Thrifty Christmas Thursday - Vegetables and Trimmings

This week for Thrifty Christmas Thursday I am focusing on the vegetables. Vegetables can often be forgotten, but on any Christmas dinner they also take centre stage.

We all know about the traditional Christmas vegetables and have all seen the Christmas cook spending all Christmas morning in the kitchen preparing the big meal. So today I am going to give you my top tips on how you, the cook, can leave the kitchen and enjoy Christmas day with your family safe in the knowledge that all of the food is prepared and will be easy to cook.

The vegetables which I am going to feature today are...

Bakedin Christmas Special Recipe Box

Last year you may remember that I worked with Gousto and wrote a review on their delicious recipe boxes. These are great boxes which arrive with all of the ingredients and step by step instructions on how to create a restaurant style meal. We all really enjoyed the meals that we received. So when they got in touch with me again asking me if I would like to try their Bakedin Christmas recipe boxes that are perfect for little hands I could not turn them down. Now that the twins are three they love to help me in the kitchen when they get the chance so I knew that they would love this.

Bakedin have joined forces with Michel Roux to create a deliciously festive Snowflake Brownie box. We received two boxes, one for the twins and one for Joseph to bake with. Joseph also loves to bake, but he likes do bake independently. He is now 11 and wants to done things on his own so this box is an ideal way to raise his confidence in cooking. These boxes are a perfect way to help children bake more independently. All of the ingredients are labelled and pre weighed so all that the children need to do is add a couple of fresh ingredients, have some adult help when using the oven and they can make their own delicious treats.

Here is how the twins got on making their own Snowflake Brownie...

Chicken and Butternut Squash Casserole with Potato and Pea Mash - CookBlogShare Week 20

At this time of year I love to cook casseroles. They are always such warming meals that are so comforting on a cold, wet day. You will probably know how I am constantly trying to get extra vegetables into our meals. One way that I have found it so easy to get some extra goodness into the children is by adding different vegetables to the potatoes when I am going to mash them. In this recipe I have added peas to the mash. They worked so well together, the flavours were perfect and were a great accompaniment with the chicken and butternut squash.

This is a great meal as you can simply leave it in either a casserole dish in a low heat oven or in the slow cooker until ready. As the meal cooks your kitchen will be filled with delicious aromas as the ingredients cook and come together.

This is what I did...

CookBlogShare Week 19 Round Up

Last weeks CookBlogShare had a wide variety of both savoury and sweet recipes. Last week I featured sweet, Christmas recipes. This week has seen me sway more to the savoury side. This is probably because I am trying so hard to not be temped by delicious sweet foods. But thankfully the Slimming World plan does allow you to have the odd treat! Over the weekend we visited Cadbury World to celebrate Christmas with the Carnival Cruise team and families who we are working with over the coming year so as you can imagine the diet went out of the window for the day! But now I am back on the syn counting and enjoying my healthier foods.

The recipes that I have chosen this week are healthier meals but they are all full of flavour! They all contain a sweetness that is combined perfectly with the savoury. They really are the best of both worlds! 

Here are my favourite recipes from week 19 of CookBlogShare...

Weekly Meal Plan - Week Commencing 30th November 2015

When I wrote last weeks meal plan I completely forgot that I did not need to plan a meal for Friday night as we were travelling down to Redditch. We stayed over night as we had the day at Cadbury World with the Carnival Cruise team and the other FunSeeking families who are working with them over the coming year.

The first two meals that I had planned went well, however after that it went to pot. There was no meal plan and not feeling well did not help. It is times like this I appreciate having a meal plan but I also realise that I need to have some easy meals on hand for when I am not feeling good or the meal plan does not go as planned. I do cook all of our meals from scratch but having some pre prepared frozen meals in would be a great help.

Last week I shared a variety of foodie posts. I shared a tasty leftovers recipe, my Thrifty Christmas Thursday tips which is the first of a five week feature that I am working on with Aldi, a delicious extra special sandwich and the contents of last months Degustabox.

Here are last weeks foodie posts...

Degustabox - October 2015

22nd November - 28th November 2015 - One Picture Everyday For One Year

This week has been so busy and has flown by. The Christmas feeling has started to enter our house. I have been reading more and more Christmas recipes, we have made our Christmas pudding and I have even started to plan Christmas activities for the children during the week that runs up to Christmas.

This week has seen Christmas puddings, saving money doing our shopping, Christmas dinner, beautiful sunrises and a lot of chocolate! Here is our week in pictures...

Sunday 22nd November 2015

Sunday was stir up Sunday and as tradition states we made our Christmas pudding. I was lucky to receive a sixpence from the Royal Mint for our pudding this year. I am hoping that this sixpence will be the start of a great family tradition and one that we will continue for years to come. Then passed down through generations.