Summer, Strawberry Picking & an Easy Strawberry Flan

So, yesterday started off a little bit grey, however I had been watching the weather forecast and knew it should clear up enough for us to pop over to the local pick your own farm and collect some yummy strawberries.

We picked up a couple of baskets and headed off to find some yummy red beauties, we may also have eaten one or two on the way round!

Afterwards we popped over to the rhubarb patch to pick some huge stalks of rhubarb, the kids loved helping me to pull them up and then carried them back over their shoulders like huge fans.

Once we got home we washed our beautiful red strawberries and made them into this super easy strawberry flan.

All you need is a flan case, some custard, I used Ambrosia Devon Dream as it can be kept in your store cupboard and then some lovely fresh strawberries....top the flan case with the custard and then arrange your strawberries as you wish.

Here are some more fabulous summer strawberry recipes for those extra strawberries you don't manage to eat on their own.

Follow The Mummy Diary's board Strawberry Recipes on Pinterest.

Strawberry Picking Fun

I have been wanting to go strawberry picking with the children for a few years now and the weather has been nice we decided to go and get some as a treat for my birthday.

The kids loved looking for the biggest juiciest strawberries...

Daddy helping them look...

Lots of strawberries picked, we also picked some rhubarb on the way back to the car...

We had lots of fun picking strawberries, i've got a couple of recipes planned to use up any we don't manage to eat. But it was lots of fun and I can highly recommend stopping buy your local pick you own farm if you have one.

If you are local to Nottingham we visited Hills pick your own in Kirklington.

Linking up to Magic Moments on The Olivers Madhouse blog.

Super Green Smoothie

Over on Instagram I have found the fabulous Simple Green Smoothie's feed and it has been an insight into the wonderful world of smoothie making.

Since being diagnosed with fibromyalgia and now a Vitamin D deficiency I have been desperate to boost my intake of fruit and veg and this has been a great way of doing it.

Tasty (although I admit it looks a bit gruesome) it is a super easy way of getting a vitamin hit as well as some slow release energy to keep me going and fill me up.

I have adapted this recipe as it is just for me but you can find this one and more on their website or instagram feed.

Ingredients:

1 Cup of Almond Milk
1 Tablespoon of Almond Butter
1 Tablespoon of Cacao (I used Willie's Cacao finely grated)
1 Banana
1 Cup of Spinach

Put all of the ingredients in a blender, I use my Hinari Genie, it's seen better day's but does the job and blends quickly, it's easy to put together and wash afterwards. And blend until everything is liquid.

Poor into a glass and serve...

I have been taking these to work too in a Bonne Maman jar, these are the perfect way to give me an afternoon energy boost.

I have also been adding some strawberries and blueberries if I have them, if you don't have cacao then you can use cocoa but you don't need as much as it is quite strong and bitter and you may need a little honey.

Next up I am going to be trying the Alpro coconut milk, it sounds amazingly tasty and apparently makes things tasty like bounty!