I cook when I am happy…

Hello,

I’ve missed you…I’ve missed me too.

Life as been a bit crazy with too many stupid things. I now know I cook when I am happy…and struggle when I am not. We have been content with the humdrum..fishfingers..chicken…sausages…pizza…but no pushing of boundries…no getting my Bubs to taste spaghetti carbonara…chicken pie and minestone soup.

 

Food is a funny thing..If we can find the time and energy to create..sit at a table, eat and chat …then I think to world is a better place.

I am going to put the breadmaker on (not literally lol )…make cannelloni…and venture back into a wonderful world of delights…

 

keep smiling and thank you for reading

love Sky @ http://www.thesideplate.com

 

 

 

I can no longer tolerate boring vegetables…

Sometimes , somedays….well, I just give in. I lose the will to live over the vegetable wars.

I am lucky that my daughter does love carrots and will eat broccoli, peas and occasionally sweetcorn…My son on the other hand, pulls a face that indicates he ihas been poisoned, should anything other than baked beans appear on his plate.

I will be honest, I am not the greatest vegetable eater either. And today this will change.

I read an interesting article online that indicated children can be fussy eaters in order to survive..It would seem our cultures have evolved way faster than our basic instincts. What it comes down to, is that children like familiar stuff because they know they ate it before and didn’t die.

Now I grant you, this might seem like an off the wall approach, but I am going to run with it. But on my terms. We will not longer have boring peas, I shall add chopped bacon and maybe some onion. Brocolli will be stir fried with sauce instead of steamed. sweetcorn will be encased in a fritter..or god forbid actually mixed in with the fish pie. sweet potatoes will be appearing twice weekly (yum).

I can no longer tolerate a boring vegetable….let the vegetable carnival commence 🙂

Best wishes….a soon to be much healthier Sky x

http://www.thesideplate.com

 

So many meals …so little time..and a curveball

If you are still reading my blog …then all I can say is thank you. Gosh life sometimes throws a curve ball and an uphill struggle.
I am still here..still loving to write…and still cooking.

I think that may be one of the reasons I love food..it doesn’t matter how hard life gets..how little there is..how many arguments there are. For me there will always be a dinner to make. Its my rock I guess, I don’t want to gush..but I write and cook from my heart…and when it feels like nothing is going right for us..I can still make dinner.

Tonight it was meatloaf.
I will be honest, it wasn’t the best. My daughter loved it and asked if we could have it again. I ate it with pickles and salad, and a small glass of wine. dear son moaned, but he is in a bad place…however he got through two slices. There was garlic bread and homemade chips..no one was going to starve.

whatever life throws at us..there is still washing up, but I shall be glad there is because it means we have eaten. There are grumpy children to wash and tuck in bed.

Our tummies are full, puppy is walked, we have comfy beds to go to ….for now I shall be just glad of that.

love and hugs

Sky @ http://www.thesideplate.com

Am I over re-acting??? Again

So there I was with my cooking ABC..

Yes we made it to C…chicken on the BBQ ..chocolate eggs..Chinese lol
Then I realised food is just too damn fun, tasty and interesting to get stuck in a list.

We always eat well in the school holidays because we have time..and that kind of shocks me!!

Shouldn’t we always have time for a good breakfast, a leisurely lunch and a dinner that we helped to cook. Is this not important to just about every other aspect in life?? or am I over reacting again??

How can we function if we don’t eat properly? ( I am not preeching..I am the worst culprit). I am just dumbfounded how we don’t put importance on the fuelling of our body and soul. How we aren’t even educated on how to. And how I am conforming and stumbling through life like everyone else I guess.

So I sit myself down and I think, What is important??

Fuel?
Joy?
Family?
Education in life?
Enjoying life and food??

So where do I go from here? Can I make more effort, do we go to bed later…get up earlier…fit fun into life??
Really is this how it works..or do I take a leap..defy convention…rebel now I am 40 lol ?

The truth is I don’t know. I am trying to figure it out. You comments are more than welcome..

Love, hugs and good eating
Sky @ http://www.skybendelow.com

,

Happy Good Friday…it seems I cannot keep it simple :)

A strange day…not a particular festival day for us, but always grateful for a day off…..BBQ time I think.

I am full of cold (and grumpy..ask my boyfriend lol )..but the sun is shining and it is family dinner day.
I suggested BBQ..we will keep it simple I said….but oohhhh I cannot do simple!!!

It will just be burgers and sausages.. (no steak, chicken, prawns.) but whilst My Love is at the Big Shop..I am secretly boiling Bantam eggs (it is Easter after all). There will probably be a potato salad….Hummus….cous cous??? Brownies…maybe millionaires shortbread…hey I am not going mad I am ill ..it will be a lovely distraction..unobligated cooking makes me happy.

I can’t do simple…It is a feast for the people I love…there is no better celebration than that..I shall cherish every moment

Whatever you celebrate….have a happy one

Love and Hugs
Sky @ http://www.skybendelow.com

So here we are…..A

Well here we are A in my kids foodie education.

They decided they didn’t want apple fritters after all..so I made muffins.

They were delicious, although a little more messing about on a morning then I would like lol. Next time I shall pre make them and just reheat. I am not a morning person, and beginning the day looking for damn baking powder didn’t help my pre 2 cups of coffee mood :S

In line with the whole learning thing, I intend to buy one of each kind of apple available in the supermarket, and find its origin on a map. Hey we might even buy and plant another tree. We are also going to look behind the prices of them and why they might be priced differently. (This wont be today..hey it is the school holidays .. I am breaking them in gently).

