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May Day Party in the Park

May 9, 2014 by Anne Sweet 24 Comments

We don’t get out much these days but on Bank Holiday Monday one of our favourite bands, Little Liam, was playing live at a local park fete so we had to make an effort.
We were lucky as it was a lovely day, not too sunny but it was warm and it didn’t rain until the night time. The park was full of people, really crowded and I didn’t take too many photos because I was worried about losing one of the children in the crowd (particularly the Little Man who loves to let go of my hand and escape at any opportunity)
There was so much to see and do but we’d mainly come to see Little Liam play so we spent most of our time at the stage.
Here is the lead singer of Little Liam (His name is Liam!) with the rest of my crew.

Here is Star totally engrossed in the performance. She’s most certainly their number one fan. Her favourite song is ‘If I Wasn’t Me’

www.facebook.com/LittleLiamBand

I love this photo of the Little Man having a dance.

After watching the show we went to have some fun on the fair. Of course with Star not being well enough to go on most rides we were really limited. It’s hard when you have to say to an eight year old you can’t ride on that or you can’t go on that all the time. Thankfully, Boo and the Little Man were happy enough with the safer rides I chose for them. They were all a little dissapointed that the bouncy castles were off limits though. I just can’t risk Star falling over or getting bumped. They did have some fun though.

After the fair we had a hot dog. Well, you have to don’t you? Then we took a walk around the craft and tombola stalls as we made our way to the park’s exit. Star was getting tired and it was time to go home. I’m glad we made the effort to go out though, we all had a lovely day.

If you’d like to listen to Little Liam band you can find them on itunes

I’m linking up with Country Kids from Coombe Mill, click the badge to hear all about their fantastic birthday party this week and lots of other posts about having fun in the great outdoors!

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Disclaimer…not really needed, I’m only promoting Little Liam because I think they are great 🙂

Morrisons Mum – Salmon Twirl

May 7, 2014 by Anne Sweet 5 Comments

How much can you buy for £80 was the challenge set by Morrison’s and Britmums. Well, with Morrisons cutting so many prices I hoped it would be a lot! We had a long bank holiday weekend to cover and with a family of seven I do spend a lot of money on food, our usual budget is usually over £200 per week.

I set off with my daughter on Saturday morning. I was going on Friday but a fall down the stairs on Thursday evening meant I was in a little too much pain. All sympathy gratefully accepted as almost a week later I’m still sore and bruised.

Anyway, less of my woes and more of the shopping.

I love Morrisons mostly because of Market Street. They always have an abundance of lovely fresh food. We particularly like the fish counter and our Morrison’s had a very friendly and helpful Fishmonger

We bought some Salmon, trout and mussels. Coming up I’ll show you how I made a Salmon Twirl. They had these already on the counter but as my lot are not so keen on spinach I decided to buy the salmon and make some myself using chives instead of spinach. I think I saved a little more money in doing so too.

Another reason why we like to shop at Morrisons is the brilliant range of Asian food. We bought everything we needed for a curry night including lots of extra’s like onion bhaji and pakora as well as popadoms. They also have less common foods and we love the Japanese ingredients.

We were on the lookout for the ‘I’m cheaper’ labels indicating the products that had been reduced to a lower price and are going to stay cheaper too! Great news.

As I said, my daughter came shopping with me and she couldn’t resist doing a little shopping herself. She is a grown-up!

I was really happy with how far my money stretched. I have to admit that I do a lot of my shopping online so it was a treat to get out to the store and browse around, but this also meant that I wasn’t keeping such a careful eye on my spending. We had a fabulous curry night on Saturday and on Sunday we had Steak in mushroom sauce. Then on Monday we had Salmon Twirls. I was still left with some chicken and trout for two further meals.

As promised here is my recipe for Salmon Twirl.

I used two pieces of Salmon to serve four people.

Ingredients:

2 Salmon steaks (£4 from fishmonger)

1 portion of Brie (£1.57)

1 portion of chives (79p)

Method:

First you need to slice the salmon into long flat strips. To do this you find the fattest part in the middle an put the knife in slicing through but not all the way to the end so you can open it up like a flap. In this picture I show you where to put the knife.

Do this to both strips of salmon and then add the cheese. Normally in a Salmon Twirl you would use soft spreadable cheese, but as I used Brie it was less spreadable so I put it on in small pieces to cover the slice.

Then I sprinkled on the chives which I had chopped into small pieces.

Finally you roll the whole piece up and tie it with string or food grade elastic bands. I had neither so I stuck in a couple of toothpicks and hoped for the best. They didn’t keep their shape so well in cooking but they tasted delicious so it didn’t really matter.

Here’s the cooked salmon.

The cost was £1.59 per person which was excellent value, there was some Brie and chives left over to have on crusty bread for lunch the next day too. I served the salmon with garlic pasta which cost less than £1 to make for us all. So all in all a very tasty value meal.

I’d like to say a big thank you to Morrisons and Britmums for giving me the opportunity to take part in this challenge.

