For months now I've been drooling over the English Cheesecake Company cheesecake slices on the dessert shelves in Waitrose. I'm a huge cheesecake fan and for years all we've had in supermarkets is the standard New York cheesecake, chocolate cheesecake, and strawberry cheesecake, sometimes with a lemon one if you're lucky.

Yellowsticker bargains for September

I spent September doing a walking challenge - 300,000 steps in the month to raise money for Tommy's and the Miscarriage Association.

One of the benefits of all this walking was finding quite a few yellowstick bargains in my local Co-Op and the much closer but smaller One Stop.

Review: Carluccio's in Colchester

In January I spotted a voucher mentioned in the Money Saving Expert news letter - buy one main course and get a second for £1 at Carluccio's. I'd recently spotted a Carluccio's tucked away in the corner of the top floor in Fenwick's in Colchester, so this seemed like the ideal time to have a discounted lunch date with my husband! 

We booked ahead and I was very glad we did as the space was quite small. We saw several people get turned away as they didn't have a reservation and all the remaining tables were booked up. Despite it being busy the service was still very good and we order drinks while we browsed the menu. Well, I should say while my husband browsed the menu - I'd already looked at it several times on Friday night and decided what I wanted XD

For a drink my husband had a very odd "Rosemary water", which I'd never seen before. It's sparkling water infused with rosemary, and came with a sprig of the herb in the glass. I had a little sniff at the bottle and smell was overwhelming, but my husband said it was very nice. 

For starters I ordered the garlic bread. This was possibly the best garlic bread I've had in years. The bread was a freshly made focaccia, with a lovely garlic butter melted on top, and then placed on a grill to give a fabulous chargrilled taste. I'd already told my husband to have half of it, as I don't like filling up on starters, but I seriously regretted saying that after finishing off my piece XD My husband had calamari, which he said was very nice and came with a little pot of sauce and a slice of lemon.

My main was a spaghetti carbonara. This was the key reason why I was so happy at getting the voucher, I'd been wanting a proper Italian carbonara for weeks. It was as good as I had hoped, although I thought there was a bit too much parsley on top. But apart from that it was lovely, the pancetta had a wonderfully strong taste and there was just the right amount of sauce to cover the spaghetti. Husband went for the Penne Giardiniera, which was large penne with courgette, chili and garlic, with crispy spinach balls on top. It genuinely wasn't something I thought he would pick as he's not a huge fan of spinach, but he said it was delicious and he was very happy with his choice.

The only problem I had was that at the end of my very large bowl of pasta I had no room for dessert! I had sacrificed half my starter to no avail. I'd already seen someone's tiramisu go by (husband thought my reaction was hilarious) and had been determined to order one myself, but there was no way I could fit a dessert in to my full tummy. 

A reverse advent calendar

After taking a break from this blog in October I'm now raring to go again! So since my Christmas shoebox post was so well received I thought I would highlight another little charity thing I've received to do this winter - a reverse advent calendar.

"A what?" I hear you ask yourselves. This amazing post from Sara Williams at Moneywise explains it all very well! Basically every day you buy one item of food for a food bank, collect it all in a box, and at the end of the 25 days of Advent you take the box to your local food bank as a donation.

Like many other people I'm planning on doing mine for the next twenty five days (starting yesterday on 4 November), as it means the food bank will have time to get the food out to people. However if you don't think you can manage to arrange it that quickly then don't panic! The food you need to get should have a long shelf life. If you decide to start it on 1 December then you can always donate the box in the first week of January. Donations tend to drop in the New Year as people tighten their financial belts after all the Christmas spending, but they're also the point when the numbers that need a hand increase. A box of supplies will be just as welcome in January as it is in December.

Using one of our old moving boxes to store things!

You might be trying to rattle your brain and think about what specifics you should give to a food bank. First of all you should Google for your local food bank, many are set up or assisted by the Trussell Trust so they're a good place to start. They'll list specific days and times when they're open for donations. Each food bank will have an "urgent needs" list, things that they are running very short on. They'll also have a list of suggested donations. They need to make up enough food to feed people for several days, and it needs to be long-life. Dry goods like teabags, pasta and tinned items, plus things like jam, long life milk (may not have a fridge for fresh milk), and a treat such as a packet of biscuits. Many food banks will also have a box of toiletries for people who may be in need of shampoo and deodorant. The phrase "period poverty" has become quite well known in recent months, so donating a pack of sanitary towels or a box of tampons can be a real help.

