We quite frequently end up with a crust or two that linger in the bread bag after the rest of the loaf has been eaten, and while I often just toast them for breakfast, sometimes I blitz them in the food processor to make breadcrumbs. They're handy to have around and you can use any bread you have- a bread roll that's started to dry out, the end of a baguette, wholemeal or white, all of it can be turned into breadcrumbs and stored in the freezer for when you need it. Here's my list of the best ways I've found to use them;
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So this is a new one to me but I wanted to share it with you all because it sounds amazing! It's a fab way of getting everyone out of the house, even older kids who may not always jump at the chance to go on a family walk might be persuaded by this. However seeing as I haven't tried it yet, Ady who is part of Open Heaven is going to tell you all about it below, in our first 'Guest Post' on the blog! One way to get children (of all ages!) out of the house is with a treasure hunt, and you might be surprised to know that there are millions of items called Geocaches, hidden all over the world (with hundreds of them in Charnwood) waiting for you to find them. These Geocaches are found in parks, urban areas, forests, deserts, on top of mountains — pretty much anywhere you can imagine. There are probably a few near you right now… All you need to do to take part is register for free at Geocaching.com and then armed with a smartphone and the geocaching app, you can start hunting. This is a picture of one I found in the Lake District, can you guess where the (very) small Geocache was hidden? One essential item that you need to take with you is a pencil so that once you've found the Geocache, you can sign the logbook and then return the logbook and Geocache to their original location for the next person to find. In view of Covid 19 you may also want to take some hand sanitiser with you, just to be on the safe side. I have found Geocaching to be not only a great excuse to get out of the house for a walk, but also a great way to discover more of the countryside around where I live. Doesn't this sound so fun?! I've signed up already and there are loads of geocaches hidden within a stones throw of our house- I've probably walked past lots of them without knowing that they're there! Definitely some good half term fun to be had with this.
As a family we love having a pizza night! Miles and Sophia love helping to cook, and with this everything can be done at the table rather than in the kitchen which is ideal- there's much more space, especially for rolling the dough and nobody has to stand on chairs to reach the worktop. This is also learning at it's best- when the kids don't realise it's happening! They're actually recognising numbers, learning how to weigh accurately, developing their fine and gross motor skills and hand-eye coordination... the list goes on! Plus, getting creative with food and involving children in making it can encourage fussy eaters to try new things, along with a whole host of other benefits. I usually plan this for a weekend when we have a bit more time on our hands, so we don't need to rush and the kids can enjoy the making as well as the eating. The dough recipe itself is from BBC Good Food and is a simple mix of flour, natural yogurt, baking powder and salt. We make our own pizza sauce without the added sugar- I'll pop the recipe along with the dough recipe at the end of this post. When it comes to the toppings, the possibilities are endless! I normally put lots of options in the middle of the table and the kids just choose what they fancy. Today I put out Salami, chorizo, green olives, mushrooms and red onion along with the tomato sauce and grated mozzarella. You could try different cheeses, tomato, pepperoni, ham, chicken, anchovies, pepper, sweetcorn- anything you like the sound of. Pizza Sauce Recipe Ingredients: tsp oil 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped 1 carton passatta heaped tsp oregano and heaped tsp basil or 2tsps mixed herbs Optional: 1/2 tsp celery salt 1/2 tsp onion salt pinch pepper Method:
Dough Recipe Equipment: rolling pin baking parchment Ingredients: 300g /10.5oz Self Raising Flour (plus a bit extra for dusting) 300g / 10.5oz Natural Yogurt 1tsp Baking powder 1/2tsp Salt Method: Put two baking trays in the oven and allow to preheat to 220C or 200C fan.
