Hello! It’s Bee again. I know what you’re thinking, thank God, a break from all the wedding talk, time to talk about something real, something relevant.

You may remember my last post about pizza and you may remember ordering a Domino’s right after reading it. Anyway, continuing along the theme of delicious but probably not that healthy foods, I’m going to be talking to you about Jelly Beans!

So if any of you read my actual food blog, you will probably know that I have taken a little break recently due to starting a new job and moving house and all that, basically becoming a fully grown adult over night (terrifying). Well on the last day of living in halls at uni I checked my postbox just in case someone had sent me something, although I wasn’t expecting anything.

The reception desk lady proceeded to bring out the most humongous parcel. I was excited but also slightly annoyed that that was one more box I had to pack into my friend’s mum’s car and then carry up two flights of stairs to the new flat. I got it up to my almost empty room and when I opened it I felt about five years old. It was mounds and mounds of jelly beans from The Jelly Bean Factory, in boxes, tubs, packets, tubes and glass jars. I worked out that there must have been about 4kg of jelly beans in that box. It was glorious. View Post

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It’s a bit of a standing joke in our family, at my mum’s expense, (sorry mum), that her favourite way to serve Boursin is ‘on a knife’. You’re thinking about it now and salivating aren’t you? There is something about Boursin that is just so wonderfully decadent. That advertising campaign they used to run, with the husky French voice – Du pain, du vin, du Boursin – will stay with me until I die, as a symbol of what I wanted my life to be like when I was a proper grown up lady.

I have a rather unhealthy habit come the evening of instinctively reaching for something to snack on while I watch TV, and that something is normally sweet. Lately though I’ve been doing my best to resist the sugar cravings and when I really do want to treat myself, I try to make it something savoury instead.

The last few months have been really busy for me work wise, which is great, but it does mean I’m working hard and am quite often travelling about, so when I get home and the phones, tablets and laptops have been put away, I want that time with my little family, or occasionally on my own, to be special, and all about us. I consider myself very lucky, as Belle still wants to spend time with us, and we love cuddling up on the sofa, watching the TV or a film, playing a game or just chatting about our day.

And for this sort of indulgent, quality time, you need snacks. View Post

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Today I have a guest post from my fiancé, because he knows about football and I wasn’t sure who Sir Geoff Hurst was. I did pose for the picture though:

Sir Goeff Hurst

Think of Mcdonald’s, and you’d be forgiven for not associating them with sport at grass roots level in the community. All right, you might think of their logo blazoned on sponsorship boards at every football World Cup in recent memory, but you probably wouldn’t think that they’re that heavily involved in getting children active and involved in their local football clubs.

We were pleasantly surprised too.

“Do you want to come with me to interview Sir Geoff Hurst? “ Jo asked, adding, “is that a thing?” to confirm her understandable ignorance to English footballing history. I don’t blame her for this – mine is sketchy too, but it’s always nice to have superior knowledge to Jo when the majority of the time, on most subjects, I’m metaphorically in her rear-view mirror. View Post

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Pizza!!

Hey guys, it’s Bee again. Did you miss me? Today I am here to talk to you all about pizza! The food we know and love. And not just any pizza, but delivered pizza. More specifically, Domino’s! Yay!

Delivered pizza is basically the biggest treat you can get in our family. We never quite know when the blessed day is going to come around. Sometimes it is a special occasion, sometimes it is a random rainy Sunday, but every single time it is all we ever dreamed and more.

This is particularly true for my little sister. Belle LIVES for delivered pizza, it’s her favourite meal ever. One night for her of deliciousness and not having to fight about which vegetables she will and will not be eating. In fact, the sweetcorn that she has on her Hawaiian pizza is pretty much the only vegetable she will eat without making some kind of comment. Therefore, pizza makes not only her happy, but also the rest of us, who want to eat our dinner in peace. View Post

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I’ve been a member of Hestercombe Gardens on and off ever since Belle was born. When she was little, it was our go to place for meet ups; many an hour have been whiled away on weekday afternoons looking at the ducks, hiding in the orangery or paddling in wellies in the streams.

Food at Hestercombe

I walk around the formal gardens now and I can still picture Belle and her friend Ella as toddlers, propped up against the side of the fountain, chubby hands in the water. I can’t quite get my head around how tiny they must have been.  View Post

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One of the most tedious tasks for me as a parent is cooking. It’s not so much the cooking itself, it’s more the planning of it – trying to think of something new and interesting every single bloody day, only then to have it rejected by a fussy child, gets rather dispiriting after, say, 20 years.

Enter fiancé, stage left.

(You see? I did it! I called him fiancé!)

For the last month or so, my fiancé has taken over in the kitchen. He does all of the cooking, and even the washing up when Belle’s away. I’m barely even allowed to make myself a cup of tea. It is absolute bliss getting to four o’clock every day and not having to start fretting about what I’m going to cook.

