{#MorrisonsMum - our Bank Holiday BBQ}

I was absolutely delighted to be selected as a BritMums #MorrisonsMum for the Bank Holiday Weekend.

The littlest and I headed to the supermarket on Friday afternoon whilst the eldest was at nursery to pick up our supplies for the BBQ we were hosting that evening.

I even managed to get in front of the camera for our YouTube video!



Seeing as we had a new BBQ to try out from our TK Maxx adventure in Falkirk, we kept our fingers crossed for a dry evening - and it was!! Result!

R's family were joining us, and I was keen to impress, so we went all out getting a massive spread - I totally went OTT as you'll see below!

Loads of bargains to be found in every aisle. Morrisons really have cut their prices on thousands of products... We were loving the Kettle Chips!

I enjoyed a chelsea bun (£1 for 2) before attempting the unpacking!

Making the bean salad

The menu

To nibble on whilst cooking...

Kettle Chips, 99p

Beetroot Houmous, £1

Sour cream & chive dip, 99p

Followed by:

Tomato & mozzerella salad, see below

Bean salad, see below

Green side salad, 99p salad bag with orange pepper (79p) and cucumber, tomatoes & red onion

3 for £10

Morrisons signature burgers - Scotch beef quarter pounders

Morrisons signature burgers - hot & spicy jalapeno beef quarter pounders

Chicken breasts

Morrisons signature thick prime beef sausages, 2 packs for £5

Finger rolls, 72p 

Burger buns, 72p

Flava-it barbeque marinade sachet (for the chicken), 69p

Corn on the cob, £4

Baked sweet potatoes, £2.27

Morrisons signature coleslaw, £1

Morrisons deli style potato salad, £1

Gherkins, £1

Burger relish, £1.09

Tomato ketchup, £1.75

Cheese slices, £1.55

Washed down with:

Diet coke with lime

Coke zero cherry

(£2.64 for 8 cans - great price!)

Robinsons Fruit & Barley, £1.79

For the next again morning:

Blueberry muffins, £1

Pecan plaits, £1.09

Bagels, 90p

Cream cheese, £1.85

Coffee, £3

Milk, £1.39

Fresh juice, 3 cartons for £4

For the washing up:

Fairy liquid, £1.30

Finish Quantum, £6

Scourers, 69p

The salads & condiments

Tomato & mozzarella salad:

Red onions, 69p

Vine tomatoes, £1.29

Buffalo mozzarella, £2

Fresh basil, £1.39

Belazu balsamic vinegar (from my cupboard)

This salad always reminds me of my mum, who made something along these lines frequently when I was growing up. Basically chop everything and throw it in a bowl with the beans and pour over some dressing. Easy!

Bean salad:

Cucumber, 49p

Cherry tomatoes, 99p

Red pepper, 79p

Yellow pepper, 79p

Kidney beans, 79p

Chick peas, 59p

Sweetcorn, 65p

Cannellini beans, 59p

Spring onion, 49p

Balsamic dressing, £1.50

Our new BBQ

Lumpwood charcoal, £5

Lighting gel, £3

Matches, 55p

Lighting cubes, £2

Bacofoil tin foil refil, £2.99

BBQ fork, 88p

BBQ turner, 98p

BBQ tongs, 98p

(you'll see the tools in the photo above - absolute bargain!)

GRAND TOTAL = £94.26 (of which £69.89 is food)

I realise this is rather expensive, but as you can see from above it included all the BBQ charcoal etc plus dishwasher tabs (which in themselves are extortionate!) and the food we prepared fed 4 adults and 2 children, plus there were tonnes of leftovers so I had lunch and dinner the next again day, and the day after that (it basically fed me for the whole bank holiday weekend). Plus there's still plenty salad for my lunch at work this week! I've worked out that the food was enough for 9 adult meals (if not more), making it cost approx £7.77 per person. 

The end result :-)

The burgers were lovely, and I especially enjoyed the BBQ chicken breast. I'll be making that again for sure. The flava-it barbecue marinade sachet that I used was great as it only needed 10 mins to work it's magic.

All the produce was lovely and fresh - lots of nice looking salad vegetables to choose from - as you'll be able to see from our YouTube 'advert'.

