Looking Forward To 2014

A part of me is glad to see the back of 2013, I've always being a little supersticious and had that feeling it wouldn't be a great year. But on reflection it wasn't that bad really, I'm not going to dwell on the negative parts of the year but I have looked back at the positives and realised that I am thankful for so much. 

In 2013 we celebrated our second wedding anniversary, which may not seem to be a huge deal but we celebrated our first with me in hospital very poorly with HG at 38 weeks pregnant, so the second one was really to cover both! 2013 is also the year that I joined Pregnancy Sickness Support (PSS) as a volunteer, I am privileged to be supporting amazing women as they fight their battles with HG and NVP. I also met a lot of fellow volunteers through the year and was fortunate to spend a week away with a dear friend, Emma who suffered through HG at the same time as me, and of course her gorgeous HG survivor Adam who became great friends with Griffin. 

2013 also saw me graduating "Boob School", this was a course to train to be a breastfeeding peer support volunteer, but this course and Nikki, our Boob Coach, gave me so much more. It gave me the confidence to continue breastfeeding Griffin, to be confident in feeding him whilst out and about and of course the opportunity to meet so many wonderful women who are such lovely friends.

There were a lot of downs throughout the year too, including Hubster being laid off, it's being difficult for him to adjust as he's worked all his working life and finding another job is taking it's time. It's not just the financial strain that has taken it's toll it's the emotional effects too, his confidence has taken a big hit and he's not used to been at home full time with Griffin. But on the positive it has given us more quality time as a family, Hubster has bonded so much more with Griffin and of course he's had time to reflect on life and careers. 

So 2014, I have a feeling it will be a great year. We're starting the year off with celebrations for Hubster's 30th birthday, he doesn't like the fact he's moving out of his youthful twenties, but I'm going to make sure he embraces it of course! I am also planning to reach my goal weight at Slimming world, hopefully by the summer. I'm excited that we are almost at the end of the Nine Months Of campaign for PSS and I'm really looking forward to seeing how much awareness will have increased as a result of the campaign. Then of course there's the Baby Bistro's, I'm hoping we will see lots more breastfeeding mums there and continue our efforts to normalise breastfeeding. Finally I'm looking forward to continuing with my blogging journey, it's most likely a lot of ramblings to a lot of people but it's very therapeutic and fun.

I'm going to stop rambling on now and simply thank you all for reading, following and supporting Mummy Whiskers. I really appreciate you all and wish you all a very happy new year and the very best of wishes for an amazing 2014 

With love from 

Katrina, Scott, Griffin, Sooty & Sweep

XXX

Silent Sunday 29/12/2013

Meat Free Monday Singapore Noodles

So last Monday I made Singapore Noodles, a recipe in my Quorn Kitchen recipe book, you can find it here on the Quorn website too. It's a really simple recipe with basic ingredients that are so easy to obtain and cheap too, so perfect for a family meal on a budget. 

I found the recipe really easy to follow and it's quick to make too so ideal for midweek or when you're busy. I prepared all the vegetables first before I started cooking as the cooking part doesn't take long at all. The only changes I made were to replace the cooking wine with more soy sauce so that Small Boy could try some and to cook the Quorn mince from frozen and add the sauces to the wok as cooking rather than to defrost and marinade. I cooked the mince from frozen in my large wok, I use a low calorie spray rather than oil. Once the mince had browned I added ingredients in the order from the cooking instructions. I boiled the noodles as per the instructions on the packet, although I did add a few cheeky splashes of soy sauce to perk them up a little, then once they we're cooked and drained I mixed them into the wok with everything else to give them a little crisp. 

Served immediately, this is what it looked like...

The Singapore Noodles were a hit around the table, we had my mum over for dinner and she absolutely loved this, as did Hubster and myself. Small boy enjoyed the mince, but he's not keen on noodles, or pasta for that matter. It surprised me just how tasty this dish was, I've made a lot of stir fry's with a bag of mixed veg and a packet of ready made sauce and I'll never go back to that now, this recipe was so quick and easy to make yet tasted wonderful.

My family have always being big meat eaters, my Grandad was a master butcher. My family and Hubster have this idea that Quorn is tasteless so they don't eat it, but they have agreed to try Meat Free Mondays and I am pleased to say they have found the recipes that I have tried so far using Quorn to be very tasty and said they would definitely have them again, this is a huge achievement!

