Meal at Giraffe & The Hunger Games

Evening! Good weekend? I had an amazing day out with my Mum at Exeter Food Festival today - such a fantastic day that I look forward to all year...bring on 2013!! I sampled lots of food, took lots of photos and brought home lots of goodies...so much so that I don't have the time (or energy!) to bring it all together into a blog post tonight. I don't want to rush the post as I really enjoy writing about the food festival...so that is tomorrow's project.

Tonight you get a post that I've been meaning to write for over a week - ever since we went a week ago last Thursday in fact. What with Easter weekend and the school holidays, time has run away from me! I started to include it in my catch up post on Friday, but I decided it deserved a post of its own so here it is...

Last Thursday (5th) Liam and I went out for the evening - a very rare occasion for us! Because we go out so rarely, we tend to go a bit overboard when we do, so not content with either going out for dinner or to the cinema, we did both! First dinner - at Giraffe. Because we went before a film, we ended up going for dinner much earlier than usual, which meant we hit the cocktail happy hour...ok with me! I started with a mango and lime daquiri...

This was delicious - thick and fruity! Liam had a Mississippi Punch, but he preferred mine...of course! ;)

For my main course I'd already decided to have a falafel burger...upgraded to include sweet potato fries - my favourite. For some reason I'd expected this to be burger shaped, but it was actually individual falafels in a burger bun...

Still delicious - I love falafel - just a bit more difficult to eat! I was actually more interested in the toppings anyway - "grilled pepper, hummus, beetroot, rocket, halloumi AND tzatziki"...say yum!! :) Luckily the harissa was on the side - Liam tried a tiny taste of it, and his reaction was enough to put me off having any myself - I dipped my (amazing!) sweet potato fries in a mix of ketchup and mayonnaise instead...much better!

During the meal I had one more cocktail - an apple and elderflower martini...

This was actually my favourite cocktail of all of them - it had a wonderful zingy flavour which was perfect to cut through the heaviness of the burger.

And then, despite already being quite full, we decided to have dessert at Giraffe rather than ice cream at the cinema. Liam had the Rocky Road Sundae...

and I had the toffee apple crumble...

Really good, although it did leave me a little more full than I'd usually like to be for sitting in the cinema!

Luckily I was really looking forward to going to the cinema (that was the main reason for going out, but then when we realised we'd got confused about the times and had asked Liam's Mum to babysit earlier than we needed her, we decided to squeeze in dinner as well!). We went to see The Hunger Games. I wont give away the story line in case some of you are wanting to see it, but I loved it!

I don't usually like films that are based on books - I never find the films to be anywhere near as good as the books they are based on - and I'd only read the Hunger Games books a few weeks ago (reading all 3 books in less than 48 hours!) so I was worried that I would be too critical of any bits that the film missed out. I was pleasantly surprised though - I think this is the best book-film I've seen! Of course a few bits are missed out because of the nature of it being a film (I especially noticed that Gale had less of a prominent role, but I suppose that is because in the book a lot of the mentions of him are Katniss' thoughts) but overall I found the film to be pretty true to the book. I really enjoyed it and can't wait for the next film!

Liam also loved it and, amazingly for him, it has inspired him to start reading! He didn't read the first book, but the day after we saw the film he started reading the second book on my Kindle. He doesn't love reading like I do, so has only read 3 chapters so far, but I'm amazed that he wanted to read it at all - another sign of how good the film was!

Have any of you seen The Hunger Games film and/or read the book? What did you think? And have you been to Giraffe before? Maria mentioned a couple of days ago that she loves the sweet potato fries at Giraffe, and I definitely agree - best ones I've found! One of my friends, despite living quite close to several branches, hadn't actually heard of Giraffe, but I've now educated her on its' delights (I also love their farmers market vegetable burrito) and she's planning to go to one soon! :) I tend to forget that not everyone thinks about food as much as I do!!

Highlights from a Festive Weekend

Evening everyone! How have all your weekends been? Sorry I've been a bit absent - weekends go so quickly that I like to spend as much time doing stuff with the family, rather than sitting on my laptop.

This weekend has felt quite Christmassy - I have to keep reminding myself that it's not even December yet!

I started the weekend by making almond milk. Ok, that's not particularly festive, but it is something I've been meaning to do for a while!

