Tag: Summer

My Tuna Nicoise Salad

Lydia | July 2, 2013

This week’s Family Meal is a delicious, healthy and tasty take on a Tuna Nicoise Salad.

When I made this salad the weather was still cooler than usual for summer so I left out the iceberg lettuce and substituted it for some broccoli which makes the Tuna Nicoise Salad more filling. And instead of boiled potatoes I lightly roasted some potatoes with onion and garlic cloves to give the salad an extra kick.

Serves 4

Prep Time 5 mins. Cooking Time 20 mins.

You’ll Need:

4 Free Range Eggs
6 New Potatoes
1 head of Broccoli
1 Red Onion
3 Cloves of Garlic
1 large tin of Tuna in Spring Water
Pitted Olives (if children are eating the meal)
Dried Herbs
Drizzle of Olive Oil
Lemon

Let’s Make My Tuna Nicoise Salad

1. Pre heat the oven to 190 degrees Celcius. Wash and chop the Potatoes into small cubes. Boil until soft (approx 15 – 20 minutes).

2. Boil the eggs until hard (approx 15 minutes).

3. Boil or steam the Broccoli for a couple of minutes until tender.

4. Chop the Red Onion and Garlic.

5. Put the Potato, Garlic and Onion into an oven dish and lightly mix with a drizzle of Olive Oil. Add a sprinkle of Dried Herbs onto the Potato for extra flavour. Roast for approx 20 minutes or until the potatoes have turned golden.

6. Add the cooked vegetables into a salad bowl.

7. Open the tin of Tuna and drain the spring water. Add the Tuna to the salad.

8. Peel the Boiled Eggs and cut into half or quarters and add to the salad.

9. Add Pitted Olives (only if children are old enough to eat Olives).

10. Squeeze a little fresh Lemon juice onto the salad for taste.

Enjoy! This recipe is superb as a summer or winter family meal.

#KidsGrowWild Challenge

Lydia | June 21, 2013

Despite living in central London we always find creative and versatile ways to use our green fingers. This summer we decided to grow our very own city flower garden for our balcony. We linked up with the fun #KidsGrowWild Challenge and were sent a lovely Little Pals Garden Kit.

The Little Pals Garden Kit is brightly coloured and comes with all the essentials for gardening. We received a handy gardening bag with built-in storage space for the hand trowel, hand fork, gardening gloves, watering can and sachets of flower seeds.

Imogen gets the pots ready for planting with a bag of soil and her Little Pals hand trowel.

We helped Imogen put the bright blue gardening gloves on which she loved.

With the help of Daddy the soil is added to the pots and the flower seeds are planted.

Finally Imogen carefully waters the seeds using the Little Pals watering can.

And now we patiently await the germination of the flower seeds and for little green shoots to sprout through the soil. A little sunshine will greatly help!

This post is an entry for the BritMums #KidsGrowWild Challenge.

Growing in the Garden

Lydia | February 26, 2013

Our New Zealand summer garden has been a haven of fun and activity over the last two months. We’ve had the most glorious weather and have eaten outside almost every day.

There’s still brilliant sunshine forecast for New Zealand but the mornings and evenings have started to have the feeling that summer is passing. We travel back to London in a few days we’ll miss playing in the outside garden, watching all the creatures that live here, splish splash sploshing in the paddling pool and helping to water the flowers and vegetables.

We found green and golden bell frogs with beautiful markings in the tomato plants, on the runner beans and in the patch of strawberries in my parent’s garden.