Foodie penpals – November 2013

I am so in love with foodie penpals – I’ve been sent some amazing treats from around the UK and Europe, and also had the chance to send some (hopefully) delicious goodies to random penpals across the UK (and one to Norway, in which Copenhagen is not!). The scheme takes a break for Christmas (quite […]

Stir it up Sunday

Note from the idiot: I thought stir it up Sunday was on 17 November, so I made my cake – and wrote this post – on the 17th. Someone kindly pointed out on my Facebook page that I had the dates wrong – whoops. So I had to leave the post for a week to […]

Marvellous Mauritius – Indian, Creole and French treats

We have just spent the most idyllic week in Mauritius – a true tropical paradise in the Indian ocean, full of the friendliest people I have met, and some of the most delicious food I have eaten. Whilst I was sad to return to freezing London, it has been nice to be the only tanned […]

Foodie penpals – October 2013

Foodie penpals seems to come around so quickly each month, and it’s such a pleasure to put a parcel together for others, and to receive a parcel which someone else has caringly shopped for and packed. It’s even more of a pleasure when you get to ‘meet’ really enthusiastic penpals, especially as that enthusiasm matches […]

Happy birthday dear blog

Wow – thanks to a notification from wordpress I just discovered that this blog is a year old! My first blog post was on 27 October 2012, and here we are, one year and 76 posts later (this one will be number 77). If I am honest, I didn’t believe I’d still be posting blog […]

GBBO challenge week 10 – pretzels

Oh woe is me – it was the last GBBO of 2013, and the last GBBO challenge blog post for me. I might have been feeling more sad about the end of this era of the blog, but I have been distracted by boiler problems, accepting a new job, and going on holiday. Well, after […]

Survival of the fittest

Finally our two weeks of annual leave has started. It hasn’t come a moment too soon as we’re shattered from rushing around at work and rushing around at home. We’ll be going away to Mauritius for a week, but are also enjoying spending some time in London. And a very nice way to start our […]

GBBO challenge week 9 – savoury canapes

I can’t believe there’s only one episode of the Bake Off left! I have really been enjoying my challenges (except the evil choux nuns) and I have even managed to get to my Weightwatchers goal weight – I am pretty impressed with myself considering the amount of cake and pies I have been eating over […]

GBBO challenge week 8 – vegetable cake

Find out more about by Great British Bake Off challenge. Okay, I admit it, this week is a complete cop-out. The technical challenge during week 8’s GBBO was a dacquoise – a layered cake of hazelnut meringue, coffee cream, chocolate ganache and crushed hazelnuts. I did seriously plan to make this cake, until my lovely […]

Sour grapes

Andrew and I detest gardening … not only because we are extremely lazy and are quite clueless about plants, but also because this year there are supposed to be poisonous spiders crawling amok in the gardens of the UK. If ever there was a perfect excuse not to garden, that was it. However, because we […]