Now you're looking at the list on your local food bank's website and wondering how much this will all cost. It sounds really expensive, after all prices are going up everywhere. It's going to be £50 at least, right? But I did a little run around Tesco with a pen and notepad the other day and managed to get to grips with the bulk of the prices. Everything on the list below comes to a total of £31.67. BUT - you don't need to get everything on the list. I found Heinz soup on an offer of 5 tins for £3, and individual pots of porridge at 5 for £4. So that would be 10 items right there. I also picked some large sizes (the pasta sauce for example was a large jar) but you can choose smaller ones. Food banks help families, couples and individuals, so there's always someone who could need what you buy.

So here's a list of 25 things (and their cost) you can buy for a reverse advent calendar;

1. Small pack of rice - £1.00

2. Potatoes (tinned) - £0.60

3. Carrots (tinned) - £0.30

4. Long life milk - £0.55

5. Fruit squash - £1.20

6. Cereal - £1.50

7. Porridge - £0.90 for a small pot (my Tesco has a 5 for £4 offer)

8. Tea bags - £1.30

9. Coffee - £2.00

10. Jam - £0.75

11. Marmalade - 60p

12. Meat (tinned) - £2.50 (you can get tinned curry and bolognese as well as stewing beef etc)

13. Tuna (tinned) - £1.50

14. Pie (tinned) - £2.70-ish (there were quite a few types)

15. Soup - £0.95 (also has a 5 for £3 offer for Heinz soups)

16. Pasta - £1.00

17. Pasta sauce - £2.00 (big jar)

18. Tinned beans - £1.00 (three pack of Branstons from Iceland)

19. Heinz ravioli - £1.07

20. Heinz beans with sausages - £1.05

21. Pudding (tinned) - £1.70

22. Biscuit snack pack - £1.00

23. Shampoo - £1.00 (Wilko)

24. Toothpaste - £1.00

25. Towels/tampons - £2.50 (depends on the pack you buy, I think this was the larger pack of Always towels)

I should also qualify that some of the stuff is Tesco brand (jam, potatoes and carrots for example) and some is branded (teabags, porridge, biscuits), so you may find better prices in Sainsburys, Asda or Morrisons.

I already have mine started. On Saturday I popped in to Wilko for some cleaning supplies, and got a bottle of Alberto Balsam shampoo for £1, and then in Iceland I found a pack of 3 tins of Branston's baked beans for £1. So that's Saturday and Sunday sorted out. I'm trying to use multipack offers to bump up the numbers of things in my box, and buy one type of item each day. But as I said above, you can take advantage of such offers to help you reach your 25 goal if that's what works for you!

Thank you to everyone who Tweeted about the Moneywise article, I hope you all enjoy your reverse advent calendars!

Preparing for winter

Yes, I know, preparing for winter in the summer sounds a bit daft, at the very least I should probably wait until September. But we all know how quickly a month can go by, and since I've had a few days off work in July, and have another week off at the end of August, now seems like a good time to get a few things ticked off to get ready for the colder months!

Even if it doesn't snow we should get frost!

Car prep

It's not just getting the car through the MOT (mine is due in November so I have to get any problems sorted in the summer anyway), it's making sure that if you get caught out by the snow then you have things in the car that will help. Along with my wellies (which live in the boot of my car from autumn onwards) I also have a little bag with some extra thick socks, gloves, a scarf, a woolly hat, an energy bar, and a torch. Should I find that I have to abandon my car at the bottom of a hill and walk the rest of the way home, I'll be a lot more comfortable doing that walk with multiple layers and some food in my stomach!

My Dad had to walk home from the nearest town several times over the years, and every time it happened he wasn't prepared for it and had to do the walk in smart work shoes! Even if you don't drive, get your other half to prepare a little kit to go in their boot, just in case!

Food prep

I'd love to make some jam but it sounds difficult XD

I doubt we'd get snowed in to the point where we can't get any food, if only because there's a One Stop 5 minutes walk away. But I find that the winter calls for more homecooked food, in the summer I can throw together a cold Tesco quiche with a salad and some oven chips for dinner after a long day, but when you've just got through the front door in January a cold quiche isn't going to cut it.

