Yo Ho, A Disney Life for Me - Summer 2020 pre trip

[MrsSilverStar]

On the food subject...I’m not going to fit out the front door once this is over, if I carry on eating the way I currently am! Comfort eating to the max! It’s flour I can’t get hold of, so we’ve resorted to buckwheat...will see how that goes.

I keep having dreams about being back at WDW, but they’re really stressful - funny how the mind works through stuff like this.

Colette, I’m glad your furlough pay is good, looking forward to seeing your ADR list.

Abby, am I right in thinking that you just missed the opening of Galaxy’s Edge? Really hope you get to see it soon. I’m saving the Mandalorian until there are more episodes, but looking forward to it.

And another vote for Fairytale weddings - I love that show! Even Heath watches it with me now, he was born two years after our wedding so he thinks we should do it again so he can be there...reckon I can talk Mark into a WDW vow renewal? 😂

Hope everyone is doing ok x

[Goldia]

Originally Posted by MrsSilverStar

On the food subject...I’m not going to fit out the front door once this is over, if I carry on eating the way I currently am! Comfort eating to the max! It’s flour I can’t get hold of, so we’ve resorted to buckwheat...will see how that goes.

I keep having dreams about being back at WDW, but they’re really stressful - funny how the mind works through stuff like this.

Colette, I’m glad your furlough pay is good, looking forward to seeing your ADR list.

Abby, am I right in thinking that you just missed the opening of Galaxy’s Edge? Really hope you get to see it soon. I’m saving the Mandalorian until there are more episodes, but looking forward to it.

And another vote for Fairytale weddings - I love that show! Even Heath watches it with me now, he was born two years after our wedding so he thinks we should do it again so he can be there...reckon I can talk Mark into a WDW vow renewal? 😂

Hope everyone is doing ok x

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There's pretty much a zero chance of me fitting into my holiday clothes if the trip does still go ahead with all the food I've been eating so I'm with you on the not fitting out the front door! Not sure about buckwheat though sounds a bit weird to me. Although our dinner tonight was one of the freezer special meals, I thought we had some cod or haddock in there so I planned on having that with the potato croquettes we panic bought. Well it turns out we didn't have any recognisable fish, as we must have eaten the actual named fish as all that was there was a non descript white fish. I kid you not so we had white fish and potato croquettes. I decided the whole thing would be brought together with a tomato sauce and as we had a tin of tomatoes I made a tomato sauce out of an onion some garlic and the tin of tomatoes. Dare I say it was actually quite pleasant perhaps my opinion was influenced by the fact I'd had 2 Bacardi and cokes before dinner I know it's mid week and all that but I was in the mood!

I still haven't watched any fairytale weddings yet. Maybe tomorrow? I'm holding out until I really need a boost. At the moment I'm doing alright, in spite of what you may think about the aforementioned white fish and Bacardi and cokes pre dinner!

[collybird]

Abby, this thread is my safe place these days I need to stay out of the Coronavirus forum, the 'when will Disney reopen?' thread makes me feel ill, yet I keep reading it despite knowing that no-one knows what is going to happen

The way you feel about booking FPs is how I feel about booking ADRs. It feels silly to do it, as though you are wasting someone's time, despite it all being an automated system.

What's everyone's culinary plans for Easter?

I never get Bank Holidays at home so I am going to try and make the most of it. Nik's not a big fan of lamb so I'm torn over whether or not I should go to all the effort of going the whole hog for him to say he'd have preferred chicken! If he does I'll just tell him he should be grateful we're not having white fish and potato croquettes (He doesn't like Potato Croquettes, I do.) We had Swedish Meatballs for tea tonight, I've never had them before and didn't like them. Nik cleared his plate because 'I'm never going to get to have these again'

I'm going to do a Mini Eggs cheesecake, that is for certain!

We had homemade Sausage and Egg McMuffins for lunch today and they were even better than the real thing. I couldn't get muffins in the supermarket and had Lancashire Oven Bottom Muffins instead, I didn't even know they existed before now, but they were yum.

[Goldia]

Originally Posted by collybird

Abby, this thread is my safe place these days I need to stay out of the Coronavirus forum, the 'when will Disney reopen?' thread makes me feel ill, yet I keep reading it despite knowing that no-one knows what is going to happen

The way you feel about booking FPs is how I feel about booking ADRs. It feels silly to do it, as though you are wasting someone's time, despite it all being an automated system.

What's everyone's culinary plans for Easter?