A couple of weeks ago we were treated to a food delivery from Marley Spoon, one of these food box companies where you’re sent a recipe and the exact ingredients. I love the idea of this as it’s such a pain buying things like herbs, spices and oils for recipes, when you know you’re only going to use a tablespoon and then have them sat in the cupboard for years. View Post

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Looking for ways to get children to eat vegetables? You’ve come to the right place…


ways to get children to eat vegetables

“I’m not eating that,” says Belle, practically spitting as she speaks. She is pointing with her fork at some broccoli, as though we have heaped actual excrement onto her plate alongside the fish fingers.

“It’s fine!” I say, with forced good humour. “Just eat it with something else and you won’t even taste it.”

She looks at me as though I’m possibly the stupidest creature that’s ever been allowed to roam the earth, let alone be in charge of meal planning. “It’s disgusting,” she says, with a look of genuine repulsion.

This is how I have spent almost every meal time for at least the last 12 years – coming up with new ways to get children to eat vegetables has become the bane of my life and to be quite honest I am just about done. I am teetering on the brink of not giving a toss. “It’s only your health and well being,” I want to say, “have Poptarts for every meal for all I care.” View Post

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Today’s post and recipe comes courtesy of my boyfriend, who knows much more about the Cricket World Cup than me…haggis scotch egg recipe

When I rank the clubs where I’ve played and watched cricket, much of my affection comes not from an exciting game or a personal achievement, (which were few and far between), but from the quality and quantity of the food. I can’t think of another sport where players stop for both lunch and tea, and jolly civilised it is as well. When I trained to become an umpire, there was even a column on the official match report for the standard of tea.

The professional game is just the same. It’s not so long since the players left the field for lunch at Lord’s – the home of cricket – to be met by a butler on the pavilion steps with a tray of gin and tonics, before being served a full three course lunch. If that’s what modern day professional sport was like, I would excel.

Watching cricket is equally hungry work. A day out at the test match requires a huge calorific intake, partly just to absorb the vast quantity of alcohol that goes hand to hand with watching England’s batting collapse. The scotch egg is the king of the cricket picnic and usually comes out of the cool bag early in proceedings as an aid to line the stomach before too much alcohol flows.

So, when choosing a meal to reflect the 2015 Cricket World Cup, the scotch egg was something of a no brainer. I had no issue choosing another of the ‘home nations’ as I’ve got a soft spot for cricket in Scotland. (We’ll forget that they beat England recently because that hurts almost as much as an Ashes defeat, and I’m sure it was just a scoreboard error). View Post

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pasta bake recipeI love looking at recipe books, the pictures are always amazing aren’t they? You get all excited and think ‘I could do that’ and then you look at the recipe and realise it contains 17 different ingredients, three of which you’ve never even heard of, and you get a pizza out of the freezer instead.

Or you attempt it, (leaving out the things you’re not sure about), and end up with something like ‘blue soup’, Bridget Jones style. The ‘purple pie’ I tried to make with leftover red cabbage is fast on it’s way to becoming a favourite family legend, and not for good reasons.

I need something simple and idiot proof, a recipe with just a few ingredients, none of which I have to go to a specialist Asian supermarket for, which makes me perfect for the #TryTotal challenge from Total, the Greek yoghurt people. The idea is to create easy but tasty recipes with just a few ingredients and for your efforts you can win all sorts of lovely prizes including a Magimix food mixer, an iPhone6, a cookbook or a month’s supply of Greek yoghurt. View Post

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What is your favourite comfort food?

When I’m feeling in need of a little calorie based comfort I regress to toddlerhood and find myself drawn to all the beige foods – mashed potato, thick white toast with lashings of butter, pasta and cheesy sauces – you know what I’m talking about. Small children really know what they are doing there.

Another of my favourites is cauliflower cheese, which has the added bonus of not being all about the carbs. I’ve put together a very simple recipe that proves that a lack of colour doesn’t have to mean a lack of taste and nutrition – it’s all the fun of wintery stodge but without the guilt.

smoked haddock and cauliflower cheese recipe View Post

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There’s nothing I like more than a hamper of delicious goodies and this week I had one delivered right to the door (my best kind) by Asda. They wanted to show off their Christmas meat collection and I was certainly impressed. It didn’t hurt that the meat came in a rather gorgeous wicker basket, surrounded by mince pies and wine. (Again, my best kind.)

Asda Christmas meat

Asda meatI wouldn’t normally think to choose Asda for my festive meats, so I was really pleasantly surprised to see just how fancy and festive they were. Our basket included:

Extra Special 21 Day Bone-In Horseradish Beef, Extra Special Venison Rack and Extra Special Six Bird Roast.

(Are you sensing the theme here?) View Post

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I’m not super awesome at cooking, but I have this one soup recipe that I have been making for about 15 years. (Not constantly – on and off. I’m not that crazy.) I don’t know why this one has stuck, but it has – there is just something very tasty about it, plus I have been making it for so long now that even the smell of it makes me happy.

I’ve always made it in a pan as I’ve always imagined that frying up the onion in the butter adds something to the flavour, but in the interests of saving Belle a little bit of washing up and saving myself from splattering hot carrot all over my face when I try to use the hand blender, I decided to give it a go in my new Tower soup maker.

Putting together the recipe was hard as normally I just chuck in what I think are roughly the right quantities and see what happens; I had to pay proper attention and try to figure out what I was actually doing so that I could tell you. View Post

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