Back to School Lunch Box Meal with #PowerofFrozen

Now that we are coming to the end of the long summer holidays it is time to start thinking about the children returning to school. The return to school also brings the return of preparing packed lunches. I don't know about you but making packed lunches always seems like a chore, it is always done at the end of the day and I often get stuck for ideas. So when Iceland challenged me to devise an easy recipe for a healthy packed lunch I knew that it would need to be a lunch that will not take long but that would also be full of healthy foods that the kids would love. The one way I find that my children tuck into a salad is if it is fun, colourful and with mayonnaise.

The beauty of this recipe is that the majority of the ingredients are frozen so there are no worries about whether you have the fresh ingredients to prepare. Even the bread rolls are frozen! One of my packed lunch fails has to be not having enough bread or forgetting to defrost some fresh bread. When I defrost bread that I have frozen it never tastes as good, so when I saw that Iceland stocked bread rolls that could be baked from frozen I knew that they would be a must have! I was not disappointed the rolls came out of the oven just like freshly made bread rolls do.

For my back to school recipe I decided to make a rice salad. Rice is full of carbohydrates so acts as a fuel for the children's bodies. The return to school can be tiring for them so they need all of the energy they can get to keep their bodies and brains going! The addition of an egg provides them with protein to help keep their energy level up. The tuna provides them with healthy omega 3 fatty acids while the vegetables give them their much needed vitamin goodness! When using frozen foods you are guaranteed to have a high amount of vitamins as the vegetables are frozen at the optimum time after picking to preserve all of the goodness that wears off as they ripen.

Today's recipe is colourful, fun and full of goodness. This is what I did...

Cheese and Meat Platter from Aldi

Every Friday the hubby and I enjoy our weekly date night. It is a night for just the two of us. Once the twinnies are in bed and J is upstairs playing or watching television the hubby and I tuck into some delicious food, paired with a glass of wine and watch a movie. One of our favourite foods to enjoy has to be cheese, cold meats and wine. Sometimes knowing which cheeses to choose can be difficult so today I thought that I would share with you my top cheese and cold meat selections from Aldi. Cheeses can sometimes be expensive, depending on the type of cheese you enjoy, but in true Aldi style, they offer the best cheeses at unbeatable prices.

Here are my top cheese and meat selections from Aldi...

CookBlogShare Week 35 Plus a Sneak Peek at some Carnival Vista Food!

Hello and welcome to week 35 of CookBlogShare. Having been absent from the linky for two weeks it is lovely to be back. I hope that you have all had a great couple of weeks.

After our holidays I simply have not had time to cook let alone write a recipe. So for this weeks linky I thought that I would share with you four sneaky peeks of just some of the meals that we enjoyed while onboard Carnival Vista. As you can probably imagine the food was fantastic and we were always full! There was so much to choose from and even now I am realising that there were places that we missed. I am going to be sharing more posts over the coming weeks telling you all about the food that we enjoyed as well as what we got up to during our cruise. But to get your taste buds going I thought that I would share with you today a bit of a taster of the speciality restaurants that we visited.

Weekly Meal Plan - Week Commencing 29th August 2016

After a truly amazing holiday, it is back to reality and back to cooking meals again. I will admit to enjoying having our meals cooked for us. But now that we are back home it is back to the kitchen for me. This weeks meal plan has been written using what we have in the freezer and the fresh ingredients that we picked up on our way home from the airport. We found an Asda on our journey and popped in. At last I am trying their well known Wonky Veg boxes. We picked up two boxes full of veg for just £3.50 per box! So we have a lot of lovely fresh vegetables in the fridge!

Last weeks meal plan was so good! I am going to be writing lots of Carnival Vista foodie posts over the next few weeks. There was so much food and activities to do I simply cannot write it all in just one post! So keep an eye out for those.

Now back to this weeks meal plan, This is what we will be enjoying this week...

Forza - Shake It Slim

You may remember that in the past I have written posts about how I want to loose weight and suddenly stopped. Today I thought that I would tell you why I stopped writing them and what has changed.

I have mentioned before that I once suffered with eating disorders but, thankfully now, they are behind me. This came with finding my inner peace and happiness. But finding my body confidence did not come as easy and I have been trying to loose weight again. But I have one problem. I like to eat, I like my food, come on, I am a foodie blogger, I need to love food to write passionately about it. Before I decided to put my calorie counting, not eating, rigid diets behind me I was asked if I would like to try some shakes to which I agreed. So when the Forza Supplements Shake It Slim shakes arrived I was curious to what they were like as I was wanting to trim up a bit ready for our holiday.