Since we've moved in I haven't got round to doing as much batch cooking as I would like, so my plan is to top up our stocks of bolognese, and add some more chili and a lasagne or two. We went to IKEA last Saturday and restocked on meatballs, and I've already done a batch of half a packet with some tomato sauce (we had a taste test for dinner and they were lovely!) so that's safely tucked away in the bottom drawer of the freezer. I'm also going to keep an eye out for some more yellow sticker food in the supermarkets so they can be put straight in the freezer after purchase and will make a nice quick hot dinner in a pinch.

One of our wedding presents was a slow cooker, so I'd also like to do a few casseroles as well. But that may have to wait until autumn as I don't think a nice beef casserole will be a great thing to eat in the middle of August XD

Stocking up the medicine cabinet

With winter comes colds and sneezles. One of the worst feelings is to get up with a bad headache, head to the medicine cabinet, and find that there's no Neurofen left. So I've started to stock up with headache pills, Lemsip Cold and Flu capsules for me, and the Lemsip drink for my husband. I'm not a fan of the drink as it always makes me feel a bit sick, so I'm happy to take the pills instead.

I've also now signed us up to our local GP, several months after we moved to the area XD But it now means that if one of us falls ill with a chest infection or the like then at least our local surgery will have our medical records and we won't have to fill out extra paperwork to get an appointment.

Need some more blankets too!

Around the house

Because we've only been living here for four months, there's still quite a lot of things we need to get done around the house. Recently we've been focusing on things like decorating and furniture. But we know that our central heating needs some work (a lot of the radiators don't heat up properly), and the gutters at the back of the house are partly blocked. Since winter brings with it cold weather and rain, these are things we really need to get sorted out before it gets too cold, so booking some companies for quotes for the work is definitely on the table. Oh, and I also need to stock up on some nice warm blankets!

Hopefully this has given you some ideas on how to prepare for winter. What do you want to do for the season?

Review: Jack's Gelato in Cambridge

Last year I made a terrible mistake. Despite my colleague telling me how good they were, I never bought anything from “6” ice cream shop on Bene’t Street in Cambridge. Then they closed down, and winter was spent passing by an empty shop, wishing I’d got round to trying it.

Lovely simple design for the cups

So it was wonderful to walk past the same building at lunch time on Tuesday and find that a new ice cream business has taken over the space! Jack’s Gelato is well-known around Cambridge, he’s normally found serving ice cream through portable freezers around the streets of the city, as well as at festivals and fairs. Now he’s got a new shop, and it’s officially opened, complete with an actual ice cream machine at the counter so in the future you can watch it being made!

Since I was passing by I decided to have a look at the sign outside. Different flavours are on offer each day (you can see a list each day on his Twitter account), and I had to stop when my eyes caught sight of the words “Mint Choc Chip”, “Burnt Sugar and Salt”, and…”Chocolate Orange Sorbet”!

The problem I normally have with chocolate ice cream is that while it’s delicious, it generally makes me feel a bit sick about halfway through the first scoop. Great for making sure you don’t overindulge, but it generally means I have to steer clear of chocolate, otherwise I feel like I’m wasting my money. On last year’s trip to Rome I stuck firmly with hazelnut ice cream and lemon sorbet, rather than risk feeling ill while I was trying to stare at tourist attractions.

However the sound of chocolate orange sorbet was just far too tempting for me to give it a miss, so I got a small pot. The guy behind the counter (who wasn’t Jack) was very chatty and friendly, and happy to answer my questions about the new shop. I was warned that the sorbet was still very soft as it had only recently been made, but sorbet is a bit softer than ice cream anyway, and it wasn’t dreadfully hot so I knew it would last.

So delicious I could eat it all day!

Chocolate orange tends to be a bit of a marmite flavour, people either love it or hate. I’ll happily eat a Terry’s Chocolate Orange, but my other half wouldn’t (he’s the same with chocolate mint though). I think it’s because it’s very easy to get the orange side of it wrong, either it doesn’t taste of orange at all, or there’s too much and it overpowers the chocolate.

