A love letter to coffee

Dear Coffee

When we first met I was young and I didn’t like you, you tasted funny, and you seemed far too old for me. Soon I learnt that you were a great vehicle for dipping in rich tea biscuits, especially when spending afternoon’s at Grandma’s, leaving the biscuits in there so long they dropped off and dissolved into you.

As I got older and moved away from home we fooled around; a milky latte here, a cappuccino there, but we never made it official. In my second year of Uni, things got more serious, and I remember ringing Dad to ask him if you could have too many coffees. I was so naive.

At 21 things between us became intense. Espressos and macchiato’s became a daily, sometimes hourly event. The smell of you bubbling away on the stove in my little flat brings back so many memories, and I learnt to really appreciate you.

By the time I moved back to England I knew you’d be in my life forever. You gave me the perfect, inexpensive excuse to catch up with friends, relax, treat myself, and got me through hours of lectures and long library stints. I played around with adding syrups to you, but I kept coming back to you on your own, plain and simple.

Now we’ve settled into a routine like a married couple. Every morning you wake me up and set me up for the day. Whenever I’m down in the day I know you’ll pick me up, weather you’re on your own, or double dating with some soy milk. At weekends I look forward to spending time with you and friends, experimenting with your different flavours and roasts, there’s always something new to try with you. You make my weekends relaxing, I can’t wait to spend a long, lazy Sunday with you and the TV.

So, coffee, I just wanted to say – thank you, and I love you. I hope you’ll stick by me forever, you’ve given me so many happy memories, and I couldn’t be without you.

Always in your debt

Emma xxx

Fitspirational bloggers I love

I love finding new blogs to read, and I’m always on the hunt for new blogs, which invariably means that my bloglovin’ unread blog count is well over 300. However, there are some blogs I read without fail whenever they have a new post. I’m going to list some of my favourite fispirational bloggers, and I’ll also post other types of bloggers I love over the coming weeks.

1.  Meals and Miles. Meghann’s was one of the first blogs I started to read, and in that time I’ve read about her completing countless races, and most inspirationally perhaps, she just completed an Iron(wo)man.  I love how Meghann has a full time job, is recently married, and still finds time to train, work, and have fun!
2. Pumps and Iron. For me this blog is probably the ultimate in fitspo, Nicole posts regular work outs that are actually do-able at home, including a no-jump one, great for when you live on the top floor of a block of flats! She also posts really lovely looking recipes, and she’s a big juice fan, just like me, plus she’s gorgeous to boot!
3. The Runner Beans. Charlie is really into running, having completed two marathons and training for more in the pipeline, plus she’s currently midway through a 21 day yoga challenge. I love her running and race recaps, plus she tries out and reviews loads of really amazing and interesting exercise classes in the capital, making me wish I lived that bit closer to central London!
4. Running Cupcake. I found Maria’s blog ages ago, but I’ve only recently got to know her well through commenting on each other’s blog. Maria was a successful runner having completed a marathon, but then became ill and had to start from scratch again with her running. She’s back up to doing great distances in super impressive times too, and makes me wish I could be that fast! Plus she posts some pretty tasty recipes too, which definitely gives me the baking bug!
5. Peanut butter fingers. Again, it feels like I’ve been reading Julie’s blog for years! She regularly posts the work outs she has completed, which all seem very manageable with some simple gym equipment. Julie also posts her eats and regular healthy yummy recipes, which whilst American, are pretty easy to recreate in an English kitchen!

What blogs, if any, do you read for fitspiration? Are there any missing from my list?

 

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Cote d’or bouchee

Have you ever seen or heard of these little elephant shaped chocolate moments of heaven? I’m not sure the first time I tried a bouchee, I think I pinched one from my Mum’s box that she’d bought back from a holiday to France. Ever since then I’ve been hooked. I don’t know what it is that I love so much about them, possibly the hazelnut and almond centre, oh my!

I have memories of my brother going on a school trip to France and bringing me back several boxes of them, and them not lasting long. Each time I have friends who go to France I ask them to bring me back some if they see them. They’re getting harder and harder to find though unfortunately.

In England they’re virtually impossible to get hold of, especially now my two favourite delis Crebers in Tavistock and Partridges on the King’s Road seemed to have stopped selling them the last time I visited them. So, when I saw them for sale in a teeny tiny shop in Southwold at the weekend I snapped up two as a treat. They’re both gone now, and I wish I made them last longer. If anyone knows where I can get them easily in the UK, let me know!!!

