Simple Soup

A very cheap to make easy recipe for a chicken soup. Feeds 4.

Ingredients

1 chicken breast

1 courgette 

3 fluffy potatoes (Maris Piper)

1 onion

1 clove of garlic

Pinch of dry thyme

2 chicken stock cubes 

I litre hot water

Knob of butter and a splash of oil.

Method 

Peel onion, garlic and potatoes. Chop onion, potatoes, chicken and courgette into roughly 2cm cubes. Crush garlic. Put butter and oil in a pan and add thyme, cook for 1 minute. Add onion, continue to cook till soft and golden, add garlic and cook for 1 more minute. Add chicken continue cooking until opaque. Add the veg and cook for a further 2 minutes stiring well. Dissolve stock cubes in boiled water, add, cover and simmer for 1 hour, add parsley for the last 5 minutes of cooking season to taste, blend or eat chunky with lots of fresh bread.

Progress!

Argh sorry have not up dated in what seems like forever. Just after my last post I came down with some vile plague and food was the furthest thing from my mind and anything that even resembled a smoothy made me want to sell the nutibullet on ebay and post it outta here 1st class. However it wasn't the end, Smallboy2 has now started school which has given me a little more time and we have worked our way through all the fish fingers and burgers we had in the freezer and I now have tupperware tubs filled with home made burgers, chicken strips, cod bites and meatballs in their place, the meatballs have been sampled and were a hit :) The rest will be hitting the plates in the next couple of weeks.

Baking is going okay, I have had all sorts of cookie and muffin flavour combos going on. I also tried my hand at cheese scones and lemon drizzle, the scones were awesome, the drizzle was a bit sad :( but in the absence of Kitkats and Jaffa cakes was still devoured.

Bedtime is the bomb nowadays if they are not asleep by 8 I get a bit disappointed, less than 6 weeks ago these kids were still tearing up and down the stairs at gone 10!!

Family time is top priority this week, time to get that nailed!

I will also be giving pasta sauce a whirl, tomato and basil and pesto.....as always wish me luck!

I'll leave you with my favourite cookie recipe, oh my word the chilled dough is so good it is tough leaving any for the oven. Jamie Oliver recipe pimped by me :)


Chocolate and Coconut cookies :)

45g plain flour
45g wholemeal plain flour
10g cocoa powder
125g butter
100g golden caster sugar
1 large egg
25g milled flaxseed (optional)
25g porridge oats
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
50g milk cooking chocolate
25g coconut

Allow butter to soften at room temperature. Put in a bowl with sugar and beat with an electric whisk till you get a thick, creamy consistency. Add egg, beat in. Sieve in flour and then add all the other ingredients. Mix until smooth.

Spoon onto a piece of clingfilm  and roll into a sausage shape about 7cm in diameter. Pop dough in freezer for 30 mins. You can now leave it in the freezer for as long as you like, then take it out leave it t room temperature for about 30 mins. Slice into 1cm thick pieces and pop on a nonstick baking sheet and cook at 190oc/375of or gas mark 5 for 8-10 mins a little longer if you like them crispy.

Oh yeah and......I lost 4lb :)

So far so good!!

Sooooo week one was mainly positive, the boys in spite of being very resistant of change have actually done very well and tried all the new things. Bed times have improved, they are still not quite where I would like them but they are better, Best of Both is not popular but it is being eaten by all three of us, I am hoping to replace it with wholemeal from the bakers by the end of September.

Changes we made this week!!!
Breakfast....we waved bye bye to chocolate cereal and marmalade on toast, and replaced it with fruit porridge, blueberry pancakes, eggs, boiled and scrambled and even a cheese omelette and finally mixed berries with plain whole milk yoghurt and buttered toast fingers. These are massive changes for us and actually has made breakfast a bit of an adventure.

Our Nutribullet arrived on Wednesday and since then we have been having a smoothie every day at breakfast, this mornings was a disaster but other than that they have been yummy and well received and the kids are getting a blast of raw spinach every day at breakfast, we have lots more recipes to try and today we will be upping to two a day.

Lunches too saw a change we still mainly had sandwiches however instead of having, crisps, biscuits and processed yoghurt with them we had vegi sticks and fruit all hoovered up by the kids.

Smallboy2 hates the water bottles and still moans for apple juice most of the day but he will now have water with his meals without moaning till my ears bleed all the way through!!

I made Cookies!! And Jam!!

So this week is about maintenance and dinner. We had guests last week so dinners were a bit hit and miss, today I will be planning evening meals for the rest of the week.

