All posts filed under: DO NOT USE

Beef and spinach curry with spring onion cakes

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My new thing is cookbooks. I’m a 23 year old girl and I’d rather sit at home reading a good cookbook and cook a delicious meal than go out clubbing. Am I old before me years?! I don’t care – I’ve had my fair share of ‘fun’ over the years and now I just love devouring a delectable book page by page, picking out recipes that I want to recreate. So I was a VERY happy bunny when Stephanie Alexander’s ‘Kitchen Garden Companion’ landed on my doormat. I do have a garden, although it doesn’t get much sunlight. In fact, it pretty much doesn’t get ANY sunlight due to the massive (albeit beautiful) trees surrounding. The best I have is a (sort of) ‘roof terrace’. What I really mean when I say ‘roof terrace’ is a flat gravelled roof that we occasionally use for sunbathing in the summer. We are just in the process of refurbing an old bedroom and making it into a kitchen and the ‘roof terrace’ is accessible through that kitchen widow. …

An evening of Canadian inspired food

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Three months ago I cooked Pancakes with Blueberries and Maple Syrup for breakfast. I wrote a post and the day after I was contacted by Nim from the Canadian Tourism Commission inviting me to an event that she was planning at L’Atelier des Chefs where food bloggers and writers could cook a few dishes using Canadian ingredients or inspired ingredients. This line of the email particularly got me ‘maybe you haven’t really thought before about Canadian foods or the culinary scene in this vast country so hopefully it would be an opportunity to find out more.’ She was right, I certainly had never thought about what constitutes as Candian cuisine – except obviously for maple syrup and I really did want to find out more. I wasn’t sure what to expect, partly because I had never been to L’Atelier des Chefs and party because I had no idea what foods we’d be cooking… although I was pretty sure that pancakes and maple syrup would be involved. The evening started with a range of freshly prepared …

Vintage at Goodwood

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For those of you who know me, you’ll know that my boyfriend is a part of the team that set up and worked on Vintage at Goodwood. So from the word go I knew all of the goings on behind the scenes. It was an exciting year in the lead up to the first event. Throughout the year I learned that there would be an arena for each different era, from the 1940’s to 1980’s. I also learned that there would be a pop up high street, the first of it’s kind and 200 + market stalls selling the finest Vintage clothing. This was to be the largest vintage market in the world! The attention to detail was fascinating – as I sat observing a meeting for all of the curators in our kitchen a couple of months before, I realised that this event could possibly be the best I’ll ever experience. The idea, for someone like me who loves Vintage but not one specific era is great because it allowed me to meander around …

Vintage at Goodwood tea party in Hyde Park

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This Saturday, armed with flyers, cakes, music and deckchairs, a few of us trailed to Hyde Park to enjoy the glorious sunshine before the Stevie Wonder gig in Hyde Park. We set up camp with our picnic table beautifully dressed, right before the entrance gate and staged a mini Vintage at Goodwood tea party having encouraged people to come down, bring a cake and join us for a cuppa. Vintage at Goodwood will be a celebration of British popular culture from 1940 – 1989, set in the glorious surroundings of the Goodwood Estate in West Sussex. The festival, in it’s first year will take place on 13th-15th August and will play host to a plethora of bands, DJ’s, stalls, cafes and fashion shows to name but a few of the goings on. There will even be the worlds biggest vintage fare (so get saving your pocket money now) Expect to hear live music from Faces, Buzzcocks, Earth Wind and Fire, Noisettes and what will most likely be my favourite – The Sandy Shaw Review, which …

Taste of London 2010

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I only had two hours to hot foot it around Taste of London this year before jumping on a train to Nottingham and my aim was to try as many dishes as I could in a short amount of time. I was on a mission – the tube journey on the way consisted of revising the programme and circling every restaurant that I wanted to visit and every dish that I wanted to try. There were quite a few and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to try them all due to time, money and stomach restraints (I did however skip breakfast so I could fit a little more in). To me, there didn’t seem much point in choosing dishes from restaurants that I have either visited before or that are easily accessible to me in terms of price. I chose to ignore the four lip-synching Malaysian dancers that greeted punters and headded straight to The Grill at The Dorchester where I ordered Pan roasted scallop with sardine pie and a cauliflower puree. A …