I never get Bank Holidays at home so I am going to try and make the most of it. Nik's not a big fan of lamb so I'm torn over whether or not I should go to all the effort of going the whole hog for him to say he'd have preferred chicken! If he does I'll just tell him he should be grateful we're not having white fish and potato croquettes (He doesn't like Potato Croquettes, I do.) We had Swedish Meatballs for tea tonight, I've never had them before and didn't like them. Nik cleared his plate because 'I'm never going to get to have these again'

I'm going to do a Mini Eggs cheesecake, that is for certain!

We had homemade Sausage and Egg McMuffins for lunch today and they were even better than the real thing. I couldn't get muffins in the supermarket and had Lancashire Oven Bottom Muffins instead, I didn't even know they existed before now, but they were yum.

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What a compliment I'm glad you and other Dibbers want to pop on here for a distraction and have a chat. I wondered at first if people would think that talking about other things was frivolous or in some way callous but I figure there's plenty of other opportunities for people to talk about their worries and fears. Although I do stray into them more often than I would like on here I'll try to stay upbeat at least as much as possible.

I love lamb, but that's not in our plan for Easter weekend. I reckon you should make what you want and Nik won't mind, well maybe he will, but you can do a meal that he would enjoy another time. We like doing McMuffins and we sometimes make the Bagels, we make them the same way with sausagemeat and egg, but a bagel instead of a muffin (obvs over explaining there...but I decided not to delete it ). Potato croquettes are not something we usually have but were bought on my last day of work when we hadn't shopped for a while and it was pretty shocking seeing the empty shelves so we felt we had to buy something and ended up with lots of stuff that we wouldn't normally have. I remembered eating them as a child and hoped they would be similar to tater tots, which they were just a bit bigger. How can Nik not like them? I really enjoyed that fish dinner.

Kate is updating our chalk countdown on a daily basis, normally I only do it once a week at the between ADRs and FPs stage as it feels so long. We will of course be doing our FPs when the time comes as she won't let me not do them . Yesterday she wanted to know what the plan was for the first few days, parks, rides, food etc. So I explained it would be AK on our first full day as we have EMH, then MK in the evening and dinner at Liberty Tree Tavern. She was very excited about this as AK is her favourite park and so she thinks this is a fab plan. Of course you have to book the ADRs, it will be an odd experience and certainly not the normal feeling of anticipation and excitement, but you do have to book them.

I'm going to post some of our Eating around the World dinners. I've had a lot of fun planning with Kate and thinking about what we will eat. She's been wanting to bake with me and that's been great, we usually do that before watching our next movie on Disney+. Yesterday we made it out through the wilderness after Bambi as it was time for Cinderella (there were a lot of fairly dull movies in between I'm afraid).

[Goldia]

Eating around the World

It's Good Friday and we are now over half way between ADR day and FP day. That countdown always seems to take forever and yet at the moment I'm wishing the time would slow down so the world has time to go back to normal. I'm not sure if we will end up going on holiday this summer, but at the moment Kate and me are enjoying planning, baking and then eating it all

Some of the meals below are more eating the food we panic bought when we went shopping and realised everyone else had already done their shopping...in the last week of being at school I didn't have time for anything other than going to work and so we didn't get to the shops until there were lots of empty shelves. Anyway, for want of other things to post I'll share some of those meals too.

We spent a bit of time thinking about some of the things we love eating at WDW and the first thing we thought of was cheesecake! Of course this is on the list as this is on almost every dessert menu out there. This is our marble chocolate cheesecake. Very tasty! It lasted a few nights and was a real treat.

I decided that we really needed to have an American BBQ style meal. We had ribs, potato wedges (sweet potato and normal potato), coleslaw and corn on the cob. The ribs recipe I use is one of Nigella Lawsons that I saw on a Christmas meals programme of hers from many years ago. The ribs are cooked in sweet chili sauce, lime juice, clementine juice and soy sauce and they are the best ribs. So, not exactly American ribs but we enjoyed them.

Next up Toad in the Hole as a UK meal, plus we had sausages in the freezer

Anyone fancy a cocktail? Good Here's my Negroni.

Now for one of our panic buying meals, which turned out pretty good. I saw some steak and kidney puddings in the freezer section. I wasn't 100% convinced the kids would enjoy them as this is not something they would usually eat. Me and Dave really loved them and actually the kids didn't moan too much.

Ready for another cocktail? Here's a margarita, but made with lemons and not limes as we didn't have limes. Again, actually pretty good.

