Up with the birds and eating magic biscuits: my morning win

Fruit for breakfast

I think it's fair to say I'm not a morning person. I used to work in an office where - unknown to me - it was widely acknowledged that it was best not to talk to me before I'd had at least one cup of tea. Unlike other 'super' Mums who are up with the birds and making lunches and preparing for the day I am lying in bed pretending not to hear my son asking if he can come in and watch the TV.

It wasn't always like this. There was a time when I would get up and go swimming at first light and go into work refreshed and invigorated for the day ahead. Now I'm lucky if I'm able to function before the cat - and that's saying something for an animal that sleeps for 20 hours of every day !

Toast for my boy 

One thing I've never skimped on though is breakfast. I was raised to eat breakfast every day and my mother was zero tolerance about this one issue. She would ensure we had porridge or boiled eggs or cereal and would supervise to make sure it was eaten and not hidden under a rug or the middle leaf of the expanding table (totally not looking at my sister there - *cough*) When I was a teenager I would gulp a black coffee and run out of the house and she'd call out to me holding a piece of buttered toast, but I'd just shrug it off insisting I wasn't hungry.

Now I'm a grown up I am the same with my boy and make sure he has something to eat before he leaves the house, but I'm not as good at making sure I'm fed too. I can go until 11am (or later) without having anything to eat and it's not the best really. I try to remember to carry healthy snacks with me to make sure I don't fade away, a banana or an apple usually, but sometimes I just forget.

Magic breakfast biscuits 

I wasn't convinced by the idea of a 'breakfast biscuit' - I mean surely a biscuit is a snack food and one that I avoid at the best of times. However, the Belvita range of biscuits has been created to be eaten as part of a healthy breakfast to slow release energy all morning rather than an immediate spike in sugar with the comedown afterwards. I popped a pack of them into my bag as an emergency and on one of my inevitable busy days I found them to be invaluable and quite tasty too ! I picked up my free cuppa from Waitrose and chomped an apricot biccie (or 3) with my brew on the bus on the way into town for a job interview. Now I'm not saying they are magic or anything, but I did get offered the job so you draw your own conclusions :)

I have to say that making a good start to the day does make a big difference whether it's...

Daily toast dilemma

Waking up to find that Hubbie has not only changed the toilet roll, but proven to me that he can actually do it and isn't relying on the toilet roll fairy

or

Being able to get out of the house without a row about brushing teeth, putting on shoes, finding socks, or breakfast, "I said Marmite on toast not jam Mummy."

or

Power walking alongside my boy's scooter to school without him swerving into the path of a car or into that pile of horses**t that's been at the top of the hill for 2 weeks now !

or

Dropping my boy at school then going for a swim so I've managed a power walk (uphill) and a swim all before 9am :)

or

Drinking a cup of tea before it goes cold - this is my favourite by far. Add a pack of breakfast biscuits and we're talking an Olympic standard #morningwin

The new Belvita flavours - yummy ! 

This post is an entry for #MorningWin Linky Challenge sponsored by belVitaBreakfast. Learn more at http://bit.ly/belVitaUK

Crunch your way to a healthy tummy - inside and out.

I first became aware of All Bran when I was a child and my Dad started to eat it as a healthy breakfast. When he had been eating it for a few months and we had seen no marked improvement in his health or well being it became clear he was doing something wrong. Turns out he believed that all bran had magical properties that completely annihilated all other foods so he would follow a bowl of the cereal with a full English breakfast and wonder why he wasn't losing any weight. Oh how we laughed.

Oh what a delicious decision to make :)

Then when I was at uni and following the Rosemary Conley plan (for the first time) I became re-acquainted with the cereal when I discovered a fat free cake recipe using All Bran. It was absolutely delicious and helped me to shift some unwanted poundage over the Easter break in my second year. It wasn't quite a substitute for chocolate, but having a slice of it while revising for exams was a pretty good alternative to chewing on celery.

Eating it again after so many years I was surprised at the variations that are now available. I was sent three to try; Chocolate Wheats, Golden Crunch and Red Berry Crunch. The funny thing was we were on holiday at the time they were posted and I never received the boxes. I wondered whether the postman had made off with them in a desperate desire to resolve some digestive issues or whether they had just gone astray at the sorting office. I never found out, but was sent some more anyway and they made it to the kitchen.

I've mentioned before that I don't do chocolate cereals so Hubbie had the privilege of trying the Chocolate Wheats and he was shocked that I was encouraging him to eat chocolate for breakfast. It is such a rare treat that he didn't complain and in his own words, 'I've felt better and fuller." There was more about his digestion, but due to the graphic nature of his remarks they are best left unrepeated I think.

