The Vapestick!

Posted on May 28, 2012 | 2 Comments

The Vapestick! 

Quick Summary  - What is an Electronic Cigarette or a Vapestick?

Basically a Vapestick consists of three parts, the cartridge which contains the nicotene or flavouring, the atomiser and the battery.  You exhale water vapour, not smoke; and inhale your dose of nicotene.  So you get your nicotene fix and your smoking / vaping experience, except with none of the tar and nastiness you get in your average cigarette.  

I’ve been a smoker on and off for about 12 years, give or take a few years here and there.  On average I’ve smoked between two and ten a day, sometimes more if I went out or felt particularly nervous. I have always known I should give up, weak chests run in our family and I am no exception.  Nights out on the town spent smoking like a chimney often ended up with me cursing my fags and feeling like my lungs were covered in green goo.  Towards the end of my smoking career I also had an almost permanent cough that actually made me throw up a couple of times, it was that bad. So…….I decided a change had to be made.

The Vapestick XL! They’re called Vapesticks because instead of breathing out smoke, you breath out water vapour into the air, and they look a bit like a stick I suppose?

Here’s where I keep all my Not-Smoking equipment. It’s sturdy, has a v slightly magnetic flip over lid and is great for keeping Vapestick equipment together.

Previously I’d tried those little white nicotene inhalators and I’d also been to ‘Stop Smoking Or You’ll Die!’ classes too.  Did they help?  Yes!  Did they work? Nope.  So after a particularly bad near chest infection this January I’d again given up but was dying for a blast on a cigarette. My sister gave me an E-Cigarette to try, and I have to say I have never looked back!  I’m more than happy to tell you about Vapesticks and E-Cigarettes in general because I think they’re such fabulous products and I feel 100% better since having given up smoking ‘real’ cigarettes.  My food tastes better, I’m not out of breath all the time, I don’t have to worry about setting my house on fire, there’s no horrid stinking ashtrays to worry about and I don’t have to worry about anti-smoking legislation anymore.

I could write a whole post just about the plus points of smoking Electronic Cigarettes, but as this is officially a review I’ll try and get as much in about Vapesticks and add information about the whole vaping experience as I go along.  The whole subject can be a tad confusing – eg.  you charge this, and screw this bit into that and then you vape, and where and when can you use your Vapestick etc etc.  I’ll fill you in, in a minute.  Be patient!  If you’re serious about stopping smoking and using an alternative this post is worth trawling through, honest.

I’ve tried a few brands now, some of the E-cigs from Tescos, and another kit with my own money from another company, so I have a bit of an idea about some of the products on the market.  Not much, but a little.  I can safely say when Vapestick sent me some of their products I was blown away at the difference between what I’d used before and what Vapesticks had to offer.  Here’s a picture of some of their products.

These two Vapesticks (V1′s) are disposable, each one is the equivalent of 50 cigarettes (500 puffs) and come in menthol and original flavours. Both are 1.8% nicotene strength and are £9.99 each.  The pouch is so that you have somewhere to keep them and which also stops them from being scratched on spare change in your pocket.

If you’d like to have a look at these disposable Vapesticks in more detail, feel free to have a look around the Vapestick website HERE.  They’re a great option if you’re not sure if you’ll like vaping or not, and if you’re not quite ready to fork out for a full Vapestick kit.

At this point I’ll bombard you with pictures of what Vapestick sent me and then I’ll waffle on about why I think they’re so good.  I’m not just saying this either just because I’m blogging for them, I honestly think that so far Vapestick have a huge advantage on other E-Cigarette kits.

This is the Vapestick XL packet where you keep your spare batteries and your cartridges, that doesn’t mean ‘Extra Large’ by the way.  It also charges your batteries for a week if you charge the packet itself first using the charger supplied.

Your nicotene or flavoured cartridges arrive in a plastic, child safe tub, complete with nicotene percentages printed on the side.

A spaghetti pile of chargers. With Vapestick they give you a charger for your car, a charger for your individual Vapestick, and a charger for your Vapestick packet too.

The inside of your Vapestick packet, there’s room for your cartridges, and you can screw your spare cartridge in and charge it, if you precharge the packet itself first. Confused yet?

The Vapestick XL will set you back  a cool £49.99 plus additional costs for cartridges which are disposable and need to be bought on a regular basis if you’re a dedicated Vapestick user.  Here’s a link to the cartridges and another one to the Vapestick XL if you’re curious.  This might sound a lot, but if you compare that to the annual cost of smoking, and the annual cost to your overall health, Vapesticks are a valuable investment.

Vapestick supply a handy card, so if anyone challenges you about smoking in a public place, you can reassure them that vaping is completely within the law, and smoking restrictions do not apply.

I do need to be straight with you though, Vapesticks do not cure your nicotene addiction and they are not ‘healthy’, nor are they officially endorsed as products to help you stop smoking, ie, you won’t find them in Boots.  They are simply another way of imbibing nicotene.  A huge bonus is that although you might entertain an addiction, people around you don’t have to suffer the consequences. The vapour you breath out is simply water vapour, it does not harm anyone around you.  Having said that, I’m still rather wary of vaping in front of my children because they’ll no doubt pick up that habit, rather than a full blown smoking habit.  It’s best to do without either I suppose, if you can.  It’s a tricky ethical subject really.  I enjoy a glass of sherry ocassionally, but drinking in front of minors probably encourages them to want to do the same, the same applies to vaping I’m sure.

