Reduce Food waste and save money

Over the past few months I have been trying to reduce the food wasted in the house.  As well as being a massive waste of money I hate to see food thrown away! Love food hate waste stated that
"We throw away 7.2 million tonnes of food and drink from our homes every year"  It is actually very shocking when you look at the table to see how much money this equals to.

Due to this I have started to write down or at least be more mindful of what we are eating and need to eat each week.

I have also started to freeze home made meals meaning we have our own ready meals ready and waiting.

One recipe that I have been doing for ages is banana bread/muffins this is a great way to use up bananas that are over ripe and that may be thrown away. It is a great recipe to make with Little ones Little Boo loves mashing the bananas!

The best recipe that I have found is this one I just omitted the Walnuts.  I made this into muffins so it took 25 Minutes to cook.  Once they had cooled I was able to freeze some for another day.

Snowman biscuits

We helped my Mom and Dad over the weekend to put up the Christmas decorations.  A tradition that I would never like to miss out on! I love doing their tree as it has loads of mine and my sisters decorations that we made when we were little, so many great memories! We tend to laugh at each others creations and at my Mom for keeping them ALL.  I can now understand why she keeps them all though I could not part with anything Little Boo makes.

 I hope that when Little Boo gets bigger that we will to have decorations that she can look at.  It was funny to watch Little Boo look at the decorations that we made with great interest.  I thought at one point that she may start to offer me tips for improving my master pieces.

Anyway due to putting up the decorations I thought it would be nice if we had a little something to take with us so decided to make some biscuits (always goes down well with my Dad he is a biscuit addict).  I searched on-line for the simplest recipe I could find and found this easy biscuits recipe this suited the limited ingredients that I had available and time.  Little Boo loved mixing all the ingredients that I had ready for her in bowls.  We mixed it then cut out the circles then all of them were ready to bake.

Only problem was that I had to be at my Mom's within the hour which gave them just enough time to cook and cool.  No time to decorate them.  I told Little Boo that we would finish them the next day which was met with tears, this meant that the biscuits went on a trip to Nannies to finish off cooling in the car as we drove there.

We finished them off once we had decorated and everyone loved them.  I know they liked them as some suspiciously went missing before they were even decorated! All we did to decorate them was add a bit of icing sugar then a sweet for the nose and chocolate drops for the eyes and mouth.  This is great for fine motor skills as Little Boo had to pick up the small bits to decorate the biscuits. They were then all finished to eat. Apologies that they are on an icing sugar splattered plate needless to say Little Boo liked spreading the icing.

This idea is really versatile and could be used for many occasions. All you need to do is decorate them differently.  If you do not feel like making the biscuits why not decorate rich tea biscuits?

A guest post by Little Boo's Aunty

When you’ve got such a fabulous mom, being a cool aunty is a pretty tall order.  Little Boo has started coming for a sleep over and the pressure was on to find things to do together that she would enjoy.  We both enjoy cooking (in our matching aprons) and making crafts (I think this runs in the family!).

The first time boo had a sleepover, we made our tea together.  We made some pizza, and little boo chose her own toppings and sprinkled them on. 

Aunty Wendy’s pizza! (no cheese version!)

After tea, we made some crunchy granola for mommy.  First we greased some baking trays using melted coconut butter.

I prepared all of the ingredients, and little boo helped to weigh them out.  Then came the fun part – blending it all up in the blender!  Little boo was a bit scared of the noise at first, but it really appealed to her love of mixing things up! 

She loved it so much, we had to make a banana smoothie later on, just so we could use the blender again!  We baked the granola, and whilst it was in the oven, little boo decorated a tub for it to go in.

 

For this I used a large lidded tub that my porridge comes in (I believe these tubs feature quite often on this blog!) – If you are trying to find one, it is Asda’s own porridge.  We looked through newspapers and magazines to try and find pictures of the ingredients to go on the tub.  Boo found some pictures of apples, and raisins, and nuts.  She cut them out carefully and stuck them on.  All in all, we had a lovely night together, finished off by a bath and about 4 bedtime stories.

On the next sleepover, we made some cheerio cakes, with a recipe I got off Pinterest. 

http://www.marthastewart.com/313888/cranberry-oat-cereal-bars?czone=home/back-to-school-cnt/back-school-recipes-snacks&czone=home/back-to-school-cnt/

These were very simple to do, and made loads!  Boo helped to weigh out the butter, and chopped it up using her own knife to go into the pan.  I watched her carefully, but she kept reminding me that she was being careful, bless.  Boo then put the marshmallows into the pan (and one in her mouth), and I put them on the hob to melt down. 

Little boo then greased the pan, I put some melted coconut butter in a little pot and gave her my pastry brush, so she could paint the pan. We measured out the cheerios into a bowl, counting 6 cups, and added the packet of cranberries.  Little boo asked if they were red raisins.  We tried one to see if they were the same as raisins. Once the marshmallows were melted, we stirred them into the cheerios and then put the mixture into the greased pan, and into the fridge.  You need to cut them up with a sharp knife after about 30 mins in the fridge.  We all enjoyed eating these at the fireworks night the next day!  Boo was very impressed with them, but didn’t want to eat one as they made her fingers sticky.

I hope that you have enjoyed my sisters post.  I am really grateful that she wanted to write for the blog. Please feel free to check out her blog over at Never-rest she blogs about all her training for long distance events.  

Maltesers cake

This cake I saw on the Internet and it was a must try! We love all the ingredients in the cake so knew we would love the end result and we were not disappointed. It was so easy to make.


