Night out and meals

We went out on Saturday night, it’s been a year since we last had a Wuffysitter and we thought it was about time we did.  We saw Roger Davies in concert and he was very good, we really enjoyed it.

We pretty much stuck to the meal plan last week, two changes, one becasue I was being lazy and one because we didn’t have time for a normal meal on Saturday night.  Overall I would say we did well, for us!!

This week we are having

curry

risotto (we have this every week as we all love it and I don’t cook it )

spinach pasta

sausage casserole with veg

sandwich with hummous and veggies

jacket spud (because we didn’t eat them last week)

That’s only 6 but it is my birthday on Friday and I haven’t decided what we are having then

two posts in one day, see miracles do happen!

 

Meal Planning

We are supposed to meal plan every week, but when things get bad workwise (and they have a lot this past year) it tends to fall by the wayside. Now the MSc is finally over I am going to try to be much better at meal planning and baking. I thought that if I posted here it might encourage me to stick to it. So for this week we are planning

 
What’s in the fridge pasta with chorizo
Brown rice with stir fry veg and beans
Veggie mince with mashed spuds and veg
Sandwichs with a big dish of raw veggies and houmous
Risotto
Jacket spud with beans and salad
Pizza

These are in no particular order we will eat what we fancy each night, we only plan specific nights if we are very time restricted. I am going to try to take some photos and then post an update.

I have just taken a chocolate cake out of the oven and later we will melt chocolate to cover the top. At the same time we will make some chocolate digestives.

I love cooking and baking so I am really hoping that I have a bit more time to devote to it

 

Christmas – a little late

well you know what they say about better late than never

Wuffy left his stocking by the dining room fireplace as he knows Santa will come down that chimmney

I was up before anyone else and managed to get a picture before the mayhem began

Wuffy opened his stocking first, he loved this pudsey bear and shared the rest of his stocking presents with it!!

Then he went into the living room and saw the presents under the tree

he started telling us what this would be

He was right

With Grandma on Christmas Day

Built at last

Is this the only Playmobil plane in the world to have knitted cushions? He asked his Grandma to make tham on Christmas Day and being a wonderful Grandma she did

our living room window, posted because I thought it looked good it was better in the dark but the photo of that is not very good

and finally a couple of food pictures

i’ve just noticed that the only food photos I took at Christmas were of chocolate

 

Buns and writing

We made rudolph buns today, got the idea from Krista at disposableaardvarks, she got them from another blog

Had a little melted chocolate left so I quickly made some holly leaves

Covering them in foil is the most difficult bit. I bought the chocolate moulds from cakes, cookies and crafts, they were very good.  I ordered at 11pm on the Tuesday and they arrived on the Thursday morning.

Yesterday was the last day of school, Wuffy was told he could take in a toy so he took his Tom Thomas helicopter.  When his Daddy picked him up the teacher gave him two sheets of paper that Davey had been writing on.  One of them had a distinguishable “jigsaw”, “doll” and “car” and apparently had the names of the children who brought them in but they were not so easy to find. The other piece was amazing, here it is written and spelt all by himself

We are both amazed and proud

 

Birthday Photos

 

 

This is the cake he had at home on his birthday

His birthday tea was what we call a “bits and bobs” meal Wuffy loves this type of meal

The Hornby train set he got for his birthday (purchased from Woolies )

 

Bread Making

Wuffy can’t remember making bread as we haven’t done it for so long. On Saturday we decided to make some, after mixing it into a dough I gave him a piece to knead

Then after it had risen he punched it down and shaped it

into an elephant, a sausage dog and two moon rocks.  I just made a loaf and some rolls.  I covered it in oiled clingfilm to rise for the second time and that was a mistake.  The cooked bread has a funny top due to the oil, doesn’t affect the flavour though. Wuffy had already eaten the moonrocks before I took the picture

 

Tuesday 7th October 2008

Wuffy came into our bed sometime in the early hours, we are not sure exactly when but he was there at about 3am.  He says he is fine but his cough is still bad and we suspect that he actually is not very well.

this lunch was virtually the same as yesterday, the fruit had pear and sultanas but I think it was the same apart from that. When Wuffy saw it he said he didn’t want the fruit. I told him that was fine but we would leave it in case he felt like it at lunch time, which he clearly did as he ate all of it.  For the second day running he left the tortilla chips!! He isn’t getting any tomorrow.

I picked hm up today and on the way home he told me all about sitting in a circle and learning how to cross the road properly. He told me you have to look right and then left and then right again and you only cross if the road is clear.  Then he had to be a yellow car and another child was a red car and another was trying to cross the road.  This obviously made an impression because he doesn’t usually tell us anything about shcool.

