clearing and colcannon

Mit's been home from work today recovering from an intense couple of days of flu. He's on the mend, but I'm totally thrown. Its put me into weekend mode, I was so certain it was Sunday, I felt a bit bereft when I thought Tescos would be closed so I couldn't buy in some chocolate and other bits when I realised stocks were low. Chocolate, and bananas. I cannot stop eating bananas at the moment, and probably eat too many, they are such an easy and convenient fast food!

Spent most of the afternoon in the garden, clearing. Its half term, so no work or pre-school. Our new garden (a new and recent treasure) has two wide borders with lots of mature plantings. Now Autumn's set in, its easier to see where to cut back and clear. Rohan and Luca 'helped' by trundling their wheelbarrow around and making 'chocolate cake' with the compost, which did uncannily resemble a rich chocolate... to look at only! No one actually sampled it, I kept a very close eye : )

Made colcannon tonight, the famed Irish dish of sexed up mashed potatoes! Mashed spuds mixed with some soya cream and leek, with spinach and greens mixed in, topped off with some melted vegan butter. We had Frys schnitzels with it. The boys had some cubed tofu lightly sauted with olive oil and soy sauce (because they didn't want to try the schnitzels, quite normal for the first time I put something in front of them.) Colcannon seems to magically convert the less esteemed veg like cabbage into a luxurious dish. Cabbage- the word alone just doesn't exactly stir up excitement, it sounds so dour and laden... like baggage...

Well, the boys ate several forks of the colcannon. This amount is always a relative success. I did read somewhere, in one of those baby/toddler guide text books- that your toddler should be able to put away similar portion sizes to you. Well, we have a long way to go then! But to get some green vegetable into the boys (that isn't peas) feels good, and can't be bad for a Luca who sometimes says ' I don't like green food, mummy'. But therein lies a common toddler/child suspicion of green food!!

Took a colcannon pic. Probably not the best culinary subject for a first blog image! Mit summed it up well- 'I think food photography is an art'. Hmmm, where can I do a short course?!!