Last Day

Flat white and an almond croissant with my favourite Swedish gal for a final catch up of the year.

A Very Merry Christmas!

All of you kitchen geeks out there will appreciate this - my boyfriend bought me a cream KitchenAid for Christmas, and I almost died of happiness. I've wanted one of these for so long and now that I have it, I have no idea what to make first. For now I've just been finding the perfect spot for it on my worktop and admiring it from afar. But I do know that if anything will get me back to baking as much I used to, it's this beauty. Merry Christmas everyone! Peace and Love x

The festive season...it's beginning to take its toll.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Is it just me or does everyone seem particularly excited about Christmas this year? We've been getting very much into the festive spirit. Some highlights so far have been...

Red cups!

Hot chocolate, mince pies and a posing cat

Christmas cards for school friends with candy canes inside

Talking about Father Christmas. A lot.

A very long day of present shopping 

A budget end-of-term Christmas dinner with uni friends

And the best thing is, there's still 10 days to go and loads more fun stuff to do. Nice.

The Salamander

The Salamander, Bath. You couldn't find a more cosy place to hide away on a cold Winter's night. 

The Salamander is one of those tucked-away pubs that's easy to forget about, but it's becoming a favourite boozy destination of ours and is popular with Bath locals looking for something with a bit more soul than the usual city gastro pub. In the bar downstairs, you can choose from a tempting array of Bath ales or something from the decent wine list, and pitch up at a wooden table by the fire. But you'd be a fool not to go upstairs afterwards and sample the food in the intimate dining room. 

 

Feeling in need of something hearty, my boyfriend and I both opted for the braised ox cheeks with horseradish mash (despite it being a pet hate of mine to both order the same thing, mostly because I want to see what the other dishes on the menu look like!). Ox cheeks aren't the usual cut of meat you'd expect to see on a menu, but luckily they were slowly cooked to perfection so that the meat was tender enough to cut with a butter knife, and served in a rich savoury sauce alongside a big heap of creamy mash with just enough of a  horseradish kick. Pretty reasonably priced too at £12.95.

We carried on drinking leisurely whilst kidding ourselves that we weren't going to order dessert. The final compromise was to share the English apple tart with butterscotch sauce and creme fraiche, and although the flavours were the perfect balance of sharp apple and achingly sweet toffee, to be honest it was a greedy step too far and we couldn't finish it.

So we gave up and carried on drinking. Well it is nearly Christmas!

Go to The Salamander website here

Carrot Cake Muffins with Cream Cheese Icing

Since being back at uni, I've definitely found my eating habits have become more sporadic. I either skip breakfast entirely, or dash out the door whilst looking sadly back at a piece of toast and steaming hot cup of tea that I didn't have time to eat. Similarly, lunch is often something grabbed in between lectures, and as much as the cheap food offered in the SU bar is very tempting on a Winter's day, a girl cannot live on chilli chips alone.

So I decided to make these muffins to see me through the week. They contain wholemeal flour, carrots AND raisins, so I think they're pretty healthy. You could of course leave out the dairy and sugar laden icing, to make these even more breakfast appropriate. They're great to pack in your bag and eat on the go.

Also, people love you if you bring them homemade muffins. It's important you know that.

Here's what you'll need and what you need to do with it:

Muffins

100g wholemeal self-raising flour

100g self-raising flour

175g soft brown sugar

1 tsp nutmeg

1 1/s tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 eggs

zest 1 orange

150ml sunflower oil

200g carrots , grated

100g raisins

Icing (optional)

100g butter , softened

300g soft cheese

100g icing sugar , sifted

1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4 and line a 12-hole muffin tin with cases.

2. In a large mixing bowl, mix the sugar, flours, bicarbonate of soda, spices and orange zest. 

3. Whisk together the eggs and oil, then stir into the dry ingredients with the grated carrot and raisins.

4. Divide the mixture between cases and bake for 20-22 mins, then leave to cool on a wire rack before icing. (If you're not icing them, the muffins can go in the freezer for future use once completely cool)

5. For the icing, beat the butter until really soft, then beat in the soft cheese, icing sugar and vanilla. Spread onto the muffins, then stand back and admire their muffiny beauty.

Fact: Monday mornings are easier with a pretty mug and a bit of Radio 6.

Saturday-Sushi and Cake

Bath, on a Saturday. If you're crazy enough to brave the shopping crowds, as we decided to, be sure to head to Yen Sushi for lunch. Then, you only have to face the rain and cold briefly to seek respite in Cafe Lucca - in the form of hot chocolate, orange and marmalade cake, and walnut tart. Oh and it helped that this guy makes the rain and hour-long-search-for-a-parking-space seem totally bearable!

They Are Getting Married

We spent the weekend with our wonderful family, celebrating the engagement of my brother and his partner Lucy. They're an adorable couple, and happen to make excellent hosts, too. So on Saturday night we were treated to dinner of spaghetti and tricolore salad, followed by homemade meringues and fruit. Then it all got a bit less civilized when the sticking-of-spoons-on-faces started...

Family members arrived from both sides the next day, and we enjoyed homemade pasties, quiches, and cakes - including Lorraine Pascal's Oreo brownies which I'd been dying to try; a Baileys and white chocolate cheesecake that a relative of Lucy's has been given strict instruction to send me the recipe of; and little heart-shaped Victoria sponges that made all the women coo quite hysterically. Oh, and champagne of course! Although I regretted that slightly when Toby and I had to rush for our late night train home!
 Totally worth it to spend some time with my brother though. Congratulations Adam and Lucy! xxx

A Parisian Food Market

Miss P Does Paris, Volume I

Every Sunday morning in the Bastille area of Eastern Paris, a food market appears that stretches down the whole of Boulevard Richard Lenoir, with more fresh produce than you can shake a baguette at. It's a total foodie paradise, and made me wish that I had a pretty little apartment nearby where I could cook up some culinary delights with the exciting goodies on offer. Even so, it was worth a visit to soak up the atmosphere, and to witness food shopping at its simplest yet most inspirational. Surely this is how it should always be? 

 (me, looking like I've never seen a clementine before)

To experience it for yourself, get the Metro to the Bastille stop and exit at Blvd Richard Lenoir. You can also enjoy a hot Nutella crepe on your way around, as we did, but that's entirely optional of course. What you must do, though, is find the guy making fresh fruit juice to order on his stall with his little blender. His jus d'orange is probably the best in Paris!


Miss P x

Almost there...

I don't think I'll get much sleep tonight - in the morning we're off to Paris! As you can imagine I'm pretty ridiculously excited. It's somewhere that I've never visited but have always longed to, so I hope it fulfills expectations - and yes, I fully expect hundreds of pink balloons to be set off in front of the Eiffel Tower upon our arrival.
  I'll be sure to take an embarrassing amount of photos, so stay tuned for  pictures of Parisian foodie delights and my tips on where to eat. Until then, Bon Nuit!