DIY and Father's Day...

I popped home to Somerset to visit my parents for the weekend, and lots of progress is being made on the new house! It's all coming together now - the gorgeous slate tiles for the kitchen and dining room should be fitted next week, the new bathrooms are done, the kitchen has new cupboard doors and beautiful granite worktops, and they've painted the dining room a lovely warm cream colour with new curtains. The sitting room was next on the list, and as I was home I became part of the painting party!

Wearing the most attractive and flattering outfit in the world, obviously...! I did all the cutting-in bits around the edges (very fiddly going round the beams!) and discovered a hitherto untapped talent for filling cracks using decorators' caulk. We spent the whole of Saturday painting, and it looks fab! The walls used to be a pale grey/lilac sort of colour, which was quite nice, but we didn't realise how cold and dark it made the room until the fresh cream paint went up.

An added bonus of going home for the weekend was that I got to spend Father's Day with my dad. My sister and I got him this brilliant mug with a biscuit dunkability guide (my dad does love a cup of tea and a biscuit!) and we put a little selection of biscuits in the mug so that he could conduct his own dunking experiments. We had amazing home-baked croissants from the farm shop up the road (they're absolute genius - they come frozen and you defrost them overnight before baking them to flaky golden perfection in the morning) for breakfast, and then (after a bit more painting) took Dad to our favourite local pub for a delicious Sunday lunch. I'm a bit knackered today after all that DIYing, but it was a lovely weekend!

Easter Food Fest...

I'm back from my Easter weekend in Somerset feeling absolutely stuffed - we made all sorts of gorgeous things to eat!

First off, my mum finally got the ice cream maker for her (beautiful) Kenwood Chef out of the cupboard - it was her birthday present from me and my sister last year, but she hadn't used it! It's really clever, with a bowl that you freeze, a larger plastic bowl, and a paddle attachment to complete the transformation from Chef to ice cream machine. We used this maple syrup ice cream recipe (we love maple syrup in our house thanks to the four years we spent in New England when my sister and I were little) and unfortunately we were far too excited about watching the ice cream churning to remember to take photos, so you can have a sneaky pic of the finished product instead!

We used more maple syrup than the recipe suggested, and rippled some through the soft ice cream before it went into the freezer to fully set, and it was amazing. Really smooth, really creamy and incredibly delicious!

We then revisited the chocolate pie I made a couple of weeks ago, but as my sister wasn't around we didn't have to worry about making it totally gluten-and-dairy-free. While shopping for biscuits we spotted some almond ones in Waitrose, so we used half almond biscuits and half ordinary digestives. Great idea! The chocolate filling was the same as before, except we used almond milk to carry on the almondy theme, and we decorated it with some edible gold leaf just to make it posh!

(Can you tell I was let loose with my mum's smart Nikon DSLR camera?)

And finally, we made a lemon drizzle cake - but it was a bit of a disaster! When it came out of the oven looking seriously misshapen and a bit odd, my mum remembered that she'd tried the recipe before, a couple of years ago, and had ended up with a weird cake then as well. But we sliced it in half, sandwiched the two halves together with buttercream to hide the wonkiness, and topped it with lemon icing, fluffy chicks and Mini Eggs. You can't go wrong with that, and it did taste far better than it looked! A bit of clever photography also helped...!

I'm not going to post the recipe, because it's so impossible to get right that it's been banished from my mum's recipe file, but at least we made it look half decent in the end!

Painted...

Every now and then I treat myself to a manicure - mainly because I hate doing my nails myself and I can never be bothered to spend the time to make them look nice! The other day one of the girls from work had her nails done and it looked so nice that I thought I'd get mine done as well. There's a brilliant salon just round the corner from the office - their manicures are £10 and they're fab. Usually I just go for one coat of a very, very neutral colour but I'm going to a party with a 'Hollywood glamour' theme this weekend so I thought I'd have a bit of colour. I have quite short nails and quite small hands, so I was a bit worried that the dark polish would make them look even shorter and smaller, but actually I think it makes my nails look really nice!

