House of Fraser mood boards: autumn and Christmas cookware

Christmas is coming! You must have noticed all the shops have got their Christmas ranges out - it's just over two months to go. I love Christmas - all the anticipation, choosing gifts, picking out things I'd like, wrapping presents and of course the food! I don't yet know where I will be spending Christmas this year but probably won't be cooking my own Christmas dinner (though I did last year) - what will you be doing?

I used to love browsing through Christmas gift catalogues but somehow it isn't always quite the same online - items aren't presented in quite the same way. Which is why I love these mood boards from House of Fraser - a carefully curated selection of items on a theme. This one is called 'Autumn spice' and is full of pots and pans in very festive red. I particularly like the oven-to-table serving dishes and the cast iron cookery book would come in handy. And who doesn't love a jazzy apron?

Check out some other House of Fraser mood boards and styling ideas here.

This is a sponsored post.


 

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Back to the Future: 1.21 Gigawatts Wake-Up Juice

 

 

There’s one 80s movie that consistently comes top of the ‘100 greatest’ lists. It was never one of my favourites – the male leads, sci-fi theme and plot that revolved essentially around a car – never really appealed to me as a little girl. But I always enjoyed it when the film came on TV and conjured up a picture of the future, where we had self-tying trainers, self-drying clothes and hoverboards.

 

That movie is of course Back to the Future, and do you know what day it is today? October 21, 2015 is the day in the second movie that Marty went forward to…. In the future. Well, we may not have all the things the film predicted, but in some cases, we are not that far off.  Lexus has managed to invent a hoverboard (of sorts),

 

 

  

mobile tablets and wearable technology is here to stay and Pepsi has launched a limited edition Pepsi Perfect to tie in with the film today.

  

I wanted to make something based on the film, and struggled a little – I’d love to make a cake in the shape of the Delorean but time is not on my side. Instead, one detail stood out – in the first movie, the Delorean needed 1.21 gigawatts of electricity to make the return trip. That much power can only be generated by a nuclear plant, or a bolt of lightening, which is how the movie culminates in a race to connect a wire from the clock tower during a storm.

 

There’s another scene where two characters give a drink called “wake-up juice” to Doc after he has drunk too much in a saloon in the 1800s, which revitalizes him quickly (and unpleasantly).

 

I decided to combine these two things into my own recipe, for what I’m calling:

 

1.21 Gigawatts Wake-Up Juice

An original recipe by Caroline Makes

 

Half a can of Red Bull

1 shot Raspberry vodka (Absolut is good)

1 shot tequila

Blue Bols foam - this is something I bought ages ago online and forgot until now I had. It comes in different flavours - I have cassis - and it comes with a pump you insert into the bottle. It turns the liquid into a foam so you can get it to sit on top of the drink, but it still tastes alcoholic, which is really cool - and I think makes this drink a bit futuristic!

 

Before the foam is added...

and after!

Cheers!

 

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Restaurant Review: Chalkhill Blue, Andover, Hampshire

It’s not often a restaurant messes up my order and I know mistakes happen, but in this case it happened twice during the same meal.

 

I was staying with a friend in Andover and we went for lunch to a pub near her house – the Chalkhill Blue.

 

It’s a Marston’s pub with a fairly extensive menu and a glass-fronted oven with rotisserie chickens being cooked on display near the bar. In some ways it’s a great family pub – the children’s indoor play area looked good (not that I normally take much notice of them so can’t compare) and the pub had different areas so families could sit separately to drinkers. There’s an outdoor seating area as well, which had two brave souls putting up with the October chill.

 

I’m trying not to overindulge too much (not all the time, anyway) but it was too cold a day for salad, so I chose something from the ‘light bites’ section of the menu – butternut squash, red wine and tomato tagliatelle (£6.30). It was served with garlic bread but I asked for it without and there was an optional chicken breast which I added (usually £2 more but I can’t remember whether they charged me this as I wasn’t having the garlic bread, or not).

 

 

My friend ordered the half rack (8oz) of sticky BBQ baby back ribs which came with chips (£8.70) and my food came out first. I waited for a few minutes and she told me to start eating, so I did, expecting her food to come at any minute. It still didn’t appear so I stopped eating and waited a few more minutes, then we attracted the attention of a waitress. She remembered our order and was surprised one dish hadn’t come so went to check with the kitchen, and came back very apologetic. She hadn’t pressed the button hard enough so the order for the ribs hadn’t gone through!

 

The waitress handled it very well I thought, apologising, offering us a complimentary drink, and asking if I would like my food to be taken away and kept hot until my friend’s was ready so I said yes. When the food came back – with the ribs this time – I started eating, thinking how plain my meal was – basically just pasta in a light tomato sauce with a plain chicken breast on the side. Then it dawned on me, wasn’t there supposed to be butternut squash?