From what I can tell, you simply transfer your smoking addiction to a vaping addiction instead.  The main flaw I have found is that I’ve gone from a part time smoker to a full time vaper, I can smoke indoors and anywhere I choose now (the anti-smoking laws do not apply to E-Cigarettes) so it’s almost too easy to sit chuffing away on my almost never-ending vapestick.  As a result I reckon I have a fairly serious nicotene addiction now, although I don’t touch real cigarettes anymore.  Run out of cartridges at your peril by the way, you’ll still get the panicky ‘I’m going to go nuts!’ feeling that you get when you run out of your normal fags.

And finally, why I think Vapesticks are a better option than others I have tried…..the XL in particular looks really spectacular, very metallic and shiny (it doesn’t feel like you’re smoking a biro) and fits nicely in your hand.  You can get a Vapestick bag which is great for slotting in your handbag or your jeans pocket.  The nicotine cartridges are labelled with their content percentages (others I have tried have simply said ‘low’ or ‘high’ which tells you nothing really).  The Vapestick company itself has been very helpful when I’ve run them or tweeted them, so friendly customer service is obviously important to them. My only quibble is that the Vapestick logo peeled off their lovely drawstring velvety bag after I’d used it about 3 times. Quality control guys, you need better glue!

I hope I’ve not gone on too much, it just seems a lot of information to try and fit into one post.  There’s the products themselves, and the whole issue of Vaping and what it is and why I personally think it is so much better than smoking tobacco. Feel free to ask any questions on here via the comments section, or via Facebook or Twitter (I’m @Chaoskay), I’ll do my best to help or refer you to Vapestick themselves who know more than me.

Vapestick supplied me with the above products for review, no other financial reward has been given, and my thoughts are all my own. I hope I’ve not bored you to death with the reams of paragraphs.  If so, my sincere apologies!

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My Great Grandad and the Queen Mother.

Posted on May 27, 2012 | 2 Comments

My Great Grandad and

the Queen Mother.

Is it me, or has the whole of England gone a bit Jubilee mad?  Yes, I know I made a cake with a Union Jack on it too, but no, that doesn’t make me very keen on the Royals.  I just like cake, and I enjoy an artistic (or ham-fisted depending on how you look at it) challenge.

The thing is I just don’t quite get why people almost deify royalty, they are, after all, just like us.  They simply have a birth line and money which guarantees their place in the history books, they are no better or worse than us.  Anyway, at risk of being ‘got’ by the government for disrespecting authority….I’d like to relate a family story that has been passed down over the years.  This was told to me at a very young age, and probably has quite a bit to do with my attitudes to people who wear crowns and open stadiums with big pairs of scissors, whilst making speeches written for them by other people. Yes I know some of them do good work…I don’t deny that.  What I do deny is that they deserve any more cow-towing from us than anyone else in this world.  Even the queen goes to the loo as they say.  Anyway, here goes.   This is about the day my great grandfather met the Queen Mother, (she was Queen Elizabeth at the time) or ‘Gin Lizzie’ as she was known apparently.

Great Grandad was in the army at Scappa Flow in Scotland, I’m not sure of the year, and there he was tasked with keeping an eye on prisoners.  He was also stationed in the Orkneys for a while.

Whilst based there my Great Grandad and the regiment as a whole,  were tasked with building bunkers.  This was around the time that Singapore fell, my Great Grandad said that this was mainly because the guns there all faced out to sea, so they couldn’t cope with an inland invasion.  Presumably this is why they were building new bunkers in Orkney, lessons had been learned and they were going to be prepared for anything.

As a result of their hard work, they were all shipped down to Kirkwall,  where they were told that the Queen Elizabeth would ‘review the troops,’ in recognition of their hard work and contribution to the war effort.

There my Great Grandad stood in a line with his colleagues, in the pouring rain, in huge coats, for the grand total of two hours.  They were told that the Queen would be along soon, so they just carried on standing there…waiting to be ‘reviewed.’  Their commanding officer kept telling them that she’d be there in a minute and to be patient. Just before Her Highness arrived on the scene, they were sternly briefed – all the soldiers were told to be respectful, no matter what, and that if anyone showed even a flicker of disrespectful behaviour they would be put in gaol for 28 days.

The Queen Mother emerged from the officers quarters suspended between two officers, ‘legless’ drunk.  The poor love tottered and staggered up and down the line ‘reviewing’ them and one by one, despite their best efforts, my Great Grandad and the rest of his troop cracked up and collapsed in fits of giggles.  I can’t quite imagine these obviously battle hardened officers rolling around laughing, but they did.

They couldn’t possibly put the whole troop in gaol for 28 days so they weren’t punished in the end.  I’m presuming Queen Liz returned to the officers’ quarters. consumed a great deal of strong coffee and hoped that this particular story would never see the light of day.  Well, until today, I suppose.

