A lifestyle blog
If you are on social media today it won’t have escaped your attention that today is Christmas Jumper Day. Everybody is encouraged to wear their silliest, tackiest, most ridiculous Christmas jumper today, and to donate just a couple of quid to Save The Children. Of course larger donations are always welcomed but £2 can really make a difference. By donating that amount you will be contributing towards Save The
Christmas means one thing. Turkey. Presents. A week off work. A monster credit card bill in January. Snow. Family. Either you going to stay with other family, maybe not even your own, or them coming to stay with you. We always host at Christmas and whilst I can’t say I am an expert in this, I do think we have pretty much got it nailed for avoiding family
Well there have been another seven gins sampled since the last post and it has been a real voyage of discovery and actually also of geography. This week we have been all over the place, from Menorca to Yorkshire to Spain to Scotland and I have loved finding out a little bit more about each distillery or gin. So for posterity, here they all are in case you
The only pasta recipes you will ever need Pasta has to be one of the greatest ingredients ever created doesnt it? Simple ingredients mixed together to form a product that can then be shaped and used in dozens of different ways. In its simplest form just cooked for a couple of minutes and served warm with a drizzle of olive oil, a pinch of salt and big grind of freshly
No sooner has the August bank holiday weekend gone then shops start creeping in their Christmas ranges. Then from mid November onwards you cannot move for Christmas products everywhere you look. Every magazine has Christmas supplements or pull outs. There are tins of sweets stacked ten high, four columns wide. Yards of Jaffa cakes, though quite how they symbolise Christmas I have no idea. What I am noticing more
Here we are with Ginmas Week 1 When my parents owned a vineyard for ten years it never ceased to amaze me how much they knew about wine. As much as they knew though there was always more to learn and I really envied that knowledge of a subject and the ability to keep learning. As I approach my fifties I keep thinking my brain is going to
Ten years we have lived in this house. And for ten years I have wanted a new bathroom. We said we would do it as soon as we moved in. It was the one thing we new we wanted to change, despite it being brand new. To the untrained eye our bathroom ticks all the boxes: tiled floor / tiled walls / all white / big window /
It is easy to focus on the booze at Christmas, heck I am even doing a gin advent calendar. “Have we got dessert wine to go with the pudding?” “Is there enough fizz for breakfast?” “How many bottles of red wine do we need for the mulled wine on Christmas Eve?” It is all about the alcohol apparently. Which is not so great if you are the
Is a question that always makes me reply with a disclaimer first “well… I was born in London but I have lived all over the place”. I think my current home is my 18th, and between London and here there have been stints in Surrey, various other parts of London, the midlands and the middle east. I have often felt that I am not “from” anywhere. I am not
Every year, round about now I get tagged in pictures of a gin advent calendar that retails at around £100. A “wee dram” of gin in a tiny bottle between 24 little windows that looks cute but over the years has crept up in price and has never really struck me as being great value for money. Yes it looks amazing and would be a stunning gift for any gin
Potato topped sausage and Onion pie recipe As soon as the lights are on all day my thoughts turn to comfort food. In the absence of being able to hug a hot water all day I turn instead to warming comforting foods. Those hot dinners that say “a hug from within”. I had actually forgotten about this recipe until I was reminded of it at the weekend during a
The story of a 14 year old cancer victim being cryogenically frozen has troubled me this week. Not for the story itself, though that does trouble me on many levels. The false hope this girl has believed may one day bring her back. What happens if by some medical miracle she is brought back to life? She will remember nothing and know no-one in the US. She will still be 14
