Lisa Faulkner’s Recipes from my Mother for my Daughter

I loved watching Lisa’s journey on Masterchef in 2010. Without doubt my favourite winner of all the series, a view shared by Gregg Wallace who at the time said: Lisa elevates humble food into something beautiful. She’s possibly the best Celebrity MasterChef winner we have ever had As soon as I heard that Lisa was releasing a recipe book I went to Amazon (other book shops are available) and pre-ordered

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Statistically speaking

  …. most studies are pointless aren’t they? Do you ever see those adverts that tell you at the end that “66% of 75 women…” and think, actually that is not so great. It just isn’t a conclusive study to me. I saw this earlier. According to a recent study, 77 percent of parents who drive their kids to school find both the morning and afternoon school run more stressful

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The Gallery — Landscape

As soon as I saw this week’s theme for The Gallery over on Tara Cain’s blog was landscapes I knew I had just the picture for it. This is my favourite beach on Barbados.   Not my favourite place over there, those that know me will know about my “Happy Place” but that view has to be seen as photographs don’t do it justice. Photo was taken mid afternoon, height of

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“That’s so gay”….

  …. is an expression that makes me want to weep at worst, at best makes me cross. It is said in jest quite a lot, and with no real malice attached to it most of the time.   It’s a throwaway line.   But what if you don’t hear it that way?  What if you hear it in such a way that makes you feel inferior for just being you? I

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I have a sponsor!!

You might remember that I posted recently that I was looking for a sponsor to cover my expenses at Britmums Live in June.   I was really chuffed, therefore, to get an email from a company recently offering to do just that. An email from a company I have known about since about 1979 and who I am really chuffed to be associated with now.   I have such happy memories of

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Six years ago today

Mr B and I were in Florence.  We had gone for the week to buy hand cream. Yes. You read that right. By now you know that I am slightly mad and so to me it is perfectly reasonable to go away for a week to Italy in pursuit of hand cream. I had been given a pot of this stuff by a friend who had just come back from

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The Gallery — Embarrassing Outfits

I love Tara Cain’s blog and her Gallery blog hop.   I am just never organised enough to participate. Until I heard this week’s and thought “I have to enter this, I have a belter”. I had been searching through old photos of me to do a post on childhood holidays, when I stumbled across this: I would love to be able to say that I am the stylish lady on

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Twitter hypocrisy

So if you are on Twitter you have been bombarded recently by the “ladies” who’s bios are sparse but leave you in no uncertain terms what they are about. They are all bots that want you to follow them back so they can spam your private message box with links to porn sites (which they cannot do unless you follow them back) but it is infuriating to have to keep

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Wonder by R J Palacio

Wonder by RJ Palacio, a review   Another book that Marianne at Transworld sent to me this week, and another book that I finished in almost one sitting. “Wonder” tells the story of August Pullman, a 10 year old boy born with a facial deformity that we are told is so bad it makes people gasp when they see him.   So bad that August felt he had to hide behind

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RIP Whitney

We have woken up this morning to the sad news that Whitney Houston has died. “Houston has a problem” to paraphrase a great quote, and has had for years.   Her drug abuse has been well documented and early reports today indicate that her death is connected to an overdose.  Though not yet confirmed. Whilst I am sad for her family, it is her daughter I feel for most. Yes Whitney

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Dear Volkswagen

Dear Volkswagen I am the proud owner of one of your Touaregs.   I confess that I didn’t buy it new, I bought it two years ago when I had to trade in my beloved PT Cruiser because I had driven it into the ground. I do a lot of driving.  A quiet day sees me doing 60 miles of driving just on school runs.   A busy day, such as today

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Thinking Slimmer — Week two

Well I think I can sum up this week as “bumpy”.   But I am cool with that, it’s fine.  As over all I am still losing weight. I have lost another 2lbs!  I actually lost 4lbs but put two back on again.   And as I say, that is fine.    This takes the tally over two weeks to 7lbs.  That’s half a stone.  Half a stone!!!!!! Un flipping believable. I have

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