cheese

Word of the Week -Farm

October 27, 2017 by Anne Sweet 6 Comments

This week my word of the week is Farm.

Half term is flashing by so quick. I’ve so enjoyed not having to rush around in the morning and just chilling with the kids. I think we may have chilled a bit too much though as we didn’t leave the house for five days!
The kids didn’t seem to mind, they’ve been playing with their toys and crafting, and generally making a right old mess for Daddy to clean up. (sometimes I’m happy there are things I can’t do anymore, like pick things up off the floor!)

We finally had our day out yesterday, I’d booked us into a pumpkin carving session at a local farm. Good job it was local as I’d only gone and booked the wrong day!! So now we are pumpkin carving on Saturday instead. At least we have something to look forward too, again.

As we were already at the farm I thought we’d take a look around. We’ve been meaning to visit for a long time, this farm is literally five minutes away in the car. We walked into the shop and I couldn’t believe how big it was, I mean it was as big as a supermarket. There was a huge fruit and vegetable section, a bakery, a butchers, a gift shop, loads of chutney’s and jams, biscuits, cheese, tea, coffee and a lot more! I bought cheese…lots of it, cheese with nuts, cheese with fruit, spicy cheese, blue cheese. All in small pieces, mind, just so we can try it out and go back and buy our favourites. I did buy a load of other stuff, but I wanted to get even more so I’m thinking we’ll be going back there again, probably very soon.

After we left the shop we spotted a mobility shop so we decided to go and look in there. The we discovered just how huge an area this was and there were so many other shops. I managed to persuade hubby that he didn’t need to go into the golf shop and we went into a big warehouse instead. I haven’t been to a warehouse in ages and we had great fun looking around this one. They sold just about everything. I have been wanting some new Christmas decorations for a while so we stocked up on them, and they were half the price you’d pay in a regular shop. We let the kids have some little things to play with (craft stuff again!) and I found some lovely fluffy bed socks for my freezing cold feet (96p a pair!)

We left exhausted, but happy. And my purse was a lot lighter. I think when we go on Saturday it will be for the pumpkin carving only, but me and the hubby are planning on another trip to that warehouse before Christmas.

The Good Food Show 2017

June 21, 2017 by Anne Sweet 3 Comments

A couple of weeks ago I told you about the Good Food Show and Gardener’s World Live at the NEC Birmingham. I couldn’t wait to go but unfortunately we couldn’t go when we wanted to. On the Thursday I was struck with a migraine, then on Friday, Star was feeling to sick to go to school. So, we had to go on Saturday with all the kids in tow.

It was a little more stressing taking the kids and we didn’t manage to see all we wanted to see. We even did’t get to go around Gardner’s World Live which was really disappointing.

What we did get to do though is see the lovely, and fit, Joe Wicks cook in the Super Theatre. He was very entertaining and the meals he cooked where really easy but looked so tasty, and they smelt real good too, even nose sensitive Star was enjoying the smell.

After the show Boo was adamant that she wanted to buy one of his books, so we did! It’s actually pretty good and although it’s not family aimed, (most of the recipes are for one or two) the recipes are easy enough to adapt and I’m sure Boo is going to be able to make some of them. She wants to start with creamy chicken pie.

Joe Wicks told us of his hope to smash the World Record for the largest ever HIIT* session at Hyde Park on Wednesday 5th July starting at 6pm. He assured us it was going to be a great evening with lots of entertainment as well as exercise. Please take a look at his website The Body Coach if you are interested.

*HIIT = High Intensity Interval training. Train for 20 seconds, rest for 40, and it’s over in 15 mins!

I think Joe was definitely our biggest highlight of the show but we did buy some things that were on offer so here are a few more favourites.

Flower and White had some gorgeous cakes and meringues on show and we just couldn’t resist. The cakes were also gluten free which is an added bonus. They were so tasty too, little round cakes of delight.

Laura’s Fudge was spotted early on by Boo and we couldn’t leave without buying some of the delicious flavours on offer.