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I always double the quantities when I make the dough. Just freeze individual portions wrapped in cling film, and defrost them next time you want to make pizza. You'll be half way there before you've even lifted a finger. Link to BBC Good Food recipe: Recipe:www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/quick_cheats_pizza_88026 Something that Sophia loves to do is go for a walk to post a letter! We do it quite often these days. She will happily sit down with some paper and pencil crayons or felt tips, and draw a picture for someone we know- usually her grandparents or aunts/uncles etc. Now this doesn't exactly take very long- I'm not going to be able to do a sink full of washing up while she does it, but I might manage a small task or sit with a cuppa for five minutes and watch while she creates. To be honest, I normally go for the latter- there's really no contest. It is pure joy to see her in her own little imaginary world, talking to herself as she draws, or acting out the voices of the people who she's drawing. For a longer activity, but one that requires some supervision- you could get the paints or craft stuff out too. But I like that this is quite fast and feels achievable, and doesn't need lots of cleaning up afterwards. When she's completed her artwork, we pop it in an envelope, she 'writes' the address, and then I write the address too so it goes where it's supposed to! She LOVES sticking the stamp in the corner of the envelope, and eagerly grabs her coat so we can post it. She proudly carries it as we walk round to the post box, and is now tall enough to post it herself which she hugely enjoys being able to do. If you like, to make this totally free, you could pop it through the recipient's letterbox by hand if they live close-by, the excitement of posting it will be just the same! This is such a fun activity- although not one for a rainy day if your little one likes to carry the letter themselves, which they probably will! If it's more than a 30 second walk to the post box, their precious letter will probably get rather soggy. But it's a great opportunity for the kids to be creative, practice their mark making and drawing skills and burn off some energy. For us parents, it's practically free which is always good, gets us in the fresh air which is a big mood-booster, and gives us all the fuzzies, knowing what a lovely surprise it will be for the person who receives it!
This is a really quick and simple biscuit recipe (BBC Good Food) that Sophia loved helping to make. It's pretty healthy as biscuits go because it uses wholemeal flour along with the oats and doesn't have huge amounts of sugar in it. Perfect for every day sort of biscuits and half term baking. If you don't have wholemeal flour, I'm sure plain flour would work just as well- let me know if you try it! Ingredients 75g wholemeal flour 1 tsp baking powder 75g porridge oats 50g caster sugar 75g butter 1 tbsp golden syrup 2 tbsp milk METHOD
BONUS ACTIVITY!
There was some flour on the table that Sophia started to play with as I was clearing up. She was pretending that it was snow and was having so much fun that I took some extra out of the bag and sprinkled it on the table for her to play with. With just the spoon that we'd been using and her imagination, this kept her busy for over 25 minutes while two batches of biscuits cooked in the oven! I think her face shows just how much she enjoyed it! Link to BBC Good Food Recipe: www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/oat-biscuits-0 In my last blog post, I spoke about all the reasons why I write a meal plan each week. In this post I'm going to give you all the tips and tricks I've learnt along the way about how to meal plan really well! 1. Don't write a meal plan when you're hungry! Maybe a slightly silly sounding one to begin with, but I find if I'm starving hungry when I sit down to write the meal plan, I end up planning meals that are unhealthier than I would normally choose. Just like going shopping, it's easier to make good choices when your brain isn't being swayed by the needs of your stomach. I like to sit down when I've got half an hour spare, grab a cuppa (when does a cuppa not help things along?!) and get to work. 2. Check your calendar Have a quick look over your calendar for the week and see if there's anything that might affect your food choices for your evening meals. Now at the moment, in these weird covid times, for the most part we don't have much going on in the evenings or after school, if the kids are even in school at all! But when life starts to return to normal again, on a Wednesday after school Miles will have a swimming lesson. I know that by the time we get home he'll be hungry after all that exercise, and dinner needs to be on the table fairly quickly. So for that night I might plan a quick pasta dinner or a batch cooked meal from the freezer. 3. Make a list of what you've got Have a proper look in your cupboards/fridge/freezer and write down what you've got that you can use to make meals out of. Sometimes just seeing it all written down gives you instant ideas for meals that you can make without even going shopping! Or at the very least, ideas for meals that you can make without needing to buy a huge amount. 