I followed Laura's directions, and sweetened the milk with 3 or 4 pitted dates.

I also made the almond pulp cookies Laura linked to in the above directions, but I was too impatient and so burnt them, oops, next time I will actually cook them at super low temperatures like I was supposed to!

On Saturday afternoon, my Mum, Izzy and I went to the local college's Christmas Fayre. We went last year and there were loads of food/cake stalls so I was really looking forward to this. Unfortunately, it seemed to be smaller this year. There were only two baking stalls and one selling jams/chutneys. No sign of either the marshmallow sweet bags or the balloon making man - both of which Izzy had remembered from last year and had been looking forward to! I did manage to buy a few things though. Cake pops that had been made by the after school cookery club (we ate these last night, hence the poorly lit photo). The insides of these was madeira cake and melted mars bars - tasty, but slightly sickly.

I also, of course, couldn't resist buying some cupcakes. The stall I bought these from was a bit disorganised though - they claimed Izzy's (with the stars) was lemon, and Liam's (the purple rose - it reminded me of our wedding cupcakes!) was vanilla - which luckily was correct, but they told me mine was "either pumpkin or carrot" so I was most disappointed when it turned out to just be plain cake! The icing was nice though, with desiccated coconut on, I took the red man off as he looked a bit too gelatinous for my liking!

I also bought a couple of jars - one of plum and blueberry jam, which I haven't tried yet, and one of apple cider butter, which is just amazing. The lady who sold them had business cards with pretty much just her phone number on it, saying she took orders large or small, so I may have to buy some more apple butter! I did look into making it myself, but it seems to be quite a lengthy process. She sold me this jar of amazingness for only £1.30 which seems a good deal to me!

I had some of the cider apple butter with this morning's breakfast - french toast, a microwaved diced cinnamon apple, a little agave and lots of apple butter.

Absolutely divine! I think I'm going to get through that little jar way too quickly!!

Back to yesterday though, and the other Festive thing of the weekend. Last night we went down to see the town's Christmas lights being turned on. The school newletters on Friday had given all the children a raffle ticket to win £100 voucher from the local toy shop, but only if they were there when the draw took place yesterday evening. A good ploy to get more people to turn up, but it meant that it was so busy that we couldn't get close enough to see the entertainment that was put on for the children. We also could barely hear the raffle as the speakers weren't working. Ah well, at least the lights are pretty!

Poor Izzy was a bit disappointed afterwards as well, as we'd decided to eat in town after the lights were turned on. However the best laid plans and all that - despite it only being 5.45pm, Toby decided to start screaming, which meant that eating in the family-friendly pub was out. And then the local chippy ran out of chips! We had to make do with pizza from Co-Op in the end, but promised Izzy we would go for a pub lunch today instead.

*****

After a super snacky day yesterday, I woke up this morning deciding that I would have three amazing meals (+ the cupcake from the Christmas fayre), but no more. I did pretty well until Liam tempted me with store-bought, nothing special, chocolate brownies just now! Apart from that though, I had the amazing appley breakfast I've already shown you. Then, for lunch, we went to the pub and I had a small Mediterranean vegetable pizza (I didn't remember until I was eating it that we'd had pizza last night as well!):

and, the main reason I like this pub, a side of sweet potato fries:

So good!

After we lunch, we went for a walk along the seafront. It was slightly chilly, but so pretty! I love getting some sea air whenever possible, a good way to remind ourselves of how lucky we are to live so close the seaside (even if it does mean we're hours away from Wholefoods, haha!!)...

On the way home I picked up a takeaway coffee from Costa - roasted hazelnut latte. I stuck to tap water at lunch so figured this was "allowed"!!

Not quite as good as the gingerbread flavour in my opinion, but still really good. And with the added bonus of not having loads of grated nutmeg in the last mouthful - win!

This evening we had Mama Pea's Quinoa Courgette Lasagne for dinner, which was great, but the photos were not. I can't wait to get our camera back from repair - my little sister's camera is doing a good job, but cannot handle the poor winter lighting.

What is the best thing that you have done this weekend? Is it getting Christmassy where you live? I was chatting to one of the local shop-owners a couple of days ago, and he was saying that they have to put decorations up to coincide with the turning on of the lights. I don't think he was too keen on how early it was though - I'm sure the lights didn't used to be turned on til it was December did they??!