 

Turning to the menu I read that my dish should include “chunks of roasted butternut squash”. Just at that moment the same waitress came over to ask if our food was OK and I asked if my dish wasn’t supposed to have butternut squash. The waitress replied that it was blended in the sauce (which I could neither see nor taste) and when I showed her the menu and said it was supposed to have big chunks of roasted veg, she seemed surprised and said she could ask the kitchen if they had some that they could add. By this point though I just wanted to get on and eat my meal – even if it did have one of the main ingredients missing – so I politely declined.

 

My friend may decide to go here again as she lives locally, but I don’t, and I certainly won’t be in a hurry to go back.

 

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Meal Planning Monday Week 43

It's another busy week this week - I never realised how much there was to do when you got engaged! This week my sister is coming to stay on Thursday night (after dinner), I'm out with friends (and her) on Friday with a very important question to ask someone, and on Saturday we are going wedding dress shopping - I'm exhausted even just thinking about everything there is to fit in, but really excited!

Monday
Lamb for me (I had to defrost two pieces at once on Saturday) and burger and chips for him (also had to defrost one burger too many at the weekend)

Tuesday
Rest of fish pie from Sunday for me while the other half goes to his mum's

Wednesday
Gammon for him, salmon and veg for me PLUS make chocolate popcorn tray bake along the lines of this recipe.

Thursday
Venison steak with fig for me, sausage and mash for him.

Friday
Out

Saturday
Lunch: At my house between wedding dress shops with my meat-eater fiancé, vegan bridesmaid, her daughter, my sister and me... I will do grilled sandwiches which we can have with tuna, cheese, ham, and I found a vegan idea of houmous, falafel and cherry tomato which hopefully will be nice.
Dinner: I think I will do something along the lines of this pithivier that I learnt how to do at a Jus-Rol event recently. I can do different fillings and make a vegan pastry and serve it with new potatoes and salad.

Sunday
Lunch: French toast stuffed with cream cheese
Dinner: Chicken Chilaquiles from my Mexican recipe book

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Chicken topped with Homemade Houmous

This is a good way to make chicken a bit more interesting without using a complicated recipe or using something calorific (like melting cheese over the top).  You simply top the chicken with houmous and cook it in the oven to create a crust. You can use shop-bought houmous but I made my own.

 

This recipe makes plenty of houmous so you will have some left over.

 

You need:

400g tin of chickpeas, drained (but before you discard the liquid, check out this recipe!)

Juice of half a lemon

1 clove garlic

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp tahini paste

Pinch of salt

 

Simply mix everything in a blender until smooth. This will keep in the fridge for about 5 days.

 

To make the chicken recipe, simply spread the houmous over a chicken breast, as thick as you like, and bake in the oven.




 

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Layered Butterscotch Oreo Pudding

When I went to a barbecue at my friend Ros' house over the summer she made this amazing dessert.

Either luckily or unluckily for me (as I am trying to diet, but it looked amazing) I don’t like mint, and there was mint flavour in both the filling and the chocolate! My other half loved it though so I decided to make the same type of dessert but with a different flavour – butterscotch.

 

I had seen a new flavour of Oreo in Asda (which has been available in America for a long time) called Golden Oreos. They are a bit like custard creams but a little saltier I think, and really nice (though not as good as chocolate Oreos!). I also wanted to incorporate these into a dessert so decided to make this the bottom layer.
 

 

I completely followed Ros' recipe so I won't repeat it here; the only changes were that I used Golden Oreo cookies instead of chocolate Oreos for the base, and for the filling I left out the mint Aero, the green food colouring and the mint extract and instead I used butterscotch flavouring.

Similarly for the topping I left out the mint Aero and mint extract and instead decorated the top with some butterscotch chips I got in the US. It was a very indulgent and very nice!

I'm sharing this with We Should Cocoa, hosted this month by It's not easy being greedy, on behalf of Choclette of Tin and Thyme as the theme this month is America.

 

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Formula 1 Foods: Russia roundup and the next challenge: USA

The Formula 1 Russian Grand Prix was won by Lewis Hamilton, which made my fiancé very happy. The Russian cake I made might have made him happy too but I ended up taking it into work!

I had a look online for a suitable Russian recipe I could make and came across one for a layered honey cake. I used Greek yogurt instead of sour cream and wasn't exactly thrilled by how the cake looked on the outside, but when you slice it, you can see the thin layers and it does look quite neat. It had a biscuit taste more than a cake as the recipe involves making a sticky dough, so it was an interesting change from the cakes I normally make!

 

Suelle from Mainly Baking, who has been brilliant at taking part in this blog challenge, made a savoury potato and cheese dish called Kartoshnik and also Sharlotka, sliced apples cooked in a sweetened egg-rich batter to make a cake or pudding. She decided to cook them both and have a meal inspired by Russia.

I forgot to add my own entry to the linkup, oops! But since I am the host I can include it - and a few other things I made a while back - in the roundup anyway. I've made Shashlik kebabs:

 

and a Russian doll birthday cake, among other things.

 

 

The next challenge should be a lot easier because the Grand Prix is coming from the USA! You have until Tuesday 27 October to send in your American entries using the linky below.

 

 

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