Mummy & Moose
clapping, napping and yapping our way through the day

Turtle Bay Peterborough

We had been itching to try Turtle Bay since it opened in Peterborough last year so it didn’t take much for us to say yes when asked.

MrG has a love of all things Caribbean (especially rum) and he was very excited to sample what Turtle Bay had to offer. We thought it only fair that we let the children come along too. None of us are well versed in Caribbean cuisine so we took a look online beforehand.

There is a Turtle Bay app where you can book your table and earn rewards too!

turtle bay peterborough

Turtle Bay is situated on the outside of Queensgate in the city centre opposite St John The Baptist church. As well as offering a great food menu it also offers a vast array of cocktails and mocktails and a lot of rum!

turtle bay games

Turtle Bay’s famous happy hour lasts from 11.30am – 7pm and then starts up again at 10pm! This makes it the happiest happy hour in town with ALL of their cocktails available at 241 during that time – a must for cocktail lovers and rum enthusiasts all week long.

Starters

For our starter we chose the Just Jerk Platter. Included in the platter was marinated jerk wings, glazed pork ribs, beef patty, jerk chicken flatbread, sweet corn fritters and a super green salad.

As you can see it was huge! So tasty and I would absolutely recommend this as a great start to your Turtle Bay experience. I loved the sweetcorn fritters and the salad was really good too.

Main Meals

I was a bit unsure about bringing the children to a restaurant famed for being spicy. The children’s menu (or, Little Turtles) was really good though. I like that it offers choice and it’s not just your all too common fare of “something, chips and beans”.

Moose decided on the chicken flatbread with fries and I thought the portion size was really good! Bess decided to order the goat burger from the adult menu which she found a bit too hot. She said that if we were to return she would like to order from the childrens menu.  She tried Moose’s flatbread and loved it.

turtlebay flatbread

MrG who is not really a lover of spice either chose to try the Shack Stack: a seasoned beef burger topped with jerk pork belly, mature cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato and jerk bbq sauce. He loved it!

Trying something new

Something Turtle Bay has recently changed on their menu is that the burgers and wraps have reduced in price but now don’t come with a side (other than a little slaw). The idea being that you choose from the sides on offer and order as much or as little as you would like. I think this is a great idea, especially for the lunch crowd.

I opted for the Jerk Pork Belly which arrived with rice ‘n’ peas, crispy rind and a pineapple chilli salad. The pork belly itself was absolutely delicious and went perfectly with the rice and the salad. I also ordered crumbed plantain because it felt like the right thing to do. It was.

turtle bay jerk pork belly

Sadly for me it was my turn to drive so I couldn’t sample the alcohol but I would definitely come here for a night out (I am a Mum so, lol) as the cocktails look amazing.

Between us however we did try the peanut butter smoothie, the Reggae Sunsplash, the virgin kolada and the Virgin Raspberry Reggae. All were lovely, my favourite was the Virgin Kolada and Bess loved the Reggae Sunsplash.

turtle bay apple juice

Moose asked for an apple juice and was most impressed when it arrived in a bottle!

We all agreed that we were just far too full for desserts this time but we all said we would like to come back to try something from the dessert menu for sure.

We were given a meal in exchange for review. All opinions are our own.

Crate Creatures Surprise – Snort Hog

Brand new from MGA Entertainments comes the Crate Creatures. There are 4 new “beast” friends to collect. Each one stands at 7″ tall and comes with 45+ unique creature sounds and with its favourite food.

I thought this would be a great toy for Moose to try and since the Crate Creatures are for aged 4+ and he just had his 4th birthday we agreed to see what they were all about. To say he was excited to get his hands on one was a bit of an understatement.

crate creatures surprise

 

The first thing we noticed was that on the box it warns you “DO NOT PULL TONGUE”. Of course, as soon as I said this Moose did exactly that and was met with some pretty disgusting noises.