All you need is

100g butter
200g milk chocolate
3 tbsp golden syrup
225g crushed digestive biscuits
225g Maltesers

How to do this 

• Melt the butter, chocolate and syrup in a pan on low heat
• Add crushed digestives when this is melted
• Add Maltesers and stir for a little while (you do not want to melt the Maltesers)
• Place in a small lined baking tray the (suggested size was 22cm x 17 cm x 2 cm deep)
• press down and smooth 
• Refrigerate for at least one hour 
• When chilled take out of the baking tray and peel off the lined paper 
• Cut into squares 
• EAT! 

When we had to crush the biscuits Little Boo really enjoyed doing this I placed the biscuits inside a bag and she rolled them with the rolling pin to crush them up.

 I hope that you all love this cake I know that we did!!

Cobweb biscuits

I am sorry that we have not really done many Halloween inspired activities.  Truth be known Little Boo still gets quite frightened by the Halloween things in the shops.  However, I saw this biscuit idea in a library book we have recently got, 100 yummy things to cook and eat is a great book! there are loads of ideas that we want to try.

There was plenty of stirring 

 Little Boo then had to roll out the dough.  She was really pleased to use Mommy's big rolling pin.

After the biscuits had cooked and cooled the icing needed to be put in a swirl onto the biscuit.  The book then says to use a cocktail stick to make the cobweb effect but we only had skewers which I cut down and taped at the opposite end.  I obviously watched the whole time she was doing this as the skewers are sharp, please be careful. 

The effect was amazing and they were yummy! Here are a few that turned out really well. 

Nanny and Grandads birthday surprises!

I have loads of creative ideas to share with you as it was my Mom's Birthday yesterday and Dads Birthday today :) Due to this both me and Little Boo have been really busy doing loads of crafts and cooking to give them some home made presents! I love giving home made presents as I know that many people (especially my Mom and Dad) love to receive them.

We made a cake which was nicknamed hedgey from Little Boo! This hedgehog cake I found on the nature detectives website .  The fact that chocolate buttons were used was a massive selling factor to make the cake.  It was a massive success and Little Boo loved making it. 

We also made Nanny a flower window box this was made using 

• Egg carton
• acrylic paint 
• pipe cleaners
• beads
• floral Oasis 
• cardboard box
• lots of stickers 

These are the cut up egg cartons 

Little Boo painting the egg cartons

Once they are dry pierce a hole in the middle and thread the pipe cleaner  through.

Add beads to the middle as well so that the flowers stay in place. We had decorated the box with loads of stickers and I had cut oasis to fit the box.  This just left Little Boo to place the flowers in.

Little Boo also made Nanny and Grandad their cards.  Nanny's was an idea that I have pinned on Pinterest.  This was two hands that contained a concertina in between.  The hands say I love you then you open the hands and it reads "this much"Little Boo also wrote Happy Birthday in the centre as well. She wanted to use her new stamps so this was a great opportunity. 

To make Grandads card Little Boo used lots of her sparkly paint this was squirted out and added sequins. 

She then made a frame with lollipop sticks and added stickers.  I found a nice picture of Little Boo and stuck this behind then added this to the glittered card (when it was dry it took two days!) 

My Dad loves to have a cake or a biscuit with his cuppa so we made "Grandad's treats to have with a cuppa" We made some cookies and krispie cakes I love making rice krispie cakes they are so easy and so tasty!

Little Boo adding the rice krispies to the chocolate

Grandad loved his treats!

Hope that you like these ideas my Mom and Dad loved them all! 

Making tea for Mom, Dad and Me

Little Boo loves any opportunity to get into the kitchen so after seeing the Nurturestore ebook on playdough and the bread dough recipe and the success of using the recipe to make the smiley face bread inspired me to use it to make pizzas with Little Boos help. I made the dough up whilst  Little Boo was having a nap as it needs to be left for one hour to prove.  This also meant it was a nice activity ready for when she woke up.

All the ingredients that we used were in the house making this a cheap activity to do.

I just placed all the ingredients out so that they were easy to access for Little Boo. We placed the dough into  greased pyrex dishes and then added all the ingredients. This was a great tea to make as we could easily cater for everyones likes and it was simple to make one vegetarian one for me. 

All the Pizzas ready to eat. 

When the Pizzas are all ready I popped them in the oven at 220 c for 20 mins.  Just keep an eye on them as they may be cooked sooner.  Hope that you like the idea this is so simple to do and could also incorporate practising using a knife if you feel confident for your child to cut up some of the easier items. The cooking provided a great opportunity for communication as we talked about how we were spreading on the sauce then sprinkling on the cheese.  Little Boo also counted the pieces on some occasions.

Making bread together

After seeing this post from the Imagination Tree I was inspired to make real bread with Little Boo.  It is really nice though that there is a play dough alternative.  Due to it being Fathers Day yesterday we had a family get together and I knew that fresh bread on the buffet is always a hit with my family.  I got the recipe from the Nurturestore  in the free e-book.  It was a wonderful experience for Little Boo to make something for the whole family to enjoy.

 Making the bread yes we were still in our pyjamas! It was very early.

Kneading the bread.  Little Boo commented on how it "felt nice" and that  it "smelt nice" 

After leaving the dough to rise Little Boo saw that "it is bigger"

We then set to work treating the dough a lot like  play dough .

Little Boo then made "Daddy", Nanny, me Auntie and Grandad.

Some of the finished creations ready for baking. Look at all those smiling faces.

When we finished.  The smiling faces looked really good still and kept their shape a lot better than the shapes we had cut out with cookie cutters.  It was funny as all the family were trying to guess the shape.  The smiling faces were lovely though and would be a good idea for my lunch box at work a definite way to cheer up my day!