In this case though the balance was perfect. The chocolate looked dark and tasted very chocolatey, but had none of the bitterness of very dark chocolate. Likewise the orange was a lovely note within the chocolate, it was noticeable but not excessive, and because the orange was adding the extra sweetness to the sorbet it wasn’t overly sugary, so I didn’t feel sick after eating it! In fact I couldn’t eat it fast enough, I overloaded my tiny spoon a few times and felt highly disappointed when I reached the end of the pot. I'd give this six stars out of five, were I operating a star rating on this blog.

If you’ve never been to the kind of live event that Jack has been catering to before now, then you MUST get down to his new shop. Take a big spoon with you, you’re going to need it!

Review: Aromi in Cambridge

If you're in Cambridge and want pizza without having to go to a big chain (there's a Jamie's Italian, a Zizzi, a Carluccio's and a Bella Italia scattered around the city centre) then you really need to check out Aromi! They're an independent Italian cafe, split across two sites in the city centre but only 2 doors away from each other. The larger one, with a bigger serving counter, a larger seating area and takeaway ice cream at the front, is on Peas Hill next to Cambridge Art's Theatre. The smaller one, which I went in to, is on the corner of Peas Hill and Bene't Street, two doors away!

The main thing to remember about the smaller branch of Aromi's is that it's tiny! The doorway gets

Delicious margarita pizza!

very crowded very quickly, and I've never actually seen a free seat in there at lunch time, even though there's a slightly larger basement seating area as well as the more obvious ground floor one. But this doesn't matter as Aromi pizzas come as a takeaway, so you don't have to hang around waiting for table space!

I keep mentioning pizza but actually Aromi, which specialises in Sicilian food, does sandwiches, arancini (fried rice balls) and desserts including ricotta cheesecakes. They have a selection of toppings for the pizzas and fillings for the sandwiches, and also do hot drinks including proper Italian hot chocolate (the really thick kind). Everything is made fresh, if you walk past in the morning you can see them working on everything as the kitchen is wide open, with the windows facing the street.

Should you managed to find a table then your food will be brought to you. If you're buying to take away then you'll be given a raffle ticket with a number on it. Once your order is processed they'll call your number, you collect your food, and then try to squeeze back out the door!

The thing I love about Aromi is just how good the pizzas are. The dough is fresh, the tomato sauce tastes like it's from an actual tomato, and there's great lumps of mozzarella scattered across the margarita. Everything is set out under the glass-covered counter, and once you pick what you want they cook it in their wood-fired oven right then and there. Rather than a circle the pizzas are cooked as a rectangle, and the toppings go all the way to the edge. At an average price tag of £4 you may think it's a little expensive for a slice of take away pizza, but they really fill you up so you won't be able to eat a second slice (although you'll really want one!)

If I have one small complaint about Aromi, it's that the paper bags they use really don't keep your slice warm for long :( If I'm taking mine back to the office, which I occasionally do at lunch, then I always have to reheat it in the microwave.

But a microwave can't stop these being so tasty. I think I'm going to have to go back again...

Recipes

Another quick blog post as I'm still having a tidy-up around the place and tonight I'm checking my vintage books.

I'm going through another phase of wanting to try new recipes. I've got three cookery books from the library that I need to sit down and go through, and I've also been adding recipe pages to my "favourites" list (they have their own little folder).

The problem is finding the time and enthusiasm to try any of them, let alone all of them. On the one hand they do look very tasty, but on the other hand if I try them and mess them up then I feel like I've wasted both food and my money.

My other problem is that any recipe from a borrowed book has to be written out into my own recipes folder, which involves me sitting down with a pen, and on occasion I'm a bit too lazy for that ;)

Not really sure what the point of this post is, other than to make myself hungry even though I've already eaten dinner.

Also tomorrow may have to be Wordless Friday as I'm going to be busy in the evening :)

Last Day

Today is my last full day in the Netherlands as I'm heading back to England tomorrow afternoon. We were going to go for a hike, but in the end Eva wasn't feeling too well and I keep sneezing and blowing my nose (the first cold of the season), so we opted for staying in and keeping warm.

One of the films we watched this afternoon was "United", which is about the 1958 Munich plane crash which killed several members of the Manchester United squad known as "Busby's Babes". The players were all relatively young, hence their name. I actually knew very little about it, but had a read of the Wikipedia page after we finished the movie. I think the whole thing was done very well, and pays a decent tribue to both the deceased and the survivors.

