Well, well, well – look what got delivered to my house today!
I decided to treat myself to an advent calendar with a difference this year, and the Ciate Mini Mani Month looked so enticing I couldn’t resist! (Especially as I was lusting after the Caviar pearls – four colours inside!) Expect an update every day in December (well, up until Christmas Eve!) with a brand new shade…
Recently, the nice people at PopChips sent me a box of tasty treats to review, and by a fantastic coincidence, they arrived the day of my best friends’ birthday (they are twins… the grammar is making my head ache)! Already armed with the super delicious (but highly calorific) Kettle Chips I had already bought, I took the box along to share, and get everyone’s opinions about PopChips.
I first heard about PopChips through Jillian Michaels’ podcast, as she’s an investor in the company (and you know I love me some Jillian). These are often listed as one of her recommended snacks on her diet plans. However, these really aren’t diet food – but then, they’re not really crisps, either. They’re puffed up discs of deliciously flavoured, 100% real potato goodness, and each bag is under 100 calories.
Think popcorn, but crisps! So, I took my magical box to the party (not just ANY party, a 30th birthday party!) to canvass some opinions. And to be honest, some of my friends sounded like they were auditioning for a job in PR when I asked them to text me their thoughts later – they obviously really liked these crisps! (And there were plenty of Kettle Chips that got left behind that night, let me tell you.)
This is Charlie. He had plenty to say about PopChips, all of them in handy, bite-sized slogans. He started off quizzically.
“Who would have thought you could flavour air? Crazy!”
Then he upped the ante.
“They were so good, I had my sex-face on. Mmm-mmm.”
(I did not get a sex-face photo. Sorry.)
He finished off with:
“If Sting had PopChips, he wouldn’t need tantric sex.”
Indeed! Those salt and vinegar ones must be good. (What a scamp!)
This is birthday girl #1, Rachel! She loved the salt and vinegar flavour too, and complimented them on their crunchiness.
This is Lorraine, birthday girl #2! She was also heavily into writing slogans when I texted her about her thoughts. “Why have crisps when you can have PopChips?!” she demanded. “Taste just as yummy but fewer calories – just what I want from a snack! Particularly liked the barbeque flavour, very tasty!”
As you can see, Omar was initially sceptical about the idea of low calorie crisps. He is a man’s man. Man’s men don’t eat low calorie crisps. However, he was won over, and pronounced them “tasty, and surprisingly light.” Well. He was eating the manliest flavour, after all.
Here’s Sara (you might remember her from the post about WestQuay’s new Dining area). She liked her salt and vinegar flavour, and told me she reckoned they were “a good alternative to crisps.”
Finally, my dear husband, Michael. We don’t need a quote from him. Look how happy he is, just eating those PopChips.
Really, the face says it all, doesn’t it?
You can buy PopChips at WHSmith, Waitrose, Ocado, Boots, amazon.co.uk and many other fine retailers. Check out PopChips’ site here! Or, visit them on Facebook. Tell them I sent ya!
You know I loves me some French Sole. I also love the new studded slipper trend. Put the two together, and you get these beauties! 
Black dome studded leather Henriettas from French Sole! Oh my… Let’s look a little closer at these beautiful little studs!
Even though I love the bold, rock chick look of the pointed studs of the current trend, these domed studs are beautifully feminine, like little golden bubbles! 
There’s something really Christmassy about these sweet flats – and it would definitely make a great Christmas present for a lucky girl! Purchase these beauties at French Sole for £150.
This bento is packed with leftover Spanish omelette from dinner the day before. It’s just as delicious cold the next day, and I love it with dill pickles.
Here’s the Spanish Omelette recipe!
INGREDIENTS
METHOD
This will serve two for dinner with a portion left over for a bento, or will make around four large bento portions.
These are seriously the most delicious spring rolls I have ever eaten, so I’m really excited to share the recipe with you – I hope you get a chance to try them out and fall in love too! Forget soggy beansprouts and weird gloopy sauce, these spring rolls are a meal in themselves – because you won’t be able to stop eating them once you start…
You can freeze these ahead of when you want to eat them, but you should thaw them before deep frying. Just prepare the filling and roll up the wrappers, then pop in a single layer in your freezer. The ones pictured are normal size, but for bentos buy a large packet of spring roll wrappers and then cut them into quarters for cute mini spring rolls!
INGREDIENTS
METHOD
Ever wondered what happened to the golden nail varnish of my dreams? I’d been too afraid to try it on properly until yesterday, keeping myself to just a one nail swatch to try it out. Why, you ask? Well, because I didn’t think I could handle all that awesome at once. Who knows what could have happened? One minute, you’re painting your nails, and the next minute, you’re standing in the garden, holding your hands up to the sun, shrieking “EUREKA!” and doing a special nail varnish dance*. (Don’t look at me like that, you know which one I mean.) Frankly, my neighbours think I’m weird enough as it is. Anyway, I finally tried it out last night, and here are the glorious results:
Here it is in the daylight:
Ahhh, so beautiful and shiny! The colour is actually glitter suspended in a clear varnish, I think, and you layer it up over several coats (this is three). This is the perfect way to get a complex, ultra sparkly colour, without it being overly girly or glittery (nothing wrong with glitter! But I wanted GOLD!). This, to me, is the perfect festive shade! Has anyone else planned some festive colours this holiday season?
