Dinner and Overnight Oats

I have a couple of dinners to show you (or as we call them back in my good old home county – tea!) and also my new favourite breakfast – the husband loved it too but the toddler wasn’t so keen. He mostly just tried to cart it around the living room and feed it to anyone he could find. Then 30 minutes later he was hanging off the fridge door yelling “CHEESE!” – I’m telling you, my toddler has a cheese problem. Usually I’m quite mean about these things, if you don’t eat it, it’s you problem but since this was a new meal and he did try it I let him have some cheese and a fig roll (nutritious huh?!)

Oh and on a sidenote: This weeks weigh in: 5lbs down 🙂

Saturday Night Dinner: Cripsy Chicken - chicken thighs, chickpeas, peppers, cannellini beans and cherry tomatoes. A family favourite

Sunday Night: Fish Pie. I took the picture without the topping because it looks all blah and boring once the topping is on. New addition to this fish pie - curly kale.

Last night I cooked a really good lasagne (if I do say so myself!) but because I’m vacant I forget to get a photo of it. Bad times because I think it was my prettiest creation to date. I usually make a cheat recipe and instead of making the bechamel (spelling??) sauce I used creme fraiche and put some parmesan on top. Thing is – those are expensive and I’m feeling cheap. Since I had the ingredients for the actual sauce I made that for the first time. Everyone told me it was hard but I thought it was dead easy and really tasty 🙂 I also didn’t have parmesan for the top so I just added sliced low fat mozerella – that worked really well. I was running low on veggies so I added some curly kale to it also. Curly kale is my new favourite veg 🙂 it tastes great raw or cooked.

Breakfast: Over night oats. 1/4 cup oats, 1/4 cup vanilla soya milk, 1/4 cup home made low fat greek yoghurt. All mixed up and left in the fridge overnight. Here it is topped with some Agave Nectar to sweeten it up a bit.

Finished product: topped with an apple and some sultanas. The husband has his topped with seeds and dried fruit and the toddler had his topped with sultanas.

Welsh Cakes

My mum has this story she likes to bring out now and then to embarrass me, as mums do. When I was young girl I was heard to say something along the lines of “When I grow up I’m not going to stay home and bake welsh cakes all day like you!” Quite why I got in to my head that mum spent her days baking welsh cakes is beyond me, she didn’t actually make them that often. Anyway, what did I do today? Yes – stayed home and made welsh cakes. It’s ok though because I also went and got my self some nice new boots and started the prep for making an Irish Whiskey Cake, I’m hoping that turns out well so I can take some for my parents when I visit on Saturday. So – here are the welsh cakes. They taste better than they look, promise.

Welsh Cake - like a scone but cooked in a pan rather than in the oven. If you are serving it with jam and/or cream you are being very English! Stop!

For the last few mornings I have been having toast for breakfast but to be honest, it’s not very satisfying, I always want to eat more of it and it never lasts me through to lunchtime not matter how close to lunch I happen to eat it. So today it was back to…..

In the mix: vanilla yoghurt, satsuma, museli and some fruit and seed mix

How it looks once I start eating

Lunch was a falafel wrap while we were out shopping in town – I didn’t have my camera with me but it was good. The side salad was pretty blegh however.

Spinach and Feta Couscous

Dinner, yes it was served in a Christmas themed bowl, it is never the wrong time of year for a Christmas themed bowl! This is spinach and feta couscous and is the first ever meal that I have cooked without really following a recipe. All the boys in my house (I’m outnumbered 3:1) really like it and it was very quick to make. In the mix: couscous cooked with some veggie stock for flavour, red onions, red pepper, cherry tomatoes, chickpeas, baby leaf spinach and topped with feta cheese. I didn’t eat all of the feta you see here, I’ve never had it before and although a little was fine I found the taste quite strong and almost musty. I definitely didn’t need nearly as much as you can see here so I left about half the feta. My 20 month old son could not get enough of this meal and he cleaned his plate. It’s nice to see him eat a dish so full of veggies 😀 what a good boy.

On a kitchen note – we have a new fridge coming on the weekend. I got it off ebay for £15. It says it has signs of wear and tear but the only thing I care about is that it works. For £15 if it works it’s all good with me. Currently we have a little under the counter fridge and an under counter freezer. We really don’t need all that freezer space as we barely keep anything in there. What we do need is a much bigger fridge to hold all our yummy fresh produce and to stop it going off so quickly. This fridge is double the size of our current one. I never thought I’d be so excited to get a household appliance.