I haven't chipped it so far...fingers crossed...!

I'm off to visit my parents for the Easter weekend today, so I hope everyone has a lovely weekend with lots of chocolate and hot cross buns!

Sunshine and chocolate pie!

It's been a lovely weekend. British Summer Time arrived in style, with wall-to-wall sunshine and lovely warm weather. It feels like spring has really arrived! Personally I'd like it if spring could bugger off again for the day next Sunday, because I hate running in warm weather (yesterday's 12-miler was utterly hellish and very slow) and I'd like to not die halfway round the Reading half marathon, but for the time being I'm enjoying the sun!

My sister also came to stay this weekend, and as usual I wanted to find a suitably delicious Suze-friendly recipe to make. Especially this time, as I hadn't seen her since November! I eventually decided to have a go at this chocolate pie from Post Punk Kitchen and I'm really glad I did, because it was brilliant. I made my own buttery biscuit base from 1 1/2 cups of biscuit crumbs (I used a pack of Doves Farm hazelnut and orange cookies and a few TruFree digestives as there weren't quite enough cookies in the pack) and 1/4 cup of dairy-free spread, which I melted and mixed with the biscuit crumbs before pressing it into a 9" non-stick shallow cake pan (I don't have a pie dish that size) and baking it in the oven for about 10 minutes. Then I made the chocolate filling as per the recipe, except I used Alpro hazelnut drink instead of almond milk.

We were SO impressed with the results! The hazelnut biscuits were perfect for the base, and the hazelnut milk in the chocolate filling made it taste ever so slightly Nutella-like. Yum yum! You absolutely would not know it was gluten- and dairy-free. It was amazing, if I do say so myself!

Sorting things out!

I'm having one of my periodic financial crises. I get paid on the 22nd of the month, and thanks to a few birthdays, trips and a bit too much shopping, this month has been a real struggle and I've had to dip into my (already quite meagre) savings just to get through to Thursday. Not good! I've also been struggling to eat as well as I'd like to - I've fallen into the 'too much wine at the pub followed by a dirty takeaway on the way home' temptation trap far too many times recently, which isn't good for either the waistline or the bank balance!

So as it's now officially spring, which seems like a good time for a fresh start and some positive thinking, I'm going to attempt to sort things out and get back on track. To that end, I've joined the excellent Shoeperwoman's Wardrobe Challenge. She does a Shoe Challenge every year, where you have to 'save' your shoes by wearing them - at the end of the year, any pairs you haven't worn have to be thrown away or sent to the charity shop or whatever. And now she's doing a similar thing with her wardrobe. It's such a good idea - I'm frequently guilty of buying new things for the sake of it (do I actually need another dress with birds on it?) rather than wearing the perfectly good clothes I already have, and I do have far too many items of clothing in my wardrobe. So I'll be attempting to 'save' my clothes by wearing them, and I'll be trying not to buy new things.

I'm also going to put a stop to the post-pub takeaways! My veg box has really helped to keep me away from the supermarket over the last week or so, and I've made some lovely healthy things, so it really is just this awful 'must get something to eat on the way home' habit that I've got to kick into touch. It's embarrassing, because everyone thinks of me as this ultra-healthy runner who eats lots of vegetables, and there I am shoving a horrible greasy pizza into my mouth at half past midnight. Yuck. Unfortunately after a couple of glasses of wine my self-control tends to go out of the window, but I'm going to try my best!

Weekend cooking...

I've done quite a bit of cooking this weekend, and most of it has been really very successful. As well as last night's banana ice cream triumph, I made a tofu pilaf for supper - which was based on this recipe, but I roasted the courgette with some tofu and used that instead of the tuna. I'll have to try it with the tuna at some point, though, and I reckon it'd be gorgeous with some baked cod.

Then this afternoon I was bored and I spotted this flourless chocolate cupcake recipe on Pinterest, so I decided to give it a go.

