This is Florence’s first year of proper school so this is the first year I’ve had to be organised about absolutely everything. Organised about remembering books and bags and making sure I’m on time. Organised about uniform being clean, dry, ironed AND having a spare set in her bag just in case (in the first week I managed to fail at that entirely and when everything was still drying I took out the spare set for her to wear. Of course, it was the one day at school when she NEEDED a change of clothes…)! I have to be organised about food too! We used to just meander around and pick up what we fancied when we passed the supermarket and we had no real set time for supper at all. With school, all that has changed!

Me and my gal on her first day of school! I was up and dressed by 8.30 so that’s all a bit of a change too!

Florence comes out from a full day at school absolutely ravenous yet she assures me she is eating lots at lunch time. Somehow I’m not so sure, she’s always been one who needs encouragement to eat! So we’re having our tea at about 4pm which is way earlier than we’re used to and it doesn’t give me much time to think about what I’m going to cook, especially on the days when she has ballet or Girl’s Brigade. I end up not doing anything particularly exciting and knew it would be that way so I wanted to make sure Friday night was special and that the children would have a Friday Night Treat Tea.

When she comes home at the end of the week we kick it off in style and every week the children will choose a theme for me to base the treat tea around. The first week, after she had done a couple of days at school, we had a pirate tea which they both LOVED! I used food to make a treasure map on their plates then they had melon pirate ships followed by chocolate mini roll and Oreo treasure chests! To drink I made some fish shaped ice cubes swimming in the sea!

Florence then chose, somewhat predictably, a Princess theme for the end of her very first full week at school. I tried to make a ‘Princess and the Peas’ bed to be followed by some fruity fairy wands and finishing with decorating cup cakes as Princess skirts with a Princess stuck in the top like mini crinoline lady cakes. We washed it down with edible glitter inside Vimto ice cube hearts mixed with a jug of water!

The thing about my Friday night treat teas is that I want them to be exciting but not terribly taxing. I don’t mind knocking up a fairy cake or two, that’s easy and I do want there to be a novelty aspect to the food otherwise what’s the point? But I want it to be something I can always put together quickly, just the same as any other day with the effort going into the novelty and fun aspect instead of cooking time. Both weeks I have used products from Birds Eye which has made things MUCH easier and I intend to keep using them too! Out of the freezer, cooked and on the plate in twenty minutes definitely works for me and who doesn’t like a fish finger? Even Jamie Oliver loves a fish finger sarnie so with top chef’s giving them the thumbs up I don’t mind adding them to my children’s menu at all!

Birds Eye fish fingers!

For the Pirate Tea I used Birds Eye Chicken Dippers with Birds Eye Peas to make the palm trees on my treasure map.

A treasure map with Chicken Dipper and Pea palm trees!

And for the Princess tea I built the bed with Birds Eye Peas underneath, mashed potato covering them and then topped with Birds Eye Fish Fingers and a bit of a dubious Princess made out of carrot (I might have to re-think how to make the Princess for another time). The children really enjoyed getting to the bottom of the bed and finding the peas!

A Princess and the peas bed with peas and fish fingers!

I really like Bird Eye products and I even served up fish from their Inspirations range to my husband this week. He rings me every day to ask me what’s for tea, seriously, men! I find it a real chore thinking about what to cook every day. Don’t get me wrong, I love food and love to make it but only when I have the time; when we’re all rushing around I like quick and easy and the Inspirations range is great!

Inspirations!

I’m going to doing a Friday Night Treat Tea every single week, you’ll be able to see all of our themes here and I’m sure Birds Eye will play a vital role in future treat teas too!

This post is an entry for #Afterschoolchefs Linky Challenge, sponsored by Birds Eye. Learn more on the Birds Eye Facebook page.