The weather was glorious and the food and drink aplenty! There were a fair few stalls there, plenty of taste testers available and plenty of food cooking all around We took a wander around the stalls first, before it got too crowded to be able to see what was on offer, and then grabbed some lunch (ready cooked Ostrich burger for me and a Kangaroo burger for David) followed by dessert (frozen yoghurt with frozen raspberries in it), before heading home.

The only downside of the day was lack of space in areas and a lack of seating. I’m 5.5 months pregnant now and standing around is hard on my back anyway, let alone when I’m carrying our (almost) bundle of joy around too!

We left the festival with a few purchases:
Fudge (a plain clotted cream variety and chocolate and chilli – David’s choice)
Chocolate coated Cinder Toffee
Chicken and Ostrich ‘cushion’ (next Sunday’s dinner!)
Vegetable Samosas (for David)
Goat sausages
Chilli puree (called ‘Pure Pain Pleasure’ – also for David!)

In the news they’ve now added, however, that fast food is in fact cheaper than buying from the supermarkets, something I complete disagree with! How can paying over £2 for a quarterpounder burger from McDonalds be cheaper than shopping in a supermarket? And just to prove it, here’s a couple of fast food recipes to compete with two of my favourite meals. The difference? The homemade ones will be far more filling!

Quarterpounder with Cheese

You can buy aberdeen angus quarterpounder burgers from most supermarkets. In Marks & Spencers you can usually get a deal of 8 burgers (2 packs) for £5. That’s 62.5p per burger. Or you can get the non aberdeen angus burgers for £4 for 2 packs, so just 50p a burger.

Need

1 quarterpounder burger (Aberdeen Angus from M&S – 62.5p)
1 white roll (20p max)
A cheese slice or some sliced cheddar cheese (10p max)
Half an onion (10p maybe?)
Tomato ketchup (pennies)

Total Cost: £1.05 compared to over £2!

I also like to add lettuce and plenty of it, again, this is not very expensive, 10-20p max.

We usually put our burgers on the George Foreman, and fry our onions. Simply put it all together as you would and hey presto, a quarterpounder with cheese for about £1.00. In McDonalds you can expect to pay over £2 for one, and in Burger King the ‘Angus’ (which is meant to be a quarterpounder but really doesn’t seem to be when you get it) is over £3.

Sausage and Egg Muffin

I adore these and am very impressed that McDonalds uses free range eggs too, however they are still quite expensive (around £1.50-2 for a sausage and egg mcmuffin I think). To replicate this at home:

You Need

White muffin (20p max)
1 free range egg (25p max)
100g Sausagemeat (40p average)
Slice(s) of cheese (10p max)

Total Cost: 95p on average compared to £1.50-2.

Flatten the sausagemeat into a burger shape and either put it under the grill or on a george foreman or sandwich press. Poach the egg. Easiest is to do it in a microwave egg poacher as it stays round then! But you can do it as normal if you need to. Toast the muffin. Then just make the muffin up. Goes well with a good strong cup of tea!

Shopping for Food

We don’t buy ‘basics’. I’m sure some of it tastes just as good as normal brands, and some stuff is normal brands repackaged, however I can’t be bothered to work out what is and what isn’t good! I like decent food, I like meat to be meat and not gristle, bone and fat!

With a bit of trial and error, most fast food meals can be recreated at home, in a cheaper and probably healthier way. Some can seem a little fiddly but once you’ve got the method covered then you’ll find it a quick and easy meal to recreate and enjoy

However, the campaign has been pulled to make way for a new campaign which is currently running with David Jason (UK Comedy Actor) doing the voice over. As much as I love David Jason, the adverts are not good. I’ve seen them several times and it’s not appetising (true, there’s no chocolate cake with fondant oozing out!). You can’t listen and not see the advert, and realise it’s Marks and Spencer’s food until it’s mentioned at the end. The adverts have lost their style and their appeal.

Just bring Dervla and the music back!

Take a look at a Wine Review of it, or just take my word for it

I get one kitchen utensil/cookware catalogue through the post, probably wise else I’d want to spend more than I have! This catalogue is from the Professional Cookware Co. and to get their catalogue delivered for free sign up on their site for it. Luckily I happen to live near an outlet for this company, as they have a shop in the Cheshire Oaks retail park which I live about 5 minutes from. We’ve bought a few things from them in the past, a Pestle and Mortar, which is used on a weekly basis to ground the garlic down for garlic butter, a Parmesan grater – used when we have Parmesan!, a knife block for a set of knives we’d bought, and a few others bits such as baking trays.