And the cakes turned out OK, but they weren't really chocolatey enough and the almond flavour really overpowered the chocolate. That might have been because I used almond oil as well as the ground almonds, but whatever happened they were just a bit nondescript. I've put them in the freezer for chocolate emergencies!

After that slight disappointment, I was a bit wary of trying another new recipe, but I decided to give it a go anyway and I'm so glad I did! I made some gorgeous mini tofu quiches, using this Fat Free Vegan recipe. They were so easy to make and absolutely delicious - I didn't have any peppers so I used onion and mushrooms, and I didn't have any herbs so I used some chilli flakes. I also used a whole pack of Cauldron tofu (which is just under 400g) rather than the 350g specified, but I added a little bit more almond milk when I was blending it (honestly, my little blender has been a real workhorse this weekend!) and it was perfect.

I had them with a big pile of garlicky sautéed leek and spring greens - my mum's dinner party staple when I was growing up was courgette and leek in garlic butter, and it really reminded me of that (without loads of butter, obviously!)

Apart from the cooking, it's been a glorious weekend weather-wise - and spring is starting to show itself, with these lovely crocuses in the park!

Pancake Day!

Yes indeed, today is Pancake Day (or Shrove Tuesday). So guess what I did? I made a quite obscene amount of pancakes, and then I ate them all.

My basic batter followed the recipe that my mum has always used - four dessertspoonfuls of flour, one egg and enough milk to turn it into a double cream sort of consistency. Then you swirl the batter in a hot non-stick pan - don't worry, the first pancake is always rubbish - and the trick is to wait until the edges have started to lift away from the sides before you think about moving or turning the pancake. We used to have pancake races at primary school, but these days I'm a bit more cautious and I prefer to flip my pancakes with a spatula rather than tossing them!

So I started off with savoury pancakes, which I baked like cannelloni - I fried up some mushrooms and spinach with garlic, black pepper and a tiny bit of pesto for the filling, then made some pancakes and rolled them up with the filling before baking them in my little Le Creuset dish with some tomato sauce (or passata) on top.

Yum yum! And then of course I had yet more pancakes, this time with maple syrup. You'll notice I make proper English pancakes - the thin variety, rather than the thick American sort - but having spent four years of my childhood in New England, I do like a bit of maple syrup!

And then I watched Blur performing at the BRIT Awards and wondered whether it might actually be 1995 again...but sadly Damon Albarn looks too old and they'd never let a 14-year-old rent a flat on her own, so it must be 2012 after all!

It's beginning to look a lot like...

...CHRISTMAS! Yay!

Apologies for the complete lack of blogging action recently - I've been ridiculously busy and my internet connection at home has been playing up. Anyway, here I am! Since I last posted, I've done all sorts - I put on a posh dress and went to a ball, I drank far too much at the running club's Christmas party, and I did a bit of celeb-spotting at the work Christmas lunch.

I also managed a PB on my usual Wednesday night 4.4-mile run - look!

I'd promised myself a night off, as it was the day after the aforementioned work do and I was anticipating a monster hangover, but I actually woke up feeling fine and therefore had no excuse for not getting out there for a run. I'd joked with one of the running club chaps that he should coach me to a PB, and he was as good as his word - he paced me round and I knocked a whole minute off my previous best! Just goes to show what I can do when I actually put some effort in...!

I've also been doing some Christmas shopping and baking - this year I made little gift bags for my friends with all sorts of homemade goodies inside, like rhubarb gin, caramel apple jam, and chocolate, cherry and almond cookies. And I also made some gingerbread men for some vegan friends of mine - they were the ones I made a vegan banana and mango loaf for a few months ago, but unfortunately I'd somehow managed to forget that my friend Janet hates bananas, so that didn't go down quite as well as planned! So this time I wanted to make sure I made something extra delicious, and this recipe from The Post Punk Kitchen was fab. I think my mini gingerbread man cutter must have been extra small, because I got hundreds of the little buggers! They looked brilliant all packaged up and ready to go - I just hope they've survived the post!