So here goes week two wish me luck!!

Change is coming.

Several things have prompted me to want to make some changes around here. The changes will I hope be radical.
Firstly bed time needs some serious work, sometimes it is gone 10pm before all three are asleep this is just crazy and not good for them or me. I love to cook but I have fallen into a cycle of using the easy option and good home cooking has taken a back seat. The children have hours and hours of my time but little real quality time with me. I want to change these things!! The children are not so sure, they like things the way they are!! They like sausages, fish finges, fruit corners, cadburys fingers, froobs and white bread, they really like white bread. They like the T.V too, Smallboy2 really likes the t.v. Luckily Smallboy3 is too young to care, he likes boobs, but at 4 and 6 I fear I may face some resistance from the older two.

I think if I try and change to much at once there will be a riot and I will fail, we will fail. So softly, softly, catchy monkey and hopefully by Christmas I will have made the changes, cleaned up our diets and our lives, lost some of the junk food and filled some of the lost hours. Please wish me luck!!

Week 1: Starts today bank holiday Monday 25/08/2014
Sleep: Children to be in bed by 7.30.. lights out by 8.30.
Diet: Byebye Hovis white. Hello Best of both a small change, but in the right direction (and yes they did notice the difference.)
Water: I will be trying to fight my tea addiction by starting each day with a mug of hot water and lemon slices.
Activity: at least 4 active and 3 non active sessions of family time this week. I work 2 days so it may be that we have to do 2 some days. I hope that they will also all get a one on one with me too.

In addition I have ordered them one of these each http://www.amazon.co.uk/Unicol-Bottles-School-Lunchbox-Dinner/dp/B00EAQC29M/ref=pd_ybh_1 which I am going to fill with mineral water and keep in the fridge to try and help Smallboy2's apple juice habit.

But most exciting of all I have one of these on it's way http://www.buynutribullet.co.uk/nutri-bullet-microsite.html?gclid=CKC1zfTSrsACFc7HtAodygQAHg so later in the week we will be shopping for lots fruit and veg and trying it out!!

and finally in bee news I will be off to the health food shop for honey from our local Quinces Honey Farm as an alternative to sugar.

The Best Soup Ever.....

So Friday is soup day in this house, cheap, easy and looks after itself in the slow cooker. I adore this soup it is adapted from a recipe passed on by a friend.

Autumn Squash Soup.
1 small butternut squash.
1 medium courgette.
1 large carrot.
1 onion.
1 clove of garlic.
3 rashers of streaky bacon smoked or not.
1/2 teaspoon of paprika.
2 veg stock cubes.
a good grind of black pepper.
1 litre boiling water.
1/2 a tub of Philadelphia or one of it's cheap relatives.
Lug of olive oil

Chop it all up fairly small. Fry the onion, garlic and bacon in the olive oil till bacon is cooked and onion is soft, throw into slow cooker, Throw all the other veg in on top, dissolve the stock cubes in the water pour into slow cooker add paprika and pepper. Cook on high for 2 hours. Blend with a stick blender, add the cheese blend again. Eat straight away with crusty bread, this makes quite a runny soup if you prefer a thick one only use 3/4 of a litre of water :)

Sorry....

Poor blog so neglected, time to pick up my pen well keyboard again I think......

Dinosaur on the stairs.

There's a dinosaur at the top of my stairs, he's been there several days looking down wondering solemnly if anyone is every going to play with him again. He irks me a little, why leave him at the top of the stairs why not take him down where I can toss him equally unloved into the play room? Or carry him back into their bedroom where he can fall down the back of Small Boy B's bed never to be seen again.?

Today has been one of "Those Days" Small boy B wet his bed so came into mine in the early hours and wet that too, nothing like 2 lots of wet bedding to start you off on the wrong foot. My lovely friend and her equally lovely little girl came to visit and brought pain au chocolat which lifted my spirits and Small Boy B went out to visit my Mum. So all good, but when they all left Small Boy T turned into a demon. Not something that happens often with him but the hour it took to persuade him he really needed a sleep was fraught to say the least. Now I am left with half an hour before Small Boy B returns and instead of doing anything constructive I waste it, while breathing deeply, on Facebook.....guilt ridden, while Cbeebies still chatters on in the back ground as I am too lazy to get up and find the remote!

Then on a quick trip upstairs to fetch some more wet bedding I am struck with a thought, the one that keeps me sane and also makes me a little sad, my Small Boys will grow away before my very eyes and dinosaurs on the stairs will be a thing of the past.