Saturday Recipe Swap: Healthy Pancakes

Like many parents I'm always keen on finding healthy and quick recipes to get my kids to eat. This is especially true during the school holidays when they are forever hungry! So I'm asking for you to join in and share your quick and easy family recipes...


Here is mine for pancakes:

• Choose a cup, mug or beaker of required size
• Half fill cup with plain flour
• Top up the cup with wholemeal flour almost to top
• Tip flour into mixing bowl
• Fill cup to top with skimmed milk (or semi if for under 5s)
• Tip milk into flour
• Crack an egg into bowl
• MIx until smooth batter
• Heat a large frying pan after spraying with low calorie cooking spray
• When pan is hot spoon in as many pancakes as will fit:

• Whilst they are cooking slice up some fruit and prepare any other toppings

• Flip pancakes once they are cooked on the underside
• When second side has cooked serve up and add your choice of toppings

For a less healthy option as a special treat you could serve with cream or ice cream.

So what recipes would you like to share with me? Get your thinking caps on and please join my blog hop!


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recipes I've been tweeted

suzywoozy13 Sue in the Lakes @LakesSingleMum Bagel Pizza, Tomato puree, thin layer of Sacla Sundried Tomato Pesto, Grated cheddar, Cook under grill, quick and yummy. Jul 16, 2:19 PM via web

Friday review: Haba Ball Track Sounds Starter Set

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When I was told that the second batch of toys for my family to review as part of the Haba Mums Club I was really excited as to what it would be. My children and I had loved the previous lot of toys and were hoping that these would give as much pleasure. I have to say that my 4 year old son's facial expression when he saw the ball track box gave me a good idea of how much he was going to enjoy it.

The Ball Track Sounds Starter Set is part of Haba's wooden building blocks and ball track sets range. It can stand alone as a toy or be used in conjunction with other sets. With an RRP of £81.99 it's not the cheapest toy on the market but it looked and felt really high quality.

With my son we had an experiment to see how we could use the different parts to make music with the marbles. As he is only 4 he needed quite a bit of help to work some of it out but I'm sure that over time he will become quite adept. He did manage to incorporate one of our little wooden stools into a run to make it more exciting. The fact that the marbles "played" the musical instruments added to the fun:

A xylophone and drum effect

We enjoyed working together to problem solve getting the marbles to run effectively and to make the most noise! It was a good educational experience as he had to choose different sized blocks to raise the runs to the required height.

My daughter at 7 was keener to have a go without any adult assistance. I persuaded her to first try and copy the picture on the box as I thought they wouldn't have photographed a run that didn't work. My theory proved correct and the children had great fun running the marbles  down the run:

My daughter then went on to experiment more and try her own variations to see what she could do:

She was happy for quite some time experimenting with various combinations some more successful than others. As a starter pack there are a limited number of combinations but a variety of pieces such as a mini tunnels and differing lengths of slide. I can see that having additional sets of wooden blocks would make this a much more versatile toy. There are certainly plenty of tempting additional sets that are available on the Haba web site. If you got this set for your 3-4 year old it would be a good investment for the future plus you would have plenty of chances to add to it when money allowed.

Reasons to be Cheerful XVII (#R2BC)

On the whole a much more cheerful week so here's the things that have made me smile in the past 7 days:
1) A Wonderful Weekend
The friends who did the most to help me move out of my old home to come up north were up in Kendal staying with my parents. We had a great weekend showing them around Kendal, having a BBQ and going to the #CumbriaTwitnic. It was a very relaxed weekend with friends old and new. The fact the sun shone for almost the whole time was an added bonus.

Windermere from Fell Foot Park on Sunday

2) The Fells
See Tuesday's post where I got a chance to actually get out and enjoy the marvels on offer on my doorstep.

Grasmere from Loughrigg Fell

3) My Son's Nursery Leaver's Report
My son is leaving nursery next Wednesday and yesterday I was given his final report. I am one proud mummy after reading the lovely things his teacher had to say about him:

• very confident and motivated
• hugely creative and develops some fabulous play
• His imagination is a joy to observe
• has a superb general knowledge and wide extensive vocabulary
• has a wonderful knowledge of songs and rhymes

The best bit has to be "you have been a super member of the class and we will all miss you". I think it could be quite emotional when he has his last visit next week.

#TheGallery: Travel

Tara has asked us to put up our Travel photographs this week. At this point I wish I had scanned in one of my major holidays from pre-digital days.... instead here is a selection of my more recent and more mundane travel pics:

My son travelling Spiderman style - not!

Travelling slowly on the Lancaster Canal

Travelling on 4 wheels and 1 foot

Heading off for their first ever foreign holiday

Think I took the scope a bit loosely this week! Click on top logo for more exciting entries...

Wainwright bagging (2): Loughrigg Fell

Today my mum invited me to join her on a walk up Loughrigg Fell so she could check out part of the route for a Ramblers walk tomorrow. It was a fine Cumbrian day for a bit of fell walking using the Wainwright book as a guide to follow along with the Ordnance Survey map. There are so many little and large paths across the fell it is very easy to take the wrong one and in the book Wainwright warns of the dangers of mists on this fell. 


On this occasion we took all the right routes and had our first fab views from the cairn on the secondary summit. Even though it was midweek there were plenty of people coming up the fell from various directions as its accesible from plenty of paths. Coming up from Rydal like us is one of the gentlest routes and as we climbed we had many glimpses of places such as Windermere from a height:

Then we had a little boggy walk and a scramble up to the final top. It was amazing to see so many of the Lakes fells from the top. All of them much higher than the 1099ft of Loughrigg and a challenge for future days. My mum snapped me with the trig point just to prove that I had actually made it:

trig points hide a multitude of sins!

The descent down to Grasmere was mostly stone steps that had been created to mend the path. This actually made it a slightly less comfortable path to walk on and is apparently very slippery after rain. The reason for coming down this way became clear as we got close enough to admire the waters of Grasmere from above:

Just above the lake we chose to take the mid height path which took us through the abandoned quarry and let us see in the caves that were created by the quarrying of slate in the past. As Wainwright said you could fit the whole population of Ambleside inside the cave, even if some would be rather wet:

It was then a simple stroll back to the car park after our little meander up the fell. This was my second Wainwright as far as I know so I only have a couple of hundred to go!