fairly regularly before I had The Toddler but when I was pregnant I once made the mistake of eating it in the middle of a bad bout of all day sickness. Ewww.  Nearly three years later I’m able to eat it again! This turned out really well, so much flavour. All my boys liked it. Mind you I think the only boy in the household likely to let me know if they actually didn’t like it would be the Toddler. The Husband and The Nephew would be too scared too 😉

Tuesdays Breakfast: No added sugar museli with almond rice milk and fresh pear

We seem to be mostly out of food in the house today, bad times. The shopping is being delivered tonight so we’ll be restocked soon. Basically all I had in for breakfast was fruit or museli – so why not have both. I usually just have standard milk on my cold cereals but I haven’t used it in so long it smelled – not good 😉 The Toddler entered the kitchen while I was making breakfast (I’d saved a slice of bread to make him some toast and peanutbutter) and with much banging of fists and yelling of “MORE TA!” I got the idea that he wanted some too. I really didn’t expect him to like it but before I’d even finished pouring it in to the bowl he was dragging his high chair to the table to eat. He LOVED it. Polished off his portion and tried to move on to mine. Nothing is your own when you’re a mother.

The Toddler enjoying his breakfast! Note the pyjamas - no need to mess up his day clothes!