Muffins, pastries, bagels and cream cheese for breakfast

Thank you Morrisons - we had an awesome BBQ (eldest's words, not mine!).

We received £80 of Morrisons vouchers as part of this campaign. Opinions, as always, are my own.

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{M Kitchen}

The kids and I were invited along to the pop-up M Kitchen in St Enoch Square at the weekend - not sure if anyone of you spotted the high-tech truck or tried any of the meals?

{M Kitchen Roadshow at St Enoch Square}

Well, I was mighty impressed!

I took along Becky from The Olive Dragonfly and between us and the kids we demolished 12 pots!! They all were delicious.

If you haven't heard of M Kitchen, then let me fill you in... It's basically a development kitchen at Morrisons HQ and it was set up in October 2011. It's a real, working kitchen where eight M Kitchen chefs develop tasty recipes for all the meals that you see in the Morrisons aisles. Hundreds of recipes are tasted each month and can be tweaked as many as 13 times. The development recipe is transferred out for scale-up but then it comes back to the M Kitchen where the chefs make sure that it still tastes the same as their original meal. The scientist in me loves that part!

{The M Kitchen}

There are 400 lines in the M Kitchen range and I've now tried a good handful of them.

First up was the Taste of Home range and we tried the sausage and mash. I've had other sausage and mash ready meals and the quality of the sausage in this one was top notch. I'd certainly be happy giving this to my children for dinner. This meal contains two British pork sausages with mashed potato and onion gravy, for just £2.20.






























Here's the littlest enjoying the sausage and mash!

From the Taste of Italy range we sampled the Sausage Pasta Bake and it was really good too - again, you could taste that it was a good quality sausage.

The Sizzlin' BBQ Pork and Spicy Wedges from the Tex Mex meals was also excellent. Then lastly we tried a few curries from the Takeaway range. The chicken breast pieces were again good quality. Sometimes I find it can be a hit or a miss with ready meals.

My only comment would be that the meals we tried were cooked in the oven at the pop-up M Kitchen, and I'm not sure if they will be as good in the microwave, but other than that I'm amazed!

The next day I headed to my local Morrisons and picked up a selection from their Indian Takeaway range to have for dinner. The curries were thrown in the oven and about an hour later I had a beautiful meal in front of me. Just as good as a takeaway too, but probably healthier. The only negative was the naan, but I've never found a shop bought naan that tastes as good as naan from a restaurant. Portion wise the curries are supposed to serve 2, but I ate a whole one to myself. So I'm reckoning that if you've got two hungry adults, then the one pot won't be enough. There was an offer on in my local Morrisons for two Takeaway mains and two Takeaway side dishes for £6 - so we had two currys with a side of rice and naan (and we got some onion bhajis for good measure, 6 for just £1). Fatties ;-)

Please excuse the bubble wrap in the background... I'm still unpacking!!!

At the event at the weekend we were able to speak with one of the chefs from the M Kitchen. I had prepped my son with a few questions... First up is the obvious 'what's your favourite food?' and my son suggested beforehand to me that it would be pizza, and he was right! We also asked what his favourite kitchen tool was. The prediction was that it would be a fork or a spoon. I reckoned it would be a knife. But the kids were right... a spoon it was, a caviar spoon in fact that has little holes in the bottom of it making it ideal for straining food. Who knew!

It was recommended that we try the Morrisons Bistro pizza, which we did and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Becky and I were each given a goodie bag of some more meals to try and home and some vouchers for Morrisons (which I spent on the curry & pizza above!). The kids loved the Tastes of Home Fisherman's Pie (my son did find a considerable sized bone in it which I guess is to be expected, but other than that it was yum!). I had the Beef Casserole, although I'm not a fan of beer and I found the gravy to be a bit too strong with the beer flavour.

All in all I'd give the range a big thumbs up and I definitely recommend you give it a try. All the meals are very well priced and taste great. Excellent value for money. I think I'll be shopping in Morrisons more often now.

I received a goody bag with some M Kitchen meals to try at home and some gift vouchers for Morrisons in exchange for this review. Opinions, as always, are my own.