Prezzo, Redhill

Just before Christmas, my mum had an operation on her knee. It was under general anaethestic so she needed someone to watch her afterwards to ensure she didn't blow up or something like that. She was due to go out for dinner with her friends for a catch up, and as she doesn't see them that often, I thought it'd be a good idea for her to go, but obviously I couldn't let her go on her own as she might spontaneously combust, or something like that. This meant I got to have a nice meal out too!

Although Prezzo is a chain, I have been to several and the quality does seem to differ between them, so I've made it clear which one we visited in the title.  While we waited for the rest of the group to arrive, we ordered some breads and olives to share as a group - I insisted on getting the Pane con cipolla (garlic pizza bread with caramelised balsamic onions and melted mozzarella cheese) because I've had it before and it's really good. It's also large enough to share although people seemed more concerned with chatting so I got to eat most of it!

For starters, I decided to go for something I'd not tried before - Arancini. These are described as crispy risotto balls with mushrooms, grana padano and mozzarella cheese with a tomato chilli dip. I think it would have benefited with some leaves or something to make it look more interesting, but the taste was good, and it was definitely something different and I'd consider it again.

Mum went for the bruschetta and I stole a bit of that. I liked the way it looked, with the yellow cherry tomatoes making it a complete traffic light of colours. The description on the menu definitely mentions red onion though, and I can't see any in the photo.

Prezzo does a lighter option for the mains, which I decided to go for as I'd already had a lot of food considering the amount of pre-starter I'd eaten. I went for the Goat's Cheese flatbread with side salad, and although it was the lighter option, it did look a little bit sparse on the toppings. It was still tasty though and I felt extra virtuous for going for the healthy option.

Mum was struggling to find something to eat as she's not a fan of spice, and wont eat creamy things. She settled on the Chicken and Roasted Pepper Fusilli and salad, and again, this was a bit sparse, with only two or three bits of chicken in it.

Noone opted for the strange special of the evening which had me giggling.

Having been so virtuous with the main course, I decided that meant I could eat cheesecake for dessert! I did regret this though, because cheesecake makes me sick but my brain goes crazy when eating out.

Christmas Revisited Part Two

When I was young we'd always have a light breakfast on Christmas day so as to be ready for the large Christmas lunch at midday. Ian grew up with a slightly different timetable on Christmas day and is used to a large breakfast and a later dinner. I like a full english so Ian's way seems pretty good to me!

This years fry up was even better because we were at Ian's parents so didn't have to make it!

Christmas dinner was also pretty epic, it took me ages to find some of it because it was piled so high! Look at all those lovely sprouts - I only have them at Christmas but I really love them so I might try and see if we can have them more often (by we I mean me, because Ian is not a fan). 

We enjoyed a few dinners out whilst up in Birmingham as Ian's parents were still trying to sort all the lose ends left over from their extension and so it was easier to wander along to the nearby restaurants. One restaurant was a steak house, that did amazing onion bread which I forgot to photograph but was so much better than the normal onion rings that normally accompany steak (although it was probably more filling so I struggled to get through the steak - I did eat Ian's bread too though so that might have been the problem!). We also visited The Oak, and I remembered to take pictures of only the starters this time, but I guess that's an improvement. These were chorizo fritters which were very tasty and nicely presented.

Ian preferred his starter which was goats cheese with a hazelnut crust and caramelised walnuts with apple puree. I can't remember what the red stuff was but the whole thing was good - I'm pleased we share starters!

When we got back home after our visit to Ian's parents, my mum and aunt came to visit for a second Christmas and some silly games, and Ian cooked another massive dinner. I've realised why I like my plates so much - because you don't often get blue food, so they stand out nicely from the food, but also adds a good amount of colour to the photos I take!   

