Menu Planning Monday.

Funny week this week, seem to be a lot of gaps! The meals we do have planned are loosely based on Jamie's 30 minute meals.

Monday - out
Tuesday - mustard chicken with huge mixed salad
Wednesday - green chicken curry with asian slaw and lentils
Thursday - out
Friday - out
Saturday - cumberland sausages with horseradish mash and mushrooms
Sunday - far too far ahead to even be thinking about;)

We still have mother-in-law staying locally so a free babysitter, hence the number of meals out this week! Monday was half price steak night in the local pub, Thursday we are round at friends and Friday is our wedding anniversary - a curry is looking favourite at the moment!

Now pop over to Mrs M's for more ideas...

It's the weekend!

So, what's the plan gang? After about a zillion weeks of rain, I don't think the weather this weekend will be any different. Mother-in-law is staying locally for a couple of weeks and has bought us some clams so lunch tomorrow will be a family affair with spaghetti vongole. The kids have a party in the afternoon that was meant to be in the local park but has been changed to the local hell hole softplay place. At least it's in the centre of town so I can sneak out for a wee shopping trip if things get too loud; on the other hand they have a bar and at least one other mum is a good friend who will help me to prop it up.

Then, off to a friends house for dinner in the evening, will be full of food and wine and good times. And no doubt some drunken ramblings. Sunday we'll be grateful that our oldest is big enough to reach the tin of muesli bars so he can feed his sister breakfast while we languish in bed, nursing sore heads, just possibly. We have planned a family swimming trip followed by a roast which will take up the rest of the afternoon; I just need to stay awake - the general anaesthetic I had earlier in the week has taken it's toll on me and I seem to need a kip in the afternoon ever since!

Anyone else got some good times planned too? Since we changed our jobs and lifestyle last year we've been determined to make the most of family times - quality time together and leave the chores for weekdays!

Sustenance.

After spending yesterday morning starving myself for an operation, then the afternoon trying not to throw up after a general anaesthetic, the only sustenance I got was a titchy and almost inedible hospital meal and a packet of the kids Wotsits.So today when my parents offered to take me out for lunch, thought I'd treat myself to some real food. Sod the diet for another day!

Prezzos did us proud, spaghetti carbonara and stick toffee pudding, Not my usual choices as a) I'm married to an Italian and have spent a lot of time eating real Italian food in Italy and therefore know that carbonara should NOT be made with cream, and b) wheat and I are not the best of friends - but I needed something soft and comforting to eat.

Ooops, this blog is turning out to be centred around food, better redress that balance soon!

Meal Planning Monday.

Now this is something that a few of my friends do, with a link to the fabulous Mrs M's blog - just hope I do it all properly!

I've menu-planned on and off for years, and it's something that a) means we eat a better variety of food, b) cuts down the shopping bill and c) ensures that we end up cooking proper meals rather than just chucking the contents of the fridge into a pan. Last year I completed a 365 photography challenge based around Food & Drink and I was looking back at some of the photos last night - reminded me how well we ate when I had to produce photographic evidence!

So, with a renewed determination to eat nicer meals as well as shift a few lbs, here is this week's entry, to be eaten in no particular order;

Jersey Royal, bacon and broad bean salad with tarragon mayo
Chinese chicken noodle soup - will be very hot'n'spicy
Mediterranean chicken stew with salsa verde
Tortilla pizzas (with salami and peppers for the kids, salami, rocket and artichoke hearts for us)
Saturday we're out at a friends for dinner
Sunday will be a roast of some sort, probably pork after all the chicken we've had during the week

I realise that is only 6 days worth, but tomorrow I will be in hospital for a minor op and the Husband is having filled pasta from my freezer stash!

S;)

The Proof.

Skate and home-made chunky chips for tea, and they both polished the lot off!

Fish.

After banging on about fish in my recent holiday posts, thought I'd blog about them tonight! After eating an obscene amount of fish'n'chips in Cornwall, I am kinda fish'd out a bit, but the kids are still going strong. They've always loved fish fingers and fishcakes, but seafood never grabbed them at all - in fact they both declared they hated prawns and mussels even before they'd even tried them. But Mr Moo has decided that scampi is his current favourite food, and he even likes chips now, which I'm secretly pleased about as he would never eat them as a baby or toddler; can't say I blame him, without salt they are frankly tasteless, and his tastes don't run to mayo or chilli sauce quite yet.