4 to collect

There are 4 Crate Creature Surprise “beast friends” to collect. All with their own origin story and if nothing else, you’ve got to love an origin story!

Each creature arrives in their own crate. This doubles as both packaging and an integral part of the way your child plays with the toy. I love this idea. The crate has a padlock and chain and on the side of the crate is a crowbar. This is how your child will open their padlock and the crate itself.

crate creatures

Snort Hog

This bog warthog hails from the muddy jungles of Tuskk. Unlock him from his crate to discover the slimy snot that squirts out of his nose, knock him over for his snotty growls and record your own message to hear him grizzle back. Listen to him crunch on his corn dog with over 45 unique sounds of appreciation for his favourite food.  Take it away before he’s had his fill though and watch his four furry arms flap up in horror. Get him back in his box, and lock him up before he gets too mad!

When the Crate Creature arrives it will be in demo mode. To access all of your new toys functions you will need to open the velcro on its back and switch it to on. It has a loud and quiet volume setting too. A shiny star to the person who included this feature.

This toy does come with 3x AAA batteries but how long they last will depend on how much they were pawed at while still in the shop. 

What did we think?

I did wonder whether Crate Creatures Surprise would be worth it’s £39.99 RRP. That seemed quite expensive at first but I was surprised by how good the build quality of the crate and the creature was (it’s fur is super soft) and by how many features it has such as being able to record your own voice.

It feels like it would last a long time and Moose has played with Snorthog daily since he arrived. I would say that this toy would be perfect for boys or girls aged 4-10.

Moose loved that Snorthog made farting, burping and grunting noises and that bogies can be made to come from Snorthogs nose. Bogies, apparently, are hilarious.

Crate Creatures retail at around £39.99 and are available from Smyths Toys

 

Little Foodies Coconut nougat recipe

One of my favourite aspects of taking a holiday abroad is trying the local cuisine to get a real flavour of where you are. I meant that pun and I am not sorry.

Of the 3 small humans I have created, my eldest 2 have inherited this love of trying new things. I have always preferred to give them a smaller portion of “adult food” and felt pretty good about my parenting in this area. Col was scoffing curries before he could walk and Bess loves sampling cheeses which could make a grown mans eyes water…

Then along came Moose. This child is the king of vegetable refusal. He likes peas and sweetcorn but anything else is met with serious resistance.

ANYTHING.

If it looks funny – he won’t eat it. If it smells funny – he won’t eat it. If it is touching anything with any kind of sauce? Forget it.

It turns out he is not alone. Emirates have done some research and they have found that over half of parents worry about what their children will eat while away with almost two thirds (64%) stashing failsafe food items in their suitcase. 

With this in mind, Emirates Holidays has partnered up with chefs from their top family resorts to create an exclusive series of ‘Little Foodies’ recipe cards to encourage families to cook together, expand their taste buds and remind themselves of their holiday through local flavours this summer.

You can find more info here

We had a go

I decided to try out the Coconut Nougat recipe with Moose. He hadn’t really tried coconut before and I thought that making sweets might be fun. It was! (once I had opened the coconut, obviously)

How we got on

First of all I procured some of my husbands tools to get started.

Not my usual cooking tools but they were necessary. Gently(ish) hammer the screwdriver through one of the coconuts soft spots and drain out the water into a glass. Drink it, I love it!

Then wrap in clean tea towel and smash it with a hammer. I found thinking about how my neighbours currently enjoy the BeeJees on repeat (at volume) helped with the hammer smash but you can use your own motivation.

Once I opened the coconut (like a boss! I was expecting it to be hard work) I simply followed the instructions on the recipe card.

I was a bit confused by the lemongrass having not used it before. The recipe card didn’t really tell me how I should prepare it so I went with removing the outer woody layer and then hacking it into chunks which I removed after boiling. I could really taste the lemongrass in the nougat so I would use this approach again.

