In Search of Exceedingly Good Baked Goods

Birthday Party of Awesome

2012-01-29T19:34:00.000Z

Two years ago I got snowed in on my birthday. I didn't see anyone but Ian, I had a cake that I'd made for my colleagues at work that I had to eat all by myself and it was pretty pants. So, I made a promise to myself that I'd do something to celebrate my birthday so that it felt special. Last year we had a great nacho party. This year an idea came to me whilst watching Ian coming down the stairs for work one day. He was wearing some nice rainbow striped socks and it reminded me how much I like rainbows. If we'd had a massive wedding, I would have had 14 bridesmaids, two of every colour. So, a rainbow themed party it was.

I spent ages looking for inspiration, I even put together a whole rainbow party board on pinterest. I had a lot of plans but I'm not great at actually getting as far as executing. I still think I pulled off an impressive spread but I could probably have done some more awesome rainbow stuff if I'd spent less time on the internet!

The first task I had to tackle was the rainbow jelly. It needed to set so I started this one in advance. The first two colours were hard work because we don't have blue jelly in the UK and the blackcurrant jelly was not as purple as I'd wanted. Consequently we used soft drinks and gelatine to make these layers. We wanted the jelly to be slightly more exciting than just clear layers (when I say we, I mean me - Ian just got dragged into helping) and so we split each colour in half and added milk to one half to make it more opaque. It turned out pretty good, there were two different methods of eating it within our group, some ate each layer individually, some attempted to get a spoonful with all the layers - all ate the jelly (apart from one person who doesn't like jelly who had a pretty decent stab so I'm pleased still).

The next task was to make the centrepiece cake. I was inspired by this cake, and I followed the recipe for the icing, but made the sponges with my normal basic sponge recipe (although I did leave out the egg yolks so as to get a whiter starting mix - not sure that was strictly necessary because the food colour paste I used was pretty bright so could probably have taken the yellow - guess I'll never know as I've no plans to make another one!). The icing was delicious but was quite hard work to make, mainly due to the fact that I wanted to do the pasteurising mentioned in this post so that my pregnant friend could also enjoy the cake.

Most of my friends knew what was coming with this cake, but the white icing allows you to hide the rainbow inside the cake until it's served which adds extra wow factor. I'd recommend cleaning the knife between slices to avoid getting coloured crumbs in the icing of the next slice.

The morning of the party, I was making more sweet rainbow delights, this time in the form of marshmallow rice krispie treats. These stuck to anything and everything, but eventually I saw the part in the recipe about spreading them out with a buttered spatula and everything became easier!

I wanted to make sure that not everything on the table was for the sweet tooth so I made a rice salad to balance out all the sugar. My plans were to dye a small amount of rice blue to add into the salad, but we ran out of time. It was still quite colourful though with the addition of red pepper, sweetcorn, peas and small cubes of ham.

I also made a nice tower of rainbow crudites, which allowed me to use another of my many cake stands (after wanting one for several years, I ended up with three as wedding gifts and two more this christmas - I'm not complaining, but I think Ian might be!). I was proud to get natural blue onto my tower too in the form of blue tortilla chips and I felt very pretentious serving up dip that we'd bought from a local restaurant too!

For those after the healthy option, we also had rainbow fruit kebabs, on another cake stand. We made about 10 of these, so we only needed 10 pieces of each fruit, but we weren't thinking when we went shopping and so bought masses and masses of fruit! Ooops!

I really impressed myself with the colourfulness of the table and I think this party will be well remembered for quite some time. If you want to see more rainbow party pictures, check out my set on flickr.

Winner

2012-01-24T22:19:00.004Z

I'm pleased to announce that the winner of my 100th post giveaway is Matt. A nice cupcake package will be on it's way to you shortly, to help bring out your girlie side!

The White Horse, Otterbourne

2012-01-18T12:30:00.000Z

For my birthday meal, we decided to go somewhere new. The White Horse in Otterbourne has recently reopened after a change of management and it's on the route home so it seemed ideal.

The taster menu on their website looked good, although I'm not sure they win any points for using fractions in their prices. When we arrived, the restaurant was fully booked so we took a table in the bar, which they were happy to accommodate. The menu wasn't the same as on the website so I assume they use seasonal produce and change their menu accordingly.

Ian and I both wanted the black pudding fritters, but as it was my birthday, I got them and Ian went for the goats cheese with poached pear. Of course, we were just going to share them both, so it didn't really matter. Both starters were really good, I was expecting the black pudding fritters to be more like sweetcorn fritters, but instead they were more like battered black pudding. A little greasy, but this was balanced out with a good amount of leaves and apple puree.

Ian's starter was quite similar to the starter at our wedding (which I really should blog about!) although the goats cheese were inside little balls, which sort of melted when you bit into them (that's not a bad thing, it was quite nice). The caramelised walnuts that accompanied it were good, but Ian didn't think the pears were 'peary' enough.

For mains, I went for duck confit with a white bean and chorizo cassoulet. Now, let's see if you can tell what I'm going to say just by looking at the photo.

Yes, that's right - it's a bit, erm, lacking in the colour department. The cripsy shallots on top really helped the cassoulet along, because it was quite boring - the chorizo really didn't shine like chorizo should. When we cook chorizo (for we, read Ian), it's a lot more vibrant and the flavour oozes out. This didn't seem to be the case here. It's a shame because the starters definitely made our expectations a lot higher.

Ian's main was fish and chips in an ale batter with smashed minted peas. The batter got increasingly aley as you got further through the fish, which was a bit strange. Ian tipped his chips onto his plate and although good chips (thrice cooked apparently), there just wasn't enough of them.

Overall, the meal was a little disappointing, mainly due to the inconsistency of the food between courses. The pub itself is nice and cosy, and has plenty of high backed chairs and seems like a good place for a drink after work. It was quite lively when we visited, but it was a Friday night.

Week 3 Photo Challenge

2012-01-17T22:17:00.002Z

Already I'm beginning to amass a good number of photos, and I'm getting quite excited about how many I'll have at the end! My friend pointed out that it will make me remember just how much I did this year, and although at times I find it hard to think what to photograph, I'm persevering because I know it'll be worth it. This week I did almost miss a photo though, so apologies for the randomness of Day 11 (and the blurry photo!).

Day 10 is a reminder of the vast amounts of sweets and chocolate still to eat - this will appear again this week too!

Day 10 - Sweetie Bowl

Day 11 was the day when, at 11pm, as I'm dozing off, I realise I've not taken a photo. This time, Ian is doing similar next to me so I can't convince him to go and get my camera or take a photo on my behalf. I tried taking an arty picture of my bedside table but it just looked messy. Then I spotted my first digital camera in amongst some junk in a drawer and thought it would be a good thing to document. I'm on my fourth digital camera now, one died when my sister pushed it off a kitchen work surface with a cake (she maintains it committed suicide), and the other didn't have a good enough zoom to cut it for the honeymoon. I'd still like to get better at taking photos, so hopefully this challenge will help with that too.

Day 11 - Camera blast from the past

Day 12 there are a set of photos. I'll only post the starting one here, but you can check out this set on flickr to see what happened.

Day 12 - How can you eat something that's looking at you like that?

Day 13 was my birthday so there were plenty of photos to choose from that Ian took while I opened my presents.

Day 13 - Happy Birthday to me!

Day 14 my family arrived to celebrate my birthday. When my family are visiting the week beforehand is spent frantically tidying the house. It doesn't take long for it to look like this, but it's worth it because we have fun!

Day 14

Day 15 we went out for a meal out at The Water Margin with my family and two friends. Entertaining a six year old isn't always easy, and you have to be resourceful. Sometimes, playing with your food is OK!

Day 15 - Chopstick noughts and crosses

When we got back, we realised that my friends shoes are the same size as my eldest niece. There's a twenty year age gap, and it's not that my niece has enormous feet!

Day 15 - shoe size shenanigans

Day 16's photo is an example of the worst parking ever. I was so shocked as I drove past that I managed to park my car almost as bad and had to repark (and really, this person should have reparked - it's ridiculous!)

Day 16 - Parking palava

This week should be a good one for photo opportunities so next weeks post will be worth checking back for. Also, don't forget you've got until 24th January to enter my giveaway.

100th Post!

2012-01-13T12:30:00.000Z

This is my 100th post! It's also my birthday! Celebrations all round.

So, I'd like to do a giveaway - I've never done one of these before, but it sounds like fun.

To enter, leave a comment saying what your best or worst birthday present has been, and then I'll randomly select a winner from the comments using some clever random number generator.

The prize will be a small cupcake themed parcel of goodies. I'm happy to post anywhere, so it's open to all. Make sure you leave some way to contact you when you comment.

I'll draw the winner once I'm done celebrating my birthday, which will be 24th January, 10pm UK time.

Good Luck!

Week 2 Photo Challenge

2012-01-10T22:35:00.000Z

Taking a photo a day isn't that easy. Some days, I'm just really boring! But I've managed to keep up with it, and I'm blogging again so it's all going swimmingly so far.

Ian got a new alarm clock this week, and the first time it went off, he jumped, so I guess it's working!


Day 3 - Monkey Alarm

It's been hard getting back into the routine of early bedtimes for work, and so when I managed to make it upstairs before 10pm on day 4, I thought it would make a good subject for the photo. I tried to take a picture several times with the clock on 21:59 but they all came out blurry, so unfortunately the picture doesn't really prove before 10pm, but it's close enough! (Clearly the routine isn't working, I'm writing this at 10.08pm!)


Day 4

The last day of the christmas decorations happened to coincide with an incredibly windy day here in Hampshire so I tried to document both of these things. Thankfully, the damage we sustained was only a fallen over chair, not any trees or fences.

Day 5 - Wind carnage

Day 5 - Tequila!

This bobblehead reindeer was the newest addition to our Christmas decorations this year, and possibly my favourite.

On my day zero list, I also have a goal of reading a book a month. Some months I've even managed three, but I'm trying to keep it to one so that I can use the spare time to achieve other things on my list. So, it's 10 days into January and I've already finished the book for this month, and that's because I settled down to read it with chocolate! What a perfect evening.

Day 6

Days 7 and 8, my photos are of new purchases I made. One is slightly more exciting than the other, both are purple though! I'm still working out whether the curtains are good enough, that's why there is still an old one up, but the laptop is amazing and I'm blogging on it right now!

Day 7

Day 8 - Wish I'd hoovered before taking this photo!

Day 9 was the first day where I found myself in bed having forgotten to take a photo. Thankfully, I knew what I wanted to photograph, and Ian was still up, so I asked him to do it for me. I told him that I wanted to photograph the new waitrose magazine we picked up while shopping, to show that we were back into the shopping routine after the Christmas disorder. Ian followed my brief, but decided to add his own twist and sneakily put the empty Terrys Chocolate Orange box in the picture to show that as well as returning to routine, I'd also spent the night scoffing the whole thing! We've got so much chocolate in the house right now, I'm worried this will become a common photo!


Day 9

365 Day Photo Challenge

2012-01-04T21:10:00.001Z

I've seen many bloggers attempt a 365 day photo challenge. I've always wondered if I can manage it. I made a day zero list last July, and I decided to add this to my list. I also added blog weekly, so I'm hoping that by doing the first one, it'll help me achieve the second as I've not been doing very well with the blogging! So, I'll start with my photos from the first two days of the challenge (as the other two are still on my camera - great start!) and I'll pop back weekly with a round up of the weeks photos.

For the last three years, Ian and I have exchanged lego sets on New Years day, and then spent the day building them. This year, I bought Ian a slightly larger set than normal, and so it spilled into two days. Consequently, the first two pictures are of Lego. I can assure you though, the dog shark was not part of the instructions, just Ian improvising with the left over pieces (we also had an exploding bomb dog but I didn't photograph that).


Fire Station - floor one

Dog Shark

Happy New Year - here's to a more blog-tastic 2012!

Creepy cupcakes

2011-10-31T22:12:00.001Z

As it's halloween, and I haven't baked anything special for it, I thought I'd use the occassion to show off some pictures of my hen party. Except, it wasn't a hen party actually. Ian and I have quite a lot of shared friends so we decided to have a joint hen and stag party, or a hag party.

I wanted to do cupcake decorating and decided I'd force Ian to do it too! He wasn't the only guy dragged along, and they all decided to team up and have a zombie cupcake competition. I'm not sure the cupcake lady was expecting this kind of turn of events, but she seemed to really like the finished results, and they guys all seemed to have a nice time.

Here are some of their cupcakes.

This post would have more pictures, but my internet is down, and not wanting to miss halloween for this post, I'm using the internet on my phone and it's unbearably slow.

Baking Wedding Vow

2011-10-26T17:45:00.003+01:00

Now, I didn't actually make this vow on my wedding day in front of all my guests. But I did vow it to Ian in private and I am intending not to break my vow. I vowed to bake something for him every month. That was it - there were no rules about whether he got to choose what I baked or if it had to be sweet or savoury (I imagine it will always be sweet though),

We got married on the 13th, so I reckoned I had until the next 13th to bake. I put it off, because I was too busy looking for enough clothes for a 16 night cruise. Then I realised that it was almost cruise time, and I'd not baked a thing. So, my plans for a cherry pie went out the window (I didn't have a pie dish and I had no time to pit all the cherries) so I fell back to my ultimate cookie recipe and made white chocolate chip cookies so that we wouldn't waste anything when we left the next day for our cruise because we could freeze the leftovers.

I sent Ian out for white chocolate chips. This, I have decided, is fine. My vow, afterall, was not 'I must bake something for Ian every month and not force him to run errands related to it.' Ian returned without chocolate chips, but with white chocolate buttons instead, so I spent 5 minutes just breaking the damn things in half!

I used one of my measuring cups (think it's a quarter one) to make little discs of cookie dough, baked about 8 and open froze the rest on the quick freeze shelf of my freezer. I then wrapped them in clingfilm and put them in a 'in case of emergencies' box in the freezer. The cookies were yummy as usual, but I always seem to cook them too long. I know that I'm meant to take them out when they're still uncooked looking, but I can't seem to let myself do it!

I'm afraid there is no picture of the finished article because we ate them all before I took a photo. Just imagine the ones in my other blog post, but crunchier.

Back to blogging

2011-10-18T17:25:00.002+01:00

I've been gone 7 months. I'm ashamed. I didn't mean for it to happen, but I was away for good reasons. I married a wonderful man, and pulled off an amazing wedding that had everything I wanted, done the way I wanted it, and then I relaxed for 16 blissful nights on a very large boat in the med. The prep for a wedding didn't leave much time for baking, but I didn't manage a few things for key events, and I certainly ate out. I have plenty to write about - I could write ten blog posts about the cruise food alone. But for this post, I just want to post something, to get my motivation back and so that it doesn't say 'march' on the top of my blog anymore.

Diet food... a journey!

2011-03-18T12:00:00.000Z

So February finally saw me convincing Ian to help me lose weight for the wedding. He's always semi-supportive, but loves to cook unhealthy things and I love to eat them - so hammering home how unhappy I was with myself wasn't fun, but we've been looking for healthier things since, and it's been an interesting journey. We've had some good meals, and we've had some bad - but we've generally stuck with it. So far, I'm 10lbs down. I'm really pleased with the turn around, and I'm going to let you see some of the things we've tried - and I'm also happy to take any suggested recipes for us to try.

We started off just by trying to modify some of our existing meals. First we tried putting grated carrot into our meatballs - it lacked flavour and was a bit mushy, I ate it, Ian got takeaway. We swapped the cheese in our fajitas for guacamole, but the avocados wouldn't ripen - it was still good, but there wasn't very much of it. Also, Ian doesn't understand the concept of guacamole being cooling, and added lots of chilli to it!

We then decided that we'd spend some time on Sundays going through my food magazines looking for healthy recipes so that we could learn to enjoy some new things instead of stressing over changing our existing meals.

Here's the photographic evidence from week one!

This was a smoked paprika mackerel - it was quite tasty, but I wasn't so keen on the smokiness. The saute potatoes were nice though, and added more flavour to the meal (I usually just have my new potatoes boiled - slightly healthier than Ian's version, but pretty boring). We bought the fish whole so Ian got to learn how to gut a fish and I got to take photos of the heads to scare my friend with!

This lasagne was made using ricotta instead of cheese sauce and mushrooms in place of meat. It wasn't bad but the ricotta didn't melt very nicely and so it was all gloopy. Probably wouldn't have this one again.