The teacher had told me that she had to speak to him because he was fighting over a toy. He told Daddy that he had been made to sit and watch an egg timer and he wasn’t allowed to go back to play until the sand had all run through. But while he had been sitting he thought that if his Daddy gave him a hammer then next time he would be able to smash the egg timer and he wouldn’t have to sit there, so could he have a hammer?  When asked if he thought he would be put into time out on other occasions he instantly said yes!!

Tomorrow they are having a celebration day. In the morning he is watching a clown show and then they are having a little party so I have to take in some finger foods.  This hasn’t been very well organised and I have no idea what food will be available. Also as he will be taking his normal lunch I’m not sure that it is really a good idea at his age. But I’ll take in some veggies sticks (cucumber, carrot and pepper), breadsticks, tortilla chips and chocolate crispies which I have just made because I don’t have anything better to do at 9.30!!

I just posted this on recipes because I like the picture then I realised there is a theme to my recipes right now

 

Weekend

I thought I would post about our weekend, not that anyone is really interested but it gives me something to do (not that I don’t have things to do I just don’t want to do them!)

I had to take Wuffy in town on Saturday to get his glasses repaired. He had run into the cupboard so hard that one of the legs was bent at an odd angle and they kept slipping off. We decided that we daren’t try to bend them back ourselves in case we broke them but the woman in the shop just took a pair of pliers to them.

On Sunday we walked round Digley Reservoir. We really should have taken the camera but didn’t It was quite dull when we set off but by the time we were half way round the sun came out and the sky was blue, it really was lovely.  The reservoir was much fuller than 4 weeks ago.  At one point there is a bench which was about 25 feet from the water last month, the water was lapping at it yesterday. Also the large bell for water to leave the reservoir was in full force whereas there was no water going down it at all before.  With the backdrop of the Pennines and the sun glistening on the water it was incredibly beautiful unfortunately you’ll just have to take my word for it.

After lunch I took Wufffy to the play area, he played for an hour in beautiful sunshine and we never saw another child. Where were they all? We went home and made chocolate wheaties (you’ll see these in the lunchbox picture later). 

I was very frugal yesterday A couple of weeks ago I made a sausage and veg stew, there was some left but it wasn’t enough for another meal so I stuck it in the freezer while I decided what to do with it. Yesterday I defrosted it, added a bit more sausgae and made a pie. It was delicious and we only ate half so we’ll get another meal out of it.  There was a small amount of pastry left (I use Jus Rol as I don’t have time to make pastry), I almost threw it away but I told myself not to be wasteful and managed to squeeze 6 jam tarts out of it

All in all a good weekend but I do wish we had taken the camera.

 

Wednesday 1st October 2008

Well it’s October and it really feels as if autumn has arrived, it’s wet and cold.  So Wuffy took soup today made with the pumpkin he insisted we bought at the weekend

pumpkin soup

wholemeal bread

cucumber and potato hoops

pear, grapes and raspberries

homemade bear biscuit

juice

He ate most of it, but strangely not the cucumber.  He didn’t eat as much bread as he would normally eat with soup either.  He was picked up by Daddy today as I was at work and the message that was sent home by the teacher was “less soup”. I only gave him what I know he would eat at home but he didn’t eat that much of it.  I am going to talk to the teacher tomorrow because not only are we worried about the lunch issue but we are worried about the friends that Wuffy is making, he says he doesn’t know anyones name and as he is a very sociable child who makes friends easily we are concerned.

He told us that after the part time children left at lunch time he was the only child in his class this afternoon as all of the other children had stayed at home to celebrate Eid.

Finally, just because, here are the biscuits in all their glory, I did the one eyed man

 

Tuesday 30th September 2008

I asked Wuffy this morning if he wanted sandwiches but he asked for crackerbread again!!

crackerbread and brown slice

spinach, cucumber, yellow pepper and beetroot

rice casserole

apple, kiwi and raspberries

blueberry yogurt

juice

He ate most of it today, he left some of the salad and probably most of the rice stuff

We had the rice casserole for dinner last night, it contained onion, garlic, mushrooms, peppers, sweet potato, green beans, paprika, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, creamed tomatoes, rice, veg stock, spinach and lentils. Wuffy loved it:)

Tonight we had jacket potato with beans (wuffy had baked beans we had chickpeas in mediterranean sauce) with leaves and cucumber. We had  a bit of balsamic vinegar on the leaves and Wuffy asked for some. I told him he wouldn’t like it but he insisted. He then cleared his plate and dipped his potato in the balsamic vinegar all the while telling me how good it was!! he then had banana and custard. Sometimes the simple meals are so good