Well, it is a fact that today’s busy work schedules do not allow anyone to go for leisurely activities, let alone have a multi-course meal properly. It becomes especially tricky on the days when you have just piles of office work to do or have guests coming over for supper. No, we are not suggesting that you should have to take grocery shopping or take an early break to manage all the prep. However, with these easy things on hand and a little mindful thinking, you can conjure up a three-course meal in a jiffy, complete with an apéritif, main course, and dessert. Nope, we are not kidding! Read ... read more
The Bountiful Bean: Giving Your Morning Coffee An Easy Boost
(Image Credit) Coffee is by far one of the most popular drinks in the world. Even in places where alcohol consumption is strictly limited, coffee reigns supreme as the beverage of choice for people starting their day. Of course, this makes sense, with caffeine being the perfect stimulant to get you ready for a long day of work and play. Most people don’t enjoy the best coffee they can from home, and this is a shame. To help you out with this, this post will be exploring some of the best ways to give your morning coffee an easy boost that will make it possible to get more from ... read more
A Wine Getaway In The USA
Image Of all the ways that you can travel around the USA, one of the absolute best is to be driven by food and drink. It is arguably one of the greatest countries in the world for food and drink, and you could do much worse than take a whistle-stop tour while trying out as many kinds of food and drink as you can. There are certain things which you are likely to try out especially well, however, and one of them is wine. The USA has in California one of the most respected and largest producing wine regions in the world, and much of the wine happens to be absolutely delicious too. So let’s ... read more
Finding where to dine out in London
We're lucky enough to live quite close to London. Good train routes (that run 24 hours a day) mean that getting into the capital for dinner or a night out is really simple. What isn't so simple though is deciding where to go. London is one of the world's best places to eat and drink. But how do you know, or decide, where to go when you fancy a night out there? A few years back my then husband and I came up with a plan to have regular date nights in the capital. Each month we would have two, and we each would organise one as a surprise for the other person. There was only one rule - it ... read more
Paddington 2 Marmalade Challenge #Paddington2DVD
One of my best moments of 2017 had to be seeing Paddington 2 at the cinema. I absolutely loved that film and it wasn't only the kids that were desperate to go and see it again. I am therefore absolutely thrilled that Paddington 2 is out on DVD today (12 March 2018) and to celebrate I've been asked to take part in the Paddington 2 Marmalade Challenge. "What is that?" I hear you ask. Well, we all know that Paddington loves marmalade sandwiches - and rightly so as they are absolutely delicious - and I've been challenged to come up with my very own marmalade sandwiches design. Now, the brief ... read more
Turn Yourself Into a Wine Connoisseur
There is a notion that wine experts have been born with some special skill...a particularly sensitive nose, or an intuition that helps them set apart the exquisite wines from the cheap rubbish. Or, that they have honed their craft over years of intense instruction and training. Fortunately, for anyone wanting to start out in the world of wine appreciation, both ideas are a myth. Anyone can be a wine connoisseur if they put their mind to it, and there are a few ways that the path can be a little quicker and smoother. The first way to find out more about wine and its variants is to simply ... read more
The Rustlers Burger Hacking Challenge #RustlersHack
It's all got rather foodie here on the blog hasn't it? I can't even pretend to be some great culinary whizz in the kitchen, but all these years of eating and feeding others, plus buying a crazy number of cook books, does at least seem to have taught me something. I think I've got a pretty good understanding of what things go together and I can get quite inventive with using the contents of my fridge and cupboards to pull a meal together quickly. Being able to produce a meal quickly seems to be the key thing as my kids get older. So many evenings are spend playing mum taxi and driving ... read more
Celebrating Yorkshire Pudding Day with Toby Carvery Yorkie Wraps
I may have lived down South for a while now, but I'm a Yorkshire lass at heart and it will always remain that way. My heart is very much in Yorkshire, and my food preferences too. Therefore when Toby Carvery invited me to join them at their food innovation centre to come up with some new recipes for Yorkie wraps for Yorkshire Pudding Day I just couldn't refuse. Let's start with some basic facts. Yorkshire puddings (or "batter puddings" as my ill-informed Norfolk born other half insists on calling them) are quite simply the nicest foodstuff known to man (or woman) kind. Admittedly it's ... read more
Grown-up Stand-up Dinner – Chilli Salmon Pasta #BritanniaCookOff
They say the kitchen is the heart of the home and whilst I fully agree with that sentiment, it can be a tad tricky when you're all squashed into a tiny flat and your kitchen is absolutely minute! That's the challenge that we're faced with where we're living at the moment, but despite that, the kitchen is probably my favourite room in this flat, and actually the one where my OH and I spend a fair amount of time together. When the kids are staying with us they dominate our living room and so if we want a spot of peace and quiet, and an opportunity to talk without interruption about something, ... read more
Feeding a thousand with Wok For 1000 #WokFor1000
What do you get if you assemble over a 150 budding chefs in London's Borough Market, get top chef and School of Wok founder Jeremy Pang in charge and give all of them the motivation to feed a thousand of London's food insecure? The answer is an incredible Wok For 1000 event that saw friendships made, Asian cookery skills developed, a huge amount of food prepared, and about 1400 people fed. I was incredibly proud to be part of yesterday's Wok For 1000 event as it was an amazing opportunity to understand what is already being done to help so many people that are short of food, and what more ... read more