We used a tikka masalla curry paste to make this prawn, pea and tomato curry. The best bits were the chunks of tomatoes but there weren't many of those cos they all disintegrated. I think I'd prefer this more if we used chicken (mainly because I think the prawn flavour isn't strong enough to come through once you add the curry paste).

Ian made this chicken and mushroom stir fry. It was pretty good, but I was having a nice nap and Ian woke me up when this was ready so I wasn't really awake and the mangetout was quite squeaky and hurt my head!

This was indian spiced potatoes, but we left out the ginger and onion, and it was super garlicky. I think it would have been better in a smaller portion with something else as opposed to an entire plateful of just this.

Owl old are you?

2011-03-16T12:00:00.001Z

It was my birthday in January, and I finally decided to make the owl cupcakes that I'd been planning for a long long time. I saw them here and because of my love of owls, I couldn't resist. Unfortunately, the oreos were a disaster to work with - I had to try and get them in half cleanly to use for the eyes. It was 8am in the morning, and I'd had enough - I didn't want to be fussing over these on my birthday.

So... I made one, that looked like an owl, and I ditched the decoration on the others. I think American oreos are better made than English ones. Either that or whoever made these cupcakes had far more patience than I did!

The best part of the day was that I got to use my cupcake stand - and it really made the whole thing feel that much more special!

I also hosted a nacho party - because I love nachos, and I love spending time with friends. Last year, my birthday seemed to go by without any sort of celebration so my main aim for this year was to make sure I had some photos. So, here is one - showing off my fabulous lazy susan that I've had for about 3 years and never used!

I'm back!

2011-03-14T22:21:00.000Z

I've been quiet for a little while, no good reason really, I can only apologise and hope that you all haven't lost interest.

The longer you stay away from a blog, the harder it is to come back - you start feeling overwhelmed by all the things you've been doing that you want to blog about, and it's easier to go and do new things instead, but then you're just adding to the blog backlog and then there's guilt.

Making the first post after a while is really hard - what do you write about to welcome back your blog - do you try and put all the things you've done in chronological order so it makes sense? Or do you pick your best topic and blog about that?

I'm going for both!

Back in January, our friend PG turned 30 and we used this as an excuse to do some extreme cake construction. We'd been looking for more things to do as a group at weekends, so making a bridge out of cake seemed like a good opportunity.

We even drew out a plan for it, that's how geeky we are.

Don't worry - the avocado was for something else!

Ian and I went shopping for supplies with my mum on the Saturday, I got up nice and early to bake the cakes and then we all got together in my dining room/kitchen to construct the bridge.

We thought it best not to attempt to make a specific bridge, pulling it off well would be too difficult. We instead went for a 'cake bridge', where all bits were either cake or sweets. We had Swiss rolls for the uprights, strawberry pencils for the supports, cupcakes for the tops of the towers, melted chocolate for the road, with mini marshmallow white lines. The main part of the cake was to sit on a board, that was then supported above a larger board using cadburys mini rolls.

We added extra little details - a green bus and some cars to the road, lollipop street lights, and even little haribo people and a monkey that we pretended was king kong at the top of a cupcake tower.

The bridge was a bit wobbly, but it looked pretty epic, and our friend was speechless when he saw it, I think it was kind of a crazy thing to find waiting for you at a tea break at work!

The difference a year makes

2011-01-19T12:30:00.000Z

Last Christmas I made a cottage pie for Christmas eve, ready for when my family arrived. This time, we were spending Christmas just the two of us, but I still managed to crack out the cottage pie after boxing day when my family came for Christmas number two! Last year, my eldest niece ate the cottage pie, peas and all - this year there was a lot of effort to get her to eat it. My youngest niece was the harder of the pair to get to eat it last year but this year she happily ate it all and had seconds. It's crazy the difference a year makes!

Marzipan....er....fruits?

2011-01-18T12:30:00.000Z

Every year Ian and I put together some marzipan fruits for my marzipan loving aunt. This year, I thought it was about time my nieces had a go at it, so we coloured all the marzipan in advance, and set about showing them how to make the fruits. Some fell on the floor, but most of it ended up as fruits - I think we kept them occupied for at least 20 minutes before they decided they wanted to be more creative and do their own thing. You'll notice in amongst the fruit, there is a face, a penguin, a couple of lollipops, a frog...

...and my sisters effort, a caterpillar.

Christmas Pizza

2011-01-15T12:30:00.000Z

In the run up to Christmas, you can end up having the same turkey dinner over and over again and by the time it gets to the big day, you're fed up. Enter the Christmas pizza, the ingenious idea from our Basingstoke friends, DL and PG. Our friends moved into their new house quite possibly years ago, and this was finally our invite round to their house. I must say, it was a lovely house, and a great evening, made superb by the pizza.

They let me take pictures of each stage, and I even helped make one - that's how wonderful I am!

You can make your own base, but the packet mixes are pretty good, and a good time saver. DL and PG roll the edge, I assume that's important!

The tomato sauce of a normal pizza gets ditched in favour of the much better marscapone sauce (add a bit of milk to make it spreadable). DL didn't see me go to take this photo, so just ignore that bit of turkey there! (It's like a sneak preview)

Next add sliced turkey - if you're eating with PG, you need to be generous with the meat - I got told off for leaving gaps.

The other toppings are paxo stuffing, a pig in blanket, and some mozarella cheese. Doesn't it look gorgeous? You'll notice there's only stuffing on one half - that's because it's sage and onion stuffing and Ian is fussy remember!

And here it is all cooked and ready to eat - we ate lots, and it was amazing - I think this might have to happen every year!

Dinner with Friends

2011-01-14T12:30:00.002Z

Before Christmas we had some friends over for dinner. It was mid week, so we wanted to keep the meal simple as we'd be cooking straight after getting in from work. I was going to make my sweetcorn fritter batter up while Ian started on the cherry coke duck, and then he'd make that along with deep fried mozarella, while I chatted to our friends. Unfortunately, when shopping the day before, Ian neglected to mention that he'd need redcurrant jelly and so I had to dash to tescos to get some, while he took over all the cooking. All I managed to do to help in the end was line up the plates with salad ready to have the starters laid on top. And I think it makes for quite a cute picture.

I usually make the fritters smallish, but I clearly didn't tell Ian this, because he made one mahoosive fritter per person! Check out the size of them!

The difference in the mozarella breading is because Ian wanted to experiment with adding paprika to the flour. We couldn't really tell the difference, but it didn't make them bad - I couldn't tell you which was better.

You may wish to pop back to the previous cherry coke duck picture first, before looking at the next picture, see if you can play spot the difference. Ian decided to cook the cherry coke down slightly more this time, so that it turned pretty much to toffee! He said he really enjoyed it, but I think it totally overpowered the duck, and I was really disappointed. I told him off for altering something I'd specifically chosen to share with friends because it was so good, and making stuff just for his own taste. He's good at that.- naughty Ian!

For dessert, we cheated and had lemon cheesecakes from Fru. Very very yummy and much easier than attempting our own dessert.

Sticky Pork

2011-01-13T12:30:00.000Z

The problem with me posting about the yummy stuff Ian cooks me, is that I generally don't have a recipe for what he's cooked, sometimes because he hasn't told me, but generally because he makes it up as he goes!

But this time, he cooked from one of my good food magazines, so I can actually link to the recipe. He skipped the couscous part (he's not a fan), and left out the mustard. Actually, looking at the recipe, I'm pretty sure we didn't buy any orange juice, and I remember him telling me that he added redcurrant jelly or cranberry sauce, so I guess the recipe isn't much help! I know he cut down on the honey because I'm not a big fan of the taste of honey.

The end result was de-lish! You might also have noticed that we have a bit of a thing for mangetout cooked to death in butter. It's really good, but I have a feeling we might have to scrap it in the New Year diets - boooo!

Cooking Wednesdays - The Last of 2010

2011-01-12T12:30:00.001Z

My last cooking wednesday happened in November - after that, all routine disappeared it seems. My plan was to cook toad in the hole.

And here it is!

What? It doesn't look like toad in the hole? Well, that's because we couldn't be bothered! Instead, we got out Ian's new toaster, and christened it!

Here it is on it's first heating (bread free to get rid of the funny smell).

And afterwards, with our toast. It's really cool having my own knob, set to how I like it, and knowing that it will still be on the same setting when I get back.

Cooking Wednesdays - Damn This Morning!

2011-01-11T12:30:00.000Z

I love daytime telly, especially This Morning, but obviously being at work all day doesn't allow me to watch it. But, they recently decided to do some weekend programmes, with highlights from the week and a few extra bits too, so I caught one of these back in November when Gina D'Acampo was making a pasta bake. I decided it looked good, so set about making it that week for my cooking wednesdays. It was epically huge, I probably should have halved the recipe, but instead ended up with tonnes of pasta. I quite liked it, although it was definitely the wrong ratio with way more pasta than the meat could cope with. My mum ate it, and I ate it, but Ian just picked at it, and then refused to eat anymore than the mozarella cheesy bit. This opened a big can of worms about how he never eats the food I cook, and he told me he didn't even like pasta. I did wonder what he thought was in a pasta bake and why he didn't stop me from making it, but I was more concerned by him telling me he doesn't like chilli - the dish I make quite a lot! So fussy!

So, because of Ian not liking/eating it, this is being labelled a disaster, even though I'd say it was perfectly edible, and not that bad really.

Cherry Coke Duck

2011-01-10T12:30:00.004Z

I don't like coke. I don't like cherry flavouring (I love cherries). I do like duck. But I was a little worried about Ian's choice of meal back in December when he told me about it.

But, because I love him (and because he doesn't listen to me anyhow), he made it, and it was........ YUMMY!

It was really good, it didn't taste horrible like coke at all and the duck was nice and tender and it even looks good!

Work Cake Bake Off

2011-01-09T12:30:00.000Z

Back in November was the work cake bake off again. You might remember me saying last time here that I wasn't going to take part again - but I solved the organisation problem this year, by being on the organising team! It was hard work, but we raised over £300 for charity, and managed to announce the winner the same day.

I like to try a new recipe each time, so this year I went for a simple apple traybake (traybakes are easy to cut, and feed more people - more people = more votes!) and a white chocolate spotty traybake.

The apple cake didn't seem to have the correct ratio of apple to batter - I struggled to cover the apples, but it turned out alright. I think it would be better hot with ice cream though.

The white chocolate spotty cake used yogurt in the frosting, and that made it less chocolatey, more yogurty but as a whole cake, it worked quite nicely. It won me third place which is good! (Please don't look too carefully at the OCD ordering of the smarties).

Mint Chocolate Souffles - at last!

2011-01-08T12:30:00.002Z

A long long time ago (no, this isn't the start of a fairy tale), I promised Ian I would make him a souffle. I don't remember when, I don't remember why. I do remember never doing it!

So back in October - yes, I know that was pretty much three months ago - I randomly started about making some. I found a recipe online here but Ian wanted a mint chocolate souffle, so I used some minty chocolate to make it.

It was surprisingly easy to make - although Ian's one had a big hole in it (so was mainly air - oops, good job I made more than two!)

But they look good don't they!

Kitchen Real Estate

2010-11-07T18:10:00.000Z

So... I'm back to thinking about decluttering, and in the kitchen once more. I'm going to throw this question out to all of you, see what your opinion is - what is important enough to take up space on your kitchen worktop?

We have far too much on our worktops - although less now as I've just squirreled a whole load of appliances in a new cupboard, and I'm possibly in danger of having nothing on the surfaces at all. I'd like to strike the happy medium of minimal clutter, but having things close to hand at the same time. I guess I've answered my own question really - keep things I use (Ian uses) at hand, and ditch everything else. What are your essential items in the kitchen?

Cooking Wednesdays - Catch up

2010-11-03T12:15:00.000Z

Although I've not been blogging about the food I've been cooking for Ian, I have been cooking it (well, most weeks!). Back at the start of September I attempted Moroccan chicken, a recipe found in my good food magazine. This was a successful meal, the chicken was nice and flavoursome, juicy, and sweet. The only thing I think this meal was lacking was a bit of colour.

The week after that was the inedible curry mentioned in my seven days of food post. That was far less successful, but I have learnt never to stir rice because of it (and it wasn't even me that did it, Ian was the naughty rice stirrer).

The following week we were back to success. I made pork steaks with pear and a creamy cider sauce. It was to die for - not the most healthy but a yummy treat for sure! We'll definitely be repeating this recipe, but maybe only for special occasions. I also managed to include some green on the plate this time, so I felt better about it.

For Ian's birthday week, I agreed that I wouldn't do a whole week of meals like I did last year, I'd just do one meal on his birthday, and then one at the weekend. This was good for me because I didn't have to cook as much, and good for Ian because he wouldn't have to eat food I'd cooked! So, for his birthday meal, I went for a simple recipe, lamb with feta, tomatoes and rosemary. Unfortunately, my feta didn't crumble, so I had to slice it, and the steaks weren't very flat, so the topping wouldn't stay put and kept falling off. Despite this, it wasn't too bad, although it wasn't a very glamorous birthday meal.

For Ian's weekend meal, I pulled out a tried and tested recipe that we stole from The Dog and Crook's menu, steak with sweet chilli prawn sauce. I made some bacon and goats cheese rostis to start, which were nice, but the goats cheese flavour got a little lost (as did the corner of the flash on the camera it seems!).

Because the rostis were quite filling, we skipped the chips with the steak, and instead just had all the steaky accompaniments - it was delicious.

And even though they were being cooked in hot butter, the mushrooms remained happy!

Halloween Birthday

2010-11-01T12:15:00.000Z

My niece was born on 29th October, so her birthday always seems to clash with halloween celebrations. This year she decided to embrace the closeness, and asked for a spider cake. She was quite specific, a blue cake, with a black spider, so my mum and I set about making a sponge, and then covering it in blue butter icing. Blue butter icing isn't an easy task, because the butter generally starts out yellowy, so the end result has a greenish tint to it. We started with lurpak though, a pretty light, almost white butter, and this worked well.

We found some glittery writing icing in Sainsburys which worked really well to make a glistening web on the top of the cake. We made a body out of black icing for the spider, and then used mikado (known as pocky in Japan) for the legs, adding some more icing to the joints of the leg for stability and to cover up the joins.

My sister had requested two cakes, one for the family get together, and one for my nieces friends party, but we were a hand down (my mum just had a carpal tunnel op) and it seemed like too much work in too short a space of time for me. So I suggested making small cupcakes to decorate the cake board, like the ones I did for halloween last year, and then we could eat those for the first party, leaving the main cake intact for the second party. This worked pretty well, and considering we were going out for dinner for the main party anyway, noone really wanted a cupcake, so there were still some left to decorate the side of the cake on the second day too!

I only differed in opinion from my mum once this time, she wanted to give the spider little boots, but I thought it looked better without (Ian agreed so I got my way!).

Best Before? Better After!

2010-10-31T20:10:00.000Z

The next thing I tackled on my tidying spree was the kitchen cupboard. In my last post I wondered where I'd house the crisps recently evicted from the board game cupboard (yes, I know, clearly not where crisps should live!). My friends said they keep all of their food in the kitchen (they are very smart people) so I figured I'd try and find room in the cupboard for my crisps to live.

Annoyingly I didn't take a picture of the cupboard before going tidying crazy, but it was about as full as this one here if not worse. There were quite a few things in there that I'd kept for the occasions when I cook for myself if Ian's out - but those occasions NEVER happen, we eat together every night (or I eat out and he gets take away), so I figured it was time to throw them all out. We found stuff in the cupboard with best before dates in the year 2007! Why on earth did we move all of this stuff from our flat into the house?!

Here is the new cupboard, all ready to welcome the crisps (which are non-existent now because they were also past their best before dates!).

If it's broke... throw it away!!

2010-10-20T18:04:00.000+01:00

The book talks a lot about broken things, and how, if after a month or two, you've not fixed it, chuck it. It got me thinking about broken things round our house. There's the camera my sister murdered about a year ago, Ian's laptop where the fans are bust, the phones (yes, multiple) with the broken screens, all waiting to be fixed.

Then there's the non-fixable things. We got new plates when we moved and put the old, chipped ones in a cupboard for emergencies. We have 8 good plates, so I brought up the topic with Ian about chucking the old ones. He mentioned Christmas and pancake day when we have lots of people over, how would we cope with just 8 plates?! I thought to myself though, which is worse, no plate or an old chipped plate? And why do I have to waste a whole shelf in my cupboard for something I may only need two times a year?