Next up, we actually had our first BBQ of the year last Sunday as it was really good weather, just some burgers and sausages as that's what we had in the freezer. Again this was another panic buy and a little unusual as we had chicken sausages as there were no other sausages...in true food report style I forgot to actually take a photo of the food

But I do have a photo of the kids playing swing ball. We had a family tournament going on. Dave won 9 matches, he didn't lose to any of us. Max won 6 matches as he only lost to Dave... does anyone see where this is heading? Kate won 3 matches as she only beat 1 person...I won zero matches

Here is our Moroccan meal. This was another really tasty meal. We spent a long time making Baklava (never again) it was yummy but it's very fiddly chopping the nuts into tiny pieces and then layering the filo, melted butter and the nuts. We also had homemade hummus, chicken and couscous. It was a real treat.

Back to one of the freezer specials this is the white fish and potato croquettes meal I already mentioned. I'm glad I made the tomato sauce as the whole thing ended up being pretty good really.

Yesterday I decided to make some soda bread. We don't have any yeast or strong bread flour so making a normal loaf isn't possible but soda bread is very easy. I was pretty impressed with myself as it came out looking pretty good. We ate the whole lot while it was still warm.

Finally, some photos of us out on our daily walks, we are so lucky to live on the edge of a village and we have fields in one direction and a small woods in the other.

We've been able to walk each day.

Max and Kate are enjoying climbing trees.

I've enjoyed looking at all the bluebells.

Before I sign off, what other delights do we have in store? Well, Kate and me did the Disney 30 Questions while watching Ichabod and Mr Toad (not the best movie). So, I'll share our answers to all those questions with you sometime soon. And, if you're happy to keep seeing our meals then I'll keep sharing them.

I hope everyone has a lovely Easter weekend,

Take Care xx

[Buggles94]

Hi Abby
Have been following this TR since the start and I'm so sorry I haven't commented so far!
Have followed your previous TRs and was so excited to see you are going again and that we were due to be there at the same time - we are meant to be going for a long break from July in to August! Thank you so much for continuing with this TR as it gives me hope that we might still get to go and your thoughts re will we won't we are ones I have on a daily basis! I was due to run the Princess Half in February and had to cancel due to family illness so was really ready for this summer especially as we bought annual passes last October... I looked in to moving dates but then have the worry about will we still be covered by insurance etc so have decided to stick with the plans for now despite balances being due in May... Not sure if I am mad to think it is still possible (a tiny percent but still more than 0%?) but feel that hope needed right now... Please keep updating us - this is a strange and scary world and I for one definitely need some Disney escapism! Take care and Happy Easter

[collybird]

Can you share your coleslaw recipe please? Yours always looks lush. I do really love your Eating Around the World nights, I think I might steal the idea. Your American meal is my favourite I think!

The price of my weekly shop has shot up, I was feeling guilty about it thinking I must be buying a load of stuff we don't need but then it dawned on me we're now eating lunch here 7 days a week.

Your bread looks lovely, I quite fancy trying to make some and even contemplated buying a Kitchen Aid, then I came to my senses Still no flour in Tesco

Stealing your idea for Toad in the Hole

Thanks for the photo of your cheesecake! I usually do mine in the disposable trays from the supermarket but I forgot to pick some up, I was panicking about what to do it in but a tray with grease-proof paper will be just dandy.

[Goldia]

Originally Posted by Buggles94

Hi Abby
Have been following this TR since the start and I'm so sorry I haven't commented so far!
Have followed your previous TRs and was so excited to see you are going again and that we were due to be there at the same time - we are meant to be going for a long break from July in to August! Thank you so much for continuing with this TR as it gives me hope that we might still get to go and your thoughts re will we won't we are ones I have on a daily basis! I was due to run the Princess Half in February and had to cancel due to family illness so was really ready for this summer especially as we bought annual passes last October... I looked in to moving dates but then have the worry about will we still be covered by insurance etc so have decided to stick with the plans for now despite balances being due in May... Not sure if I am mad to think it is still possible (a tiny percent but still more than 0%?) but feel that hope needed right now... Please keep updating us - this is a strange and scary world and I for one definitely need some Disney escapism! Take care and Happy Easter

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Hey there

No need to apologise for not posting until today. I'm glad you're with me again and that you've been here from the start! What a shame your run Disney race wasn't meant to be. I hope the health issues are now resolved. I'll keep everything crossed your summer plans do come off, although I suppose part of that is because selfishly it would mean my summer plans also go ahead. Whatever, it's a fingers crossed from me. I'll keep posting as it gives me something to do as well. I'm glad to know you're looking forward to the posts though so thank you.