Red Berry Crunch - yummy !

I tried the Golden Crunch and Red Berry Crunch which were both very tasty indeed. The range of flavours has passed me by so I had no idea there were so many different options now. There is still the distinctive All Bran taste - which I quite like actually - and the addition of fruit makes it just a little more interesting without being too sweet. I don't eat masses of cereal so the portions weren't too big, but they really did fill me up until well past lunchtime. I swim every day and don't eat until at least 2pm most days so feeling full is a bonus and stopped me from stuffing myself in a post swim binge. I hope that the side effect of eating All Bran will be that I'll eat less of the rubbish stuff that makes me feel rotten and regretful.

I've always struggled with being ok with my tummy, from a digestive point of view and in terms of physical appearance. I had really bad IBS about ten years ago and it was so severe I restricted my diet for years afterwards and was paranoid about eating anything that would make me a) bloat and b) feel ill. My tummy has never been flat. I envy those women who seem to expel a baby and bounce back into skinny jeans within minutes of giving birth. I lost a lot of weight before I was pregnant and I still didn't have a flat stomach. I did, however, have a healthier one. I still make sure I do a routine of stomach crunches every morning in the ongoing bid for that elusive flat stomach !

After a week of eating All Bran I noticed I felt full, but not bloated and it made me think I might go back to eating cereal for breakfast. In recent years I've been struggling to find a breakfast that isn't toast (which triggers my IBS) and trying a random selection of protein and low GI breakfasts that are high maintenance and often too much to manage. Cooking some porridge is worth the effort as it's my favourite breakfast option, but shaking out a bowl of All Bran is even easier.

Easy and quick breakfast 

So with the inner workings of my tummy sorted out maybe I can up the efforts to get it looking as good too ?

Do the crunch on the inside and the outside :)

This post is an entry for the Real Mums of All-Bran Linky Challenge, sponsored by Kelloggs

Review: Clarks Maple syrup

I take the ritual of weekend breakfasts very seriously - I get this from my mum who always did when I was a kid and I do now. I plan ahead and ensure we have a selection of waffles, pancakes, crumpets or pastries depending on what is on offer and what my boy has expressed an interest in this week. What we always have in the fridge as well is maple syrup. It's long been a favourite on pancakes and I've recently been making buckwheat pancakes with banana - mostly to use up the spotty bananas left over from the week's packed lunches !

My boy loves waffles - potato ones and breakfast ones - and I pile lots of fruit on and then the adults get a generous drizzle of maple syrup too. What I have never tried before is syrup on my porridge - I usually add a teaspoon of honey - so when the nice folks at Clarks sent us some to try and some ideas of how to use it I didn't need to be asked twice !

Maple Syrup is an incredibly versatile ingredient which can be used in a whole range of dishes. It can be drizzled on sponge cakes, strawberries and even Camembert - I haven't tried this as I'm on low fat at the moment, but when I am due a cheese treat I'm getting right on it ! You can squeeze maple syrup on salmon and chicken, pour in milkshakes and ice cream or mix in porridge and smoothies - and you can even use it in salad dressings and sauces.

We are well versed in using maple syrup with sweet foods, but adding to savoury was a new idea and we experimented with maple glazed root vegetables. I made carrots and parsnips to go with a roast and they were mild and delicious tasting. The sweetness is not overpowering, but it does definitely add a nice dimension to the vegetables. My boy even liked these, so we're going to make those over and over !

It was not until a few years ago that I even realised that maple syrup is a natural food (I know, I know, don't judge !) and it's also a good source of zinc to aid the immune system and has as fewer calories weight-for-weight than sugar and honey.

Clarks is a family run business from Canada - the home of the Maple - and they harvest the sap of the maple tree then turn it into a range of delicious syrups that are the UK’s best selling Maple Syrup brand.

For more information and recipes visit http://www.clarks-uk.co.uk

Disclosure: Clarks sent us some samples of maple syrup in order to write an honest review.

A good egg :o)

It is British Egg Week and a while back I promised my blogger pal Jen that I'd share my favourite Egg dishes in a blog post. So that time has now come. Here - in no particular order - are my personal favourite egg dishes. Nothing quite as fancy as recipes using eggs you understand, just ways to cook eggs that are simple, tasty and relatively good for you.