History just doesn’t record stories like this, but oral history does.  This tale has been been a family legend for years and it still makes me laugh to hear it.  So, no, I’m afraid I have no reverence for royalty.  They’re just as prone to melt downs, addictions, daft behaviour and irresponsibility as the rest of us.  If I met the Queen Mother or her royal relatives, you wouldn’t see me curtseying – even if only because she left my Great Grandad in the pouring rain for hours on end while she finished her bottle of gin.  So much for respect for the war effort and lives lost in battle.

I’ll dress my kids in red, white and blue for their school Jubilee celebrations, but only because I quite like the colours,  and because they’d sulk if I didn’t.  I, for one, don’t give a monkeys about the whole affair.  There you go. *Kay sticks her tongue  and blows a raspberry at Buckingham Palace.*

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A Jubilee Cake!

Posted on May 24, 2012 | 9 Comments

A Jubilee Cake!

I have only ever made three cakes in my entire life, including this one.  This is how much of an amateur I am. I have made buns which are sort of mini cakes, but they don’t count really do they.

When Bart Spices asked me to make a cake I thought they’d simply gone off their rockers or something.  I can do basic savoury dishes, but cake?!!!  I sat staring at the email for a couple of minutes, tapping my fingers on the computer desk, drinking tea, thinking……dare I?  Obviously I’d have to blog it, however badly it turned out.  Well, in the end I thought I might as well live life dangerously and have a go!  What the hell, I had nothing more exciting to do on that day other than run the dishwasher with the knives and forks stuck in the rack thing the wrong way round.  (Very dangerous dontcha know!)

Can I just state, I’m not actually keen on royalty, but I am mad about cake and this is as good an excuse as any to indulge.

Here’s what I used for the sponge cake!

½ tsp Bart Bristol Blend Five Peppercorns
½ tsp Bart Ground Cinnamon
1 tsp Bart Ground Ginger
¼ tsp Bart Ground Nutmeg
2 tsp Bart Mint (Freeze Dried)
250g self-raising flour
¼ tsp salt
250g margarine or butter
250g Bart Vanilla Sugar
4 eggs, beaten and a partridge in a pear tree.

My sous chef and I prepared the cake tins:

I greased the cake tin, both sides of the greaseproof paper and my son. Think I may have overdone things a little.

I always think it’s best to include the kids when I cook, they like it and so do I, sort of.  Usually I end up yelling ‘Nooooo!!!! Not in there!’ and ‘If you don’t stop licking your fingers I’ll chop ‘em off!’ and things like that, but it’s all fun. *ahem!*

Next I creamed together the butter and the Vanilla sugar (which in my case was sugar with a vanilla pod scraped into it).  I’ve never used a vanilla pod before, and I love them!  They’re rather reminiscent of tiny caviar eggs – not that I actually know what caviar looks like, it’s just a guess.

I christened my food processor! I’ve had it for two years, it’s been unassembled for one year and ignored for the other. To my shame up to this day, I’d only ever made one smoothie in it.

Then I added the four eggs to the mixture, along with all the dry spices.  I loved the look of the cake mix once it all blended in.  Despite being very wary of the mint and the pepper, it added a really nice christmassy mulled spice flavour. By this point I couldn’t wait to cook it!

It tasted as good as it looks!

Following this we poured it into 2 cake tins (ideally 2 cake tins, 20cm round), and sat licking the bowl whilst staring hungrily at the oven while it cooked for 20 – 25 minutes at gas mark 4 / 180C.  We left them to cool in the tins for ten mins, then tipped them onto a wire rack.  I did not bite a huge piece out of the side, it fell off. Honest.

Here are the cooked, cooled sponge cakes with the raw ingredients for the topping. Remember not to leave small children alone with a bowl of strawberries. They eat them when you’re not looking.

To help keep Sausage involved, I asked him to take the tops off the strawberries, so he ate about 4 of them without me realising.  While he was sneaky-eating strawberries I combined  250 g of cream cheese with 150ml of double cream and 100g of icing sugar until it was beaten to a delicious sloppy white fluffyish, gooey texture.

One cake tin was bigger than the other so I had to cut the excess off once I’d turned it into a cake burger…see next picture.

Then we got to the fun bit!  Sausage and I slapped the cream-cheese topping onto both of the cooled sponges and slithered a spatula over each side until reasonably smooth.  Half the remaining strawberries (some halved, some quartered) were liberally plonked on one half and then the other sponge was delicately sandwiched on top of it. I was delighted to see the cream cheese oozed out of the sides a little.  Obviously I had to tidy that up a little – and of course eat the excess.

Finally I put another load of cream-cheese on the top, smoothed it as best I could and then began decorating it.  Not meaning to ‘over-egg the pudding’ as they say, but it took me absolutely ages, I mean, it should go in the Tate gallery, no exaggeration at all,  it’s a work of art!  Please clap enthusiastically now.  Thank you.

This is meant to look like a Union Jack, I couldn’t manage the white stripes though. If anyone says it looks like a red ant I will sulk.

The sponge cake itself was a little dry once I sliced into it, but I think that’s just my oven and my rubbish baking skills.  It did however look amazing, just look at the sponge in the next photograph!  As for the cream-cheese, it is to die for!  Really sweet with a sour twang from the cream cheese! I could have eaten bowls of just the topping!

Note the green and black speckled spices in the sponge, they give a whole new twist to a basic victoria sponge recipe and look fabulous too :O)

To summarise!  Whoever said ‘All you need is love!’ was a fool.  ’All you need is Cake!’ if you ask me.

