Lazy Sundays

Our usual Sunday routine involves getting up relatively early to go to church. Once a month the gorgeous husband and amazing son number one are involved in helping at the evening service at church instead so we take the opportunity to have a lazy, family morning at home. We have a big breakfast together and generally lounge around in our pyjamas for much of the morning.

Breakfast means egg and bacon muffins, hash browns, beans, coffees and smoothies mainly sorted by the gorgeous husband. I then refuse to cook again for the rest of the day. Except for chips, because you should know by know that Sunday night is chip night in our house. Even the cat likes to join us for brunch. It seems he is partial to bran flakes, but we are not mentioning that little incident in public.

Chilli Bean Wraps (BFF)

It's that time of the week again. It's Boy Food Friday. I cheated a little this week. I made a huge vat pot of 5-bean chilli earlier in the week and gave some to a friend who is having their kitchen done. It means BFF tonight is technically leftovers. Except that I bought tortilla wraps (should have made them, but had a hair appointment very important meeting scheduled) and assembled a few extra bits to jazz it all up.

We also had tortilla crisps, some chopped tomatoes/cucumber, diced cheddar (would you forgive me if I admitted that I couldn't be bothered to grate it?), creme fraiche (sshhhh, healthier than sour cream, I won't tell if you won't) and hot sauce.

I can't take the credit for the hot sauce, although I have tweaked the recipe very slightly. It is a thing of wonder. You simply whizz the following ingredients in a blender:

• a tin of tomatoes
• some lime juice
• some honey
• a good amount of fresh coriander
• as many chillies as you can handle

It tastes even better the next day, if it lasts that long.

I also got my ice-cream maker out of the cupboard. I haven't used it in quite a while which is disappointing when you consider that ice-cream is probably my favourite food. Even more than so chocolate. Or cake. Or even triple chocolate and sour cherry brownies. I made a dark chocolate gelato to use up the egg yolks left over from making a pavlova* for a BBQ tomorrow. I have a feeling the well scraped plates and bowls tell me that the gorgeous husband and the amazing sons are pretty full right now.

*The pavlova has just been consumed by us and some friends, but I managed to snap a photo before it was demolished. I can recommend mixing the whipped cream with low-fat greek yoghurt to make it slightly healthier. Which in my book just means that you can eat more.......

Dimpling....

Someone recently said that when I smile I am 'dimpling', on account of the very large dimples in my cheeks. I have yet to meet anyone** who has larger dimples than me, though I would love to do so. As a child I disliked them as they were so unusual. As an adult I have come to love them as they are so unique.  These are some of the things that have made me dimple today.....

1. Lunch with a wonderful friend in an Indian luncheon club.
2. The cat purring as he lay in a sun beam.
3. The gorgeous husband coming home early from work.
4. My fringe finally being trimmed.
5. Baking 'ricky toad' rock cakes for BFF.
6. The amazing sons happily playing with Lego.
7. The ping on my phone as friends messaged me over the day.

Little things that please me much.

** With the exception of Bebe, my late Grandmother. But mine are actually getting bigger as I get older, so I am pretty certain they will end up being even larger than hers! They are developing their own wrinkles too, but that is a whole other story.

Cannelloni

I do love Fridays and in particular Boy Food Friday. Today we had ricotta and spinach cannelloni and I even made my own pasta. I wasn't intending to make my own pasta but I couldn't find fresh lasagna sheets to cheat with in Tesco's this morning. So out came the KitchenAid and my Imperia Pasta Machine. I'd forgotten how easy it is to make pasta, why don't I do it more often?

Note to self - next time put a layer of the tomato sauce below the pasta to help stop the pasta slightly sticking to the bottom of the dish.

Just a bit of mozzarella (and parmesan) on the top, because we had 3/4 of a ball languishing leftover in the fridge.

We ate the pasta with a tomato salad, a rocket/leaf salad (I know, I know salad for BFF, appallingly healthy) and homemade garlic bread (to make up for serving the salad). Followed by a Hummingbird Cake Days rhubarb and almond loaf and some rhubarb yoghurt. All fed. All happy. All good.

Pirates

I've had a lot of fun this week making pirate cookie pops for a friend's little girl's birthday. That is a lot of apostrophes I know, but I think my grammar is accurate. These are like cake pops, but made using a simple sugar biscuit dough.

The tricky bit is the icing. You have to start by outlining your basic shape using a thicker piping consistency.

The black icing was not easy to colour but a mad dash to Sainsbury's helped.

Then you can start to 'flood' the different areas and add details such at the white spots on the bandannas. 

Please don't ask me what ethnicity these pirates are, the skin tone was particularly orange at one point and they were in danger of looking as if they had been given a dodgy fake tan!

Finally some more piping/flooding to create the facial details. Unfortunately the black icing bled a little into the surrounding colours despite the fact I left them to dry in between each stage.

These are in no way my own invention, I closely followed the instructions here. Yes, you read that correctly I 'followed instructions'. It was quite a novel experience for me as I'm sure the gorgeous husband would agree.

A short one today. I forgot to take a photo too. This was our meal this evening. Delicious, filling and quick. I made a few changes and substituted:

• the Puy lentils for lentilles vertes (very similar but a lot cheaper, be warned they are different to ordinary green lentils and recently I can only find them in Tesco)
• the parsley for coriander (a Chui household favourite)
• the creme fraiche for natural yoghurt (that's what was in the fridge)

And we all tucked in. Nigel Slater you are a genius.

Any good, my food-loving friend?