So, at about 10pm, whilst in bed on my iPod, I reserved another plate set from Argos to match our good plates. Now we have enough plates for emergencies, and they can live in the same cupboard as the good plates! Problem solved....although, where shall I put my crisps now?!

Yay - new plates!

Clutter Control

2010-10-19T18:46:00.000+01:00

Well, my friend is back from America, and, being the good friend I am, I've suggested staying at home to get over the jet lag instead of coming over to inspect my tidying! She probably knew I'd never get it done in time but I think she appreciates that I've made an effort at least and there is improvement. To help increase the level improvement, she bought me back this book - 10 minute Clutter Control Room by Room.

I'm still reading the introductory chapters about what my clutter says about me, and general tips to decluttering, but I'm then going to attempt using it on a room to see if it works. Most of it makes sense to me, and there's some good ideas on how to make tidying a game (although as Ian is upstairs in bed ill, I think I'll let him off having to play). But some things I just don't get (and maybe this is where my clutter problem comes from!) How can I throw away all my letters? I love receiving mail and so I keep it all - sometimes to remind me to reply, but mainly just because - is that wrong? If someone takes the time to write to me - who am I to throw that out? Obviously, I'm not talking about typed letters here - maybe that's what this tip in the book is referring to - I understand that I can throw those away, and I do. What do you think?

I decided to walk through the house and find something to chuck - the book says find 10 things, but it's the first night so I figured baby steps were acceptable. I found a whole bag of word fridge magnets that I acquired from my student days. They've been on the top of my fridge for a while now - mainly because I think I prefer the uncluttered look of the fridge door this way, and I'm past writing silly things with them too. And yet they've still lived for 17 months on top of the fridge! Why?! So... off to the charity shop they go.

While I was removing them from the top of the fridge, I wondered about the rest of the stuff on the top of the fridge too - and I decided it annoyed me, but I'm at a loss as to what to do with it. On top of the fridge is kitchen roll, tissues and toilet roll. Where do you keep these things in your homes? (I should point out the fridge is next to the bathroom, so it's not all that weird having toilet roll there). It just looks messy - I'm happy with the convenience of it, and the proximity to the desired end points of each item, but how can I make it look nicer?

I suppose just the fact that I'm wondering these things is a good sign! Right - back to reading my book I go - I promise I'll get back to food soon!

Tidying Fun

2010-10-18T21:48:00.000+01:00

Ha - fun?! And tidying? Never!

I don't like tidying, but I'm fed up of living in a cluttered home. I don't want to get rid of anything (I love my stuff), but I'd like it to all have homes.

So, 3 new cupboards built, one bookcase, over 3500 photos sorted into albums, about 5 bags of stuff to take to the charity shop (OK, there is some stuff I don't need) and I'm slightly closer to utopia. But not quite there yet. I've still got piles of paperwork to home, a whole bunch of crafty things to box up nice and neatly, about 3500 more photos to sort, and a small backlog of washing to get through and put away. There's also a massive pile of CD's in the study to go through, kitchen gadgets to find homes for, and all the hoovering and dusting still to do.

We have actually had some fun along the way - yesterday we put some of the spare duvets into vacuum bags to store in the monks bench in the bedroom. It was pretty fun to watch the bags slowly shrinking, and we decided that one of our cuddly toys might enjoy the experience so we put him in and suffocated him!

Don't worry, we let him back out shortly after and he's perfectly fine, chilling upstairs with his friends.

See - tidying can be fun!

Too Busy To Blog

2010-10-06T20:34:00.000+01:00

When we moved back in May 2009, we had a lot of stuff. Seriously, tonnes. Some of this stuff is still in boxes in the back room of our house. The rest either has a home, or is cluttering up the surfaces and floors of all the other rooms in the house.

This is some of the stuff all packed ready to go

My dining room after we moved in

My friend has gone on an American road trip for three weeks, and I challenged myself to sort out all this clutter and mess while she was gone. She's been gone a week and a half and I'm starting to panic. It started out well, I purchased some new flat pack storage to help give some of the clutter proper homes. Ian made the bookcase, and I decided that I'd store my photo albums on it. This opened a big can of worms, because I had a large box of photos waiting to go into said albums sat around, and so, instead of just putting the albums in their new home, I spent 4 days sorting photos. I'm yet to complete this photo sorting task, but I have 11 full albums for my bookcase so that's progress at least!

I've still got so much to do so I'll not really be blogging until it's done. To be honest, if she gets back and it's not done, I'm pretty sure she wont shout at me (actually, she might!) But I'll definitely shout at myself. If I had a tidy house, think of all the time I'd have to do things I want to do. Like, just sit reading my magazine without noticing the clutter and feeling guilty. And having people round at short notice without getting stressed out.

Christmas Cake Bake Off

2010-09-24T13:00:00.002+01:00

Last Christmas they had another cake bake off at work (actually, I don't think I've written about the first, I made my lemon drizzle and won). I wanted to make a carrot cake (for the reindeer as it was a christmassy theme) so I found a more suitable recipe than the last one with cinnamon in and everything. My friend at work who loves carrot cake told me it was really good, so I'm pleased that I found a good recipe at last. I know it was definitely a carrot cake, because I didn't like it!

I also made a golden syrup cake with icing sugar in star shapes on top. This cake I did like, although I got annoyed by the number of stars I smudged when trying to take the paper off.

Neither cake won, I think I placed 4th and 7th but I don't know which was which. This cake bake off wasn't very well organised, so I'm not sure if I'll take part again, I do really enjoy it, but it took over a month to get the results back which just seemed excessive.

Seven Days of Food

2010-09-20T21:30:00.002+01:00

I signed up to a swapbot swap, where you have to take photos of your food for seven days and then send to your partners. Now, I took some interesting photos so I thought it would be good to write about it here instead so I could share it with all of you. I kept forgetting to take photos so I'm cutting it very close to the deadline (today!).

So, my week of food started last Tuesday. I'd bought some goats cheese with garlic from the Romsey Show so we thought we'd make pitta bread pizzas with it, but got back Monday night from our weekly shop and realised we'd neglected to pick up any pittas. So we improvised and used tortillas. I think I actually liked it more because it was crispier.

We had it with salad - served in my wonderful salad bowl that is very hard to tell if it's clean or not.

Here's a shot of both together on one plate. (On the pizza is goats cheese, onion marmalade and mushrooms - Ian had the same but without the onion).

Wednesday should have been my night to cook, but we instead went to a local pub with some friends from work. I had the twice cooked belly pork and it was good! Full review here.

On Thursday, Ian made chicken enchiladas while I went off shopping at hobbycraft for some wedding invite things (but they didn't have what we wanted). They were really good, and we used the leftover tortillas from Tuesday which makes me happier as I don't like waste.

I also had some cheesecake on Thursday (although I made it Tuesday night but totally neglected to take it into work on Wednesday morning). It was a baked white chocolate one, and went down a treat with my colleagues.

Friday night was chilli from the freezer. I tend to try and make extra portions so we can just microwave something one night a week, and we even saved on the washing up by eating it straight out of the tub.

On Saturday, we went and got some pork shoulder from the local butchers and had a roast dinner. Ian stewed some apples to go with it, but possibly added too much sugar so we ended up with more toffee apple pieces than apple sauce. It was still good though. I think this meal is lacking in green. The potatoes were very tasty (but probably far from healthy).

Sunday was my turn to cook (to replace Wednesday when we ate out). I was down to make a lamb tikka masala. Ian made the rice. I think we both did something wrong because it wasn't very good. Here it is in all it's glory.

And here is what we ended up eating having decided that the curry wasn't edible. Yay for take away.

Lastly, today's meal. We shop every Monday, so we always try to buy something we can just eat quickly when we get home without cooking. Sometimes we get a waitrose cooked chicken. Today we had prawns with bread - not very exciting, but it's quick. Apologies for the terrible photo, the prawns seemed to keep catching the light on my flash.

I really enjoyed seeing what everyone else had to eat too, and it really made me think more about adding other colours to my food, and working out how to plate up to maximise prettiness.

The Dog and Crook, Braishfield

2010-09-20T21:18:00.000+01:00

Now, the plan was to go to Gourmet Burger Night at the Wheatsheaf - but this was recently taken over and no longer does gourmet burgers. So, instead, twelve of us ended up at the Dog and Crook. We waited quite some time for our food to arrive, but I think that may have been because we were such a large group on a week night.

I ordered the twice cooked belly pork, Ian opted for the rump and rib combo. My belly pork was tasty, the crackling was a little dry in places, but otherwise good. The mash was creamy and there was a decent amount of veg with it. Ian's rump seemed quite small and overcooked, and I think he's been a little spoilt with his weekly ribs at The Dolphin because there wasn't all that many in this meal, but it tasty, although apparently a little tough. The chips were quite nice. It came with home made coleslaw which neither of us tried.

We were tempted by the desserts, both opting for the chocolate pudding (described as a sponge, with a white chocolate middle and chocolate pouring sauce). The white chocolate centre was tiny and not very central so was pretty disappointing.

Halloween Muffins

2010-09-20T13:00:00.000+01:00

I went to a halloween party, and I did not have time to bake anything. So, I bought some mini muffins, and some chocolate, and decorated them instead. It was fun, although I almost missed my train and I had to leave the mess for Ian to clear up (ah, what a shame!). They went down well at the party, but I think next time I'll make the muffins myself too.

Got cream? Make butter!

2010-09-17T13:00:00.003+01:00

I read Amy's blog post about making your own butter, and I couldn't resist the urge to try it too. I didn't take pictures of the process so if you want more than just a picture of the end results, scoot on over to Amy's post for more detail. As she says, it was incredibly easy. I added a little salt to the end result and I was so happy to eat toast for the next three days - terrible for my waistline but it made me smile non stop!

Not a Carrot Cake!

2010-09-14T13:00:00.001+01:00

I here a lot of people talk about how they like carrot cake all the time, so I thought I'd try and add it to my repertoire. Now, I don't like carrot cake, so this is clearly proof of how much I love my friends. I got out my trusty Mary Berry book, found the carrot cake recipe, and set to work. This has carrot, banana and walnut in it. It's got a yummy cream cheese frosting too (with chopped walnuts in it).

The only thing is.... my friend tells me it's not a carrot cake. Which is a shame because I actually really liked this cake! Apparently carrot cakes should have cinnamon in them. I just followed the recipe, so I blame Mary Berry (although, I also thank her for a lovely recipe at the same time). The cake went, and all agreed it was good, but that it was not a carrot cake. So my search for a carrot cake recipe continues.

Jolokia, Hockley Heath

2010-09-11T13:00:00.002+01:00

Over the bank holiday weekend, Ian and I went to stay with his parents up in Solihull. Ian lives in quite a small village but it has a nice indian restaurant less than a minutes walk away. We've been before but I've neglected to write about it so I'm reviewing it now.

My favourite part is all the starters, so Ian and I decided to order two starters each and just share a main. So we ordered the four starters all to come out at once - I went for prawn puree and spice aubergine (aubergine stuffed with spicy minced lamb), Ian opted for the Malai Tikka (chicken spiced with ginger and garlic and sprinkled with cheese) and the Mango Tikka (chicken in a spicy mango sauce).

The staff at the restaurant are very friendly and have a good sense of humour. They bought out the plates of food and put them in the middle of our table (they weren't to know that we were having two complete starters each instead of half of all four). They then returned with the following plates. Certainly memorable!

My prawn puree looked so good, all stacked up (I've had this in other indian restaurants and it's never looked this pretty before), and tasted great too. The aubergine was yummy and Ian's two types of tikka were good too, although one was scarily green which we weren't expecting!

For the main we went for the Shahi Bedami curry (chicken in a cream and tomato based curry with ground cashew nuts). It was a bit too gloopy for me, but pleasant - I didn't have too much because the two starters were probably enough for me so Ian finished it off and I was very pleased that we didn't waste anything like we normally do.

We rarely order dessert in indian restaurants as they're generally just frozen things as opposed to homemade things, so we stopped off at the shop next door and grabbed some ice creams.

Ian's really lucky to have such a lovely restaurant so close to his parents house. (If you're in the area, definitely go here and not to the chip shop - that was rubbish!)

Ian's Birthday Dinner 2009

2010-09-10T13:00:00.000+01:00

I love my Ian. Lots. So for some reason, I think it's a good idea to try and poison him on his birthday. I actually attempted to cook for a whole week as part of his birthday, but I only have photographic evidence of one day. I attempted a goats cheese pannacotta, something I'd eaten when on holiday in Oxford with my mum. I chose far too mild a goats cheese so it lost the real flavour which was a shame, but it set well (too well, it refused to come out of it's dish). There's thankfully no photo of this, cos it looked pretty boring really.

One of the successful dishes was halloumi and sweetcorn fritters. They were yummy, but we ate far too many of them to count as a starter!

One of the mains I tried was lamb wellingtons - I put small lamb steaks and some redcurrant jelly into puff pastry and cooked - they were good, although the pastry went a little soggy in places.

I can't remember what else I cooked that week, I'm pretty sure he got steak (which always goes down well) and probably a baked camembert (my quick easy 'safe' starter). He's still alive, so I couldn't a have done that badly!

Just as I was about to post this, I found another photo - now, if I'm honest, I'm not entirely sure what it is, but are those puff pastry stars cute (I think Ian cooked this, as it's slow cooked ox cheek and I don't know how to make that - but I definitely made the cute stars with the leftover pastry, probably from the lamb parcels).

Tasty Lamb Shank

2010-09-07T13:00:00.000+01:00

Not much of a story behind this one, it was just a delicious dinner. Lamb shank, in the slow cooker, with a nice minty redcurranty gravy, mash and yummy cabbage and peas.

Waffles

2010-09-03T13:00:00.000+01:00

Quite a few birthdays ago, I bought Ian a waffle maker. We decided to invite my friend round for waffles (share the waffle love). We'd also utilised the ice cream maker that my friend got us for a housewarming gift so we had strawberry and vanilla ice cream to go on our waffles. The waffle maker makes funny flower shaped waffles that you can pull apart to get 6 heart shaped waffles. Their quite thin waffles, but yummy.

As with the pancakes (which actually happened after this, just in case you're wondering), we had plenty of toppings. For future reference, black treacle does not make a good topping.

Pineapple Upside Cake

2010-08-30T13:00:00.001+01:00

I made this cake about a year ago - it might be time to revisit it. I used tinned pineapple in juice, I plan to try tinned in syrup and fresh pineapple to see what the best option is. For reference, this one tasted good!

Cooking Wednesdays

2010-08-29T13:00:00.001+01:00

What did I cook this week? Well...good question.

I cheated slightly with a premade curry paste but I ignored all instructions on how to use it so I think it's OK. The curry paste was a massaman lamb one. I boiled both new and sweet potato for 14 and 7 minutes respectively. I then fried the lamb, added the paste once the meat had some colour, added a small tin of coconut cream and then mixed in the potatoes and a handful of cashews. I also added some water, to make the sauce go further, but then I was worried it was too watery so added some leftover creme fraiche from the pea dip towards the end of the cooking.

The food turned out really good, despite having to wait for our late arriving builder to leave (he seemed oblivious to the fact we were about to have dinner even though I kept clattering plates as loud as I could!)

Pea Dip!

2010-08-28T13:00:00.000+01:00

Sainsburys do a great pea, mint and yoghurt dip. I had it once at a party and then spent ages trying to find it in my local store. Turns out that it only seems to appear in the larger stores which means I don't get it very often (which is probably good for my waistline!)

On Tuesday, Ian made Cajun chicken fajitas and to go with the spice, he made a cooling pea and mint dip. It was very easy to make and very yummy, and it had half fat creme fraiche and no mayo and therefore was probably much healthier than the sainsburys version. There was plenty of dip leftover to eat with crisps for a snack so I was very pleased. Yay for Ian!

The Fishers Pond, Eastleigh

2010-08-27T13:00:00.000+01:00

Now, this isn't an overly fair review, because we ate here almost a year ago, but whilst going through my photos, I found one I'd like to share, but had to rack my brains to work out where it was from. I remember that we had the tasting platter to start - I remember that it had pigs in blankets, but I'm unsure if the rest of the current tasting platter contents were included. I have no recollection of the mains, but, here are the desserts we had.

Ian had profiteroles, but not the normal kind, oh no, these were GIANT profiteroles.

I had the lemon and blueberry jelly.

I think we'll need to revisit this place for another review just to be fair!

Not made by me!