‘Cake is the food of love!’ not music.

And the meaning of life is not 42, it is CAKE!

Many thanks to Bart Spices for sending me the ingredients and for taking a huge risk.  I think it was the PR equivalent of jumping off a really high building in a flying squirrel suit – it could have gone very, very badly!

If you’d like to visit Bart Spices website, please click HERE, they’ll be pleased to see you I’m sure!

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Come Dine With Kay!

Posted on May 17, 2012 | 12 Comments

Come Dine With Kay!

 Turkey Meatballs & Chickpeas in a Piquante Pepperdew Stew!

This recipe is being entered in the Peppadew ‘I love British Turkey’ blogging competition.  Many thanks to my Mother In Law for the recipe, she is a far better cook than I’ll ever be.  Right, here goes nuffink!  Please click play on the link below, and use it as background music?  I’m trying to set a scene here…. ;O)

In the true spirit of ‘Come Dine With Kay!’ you have all arrived fashionably late…..bearing huge bottles of wine and gifts boxes of chocolates, lovely!  I’m wearing my best smart casual outfit (jeans and a clean T’shirt for once), and I must say you all look very swish too!  And wow!  Look at you! …..my goodness, you’re not shy with the sequins are you!

While I faff around in the kitchen trawling the fridge and the cupboards for ingredients, I would love you all to have a comfy seat in my erm…mostly immaculate living room.  Please make appropriate small talk and kindly ignore the towering pile of toys shoved into the corner.  I’d appreciate it if you could stop kicking the toybox and setting off the Zhu-Zhu hamsters.

First of all I’m going to raid the cupboards and the fridge for my ingredients and have a small glass of wine to steady my nerves.

Ignore the Basil, it just wanted to be famous so it barged in on the photo shoot.

Here I have fresh coriander, 400g of minced turkey, a tin of chopped tomatoes (with the same amount of water added), 2 sliced onions, 1 small chopped chorizo sausage, 2 mushed cloves of garlic, ground cumin, salt, pepper, olive oil, cayenne pepper, chilli flakes, a tin of chickpeas, paprika and last but not least Hot Whole Sweet Piquante Peppadew Peppers!

Right, so this is the bit where you wander around the house checking out if I’m a nutter or not.  Up the stairs you go, I’m happy here banging the cutlery about.  ‘Don’t worry about me!’ *Pours another glass of wine*

Oh no! I’ve forgotten to tidy away my antique, priceless, collection of silverware.  It’s all on display.  Silly me.

First of all I mix the garlic with the turkey mince:

Do I really have to stick my hands into that lot? *shudders*

Next I roll them into small balls, whilst giggling nervously and making a crap joke about small pink balls.

You have to have balls to attempt this kind of thing!

Then (whilst ignoring the bangs on the ceiling and the laughter from upstairs) I begin frying the chorizo in the pan until the fat starts to flow a little.

Why are they making such a racket upstairs and why did I choose a dish that spits fat at me all the time! ‘Ow!’  And my top is ruined!  Grease spots galore. Oops.

‘Ah, you’re all back!  Did you enjoy your tour?  So sorry about leaving the silverware out….’  *waits for complements*  *doesn’t get any*

‘What do you mean you went through my wash basket?!!!  Oh no, of course I don’t mind.  You’ve brought something down with you?’ *Kay lapses into a stunned silence as you (yes you with the sequins…)  wave around my all in one, fluffy, multi-coloured fish, fleecy adult-baby-gro outfit that I wear on very cold evenings and on camping trips*

‘No I don’t mind!  I said you could look around didn’t I! *smiles sweetly*

Kay thinks: ‘Well, it’s the burnt bits at the bottom of the pan for you milady!’

I return to the kitchen and begin shallow frying the meatballs in a glug of olive oil whilst swearing under my breath so my guests can’t hear me.

‘Where is my goddam spatula?!’ Fry meatballs till browned.

‘I’ll put on some music shall I?  Some nice relaxing classical music maybe?’

‘What? You prefer Guns and Roses?!!!’

Kay thinks: ‘Sequin top lady is cruising for a bruising, I might have to drop a meatball or two on the floor at this rate’ 

I have another slightly larger glass of wine and listen to the male guest with the blue spikey hair who is ‘art-critiquing’ my favourite sea-side painting.  I just like seagulls!  Get over it!  (I think this rather than say it because I’m trying to be nice and get more points)

‘Oh yes I agree, these sort of paintings are rather outdated, but I do like them!’ *stares daggers*

I return to the kitchen and:

Fry onions till translucent.

Return chorizo to the pan, add spices. 1tsp of cumin, 2 tsp of paprika, 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper or chilli flakes. Sneeze. Not on the food obviously.  Put this on a high heat for a couple of minutes.

Add chopped tomatoes with additional water. Splash my top even more.

You should all be slightly plastered now as I’ve kept the ‘Come Dine With Kay!’ evening rolling along nicely with the strongest red wine I could find at Morrissons.  Great!  I’m sober as a judge though.  *hiccups*

‘Would anyone like another glass?’ *fills everyone’s glasses to the brim*

Kay thinks: ‘Well, it if I get them drunk they won’t notice if the food tastes rotten.’