I've only got two days at work before I head down to the Westcountry for a (well-deserved, I like to think) Christmas break, but I'm sure I'll be taking lots of photos and I'll try to blog about all of our festive adventures as often as I can!

Winter light...

Apologies for the lack of posts lately - this week has been insanely busy! I somehow managed three nights out in a row, each more booze-filled than the last, and tonight is my first night in since Sunday! Today I've been trying my best to be healthy in a vain attempt to make up for the excesses of the last three days - it's been wall-to-wall green tea, water and vegetables!

I also decided to clear the cobwebs with a wander along to Waitrose after work (it's about a mile away) and the light was absolutely beautiful, so I took a couple of photos of the green...

It's actually been quite cold today - November was really unseasonably warm, but finally I've been able to break out the scarves and gloves! I like cold weather - it's December, it's meant to be cold! It doesn't feel festive without chilly weather. I'd like some snow...but maybe not quite as much as we had last year, and not when I'm trying to get home for Christmas...!

Apple and coconut cookies, mushrooms, and That Syed Off Eastenders...

We're coming up to late November (only a month until Christmas, people!) and although the weather is still unseasonably warm, I want to cook warming, autumnal things. And I want to get cracking with my Christmas baking - every year, I make some sort of sweet treat for my friends, and of course I have to do a bit of recipe testing first. Of course.

These apple, coconut and cinnamon cookies, while delicious, didn't quite fit the Christmas brief, which is why I'm sharing them with you now.

I made them on Sunday and took them to work - I was a bit worried that my colleagues wouldn't like them because of the texture, which is very soft and moist and quite far away from what you'd traditionally describe as a 'cookie', but they seemed to go down really well. They're too moist for Christmas presents, as the icing melted very quickly into the cookies, and I think they're a little 'healthy' for Christmas presents, but it was a good experiment! They're completely gluten- and dairy-free, which is always good to know.

Then this evening, I tried out another recipe - this time, it wasn't anything to do with Christmas, but it was gorgeous! I made a mushroom and pearl barley stew based on this recipe - I wanted to make it veggie but didn't want it to taste of vegetable stock cubes (I always have that problem...) so once I'd fried the mushrooms with the onion for a bit and they'd started to release their mushroomy juices, I added a good splash of Lea & Perrins and a splash of balsamic vinegar. I also added less water - about three cups - because I wanted it to be even more stew-like than Alisa's version. It was seriously yummy, and ridiculously healthy!

And, just to add a touch of the bizarre, as I was walking through the shopping centre earlier I discovered that Syed Off Eastenders - aka Marc Elliot - was switching on the Christmas lights. So I took a photo.

A week out and about...

It's been a busy one!

On Tuesday, I came back from lunch to find two of the girls I work with discussing getting tickets to see Manon at the Royal Opera House that evening. I'd never been to the Royal Opera House, so I ended up deciding to go along with them, and it was a brilliant impromptu night out!

The Royal Opera House is beautiful and even though I'm not a ballet buff by any stretch of the imagination, I really enjoyed the performance.

Then on Friday, my mum made her annual trip to London for Christmas shopping! Yes, I know Christmas is still weeks away, but it was the only weekend we could both do! I'm lucky enough to finish work at 4pm on a Friday, which meant we could hit Westfield nice and early and get plenty of shopping done before finding somewhere to eat. We started off with our traditional trip to the champagne bar, where I had the most amazing cocktail!

It was called a 'Gold Chocolate Cocktail' and, with Frangelico, Creme de Cacao and champers, it was basically a Ferrero Rocher in a glass. Incredible!

I used the trip more as a scouting mission for present ideas than an actual shopping trip, and (true to form) the only things I bought were for myself! I ended up with some socks, some hair grips (I'm growing my hair and my fringe is driving me absolutely mental) and a real bargain of a jacket from H&M. It's this one, but in a lovely camel/tobacco sort of colour, and it was half price - £17.49!

