Munchies and Munchkins

Food and travel

You are here: Home / Blog

Things you may not know about me #1

· by · Leave a Comment

I’m a book worm. I really really LOVE a good book. Before I had my gorgeous little girl I would easily get through 2-3 books a week. When I was 8 my mum found me sat upstairs reading my (much older) sisters copy of The Colour Purple. I didnt understand it but that made no difference to me.. I craved the excitement of a new story from that young age. I have been through many phases in my 28 years most typically loving the romance novels and teen high school books when I was at school. Did any of you read The babysitters club series? Haha. Now I read most genres as long as they are well written and manage to grip me in the first chapter although I do have a special fondness for crime thriller writers such as Harlan Coben and James Patterson and will read anything they write. I thought I would put a list of my absolute favourite reads of the past few years :

The shadow of the wind- Carlos Ruis zafon
The hunger games – Suzanne Collins..Its been a long time since a series of books excited me so much.
The I heart series – Lindsey Kelk is amazing. I love all her books but particularly the ones based on Angela Clark.
Linwood Barclay – No time for goodbye
The kite runner- Khaled Hosseini
Tell no one – Harlan Coben
The Lovely bones- Alice Sebold
The time travellers wife- Audrey Niffenegger
A piece of cake- Cupcake Brown

My guilty pleasure – Sophie Kinsellas shopaholic series.

What are your favourite books? Share please.

One of my bookshelves below..random assortment of books!

20120418-130352.jpg

Baked Eggs In Tomato, Chilli, Garlic & Spinach

· by · 1 Comment

It’s been a long tiring weekend and I really couldn’t be bothered to blog today but I am trying to stick with it so this week I thought I’d share some of my favourite easy recipes with you. All of the recipes are reasonably simple to make but tasty and mostly healthy. Today I am posting my current favourite lunch/breakfastrecipe.

Most weekdays I am happy to stick to sandwiches/salads but at the weekend I like to make something a bit more tasty and substantial.

I started making the next recipe based on an idea I saw on pinterest and tweaked it a little to make it even easier and in my opinion tastier. It’s incredibly healthy and so simple:

Baked Eggs In Tomato, Chilli, Garlic and Spinach

You will need:

1 large pan and 1 smaller pan. I use different sized clay pots (cazuelas) for most of my cooking as easier to clean and I like the look of them.
Tinned chopped tomatoes
Chopped chilli ( I use Asda fresh chilli in a tube as so much easier)
Eggs – free range please.
Baby leaf spinach
2 chopped garlic cloves or a squirt of garlic puree
Olive oil or butter
Seasoning

Firstly open a tin of chopped tomatoes (1 or 2 depending on how many of you are eating) mix in a small amount of chilli as well as salt n pepper and pour into a heated pan and cook over a medium heat until bubbling. Put a smaller pan onto warm up.
Next crack eggs ( I use 4 for the two of us) straight onto the tomatoes and leave to cook until the yolks are soft ( unless of course you prefer a hard yolk)
While your eggs are cooking pop your bread in the toaster and then put a knob of butter or a little olive oil along with your chopped garlic in your small pan and then sauté your spinach until slightly limp.

To serve place your tomatoey egg mixture onto your toast and top with your garlic
spinach and freshly ground pepper.ENJOY.

* to make this even tastier chop some bacon into your garlic spinach mixture.

Let me know if you try it 🙂

 

Baked Eggs In Tomato, Chilli, Garlic & Spinach

Methods Of Torture – Sleep Deprivation in Parenting

· by · Leave a Comment

If it wasn’t before it is now very clear to me why sleep deprivation is used as a method of torture. This past fortnight my normally happy little girl has had gastroenteritis followed by extreme teething which means that we ( I say we as I am very lucky to have a brilliant OH who shares the night shift) have had such little sleep I constantly feel as though I am on autopilot. Is this a permanent feature of parenthood? I hope not. When my daughter started sleeping for longer stretches-up to 9/10 hours I was silently smug..after all everyone had told me ( with delight it seems) that after having a baby I would never get a full nights sleep again but now it seems that after fooling me into thinking my life was somewhat going to get back to normal someone somewhere is laughing (smugly).

There is good news though I am more and more impressed every single day at how my body will adapt to little or no sleep and will function more or less as normal. I may look zombielike but I can pull off most everyday chores and even attempt a new exercise challenge-the 30 day shred which I will explain more about another time. How amazing are our bodies?! Don’t go thinking I am supermum as my house is nowhere near as tidy as I want it to be, there are many days when I really really struggle to get up from my sofa and outfit planning is normally grabbing what is clean and crease free but I am coping far better than I ever hoped.

If anybody has any remarkable/miracle like teething cures they want to share before I pull all my hair out I would really appreciate it as not much is working right now but after an extremely hard night made even more so by not knowing how to soothe my sobbing child I can say we finally have a tooth which means this chapter of baby life is getting closer to an end and you know what this morning she is happy and exploring her new friend in her mouth with a curious tongue which makes me smile.

Excuse any spelling or grammatical errors please I am typing this with droopy eyelids.

 

Cakes and bakes 2012 part 1

· by · Leave a Comment

This year I have started to enjoy baking a lot more than I used to, perhaps it’s because I feel like I’m starting to get the hang of it or maybe its just the excitement I get when I pull a cake out of the oven and it’s turned out just how I wanted it to ( it’s possible I need to get out more) At the moment it seems as though nothing is guaranteed to be perfect ..work, going to sleep at night, eating an uninterrupted meal to name but a few and to make a perfect cake makes me feel good.

Here are some of the cakes I’ve made so far this year:

20120412-100827.jpg

20120412-100843.jpg

20120412-100855.jpg

20120412-100907.jpg

20120412-101008.jpg

20120412-101025.jpg

There is : Divine chocolate birthday cake, farmhouse orange Victoria sandwich and apple and almond cake which are all from Mary Berrys 100 cakes&bakes book which I made as part of the @weeklybakeoff on twitter

Also a basic Victoria sponge made from a family recipe which I will try to add later today and peanut & banana muffins from a new recipe by Rachel Allen which I found online:
http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/573813

And finally a lemon cake with fondant icing which should look like a surfboard (slightly more like a rugby ball in my opinion but it tasted good) which I made for my OH’s birthday.

Hope you enjoy reading, let me know what you think.

So much to say so little time to say it.

· by · Leave a Comment

I have been wanting to write a PROPER blog for some time but I rarely found the time before I had Izzy and well now time is a precious thing..with a spare 30 mins I can exercise,cook, bathe and clean my house with the speed that only a parent will know. Anyway I am still going to attempt to write regularly and I would love your comments. One of the things I have found difficult (there have been many) since having Izzy is the lack of time for making proper meals and I love to cook so I will be posting some recipes for quick, simple meals that still make you feel like you have made the effort. I will also be writing about being a mother, ideas/tips I have picked up from other mums on twitter/baby centre and more than likely asking for your help.

Ok first post done. Tada.

>