2010-08-23T13:00:00.001+01:00

Over Easter, my mum looked after my nieces so my sister could go to something or other (I forget what). They had a fun afternoon decorating cakes. My mum used the throwaway icing bags that we'd bought from Lakeland quite a few years ago, so they had several different colours to play with. I thought the results were pretty enough to share with you all.

And if you look carefully at the next picture, you'll notice my tradition of always having one cake with a double case as the lucky one seems to have been carried on (not sure if this was intentional though!)

PS. My mum has just informed me that my nieces made the cakes too and even washed up!

Barbie Cake

2010-08-22T13:00:00.001+01:00

Last weekend was my youngest nieces 5th birthday. It's scary how quickly they grow up. My sister never makes the cake, my mum still always does it. Since my first niece was born, I've always helped (unless the cake calls for marzipan, that's Ian's department!)

This years cake was one of those fun stick-a-barbie-in-it cakes. I like these because I get to rip the legs off the barbie! It's always hard work trying to get the dress to look right, and covering the cake with the icing without it ripping and then working out a way to cover the joins. This year, barbie got a nice flowery trim to her dress.

My sister wanted to use the barbie cake for both the family party, and the school/other friend party so we made a second cake that we decorated plainly for us to eat. I ended up spending about an hour putting the hearts in a pattern on the icing my mum piped. To start with, I only did it on the top two circles.

My mum suggested adding it to the bottom circle and annoyingly I agreed with her. I don't ever want to see one of those hearts again! But I think you'll agree it does look better with the hearts on the bottom too.

Cooking Wednesdays

2010-08-21T21:06:00.000+01:00

In my house, Ian is the chef. He's very good too. A while back I made the decision to do more of the cooking. One reason was obviously to give Ian a break. The main reason though is that I eventually want to be a stay at home mum, and I wanted to make sure I'd be able to cook while Ian's out at work.

Since I started cooking (my night is Wednesdays), I've cheated really and cooked the same meals over and over. This wasn't what I wanted to achieve, and Ian kindly pointed that out last week.

So, from now on, I'll be expanding my repertoire and cooking something new. My first try was a recipe I found on Mimi's food blog for roasted prawns and tomatoes. It was pretty simple to make, and was quite nice (I did go a bit easy on the lemon zest as I'm not really a big fan of lemon zest in my dinner - great in cakes though!).

Ian seemed to like it, although he said he'd have done the tomatoes as they were in this recipe, but then would have fried the prawns in garlic butter to give them more of a kick.

Baking disaster - scones

2010-08-20T13:00:00.000+01:00

In March I decided to make scones - I'm not sure exactly why. I was clearly in a 'let's make scones and not think' mood because I followed the recipe and decided to ignore my common sense and poor the mix onto the side to knead as the recipe suggested. If I was smarter, I would have gone 'hang on a minute, this is far too runny, maybe I'll add more flour before doing that' but I wasn't and I ended up with a work surface covered in scone batter (and a Carrie covered in it too!). I rescued it as best I could, sticking what I could back in the bowl and adding more flour. I waited until it was a better consistency then tried again. I didn't have a round cookie cutter, so I used a bell shaped one from my christmas set. I'm not sure these were very successful, they were a little dry, but with a lot of jam and butter, they disappeared soon enough. I refuse to be beaten though, so expect another attempt in the future.

Pancakes

2010-08-16T13:00:00.001+01:00

We decided to host pancakes night this year at our house as we'd got an 8 seater dining table just before Christmas and wanted to test out how many people we could get round it. We managed at least 10, if I'd blogged about it sooner, I'd probably have more accurate figures.

We stocked up on topping, we had ice cream, gingerbread sauce, chocolate drops, ham and cheese for savoury ones, traditional lemon and sugar, butter, nutella, bananas, squirty cream, toffee sauce, strawberry sauce and possibly a few more.

What I didn't imagine happening was being forced to add blue food colouring to the pancake mix by my craxy friend from uni. I'm not sure it'll catch on.

La Parisienne, Romsey

2010-08-15T13:00:00.002+01:00

Ian's been working lots recently, and so we've drawn up a four weekly plan that gives me one night a week with him. Last week was movie night (we saw Toy Story 3). This week is restaurant night (for those interested, the remaining 2 nights are "board game night" and "games console night"). Clearly we can do more than just these things but this is the plan to ensure I get some quality time with Ian.

So, on Tuesday we went to La Parisienne - a french restaurant in Romsey. The menu was quite large and it was hard to chose but eventually we made up our minds. I chose the mussels (what a surprise) and Ian went for the snails. The mussels were good and there were plenty of them but they didn't bring me a spoon for the soupy bit and I got a hand wipe instead of a finger bowl, but that's just me being picky.

Ian's snails came in a cute snail tray, but they were lacking in garlickiness which is a shame as otherwise they'd have been much better.

For mains I decided on the duck confit, Ian on the veal in a sage and lemon sauce. Ian's veal was vealy good! Sorry, I couldn't resist, but it's not a lie, I was really good, the sauce was creamy but light and refreshing at the same time.

My duck was tasty but not the best duck confit I've ever had, it wasn't as moist as it should be and it came in a funny sauce that I couldn't work out if I liked it or not. Both mains came with sauteed potatoes but no veg, which, if you don't like veg is good, but it wasn't clear you'd need to order veg as well.

Ian decided he didn't want dessert but then ordered the profiteroles and I ordered the lemon tart. The profiteroles were more cups than rolls and they had ice cream not cream, but Ian seemed to enjoy them (I didn't get to try them, he scoffed the lot).

My lemon tart was quite lemony, but the base wasn't really what I was expecting, it was soft and had a slight cakey feel to it - I was expecting a crisp sweet pastry. It wasn't unpleasant but it was a disappointment.

Because the menu was so vast, I do think we'll be going back at some point to try something else.

Also, I'd like to apologise for the picture quality, I forgot to take my camera and therefore took photos on my phone (which is ancient). But, as they're all bad, I don't mind posting one more of the little salt and pepper set - which came in a sweet little basket - well, I thought it was cute anyway!

Pictures?

2010-08-14T13:00:00.000+01:00

I've been looking back through this blog, and as I blog quite a lot about eating out, there are many posts without pictures. So I was thinking about taking my camera with me to restaurants and taking pictures of the meal.

Do you think it's weird to do that?

If you owned a restaurant, what would you think about someone taking photos of your food?

Birthday Cake - only 7 months late!

2010-08-13T13:00:00.000+01:00

Wow, I didn't realise how many things I'd not blogged about until I was going back through my photos from the start of the year. My birthday is in January so I'm quite late with this post, but having seen the photos, I had to share.

I love victoria sponge cake, it's possibly my favourite kind of cake. I don't know why, it just is. Strangely, I'd never made one before so I decided, for my birthday, to give it a go. Unfortunately, having made my sponge, it snowed. Meaning that I couldn't get to work and therefore had a whole sponge that I'd have to eat myself. I didn't manage it and I'm ashamed to say some ended up in the bin. I waited until the snow had gone and tried again.

Now, I'm not sure what I made was really a traditional victoria sponge, given that it was topped with cream, but it looks so pretty, and it tasted great although I remember thinking I'd like to try and get the sponge fluffier.

Catchup time!

2010-08-12T13:00:00.000+01:00

I've been going through photos recently, and I've found so many that have reminded me of things I've been up to that I've neglected to tell you guys about. So, for the next however many weeks (basically until I'm done catching up), I'll blog about something old on Mondays and Fridays. Hope you enjoy, and sorry for not having shared all this stuff before!

Leftovers - Peach tart

2010-08-11T13:00:00.001+01:00

After my dinner party, I had a sheet of puff pastry left over and I was wondering what to do with it. I also had some overripe peaches in the fridge that I'd forgotten about and the leftover berries from the cheesecake. So, whilst also trying to make lasagne for the weekend, I decided to make a peach tart. I sprinkled vanilla sugar over the pastry to make it a bit sweeter, sliced the peaches and laid them on top and added berries at random. I sprinkled again with vanilla sugar and then used butter on the edges of the pastry. I baked until it looked done (sorry I can't be more precise but I was multitasking - it's hard work!).

With a bit of ice cream, it was yummy and I felt better about not wasting.

First Ever Dinner Party

2010-08-09T13:00:00.001+01:00

Well, not really my first ever dinner party, but the first ever dinner party I've cooked for. Ian does all the cooking in our house, so when we have friends over, I do all the "Can I get you a drink?" and conversation making, while he cooks lovely three course meals for us all.

This time, I gave it a go, so I could appreciate the hard work he does. I did have him on hand for advice and I tried to keep my menu simple, but I was still really proud of myself. I think it all went off without a hitch because I did as much prepping as I could before they arrived.

For the starter, I made small puff pastry tart things, topped with mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, basil and proscuitto. This is them before they were baked...

And after...

For the main course, I wanted to go for something not to huge as it was just a week night so three courses was probably a bit much already! I cooked chicken thighs covered in some nandos rub, baked sweet potatoes and a salad. I totally forgot to take a picture of this until we were half way through, but I tried to make it look as pretty as I could for you.

Dessert I had made the night before, a cheesecake (as I've just discovered I can eat these without feeling sick as long as I don't overindulge). It wasn't your normal round cheesecake, this one was baked in a loaf tin. I added some water to some jam and reduced into a quick and easy sauce, and then topped with berries. Ian decided he preferred this cheesecake to my last ones, because I used shortbread for the biscuit base and it was yummier.

All in all, a definite success!

Lakeland Wish List

2010-08-04T21:05:00.000+01:00

The lakeland catalogue arrived yesterday, and I sat down this morning and started to read it whilst waiting for Ian. I want so many things (none of which I really need).

These cupcake holders are so cute - perfect for transporting cupcakes for lunch at work.
Cupcakes without even turning on the oven - amazing!
Somewhere to display all the cupcakes before my work colleagues eat them all (and to allow me to dream I'm in my very own cake shop)
Even more nozzles to play with!

I want, I want, I want!!!!

Cupcake Bouquet

2010-07-27T13:11:00.000+01:00

My friend (I would refer to her as the cupcake fiend but I got told off for that) had a nice birthday barbecue party at the weekend, and so I thought it was about time I made her the present I had been planning (since her actual birthday a month ago). I spotted cupcake bouquets on the Internet, they looked like the perfect present but at £35 and the uncertainty of my friend being in for delivery, I thought there must be a better way. I googled "how to make a cupcake bouquet" and found this site.

It seemed simple enough so I popped along to hobbycraft, picked up a plant pot and a ball of oasis that you would normally use for flower arranging. I also purchased 1000 lollysticks, but didn't actually use any!

The instructions said to hot glue the ball to the pot but for some reason I was keen on being able to use the plant pot for plants afterwards. Instead, I attached a kebab skewer to the bottom of the pot with blu tak. I unwrapped the oasis, realised how crumbly it was, and immediately rewrapped it with cling film. I poked it onto the skewer and admired my handiwork.

I baked 24 cupcakes, and iced half with one icing tip and half with another and used slightly different shades of pink (I wanted it to look like it had variety).

When it came to attaching the cupcakes I realised that the lolly sticks were too long for the ball I'd chosen (I think the one in the instructions must be bigger) so Ian and I decided a three cocktail stick prongs would work better.

The prongs really need to go into the oasis first, because otherwise when you try to push the cake on, the sticks will come out the top of the cake. Thankfully Ian thought of this so I didn't ruin any cupcakes.

The cupcake bouquet ended up with 15 cupcakes on it, and although there were a few small gaps, it didn't look bad. It certainly got a lot of comments from the guests at the barbecue, and my friend liked it so it's all good!

Rainbow Cake

2010-07-27T13:01:00.000+01:00

During my recent swap on swapbot, I discovered the following blog - I've linked to it as part of my swap over here but I wanted to point out how cool this rainbow cake is - I'm inspired, watch this space - it's on my to do list.

World Cup Cooking

2010-07-23T22:09:00.000+01:00

At work, we decided to have a sweepstakes with a difference - no money involved - the winner got to choose the cake recipe that we'd celebrate the end of the World Cup with.

I did a weekly round up of who played who, and comments on each match, and it definitely made me more interested in the whole thing.

The winner chose a white chocolate and wasabi cheesecake, but as waitrose was all out of wasabi, and the team seemed a bit worried about the choice, I replaced the wasabi with raspberries.

I've never made cheesecake before and generally avoid eating it as it makes me feel a little ill. I decided that I'd make two, one baked and one not. I found two recipes on the internet although I did use slightly less cheese in one because I didn't want to buy another 200g tub just for 25g.

I accidentally bought double the white chocolate, as I assumed they were 100g bars, but they were in fact 200g. The leftover chocolate went into a wedding wednesday fondue, so it didn't get wasted.

It was hard work making the cheesecake, I decided to make the baked one as it would need time to cool. If I did it again, I'd buy a second tin because the first one definitely needed more time in the support of the tin before being moved, hence the cracks you can see in the picture. I'd also utilise my food processor more next time (I thought it would be fun to smash the biscuits with a rolling pin - it probably would have been if I hadn't tried to bash quite so many all at once.)

The non-baked cheesecake did seem to melt when out of the fridge for longer than half an hour, but the taste was still good. The general consensus was that the non baked cheesecake had more of a white chocolate taste, but the baked cheesecake won because baked cheesecakes are awesome!

Here is a picture of my fridge post cheesecake making, I think this is how all fridges should look.

And this is how you can tell that the baking you did for work was a success (the coloured plates are my cake plates).

The last photo is a small glimpse into my personality. I have some OCD tendencies - can you tell?

Pavlova

2010-07-20T17:55:00.000+01:00

My cupcake fiend friend also ordered me to make her a pavlova for her birthday. OK, I'm not sure it was an order but it was definitely a strong hint. At the moment I'm planning my wedding, and so we get together every Wednesday for "wedding wednesdays". Somehow, a tradition has started where we have dessert. As her birthday was on a Wednesday, I allowed her to choose.

We followed a Delia recipe because I'd misplaced my Mary Berry book. The recipe did not call for cornflour and vinegar as some meringue recipes so it was nice and simple to make. We started a little production line, I'd whisk and she'd add the sugar. Most of the sugar ended up in the bowl (there was a small collision between the whisk and the spoon), and we made a nice pavlova shape on a baking tray and whacked it in the oven to cook while we discussed ideas for wedding stationery.

Here it is all naked!

And here all dressed up ready to eat!

The pavlova was yummy, and did not last long!

Cupcakes!

2010-07-20T12:34:00.001+01:00

I have a cupcake fiend as a friend, and last month it was her birthday. As I'm quite lovely, I decided to make cupcakes and take them into work for her. Now, many times I've thought about making cupcakes, with beautiful swirly icing but then I've chickened out last minute and just made my standard fairy cakes. Fairy cakes, however, would not cut it this time - they had to be cupcakes (I wanted the "Cupcakes!!!" reaction). So, I started the same as I normally would, making small sponge cakes, and then I prepared some butter icing, got out my shiny new piping set and set about icing them. Things I've learnt now are - material piping bags are notgreat for butter icing (it all just melts through); piping icing is harder than you'd expect; my strength gives out just when I need it (I'd be squeezing the icing and get to the last bit and then become all weak and feeble).

I experimented with different nozzles, and different flavours (I put some strawberry flavouring in both the icing and sponge mix of the second batch) and I definitely improved as I went (the pink ones were my second attempt).

I'd very much like to get more practice, so there'll definitely be a cupcake round 2, maybe this time with chocolate flavouring, or carrot cake with cream cheese frosting - the possibilities are endless!

Geeky Chocolatey Cake

2010-07-20T12:34:00.000+01:00

Towards the end of last year, I went on a course at work, and there was an exam that I could sit afterwards that would give me a nice qualification. I finally sat that exam at the start of June and passed!

As my team at work had allowed me time off to revise for it, I thought I'd thank them in the way they like best - cake! The exam I passed was all about mainframes, so I asked a few people what they thought the cake should be like with this is mind. The general consensus was a dense chocolatey thing, so I settled on a chocolate fudge cake.

I found a nice traybake recipe in my good food magazine, and set to work. This is the finished cake. Apologies for the terrible photo - I always feel a bit rushed when I bake in the mornings before work!

I received lots of comments about how chocolatey the cake was - it really was chocolatey! I'm not a fan of dark chocolate but still enjoyed this cake, but not as much as the dark chocolate fans. It was perfect for sharing with my team, because you could only manage one slice, so more people could try it.