The kids were really interested in the Baking Products from Bake and Create and we ended up buying some silicone mould from there.

I’m big lover of cheese, although I’m not eating it at the moment, but a little treat every now and then never hurt anyone. So we bought some tasty truckles of cheese from Blacks Cheese.

The kids went wild for the apple samples at Jazz Apples and I have to say I can understand why, they are so tasty. We had to come away with a bag!

Do check out the Jazz Apples website, they have some great resources for kids!

There was so much to see and do at the Good Food Show. We took a rest and tried to persuade the kids to visit the Gardner’s World Live Show afterwards but they were totally worn out. Next time we will have to try and go while they are at school.

Disclosure: I was given a press pass to attend the event, I’ve not been asked or paid to write this post, by The Good Food Show or any of the exhibitors mentioned.

Fridges and Cookies

October 13, 2016 by Anne Sweet 4 Comments

Today’s Blogtober16 prompt is ‘What’s in Your Fridge.’

Some people have a two car household, well ours is a two fridge one! We used to have a fridge freezer and a deep freezer, but when the deep freezer needed replacing we decided that we needed more fridge space as well as more freezer space so we bought a second fridge freezer.

So what do we need two fridge freezers for? Quite simply, we are a house with four adults and three children and we eat and drink a lot.

My eldest daughter likes her drinks kept cold and she drinks a lot. She has bottles of water, smoothies, coconut water, ginger beer, Lucozade and Actimel. They take up quite a lot of room as you can imagine. Other drinks include my Other Half’s Hemp Milk which he loves and regular milk. The fridge also has a water dispenser which is great in the summer.

We also like cheese, cheddar, goats cheese, Emmental, Leerdammer, Roquefort, Philadelphia, Red Leicester and whatever takes our fancy. We don’t have it all at the same time, even us cheese addicts are not that quick at getting through cheese. At the moment we have Emmental, Cheddar, Philadelphia and my daughter ate the goats cheese last night. At Christmas we like to stock up for a fabulous cheese board. I love them when they add things like cranberries or chillies to cheese.

At the moment we have a selection of Indian accompaniments like bhaji’s and samosas for our curry night. Yesterday we had fresh scallops and prawns but we’ve eaten them now. We love sea food and fish, well all of us except the Other Half who is actually allergic to them.

We usually have a salad drawer full of salad a veggies we want to keep fresh, I also like fresh herbs.
One fridge is colder than the other and we’ve frozen a few cucumbers in the past. My daughter likes to keep apples in the fridge, she likes to eat them really cold and crispy.

Yoghurt is another favourite and we currently have a selection of Fruit Corner Yoghurts as well as a few pots of Greek Yoghurt. If you look closely you may find a Gu pot or two.

I don’t keep eggs in the fridge, I like to keep them at room temperature and I always use them quickly. I also don’t keep coffee in the fridge and can’t understand why some people do.

My fridges are not next too each other, they are in different parts of the kitchen so it’s good to remember what’s in each fridge. The one with the milk is closet to the kettle! I try to remember what’s in each freezer by storing open packets in one and unopened packets in the other. It sometimes works!

Often you will find a roll of pastry or cookie dough in one of my fridges. So I’d like to share with you a recipe for fridge cookies.

Fridge Cookies

Ingredients:

350g plain flour

175g cold butter

175g caster sugar

2 Eggs

2 tsp vanilla essence

sprinkles for decorating

Method:

In a large bowl, crush the butter into the flour with your hands, until you have something resembling breadcrumbs.

Add in your sugar and mix

Then pour in your essence and eggs and bring together to form a dough with a wooden spoon.

Roll into a sausage

sprinkle your sprinkles over a clear surface and roll your dough into it

wrap the dough in cling film

Put in the fridge for at least 30 minutes

Roll and cut and shape your cookies as you like, then bake on a lined baking tray at 175C for around 8-10 minutes depending on the size.

Here’s some we made earlier!

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cheese

Fridge Cookies

Ingredients:

Method:

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