We've also been entertaining the cats, who have been chasing after a pen on and off for the afternoon and at one point one of them skidded across the floor in a desperate attempt to get to the pen first.

This is either Liam or Locke, can't remember which one. They're both a mixture of crazy and sleepy. One of them ended up having a nap on my legs last night which surprised Eva as he's not really much of a lap cat.

This evening we've indulged in Star Trek: Into Darkness, and a takeaway. I went for chicken nuggets, chips and to fit in with the Dutch I had a beef croquette. The chips aren't like proper British chips, but they were delicious, and I managed to avoid the Dutch tradition of putting mayonaise on them.

Tomorrow's blog post will no doubt be very, very short unless I can think of something to write about when I'm on the Eurostar.

Have a nice evening everyone!

Monkeys & Pancakes

Last time I visited the Netherlands our one and only day out was to an animal sanctuary that had a cafe that did very tasty pancakes. We decided to visit it again on this trip, especially since last time we went there were no monkeys out in the monkey area.

As you can see from these photos, this time the monkeys were out and about! Last time we went on a Wednesday and didn't realise at the time that that was the cleaning day for the whole sanctuary, so we only saw a few goats and a pig. This time the monkeys were out, along with sheep and pigs, and a swan and ducks in the river.

My boyfriend emailed me last night to tell me he wasn't sure what he'd prefer, a photo of me being terrorised by monkeys, or a photo of me enjoying my holiday. You can't get close enough to be terrorised by the monkeys (thankfully!!) so I went with looking vaguely worried as close to the fence as you can get.

While this may not look like a tasty pancake, I can assure you it was actually very delicious. I had a cheese and bacon one, while Eva had a cheese one and then an apple one. I had learned from previous experience that bacon and cheese was plenty to fill me up, so didn't bother with a dessert pancake. I also won't need any dinner after this, just some Pringles and a bit of toast to fill in the gaps.

Have a nice evening everyone!

Walking Adventure

Today me and Eva were at a loss for things to do, so in the end we decided to go for a walk and then reward ourselves afterwards at a cafe that Eva said did very nice hot drinks.

We're a bit unlucky with the weather, it keeps alternating between sunshine and showers, so we did our best to time our walk between the rain. It didn't work completely, it rained a bit once we got to the forest where the walk started, but once the showers stopped and the sun came out we soon dried off.

I'm under instructions to tell you all that we had to edge around a cliff, and we saw lots of nature and wildlife. In reality we had a bit of a death-defying moment (alright, a moment where we could have fallen into a pond) on a very slippery bridge, edged our way around a tree with a very slippery path next to the river, saw a deer, and found a mushroom. The rest of the time were vaguely lost, in that we weren't sure where we were but Eva was fairly certain we were going in the right direction. There were very few maps around, and no signposts to point us in the right direction, unless we were on a cycle path. Cyclists are allowed to know where they're going, hikers just have to hope for the best :P

We eventually found our way back to the start and went to the cafe for some hot chocolate and something to eat. They had a mixed platter that we decided to share, with me eating the meat and Eva eating the vegetarian-friendly bits (olives, cheese, egg rolls and crackers).

We've now had dinner, got pizza as a reward for walking so much today. And tomorrow will include more walking as we have two golden retrievers to entertain!

Have a nice evening everyone!

Cookies

I spend part of every Sunday doing a bit of baking so I can have a little extra in my lunchbox. This generally consists of either uniced fairycakes (uniced because I don't really have the time or inclination to deal with icing XD), chocolate chip cookies, or cornflake cakes.

Today I've been baking chocolate chip cookies, which are a favourite of my colleagues at work so I thought I'd share the recipe so others can share them with family and friends! It's not a family recipe, it's one that my Mum got from a Mary Berry cookbook, so if it looks familiar it's probable that you've got the same book!

Cookies by Me!