Add chickpeas, and a quarter of a jar of roughly chopped Sweet Hot Peppadew Peppers. Simmer for half an hour. Drink more wine to numb your tastebuds. Not sure how this will taste….

I’ve had to split up spikey haired bloke and you.  I think to myself, ‘Oh hell, I should have found a cattle prod as well as a decent recipe.’

‘Just come into the kitchen and sit down will you?’ ‘There’s no need to cry now…..I know your outfit is well…a little erm, showy, but the man has no taste!’  ’I think you look lovely! Kylie carried the look off beautifully’ (about ten years ago, but I’m not going to say that am I?!

You stagger back into the living room, sloshing your drink onto my pastel blue carpet.  I begin to wonder if I’m seeing double, and the spikey bad-hair-cut-man is threatening to chew his own arm off (I think I’ve taken too long), and I think it’s time to serve up!  Brace yourselves! I proudly carry my prized praline Denby casserole dish into the front room.  I am showing off, but then this is the telly, I’m pulling all the stops out here!

Taaaaa Daaaaah!!!!!!! Thish ish a lovely dish innit! (slurs)

*hiccups*  *pours another glass* *downs in one* *fills glass again* *T’is nerve medichine you see*

There you go!  Plonks casserole dish on the table.  Knocks a few knives and forks on the floor. Ah well, a bit of dirt never did anyone any harm.  I pick them up and put them back on the table and sway slightly.

Dinner is served!

‘Well, tuck in everyone.  Let me know what you think!  It’s not like it took any effort or anything!’  Pitta bread goes nicely or you could add rice.  I chose pitta bread because I always make soggy rice and you can’t go wrong with grilling bread can you? Or can you?

‘Stop spitting out the hard bits of bread!  It’s just not nice!  Honestly I’m  not inviting you lot round again.  No, you can’t dip ZhuZhu hamsters in the food.  Oh for gods sake, I give up’

*********************End credits scroll down the screen******************

Narrator:  ’Will Kay win or did the guests think her dinner was just a turkey of a meal?  Find out next week…..’

Narrator: ‘This dish features delicious moist turkey meatballs, complemented with a lip-smacking spicy tomato and hot sweet piquante Pepperdew pepper sauce. The chickpeas add an exciting slightly nutty contrast. Best enjoyed with a sensibly sized glass of red wine and good company.  Ahem!’

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A Fortnight in France – Part 5

Posted on May 14, 2012 | 2 Comments

A Fortnight in France – Part 5

This is the fifth part of my epic holiday in France (well, it was epic for me!  I actually saw sunshine for a while and got away from home for a fortnight! WooHoo!  If you’d like to read previous installments please do click on the links below, this will all make sense if read in order, I promise.

Part 1: Setting off from a drizzly UK and arriving in a sunny haven in France.  The kids fly for the first time and we explore the area a little.

Part 2: Canoeing, hanging around the pool and swimming in a storm. (I didn’t, I was a wimp and it was too cold)

Part 3: The day France was closed, Sausages and Saucisson, and games with gravel.

Part 4: Rain, rain, go away! In which we are miraculously transported to the Lake District overnight.

This was where most of these diary entries were written. Nicely shaded and quiet (when the kids were off elsewhere at least!)

Continuing on from Part 4: I look out the window one morning and see:

Birdies

A couple of days ago we were rewarded with a line of burbling swifts/swallows lined up on our telephone wires.  They kept sweeping off their perches, swooping around a little and alighting, setting the process off all over again.  Constant movement and displacement.  Beautiful, elegant birds and an absolute joy to watch.

A random Thursday of which the date is unknown.

The highlight of the day was an update from Horace from some news website or other.  It was about an alcoholic moose believe it or not.  The poor thing had got carried away in its search for slightly over ripe apples and had actually climbed up a tree.  After consuming loads of apples that were so ripe they had become alcoholic, it slipped and became stuck.  Some bewildered Swedish bloke actually found this drunk moose floundering around up a tree!  Can you imagine the phone call to the Swedish version of the RSPCA!

‘Hello?’

‘Hi, There’s a moose stuck  in my tree and I think its drunk’

‘Is it ok?’

‘It just asked me a strong coffee but apart from that I think it’s fine.’

The news said that the swedish version of the RSPCA had rescued it and told ‘curious enquirers’ that it was ‘recovering’.

I sat and chuckled about this long after everyone else stopped thinking it was funny.

A Posh Meal With Father Christmas

By this point in the holiday we were all thinking about the inevitable return to the UK.  With this depressing thought  in mind (or maybe that was just me) we decided we’d have a celebratory meal to finish the french trip in style; we decided to go for a fabulous meal out at some far out of town French farmhouse.  It was a beautiful location for a meal, out of the way, along winding, almost Devonesque country roads finally ending up at a farmhouse that boasted a kind of derelict glory, there were dilapedated fountains and falling down stonework here and there.  The meal was the poshest I’ve ever eaten.  I still feel guilty about eating fois gras, it’s a huge delicacy here.  I just think it’s a bit mean and tastes like chicken mousse – although I suspect I’m a foodie heathen.

