Restaurant Review 4 - Hoodles, Old Meldrum, Aberdeenshire.

Hoodles Playbarn and Coffee Shop

01651 873813

www.hoodles.co.uk

Okay not really a restaurant but a cafe in a playbarn.  First let me warn you - you do not want to come here if you don't have kids.  It is FULL of children running around, screaming, etc..  Great for those of us who have kids as it means we don't need to worry if ours aren't perfectly behaved as no one will notice but I certainly wouldn't come here if I wanted a peaceful lunch or coffee.  The soft play area for the kids is great.  It is £4.75 per child at peak times ie weekends so it is expensive.  A good treat once in a while if it is raining and miserable outside and you need to let them burn off energy but at that price it really has to be a rare treat.

The cafe is excellent.  Lots of lovely paninis, soups, and home-baking!  Yum.  They have buckets that you can fill with 5 items for the kids for £3.50.  The thing I like about their buckets is that you can fill them with ANY 5 items you like.  There are no constraints.  You know how some places say you can have a sandwich, a drink, a yoghurt OR fruit, and sweeties Or crisps. I find that quite annoying whereas here I can actually choose what I know the kids will eat and can have a yoghurt AND fruit if I so decide.  When we were there on Saturday we got two buckets for the two kids but if I am skint I can actually get one bucket - I'll get two juices, one sandwich, one box of raisins and one crispy cake and split it all in two.  Anyway, I appreciate the fact they are flexible about what you put in the bucket.  Items come out at  70p per item which is not too bad.  They have sandwiches, crisps, fruit, cheese, yoghurts, crackers, milk, fruit juices, chocolate covered marshmallows, crispy cakes, boxes of raisins.  Good choice.  And they always have a great selection of cakes and traybakes for the Mummies and Daddies.  I also always have a brie and redcurrant jelly panini - yum.  So for lunch for the four of us we were about £15 but it was quite an extravagant lunch with lots of cakes.

We do love it here for a wee treat. 

Cupcake Magic.

Best way to keep the wee ones entertained - get them decorating some cakes for their Mummy!

  

Pain au chocolate and Chicken.

Steve made pain au chocolate at the weekend which was lovely.  And rather impressive, I think!  

He also made his rather lovely spinach and pork paella from Moro.  He makes this quite a lot because I love it.  Here is a picture of Rufie (2) eating it up.  I don't think he ate an awful lot but he did give it a try.

One night I was really lazy and made salmon fillets with Uncle Ben's Express lemon rice and some frozen peas.  Needless to say, this was the meal that went down best with the kids - they wolfed it down!

And here is a picture of the wee one after some Innocent smoothie.  They like that - gets some goodness into them although I don't usually have much trouble getting them to eat fruit.  I do sometimes make smoothies myself but buying the ready made stuff means I don't have to get out the blender.

Yesterday for lunch I just grilled some chicken and served it with couscous salad from Jamie Oliver's first book, some cucumber and melon.  Adam ate some chicken and some couscous.  Rufus ate loads of melon and cucumber but nothing else.  One day I'll get them both eating a balanced diet - hopefully.  Any tips?

BBQ Lamb and flatbreads.

So, sometimes I get frustrated that I make nice food for all the family and the wee boys (Adam, 3, and Rufus, 2) hardly touch any of it.  But they are definitely getting better and sometimes surprise me with what they eat.  They both love to help me with the cooking or baking and we really enjoy spending time together in the kitchen.

This Saturday I decided to try something new from Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries - Lamb-filled Flatbread.

My husband, Steve, made the flatbread for me.  He used the recipe from Moro as that's the one he usually uses.  We got the Moro book as an engagement present from my friend, Pam, and we both immediately fell in love with it.  I have made very little from it, to be honest, but I love salivating over the recipes.  Steve has made a few things from it - all lovely!

Back to the lamb - I barbecued it and we ate outside even though it was pretty windy and cold.  I also served it with some marinated mushroom kebabs that I picked up from the butcher when I was getting the lamb.

Actually went down pretty well.  The flatbreads were scoffed by both kids and they both had one or two bites only of the lamb but I was glad they had tried it.  I don't think either of them ate the mushrooms.  Oh well - it wasn't a bad effort overall.  Steve and I loved the meal.