Happy New Year 2018

Hey, it’s me! Remember me? Tracy from It’s Not Easy Being Greedy? The greedy blogger with a young baby? Last time I wrote anything was last October, so I can understand if you have forgotten about me …

Truth be told, this motherhood and working lark leaves little time for blogging. I have had the best intentions but so little time to spare, and when I do have some, I want to cuddle up on the sofa with Andrew and Ioan rather than sit in front of my laptop and type another blog post. However, I do love writing, so I am hoping I can get back into the habit of blogging. Bear with me chaps.

So, what a year 2017 was. We had a fantastic time together, watching Ioan grow into the little toddler (of 17 months!) that he is today. At the end of 2016 we were starting to see the emergence of a tooth … now he has 16 of them. Last December he could just about stand in the jumperoo, now he’s walking and running everywhere.

Unfortunately Ioan’s speech development is not as strong as his ability to grow teeth, and his only real word is a resounding “No!”. He says a very aggressive “Mama” too, which can mean me, Andrew or his grandparents. And “Uh-oh” pops out of his mouth when something happens that he is not keen on. However, he clearly understands most of what we are telling him, so I am sure it won’t be long into 2018 before he is adding words to his repertoire (fingers crossed not the sweary ones … Andrew and I really need to get our language under control around him).

I returned to work in July for four days each week: with Ioan attending nursery two days a week, being looked after by Grannie Annie two days a week. That leaves us with a day together, and the weekends with Andrew. It’s a good balance and I am really lucky that work have been flexible, but any worker who has reduced their hours from full time will tell you that it’s hard to really reduce your workload into fewer hours (because you certainly don’t get the work taken off of you) … and so there is little time to spare outside work to do those fun little things like blogging.

And speaking of blogging, of course I should write about what we have eaten this year, as this is a food blog after all … but unfortunately that’s another issue: a lack of time has meant a lack of planning, which has meant a lack of proper cooking and decent meals. I have relied far too heavily on convenience food and takeaway pizza recently, and a few too many baby food pouches for Ioan. Now he eats pretty much whatever we do, my menus have improved, but not as much as they should. My plan is that blogging, meal planning and shopping to a plan will help us all to eat better, and give me some opportunities to share some lovely recipes with you.

Getting back to my favourite subject again (Ioan), he is a great little eater. Although he doesn’t eat huge portions of food, he will try pretty much everything (although he has a pretty grim habit of spitting out textures he doesn’t approve of – delightful). In fact just last night he tucked into lamb curry with rice, naan bread and poppadoms.

So, for this first week of 2018, more home cooking is going to be on the menu, and it’s natural that after a few weeks of indulgence I am going to try and be a bit more restrained with my diet, but everything still needs to be in moderation, including those lovely chocolates that both Ioan and I share a love of.

• Tonight – I didn’t know how hungover we would feel today, so haven’t prepared any food. A nice simple meal of fishfingers with homemade chips will do for tonight!
• Tuesday – pork chop traybake
• Wednesday – faggots, mash and peas
• Thursday – pea and prawn risotto
• Friday – cod goujons with parmesan crumb as a Marcus Wareing Cookbook Challenge
• Saturday – steak
• Sunday – lamb with lentils

Do have a very Happy New Year, and I hope you enjoy reading what I share with you in 2018.