The summer catalogue just dropped through the door this week and they’ve got a few really cheap reductions on items such as BBQ equipment, a set of 5 knives plus the block for just £40, and plenty of other things that I’d love to get but can’t justify or afford right now! However if you like shopping for the Kitchen then I recommend you get their free catalogue and find the nearest store local to you. I’ve never had to order online as the shop seems to always have what I want

What’s so great about strawberries? Their freshness, their taste and the fact they’re so low in G.I. value too. They’re great to just be snacked on whilst working, and the english ones are dead cheap from the local markets.

Our own as showing, as already mentioned. I noticed them this evening and have now laid down shredded paper underneath them to keep the strawberries clean and off the mud and ground. Ours will take a while longer to be ready, probably another 5-6 weeks, but one plant this year has more than the whole strawberry pot did last year. I realise a lot of the plants are more established and stronger this year, so we should get a nice little crop.

Perfect for a fresh dessert after dinner

However the bonus of using the grill has to be the speed for cooking and the taste. Even with lean healthy food, if we can put it on the grill we will, simply because it cooks both sides at the same time. On Friday we had a couple of Tuna steaks. Cooked within a few minutes and the speed locked the taste in and left them with the melt in your mouth taste.

There are a lot of newer models available, the bonus being removable plates, which is something I’d like. The other option (which there may be one already) is a way to cook with the lid up, allow the lid to tilt back a little or all the way over and get it to only heat the bottom plate. Sometimes not everything can be cooked between plates and at this point I have to return to the ‘too large for the job and takes a long time to heat up’ oven!

It’s definitely a worthwhile buy. Almost everything can be cooked on it and it’s even come in handy for doing toast since our toaster died!

After visiting the Good Food Show in London this year, we’d been given a booklet of vouchers, one of which was a 50p off any Serious Dessert. Two booklets meant two vouchers so yesterday I battled the panic buyers (clearly not wanting to leave the house until the New Year!) to get to the dessert aisle and picked out a Chocolate Mousse and a Tiramisu. I also spotted a Beaujolais and Blackberry Trifle which had been reduced to 13p (someone missed the 5 off the end, ah well) which I picked up too. I had the trifle last night as it was reduced due to the use by date, have to admit though it was a major let down and nothing fantastic. I’ll be trying out the Tiramisu tonight which I’m looking forward to as Tiramisu has to be a favourite of mine.

Serious Desserts are not cheap however but they are a little heaven in a glass (and the containers are always useful!), and the large desserts look even more inviting. Definitely a quick and easy way to produce an elegant dessert for a dinner party!

It’s just a shame the Serious Dessert’s page that I linked to is pure images, even the text. Amazing desserts with an inaccessible web site.

I’ve been to Costco plenty of times before with my parents and know what’s available there. Whilst some things may not be any cheaper buying from there I still believe they’re better quality. Of course there are things that work out a lot cheaper buying in bulk. We picked up some Beef Tomatoes which are nice and large and have a great taste to them. We also got some fillet steak and inch thick sirloin steaks. Costco has some amazing meats available and good quality beef, lamb, pork, chicken and various fish. We saw a Tuna loin which was about a foot long (30cm), but coming in at £50 it was a little extravagant for us! We picked up some smoked Haddock however, along with a few other various foods.

So tonight we had a nice Fillet steak each, pan fried with a touch of Worcestershire Sauce, with Coleslaw (Marks & Spencers – the nicest going!) and beef tomatoes on the side. I was intending to do Potato Dauphinoise as well however didn’t have the time to get them cooked as well.

Come the new year we’ll be returning to pick up some fresh fish and meat. With the shop being so close we don’t need to overbuy unless there’s an offer that makes it worthwhile. I’ll just have to steer clear of the bakery section with the large trays of 10+ chocolate muffins!!

Anyhow, you have to go via their sponsored link at Google to get to the offer so simply go direct to the Google search and click on the top sponsored link that mentions the offer. Grab that deal whilst it’s still available