* Actually, the real reason I haven’t worn it yet was because I was saving it for post-Thanksgiving/birthdays Christmassyness… WHICH IS NOW!
I love me a fancy restaurant, and the last time I visited Brighton (way back in April), I decided to book a table at Graze, a place I’d heard some pretty good things about! Their lunch time tasting menu is actually really reasonable for a restaurant of their quality, so I was really excited to visit – and I wasn’t disappointed at all!
Before we even began on our starters, we were brought some delicious soup shots, and some bread with different kinds of butter (you guys know how much I love bread and butter!). This was a really nice touch, because the different flavoured butters really added a different dimension to this restaurant table staple. My favourite was the one flavoured with a hint of lemon.
Now, the menu above isn’t actually the one we picked from, as they had changed the starters and puddings and forgotten to swap the new menu in (we were the first customers of the day!). So, for my starter, I had pigeon salad, which was very nice indeed.
The salad and the peas were delicious, and the meat was smoky and gamey without being overpowering – and cooked to perfection!
The Mr. had a gorgeous wild garlic risotto, and loved every scrap of it – it was really tasty, and inspired me to try a similar dish when I got some wild garlic in my Riverford veg box (although it didn’t come out as bright green as this did!).
My main was the gorgeous braised pork belly, and it was velvety and delicious on its bed of celariac puree – I never thought of preparing celariac like this, but it was so smooth and creamy I might have to give it a try!
Totally unexpectedly, before our pudding we were treated to a palette cleanser!
For pudding, I had a really light and refreshing pineapple dish with Malibu ice-cream – the pineapple was cut so finely that it actually gave it a really interesting texture, much different to the usual chunky cut pineapple I usually eat.
The Mr. had a selection of ice creams and sorbets, which were all delicious, especially the ice cream – which I suspect was cardamom, but we never actually found out…
I was really surprised to be offered so many tasty and thoughtful extras with such a reasonably priced set menu, and I wasn’t disappointed by a single course. I came away feeling satisfied, but not full, and as though I had had a really excellent meal – sadly, not something you can say after every restaurant visit, especially not at this price…
Graze is currently taking bookings for their Christmas parties, and it looks as though the cheaper lunch tasting menu has been replaced with a more expensive dinner tasting menu, but you can also try their new British menu, or pop in for a Sunday roast!
The two biggest enemies to a restricted diet are boredom, and hunger. There are loads of tips about distracting yourself to stave off boredom, but hunger pangs are harder to ignore. However, there is an easy way to combat them in advance – and that’s with psyllium husks.
Sounds scary and scientific, right? Or like some kind of quack quick-fix? Actually, all it is is indigestible fibre, which bulks out your tummy, filling you up before a meal and making those calories stretch further. The husks are completely harmless – I’ve done some research and can find nothing negative about them whatsoever – provided you take them as per the instructions. These instructions are really simple – take two, 30-60 minutes before a meal, with at least 250ml water. The water is important, because these husks are dried, and expand with the water to create bulk in your tummy.
As I’m a curious bunny, when I got my husks, I decided to break one open into the water to find out what was actually inside them before I put them inside my body! When you crack open the plastic capsule, inside is sand-coloured powder. Drop that powder into a glass of water, and the powder forms a thick gel. That’s what will keep you feeling full, and that’s why these are so handy for dieters who find themselves defeated by hunger, especially at the beginning of a diet.
You can buy these in the UK from Holland and Barrett, and there are very often offers or deals going on for them there. At the moment, you can buy two packs for £12.06, which should last a couple of months.
Whatever you do, don’t use these as a way of skipping meals altogther – you need to eat a meal 30-60 mins after taking these. This is not a meal substitute.
You know, sometimes you get an idea in your head, and you just can’t shake it out. I was like that with gold nail varnish for the past year and a half. I got it in my head that what I really NEEDED for the holidays was gold nail varnish. Proper bright, sparkly, beautiful, rich gold nail varnish, varnish that would say “HELLO CHRISTMAS! Yes, indeed, I am ready to party!”
People, I am pleased to say, my search is over.
Please excuse the hasty rush job on these nails, I got over-excited when they were drying… Sigh. Anyway, I hope you can see that gorgeous shade on the bottom thumb there – that is the gold of my dreams! What is this exotic metallic varnish called, I hear you cry?! Why, it’s OPI’s Goldeneye! The MUST-HAVE gold varnish for 2012, I reckon!
In a clockwise fashion from the bottom, these are the ‘gold’ varnishes I am wearing: Goldeneye (OPI, the clear winner), Gold Coin (Revlon, just not at all what I hoped for, it’s basically just silver!) Glimmer (TopShop, my second favourite, but more of a bronze), Gold (GOSH, another tame looking gold), then Star Dust (Rimmel, another bronzy one).
Here, though, is the clear winner. Isn’t it beautiful? You can purchase this shade from HQHair for £11.
Leftovers at Thanksgiving can be so much more than a simple rehash of that Turkey Day meal (although, let’s face it, that’d be pretty darn delicious anyway!). Try these recipes for delicious leftovers – I promise you, none of them will feel like second-best meals! In fact, you might be tempted to roast another turkey (or chicken) just to make some more!
Food, Fashion and Fitness 