A Christmas food round up wouldn't be complete without Christmas Pizza. Last Christmas we first experienced Christmas Pizza, and it was so amazing that we had to do it again.  Next year will be our turn to host it, so I need to document what the pizzas looked like so I can remember how to make it! We created an assembly line and managed to get through almost 8 pizzas between 8 people (which for reference doesn't need more than 2 tubs of mascarpone - my friend bought about four and ended up freezing the leftovers to make cheesecake with later - a slightly unsuccessful venture as it turned out.)

I made a nice trifle for dessert, but I'm going to allow that to get it's own post, as I took so many pictures during the process. 

Christmas Revisited

Now that the blogs are joined, I'm going to try and do a few more posts about crafty things from the gap on my other blog (the too guilty to post phase).

This is technically Ian's crafting that I'm about to show you. Every year (apart from Christmas 2010 for some reason) he makes me a christmas card. This year he stole his idea from an owl christmas tree ornament that a friend bought me. It's small enough that it can find a home, unlike some of the previous ones, which have been massive and are now collecting dust whilst waiting to be homed. It actually found a home on our christmas tree and so will be a nice reminder every year when I reuse it.

As well as the card, I also got the gift of extra stash goodies, as he ordered the cardboard from the internet and therefore couldn't tell how much he was ordering and we now have tonnes!

At Christmas, I decided to make my own wrapping paper. I went for simple brown paper stamped with some russian doll santas but it took quite a lot of time and we had quite a few presents to wrap. The parcels did look pretty when all tied up together with silver string, but I'm not sure it was worth the effort. 

I also had some fun wrapping escapades at Ian's parents. They were up to their eyeballs in tiling, carpeting and plumbing so the wrapping of the presents had fallen by the wayside. I'm no good at any of those things, so I took on the wrapping. Ian's mum didn't make it easy for me though, with a snow shovel for Ian's sister. I'm pretty proud of it though and it was a good challenge!

Whilst writing this post I've realised there was a lot of Christmas food related things that I've yet to post about too, so look out for Christmas Revisited part two!

People Pictures?

 

Since starting this blog, I've struggled with whether or not to include pictures of myself or friends on it. The friends part was the easier decision because I didn't want to annoy anyone by putting pictures of them on the web without them knowing. But deciding whether to link my own face with my blog was quite difficult. I'm not ashamed of my blog. It's not that at all. But it was never about showing myself off, it was more about sharing my baking experiences with people (and my future forgetful self).The only place you'll find me featured is in the Cupcake Bouquet post, but I'm not looking at the camera. 

Until recently, it's wasn't a hard thing to do. I took pictures of food, and I posted them. But as I've started to blog more, I've more varied things I want to post about, and some of these topics come with photos that I'm in. I've also realised that I've got an online presence and if you click through to my flickr account, you will find pictures of me anyway. You know my name so you could even google me if you wanted. So, is there any need to be hidden? Would it be nicer to know who you were talking to?

Bit of a rhetorical question really because I've already decided to come out and play a bit more often. Ian's even said he doesn't mind popping up in a post either. I've not checked with my friends yet, so they wont feature anytime soon (and that's not because I don't have any, honest!).

So here I am, coming out from hiding! Hope to see you again soon! (Also, just to point out in case you couldn't tell from the pictures - I'm a little crazy!).

Week 8 Photo Challenge

We start week 8 with a romantic gesture by Ian on valentines day. We don't really celebrate valentines, but he surprised me by turning up at breakfast at work with a hash brown and ketchup on his plate. He likes neither of these and so I was a bit confused why he'd bought them, and then he said that it was a valentines hash brown for me! I was so excited and it was the tastiest hash brown ever!

I subscribe to several food magazines, and as part of reading them, I add post-its for recipes that I'd like to try and then photocopy them ready to add them to the favoured recipes folder if they cut it on the first trial. This months copy seemed to have lots of recipes I wanted to try, it makes the magazine look a bit funny afterwards!

Day 47 saw me and my friend baking cheesecake in an attempt to use up some marscapone leftover from Christmas pizza back in december that she'd frozen. Unfortunately the cheese didn't make it, but she rushed out to get replacement cheese while I tried not to be too nosey in her house. The cheesecake was very yummy and is a recipe I've made before.