Anyway!  It was at St Clement, near St John d’ Cole.  The meal was very classy.  Too classy for the likes of me probably.  The first course was some kind of cold tomato soup, served in something that I’m presuming they stole from a doll’s house.  It was presented in a tiny bowl, with an equally tiny spoon – added to this was a small floating random green vegetable that I was told was a pickled squash.  I ate it and it tasted of aniseed balls.  So, first course, cold doll’s house soup with random small green vegetable that tasted of sweets.

Gaps between courses were spent wandering (having a smoke) outside in the garden where the Horse Chestnuts had dropped a ton of conkers. The kids spent quite a while making this sunshine arrangement. So pretty!

The owner of the place appeared to be a slightly knackered looking Father Christmas and his lovely assistant, who wore a chef’s white jacket slung over the top of a smart dress.  We weren’t sure if she was his daughter or his trophy wife.  Either way I never saw her smile once and she looked rather like a bad tempered hospital matron than a waitress.  Apparently mardy Father Christmas had been seen to criticise her on her placement of the second course on the table and she’d begun to look unfriendly from that moment on.  I thought she looked scary from the start personally and was scared of asking for more bread rolls for fear of having my food replaced with hospital food instead of gourmet stuff.

If I remember correctly this was a certain sort of mushroom pate. I can’t remember what sort of mushroom it was, although it will have been one with an impressive french name probably.

Second course was very decorative and quite edible. Four strands of courgette, each peel curled up and placed end on, standing up on the plate with some strange pate in the middle that tasted of mushrooms maybe.   Four crunchy mushrooms were sliced and placed in between these swirls of courgette.  Horace had the slightly more expensive menu and I’d be a fool to try and describe all the odds and ends that he had on his plate, for one I can’t remember, and for two, I seriously think you might get bored, or at the very least wander off for a cheese butty and come back when we’re onto the next course.

I do distinctly remember the flower we were given to eat, and which tasted vaguely of floppy lettuce. It consisted of a yellow/orange aubergine bloom which I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to eat or not at first.  I think it was stuffed with something?  It did look pretty though!  I’d never eaten flowers before!  Well if you discount the time I ate some Clover when I was ten, someone told me that bees liked them and I thought that if they were good enough for bees I’d give it a try.  (I only ate a tiny bit of Clover before you start calling me a cow)

Horace’s next course was apparently called ‘Exploration of the Goat’.  I suspect whoever used the french phrasebook  lost the meaning in translation.  I expected a live bleating goat to be plonked on the table and for the owner to stand with a pointer and name each part of the goat in turn.

‘Zis is d’ Goat’s tail!’ ‘Ze goat’s leg’ ‘Zis is d’ Goat’s bottom!’

What arrived was a small parcel of meat wrapped neatly with string, and random pureed vegetables placed in neat small piles around the plate.  It was a ‘Brief Excursion of the Goat’ I think.  Tasted beautiful I have to say, maybe I’m not a complete foodie failure…

The meal was fantastic in all, really well presented and full of morsels of food I’d never eaten before, or at least had never eaten in the way they were presented.  I suspect that if I hadn’t been told that the strange little cubes of mottled brown and green things were actually quite high quality, home-made, matured to perfection, goats cheese cubes, I’d have sent them back whilst stropping and commenting that I’d report them to Environmental Health for giving us clearly mouldy food.

There were quite a few other courses and as I had a glass of wine with each course to complement the dishes I suspect I was rather pished at the end of it all.   I’d describe them all in detail, but I do genuinely think you’d get bored of me.

Sausage stares in amazement at his dinner! The green spiked hair was pureed spinach I think, the yellow eyes were egg yolks, and the white was the white of the egg. I think, but I’m not sure, the eyes and the mouth were olives maybe? He wouldn’t eat most of it, but loved the look of it at least!

Quick interlude, I’m typing at the end of the day.  The sky is a grey with a slash of pale pink, ocassional birds float across sky.  I’m waiting for the bats to start flitting around the garden.

Rent a Dog!

We didn’t realise that when we rented these gits, that we’d also rented the owner’s dog.  Every now and this huge fluffy, overweight retriever squeezes through a gap in the hedge and comes to keep us company, scrounge food….and to poo on the lawn – which is nice.  I like dogs, I really do.  I just hate dog poo.  I think this is bothering me more than I realised.  Last night I had a dream about a massive polar bear sized dog which I stroked carefully as it towered over my head.

This ‘Rent-a-Dog’ AKA Fluffy Pest, is actually very docile and endearing.  It’s slightly elderly and massive in an overfed retriever kind of way.  The cheeky thing sat in front of me the other day as I ate a piece of toast.  I took a bite, and it sat down and stared longingly at my food.  I told him ‘I’ve been brought up with labradors you know, I can resist you.’  He carried on staring, but he then he brought out the big guns just to see if I’d crack, despite my intensive training.  I swear that dog grinned at me!  I didn’t give him my toast though. I’m wellard me! (Just to clarify, I was brought up as a normal child, not amongst labradors in a kennel, my parents had pet dogs, I didn’t live as one of them or anything)

You can tell how hot the sun is according to how many lizards you can spot on a short wander around the gits.  The more lizards per square metre, the higher the temperature.  I prefer higher lizard density kind of days as opposed to nil-lizard drizzly Lake District days I have to say.

The Matilda Party!