6 oz (175 g) soft margerine
8 oz (225 g) caster sugar
12 oz (350 g) self raising flour
4 oz (100 g) chocolate chips
2 eggs

Pre-heat the oven to 180 celcius or gas mark 4 and prepare 3 baking trays. Depending on how much mixture you use for each cookie you can get around 12 to 18 cookies, sometimes I manage to get 20 if I've got a few small ones in there.
Measure all the ingredients into a bowl and mix thoroughly until you get a smooth biscuit dough (if you're doing this by hand then your arm will get tired halfway through).
Place large spoonfuls of the mixtures well apart on the baking trays (I do 6 per tray). Flatten them with the back of the spoon.
Bake for around 15 - 20 minutes, then remove from the baking tray and cool on a wire rack.

They are incredibly tasty, probably because of the amount of sugar! Don't even ask me to tell you the calorie count XD Also the photo above is quite old as I took it a few months ago, but I use the same recipe every time and they all turn out the same :)

Have a nice day everyone!

Croissant In A Can!!

I had to do my food shopping today, to make it a little easier on myself I ended up doing two weeks worth so I don't need to go in to Richmond again next Friday. Although this does now mean that my freezer is a bit on the full side.

As I wandered around the supermarket I spotted canned croissant dough from Jus-Rol on a fridge shelf! I've only had these twice, once when my Mum made them and then the second time back in September when I stayed in Holland with my friend Eva and she made them for me. So as you can imagine I grabbed a can off the shelf and added it to my trolley.

The basic premise is that the can contains the ready-made dough, with lines cut into it to make triangles for you. You just roll out the dough, cut out the triangles, roll them up and pop them in the oven on a baking tray to bake.

To get the dough out you just pull a tab and let the cardboard unwind. They really stuff the dough in properly as just as I got to revealing the dough the whole thing popped, revealing a big round of dough that was twice the size of the can! I made three to eat today and then rolled the other three and put them in the fridge for tomorrow.

They are very tasty, not quite as light and fluffy as proper French ones, but an acceptable substitute. You can also roll a slice of cheese up in them, as Eva did when she made them for me.

If you want something different for breakfast then I highly recommend these.

No pics this time as I was far too hungry for all that malarky.

Have a nice day everyone!

Pancake Day!

Today is Pancake Day! More traditionally known as Shrove Tuesday, the day before the start of Lent.

Pancakes were the way to use up "rich" foods, during Lent worshippers were expected to eat plainer foods. Along with giving up eggs and milk they also stopped eating certain meats and sweets, so there were plenty of things to wrap up in the pancake!

My favourite pancakes are French crepes, and galettes for the savoury option. Whenever I have a proper French crepe I always find it's so warm that the sugar has melted slightly, closer to syrup than sugar, and seriously delicious.

This evening I'm going to be making my own pancakes, although I never make them as nice as the French. I also need to remember to halve the recipe as I'll only be cooking them for myself and I've learned in the past that I cannot eat 12 large pancakes on my own, not without feeling a bit ill afterwards XD

I would put up my recipe but it's the standard one you can get off the BBC website. So instead have an adorable pancake plushie!

Pancake Kawaii Plushie by TheCraftyButtonUK

Have a lovely Pancake Day everyone!

What's For Dinner

I go through phases of trying to get a bit more organised. Sometimes these phases go well, last time I bought a large bookcase and sorted out a lot of stuff that had been sitting around cluttering up my desk for months.

Recently I decided that I needed some new notebooks to help keep bits and pieces organised. I already have one notebook entirely dedicated to Creative Classics, and another notebook for various bits of writing I think of when I'm at work. But things like to do lists and shopping lists get scribbled in a small notebook from a supermarket, and then I tear pages out to take to the shops and they invariably get lost the next time I empty my pockets so even though I have food, actually remembering my planned menu for the week goes out the window.

Meal Planner by mikiodesign

So I bought this lovely notebook! The left hand column is a list so I can write down what I'm going to cook and eat each day, and the right is my shopping list to match the menu. Because it's a notebook dedicated just to food I don't turn over random pages during the week and forget where I left my list. The paper is nice and thick so when I take it out my pocket after folding I don't throw it in the bin by accident, and the bright blue helps me finding it when other notebooks cover it on my desk.

Unfortunately it appears that they're no longer available in the shop. But mikiodesign has other notebooks, including a Day Planner notepad that is going to have to be a purchase sometime in the future! It came in a nice plastic cover with a cute thank you tag, and was despatched pretty quickly.

If you want some custom invites or a notepad to help you get organised then I would highly recommend this shop!

Have a nice day everyone!