Do you remember the picture of my tidy sofa a few weeks ago? Well, it didn't last - check out the mess! One day I'll master keeping things tidy - it only got messy because I was trying to sort through some boxes I found in the study and I got bored halfway through! (if you look carefully you'll see the undeveloped films on the left - we got those back, and they were all from Ian's first cruise back in 2002. We discovered that he didn't go to Dubrovnik for the first time on our honeymoon, he just forgot that he'd been before!)

My aunt came down to visit on day 49 for another games evening and we broke out a game we got as a wedding gift, our first ever cooperative board game, Pandemic. It's a different experience because you all have to work together or noone wins, and there's no ganging up on one person.

We finished off week 8's weekend by finally sorting out the curtain situation and we now have matching curtains, which I'm really in love with. We also moved the television and the bay looks nice and large and I can't resist dancing about in all the new space we've got. 

Day 51 was online shopping day and the arrival of pancake day ingredients. You'll know how much I love pancakes from my previous posts about them here, here and here.

I'm running about a week behind in my photo challenge posts as last week when I tried to post, flickr was broken so I couldn't add pictures and everyone knows posts without pictures are just pants. I'll catch up after the end of February because I only have two days left to read my book for this month and I'm only half way through it - oops!

The Real China, Eastleigh

This is the most recent addition to the Eastleigh cinema complex, and we were going to wait until a friend from work had tried it first to minimise risk if it turned out to be rubbish. Tonights dinner was mean to be massaman lamb, but unfortunately the curry paste we'd bought was different to the normal one and it was very oniony so Ian refused to use it (that's the danger of shopping online, you can't always see what you're getting). As I'm currently trying to complete the no takeaway challenge, we decided to use the opportunity to try this restaurant. 

The decor is pretty, although I've subsequently read on trip advisor that people have noticed the floor is lifting away already but I didn't personally spot that. They have a nice little pond type thing in the entry way with fish in, although I don't really see the point, it's quite a waste of space and the fish didn't look overly happy.

The restaurant is purely a buffet place so we ordered some drinks and then made our way up for starters. Not everything is labelled, but there was a decent amount of choice, although there were some normal chinese starters that weren't present (sesame prawn toast, wontons, seaweed). Everything seemed lukewarm which was disappointing. When we went back up for the duck course, there was no duck available so we moved on to the mains. There was the usual chinese selection but also some szechuan mains and a few thai ones also, although these were off to one side and could easily be missed. Again, everything was cold, and so by this point I was a bit fed up. 

I spotted they'd replenished the duck so was hopeful of a decent plateful of food finally, and stocked up on duck and pancakes. Despite only just being brought out, the duck was also cold, and didn't really taste like crispy duck should (it was not crispy and it was pretty bland) so again I was disappointed. 

Ian and I failed to find anything more than lukewarm, and so we thought we'd see what the dessert was like and then give up. There was one dessert that looked like a combination of rocky road and trifle. I asked the waiter what it was and he didn't even seem to know.  The other desserts included Mr Kipling cakes sliced in half with some extra icing on top, or jelly babies!

There was meant to be a teppanyaki station where you could choose your own food to be cooked in front of you, which I think is likely to be the only chance for a hot meal here, but unfortunately noone was around to cook anything.

I never expect great things from buffets, but I do expect the food to be hot, and for £12 it really wasn't worth it. I will not be visiting again!

Pancake Day!

My annual pancake party was hosted yesterday and it was good. I get very excited about pancake day, possibly too excited, which is why it's probably best it only happens once a year. At least 30 pancakes were consumed (there were 6 of us) with several different toppings. I went for one savoury with cheese and ham, a couple with sugar and lime juice (lemon is so last year), one with nutella and banana, and one with toffee sauce, ice cream and banana. Did you all have pancakes? What's your favourite topping?