Oh, for the record one tablespoon of hoisin sauce works out to be one syn for Slimming World, the rest of the ingredients were free, but please bare in mind that I follow the green plan with being a vegetarian. So it's healthy and low fat too! 

I'd love to hear from you if you try out this recipe yourself so please do let me know.

Tonight we'll be trying Lemon Linguine using a recipe from my new cook book, Lorraine Pascale, Fast, Fresh and Easy Food. Obviously I'll be switching the chicken in the recipe for a meat free alternative. I'll update you all on how it goes next Monday.

Happy Meat Free Monday!

Disclaimer: Quorn have provided the voucher for use on their products for our participation in this week's Meat Free Monday, however the choice in Quorn products purchased is my own, the recipes that I make will also be my own choice. Any opinions expressed in my blog will be my own and unbiased.

Silent Sunday 15/12/2013

 







Just Another Birthday

Well it was my birthday on Sunday, another year older. I really hate how birthdays seem to come around much faster since I hit the 30's, I don't feel like a thirty-something and it doesn't seem like five minutes ago that the thirties seemed to be in the distant future. Well it's not in the future anymore, it's here giving me a good bitch slap and saying "time to buy the anti-ageing cream!"

Now that I'm a mum I have started to think about my birthdays past, when I was a child I had a big party at home for my friends, my Mum would provide enough party food to feed an army and Big Brother would be the DJ. Birthdays as a child were so exciting, gifts were a surprise, there was the party to look forward to, all the fuss at school too. As a teenager things changed a little, instead of parties it became concert tickets for Boyzone every year and a meal out somewhere with family and besties. The excitement for birthdays was still there though, even once drinking age finally arrived... Yes from 18 to late twenties birthdays had become a week of nights out drinking and staggering in and out of night clubs, I have many fond memories and even more cringe some photos to look back on from these days. No I won't be sharing any of these drunken photos! I don't really know what it is that changes inside, but there is a turning point there where we go from all the fuss and dragging out of birthday celebrations to realising that actually the best birthdays are celebrated just one day with the people that mean the most to us and doing something that really makes us happy. Oh, and of course eating cake, cake is the best solution to every problem.

So on Sunday I spent the day with Hubster and Small boy. The day started with our little tradition where Hubster serves breakfast, pain au chocolates warmed and coffee. At lunch time we visited a Victorian market that was in our village that day, it's the first time we've been to this Victorian Market, there is one every Christmas in our village. I don't know why we haven't been before to be honest but it was great, lots of people were there, a good variety of stalls and some great food. Then my Mum made dinner for us, Big Brother & Nephew, which was lovely and then we had birthday cake... Yes you're never too old for birthday cake, everyone in my family gets a birthday cake regardless of their age! This year Hubster wanted to make a birthday cake for me, he's never baked a cake before but was very excited to do this. I wasn't nervous about the cake, just the mess that I imagined in my kitchen! Hubster looked through my baking books and eventually selected a recipe from the Nigella Lawson Domestic Goddess book, he chose the Autumnal Birthday Cake. Hubster chose this cake because he knows how much I love maple syrup and pecan nuts.

The cake was a huge success, despite how Hubster was in the kitchen making this cake until 2am, not only did it look fabulous, it tasted good too. Hubster also cleaned up the kitchen too after baking which I was really thrilled about. Although the down side was that this cake wasn't very good for my diet, but you only have a birthday once a year!

Amongst the birthday gifts were three new books that I had asked for, The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook; Lorraine Pascale's Fast, Fresh and Easy Food; and National Trust Simply Baking. I had asked for the two baking books mainly for some fresh inspiration, I have flicked through them both to see what I'm going to try out first and quite honestly I can't decide, every single recipe looks delicious! I asked for Lorraine's cook book as I needed one with easy to follow recipes and quick recipes too as most days, like most of us, I'm pressed for time at dinner and find myself in a rut of making the same meals each week. I have over the weekend read this book from cover to cover and can't wait to get started. In fact I've already picked out a recipe to try for Meat Free Mondays!

Once we managed to get Small Boy to sleep the Hubster and I managed to relax and watch a film, Hangover 3. There's nothing like a good comedy on a Sunday to laugh at. To be honest I didn't think it was as good as the previous two films, but it was still very funny and I'm sure we will watch it again. Well that was my birthday, a perfect day for me, which made becoming another year older just a little more bearable...