Huwebes, Agosto 5, 2021
Labong, Saluyot at Sitaw, Lutong Ilocano
Martes, Agosto 3, 2021
Kare Kare sa Bigas, Thickened with Ground Toasted Rice
Sabado, Hulyo 24, 2021
The Ivy Brasserie Cobham - Review
Miyerkules, Hulyo 14, 2021
Ilocos Sur’s Inabraw, Dinakdakan, Gising Gising and Lechon
Martes, Hulyo 13, 2021
In The Pink Birthday Card
Linggo, Hulyo 11, 2021
Canned Meatloaf Burger with Mushroom Sauce, Budget Meal
Sabado, Hulyo 3, 2021
Pork Feet with Mushroom and black Bean Sauce, Lutong Pinoy
Huwebes, Hunyo 24, 2021
5th Anniversary Wooden Log Celebration Cake
The theme for a fifth wedding anniversary is wood so when my husband and I were celebrating that particular milestone recently I decided to make a cake based on the theme. There are a lot of ways you could interpret ‘wood’ - after all a lot of different things are made of wood - but to me the obvious choice was a woodland theme and a wooden tree stump!
This cake has vertical layers running through it which makes it a bit different - because it’s actually a Swiss roll cake on its side!
The recipe and general design came from a blog called Top with Cinnamon. It’s actually very easy to make this delicious cake - you make two Swiss rolls, cut them vertically so you have four strips, and roll them all up around each other with frosting in between.
I didn’t make the coffee frosting in this recipe and instead added some cocoa powder as I wanted my daughter to have it and she’s too young for coffee (and probably wouldn’t like the taste anyway). I spread the ganache around the outside and on top and marked it with a fork to look like a tree trunk.
If I had more time to decorate I would have made woodland creatures out of icing but instead I used some mushroom shaped sweets (you can get these in most grocery shops) and made a ladybird, leaves and some tiny flowers out of icing (a flower plunger cutter made that last part very easy). Finally I added a ‘happy anniversary’ cake pick.
You can see the vertical layers when you slice into the cake - overall I’m really pleased with how the cake matches our anniversary theme!
Sabado, Hunyo 5, 2021
Chicken Feet Curry, Lutong Pinoy
Biyernes, Hunyo 4, 2021
Easy chicken and lemon all-in-one tray bake
Huwebes, Hunyo 3, 2021
Sweet and Sour Maling, Pinoy Lunch
Sabado, Mayo 29, 2021
Dirty Bones meal kit at home - Plateaway review
We’ve eaten quite a lot of takeaways during the pandemic, but not because we couldn’t get out to our favourite restaurants – since becoming parents over three years ago we have barely been out to eat more than a handful of times! Instead, ordering in food was either something we did at the end of a particularly tiring day of working and entertaining a toddler, or because we felt like we needed a treat of some kind. I was getting a bit fed up of our same old, same old choices, particularly when it came to actually celebrating a special occasion.
For Valentine’s Day we had a lovely delivery from a local restaurant, Spaghetti Tree, but for my birthday recently I wanted to do something else. I have seen a few websites that allow you to order meal kits from restaurants if you live too far away to get a takeaway- you do have to cook it yourself but they provide all the ingredients and instructions. That sounded quite fun so for my birthday I had a look at Plateaway to find something my husband and I would both like - which immediately ruled out quite a lot! I decided to go for burgers out of curiosity - cooking burgers at home is never as good as eating them in restaurants or indeed takeaway/ delivery from the likes of Five Guys. I’ve often wondered even if you get a good quality beef patty surely what makes these meals delicious is the way they are cooked or even the way the burgers are assembled - so this was my opportunity to find out!
I went for the ‘Mac Daddy kit’ from a restaurant called Dirty Bones - they have a site in London’ Shoreditch though I’ve never eaten there before. I selected the option I wanted from Plateaway - kit to serve two for £19 - and entered the delivery date I wanted. I went for the day before my birthday as the meal kits do have to be used within a day or two but as the delivery time is not guaranteed I thought it best to get it the day before- though it came around 11.30am.
Plateaway lists everything you get inside the box on its website so you know before you order exactly what you are getting. In this kit there were burger patties, American cheese slices, brioche buns, a pouch of macaroni cheese and a pouch of pulled pork in barbecue sauce. The latter were both already cooked and prepared and just needed reheating. The kit doesn’t come with fries so you will need to supply cook those yourself.
There was a card inside the pack with detailed instructions, though it was very straightforward and really only involved frying the burgers and heating the Mac and cheese and pulled pork in small pans. The instructions also include how to assemble the burger.
And is ordering a burger from Plateaway worth it? A resounding yes from me. The burger was juicy, the mac and cheese creamy and the pulled pork tangy, all working together to give the taste of something I would happily have ordered in a restaurant.
But is it worth cooking something from Plateaway or a restaurant meal kit yourself? First of all, let’s look at the cost. This was £19 for two people - so £9.50 per burger - plus a £4.95 delivery charge. At Dirty Bones restaurant the Mac Daddy burger is £12 - so you save £2.50 by cooking it yourself or if you count the delivery cost it’s basically the same as eating in the restaurant (though you would have to factor in the cost of getting to the restaurant unless you lived in walking distance, and a tip). It is cheaper than ordering a takeaway - we seem to spend about £40 when we order from Five Guys for instance though that includes fries and drinks. It’s worth knowing that you can also get the cook at home meal kits direct from the Dirty Bones website. They charge £28 instead of £19 for the Mac Daddy kit but that includes delivery and also two portions of fries with their special blend of onion and garlic salt.
Ultimately the draw of getting a restaurant meal kit to cook at home is if you want to eat food from a particular restaurant and live too far to either go there (or are avoiding travel/eating out still due to covid; we were in lockdown when we ordered this but even now haven’t started going into London again) or live too far away to get an actual takeaway delivered. For that reason- and because the food was delicious even though I cooked it myself - I would definitely order again!