The Royal Institute, London

2010-07-15T13:01:00.000+01:00

Now, this may be a little strange, but recently I attended a wedding here, and the food was so good, that I felt I had to write about it. It was a late afternoon wedding so there was the ceremony, then drinks and canapes and then the meal, with no extra guests turning up later or an evening buffet. Unconventional, but worked really well.

The canapes were plentiful and good quality, there was many of them so I hope I remember them all. There were miniature beef wellingtons (crispy pastry, juicy meat, yummy yummy yummy), individual baskets of fish and chips (so cute!), mozzarella and cherry tomato and basil kebabs (refreshing), tempura vegetables (great batter, and tasty dip), mushroom tartlets (didn't like these, not sure what was in them (apart from mushroom obviously)), some sort of meat (I think lamb) covered in some sort of green stuff (I think pea) (way more delicious than it sounds), smoked salmon rolly things (I'm not a smoked salmon fan). I think that's all of them, my favourites were the wellingtons and the fish and chips.

As there were so many canapes, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to fit dinner in, but luckily they'd gone for speeches before dinner, so I had time to regain my appetite. And I'm glad I did! The starter was goose liver on cherry mash with a truffle jus. We had two empty seats at our table, but we told the waiter so they didn't put the starters down and that was a big mistake, I could have easily eaten three of these, the liver was melt in your mouth good, and the mash and jus went with it perfectly.

The main was beef fillet steak on a bed of artichokes. I'd never had artichokes before, and I think they went well and provided a good potato substitute for the dish. The quality of the beef was excellent and I enjoyed every bite.

The dessert was a mandarin and mango jelly, with some small doughnuts and Earl Grey ice cream (there were posher names for all of these things, but the menu is at home so I can't share them). I don't drink tea so I offloaded my ice cream on someone else (after trying it of course) and took their jelly in return. The doughnuts were great, and the jelly was properly wobbly as good jellies should be (I spent ages just wobbling my plate - oh the fun!). I really enjoyed the taste of the jelly, and thought there was a good amount of fruit in it.

By this time I was thoroughly stuffed! Such great food, lovely company, and a wonderful wedding - I hope their marriage is as good as their food was!

Folly Inn, Whippingham, IOW

2010-07-15T12:46:00.000+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I took my mum to the Isle of Wight for her birthday (we love the Isle of Wight, and it's surprisingly easy just to hop across for the day from where I live). Whilst there we went for a meal at The Folly Inn as it was quite close to the ferry port and we didn't want to miss our ferry (it was Sunday so the evening ones were an hour and a half apart). We'd eaten quite well during the day (ploughmans, ice cream, cake) so we opted for just a main - I went for the duck, which came with dauphinoise potato, wilted spinach and a blueberry and balsamic sauce. My mum ordered the scampi. The food came quite quickly and was decent portions, and mine was very tasty, lovely potatoes, great spinach and the sauce went really well with the duck (which wasn't overcooked but nice and juicy as it should be). Mum's scampi was nice and moist, yet the breadcrumbs crisp and the chips were good. As the mains were so good, and we still had time before our ferry, we ordered two helpings of the sticky toffee pudding - and it was really gooey and rich and the sauce perfectly toffeeey! I think we probably should have shared though as it was too much to eat comfortably (we still both finished them though!).

The pub was a good size, and had free stickerbooks and colouring for children, and was right on the waterfront so you could watch boats go by. They were also featured in the RedFunnel magazine because they have table dancing on Saturday nights which definitely sounds interesting. The only thing I'd watch out for is the terrible number of pot holes (really crators) on the road down to the pub (but I spotted a petition at the bar about them so sounds like they're working on getting them fixed).

It was a good end to a great day and I heartily recommend the Isle of Wight for a day out or a week long holiday and this is one of the many great places to eat whilst there.

The Red Rose, Basingstoke

2010-07-02T15:04:00.001+01:00

Yesterday we ventured out to an Indian restaurant with our Basingstoke friends. They'd been before and it seems they'd had a major revamp inside, the decor very modern and nice, although they could do with removing a few tables to give a bit more space. I had the prawn purée to start, Ian the tandoori king prawns, both very tasty. For mains, Ian chose a creamy mangoy chicken curry, and I went for my usual lamb tikka massalla. Both very nice and decent portions. The other two mains our friends ordered were also good but no idea what they were (think one was a korai)! The bombay aloo was very good too, nice soft potatoes, good sauce. Ian and I went for the standard frozen desserts, both good although I didn't manage to finish mine cos I was a bit full!

The Mayfair Bar, The Mayfair Hotel, London

2010-06-30T13:43:00.001+01:00

We stayed at The Mayfair hotel recently as our friends were getting married at The Royal Institute and it was conveniently located. We got there in time to eat at the restaurant but instead we were directed to their bar for food. We ordered the pigeon which came with bacon, a potato rosti and a onion dressing. Ian requested no onion for his. The presentation of the food wasn't bad although Ian's looked a bit pants without the dressing. The bacon wasn't bad, the rosti tasted ok but clearly the potato had been left to oxidise after grating and therefore was grey and didn't look very appetising. The pigeon however was extremely over cooked. Totally overpriced too.

Because of this, we weren't expecting much from the main, we'd both ordered the five spice duck, it was well cooked, served with chinesey veg (which was a bit too salty but otherwise nice) and sweet potato. The sweet potato was cooked nicely, the only thing I'd say is that we would have appreciated a bit more.

We didn't bother with dessert, instead buying cookies from the sainsburys across the road.

The bar definitely wasn't indicative of a five star hotel and later on we discovered that the hotel wasn't all that five star either, but the less I say about that, the better!

The Cromwell Arms, Romsey

2010-06-30T13:16:00.001+01:00

Yesterday we ventured into Romsey for the first time in search of food together. I'd been here before for a hen night meal but obviously Ian not being a hen meant he missed out! Ian wasn't sure of the menu, he struggled to pick a starter he wanted but that's probably because he's so fussy!

I've been craving mussels for some time and thankfully this a place offered them. Ian went for tempura squid. My mussels were good, although strangely lemony but in a good way. The only thing I'd say would be there should have been more of them! Ian's squid consisted of some rings and some whole looking squid, the batter was nice and crispy but the squid firm not chewy.

For mains Ian ordered the lamb rump with pea purée, it was juicy and tasty and I really liked the pea purée. I ordered the pork belly but substituted the mustard mash for dauphinoise potatoes. It came with caramelised shallots and the fat on the pork belly hadn't been made into crackling as I'd been expecting, but was very tasty and meant the meat was succulent. The dauphinoise potato had something in it that I wasn't overly keen on, but it was still good. Ian ordered his usual side of chips but they were pretty disappointing although that didn't stop me using them to wipe up the pea purée from Ian's plate!

We did order dessert, I went for the eton mess, Ian for the baked White chocolate cheesecake with honeycomb ice cream. The eton mess was huge and I barely managed half but it was scrummy, lovely chewy meringue, mmmm! Ian didn't like the biscuit base of his cheesecake, and the small bit I had of the topping didn't taste much like White chocolate but he polished it off and the happily finished mine!

All in all, a pretty successful dinner!

Prezzo, Eastleigh

2010-06-30T12:11:00.001+01:00

We ended up here by accident, we were actually hoping for the nice little Italian place on the high street, but it was shut for some reason. We had been meaning to try Prezzo since it opened recently in the nearby cinema complex though, so it wasn't a problem. The menu wasn't overly impressive, and the specials didn't seem all that special! Ian had chicken wings to start which were good, and a decent serving size. I had goats cheese, red onion and tomato on a foccacio bread, which I was expecting to be warmer than it was but the taste was still good, although as the bread was quite thick and the topping minimal, it was a little dry.

For mains, I chose one of the specials, lobster and crab tortelli, with a creamy saffron sauce. It wad quite spicy which I wasn't expecting, and the tortelli could have been stuffed with anything as the sauce totally overpowered it. Ian ordered the calzone di mare, but I think claiming it's of the sea when there are only two types of seafood in is a bit much. The bit I tried wasn't very good, and Ian said it was only ok, plus the side salad looked like it had seen better days! The side order of chips were very nice though, I'd recommend those!

We didn't order dessert as we were expecting a delivery of cake from a friend, so we paid and left. I'd probably go back if I was feeling too lazy to cook and too lazy to drive somewhere but it's not making it onto my list of favourites.

Guzel, Eastleigh

2010-06-29T22:34:00.000+01:00

This review is pretty late - I don't even remember when we first went here. But since that time, we've been back three more times! Ian's quite taken with it, not just because it's less than five minutes walk from our house, but also because it's easy to have lots of variety, which we both love. Generally, we'll order about 7-10 different dishes when we go, and as they're small, it's not as bad as it sounds (although we've taken friends and they've not managed that many dishes so if you're going, I'd go for fewer and then order again if you have room). Their dishes include baked brie (melted cheese, you can't go wrong!), chilli prawns (we tend to order two lots of these as they're so nice), calamari, lamb shish, chicken shish (both the shishes come highly recommended - by us!). One dish that we didn't try on the first visit was melon and feta, but it's surprisingly good - we've even tried to recreate it at home, it's refreshing so we save it for the end of the meal. For those of you who don't fancy variety, they do "mains" as well as meze, so you can have a meze dish as a starter and then a main, but we just prefer to do it the other way. The only thing I would mention, is that they don't open on Sunday even though their website says they do and the service is better during the week (when it's just the owners staffing the restaurant).

The Hurdles, Droxford

2010-03-24T19:36:00.000Z

For lunch today, we visited The Hurdles, a small pub/restaurant in Droxford. It was pretty busy for a Wednesday lunchtime, which is always a good sign. They offered us an a la carte menu, a set menu and a baguette menu, so there was plenty of choice. I went for the mussels (surprise surprise) with cider, apples, leeks and creme fraiche, Ian opted for the scallops of the day which came on a ham rilette with a buttery sauce and we also went for the black pudding with blue cheese and apple to share. My mussels were good, although they'd not done a very good job of de-bearding them which was a little disappointing, but the sauce was good, and it was nice to have something different to white wine and cream. Ian's scallops were good, but he said that there was something in the rilette he didn't like, possibly mustard, and that the flavour of the rilette was a bit too overpowering for the scallops. Ian manage to distract me with mussels, so he ate most of the third starter, but I had enough to tell you what I thought. The black pudding and apple was really good, but the blue cheese was just too smelly and cheesy for me (I'm not a blue cheese fan) and I felt the flavour lasted too long compared to the other flavours. The texture of the blue cheese was good though, nice and creamy.

For mains, I went for the pork belly, with roast potatoes and red apple chutney. Ian chose the sea bass which came on a bed of crushed new potatoes, crab and watercress, with lemon roasted fennel. My pork was melt in the mouth good, it was the kind of good where you have to make someone else try it just so you can make 'ooh' and 'aah' noises together. Ian didn't seem to mind helping with that at all! The chutney had a nice hint of cinnamon (which I recently discovered I didn't hate - it was the nutmeg all along!) and the gravy was nice and rich. The crackling wasn't completely crispy, but was very tasty. Ian was a bit disappointed with his potatoes, as it was more new potato mash than crushed potatoes and it seems like there was some spring onion in there somewhere. I had three massive roast potatoes though, so I gave him half of them so he didn't go hungry. His fish was very moist and flavoursome, and the asparagus was nicely cooked. Ian wasn't sure he liked fennel but it turned out he did, and apparently so do I!

After we'd finished our mains, they asked if we'd like dessert. We've missed out on dessert so far this week, so I thought it was about time I got one, so I opted for the lemon posset, which came with berries and shortbread. The shortbread was crumbly and buttery. The posset lemony and the berries tart.

So, food wise, I'd definitely recommend this place. The only thing I'd do differently if it was my restaurant would be to tell the one waitress that her voice was too loud for her to complain about the rubbish tips the customer just left her and that she should also stop making a mountain out of a molehill (she kept apologising to all the customers because it was crazy busy - when there wasn't really any wait between courses and noone was even complaining!)

Le Blaireau, Carey's Manor Hotel, Brockenhurst

2010-03-23T18:08:00.000Z

One of our favourite venues so far is Carey's Manor in Brockenhurst. This hotel boasts 3 restaurants on site, the Manor Restaurant, a Thai Restaurant - Zen Garden, and a French Bistro - Le Blaireau. We decided to have lunch at the latter today, and although the outside is needing a bit of a fix-up, the inside is well decorated and nicely laid out. The waiters were very attentive and friendly. Ian ordered the snails to start, and I opted for the goats cheese parcel with apple and parma ham. The snails were nice and garlicy, a bit slimy but they are snails after all. Ian enjoyed them but I think he would have liked a few more (there were 6 or 7). My starter was delicious. I'm unsure what the pastry was on the goats cheese parcel but it was light and crumbly and tasted really good. There were some fried apple slices to accompany it, and some shredded apple on the top of the salad garnish. It was well presented and went down well.

For mains, Ian ordered the duck in plum sauce, served with dauphinoise potatoes and I ordered the trout with new potatoes and a melted butter and lemon sauce. Ian is always worried about onion in the dauphinoise, so we swapped potatoes, which I was happy with because I love dauphinoise potatoes very much! Ians duck was succulent and tasty and the side order of fries that he ate most of were nice and crispy. My fish was in fact an entire fish, and I struggled to get round the bones, but I soon got the hang of it. The butter and lemon was amazing and really worked with the fish. They dauphinoise was extremely tasty.

Again we didn't have room, or time for dessert. I'm really pleased that we ventured into this restaurant. We were not disappointed and it really beat our expectations.

The Queens Head, Fishers Pond

2010-03-23T17:46:00.001Z

Ian and I have a week off. That means we're eating out. Hopefully lots! Our first meal out of our holiday was at The Queens Head, in Fishers Pond. They don't have a website so we were unsure what kind of food would be on offer. The menu was typical pub food with a few extras. Ian and I opted for the fondue to start, with a hoisin duck salad as well (as we do like our starters). Mum didn't go for one, which I think she regretted after we took forever with ours! The fondue was really good, it really made me want to come home and get our fondue set (never used) out. The hoisin duck salad confused us, the first mouthful was totally unexpected as it was chilled, and both Ian and I were expecting it to be warm. It was tasty but it really would have been better with a bit of warmth.

For mains, we all opted for their 'sizzlers', something new to Mum, but something Ian and I regularly had at his local pub up in York. For those not in the know, it basically comes on a very hot skillet and continues to sizzle for most of the meal. Ian ordered the ultimate sizzler, which came with a steak, a chicken breast, chicken wings and garlic and herb prawn skewers. Mum and I went for the surf and turf sizzlers, which was just the steak and prawns. The menu mentioned that the steak was served on a bed of onions and peppers, I'd imagine this is done to stop the steak burning. As Ian hates both of these, we asked for his without. Unfortunately, they got a bit confused and gave him onions and peppers and Mum none, but they did a quick swap and I think it all turned out OK. The chips were nice, my steak was well cooked, although disappointingly it did have a big vein down the middle which makes me a little sad, but I ate round it.

We couldn't manage dessert, and there wasn't a vast number of desserts on the menu anyway, only four I think. It was a nice meal, plenty of food, well priced and a large restaurant, so likely to find a table even on busier nights. They also have lots of outside seating which would be nice in the summer.

The White Horse, Ampfield

2010-03-23T17:14:00.000Z

As well as planning our wedding, Ian has also been working on IBM's annual Blue Fusion event, which runs during National Science Week and offers 64 schools the opportunity to play 8 activities/games designed and made by IBMers. The event finished on Thursday, so after tidying up on Friday morning, some of the team took the chance for a well earned rest, in The White Horse in Ampfield. Ian and I both choose the Fish Platter on their fish specials board, 4 different types of fish, scallops and prawns, all in a creamy white wine sauce. Ian chose the chips and vegetables, I chose the saute potatoes and wilted spinach. I cannot fault the food at all, the fish was all good, and there was plenty of it. I'd probably have liked more than one scallop but it was a really tasty scallop, and they kept on the orange part that most restaurants discard. The rest of our party seemed to enjoy their food also, there were two meat pies, which were well received as they were 'proper' pies (entirely encased in pastry instead of just a pie top). There was also sausage and mash ordered, the mash being mountain high accompanied by plenty of gravy (and sausages of course!)