If you don’t already know I am considering going back to home education…simply because I cant see what they are learning at school. I am not knocking schools..but beyond basic Maths and English, I can’t see a love of learning developing, and I certainly can’t see rounded life learning. It also surprises me that although I left school with my 8 GCSEs, I really know nothing..so I can learn too. I haven’t committed yet..but we shall see.

So now…well now I am going to go end enjoy my children and the sunshine….life is for living..Enjoy

Love Sky @ http://www.thesideplate.com

Recipe for apple muffins
http://thesideplate.com/recipes/easy-apple-muffins/

an Amazon link to apple things…generating a few pennies for us 🙂

I shall practise what I preach :)

It is all well and good my ranting about how our kids are not being taught…..and not doing anything about it. So as today is the last day of school, I am going to make a real effort to get the kids really involved in our cooking.

We have decided to do the food ABC. We shall try something new (hopefully each day, but I am not promising lol) as we work our way through the alphabet.
I reckon I can incorporate maths, English, cooking, art, geography and fun….possibly all in an hour a day.
It may be brilliant, it may end in tears. All I really know is, I will have tried.

We will start off gently…As you may know, my daughter is pretty good at trying stuff. Her brother less so. I spend too much time trying to work out if this is because of his autism or if he is just bloody fussy.

We are all pretty open to the idea of apple fritters….I don’t think I have a hope in hell with avocado. anchovies I might sneak in. For years I have wanted to try making Pissaladiere (a kind of anchovy pizza). I guess now is my chance.

so here we have it…I am excited. I love to learn, and I am trying to make sure my bubs do too 🙂

I hope you may join us, or share your ideas. I will try and post as many recipes as I can…..my mouth is watering already 🙂

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things to get your kids cooking…I recieve I few pennies if you buy from this link…ta 🙂

Everything has gone out of the window…

So here I am supposedly finishing my book, dreaming up new and exciting recipes…and what has happened????

Well I am only human..she’s called Maisy..and I am in love.

Don’t get giddy Dear Friends I am not coming out of the closet…although to be fair with a name like Sky I am not always sure everyone realises I am a girl (can I still be a girl if I am 40 lol).

We now have a puppy….and oh how she absorbs my time..and oh how joyful she is 🙂 But all my motivation to work seems to have gone out of the window.

So dinner today?? Well It seems no one is bothered…fish fingers, chips and peas is enough when you can play with the puppy afterwards apparently.
She is still on puppy food and no scraps allowed from the table. so I don’t need to make anything for my new girl either.

Hopefully when we start on our walks I can make and eat more puddings (I will need extra calories surely).

so its true, love diminishes the appetite…..and lack of sleep gets rid of the urge to make extravagant dinners..tonight I will have a simple supper…possibly with a dog laid on my feet.

Happy days…cherish everyone

Love Sky @ http://www.thesideplate.com

doggy books 🙂

Computers, cake and chaos…

Goodness me, one windows update, a busy school week and celebration meal and it all went to pot!

I actually prefer the chaos to the calm, as long as I have a back up plan.
My meal plan went to pot this week but after today I shall be back on track.
I don’t need to go shopping for the next week 🙂

It all started with a computer update which seems to have wiped out half of my computer..but where there’s a will, there’s a way..so here I am back at my tappity tap keyboard.

Monday dinner was a fabulous Chinese meal. our usual takeaway was closed (see even that plan went awry).
So we tried a new one and it was excellent…so anyone who lives near Ossett, Wakefield, I can highly recommend The Orient Express.
It was a belated birthday tea, complete with balloons and cake. We finally rounded up all the children, and as it was St Patricks day, I made a chocolate guinness cake.

Wow it was the kind of cake that halfway through making it you think, Jeez this seems a lot of effort (I am lazy, what can I say). but I have to say even without the icing it was divine. I shall post the recipe later.

The rest I guess is just history…tonight’s dinner is a mishmash of pizzas wraps and fries. my boys been on a school trip so we will need to chill. Tomorrow is a little more planned with an easy roast dinner, and pie on Friday…all I need now is to sort out this damn computer.

Cooking I can do….computers..errr not so good.

Lovely to catch up and thanks for reading.

Sky @ http://www.thesideplate.com

An afternoon fruit and cheese plate…

An afternoon fruit and cheese plate…

I am trying to improve my eating habits and get more organised. (Obviously not enough to take a photo lol) So today when we came home from school, and after I had been out all afternoon I decide to head off our tired and hungry melodramas with a grab and go food plate.

We eat the token fruit and veg, I get the kids to eat their 5 a day..But I am trying to form new habits….

So my new little ritual is to prepare some fruit and a few chunks of cheese (and some sneaky chocolate buttons to motivate us). A dish of bread sticks and dip.

It went down well…they still wanted crisps…but they had some fruit first…. baby steps.

It was good for me…and I am now making dinner, there are no frantic requests for snacks…we are just chilling, I am making dinner but there is no rush. I might even get them bathed before we eat…a nice slow evening with the minimum of moaning. I can worry less about arguing over how many peas they eat at dinner. I can worry less over how many peas I eat at dinner 🙂 .

It may all go downhill later. But for now we are happy, we can try new foods without a battle, they are just there to try. If they are hungry they will try or they can wait until dinner, it is their choice

I feel less pressure to make an effort at dinner lol. We are having chicken, sausage, green beans and mash. I made cookies for supper.

Somehow it all feels easier. I love the new sharing plate J

Happy eating, thanks for reading

Sky @ http://www.thesideplate.com