Pinoy Hubby

The last part of my 2015 USA road trip - part 3 of Chicago. A few months before our trip we’d bought a Weber barbecue which my fiancé loves (and I love it because it means in the summer, he does a lot of the cooking!). I was surprised to find there is a Weber Grill restaurant in Chicago, set up by the people who invented that brand of barbecue, and it was just down the street from our hotel! I checked the menu online to make sure my future mother-in-law, who is a vegetarian, would find something to eat but she seemed happy with it.   The restaurant looked busy but it is huge so we were seated very quickly. You can see the chefs using the Weber barbecues in the kitchen so I spent a few minutes standing at the bar watching, which was pretty cool. It’s actually a fairly high end restaurant in terms of the food and prices, but the atmosphere is very relaxed. The menu is quite extensive and I found it hard to choose! There are grill-fired pizzas (which I tried doing myself last summer)...

I made this card for a friend's new baby girl; it had to be a quick make as she had a daughter and I realised I didn't have any suitable cards! I started off with a pink card blank and a pink die cut heart which I placed in the middle of the card. I had one die cut pink pram left from a set so mounted this on top of the heart. I then used a transfer for the wording to write 'congratulations' at the top and 'bundle of joy' at the bottom.

I'm enjoying my wedding cake decorating class even though we are already in week 5 and haven't actually been near a wedding cake yet (even a fake one). My main issue with the course though is that it was described as "intermediate level" - i.e. for people with some cake decorating experience - but we have been doing really basic things I would describe as beginners' level. Take stencilling, for instance - I'd never done it before so it was useful having it explained and having the chance to practice. For me, part of the reason for taking the class is to have a couple of hours set aside a week to focus on practicing cake decorating, which I wouldn't find time for at all otherwise.   But to spend half a class aimed at an intermediate level being taught stencilling was a bit disappointing. Do you want to know how to do stencilling? Well, mix some royal icing, colour it, place a stencil on your cake, and spread the icing over with a palette knife. Then remove ...

Monday leftover chicken from Sunday for me, gammon for him Tuesday probably working late Wednesday Lunch: pasta - use spiralizer? Dinner: sandwich - on my cake decorating course Thursday Chicken/turkey provencale (from DietPlan website) Friday white fish, hollandaise sauce or similar for me, sausage and chips for him Saturday Lunch: on a train en route to a wedding hair and makeup trial Dinner: out with my bridesmaid Sunday Lunch: TBA - had expected to be out but will now be home Dinner: maple and tarragon pork chops and sweet potato traybake from Sainsbury's magazine

  Did you know that the average family in the UK throws away £60 worth of food and drink every month? That sounds like a huge amount, but those are the official stats from the government’s Love Food Hate Waste campaign.   I recently took part in a project run by my local council to raise awareness of, and reduce, food waste. I had to keep a diary of what food I wasted for a week, and then go to an information session at the council office, then do another food diary for a week.   Love Food Hate Waste reckons that we are throwing away a quarter of the food we buy. I’m sure most people don’t waste a quarter of the food they buy from Tesco every week (having said that, I do know someone who throws away an awful lot every week) but just think about when you sort out your cupboards and find things lurking at the back that are out of date… or your child leaves half their packed lunch and it goes in the bin…. Or you cook too much pasta every single time as you can never work ou...

I love the idea of adding spiralized vegetables to a ‘normal’ recipe – they work really well in stir-fries particularly if you don’t like a lot of the veg that you get in stir-fry packet mixes or would normally add to the pan, like beansprouts, mange tout or mini corn on the cob. You can spiralize all sorts of veg you wouldn’t normally add to a stir fry to add some bulk and make sure you get an extra portion of your 5 a day!   My future mother-in-law came round for dinner this week and whenever we eat at hers we have a Thai takeaway, and we both always order a Pad Thai - chicken and prawn for me, and vegetable for her.   As I made a really good Pad Thai not long before I decided to use the same recipe again. This time however I left out the beansprouts (which are a key ingredient I know!) as my MIL doesn't like them, and put in some mange tout that she does like. I then got out my spiralizer and spiralized some carrot, butternut squash and mooli (a veg from the radish family ...

Jamies Wine Bar on Bishopsgate is nestled in between shops on a raised walkway, and while I’d walked along there many times I’d never thought to go in. It seemed a good place to meet a colleague for lunch as the menu looked good, but really I chose it for convenience – and also because staff at my company get a 20% discount there.     The lunch menu is extensive with dishes divided into small plates, large plates, burgers, platters, sandwiches and extras. There was also a daily special menu with one dish each day, which my friend had (shepherd’s pie). I ordered a “Jamie’s special”- a ciabatta with chicken fillet, bacon, melted cheese and mayo. The chicken was chunky and made the sandwich feel very substantial, but there was far too much mayo – it was almost all I could taste and I don’t remember seeing or tasting any cheese. It’s a shame as it would have been a very good sandwich otherwise.   The food isn’t cheap either – the sandwich was £8.95, and if I’d wanted fries w...