We decided going back to work was a bad idea, so we also ordered some desserts, Ian opting for the profiteroles, and my choice was the pavlova. I must say, it was the weirdest pavlova I've ever eaten - it had meringue (key ingredient really) but on top of that was chocolate and then some sort of jam/coulis with some strawberry cream on top, with some fresh strawberries stuck into it, all served with a few fresh raspberries and a jug of double cream. I'd eat it again, it was nice and there was plenty of it, but I'm not a big fan of chocolate and fruit (unless it's something like a fondue or chocolate fountain). Ian's profiteroles disappeared in seconds and he had a healthy smearing of chocolate round his mouth, so I'll wager he enjoyed them.

We've eaten here before but I never got as far as reviewing it, but I think the general conclusion was that the food was good, although a tad on the expensive side. I'd say this time, the mains we ordered were quite well priced for the amount of fish we received and as I made Ian buy the desserts, I'd say they were great value for money!

The Armada Restaurant - Rhinefield House

2010-02-28T16:30:00.000Z

The search for a venue continues. This week we were off to The New Forest for a wedding fayre at Rhinefield House, so we booked ourselves in for lunch to see what the food was like. We arrived promptly for our 12.30pm booking, to find that the restaurant wasn't quite ready for us. We took this opportunity to have a quick look around the fayre, which was much smaller than I'd expected. When we returned the restaurant was ready and we were told that they'd had a party of 100 for breakfast so it had been a lot to clear up. This wasn't a great sign because you really hope they could cope better with parties that size if they're offering wedding catering on site.

We ordered from what seemed like a smaller menu than the one we'd seen online (perhaps because it was a Sunday lunch menu), Ian choosing the Chicken Liver Pate with fruit chutney & brioche and my choice was the goats cheese and red onion tart. We noticed that the glasses had many many water marks on them, which was disappointing, although we didn't actually use the glasses set at our table. Ian ordered a lemonade, and asked for it to come with a wedge of lime. When it arrived, it had a slice of lemon, so Ian pointed this out to the waiter who seemed confused to start, but then happily took away the drink to replace it. At this point I was reminded of Fawlty Towers, because in full view of us, the waiter who had taken our order told off the waiter who had bought our drinks and I half expected him to slap him round the head! Most amusing.

Our starters arrived and were quite underwhelming, mine was not really a tart, but a giant vol-au-vent, which, although nice, was not what I was hoping for, and was not very warm. The filling wasn't very consistent either, in some parts it was mainly goats cheese, in others more red onion. It was, however, much nicer than Ian's starter. He had a small slab of pate and two tiny pieces of brioche. There was minimal effort involved, I could have knocked up the same dish in less than a minute at home. I personally think pate should be served with toasted bread, although I'm not sure that would have made the starter much better.

So, with low expectations, our mains arrived, mine the confit duck leg & Ian's the roast beef rib-eye. Mine came with fondant potato, red cabbage and green beans. The red cabbage wasn't the best I've had, slightly too vinegary but the fondant potato wasn't bad and the duck was tasty, although overcooked in places. Ian's beef was nicely cooked and juicy, and came with roast potatoes, carrots & beans and a yorkshire pudding. The mains were far nicer than the starters led us to think they'd be, so we were pleased, although we did notice that both the beef and the duck had the same gravy which we think was a bit lazy of the chef.

At this point we ordered more drinks and browsed the dessert choices. Ian went for a warm plum frangipane tart with vanilla ice cream and butterscotch sauce. I chose the lemon tart with lemon sorbet and a citrus salad. By the time our desserts arrived, we hadn't received fresh drinks which I pointed out to the waiter. They arrived when we'd finished our dessert, so we happily sent them back without paying for them. I couldn't detect any plum flavour in Ian's plum tart and the butterscotch sauce wasn't really an accompaniment, more just a small squirt to make the plate look pretty. My lemon tart was nice but would be more accurately described as a creme brulee in pastry.

Having dined at Rhinefield House, we've now removed this from our list of venues - the outside of the property would make a wonderful backdrop to our photos but the inside just didn't provide us with the confidence that they'd give us the perfect day we are hoping for.

The Restaurant at Chilworth Manor Hotel

2010-02-22T06:00:00.000Z

Good news! After 5 years and 10 days of dating, Ian proposed! So, now we are planning a wedding, and as the wedding breakfast is the most important bit (to Ian at least, I'm pretty excited about the dress), we decided to try out the food at one of our possible venues.

Chilworth Manor is quite close to home for us, and they're the only venue we've seen so far that advertise more than a 3 course wedding breakfast, so they're high up on our list at the moment. As usual, my mum tagged along (she's spoilt!) and we all had a very nice meal.

We were served an amuse bouche of cream of vegetable soup in a tiny tiny soup bowl. Unfortunately, Ian isn't keen on vegetables and my mum wont eat cream but I thought it was yummy and I helped eat Mum's. Ian suffered through it because he was starving.

For starters, I went for the haggis with caramelised shallots on a swede and sweet potato rosti with a whisky sauce. It was presented really well, and I really enjoyed it all - I don't think it was entirely traditional haggis (didn't seem to be in a skin, think it was just the inside bit) but tasty nevertheless. Mum and Ian went for the smoked ham hock rillette with a pineapple and cracked black pepper salsa. The salsa went nicely with the ham rillette although it had onion in it so Ian didn't take it, but my mum cleaned her plate so I think she enjoyed it.

I ordered the roasted guinea fowl supreme, mainly because it came with braised red cabbage (which I could eat all day everyday!). It came with fondant potato, which is never as good as it sounds, but this was the best I've had so far (I'd still rather have a different type of potato though). The guinea fowl was cooked really nicely, it wasn't at all dry and it went beautifully with the cabbage - big thumbs up from me. Mum and Ian continued to copy each other and both went for the braised shoulder of lamb, Mum sticking with the lyonnaise potatoes, and Ian substituting them for buttered new potatoes (to avoid the onion). The lamb was melt in your mouth good, and Mum said the lyonnaise potatoes were really tasty (they disappeared before I could steal some). Ian ordered a side of chips, which arrived, looking like a jenga tower (although quite a small one). They were cooked nicely but Ian said he would have preferred a few more of them.

For dessert, Ian chose to copy me this time, selecting the marbled chocolate tartlet with pomegranate milkshake & sweet orange sorbet. The tart was very rich, I struggled to finish it, but it was very good - Ian didn't suffer the same problem. I think my favourite part of the dessert was the sorbet, it really was sweet and tangy and had a really strong fresh orange flavour. Both Ian and I decided that the pomegranate milkshake (served in a shotglass with a tiny straw) was a bit of a gimmick and didn't really fit with the dish, but we drank it anyway. Mum ordered the baked figs with pannetone and cinnamon ice cream. I didn't try the ice cream as cinnamon isn't really my thing but the fig was a pleasant surprise - much nicer than it looked. Mum said the pannetone was very sweet - not sure if it was too sweet or not, she did mention it being very sweet several times though.

Overall, the food was excellent, the service friendly and prompt, and the location charming. A good time was had by all, and Chilworth Manor remains on our list of possible venues.

The Dog & Crook, Brambridge

2009-09-26T21:47:00.000+01:00

Ian is soon to be 26 (very old indeed), so to celebrate, I took him, and my mum (she always tags along for the good food) to local pub & restaurant, The Dog & Crook. I've been here once before, a few years ago, when our graduate year group were still doing friday pub lunch trips. I remember the food being really good, but the speed not quite fast enough for a lunch time outing. As this was an evening meal, at the weekend, we figured that wouldn't be an issue.

We ordered four starters altogether, Ian opting for the pigeon breast, me for the scallops, Mum for the lambs kidneys and the crevettes for Ian and I to share. The scallops were served with crispy bacon on top of a pea puree. They were nice and big, perfectly cooked, and went well with the bacon and pea puree. The only disappointment was the olive oil drizzled around the pea puree, as this mixed with it and overpowered the flavour of the peas - 8/10. Ian's pigeon also came with bacon, and was tasty, but came on top of a dressed salad, which meant the dressing tainted the pigeon flavour a little - 8/10. Mum's kidneys came with bacon also, and toasted brioche, with the dressed salad on the side. Mum says it was nice, and I've told her to go find a thesaurus and say something other than nice - 9/10 (She did elaborate, apparently the brioche went well with the kidneys, and the madeira sauce was lovely too, and it was all nicely presented). The crevettes (jumbo prawns for those not in the know) were meaty and cooked well, and came with slices of brown bread and butter, Ian awards them 7/10 - I agree, mainly because I like my prawns (jumbo ones included) cold and these were served warm.

The service here was friendly, and attentive, and there was a decent gap between the courses, but not so long that we thought we'd been forgotten about. The setting was lovely, a good distance between other diners (although close enough that I could still ogle their food) and quiet enough to hear yourselves talking.

The mains we ordered were the oven roasted lamb with sweet potato and parsnip mash, and two helpings of the sirloin steak - Ian ordered the sweet chilli prawns with his We thought that the prawns would come on the side of the steak, kind of like a surf and turf, but in fact it was a prawn and chilli sauce to put on the steak. I got to try this, and wow, it worked sooo well with the steak. We were also impressed with the amount of prawns in the sauce, it was well worth the £2.50 extra - 9/10! My lamb was well cooked, and the accompanying mash was lovely and sweet and really complimented the lamb, 9/10. Mum's was the same as Ian's, minus the awesome sauce.

For dessert Ian ordered the belgian waffles, with forest fruit compote and sticky toffee ice cream. It was yummy!! Ian says the waffle and ice cream worked well together, but he wasn't so sure the ice cream went with the compote -8/10. Mum was quite full (she's only little) so she just had the sticky toffee ice cream, which was apparently better than the ice cream we had at the theatre, because it was less creamy (Mum's not big on dairy) - 8.5/10 (she's soo awkward!). For my dessert I chose the orange and lemon steamed sponge pudding, and it was moist, tasty and had a nice custard with it. The only failing on this was that it came with quite large bits of peel, and I'm not really a peely person - 8/10.

A very nice meal had by all, about £30 each (includes soft drinks). I'd very much recommend the sweet chilli prawns with the steak if you decide to visit. They also do a lot of seafood specials, and seemed to cater well for veggies.

Chilworth Arms, Chilworth

2009-09-02T21:34:00.000+01:00

During our two weeks of holiday, I didn't think we were going to hit a bad egg restaurant wise, but I'm sad to say it happened today. I wont go into the palaver of trying to find the restaurant because that was all my shoddy driving and navigation, and not the restaurants fault.

The first hint that it wasn't a good choice was when the waiter told us that we could have frites or potato of the day with our mains, and we asked what the potato of the day was. His reply of 'it changes everyday, sometimes it's new potatoes, other times mash' was not overly helpful and we decided to go for the safe option of the frites.

Actually, thinking about it, I lie when I say this was the first hint - the chairs were far too low for comfortable dining, and I had to go and steal a cushion from a different area of the restaurant to try and compensate for this. There was also little lighting, my mum had a spot light on her meal, but Ian and I ate in the dark.

For starters, I chose the scallops of the day, which were served with noodles, spinach and sweet chilli sauce. The sweet chilli went well with the scallops, and the noodles were well cooked - 8/10. Ian ordered the mackerel fillets, but when it came it was just fillet - Ian gives it a 7/10, as it wasn't really anything special. Mum had the chicken liver parfait which came with fig jam and toast. I tried this, it was quite tasty, and I do think the fig jam went well, although was possibly a bit too strong a flavour. Mum chose to eat the parfait without the jam and she scored it 9/10 - one point lost because the toast was only toasted on the one side, which meant it was quite cold, and she would have preferred it warm. The starters were probably the high point of the meal - from then on it went down hill.

They brought out our mains, without having cleared away the plates from the starters. The plates were quite large, but I still felt the need to point them out to the waitress bringing out our mains as she didn't seem to have noticed them, to which her response was 'well move them to the side.' This sort of service I find unacceptable, and her response was not particularly polite. The other problem with the mains coming before the starter dishes had been cleared was that we had had no opportunity to reorder drinks, so Ian managed to eat half of his main before they arrived (see Ceno's review for Ian's view on drinks with meals).

Ian and my mum ordered the spit loin of pork, which should have come with caramelised apples and cider sauce. The apples were not caramelised, Ian reckoned they were stewed, the pork had no visible signs of actually having been spit roasted (we did ask later how they cooked the pork but noone had the decency to come back and answer us). The sauce was nice, but the portion was quite small and it was generally disappointing - 5/10 - Ian's comment was that it wasn't tender enough and the outside was salted too much - Mum's comment was that she could have cooked just as good at home on her grill. The frites weren't frites, they were chunky chips - we like both, but hate it when what is delivered is not what is advertised. My main was the swordfish which came with a papaya, mango and spring onion salsa on top, and baby potatoes. The potatoes were very sesame tasting, something again that was unadvertised - I gave one to Ian to try and he said it was disgusting so I'm glad he didn't order them. The swordfish was nice and meaty, and the salsa worked well - 9/10.

During our mains, the lighting level was dropped further, making it virtually impossible to work out what you were eating - there's ambience, and there's eating in the dark - hopefully this restaurant will work out the difference soon.

We received the dessert menu, but noone told us about the special, which we'd seen on the list at the start but most of us had forgotten about. We ordered two chocolate brownies with chocolate ice cream, and one double chocolate marquis with whipped cream (apparently this is a rich mousse like dessert). We waited. And waited. The ice in my drink melted. The table next to us finished their starter and got half way through their mains. Ian attempted to attract a waiter. Eventually we managed to summon the waiter who had taken our dessert order, and I informed him that we were still waiting for the complimentary desserts to arrive, as the ones we were going to pay for had taken far too long to turn up. This seemed to fluster the waiter a little, but he went off and I assume spoke to the manager and returned to tell us that as we had been waiting for more than half an hour, our desserts would be free, and he'd get them to us shortly.

My dessert was not worth the wait. I detected no double chocolate as mentioned on the menu, only one chocolate, and the cream was barely whipped. It was also not really very mousse-like as I was told it would be, it was far denser - 5/10. The chocolate brownie was warm and quite gooey, but would have benefited from a vanilla ice cream as opposed to the chocolate one, 9/10.

When we were done with our desserts, they cleared the plates away and apologised again for the wait. They asked if we would like anything else, but at this point we decided it was best to call it a day and ask for the bill. The bill came, and was wrong - they'd charged us for 2 glasses of lemonade at £1.65 each, and 1 pint of lemonade at £2.10. Ian had actually had 2 pints of lemonade so we complained to the waiter. He told us that they put pints of lemonade through as two glasses, so we promptly pointed out the entry for a pint of lemonade on the bill, and he trotted off again to talk to the manager. The manager returned with a new bill, minus all lemonade charges, and we happily agreed to pay this. We left no tip.

I think this restaurant could improve it's chances of getting a tip from us in the future by doing the following things. Assigning a waiter/waitress to a table, instead of letting any waiter serve us - this would have hopefully meant someone would have been aware that our starter dishes weren't removed, and that we'd been waiting for dessert for quite some time. Improving the lighting conditions so that you can actually see what you are eating. Educating their staff on the 'potato of the day', 'pie of the day', 'soup of the day' etc so you didn't get stupid responses when asking what each were.

The Old Vine, Winchester

2009-08-28T05:00:00.000+01:00

On Wednesday we ate at home, so it seems a little strange to review my own cooking (I'd give it 10/10) so I'll move onto our next meal out. The venue - The Old Vine in Winchester. It started out promising because when Ian phoned up to book, he was told that there was only one table left - rubbish restaurants don't tend to be fully booked, especially on week days.

After a fun journey through Winchester's crazy one way system, we made it to the restaurant, and on first looks it seemed more like a bar, but through a curtain, we found the restaurant area, and were shown to our reserved table. We'd looked at the sample menu online, and had already set our hearts on the scallops, but they weren't to be found on the menu placed before us. Instead we chose the crispy squid with sweet chilli sauce, the garlic chilli king prawns & goats cheese, aubergine & tomato on toast. Yes, three starters! Starters are clearly the best part of every meal, so we decided to have one each and share the third - and I was pleased we did.

The aubergine starter was really nice, although I think it would have benefited from a layer of onion chutney also - 8/10. Ian's starter, the crispy squid, really was crispy but also excellently cooked so that it wasn't at all rubbery, 9/10. The garlic & chilli prawns were meaty and had a great flavour, the only disappointment with the starters was that the bread that came with these didn't have any butter with it, but instead we dipped the bread in the chilli oil - 8/10, losing points for portion size and lack of butter.