Little Legs also impressed me no end on holiday; she is not the best of eaters (well, she is really but uses food as a method of getting attention which can make mealtimes stressful) and is hugely reluctant to try new things. But fish definitely got her going, think she would quite happily eat it every mealtime now - provided she has tomato ketchup to dunk it into naturally! In fact she was given the choice yesterday of where to go for lunch - and turned down McDonalds in favour of the local chippy! To be fair this establishment has been visited by no less than the master of fish, Mr Rick Stein, so any place with his seal of approval has to be good.

Talking of whom, the last day of our holiday turned out to be a cracker of a day. We decided to take the ferry from Rock across to Padstow, as I'd heard that Mr Stein was going to be doing a book signing there. After walking half a mile down the beach and jumping across the waves to catch the ferry as it was low-tide, we took a trip across the Camel Estuary, passing the infamous Doom Bar (yes, what the beer is named after) on the way. 20 minutes later I was standing in a queue outside his deli, with the kids eating honeycomb ice-cream and the Husband being dispatched into the shop to buy a cookery book - after I'd remembered that standing in line for a book signing was no good without an actual book to sign! Shortly after that I was in front of the great man himself, a little awe-struck if I'm honest, while Mr Moo told him all about the mussels he'd found on the beach and eaten for his tea. Mr Stein seemed rather impressed at a 5 year old even trying mussels, let alone loving them!

He was a thoroughly nice man, even if the prices in his establishments are super-inflated. We're using his recipe book for the first time this weekend, a chicken dish as it happens, will report back if it's any good - and an adults-only visit to one of his proper restaurants in now on the wishlist! Will save the nest day's antics for another blog post, but let's just say another day, another celebrity chef...

Good stuff...

Husbands birthday starts here!

Joining the technology revolution.

Not me, but the Husband! It's his birthday tomorrow (fast approaching yet another significant milestone, great excuse for a party in three years...) and he still has a really old mobile phone, one with push buttons and everything!

To fill in a gap or two, he works in retail and until six months ago was in a management position; sadly working 3 weekends out of 4 plus several evenings a week took it's toll on our family life and when it started affecting the kids negatively we took the decision that we should effectively do a job swap. So, now I work full-time while he works part-time and has taken over most of the housework/childcare/shopping/cooking duties. It's been interesting! Certainly a massive overall improvement in our family life, and dare I say it we are better off financially as I earn significantly more than him. He is better at hoovering than I am, has finally learnt to stick to my shopping list rather than filling the trolley up with crap at twice the price, and I enjoy sitting down with a glass of wine in the evening rather than having to rush around cooking and making packed lunches.

But the most surprising part (and entertaining for me looking at it from a now thankfully detached point of view) is what happens at the school gate; previously I would run in, dump the kids, run out asap. But he is far more confident and sociable than I am, and has decided to immerse himself in school life. He's searched out all the other dads who drop their kids off regularly and has formed a little clique - but not to the exclusion of the mums at all, in fact seems hell-bent on bringing them all together! My son now goes on regular playdates, something I always shied away from as a) I always had his younger sister to lug around (and she is not the easiest child in the world) and b) I love my own children but many others leave me cold so the return visit would be painful. The Husband has also put together a social group of friends, other men to drink with, go on bike rides with, talk bollox with. Good on him, he's achieved more in six months than I ever dreamt of!

So, it came up in conversation recently that he's been topping his PAYG monstrosity up with a tenner a month, mainly to organise the above-mentioned social lives! Seeing as he could get a smartphone for pretty much that, plus one of his new buddies is a technophile and has been working on converting him, I decided to get him one for his birthday tomorrow. Oh, maybe I should also mention that I couldn't think what else to get him he hasn't actually asked for anything, so it makes sense. He is now the proud owner of a Samsung Galaxy Y (with the Y standing for Young which amuses me no end!) and cannot wait to get started on downloading apps, getting on Facebook, and texting his mates about which pub they are meeting in. Just as soon as he can work out how to turn it on...

Sleeping under canvas.

Yes folks, you've guessed, today I'm blogging about camping! I first started camping aged 10 or so, at Guide Camp. I still remember those days fondly, from falling in a lake whilst rafting in my only clean clothes (and then having to spend the rest of the weekend in my 'jamas) to splatting earwigs with mallets and sneaking out for midnight feasts. In fact I first met one of my best friends at a Guide Camp, celebrating my 13th birthday by canoeing and probably singing jolly songs around a campfire, or something cliched like that.