Originally Posted by collybird

Can you share your coleslaw recipe please? Yours always looks lush. I do really love your Eating Around the World nights, I think I might steal the idea. Your American meal is my favourite I think!

The price of my weekly shop has shot up, I was feeling guilty about it thinking I must be buying a load of stuff we don't need but then it dawned on me we're now eating lunch here 7 days a week.

Your bread looks lovely, I quite fancy trying to make some and even contemplated buying a Kitchen Aid, then I came to my senses Still no flour in Tesco

Stealing your idea for Toad in the Hole

Thanks for the photo of your cheesecake! I usually do mine in the disposable trays from the supermarket but I forgot to pick some up, I was panicking about what to do it in but a tray with grease-proof paper will be just dandy.

See more...

The American meal was a good one. I'll happily share my coleslaw recipe, although it's not particularly earth shattering my preference is Savoy cabbage as I prefer the flavour. But if that's not available I will use any white cabbage. I also prefer red onion, although the one in the photo from this meal was a normal onion. Plus carrots. How much of each is hard to judge. One onion a couple of carrots and about a third of a cabbage. Then lots of mayonnaise and once it's all mixed together I put a lot of black pepper on as a garnish. I love this coleslaw too. My dad used to make 2 batches when I was younger as some of us preferred salad cream and some of us preferred mayo. I've not gone that far, but the recipe comes from him. I've read other recipes that have red cabbage or beetroot in, but I've never wanted to change it, as there doesn't seem much point in trying to change what is already perfect. I know that sounds big headed but when you've found something you like you stick with it . Don't you? I suppose the other side of the argument is that upgrades or improvements may make it better but this I guess this is something I've not ever wanted to improve.

Our weekly shops have been costing more too, for the same reason I think as the kids are now not eating at school. Oh and Toad in the Hole is Max's favourite meal. He can make it as I've taught him how to make the Yorkshire pudding, but he is happy to avoid being in the kitchen and actually at the moment I quite like the routine of cooking and being able to make meals that everyone enjoys is very gratifying. Gosh I like a purpose and I find I'm happier with a list of jobs to do, even if those jobs are as simple as making shepherd's pie (today's dinner) and going for a walk!

[smithlane]

Hey Abby, I'm finally catching up
I'm loving the eating around the world photos! Well done on making the baklava, you've got far more patience than me. The white fish and potato croquettes look, erm interesting . I'm not a fish fan so that's prob why. That soda bread looks amazing though, do you have the recipe?
I'm another one who loves the fact you're still updating this report. I think we all need just a little bit of hope at the moment, no one knows for sure what will happen in 3 months!
Have a great Easter weekend everyone

[smithlane]

Originally Posted by collybird

Abby, this thread is my safe place these days I need to stay out of the Coronavirus forum, the 'when will Disney reopen?' thread makes me feel ill, yet I keep reading it despite knowing that no-one knows what is going to happen

The way you feel about booking FPs is how I feel about booking ADRs. It feels silly to do it, as though you are wasting someone's time, despite it all being an automated system.

What's everyone's culinary plans for Easter?

I never get Bank Holidays at home so I am going to try and make the most of it. Nik's not a big fan of lamb so I'm torn over whether or not I should go to all the effort of going the whole hog for him to say he'd have preferred chicken! If he does I'll just tell him he should be grateful we're not having white fish and potato croquettes (He doesn't like Potato Croquettes, I do.) We had Swedish Meatballs for tea tonight, I've never had them before and didn't like them. Nik cleared his plate because 'I'm never going to get to have these again'

I'm going to do a Mini Eggs cheesecake, that is for certain!

We had homemade Sausage and Egg McMuffins for lunch today and they were even better than the real thing. I couldn't get muffins in the supermarket and had Lancashire Oven Bottom Muffins instead, I didn't even know they existed before now, but they were yum.

See more...

I've got a lamb dodger here too so I've bought a spatchcock chicken from Marks to go with it. Will use the leftovers in the week as we've got far more meat than we'll need for just Sunday.

Ooh Mini eggs cheesecake! I was meant to make one of those for Mothers Day but didn't get around to it but I still have the ingredients, minus the mini eggs (I obviously ate those )

How do you do the McMuffins? Can you buy the sausage patties like they are?