On the last day after we’d tidied and cleaned our gits, we decided to finish the holiday on a high note.  Sweara, being the amazing grandma and inventive foodie that she is, helped use up our left over grub and organised food for the ‘Matilda Party’ which was held at the top swimming pool – the highlight of which was an orange studded with cocktail sticks bearing leftover camembert cheese and courgette pieces.  This orange even had cheese and olives stuck on to make a face.  Perfect party food for the final finale of the holiday!

We all sat round with ‘cocktails’, ie fruit juice with mint and pieces of oranges floating in it, listening to the last chapter of Matilda being read to Darlek by Gangdad.  Darlek wandered around with crisps and drinks, obligingly helping the party along like a cute little hostess.

Sausage got bored and decided to get ready for swimming, so he stripped himself naked and sat next to Mark and Bella, splashing them ocassionally.  I thought it was best to humour his impatience and got in with him.  He doggy paddled up and down in his little floatation belt, while the Matilda party continued.  After the chapter finished there was a round of applause, and Darlek joined us in the pool.  Darlek and I played at chasing a football with two long floatation tubes thingys.  We clung together at one point because shed did her gasping ‘I’m drowning!’ thing;  both of us were giggling and laughing so much at the deep end that we then both started doing an ‘I’m drowning!’ impression.  I had to swim for safety at the side of the pool for fear of dying of drowning and laughter.  Sausage determinedly fished crickets out of the pool in the meantime.

When I got out Grandma Mu-Mu said that she had tears in her eyes.  Apparently I looked just like a friend of hers called Jackie from years ago.  I don’t usually tie my hair back and I think I may have looked a little different today, I was also wearing a very 1950′s style swimsuit. Low cut, black with striped top that crosses across my back.  I was very, very touched that she would associate me with someone she obviously thought a lot of.

It was a beautiful end to a beautiful holiday.  I’m typing now as I sit on the balcony, with  bright blue glorious skies above me, not a cloud to be seen.  Birds chirp in the distance and flies float around like motes with nowhere to go, just flying about and dodging and diving for the hell of it.  There’s a distant sound of airplanes, but absolutely no traffic noise.  The horses stand in the field opposite, swishing their tails lazily and are hiding in the shelter of their stall for shade.

A golden evening glow on the meadows.

To describe the setting: there’s the whoosh and rattle of the cooling fan behind me. There’s teddy bears left on pillows in the room , pyjamas are abandoned on the bed, suitcases strewn everywhere, floor immaculate swept and wiped clean ready for us to leave tomorrow.  This git is so clean!  Cleaner than our house at home ever is!  Horace cleaned the shower whilst showering.  He did hint that I should do that, but I didn’t fancy a shower in cleaning fluid so ducked that particular task

Off for a final meal of chilli, with friends and family.  I feel like I am so lucky some days.  The high blue skies reflect the mood I’m in.  High on happiness!

You’ll be relieved to find out that I’m actually nearly at the end of these holiday diaries.  Just one more to go…

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Pure Tea!

Posted on May 11, 2012 | 3 Comments

Pure Fresh Tea!

If someone had told me that I’d one day post a blog about three tea-bags I’d have laughed in their face.  I mean, that just doesn’t happen does it?  But, sheepishly I have to admit I am now going to do just such a thing. Do not laugh at me!!!

Pure Fresh Tea asked me if I’d like to blog about some of their products, and being a tea fan an’ all I jumped at the chance, mug in hand.  I don’t really know what I was expecting, a range of tea-bags I suppose?  Well, the lovely people at Pure Fresh Tea sent me these, a ‘sample’ of tea-bags.  Yorkshire Tea also sent me a free tea-bag in the post on the same day, with a lovely card as it was my birthday and I nearly blogged about that too.  But that would have meant I was blogging about four tea bags and I didn’t want to over-do things.

Three tea bags! These arrived in a spacious pink crepe paper lined box. Very pretty.

I opened these up (there’s a neat thumb bit where you neatly push open the packaging) and pulled the tea-bags out to have a nosey.  This is what they look like:

You can still see the flowerheads on the camomile!

From left to right, the first one is ‘Mint’, the second one is ‘Camomile’ and the third one is ‘Black Lavender.’  All of them are in a organza-style bag which you steep in boiling water.  None of this disposable papery stuff here!  This is the closest I’ve ever seen to tea leaves in ballgowns.  Very posh!

Now to taste them!  I had three mugs of tea in one evening so I could get this much overdue blog online.  They have been very patient.  As a result I’m amazed I managed to blog at all, I think I’ve spent rather more time than usual dashing upstairs for a wee.

Here’s a photograph of my favourite mug of the moment with one of their Camomile tea bags in it.  Steaming hot and pretty too, and that’s not just the mug.  I loved the look of the little camomile flowerheads in their posh dress…erm..bag.

Camomile is very good for the digestion, or so I’m told!

The camomile tea looked more eye-catching than any other camomile tea I’ve ever had before – but I have to say it tasted much the same as any other camomile tea I’ve ever tasted.  Still lovely though.

The mint tea was my favourite which surprised me.  It honestly looks more like the mint you’d find in your mint sauce than in your tea-bag, but that is because Pure Fresh Tea obviously believe in not messing around or powdering their ingredients too much.  It was refreshing, palate cleansing and would make a great cuppa to start the day.