Apologies for a rather long post about a rather small piece of chocolate!

Too much | Sampha

If you do one thing today, please, please, just take three minutes out of your day and ignore all other distractions to listen to this. I heard it on Jo Whiley’s evening show, and I think it’s beautiful.

Cook book challenge

I have a confession to make. I have something of an obsession with cook books. I read them in bed at night instead of regular books, which my Mum calls ‘food porn’. I don’t think it’s quite that bad though! As I alluded to in my 2014 resolutions, this year I want to make more of the cook books I have. I love nothing more than going into WHSmith to see the latest deals on their cook books, not to mention the treasure trove that is charity shops, and then there’s the Aladdin’s cave known as TK Maxx. I also firmly believe the cook books a person owns (if at all), says a lot about who they are as a person. I’m not quite sure how many cook books I own, but it’s about two shelves of a bookcase, so I’d say quite a lot! They vary from baking, vegan, diet, student, time saving, nationality specific, and thanks to Bess, preserves.

Whilst I love reading the cook books for ideas and inspiration, it’s rare I often actually follow a recipe from the book, and although I think this has made me a better and more experimental cook, I’ve decided I need to actually see if these people who make a living doing my dream job actually make recipes that the regular person, not professionally trained, can manage (yes, I’d love to be a TV chef and write cook books and travel learning how to cook different techniques and cuisines)! I’m hoping I can learn some different techniques, use new ingredients, and try new to me foods (I’m looking at you, shellfish).

So, throughout 2014 I hope to try at least one new recipe a fortnight, and report back to you. I’m going to be ‘judging’ the recipes and cookbooks on ease of getting ingredients, cost, time taken, ease to follow, and of course, taste! I don’t plan on doing 26 recipes from 26 different books as that could get expensive, so there may be some repetition of cook books, and chefs, but I hope you enjoy, and I think it’ll be great for me to look back on at the end of the year and see how I’ve done.

Do you own many cook books? Where’s your favourite place to look for new recipes? Do you stick to the same set of things to cook, or do you experiment?

A new obsession

We’re already onto the second series and it hasn’t even been 24hours. I think it’s safe to say we’re hooked as a family.

Other than that today has been filled with seeing my Grandma, quilting, dropping my Nanny off, and buying a sewing machine! I’m so excited for it to arrive, and finally start making some real progress on my quilt, and so many other projects. I’ve already been searching for lots of craft blogs.

How’s your boxing day been?

A new obsession | San Fermin

I’m not ashamed to admit I listen to Radio 2. I love it. Especially Chris Evans, Jo Whiley, Jamie Cullum and Dermot O’leary. It’s where the cool kids are at. I discover loads of wicked cool new songs thanks to Radio 2, and this is no exception. I’m obsessed with it. I’m even contemplating going to see them on Monday night in London if I can find anyone daft enough to go with me?? Tickets are only £9! I was going to wait for this to be a magic song for December, but it’s too good not to share with you now.

Vegan Pumpkin & Hazelnut Cookies

It seems like everywhere I look on Pinterest and blogs at the moment there is a serious pumpkin fever. I bought some tinned pumpkin last year and so I decided to make something with some left over tins from last year. My first choice for this Autumn was ‘Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies’ however I made some changes. The following recipe is based on Vegan with a Vengance, but with my modifications.

                

Ingredients

(I made half the stated amount)

• 225g plain flour
• 125g rolled oats
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 300g sugar (I used Demerara)
• 150ml sunflower oil (recipe states rapeseed)
• 250ml canned pumpkin
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extraxt
• 115g hazelnuts
• 1 handful of dried fruits

-Preheat the oven to 180 degrees

-Mix all of the dry ingredients together, and in a separate bowl mix the wet ingredients

-Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in three stages, adding the nuts and fruits last

-Drop by tablespoons onto the greased baking sheets. Flatten the tops with a fork or spoon and make into a cookie shape.

-Bake for around 16mins and then leave to cool.

These cookies are super moist and a bit chewy, and so healthy too! I’m sure they’d also taste excellent with choc chips, other nuts (I want to use almonds next time), or maybe other dried fruits.

I now have half a can of pumpkin I need to use up!! Any suggestions?