I then progressed to long weekends away whilst at uni. My group of friends were very into walking up mountains (and then of course spending the evenings in the local real ale pub, hic) and camping was the only way we could afford to go away. One hugely memorable evening we left the ODG (Old Dungheon Ghyll) in the Lake District amidst pouring rain around midnight, and slowly discovered along our 1/2 mile walk back to the campsite that it was getting wetter, and the path was getting deeper in water, and ...you've guessed the rest. I spent that night on the back seat of the car, but my mad friends who braved the tents claimed it was more akin to sleeping on a water bed. Yep, the entire campsite was under about 6 inches!

Wales was also a popular destination. I think the 2 best evenings spent there was firstly the night we befriended an alleged SAS member who stoked our campfire up with a stack of pinched pallets (OK, we might have done the pinching...) and then proceeded to drag our sleeping friend Dazza feet first out of his tent and out of a very deep beer-induced slumber. I will never forget the look on his face, utter shock and rage at the same time, truly a You've Been Framed moment had such things as camcorders been invented at the time. North Wales then played host to the evening after another friend discovered he'd received a redundancy payout just after accepting another job, and from memory we chased every pint with a double; this lead to the awesome discovery that altitude cures hangovers! We traipsed up Crib Goch the next day with cracking heads, had a blissful hour on top, then came back down when the hangovers suddenly returned. Hair of the dog was the only cure for that one!

My 20's and 30's saw me spending many months travelling around the world, backpacking and overlanding. The details are for another post (or 5), but needless to say beer, rain and sleeping under the stars featured heavily.

But the thing that prompted this entry is that I have finally persuaded the Husband that camping is the way forwards for family holidays for us! He likes his creature comforts but the price and spontaneity of camping has tipped the balance in it's favour. We've spent the last six months collecting everything from a tent and sleeping bags to essentials such as large plastic wineglasses and a spare coffee pot. He's desperate now to put the tent up in the garden to give it a go, then all we have to do is wait for a weekend with decent weather. Ah, bum, therein lies the problem...

It's raining, it's pouring...

Yes folks, it's a Bank Holiday. Dare we even suggest that someone up there might take pity on us and allow some decent weather on a Bank Holiday for once? Apparently not, as it's now nearly 8pm and the rain has not stopped all sodding day. We had plans for a picnic in the park with good friends and a zillion kids, climbing on their favourite pirate-ship climbing frame and with the adults no doubt making tits of themselves on the open-air gym. There might have been cold home-made pizza on the menu, along with the obligatory egg sarnies, carrot sticks, grapes and cakes. It was all probably going to be washed down with some wine and beer, and maybe followed by a swift half in the local. It wouldn't have even mattered if it was cold, or windy, or the sun only popped it's head through the clouds once. But no, it was just not to happen. Someone up there owes us for next time.

Instead, we spent the day just the four of us, watching films and playing on the Wii. A brief supermarket visit was necessary and we're still drying out the raincoats from that short trip. To be fair it was nice to have just our little family hanging out at home, had some nice snuggles and there was no pressure. But small kids go stir-crazy and unfortunately several heads banging together was the eventual conclusion. Thankfully they are all tucked up in bed now, the epic show CDWM (Come Dine with Me) is on the tellybox and Husband is in the kitchen making chilli con carne for dinner. And naturally there is wine open...

One crucial job we did today was buy some potting compost to get my chilli seeds planted. Photos to follow, but this years crop should include some habaneros and Hungarian paprika, half-inched from the Eden Project. Not by me I hasten to add;)

Phwew.

2lbs on, could have been far worse! Diet starts again tomorrow though...

Guess how much?

This is a full post for another day, but a couple of years ago I lost a lot of weight and have been battling to stay near-ish that weight ever since. Having just got back from a great week away in Cornwall, including eating pasties, chocolate, scampi, ice-cream, crab sandwiches and yet more fish'n'chips, am dreading what the scales tomorrow morning will say. I don't think the Indian takeaway tonight helped in the slightest, let alone the fridge-full of cheese and pork pies from the River Cottage deli that will doubtlessly be consumed over the next few days. Or should I just go for broke and scoff the lot tonight? 

Holidays.

Yay, finally found internet access in deepest darkest Cornwall! After the last 2 weeks of sunny 20 degree days, its turned arctic now so very glad I packed extra jumpers. So far have eaten fish'n'chips, been to the Eden Project, hooked up with friends, visited Rick Steins chippy, done an impossible treasure hunt culminating in a Crystal Maze-style challenge, eaten fish'n'chips, walked along the most beautiful beach and eaten fish'n'chips. Spot a theme at all?

What the...?

Our holiday accommodation has provided me with the smallest wine glass in history:(