Gingerbread Trifle – an easy trifle recipe to wow your guests at Christmas
A stunning Christmas dessert
Teenage Family Meal Plan Autumn 21/09/20 – Leftovers and Easy Dinners
A quick and easy list based on leftovers
Family food: Why letting kids loose in the kitchen could banish fussy eating
How letting kids get hands on in the kitchen leads to less fussy eating, and healthier food for the whole family
Family Food: Review of the Hello Fresh Family Box
Do you sometimes stand in front of the fridge and want to scream? If the worst part of your parenting day comes at dinner time, I have the answer. The new Hello Fresh family box. If you’re anything like me – and let’s be honest: every family needs a bit of help sometimes when it comes to meal times – what was once a pleasurable and relaxing activity has become a daily drudge since you’ve had kids. I’ve been cooking family food for 13 years now, and although in many ways it does get easier (remember cubes of frozen organic …
A Teatime Kids Favourite with Full-On Flavour but No Added Sugar
Hands up who sometimes ends up tearing their hair out at teatime? We make fabulous meal plans and have wonderful intentions to feed everybody from scratch, don’t we? But inevitably there’s going to come a day (or more!) in the week when you’re shattered, everyone’s hungry right NOW, and you just don’t have it in you to put together an elaborate chickpea and soya bean casserole. Am I right? But you still want to feed your kids something that’s nutritious, not full of rubbish, and that they’ll actually enjoy. My kids have always been fans of spaghetti hoops (though if …
Could you have Chefs of the Future? Tefal Cook4Me review
Review: The Tefal Cook4Me We’ve been letting the kids loose in the kitchen recently. They’re old enough now to know a few of the basics of preparing food, and both of them are really interested in creating meals, so cooking with the kids is much less stressful than it used to be when they were very young. What’s really made the difference though, is the addition of a new gadget to our kitchen. We’ve been working with Tefal to promote the Cook4Me, showing how easy it is to use by turning over the kitchen to the kids. Looking for more …
Recipe: Unbelievably Easy Sausage and Bean Stew (Tefal Cook 4 Me)
If you follow our social media accounts, it will not have escaped your notice that we have a new kitchen gadget. I have waxed lyrical about the Cook4Me by Tefal, to the extent that several of my online friends have gone straight down to Argos to buy one for themselves. Still others have added the intelligent multicooker to their Christmas list. I’m pretty confident that it will live up to expectation, and very excited to have one to give away today. I’ll be reviewing the Cook4Me fully next week, when you will find out how we got on handing the kitchen over …
Food: Easy Italian Family Friendly Dinner Party Menu
In our family we love to eat. Waiters never get the chance to offer the children’s menu, and always look nonplussed by our kids’ food choices. At the weekends we cook big roast dinners, complete with proper puddings, or attempt marinades for the barbeque. One of my biggest frustrations after we started a family was having to cook simple, plain foods for my children, and then start again with delicious dishes for myself and my husband. As soon as they were able to appreciate something more challenging I started to try and integrate them into our more grown-up meals, …
Travel: Why I waited 40 years to love British camping
I snuggled down in my sleeping bag, and wriggled my ten-year-old toes. I was far too excited to sleep, my Dad’s torch flicking signals on the canvas, fearful shadows urging me to stay in the tent. Joanna lay next to me, but she wasn’t asleep either. Both of us were eagerly awaiting midnight, so we could eat our Blue Riband biscuits and declare that we had experienced a real-life midnight feast. In the event, we wore ourselves out giggling well before the appointed hour, and I set my purple-faced alarm clock so we wouldn’t miss it, as we dozed off. …
Mindful Chef Review: Healthy Recipe Box Meals
Mindful Chef: the Healthy Recipe Box I don’t often post about food on this blog, but when I do, it’s because I’ve found something that really makes life a little bit better. I’ve talked before about how my love of cooking has diminished since having children. It’s something to do with the endless nature of feeding a family. No sooner is one meal consumed, than another has to be prepared, and the cycle of menu-planning, shopping, prepping, and cleaning up seems to go round too fast for me to ever feel like food is not on my mind. Add to …
Perfect Low Carb Pizza Recipe
A low carb pizza has been the holy grail of my Saturday night menu planning for a long time now. Takeaway pizza (and even the shop-bought variety) has a tendency to wreak havoc with blood glucose levels when you’re acting as your own pancreas and injecting insulin. (In fact, I have a strong suspicion that the insulin resistance of type 2 diabetes may have more to do with high fat, savoury junk food than with cans of Coke, but that’s a rant for another day). So our Saturday night fix in front of the TV has suffered since type 1 …
10 Minute Dinners: Fast Sausage and Lentil Casserole Recipe
10 Minute Family Dinners guaranteed to please What do you pull out of the bag when your kids are hungry and you need to put dinner on the table, but time is short? Beans on toast? Microwaved curry? Tin of soup? Or would you rather have a hearty, healthy casserole that will feed the whole family and only takes 10 minutes to prepare? That’s the challenge OXO gave us when they sent us some of their Herbs and More flavour pots to create a recipe for their 10 minute dinners list. In fact, they asked to to make …
How to cook pork steaks like Jamie Oliver – easy family recipe
Easy to cook pork loin steak that all the family will love
Easy Family Food: Versatile Pizza Tart recipe
When the Bug and I get home from school, chaos often sets in. Both of us have various places we need to be, and everyone needs to be fed. Pizza tart is one of our quick and easy staples. Simple to prepare, just chuck on any ingredients you have in the fridge and bake. It’s good hot or cold, and stands up well to being reheated for later if you’re the kind of family that sometimes needs to eat in shifts! In this version we decided to get a bit more exciting with our ingredients, and used OXO’s new Shake …
Grown Up Tuna Pasta Bake Recipe that Kids will Love
How to feed the whole family with just one recipe All hell is breaking loose. You abandoned any attempt at creative play hours ago and the bickering upstairs would indicate that a full-scale atrocity is underway. Homework litters the kitchen table and a million Hama beads are skating under the fridge. To make matters worse, it is 5 o’clock and the freezer is offering you nothing but a bald fish finger and some chewy-looking ice-cream. Plus it was Friday food at school today, so pizza isn’t an option, and Actually Daddy will be home looking to be fed in half …
Slow Cooker Red Lentil Curry recipe: 7 WeightWatchers ProPoints
What Mummy loves about this red lentil curry, aside from the fact that it has only 7 WeightWatchers ProPoints per serving, is that it genuinely needs no effort at all. Simply chop up all the vegetables, rinse the lentils until the water runs clear, mince the garlic, grate the ginger and chuck everything in the slow cooker on a high setting for about 4 hours. Or you can cook it all on the hob, with some low calorie cooking spray, if you’re in a hurry – about 15 minutes simmering will do it. You will need: 250g red lentils 1 …