For the main course we attempted to order two slow roasted lamb shoulders, but were informed there was only one available. I quickly picked the duck confit, and am sooo glad I did - when it arrived it was lovely and pink, and fell off the bone, and was juicy and succulent and amazing and the best thing in the world (can you tell I really liked it?). I could have eaten ten but Ian wouldn't let me order any more - 10/10. His lamb was tasty, served on a bed of sweet potato mash. Annoyingly the chef decided to garnish it with chives but they were all in a big clump so we could get them out. The sweet potato mash was nice, Ian wasn't keen on the green beans that accompanied it, he didn't seem to think they worked with the rest of the meal (and he also isn't keen on them in general!) - 8/10, mainly because the lamb was quite fatty.

For dessert we ordered the banoffee cheesecake and the summer fruit pudding with ice cream. I've never had summer fruit pudding, mainly because there is usually something more enticing on the menu, but the list of desserts weren't amazing here. I think the pudding would have been better if the filling wasn't all currants (blackcurrants, redcurrants), and was more berries, but it was quite a nice light end to the meal, 6/10. Ian's cheesecake looked nice, it came with some sliced banana on top, but the base was quite thick, 8/10.

The food here was good, despite the disappointing choices of desserts, and they had lots of wines on their specials board, so if that's what you value, I'd recommend this place to you. It was also in a nice location, just across from the cathedral, although you couldn't quite see this out of the window, but would be a good location for a post dinner stroll.

Ceno, Southampton

2009-08-26T04:00:00.000+01:00

Tonight we decided to try a new restaurant from our long list of possible places. Ceno, in Portswood, won as it's not too far away and wasn't the same sort of food as the previous day (we wouldn't want to eat chinese twice in two days!). The restaurant doesn't have a car park, but there is plenty of street parking near by. There's a lot of outside eating space but it was a bit chilly so we decided to eat inside.

We browsed the menu, and there were a lot of nice choices on there but most had one small part that Ian wouldn't like (mainly onion). We settled on the shredded mongolian lamb salad for Ian, and scallops on curried lentils for me. My scallops were well cooked, and the curried lentils nice too, but I'm not sure they were a match made in heaven - the lentils really overpowered the delicate flavour of the scallops, and I decided to eat them separately - 8/10. Ian's salad was awesome, the flavours really worked together, the lamb was well cooked, and I wish I could have knocked him out and eaten it myself! Thankfully Ian doesn't like salad, so he just picked all the lamb out, so I got all the tasty other bits so was happy - 10/10!!.

For the main course, Ian chose the confit of duck, which was served with spicy potatoes, rocket and a mango salsa. I went for the rump of lamb, served with fondant potato, and veg. Ian's duck looked quite greasy but that is usually the case with confit of duck. It tasted good, but his potatoes were a bit too dry for our liking and didn't really seem to work. The mango salsa came with a lot of onion, which the mango had absorbed so Ian didn't eat that. One of Ian's complaints about the meal was the sneaky kitchen staff hiding some crazy cheap salad leaves under his rocket, 6/10. My lamb was very tasty, but again the potato was a bit dry. The veg was good, but the restaurant seems a bit over enthusiastic with the large sea salt flakes, and so was quite salty in places (I never add salt to my food so this isn't something I rate) - 7/10.

With our mains, we ordered two sides - one portion of chips, and one garlic ciabatta. These were great - the chips were much better than both of the potato options that came with our mains, and the ciabatta was really garlicky and yummy.

At this point I should explain about the service. Ian likes a drink with his food (whereas I tend to wait til after my food to drink). His lemonade ran out approximately two mouthfuls into his main. Everytime our waitress came by we attempted to get her attention, but she kept turning the wrong way and running off. She did not come back to our table to check everything was OK with our meals. She also spent a considerable amount of time at the bar, talking to her friend from the looks of it. It got to the point where I had to get up from my meal and go into the bar to ask for more drinks. Ian and I don't find this kind of service acceptable - which is why we gave a crappy tip (don't get me wrong, we're not saying we'd never go back, we always give somewhere a second chance, but I'm not going to tip you for good service if that's not what I got!).

For dessert we chose the chocolate brownie and the sticky toffee pudding. I can never resist a sticky toffee pudding, even though I generally don't have enough room. My pudding arrived, but it wasn't really pudding shaped, it was more a big square of toffee cake. I've had better, but it was quite nice, and the portion size was reasonable - 7/10. Ian's chocolate brownie was gooey in the middle, but lacked a nice crispy crust. There were also nuts in it, and that wasn't advertised on the menu, not usually a massive problem, but they were large chunks of walnut and they didn't really add to the brownie in the right way - 6/10.

We'd definitely give the restaurant another go, the meat was good, and the sides excellent but the menu doesn't seem very big so we'd maybe wait to see if it changes at all for a bit of variety.

Water Margin, North Baddesley

2009-08-24T20:40:00.000+01:00

Ian and I have two weeks off work, and instead of going on holiday, we've decided to have two weeks of playing games, reading in the sunshine, and eating out. So, for our first meal out, we decided to go to the Harvester in Eastleigh. But reviewing a Harvester seems pointless, so I'm about to review the second place we visited, somewhere we go often because the food and service is great, but somewhere we've not gotten round to reviewing yet.

Water Margin is a small restaurant set between two peoples houses on a road in North Baddesley. It's clearly a family business, and it does well - possibly because it's so reasonably priced. They do a gourmet buffet Sunday - Thursday, £14.90 for all you can eat - but everything is cooked fresh to order. We also noticed they were doing a set lunch menu for £6 when we went today (Soup & Spring Roll + Main & Rice).

Every time we go, we always seem to order a large selection of the appetizers and they tailor the portion sizes to the size of your group (3 people, 3 spring rolls etc). We have the steamed dumplings (Ian doesn't like these because they are a little oniony but I love the flavour so I eat the extra one), sesame prawn toast (this is well topped with prawn), spring rolls (not my favourite but we usually get them for my mum), spare ribs (messy but yummy), crispy won tons, smoked chicken (this is amazing, a definite one to order) and this time we ordered some of the king prawns (again tasty, but not available if you have the reduced lunch buffet at £11.90). Ian always likes to order the soup (Crabmeat & sweetcorn) and I can usually be seen sneakily sticking my spoon in to steal some. I like the way chinese soups are thick, but not creamy - I'd love to be able to replicate this at home (I've never tried so it might be simple).

After the appetizers is the duck course, but they also do really good crispy mongolian lamb (those that know the song should be singing it right now!). So we have half duck and half lamb. The duck comes with the usual cucumber and spring onion with hoisin sauce, and the lamb comes with a sweet plum sauce, which works really well. If I'm honest, I could eat this course for the main as well, but not sure they'd let you.

There are a lot of mains to choose from, and we always hope to try something new if we have room. This time we had lemon chicken (the sauce is nice and lemony), sweet and sour pork, lamb szechuan style & duck with ginger and pineapple. I'm not big on ginger, but that was actually really good (although I couldn't eat too much of it). Other dishes we've tried before include crispy chilli beef (this is very crispy, and possibly my favourite), the squid (I'm still not sure about chinese cooked squid - always seems a bit rubbery to me), and some of the prawn dishes (not exactly sure which) - the prawns are always big and meaty.

Usually desserts in chinese restaurants aren't good, but the Water Margin do a wonderful pineapple ice cream that we can never seem to resist.

So to conclude, the food is great, the value is amazing, and the service friendly - highly recommended!!

Valentino's, Bournemouth

2009-08-23T10:54:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, my mum and I went to Bournemouth for the Bournemouth Air Show. The beach was packed, and the show was excellent. Instead of opting for the fast food found all along the seafront, we decided to hold out til the end of the show, and wander back into the town in search of a nice restaurant. Many places seemed more like bars than restaurants, but we eventually stumbled on a little round italian restaurant with a terrace outside. We hovered by the door, only to be told by Joe, the proprietor, that he was fully booked. However, being an italian, he moved around some tables, and endeavoured not to turn anyone away.

Usually, before eating out, I tend to research a bit more, and see what other people have thought - but this was spur of the moment dining. The menu was a decent size, and offered mussels (my favourite if you've not already realised) so seemed perfect to me. I chose the mussels (obviously) followed by tagliatelle carbonara, while my mum went for garlic bread with mozzarella followed by the cannelloni.

The mussels were served in a basic tomato sauce, but as the all you really want is the flavour of the mussels, this is perfect. They were decent sized, hardly any shell breakage (which is irritating when you come to devour the sauce at the end), and very tasty - 9/10. The garlic bread with mozzarella was less crispy than in most places as it had more of a middle to it, which my mum said good (I only ate the crispy bits as I stole bites when she wasn't looking!). The cannelloni was well filled, and tasty, and remained hot for ages despite eating outside where it was slightly chilly. My carbonara came and it was a huge portion, and left me feeling very full but comforted - there's nothing like a big plate of pasta when you've been walking around all day - 8/10.

The food was reasonably priced - £30 for all that, plus 3 drinks (non-alc), but it was really the atmosphere that added to the charm of this restaurant and the friendly banter between Joe and some of the diners showed that it was clearly popular with the locals.

Further Cake Experiments

2009-08-10T19:47:00.001+01:00

These days, following recipes seems to easy. So I try to mix it up a litte (if you pardon the pun!). I decided to make something for my friends housewarming, and I had some leftover blueberries, so considered making blueberry muffins. But, Ian decided he wanted lemon drizzle so I chucked the blueberries in with the cake mix so as not to waste them. It worked well, although I could mostly taste the lemon.

I also took my trusty banana loaf recipe and added strawberries. I wasn't sure how to add them - do I mash them like I do with the banana or do I add them whole? I had quite a lot of bananas and strawberries so I decided to do both. The one with whole chunks of strawberry was the one I preferred, mainly because the strawberry flavour was more intense in this one instead of an underlying strawberriness in the second one.

One thing I have discovered though.... fruit in cake rocks!

Blog Neglect - House Buying

2009-07-28T20:41:00.000+01:00

So the blog has been pretty quiet of late, and the reason for this is that Ian & I bought our first house at the end of May, and have since been fighting with the millions of boxes of stuff we have. We counted over 100, and then we emptied some of these and refilled them, so we estimate we had about 130 boxes to pack and unpack.

House buying is extremely stressful, it involves lots of chasing of solicitors and things and it leaves a rather large hole in ones pocket! But, we now have a pretty large kitchen, and a dishwasher too, so baking should be easier from now on.

We haven't been completely cake free since April though - I have indeed used the new kitchen to make some baked goods but unfortunately neglected to take photos. Ian has been working late a lot, and as I'm his chauffeur, I've been leaving work at 3 and then returning to work at 8 with dinner and making up my hours. Now, getting home at 3 feels much better than 5, so I have been utilising early leaving days by making cake. The first cake I made was a Peach Melba tray bake, recipe here. I altered the recipe slightly as I'm not a fan of almonds, so substituted them for more flour. The cake turned out very moist in places where the fruit exploded, but this was not a bad thing. My team at work made short work of the cake, possibly because they are cake fiends, and also because it was hard to cut the cake into lots of small pieces as it just fell apart so I had to make each square quite large.

New Blog Feature

2009-07-28T13:14:00.000+01:00

Where I work, the canteen has recently put up their prices by quite a ridiculous amount, and consequently lots of people are now bringing in packed lunch. If you eat lunch with people every day for a long time, eventually you run out of stories to tell. So instead of trying to think of new conversations (there are only so many times you can try to think of an animal starting with every letter of the alphabet), I have decided to analyse peoples lunches. I've been doing it for a while, but now other people are bringing in packed lunches who didn't before, some slightly weird lunches have been appearing.

So, the new blog feature is on the left hand side - there is room for the top ten weird lunches. So far there aren't many listed, but the way things are going, I imagine there'll be quite a competition for top spot.

For example, today PV produced from his lunch bag a large baguette, an entire boursin, a big wedge of tesco value stilton, a small number of spring onions, a third of a camembert - wrapped in A4 paper, some butter and a tub of raspberries. I'm all for making packed lunch, but I feel it should be somewhat more made than this! PV proceeded to chomp away at various bits of bread and cheese, interspersed with raspberries every now and then, probably just to annoy me as I believe in saving dessert until last. I think the spring onions were a bit too much for him, and we did all agree that perhaps pickled onions would be better next time. As a result, there was some left over, so we thought it was only right to play with the food in the way we were all told not to as children.

Crustless Quiche

2009-04-06T17:21:00.000+01:00

Having never made quiche before, not even with a crust, I decided it was about time to give it a go. The reason I decided on a crustless one was to make it healthier, so there was less guilt when eating it. I chose to make this quiche one Monday evening, not because it seemed like a good time, but because Ian ate my lunch for the next day so it was either make the quiche or eat canteen food. I found a recipe on my weight loss site, www.weightlossresources.co.uk, and set to (I left out the onion and replaced the ham with bacon). I'd already invested in some foil quiche trays, so that I wouldn't have too much washing up to do, and if I turned out to be really bad at quiche making, I didn't have a useless dish cluttering up space in my cupboards. I fried off some bacon and then chopped it into small pieces, mixed up the remaining ingredients and then added it all to the dish. I think the quantity of mixture was too much for the quiche dish, and it was quite hard getting the dish into the oven without spilling it everywhere. I think next time I'll put the dish on the oven shelf first, and add the mixture straight into it so that it doesn't have to travel very far.

The quiche was to cook for 40minutes, so I checked on it after 30, and it had almost quadrupled in size. This worried me slightly, but then when I took it out of the oven, it deflated back down to just above the edge of the tray. The next morning, I cut it into portions, although it was quite hard to extract from the tray. I had the quiche cold with some salad and Ian had his piece warmed up in the microwave with some chips. I think it was better hot, but I was too lazy to walk back to the microwave, and with the cold salad it wasn't too bad.

So, the quiche was a success, mainly because Ian actually ate half of it, and he doesn't really like quiche!

ingredients

375ml Milk, Semi Skimmed, Asda
120g Cheese, Mature, Grated, Healthy Eating, Tesco
70g Flour, Wholemeal, Self Raising, Allinson
100g Onions, Chopped, Frozen, Sainsbury's
114g Ham, Oven Baked, Dry Cure, Sliced, Asda
4 Eggs/200g Eggs, Free Range, Medium, Co-Op

Method

1. Beat eggs, milk and pepper together.

2. In a separate bowl mix together cheese, onion, ham and flour.

3. Add egg and milk mixture to flour mixture, folding until well blended.

4. Pour into a lightly greased dish and bake in a 200ºC oven for 40 minutes or microwave on Medium for 12 minutes.

Zizzi's

2009-04-04T07:00:00.000+01:00

This week it was my friends birthday, so we went over to Basingstoke to deliver her present and go out for a meal. The restaurant of choice was Zizzi's - a restaurant chain I've been to before but not this particular one.

I scanned the menu and found they did mussels as a starter so that was that choice sorted! I then took a look at the mains, and decided that I didn't like the look of any of the pizzas (I'm not a very big pizza fan). I've never had a risotto at a restaurant before, in fact, I've only ever had one risotto before which Ian's sister cooked. So I decided to give that a try - this particular one came with tiger prawns, calamari & salmon chunks.

The starters arrived - my mussels came without a bowl to put the shells in and with no finger bowl. This, in my opinion, is a major failure. The other problem with the mussels was that a lot of the shells were broken, which makes eating the sauce afterwards (which I have to point out was quite nice) a little risky as you're likely to swallow the shell. All of these things mean that some tasty mussels that would have received 7/10 actually got awarded 5/10. Another thing I should mention is that when I requested a finger bowl, the waitress brought me out a bowl of boiling water with lemons in, without pointing out to me that it was boiling - and when I put my fingers in and then went 'God that's bloody hot' she said she would return with some cold water - but never did!

Ian's starter was calamari - and this was nice, but the portion was exceedingly small. Because of this Ian is awarding it 3/10, and having seen the portion size - I have to agree! The other starter enjoyed by the group was something called 'Bruschetta al Pomodoro' - which my two friends were sharing. Now all four of us were expecting this to be hot - but it was literally just bread with some chopped tomatoes on top. I don't have scores from my friend but I'd have given it 5/10.

Next we come to the mains - my risotto was not good - the calamari was rubbery and the general rice flavour overpowered all the other flavours - I would have expected it to have been made with some sort of fish stock, but I couldn't taste any if it was - 6/10. Ian & the others all ordered their special 'rustica' pizzas - described as 'bigger, thinner & crispier'. Well, they were big, and thin, but I detected no crisp - in fact the piece of Ian's that I had was definitely soggy. The distribution of the tomato puree was a bit hit and miss, there was next to none in some places, and tonnes in others. Ian would have scored the pizza at 7/10, if it hadn't been for the fact that the restaurant was kind of a pizza restaurant! He expected much better and therefore gave it 5/10.

