Back to School with Panasonic.

The transition back from summer holiday freedom to early morning school runs has been tough and it hasn't helped that Archie is still on half days for another week and a half.  The freedom to wake, eat and sleep when we wanted to has gone and now I can guarantee that at 3:15 on the dot two little voices are declaring that they are 'so hungry'.

We have been working with Panasonic and Daniel from The Naked Nutritionist to solve our back to school food problems and he came up with three delicious recipes for us.  Both boys have school lunches and whilst I know that they have to follow certain guidelines, I also don't know what they are eating at school so I want to make sure I get as much fresh and healthy food into them as possible when they are at home.

My children always come out of school hungry so my first question was about after school snacks that will give them the energy to get through the rest of the day without making them too full up for their dinner.  Daniel created a green juice recipe that would help get some vegetables into them and was a great way to get them involved too.  We used a Panasonic MJ-L500 juicer which slowly presses and crushes the food with its stainless steel screw to keep more nutrition in.  The children loved getting involved and feeding the vegetables into the juicer and I love how easy it is to clean afterwards as you can take it apart and pop it in the dishwasher! 

I wanted some ideas for dinner times too as we always resort to the same vegetables which we know they will eat (peas, carrots and sweetcorn). Daniel came up with two brilliant recipes to get the children eating fresh and more variety.  The cauliflower mash is perfect for the days when they are not that hungry as it is lighter than mashed potato and we loved it with cream cheese added as well. The Panasonic MK-F800SXE food processer whizzed through the steamed cauliflower in seconds creating a creamy mash.

The boys ask for a pudding every evening and so Daniel taught me how to make a chocolate and avacado mousse that was sweet and delicious but full of hidden avacado which is such a great food for getting all the right vitamins to keep their brains working well.  The food processor has 33 functions and we have made so many different things with it by swapping the attachments.  (Next up is our own nut butter!).  Along with the classic hiding veg in a pasta sauce, I think hiding avacado in a chocolate pudding works great!

The recipes for all three of these are available on the ideas kitchen website and if you want to see Daniel and I cooking them then check out the facebook live we made on Panasonic's facebook page.

I have no excuse not to serve up something fresh and nutritious to the ravenous school boys at 3:15 each afternoon now!

In collaboration with Panasonic.

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Pasta Loaf - A Healthy Family Meal

I am a member of the Collective Bias® Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper amplification for Collective Bias and its advertiser.

You may have noticed a distinct lack of recipe posts on this blog, especially not healthy family meals.  You may have noticed that I rarely admit to entering the kitchen, let alone using a saucepan, or an oven.  I am not a fan of cooking, and with two small children (quite literally sometimes) hanging from my legs, I find nothing relaxing about cooking.  Eating though, Eating is something I am very good at.

With Archie and Dylan both having tummies to be filled every night though, I have had to venture into the kitchen much more often than I would like to and have discovered that actually, my cooking isn't too bad! I may improvise rather randomly at times (although using banana instead of egg works surprisingly well), and interpret a recipe my own way, but the boys don't complain so I am happy that way.

The challenge was to cook a healthy family meal for under £10 and as soon as the word 'challenge' was used, the kitchen became a much more exciting place.  I had seen a pasta loaf recipe link on social media that looked interesting, different and it contained vegetables so I thought it was worth giving it a go.

I took a trip to Tesco to pick up my ingredients, going shopping after work at the weekend as I know that the later on you go, the better the bargains.  Unrelated to my recipe, I managed to pick up a 10 pack of paper cups for only 5 pence in the bargain aisle!  I often browse the reduced section for inspiration as despite it all having a short date, it is usually ok to cook the next day.  

I found my ingredients and they came in at under £8, with plenty left over of some ingredients for other meals.  I may have chickened out of following the initial recipe completely as I didn't want too much pressure and it was only eighty pence for ready to roll shortcrust pastry!

I have never cooked Butternut Squash before, and I was actually rather excited to try it for the first time, hoping desperately that I would like it.  I try hard to give the boys access to a wide variety or fruit and veg and they both eat everything and anything, but I am not so good myself.  I had to google how to cook it and should someone have had a video camera around when I tried to peel it, it would have made quite a funny film!

Here are the ingredients I used in our pasta loaf dish:

250g macaroni

2 red peppers

1 butternut squash

50g butter

Fresh parsley

1 tablespoon of cornflour

3 medium eggs

250ml double cream

Feta Cheese

1 pack of ready to roll shortcrust pastry (or you can make your own of course!)

If I was making it again, I would probably use more vegetables and less pasta, as it would be healthier for us all and given lots more flavour.  So how did I make it? . . .

I roasted the butternut squash in the oven whilst cooking the pasta on the hob, making sure  the pasta didn't go too soft.

I then heated the butter in a pan and added the peppers which I had diced. 

After a few minutes, I mixed the cooked pasta, roasted squash and finely chopped parsley into the peppers and stirred in the feta cheese.

I rolled out the pastry on a lightly floured surface and lined the inside of a loaf tin with it, chopping off the excess.  I filled it with the pasta, lightly pressing it down.