Celebrating Shakespeare’s birthday with a Whirligig

Last weekend I celebrated Shakespeare’s birthday in style at The Globe. It was a pretty awesome night filled with magic, mayhem and music.

We started the celebrations with dinner at Tas restaurant on Borough High Street. Originally we had planned to go to Wagamama’s (my Mum’s favourite), but when we realised a Wagamama’s was opening up near where they live very soon we decided to try somewhere different and non-chain. After searching round on Google and TripAdviser we settled on Tas as it is so close to The Globe.

There is so much choice on the menu I found it really, really hard to decide what to have.

The ginormous menu!

In the end I was torn between two chicken casserole dishes and the sea bass with lentils. I ended up getting talked into sharing the chicken kebab and one of the chicken casserole dishes – both delicious!

For our starters we all decided to share lots of meze dishes. They were all delicious, but I particularly loved the hummus and the halloumi. Yum!

Hummus, halloumi, tabbouleh, bread, bulgar wheat

My little meze plate

Chicken casserole, chicken kebab, lamb and puree aubergine

My plate! I had this x 2. Oops!

The food at Tas was really very good. The chicken kebab was so succulent and tender, and the chicken casserole had whole almonds in it which was a really good addition. I am glad I got to share both dishes, they were so tasty. I tried a little bit of my Dad’s lamb and aubergine puree which was very good too. I’m not sure what they did to the aubergine’s but they almost tasted barbequed and smokey. Unusual but pretty tasty.

After dinner at Tas we made the short walk over to The Globe. We really couldn’t have been much luckier with the weather, it was dry, sunny and warm. Perfect for spending a few hours outside having a good time!

I’ve always wanted to go to The Globe and the inside of it is just as spectacular as I imagined. It really felt like stepping back in time and there was such an atmosphere inside, it was truly magical.

Isn’t it beautiful inside?

The evening started with Barry and Stuart from the TV show The Magician’s. I haven’t seen their TV show before although I think I did recognise them a little from adverts or something. Anywho, they were absolutely brilliant! Their tricks and jokes were a little skin crawling at a time, but in a good/funny way and my whole family were laughing at all their tricks!

Next up was a musician and actor called Johnny Flynn. Now, I had never heard of Johnny Flynn before but it appears he had a big following as there were lots of girls in the audience who knew all the words. To be honest, his type of music wasn’t for me. It was a little mournful and a bit ‘samey’. If you like his music, I apologise!

Next up was another magician and mind reader, Chris Cox. I didn’t find him all that funny and I didn’t take any photos I’m afraid. Meh!

Afterwards was Piff the Magic Dragon. Piff reminded me a lot of Jack Dee, and I really enjoyed his act, particularly his little dog Mr Piffle!

And finally on the stage came my favourite band – The Magic Numbers! I think I’ve seen them a grand total of 10 times now and they never fail to disappoint me. They played music from their new, unreleased fourth album and some old classics too. The venue was absolutely amazing to see them perform in, it was truly magical.

Sorry for the poor photos of them, it was pretty dark by this point at night! I have plenty of photos of the band jamming from previous gigs I can share with you at another time. But I have to say, they were all fantastic and I am so excited for their new album to come out. As soon as they release tour dates in the South East you can bet I’ll be there!!

So that was Shakespeare’s birthday, it was a pretty cool night. Although for a Sunday I was pretty tired getting back to work at 1am. Totally worth it!

Pumpkin Cupcakes

It’s that time of year when the blog world goes crazy for pumpkin! Last year I only had one tin of pumpkin, and made two batches of some Vegan pumpkin and hazelnut cookies and they were delicious! So far I’ve used half a tin of pumpkin to make some delicious cupcakes and I’m constantly on the hunt for more recipes. These are perfect for a weekend of baking and got rave reviews at work – enjoy!

I used a recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery found after a quick google search here.

I modified the recipe slightly because we couldn’t find any baking powder, so we used a mixture of bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar. I think this meant my cupcakes didn’t rise as much as they would have done normally, sadly.

Instead of using the frosting recipe found with the cupcake recipe I found a recipe for cinnamon frosting found here. Man oh man do I want to try the carrot cake from the recipe too! Next time!!

Things I learnt from this round of cupcake making – I need a piping bag and some baking powder.

What shall I do with the rest of my pumpkin?