All packed and ready to go...

My parents are moving house this weekend, after 17 years in the current family home. I've already made my last visit to the old house, as I'll be away when the big move actually happens, but my sister's there helping with the packing and the final bits and pieces.

And she sent me this brilliant photo!

Poppy has clearly been listening to my dad (who keeps joking about not telling the cats where the new house is - he loves them really, honest) and has decided to take matters into her own paws!

Indian summer...

The weather has been incredible just recently. A proper Indian summer, with temperatures getting up to nearly 30 degrees. Boiling at any time of year in the UK, let alone the last week of September!

Just look at this...

I went down to Somerset for the second weekend in a row, to help my parents clear out the attic in preparation for their imminent house move. And there were idyllic rural views all around!

 As well as some glorious summery flowers...

...and we managed to rescue Big Ted, a childhood favourite, from the attic! A thorough hoover, a squirt of Febreze and an afternoon relaxing in the garden, and he was good as new!

Unfortunately I think things are going to get decidedly cold and rainy over the next few days, but it really was lovely to have one last warm and sunny week to ease us into autumn a little more gently!

Gorgeous orchid!

I bought an orchid half price in M&S last year, and it duly flowered and the flowers all fell off, as they do. I didn't hold out much hope of being able to keep it alive and make it flower again, but (following my mum's expert advice) I cut the stalk off once the flowers had all died, and I've been sitting it in a tub of water once a week and spraying it with amazing Orchid Myst spray. Back in October, a tiny little flower stalk sprouted, and it's been growing steadily ever since.

And look what happened today!



Isn't it beautiful? I'm so pleased! And look at all the other buds!

Luggage bargains...

If you're lucky enough to be jetting off on holiday in the next few months, I thoroughly recommend checking out the Debenhams sale for all your holiday bargains!

I needed a large holdall for a week's break - I had weekend bags and suitcases, but nothing in between. And I found this - a bargain with nearly £60 off - and then happened upon this, which had an even more impressive saving!



That's £235 worth of luggage for £70.50 - not bad, eh? I could have gone for the medium-sized suitcase, but the large was only £3 more and I thought 'Well, my current suitcase is massive, so it can't be that big...'



Er...yes. That's my old and battered suitcase on the left. So I certainly won't have any trouble packing for my holiday this year! The only slight issue is that my new suitcase won't fit under my bed, which is where my suitcases live...so I'm not exactly sure where I'm going to put the damn thing!

My name is Allie...

...and I have a problem with shoes.

This is my shoes-and-coats wardrobe:



Whenever I have to look for a new flat to rent (which I hope with all my being I won't have to do again anytime soon) one of my top priorities is to make sure it has enough storage for shoes. My previous flat had a cupboard in the hall that was just perfect, and my current flat has three brilliant built-in wardrobes.

I was beginning to despair at the state of my shoe cupboard, so I've just had a bit of a tidy and a sort-out. With the exception of a couple of wet weather staples, I've put all my wintry shoes in the boxes at the top of the wardrobe, and I've moved my sandals and more summery shoes to the more accessible boxes at the bottom of the wardrobe. I've also thrown away a few pairs that were on their last legs...and there still isn't room for everything!

Shamefully I also rediscovered a few pairs that I'd completely forgotten about - and that made me realise that I must stop buying new shoes (honestly, I have shoes in every possible colour and shoes suitable for every possible occasion - I do NOT need any more!) and wear the ones I have instead. Because despite having an entire wardrobe of shoes, I find myself sticking to the same few pairs. At the moment I switch between my tan flat brogues, my leopard-print flats, my tan strappy sandals and a couple of other pairs. Boring!