I’m so sorry Pure Fresh Tea, but I wasn’t keen on the Black Lavender.  I thought it tasted a little bit soapy somehow, but that is just down to me and my taste-buds.  I think if you like lavender a little more than I do, you’ll love this.

Each tea-bag can be used 2 – 3 times so I have delicately hung them from the string that lifts my kitchen blinds up and down.  They are drip-drying nicely thanks.

These are the other flavours they stock:

So that’s me done then.  Thanks to Pure Tea I have blogged about three tea-bags.  Oh the shame.  They are lovely tea-bags and expensive and classy and beautiful and dressed immaculately in their chiffonesque bags, but I can’t help but feel a bit silly.

Many thanks to Pure Tea for sending me the samples.  I liked them a lot, can’t write more, sorry, I need to dash off to the little room upstairs again.

You can find Pure Fresh Tea’s very swish website HERE!

No other financial reward was given and all thoughts are my own, because they can’t be anyone else’s can they anyway?

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Tired as a Very Tired Thing

Posted on May 10, 2012 | 2 Comments

Tired as a Very Tired Thing

aka: ‘As Wet as a Drowned Rat’

I am as tired as a very tired thing that has just spent all day running around in a giant hamster wheel that has made it very tired.  I’ve even considered simply doing a page of ZZZZzzzzzzz…….  But I think my little finger might go into a spasm and that would make me even more tired.

You know what, I think it’s the weather.  It drains my energy.  The rain has been relentless!  This morning I poked my nose out of the front door to assess whether or not to get us all togged up in waterproofs or not for the school run – and I was nearly drowned in about 30 seconds.  Horrid, horrid, horrid.

Sausage wore his all in one blue waterproof telly tubby outfit, and Darlek wore her pink waterproof with the zip done right up to her nose.  I wore my massive murky green waterproof coat that looks like a tent.  We all got wet anyway.  Dunno why we bothered!  We should really have gone out in shorts and T’shirts and saved on clothes drying time.

There was more water in the air than air today.  Poor Darlek had her gym leggings on when I picked her up from school as her trousers were soaked by the time she got into class.  It really was that bad. When I set off to pick both kids up at the end of the day it was awful.  I found myself walking up the hill and paddling through streams where there are usually pathways. Within 5 minutes of walking out the door the water had soaked through my boots, I felt like I was wearing a wet suit with a leak in both toes.  I even tried to lean forward on the balls of my feet to squeeze the water out a little.  Not nice.

I want a new drought, this one’s all wet.  This is, in fact, the most rubbish drought I have ever lived through.  I thought droughts were supposed to mean lazy days ambling to and fro to the shop for ice-lollies for the kids, sitting on the doorstep tanning my milk bottle white legs, rooting out sunhats from the bottom of cupboards and smelling of sun tan cream all the time. But no!  It seems a drought in this country means everyone digs out their welly boots and umbrellas and spends hours staring out of rain speckled windows whilst the kids try to beat each other to death after being confined to the living room for hours on end.  Not that I’m complaining…..much.

I’ve heard positive thinking can make a difference to this kind of thing.  Apparently I need to embrace the sogginess, and make the best of it. So I’m going to make an effort to appreciate the sepia sort of light that hovers over the area when the sky is striped with rain.  I am going to take notice of the way the rain makes the river a mass of interlocking, ever changing, ever moving circles as it patters on to it.  The puddles are there to be jumped in, never mind soggy socks and jeans that stick to my ankles, it won’t kill me or the kids to get wet feet. When I’m trudging up and down the hill I shall make an effort to pause and listen to the plop of the rain as it hits the leaves and the forlorn pink bunches of cherry blossoms.  Rain clouds can be spectacular and I’ll look out for the ones that I can make shapes out of.  If there is ever a gap between the clouds that is.  When the skies are just plain dull grey, I’ll stop looking up and instead look at the kids as they potter along beside me giggling at the streams running down the hill.

It’s been lovely to see both of  them cupping their hands to catch the rain and throw it at each other.  Every now and then one of them will stop and open their mouth to try and catch the drops, looking like huge baby birds begging for food.  Darlek has been asking about where the rain comes from, and I’ve been trying to explain evaporation and the cycle of rain to river to sea and then back up to the skies again.  It’s rather complicated to get across really, I always was rubbish at geography. (Is it geography where they teach you these things?)  Sausage is still asking why the leaves are falling off the trees when they aren’t any more too.  He’s also been asking if Father Christmas is coming again soon – so as you can imagine, the conversations on our soaked school runs have been quite diverse.

So, yes.  Here, now, this minute, I declare I will not be beaten by crap weather.  I like it really, I do, I do, I do. Do I sound believable? I suspect you can hear my voice cracking even through the medium of the written word. I’m going to do a Gloria Gaynor impression now:

‘I will survive!  I know as long as I know how to live (or put on wellies) I know I’ll stay alive!’

Come on now, sing along with me! Sing it like you mean it!(Kay mutters something about fecking rain, soaked socks and raging athletes foot)

Here’s to surviving an English summer!  And here’s to hoping for sunshine! Cheers! *Raises a welly boot filled with rain instead of a glass of champers*

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