The starter pack contains all the shakes that you will need for one week, 14 shakes. There are two ways to use the shakes:

• Replace 2 meals with shakes
• Replace 1 meal with shakes

The 2 meal replacement is for weight loss while the 1 meal replacement is for weight maintenance. I decided to have just the one shake for breakfast. I am truly awful at having breakfast. I often find that I am too busy and simply forget about the most important meal of the day. This is how Shake It Slim has helped me. I have been having a shake in the morning as my breakfast and kicking my metabolism into action!

The shakes mix up easily and create a smooth drink. I have tried other powder shakes in the past and have found some of them to be difficult to get a smooth drink without using a powerful blender. But Shake It Slim shakes mix with the water using just a shaker cup.

Each shake contains just 204 calories as well as 22 different vitamins and minerals to promote good health. They come in three delicious flavours, vanilla, chocolate and strawberry.

After having a shake at breakfast followed by healthy meals have I lost any weight?

To be honest, I do not know. I have stopped stepping on the scales. Instead I am going by how my body feels and how my body looks. I definitely feel less bloated and am not snacking as I was when I missed a breakfast meal or shake. If this is thanks to the shakes or thanks to eating a healthy balanced diet you decide. I will admit that I am swaying to the healthy eating option but if you do not have time to sit and have a meal these shakes give you the perfect and healthy option. If you want to loose weight the best way to do it is by exercising and eating healthily.

Now that I have said goodbye to the fad diets I feel stronger in myself. For the first time ever I am accepting how my body shape has changed since having the twins and that it is now part of me. When I don't eat or am stressing over calories I am so miserable and moody. I don't want to feel like that. I want to feel happy and my body needs to eat healthily for both my physical and mental well being. Also have a daughter! I do not want her to think that she needs to be obsessed with dieting as I once was. We all need to show our children that having a healthy balanced diet is essential and that you can enjoy a piece of cake or some chocolate in moderation. We need to stop showing our girls how our bodies should look according to the media. We are all different, we all have different shapes, there is no "perfect figure" and we need to embrace our bodies as they are! This may not be the review that you were expecting but I am being honest. They are nice drinks, they probably do help you loose weight if you have more will power than I do but they are just not for me and I do not want to be hypocritical and tell you something I do not believe in.

If you would like to try the Shake It Slim starter pack it retails at £25.99 and is available at Boots and Holland and Barrett. Or you can order directly from Forza and pay £18.99.

Disclosure: I received a Forza Shake It Slim for the purpose of this post. All words, views and opinions are my own and 100% honest. No cash payment was received.

#PowerofFrozen and Kids in the Kitchen - Chocolate Eclair Ice Cream Sundae

Now that it is coming to the end of the summer holidays, the kids are starting to get bored and us parents need new ways to keep them occupied. If there is one thing that all three of the kids love it is spending time in the kitchen either helping to prepare their lunches or baking.

When Iceland challenged me to come up with a recipe that the children can help with I knew that a dessert would go down a treat with them all. I don't know about you, but our plans often change depending on the weather, if I have work to be done and what the kids want to do on that day. So having fresh foods can often lead to waste if we get busy doing something else. But when buying frozen foods you know that if you need a last minute activity for the kids or they simply come and say they want to make something you know you have got the ingredients in.

J and I went shopping to our local Iceland to pick up some supplies. As we have had some gloriously warm days we decided to make an ice cream dessert. There are so many different ice creams to choose from. Iceland stock their original ice creams in vanilla, Neapolitan and raspberry ripple. They also have some delicious Italian gelato ice cream in cherry ripple, vanilla and caramel swirls. To go with the ice creams there was a wide choice of toppings and additions!

We decided to go for their Bellissima Chocolate Italian Gelato. This ice cream comes with three irresistible flavours in one, white chocolate flavoured ice cream with white chocolate flavoured ripple, chocolate and cocoa flavoured ice cream with chocolate flavoured ripple and lastly hazelnut and chocolate flavour ice cream with hazelnut and chocolate flavour ripple.

In the end we decided to get the following ingredients...

Today we are going to show you a super easy, delicious sweet treat that not only the kids will love but is perfect for the whole family to enjoy. As much as we all love a good old hot pudding and custard it just won't do in the summer, plus I wanted this to be a safe and easy recipe for the kids to be fully hands on without the worry of the oven. Plus my kids are not very good at waiting for things to bake, like most children when they want something they want to be able to enjoy it as soon as they can. What is even better is that this recipe requires no preparation. You simply need to defrost the eclairs for 30 minutes and then let them go!

This is what we did...