Tag: kids

Pasta in a flash!

Quick Creamy Tomato Pasta

As a busy mum, I sometimes get so wrapped up in things I forget about organising meals for Madame until she says ‘mummy I’m hungry’.  Quick check of the watch and realise, yes, it’s dinner time and I need something quick.  This is one of those recipes that you can throw together in about 10 minutes.

Ingredients

2 TBSP olive oil

½ an onion chopped

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

2 TBSP of cream cheese

1 tsp of dried basil

50g of pasta per child (any shape will do)

Method

  1. Start cooking the pasta.  I’m not going to tell you how as the instructions are on the back of the pack.
  2. To make the sauce.  Heat the oil in a pan and sauté the onions until soft (approx 3-5 minutes).
  3. Tip in the chopped tomatoes, bring to a boil, turn down add the cream cheese and basil.  Heat through.
  4. Drain the pasta a mix into the sauce.

I tend to serve it with sweet corn or cucumber slices on the side.  If I have a bit more time to preheat the oven, as ours takes about 30 minutes to heat, I serve it with garlic bread.

5 Minute Chocolate Mug Cake!

OMG this was so much fun and so easy! I was planning on doing a bit of baking today with Madame, but as usual I fell at the first hurdle as I didn’t have the ingredients I needed to make brownies. What the hell is Vanilla Sugar anyhow? Anyway, the lovely @jinks67 suggested I Google 5 Minute Mug Cakes so I did and this was the result!

They were so simple a 3 year old could make them. Honestly, they weren’t too my liking, bear in mind I don’t normally eat chocolate, but Madame wolfed them down. I think they’d be much more inviting with a dollop of cream or vanilla ice-cream.

If you want to have a go here’s the recipe.

Easy Christmas Decorations

If you’re snowed in and the kids are climbing the walls you could make some Christmas Decorations.  Madame and I’ve been making them over the last couple of weeks.  I’m not crafty and she’s only 3, if we can manage you can too.  Have fun.

The template for the Smiley Snowflake can be found here!

The Santa Stars were inspired by redtedart.com.

It’s fairly straightforward but here are the instructions for the Layered Tree

The Felt Presents were dead easy.

Happy Christmas and all the best in 2011!

Santa Stars!

Crafts are not my strong point. Luckily, I have my own personal mentor @redtedart. She often sends me links to things that she thinks we can manage. Last week she sent me a link to these adorable Santa Christmas decorations. As usual, I didn’t have a lot of the supplies at home, namely the cotton wool, but managed to adlib. What do you think?

Gone are the days that I have a perfectly colour coordinated tree…my chocolate and gold theme is no longer.  I’m going to have a go at these next! Wish me luck!  (click on the image for the instructions)

Happy Christmas!

Ice Skating in the UK

I know that the English are weird with their pickled eggs, eggy bread and squash but who in their right mind would design an ice skating rink that resembles a giant plastic cutting board and then strap a couple of butter knives on their feet!  We all know that plastic cutting boards can dull knives.

The thing is I can skate, not brilliantly, but I can.    I started when I was 3 and at one point my mother was the President of the Ice Skating Club.  That is me on the left.

However, when I took my daughter skating this morning I could barely stand up let alone do a few strokes and heaven forbid a Camel Spin or a Double Salchow, which at my age would’ve been a bad idea anyhow.  The skates were dull and I looked like a duck walking on a frozen pond.  Luckily, I could feign the doting parent and propped myself (safely) up against the edge to take this video.