In a separate bowl, I mixed 3 beaten eggs, the cream and the cornflour (which I had made into a paste with 2 tablespoons of water), and if you have older children, you could add salt and pepper.  As I was planning on feeding this to Archie who is only 10 months, I left out the seasoning.

I poured the sauce over the pasta and then made a pastry lid, covering the pie completely, and sealed with my fingers.  I made a small hole in the lid to let the steam out, and popped it in a pre-heated oven on gas mark 4 for one hour.

When it came out, I left it 15 minutes to cool in the tin and then turned it out, leaving it another 15 minutes before slicing it.

The dish may not be the healthiest, but it is hearty, filling winter food that went down very well with the bloke, the toddler and the baby-led-weaning 10 month old.  You could easily add more vegetables and use wholemeal pasta if you wanted to.  Most importantly, it is simple enough that even I can make it and this was big enough for the four of us to eat one meal and an extra meal for the boys too.  

In fact, the leftover £2 gave me just enough to buy some ingredients for a little dessert too and Dylan helped me making fruity pancakes afterwards. 

We mixed one mug of self raising flour, one mug of milk and one egg in a bowl

We grated in one apple (including skin) and tipped in one finely chopped banana.

We cooked it in a frying pan using butter instead of oil and the fruit made the pancakes naturally sweet and delicious!  The boys loved the treat and I felt happy knowing that they contained fresh fruit and no nasties - definitely a hit!

So it took the term 'challenge' to get me into the kitchen, but I managed to cook a two course meal for all the family for under ten pounds so we are all happy!

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Quality Time #CBias

Having two children close together means I have very little time to spend with either one.  As I am breastfeeding Archie he is almost permanently attached to me, and Dylan is so full of energy that I get little time to sit and enjoy my newborn baby.  Over the Easter weekend, the bloke has been off work and it has been nice to enjoy some quality time with both boys separately.

 On Saturday, Archie and I went out for a lovely walk, with him all tucked up in the sling.  It was lovely to have my hands free as I walked and lovely to enjoy the cuddles.  We popped down to Asda (see my Google+ album) to get the final preparations ready for the Easter egg hunt I was planning for Dylan on Monday.  I chatted to Archie about everything we saw and it was great to do the things with him that I did the first time around.

We bought the last bits for the Easter egg goody bags, and were disappointed that they had already run out of every kind of Easter egg! (although they did have plenty of hot cross buns left!)  Luckily I had the chocolate already and was just looking for some bubbles to hand out.

I knew that the Easter weekend was going to be tiring for the little man as we had lots of plans with family and outdoors so I needed plenty of energy boosting and healthy foods for him.  I bought something that I was hoping we could make together for when the bloke was free to look after the littlest one.

After an exhausting morning on Monday hunting eggs, Dylan fell asleep on the 30 second walk home from the park so his lunch was put on hold.  He had been nibbling sweet stuff like chocolate and raisins all morning so I wanted him to get at least one of his 5 a day with his lunch.  Archie fell asleep just as the little dude was waking up from his nap, so it seemed the perfect opportunity to spend some quality time with Dylan.

I had all the ingredients to make fresh pizza, but as I knew his little tummy wouldn't hold out that long, we decided to cheat and use a frozen pizza base  We topped it with tomato puree and I grated cheese for him to sprinkle on top.  We topped the pizza with some Heinz cheddar cheese baked beans (I never even knew these existed until Friday!) which he carefully  spooned onto the pizza and we added the rest of the cheese.  Dylan seemed very excited to be doing some cooking and it was great to know my little bean lover would definitely wolf down his dinner!

Dylan loved sticking his fingers in the beans and giggled away as we made his dinner.  I must admit to being dubious about the idea of baked bean pizza, but it was a big hit with the boys!  As it was the last day of the long weekend, we all sat down together oin the living room with the Gruffalo on TV and enjoyed our cheesy bean pizza, with Dylan stopping between every bite to say pizza! cheese! beans!  It was such a simple idea and perfect for cooking with a toddler.

It was lovely having time alone with both boys knowing that the other one was in safe hands, but there is nothing like cuddling up together as a family with a yummy meal.

I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community. This content has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias® #CBias #SocialFabric.

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Plum Cookery School

I have never been one to cook.  I don't cook for myself and even with the best intentions, I don't really cook for the little dude. When we were invited to Plum's cookery school I was excited to see if they could persuade me that I can make a healthy meal for him.

As well as being completely lost in a kitchen, I worry that any meals I make for him won't have the same nutrition and taste that the pouches we buy do.  His health and well being is my priority so I need to know what I cook would be packed full of the right nutrition.

We were invited into the home of Beverly Glock which doubles as a cookery school, helping ordinary people get comfortable in the kitchen.  They invited 5 bloggers with young children along so that we could recreate their new taste adventure dish 'cape curry with beef'- one of Dylan's firm favourites.  I was looking forward to seeing how it was actually made and getting to taste our homemade version.

Together with Beverly's help, we recreated this great dish, using all the same ingredients you would find on the back of your plum pot.  It was so much easier and quicker than I

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