Poached eggs: 

I know there is a proper 'cheffy' way to make poached eggs using a pan of water on a rolling boil and my gorgeous friend Sharon can do this fantastically well. I have tried the old school poaching pans that leave you with a rock hard egg and an electronic gadget that Hubbie bought me that exploded the eggs and made the kitchen smell terrible for weeks after it's inaugural (and only) use.

I have finally settled on these fab little silicone moulds for making poached eggs. You lightly oil them (I use spray oil) and crack the egg into the mould and pop it into a pan of water and bring it to a boil. The timings are pretty exact on this and I find 4 mins creates my perfect egg. In this piccie you will see it's a little over as the yolk isn't as runny as I'd like, but it's still a pretty good brunch with some baguette slices and butter and marmite with a big cup of tea - yummy !!


Boiled egg and soldiers:

I love boiled egg and toast soldiers for breakfast or lunch. When I was pregnant I stopped eating them as I'd read that you could only eat fully cooked eggs while pregnant and I missed them like crazy. Then I found out (in my last few weeks of pregnancy) that I could have eaten Lion brand eggs all along as they are safe to eat. It is, however, an effort to make a 'dippy egg' and involves some scientific timing. I occasionally get it just right with a lovely runny yolk and solid white as well as perfect toast for dipping. More often though, I over or under cook the egg and the toast is either a bit too crunchy or a bit soggy and it makes for an ok meal rather than the one I've been so longing to enjoy with a lovely big mug of tea.

So imagine my joy when we stayed in a hotel in Edinburgh where the chef made my perfect egg and toast for me. I actually considered moving in permanently just for the sheer joy of perfect boiled egg and soldiers every day. Until then I have this gadget which my lovely friend Adrian gave me as he had two of them. You pop it into the pan with the cold water and egg(s) and it changes colour to indicate how well done it is. I've found that using larger eggs can throw this system though, so it does take some testing to get it just right. Can anyone tell me why they are called soldiers by the way ?

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Fried Egg:

Dead simple this one - spray the frying pan with a light spritz of oil and crack the egg into the pan. My chef friend Ajay told me the right way to make a fried egg so that it is cooked and the top is not too soft, but the yolk is runny. It involves cooking in a lot of oil on a low heat which makes me feel a bit ill so I do it this way instead. As I don't like the top of my egg to be too wet I have discovered - thanks to an unlikely tip from my father in law - that popping a lid over the pan will enable the steam to cook the top of the egg and prevents the edges or underside going crunchy (yeuch !!) If you have the grill on to do tomatoes, sausages, etc you can pop the pan under the grill and it will cook the top, but you also risk overcooking the yolk too, so I advise caution with this method. 

Scrambled egg: 

The fat free version of this is my personal choice, but you can make it in a pan and stir cream into it slowly until it's all rich and luxurious. I choose this method as it's fast and not as messy as a pan and it uses no fat at all. Firstly break the egg(s) into a microwavable bowl. Beat the egg with a fork and if want to you can add milk. Now depending on the strength of your microwave this bit can be tricky. I give the egg a blast of around 30-40 seconds and then stir the mixture. I keep giving it 10 seconds at a time and stirring between hits. Remember it will keep cooking even after you take it out of the microwave so don't overdo it. I like my scrambled eggs soft, but not runny, and on a piece of toast with - you guessed it - a cup of tea :o)

Eggy Bread: 

I know that this is called French Toast and all sorts of other fancy names, but let's keep it simple and call it what it is - eggy bread. This is actually my favourite way to use up eggs that are on the way out and to revive any bread I have that is going a bit stale. I make eggy bread with slices of leftover baguette, sliced up rolls, the scrag ends of bread and essentially anything bready - if you have it why not try brioche ? Soaking a dry crust of bread in beaten egg gives it a whole new life and it can be a sweet or savoury dish. When I'm feeling really fancy I have a savoury one with a side helping of HP sauce followed by a sweet one with a smattering of maple syrup (and if I've got any fruit to use up that goes on as well). This truly is the most versatile dish, but it does involve a little bit of effort to make. I beat the egg and leave it plain. My Mum seasons the beaten egg mixture with salt and pepper for savoury and sugar for sweet. I've added a smidgeon of maple syrup to the egg mix before now and it makes a delicious sticky coating on on the individual slices which works really well with sliced bananas and strawberries. If you're being proper fancy you can shake some icing sugar over the top too.

So these are my preferred ways to cook eggs.  I haven't even mentioned omelettes, or baked eggs, but here are some ideas that you might not have tried before. They're really simple and I find them filling and tasty.

It's often said that eggs are very versatile and it is true. Why not see how many different ways you can cook eggs and tell me what your favourite is ?