 

I am really keen to widen the variety of foods which Moose will entertain and this definitely helped! Making our own nougat (although if I am honest the finished result was more like coconut ice?) was really good fun and Moose loved getting involved!

This was a collaborative post but all opinions are as ever my own. Moose loved the coconut nougat and we will be trying more of the little foodies recipes!

 

 

Review: Daewoo KOR6M5R 20 Litre Microwave

I am a big fan of the microwave

. Working from home and organising a family means that time is valuable. I try to feed my lot a pretty varied diet but some days I simply don’t have the time to prepare a meal (or 3) from scratch as well as getting everything else done. On days like those, the microwave comes into it’s own.

When I was asked by www.ao.com to try out the KOR6M5R microwave I was really happy. Their timing was impeccable as ours had died not a week earlier!

Space saver

As you can see from the photo above, we did not have space for a large model. Luckily this Daewoo model fits into the available space beautifully. The KOR6M5R is a 20 litre capacity which might seem small compared to other microwaves but it’s absolutely fine for us and we are a family of 5.

The Daewoo KOR6M5R is touch control and has an auto cook function with 5 programmes tailored to cooking certain foods at the push of a button.It has a simple to use display and I found the defrost function very handy when I forgot to get food out of the freezer for dinner this week!

Eco Friendly

I really like that this is a zero stand-by appliance. This means that after 2 minutes of the microwave not being used, it reduces the stand-by power consumption to nothing. When you are ready to use the microwave again, you simply open the door. Great for those of us who don’t like to have a house full of appliances on stand-by adding to our bills and to the planets energy consumption.

What I really like about using a microwave though is that on those hot summer days when you really don’t want to add to the temperature of the house by having the oven on, you don’t have to!

What do you like to cook in your microwave? I love this cookie dough mug cake recipe by Running With Spoons

We were sent this product in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Cool Maker KumiKreator Friendship Bracelet Maker

When I was a child (not that long ago to be honest), friendship bracelets were incredibly popular. Of course, as with all generations we assumed that this was an idea that we as a collective had come up with.

Apparently not

Friendship bracelets originated in Central America a long time ago. I like the thought of tween girls in somewhen B.C swapping their knotted bracelets and maybe drawing a selfie on their walls for posterity.

Anyway

We were offered the chance to try out the Cool Maker Kumi Kreator last week and it’s basically Bess’ new favourite thing.

Kumi (for anyone who is wondering) is short for Kumihimo which is a Japanese form of braid-making. Cords and ribbons are made by interlacing strands. Kumihimo is Japanese for “gathered threads”. You’re welcome!

What’s in the box
  • 1 Cool Maker KumiKreator
  • 88 Spools
  • 10 Clasps
  • 20 End Caps
  • 26 Clasp Stickers
  • 1 Design Booklet
  • 1 Measuring Guide
  • 1 Storage Case
  • 1 Playbook

How do you play?

The first thing you MUST do is to watch the instruction video. Honestly, I am a big fan of winging this stuff but for this toy you are going to want clear instruction and this link is the clearest. Go to www.coolmaker.com

What did we think?

The KumiKreator takes a little while to set up and just a minute to create a bracelet. Bess (12) did 99% of this herself. She found it interesting to use, she really likes seeing how things are made so to have the mechanics of the toy on display was something she was pleased about.

Bess found the spools tricky to put onto the Kumikreator and we can see why this toy is for 8+ although Moose absolutely loved watching Bess create her Kumi bracelets.

Choose to create 8 or 12-strand bracelets from the design booklet for different bracelet looks. Bess of course decided that she didn’t need the design booklet after her first couple of goes and created her own unique bracelets. I like that this toy allows children to use their imagination in this way.

Where can I get one?

Cool maker Kumikreator is available from all good toy shops and is priced at £29.99. Considering that you can make up to 10 bracelets and the refill packs (also 10 bracelets each) are £9.99 I think it’s pretty good value!

Disclaimer: this is a collaborative post. We received this toy in exchange for our honest opinion.