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Disclaimer: I was given £80 in Morrisons vouchers to take part in this challenge.

Kids in the Kitchen – Banana Split

May 5, 2014 by Anne Sweet 4 Comments

Welcome to this weeks Kids In the Kitchen. We’ve had a lovely foodie weekend after I was chosen as a Morrison’s Mum and I received £80 in vouchers for my weekend shopping. I’ll be writing more about that soon but for the kids I bought them some nice things to make their own banana splits. You can see how they got on later in this post.

First I like to thank those who contributed to Kids in the Kitchen last week.
First up was Mummy Zen and daughter made Beer Bread. I really really have to try this, bread that can be made quickly, sounds brilliant. The only other bread I know that can be made quickly is soda bread and I’m not a fan of that.
Then over on The Beesley Buzz, the lovely Miss T makes Apricot Bread Pudding. I’ve been craving bread pudding ever since, yum yum.
Finally, over on The Recipe Source we have gluten free biscuits, baked in a challenge to see if they can compare with their regular recipe for allergy free shortbread biscuits.
Thank you all for joining in and inspiring me, and hopefully my readers too.
Do come and join in if you can, all kids cooking posts are welcome, old or new.

Banana Splits

These were inspired by The Beesley Buzz who had a lot of banana recipes over the last few weeks. When I saw them I thought my littlies would love to make them, so we had to give them a try.

Ingredients:

the main ingredients are bananas and ice cream. Then you can add any sorts of topping that you wish, we used, sprinkles, mini chocolate beans, mini marshmallows and strawberry sauce.

I let the kids loose helping themselves to banana slices, ice cream and whatever toppings they wished. They had loads of fun.

Boo Adding Sprinkles

Star Admiring her work

Star demolishing her work

nom nom nom the Little Man loved his too!

This final bowl belongs to No1 son who was keen to get in on the action.

Joining in doesn’t have to be complicated, but it will be fun. So link up your posts with the linky below and if you wish you can also add my badge so other’s may see it and want to join in too.

Apprehensive – Word of the Week

May 2, 2014 by Anne Sweet 9 Comments

This week I am feeling apprehensive. I could say I was feeling fear, or anxiety, or that I’m terrified of what the future may bring. Actually, I like to be more positive, so pushing the more horrible feelings aside, I’m going with apprehensive.

We heard from Star’s consultant. Yay! At last! He told us she would be admitted sometime in the next six weeks. First she will have another manipulation under a general anaesthetic and another halo will be applied. Then one week later they will take her to theatre again and put a metal plate fixed with tiny screws into her spine. Into the back of her neck.
It’s such a lot for a little girl to go through.
I don’t want her to feel any pain, I don’t want her to suffer, I just want her well again.
So, it’s good news that they are finally doing something to help her, but at the same time I’m apprehensive about it will all go, how it will all turn out in the end. It’s going to be tough for all of us, but mostly for Star. I so wish she didn’t have to go through this. I so wish I didn’t have to go through this. The waiting is going to be a nightmare.

So many fears trying to take over my mind, so many worries about the future. I just want to hold my little girl and make everything ok again. This is one boo boo mummy can’t kiss away.

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Kids in the Kitchen – Parmesan and Garlic Baked Potatoes

April 28, 2014 by Anne Sweet 6 Comments

Welcome to this weeks Kids in the Kitchen linky.
This week we cooked Parmesan and Garlic Baked Potatoes and I’ll give you recipe in a little while.
I started Kids in the Kitchen because I wanted to spend more time teaching my children the basics of cooking as well as spending more time with them. I do try to do the arts and crafts stuff with them but to be honest, it’s not what I’m good at. So each weekend we have one day either playing games or doing arts and crafts and one day doing some cooking together. I started this regular spot because I wanted to share what we cooked, but I also made it a linky so that others that stopped by and share what they have cooked with their children too. So please do join in if you can.

I’d like to thank last weeks linkers for joining in. Over on ET Speaks From Home we see the lovely Miss C baking bread with her mum. Learning how to bake bread is a fantastic skill for children to learn and it also makes the house smell really yummy!
If you pop on over to The Beesley Buzz you can see all the recipes they have been getting up to on their nectar savvy blog challenge including their fabulous frozen banana penguins!

Parmesan and Garlic Baked Potatoes.

I know I haven’t mentioned this before but Star is a fussy eater, in fact she doesn’t try many different foods at all and this is one of the reasons why I wanted to do more cooking with her. It’s well known that kids that cook their own food are more likely to eat it. This doesn’t necessarily work with Star unless it’s something she likes already. So this week I was a little crafty and picked one of the foods she loves and added a little twist. Star loves baked potatoes, usually with baked beans or grated cheese. In this recipe the potatoes are baked in garlic and parmesan so I was taking a little risk.

Ingredients:

potatoes

grated parmesan

chopped garlic

Method:

Boo washed the potatoes for me and I cut them in half.

Then Boo sprinkled the chopped garlic into a large roasting tin and Star sprinkled in the grated cheese.