The best part of the meal (obviously apart from the company) was the Banana Con Cioccolata - Caramelised banana with toffee and chocolate sauce on a waffle served with ice cream. This was really good, the toffee sauce was very tastey - the dessert would have got a 8/10 if it hadn't been for the fact that this banana dessert only came with 4 small slices of banana - not even a whole banana! So, the marks had to be chopped to reflect this, giving it 6/10.

One other thing to note is that Ian ordered a 'lemonade' to drink, and in fact received a 'Sprite' which, as those of you who know Ian know, he quite likes, but he says it is wrong to serve someone a sprite when they have asked for a lemonade and I can't help but agree.

Mauritius Bar

2009-03-24T19:51:00.000Z

Having not seen my friends from the library where I used to work for ages, I travelled up to Norbury to meet everyone for a meal. We'd chosen a little restaurant on London Road, as it was nearby to the library so people could go straight there from work.

The place was deserted when we arrived, it looked like just the family of the owners in there. Our table wasn't ready to we got ourselves a drink and waited for everyone else to arrive before moving over to our table. One of our group is actually from Mauritius so we were all looking forward to sharing in some of her national dishes.

Unfortunately, the food was abysmal! We are assured that it was not representative of Mauritian food at all so I'd definitely give their cuisine another go, but not at this restaurant. So... the food. I ordered the whitebait to start, as there were only about 5 starters, and that seemed the best and I must admit, it wasn't bad - in fact, most people seemed happy with their starters, apart from the hour wait for them!

The mains were less successful - there was again about an hour wait for most, others had to wait longer. I'd order the red snapper which came with creole sauce, and it wasn't a bad taste, but the fish had been crucified! Several members of the group were vegetarians (or fish-phobic) and the menu didn't seem to have very many options for this so we'd asked the waiter if there was anything else they could do. He came back with the following options; Mixed vegetables in black bean sauce, mixed veg with sweet and sour sauce, or mixed veg and potato curry. These dishes seemed to be just frozen mixed veg and a sauce out of a jar - really not worth the money (or time) we'd spent on them.

At the end of the meal, I think the waiter could tell we had not had a very good experience, and tried to soften the blow with several random liqueurs. They didn't smell to bad (although they did smell quite toxic) but as I was driving I refused the bribery. So to sum up, the company was amazing and it was lovely to see some old friends and meet a few new ones. But the food was good, both in terms of taste, and value for money, and value for time! 2/10!

Trip to Wimbledon Night 2

2009-03-15T22:04:00.000Z

So.. after the party, Ian still needed feeding - I'd had quite a bit to eat at the party so just wanted something light. We took a look at the menu of the place we were staying (The Rose & Crown) and as there was mussels I sent Ian off to the bar to order me those, and something for himself. They were out of mussels :(

Back to the room we went to get some money, and then back out to the village in search of food. This time we stopped a lot closer to the hotel, a restaurant called Piccolino's. As we only wanted something light, I went for the pasta with clams (cos the mean lady on the table next to us had just eaten the last of the mussels). Ian went for the Marinated prawn, swordfish and scallop skewers with saffron rice and cherry tomato sauce, with a side of chips cos he wasn't sure if he'd like the saffron rice. Turns out he did, but the chips were some of the nicest chips I've ever tried so I helped him eat those too! The swordfish was very good - I really wish I'd ordered the swordfish steak as it's a really meaty fish with tonnes of flavour. Ian gave the skewers 7/10 as although they were nice, it got cold really quickly. My clams were good but I really wanted the mussels (or the swordfish having tasted Ian's) as they have more flavour, so 7/10.

So our trip to wimbledon was full of good food, even though it was an expensive weekend, it was just what we both needed after a hectic couple of weeks at work.

Trip to Wimbledon Night 1

2009-03-14T21:21:00.000Z

Ian and I had to go to Wimbledon for the weekend for my aunts 60th birthday party, and while we were there we thought we'd sample some of the local cuisine. The first night we wandered down the High Street and came across a little restaurant called the Cote Bistro. It was nice and quiet, so Ian and I could enjoy some lovely conversation. The waitress bought us a bottle of complimentary mineral water which was a nice touch.

The starters arrived, I had ordered the mussels (what a surprise!) and Ian had ordered the calamari. The mussels were amazing, the portion wasn't huge, but the individual mussels were and that meant they were packed with flavour, 9/10. Ian's calamari was also really good, it was the right texture, it hadn't gone rubbery like it can do if overcooked, 8/10.

The mains were brought to the table not long after. Ian had ordered one of the specials, Roast Duck with cherries with potato gratin and watercress. I thought it an interesting combination, I knew Ian liked both duck and cherries, but I wasn't sure what he'd think of them together. They worked perfectly together, the sweetness of the cherries mixed with the flavour of the duck made you 'ooo' involuntarily, and this is why Ian gave it 10/10! He didn't eat the yummy potato gratin which I stole, but instead had chips, which were skinny and crispy and very nice. My main was a fillet steak, which was cooked medium rare. The steak was really good, although the outside of it was a bit peppery for my tastes, but was interesting to try, 8/10.

Now, having had two really good courses, we couldn't resist trying the dessert menu. Ian ordered the creme caramel - which was billed as the restaurants speciality, and we weren't disappointed. The caramel flavour was intense, and I contemplated ordering a second one for myself! Ian is giving it 7/10, as although it was a really amazing creme caramel, he says it was still only a creme caramel. I had a tarte tatin (apple tart) which was good but I kept losing the apple on the way to my mouth! 6/10.

So, a good evening was had by all, and we returned to the hotel with nice full bellies (although Ian did later polish off a whole bag of popcorn!).

My Favourite Day of the Year

2009-02-24T21:55:00.000Z

PANCAKE DAY!!!! I love Shrove Tuesday, because although I know I can eat pancakes any day of the year, I don't, and then this day comes and I eat enough to last me the whole year! My problem got out of hand two years ago, when, egged on by lots of friends, I managed to eat about 15 pancakes (and then felt very sick). So these days I try to be a bit more reserved. However, I can't resist a little bit of competition, so out came the scoreboard again - I think you'll see I did pretty well!Every year, I always try to get a picture of the mandatory pancake tossing, but as my old camera used to take about 20 seconds before it took the picture, meaning that it was pretty much impossible to get the picture. This year I have a nice new camera, so her is the action shot we've all been waiting for.
Having written this post I now want more pancakes! Hurry up next year!!

Girlie Night Out

2009-02-21T21:18:00.000Z

Now, usually we have girlie nights at someones house, and we all bring food to fit in with a theme. But, for a change we decided to go out for a meal. Galicia's in South Croydon was our restaurant of choice. I've been before but this time we decided to order from the tapas menu. There was discussion on how many dishes to order each because we weren't sure how big each portion was. We made the decision to go for three dishes each. About 15mins later our food began to arrive. 5mins after that, the extra table was brought over so we could fit all the food! So.. the moral is, if you go to Galicia's, two dishes each is enough!

The three dishes I ordered were, black pudding with cannellini beans and pork; mussels; and meatballs. The first dish I wasn't too impressed with - the black pudding wasn't as good as other black pudding that I've had, the beans were just beans, and the pork was mainly just fat, 5/10. The mussels were awesome, really good portion size, tasty sauce, and wonderfully cooked, 9/10. The meatballs were also really tasty, a good texture and there were 5 in a portion, 8/10.

Some of the other food I sampled - the whitebait, I ate most of this because the rest of the girlies turned their noses up at this (so you're probably wondering who ordered it - I made my sister!). This was good at first, but the portion was huge and I soon got bored, but I'll still give it 7/10. The patatas bravas was nicely spicy and the potatoes weren't too hard, which can sometimes be a problem, 7/10. The spanish omelette was average, 6/10. The peppers in olive oil weren't really my thing, 3/10, the pork wasn't nice - bit chewy and strange taste, 2/10. The aubergine dish that we ordered for the veggie was very nice, but I don't remember what is was called, it was kind of like a lasagne type dish but with aubergine instead of pasta, 7/10.

Now, I'm not really sure that's all the food but there was sooo much I'm having trouble remembering it all! Also, the sangria helped wash it all down very well!

Pub Lunch at the Forge

2009-02-20T21:34:00.000Z

It had been a long time since we'd been to the Old Forge in Otterbourne, as the last time we went there was a caterpillar in my food, and the roasted veg looked very much like it had been boiled to death. But, that was over a year ago, so we decided it was time to give it another try.

It was a lunchtime outing, and we had to be back at work within the hour, so we only had one course. I ordered the Pork & Wild Boar Sausages. These came with no veg, just mash & gravy. I was also a bit concerned with the speed they came out so figure they were probably microwaved - which for the price I think is shoddy. 7/10

Ian ordered Pork fillet with black pudding & caramelised apple. The portion was tiny and the apple was unidentifiable. Apparently the pork had no flavour (I didn't get to try it because I noted how small it was and didn't want to deprive Ian!) and the accompanying veg was sat in water. 4/10

Friend K ordered Sticky honey & lemon chicken with chips. Her comments were 'the chips were good, right amount of crispness and saltiness. Portions bit small for the price. Sauce was more like a salad dressing, not as thick as you would expect for something advertised as 'Sticky' 7/10'

So... to be honest, it was a bonus there wasn't a caterpillar in my food, but I don't think we'll be going back.

Candy Floss!

2009-02-07T21:09:00.000Z

For Christmas, Ian got a candy floss maker. We experimented with it earlier, but since then we have ordered candy floss colouring so that we can experience the candy floss properly. Here is a picture of the sugar after we added the colouring. Here's what the candy floss looked like. I must say, although the candy floss maker is not the most healthy addition to our household, it is probably the easiest gadget we have to clean and therefore I love it .Look out for the other colours - pink, green & yellow!

Birthday Dinner

2009-01-14T04:00:00.000Z

Now, the purpose of this blog was to document my attempt at cooking - but as it's on the theme of food, I thought restaurant reviews would fit well too. So.. for my birthday we went to one of our favourites, Keats in Ampfield. It's an italian, and we took along 3 friends. So.. we've decided to score out of 10 for each course.

Friend H - Starter, Mozzarella Carozza 8/10; Main, Pollo Milanese 6/10 - comments, chicken was odd, and the pasta bland; Dessert, Black cherry cheesecake 8/10

Friend K - Starter, Garlic Bread 7/10 - comments, good but pretty average and a bit too "herby"; Main, Penne Pasticciate 8/10 - comments, tasty, good size portion, but basically a pasta bake; Dessert, Pavlova 9/10 - comments, docked one point for being expensive, but probably the best pavlova I've ever had.

Me - Starter, Mussels 8/10 - comments, I love mussels so I could have eaten about three portions!; Main, Chateaubriand 9/10 - comments, this is the best steak ever, it just melts in your mouth, and it comes with a decent portion of chips and veg; Dessert, Pavlova 8/10 - comments, I'm more of a fan of chewy meringues than powdery, but the taste was good.

Birthday baking

2009-01-12T16:56:00.000Z

What I don't understand is that when you're growing up and you have a birthday, people bring you presents and bake you a cake. But when you get old and go to work, you have to bake lots of cakes and take them to work as a present for your colleagues. How is that fair?! Anyway, this year I turned 25 and spent the weekend before my birthday baking. I decided to make fairy cakes as they always go down well, and Ian wanted to make brownies, and I figured it was about time to try a new recipe. I found a recipe in a tiny little book that my mum had bought me - 'lemon crumble bars' - which looked good, and I figured it would make a change to the lemon drizzle that I'm always making. I followed the recipe exactly, and used a 9in square tin as it said, but the mixture hardly covered it. The bars tasted good, but I think next time I'll use a smaller tin to make the bars the right size and right ratio of crumble to lemon filling. Also, I'd probably make the filling a bit more lemony. I'd add the recipe but the book is sat on my desk at work, so will append it later.

Steak Night

2009-01-04T16:32:00.000Z

Over Christmas my mum annoyingly let slip that she used to cook my dad a steak every week, and Ian complained that he hardly ever gets steak. So, I promised Ian steak night before we went back to work and had the new diet. Now, when I make steak, it's a special occasion, so I do a starter, main & dessert. For starters, I decided to do baked camembert with little toasts as that usually goes down well with Ian. I'd picked up a lower fat camembert from waitrose so I stuck that in the oven like I normally do, and then when I came to slice the top off, I was a bit surprised to see something that looked a bit like a sponge! It was very disturbing looking, and we thought maybe if we put it back into the oven for a while it might sort it out a little. However, after about 10 mins more in the oven, it still looked the same, so we decided to give it a try. It tasted just like camembert - but had the wrong texture. So... this blog entry is not really about steak at all (although the steak was fab) but more of a warning to others - do not try and bake low fat camembert - the result is just too wierd!

Freezer Cooking

2009-01-02T17:59:00.000Z

Having now found the cable for my camera, I can get back to blogging. At the start of the month I decided to have a go at cooking for the freezer. As it was my first attempt, I only made one recipe, lasagne, but I managed to make 4 portions to store in the freezer for the nights when we couldn't be bothered to cook. It's quite nice to be able to come home and have a nice home made meal, but with no effort, and hardly any washing up. Next time I try it, I'm going to make more lasagne, cottage pie, maybe a curry and some cookies.

Leftover Pie

2008-12-27T23:14:00.000Z

After Christmas, even though we don't have a massive turkey, we still had quite a lot of our supersized chicken left over. I believe my mum usually makes a chicken stew with this, but as this has onion and other stuff that Ian wont eat in, and as we were staying slightly longer this christmas, we had to think of other ideas for the leftovers. So, Ian decided on a chicken, black pudding and apple pie. I'm told this basically involved chucking it all in a saucepan with some chicken stock, and boiling until reduced and a nice piey consistency. The filling is then putting into a dish, and some shop bought puff pastry laid over the top, with the edges tucked in as we'd seen Jamie Oliver do for his leftover turkey and leek pie a few days previously. I made some slits in the top with a knife and we baked it until golden. With some mash, it was very very tasty. Not yummy, because I've been told that I use yummy too much. Tasty delicious scrumptious delectable etc etc but definitely not yummy!.

Christmas baking

2008-12-24T23:09:00.000Z

Usually, my mum does the majority of the Christmas baking with my help, but this year, following an operation to fix her carpel tunnel problems, she was a hand down and consequently I was left in the kitchen all of Christmas eve! (She kept me company which I guess is something - oh and she made a jelly :D ). The first thing on the list was to make sausage rolls - simple, grab some sausage meat, fry some onions, mix them up, put this in the middle of some puff pastry and bake!Next was a Christmas cake - now in my house, this is not a fruit cake, but in fact a chocolate sponge! I made two chocolate sponges, then started to make the butter icing for the middle. As most of my mums recipes are as old as her (!) they aren't given in grams but in tablespoons and apparently the measurements change depending on what it looks like. Not being my mum (and therefore not knowing what I was looking for), I followed her instructions and ended up almost killing my arm trying to mix the icing sugar into the butter. We then added some cocoa into the butter icing, which then resulted in it being too runny, so more icing sugar was needed. The cake was meant to just have a melted chocolate top, but with the vast quantity of butter icing now made, we decided to put it both inside the cake, and on top. Then I added a few Christmas cake toppers and put the cake to one side. Lastly, for dessert on Christmas day, we'd decided on Eton Mess (meringue, cream and raspberries all smashed together to make a mess!). So, I whisked up 8 egg whites with 1lb of sugar, shaped with two dessert spoons and placed on baking trays. I then baked these in the oven for 45mins at gas mark 1 - I'd cut down the cooking time because the spoons I used for shaping were smaller than the ones I'd have used at home, so thought they'd need less time to cook. After cooking, the meringues should be left in the oven until the oven has cooled. When trying to remove the meringues from the baking paper, I found that they weren't very cooked in the middle at all - so I baked them for another half hour! I'm not sure if it was that they gave them a great chewiness, but they were great meringues! (tip for the leftover egg yolks, yummy scrambled egg!)After all the baking I was in need of a sit down - but instead went to Midnight Mass with my mum whilst Ian cooked the pork ready for dinner the next day (our oven is quite small so we had to try and get ahead somehow). So, at about 1am christmas morning, I was eating roast pork and longing for sleep - perfect! Which is just how Christmas dinner turned out, and no thanks to me, all the credit goes to Ian who made the tastiest roast chicken ever. He's a very very clever man!