So I'm starting with these:



I bought them in New Look at least two years ago, and I can only remember wearing them once since then. I'm wearing them around the house this evening to see if I can work out what the problem was (did they hurt my feet? Give me blisters? Keep falling off?) and if I can't work it out, then I'll have to wear them more often, because they're really nice! They've got a little wedge heel and they look fab with skinny jeans.

Lazy Giraffe Jewellery...

I have a bit of a thing about pretty jewellery, and Lazy Giraffe Jewellery is one of my favourite places to browse when I want to find new things to lust over! It's run by the lovely Deepa, who really does make the most beautiful things. I'd been sighing over her Petite Rose Ring for months - I've got quite small hands, so I like very delicate rings, and it's just perfect. So imagine my surprise when a very lovely friend (who is obviously very good at picking up on hints...!) bought it for me!



Doesn't it look lovely? And the best news is that Lazy Giraffe has free shipping this weekend!

And yes, I am wearing it on my ring finger. I often wear rings on the third fingers of my right and left hands, just because I like to. I once caused a Facebook furore when I modelled a fingerless glove someone had knitted - I happened to be wearing a not-very-interesting plain ring from Accessorize on my left ring finger, and people went mental assuming I'd secretly got myself engaged! For a start, if I did get engaged I'd tell my friends in person rather than letting them find out via Facebook, and more to the point, if I did get engaged I'd want a significantly more sparkly ring than the one I wore for that photo!

Shellac

On Monday night, I went over to my friend Lan's house for a fabulously girly evening of healthy nibbles and toenail painting. Lan had told me about this incredible stuff called Shellac, which is a special nail varnish that won't chip. It's guaranteed to last two weeks on fingernails, but on toenails it can last much longer than that. It sounded perfect - I hate my toenails and always feel ridiculously self-conscious about wearing sandals. Usually I just slap on a few layers of badly-applied nail varnish and avoid showing my toes unless it's absolutely necessary, so the idea of a nail varnish that would a) last a decent amount of time and b) possibly make my feet look halfway normal was very appealing!

The lovely Rowena spent three hours painting our nails, and this is what we ended up with!



I love it! I went for hot pink, and it's really summery and incredibly shiny. And that's how it's going to stay for the next however many weeks! My feet look normal in sandals!



And there was an added bonus, too - going to see Lan means going to see Mabel, dog extraordinaire!

Bits and pieces...

Just a couple of miscellaneous things from the last few days! Firstly the most amazing cup of apple, cinnamon and honey tea from my local organic café. I was expecting an ordinary fruit teabag affair, but no - it was fresh (i.e. made that very minute in a juicer) apple juice heated up with a stick of cinnamon and a dollop of honey. Absolutely divine!



And then something I spotted that restored my faith in humanity - I like to think this bag still has its original contents and is just waiting for its owner to come and claim it...

Bringing my cookery into the digital age...

I've had this set of kitchen scales for a good few years now - I bought them from Morrisons and they cost a whole five pounds. And they were OK, but only OK - it was always really difficult to get them to actually read zero before you started, and they weren't at all accurate. The imperial bit just had pounds with four little markings between each number, and every time I used them I'd have to think 'Er...how many ounces in a pound again? 16? So each one of these markings is 4oz...?' which was a bit of a pain in the bum.



Over Easter, I used my mum's shiny digital scales and couldn't believe how quick and easy they were to use - and so today I decided to treat myself to a set. They were only £14.99 from Argos, but they're brilliant!



I love the fact that you can weigh things straight into the bowl you're going to use to mix them, and the fact that it measures liquids as well as dry ingredients, and the fact that you can weigh one ingredient, set it back to zero, and weigh the next ingredient in the same bowl. Less washing up! And they're much easier to store away than my old ones. I think they'll make my life so much easier - I weigh things like pasta and rice for everyday meals, which I know makes me sound like some kind of obsessive weirdo, but portion control is something I really struggle with and if I'm not careful I find that I end up with massive portions, which of course I then eat! And it's going to be much easier to just whip these scales out than it ever was faffing about with the old ones.