4. Make the most of supermarket offers Have a look at the offers that are on in the supermarket that you use the most. We go to Aldi for nearly all of our shopping- so I check out the super 6 offers before I go and try to use some of those items in the meal plan for the week. It can really help to keep the cost of fruit and veg down. You could also do the same for the offers on meat too, but usually the more 'basic' (versatile!) meats that I buy- mince, whole chickens etc aren't the ones that are included in the offers. With other supermarkets there may be all kinds of offers that you can make the most of if you plan your meals around them! 5. Plan in some veggie meals Veggie meals can be much cheaper to make than meals containing meat, as well as being good for our health and for the environment too! Try using lentils or soya mince in a cottage pie instead of minced beef, or how about simply subbing the chicken for chickpeas and extra onions in a good curry? There are so many amazing blogs dedicated to veggie food out there with heaps of exciting ideas! A couple of good ones that I've found and used before are tinnedtomatoes.com and www.happyveggiekitchen.com. 6. Keep a list of regular meals Have a list of all the meals that you eat on a regular basis written down somewhere, and add to it if you cook something new that turns out to be a favourite! Mine is in the back of my recipe book, and that's where I also keep print-outs of recipes that I want to try, or recipes that I've pulled out of free supermarket magazines. It makes planning so easy, because all I need to do is look down the list and choose the meals. 7. Bulk is best Buying in bulk or larger packs where posssible, and using that thing in more meals throughout the week is a good way to keep costs down- if you can stretch to buying a large or extra large chicken instead of a small or medium one, you can plan to use the leftover meat in more meals over the following few days. Likewise, a large sack of potatoes or a big pack of carrots is more cost effective than smaller packs- so as long as you have somewhere to store them, these can also be good options. 8. Batch cooking for the win! Plan in one or more days where you batch cook something. The more you get stashed away in the freezer, the more flexibility you have over your meals for the week. If plans change and you need something speedy, they're there. If you've been up for most of the night before with a baby or toddler who won't sleep, they're there! It's nice to know that you have a backup ready and waiting and it also means that you can have a night off cooking sometimes too! 9. Newy Newness! Before I started meal planning, I'd see a recipe somewhere, think how amazing it looked, then look at the list of ingredients only to realise that I didn't have half of them. I'd plan to buy the unusual ingredient the next time I went shopping. However the reality was, that the next time I was at the supermarket I was so overwhelmed with just trying to make sure I'd got enough stuff to make meals out of, that the special ingredient would get forgotten about. These days we eat lots more new meals because I can plan them in and make sure I have what I need to make them with. For a while I tried to make one new thing every week- this probably only lasted for a month or two but it was a fun challenge! 10. Go easy on yourself
Finally, don't pile pressure on yourself trying to do all of these things every time you make a meal plan. This is supposed to be something that will remove some of the stress from your life! Some days you'll have lots of time and motivation to check out offers, look at new recipes and be super thoughtful about it all, and other weeks it will be all you can manage to use the same meal plan as the week before, scribble the shopping list down and hope for the best. That's just how life goes, right? I'm sure we've all been there. But I hope this has given you some food for thought and some pointers for when you write your own meal plan. Let me know if you decide to give it a go! Now this might not sound like the most exciting thing to write a series of blog posts about, especially my first posts on this blog! But honestly, meal planning was just the biggest game changer when I started doing it and I couldn't go back now! So, naturally, I love telling people about it in the hope that it will be as helpful for you as it was for me. In this post I'll tell you all about why I meal plan- there really are so many benefits- and if you want to find out more about how to put a meal plan together, you can find out all about it in my next post. My reasons for meal planning are these:
So like I said, I'm a huge fan of meal planning. It has truly made an enormous difference to how well we as a family eat, along with all the other benefits I've mentioned. I hope this encourages you to give it a go! Let me know in the comments if you meal plan already, if you've been inspired to try it, or if you have any questions- I'd love to hear from you. We’re so glad you’ve come to visit our little corner of the internet! Here you’ll find lots of the sort of thing that we cover in our Safehaven Cafe sessions- from fun activities to do with preschoolers, to meal planning and ways to encourage fussy eaters, to tips on finance and making the most of your money.
There will be guest posts from some of the wonderful people who help to run our sessions, sharing their wisdom, advice and experience. We hope that this will be a really useful resource that you will be able to come back to again and again for new ideas and inspiration, and that it will be a handy tool for you to find out ‘what that woman said about that thing in that Safehaven workshop that time!’ If you’ve stumbled accross this blog and have never been to Safehaven Cafe, we hope that you’ll still find it really useful, and we would love to hear from you if you’re inspired by anything you find here! |
AuthorHi, I'm Laura. I'm part of Open Heaven Church in Loughborough and I run our Safehaven Cafe courses along with our amazing team of volunteers. Categories
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