Bank Holiday Sunshine

I hope everyone in the UK has been enjoying the bank holiday weekend? We've had fun the last two days, enjoying the sunshine. Saturday was a bit miserable (which I solved by making caramel sauce!) but yesterday and today have been wonderful!

Despite my sweet tooth, I've been waking up fancying savoury breakfasts recently, specifically eggs. Yesterday I had two slices of seeded toast with raspberry jam, plus two scrambled eggs...

This morning I also had two scrambled eggs, with one slice of seeded toast + pure spread, and an avocado nectarine 'salsa'...

These were both delicious, I love the egg-jam combo, and this morning's avocado was so creamy, delicious!

Lunches have also been great. Yesterday, Liam had a long shift at work so had requested a "light" lunch as he's usually too tired to eat much. I aimed to please with a summery salad (plus it meant I could spend more time in the garden before starting to cook!) - spinach, quinoa and basil tofu, plus mozzarella for the others...

This was really tasty, warm quinoa with cold spinach and tofu was a great combo, and it was filling without being too heavy. I also drizzled a little sesame oil in the quinoa for extra flavour, yum!

Today Liam had the day off work, so we went out for lunch. I had a sweet and sour vegetable stir fry with noodles...

...plus a bowl of sweet potato fries for everyone to share...

The sweet potato fries were, of course, amazing! The stir fry was nice - the vegetables were really fresh - but there was a bit too much sauce for my liking.

After lunch, the others had ice creams on the seafront...

but I went to Costa instead and got a iced vanilla soy latte...

Mmm, real coffee! I switched to decaf coffee a week or two ago as every time I had a latte I was getting horrible making-me-double-over stomach pains. However, when it started happening after some of my meals as well, I started to realise that it usually occurred when I had a lot of dairy. So the last few days I have been using non-dairy milks, avoiding cheese etc (although still eating trace amounts of dairy in cakes and chocolate chips!) and I am pleased to report that, so far, I've had no stomach pains. And (more importantly!!!) this coffee caused no problems, so I can start having caffeine again, yey!! :-D

I haven't really eaten proper "dinners" the last couple of days - yesterday I had lots of snacks during the afternoon. Including, but not limited to, several coconut cakes topped with raspberry jam...

and an Alpro Soya vanilla dessert with pb & chocolate chips...

So I ended up having dinner pretty late, and still fancied something sweet. Enter porridge made with a mashed banana and peanut flour, topped with Julie's peanut butter granola...

I think I should have cooked the granola for a minute or so more as it didn't get very crunchy, but it was still so addictive - I ate the whole batch over the course of the evening!

Delicious, I want to try baking lots of different types of granola now - so easy to make, I can't believe I haven't done it before!

This evening, I haven't actually had any dinner yet. We didn't end up eating lunch until 3.30pm as Izzy was awake at 4am so had a 2.5 hour nap in the middle of the day! I have made muffins this evening, but I will wait until I can take photos in better light to share that recipe tomorrow. I ate one of those straight out of the oven though, and will go and get more food once I publish this, I just don't know what I fancy/can be bothered to make!

We have made the most of the sunshine to go to the play park lots over the last two days. Izzy had been desperate to go for days but the weather kept preventing us, so as soon as we saw the sun was out yesterday, we knew what we had to do! Yesterday, my sister and her boyfriend joined me and the children - we went at 9.30am on Sunday morning, so the park was still nice and quiet!

Today, Liam and I took the children to the park twice. Being a bank holiday, it was much busier, but we still had fun. We first went this morning...

We had then planned to go straight for ice cream, but both children were very tired (aka grumpy!) so we went home for them to both have naps. We came back to the park on the way home from lunch later on...

I'm so glad we managed to fit in lots of fun this weekend! I doubt the sunny weather will be around for that much longer (it is already quite chilly even when the sun is out) and Izzy goes back to school next week anyway. She's really looking forward to going back, but I'm a bit sad - it's been fun to have her around more and not have to stick to the routine of the school run!

How has your weekend been? Did you do anything special today if you had a bank holiday? Oh, and I wanted to say 'have a great time' to all of you that are meeting up in Manchester tomorrow - I've been reading all your tweets and wishing I could be there...if only it wasn't so far away/so expensive to get there! I look forward to reading all about it on your blogs though! :)