Pinoy Hubby

I suddenly realised it was a male relative's 60th birthday and I hadn't done any card making for a while, but I wanted to send him a handmade card. I turned to my box of pre-printed patterned card blanks and chose one I thought would work as a base, and added a happy birthday banner. I can't read what the sentiment in the silver square at the top is and I can't remember - something along the lines of 'enjoy your day' I think! I also had some number stickers and stars which I stuck in the various circles on the printed card. Not my best card but I still think a handmade card is more meaningful than just grabbing one off the shelf in a shop - though sometimes you can find the perfect card for someone that suits them to a T in the shops!

I took my mum shopping for her outfit to wear to my wedding and decided to make personal shopper appointments in Debenhams and John Lewis on Oxford Street. They bring you different clothes to try on and know what style would suit your body shape. It was a pretty exhausting day as my mum must have tried on at least 15 outfits, but eventually found one she really liked. As I knew it would be a busy day we didn’t want to take too long over lunch and I had a look to see whether Debenhams had a café. They have four! We stopped for coffee before we started shopping and went to the W1 Bistro on the lower level; it is a very smart café that looks more like a wine bar, with a mixture of types of seating and a small food menu with things like toasted sandwiches, but we only wanted a drink. Later, we found ourselves on the 5 th floor near the “family restaurant serving British classics” so decided to have lunch here. Most of the dishes on offer are what I would call “main meals” – fish and chips...

Do any of you have ice cream makers? I've wanted one for a while but never had the space - you have to put the whole bowl from the machine into your freezer, and in the past I had quite a small freezer. Now I have a huge American-style fridge-freezer, but it's always full of food! But my fiancé gave me an ice cream maker for Christmas and I haven't used it at all yet - I usually only want ice cream in the summer and to be honest with wedding planning I haven't had the time to figure out how to use new kitchen gadgets. But I'm definitely planning to use the ice cream maker after the wedding next month so I need to start using up food in the freezer so I have space! Monday My fiancé has a day off Lunch: I'll have a chicken salad, which I have been having most days! I'll buy him something nice to have for his lunch Dinner: He can have chicken goujons and chips and I'll have sweet chilli breaded prawns, also in the freezer. I'd love to have them with c...

The lengths I go to for dieting… I wasn’t looking forward to my dinner recently as I’d decided to make pesto out of broccoli and serve it over spiralized veg, while my fiancé was tucking in to a pizza. Though as he correctly pointed out, it was a frozen pizza and he could have ordered Domino’s but didn’t as he knew it would make it harder for me - and I was the one who cooked him the pizza!   But when I actually started to eat my dinner I was surprised at how good it actually tasted, and I really enjoyed it. Which is not to say I wouldn’t rather have had a pizza but I have a wedding dress to get in to!   The recipe comes from I Quit Sugar by Sarah Wilson which has become a book I turn to a lot at the moment!    To serve one, you need: Spiralized veg: I used half a tub of spiralized carrot from Tesco (it’s hard to put a carrot through a spiralizer unless it’s a really thick one), and I spiralized half a butternut squash to go with it. For the pesto: 1 cup broccoli f...

Chicken breasts are a great stand-by for dinners during the week; both my fiancé and I like them, they are quick to cook, pretty healthy and you can do a lot of different things with them. I found this recipe for spiced baked chicken parcels – chicken en papilotte – on Serious Eats , and decided to make my own variation on it.   I already had za’atar, a Middle Eastern spice, I’d bought when we had the letter Z for Alphabakes, but I don’t like to eat peppers or tomatoes so instead decided to use a little bit of pepper and a portion of spiralized butternut squash. A squash is really easy to spiralize if you have a robust enough machine (mine is the Lurch one from Lakeland that you can buy on Amazon here:     I tossed the chicken breast, which I had butterflied out, with the spices, oil and herbs and then placed it on a square of foil with the peppers, onion, spring onion and butternut squash on top. I wrapped up the parcel and baked it in the oven; it only took 20 minu...

I’ve been following a low sugar diet for the last few weeks and bought the book I Quit Sugar by Sarah Wilson, which is full of healthy recipes. Weekend lunches are probably the meals where I struggle most to come up with dishes – my fiancé would have a bacon sandwich every Saturday and every Sunday if he could, but I prefer to cook different things and at the moment I’m not really eating bread so that doesn’t work for me at all.   I found a recipe in I Quit Sugar for quinoa and pumpkin tarts which I knew my fiancé would never eat, so I decided to do him a cheese and bacon tart on a pastry base to use up some shortcrust pastry I had in the freezer. For myself, I followed the recipe but scaled it down as I didn’t need it to serve 4. I also used butternut squash instead of pumpkin, and agave nectar instead of rice malt syrup. I also realised I didn’t have any parmesan so used a little gruyere instead, along with the blue cheese and ricotta.   It was a bit fiddly to make as you h...

  I have a great relationship with my personal trainer. She pushes me hard, but not too hard; she's encouraging, we have a good chat while I'm working out and she isn't draconian when it comes to diet. To prove th point, she hinted that since I like baking I could make her a cake for her birthday, which was the day after mine. She'd told me she liked loaf cakes and I decided I wanted to make something that wasn't too unhealthy, so would involve less sugar than some cakes, not have piles of frosting, and include fruit but have an indulgent quality at the same time - it was her 40th birthday so a special occasion after all. I turned to Lorraine Pascale's book A Lighter Way to Bake and found a recipe for a blueberry and limoncello drizzle cake, which ticked all those boxes - it wasn't a loaf cake but as it wasn't filled I decided there was no reason why I couldn't bake it in a loaf tin. The recipe can be found online here ; I had some blueberries in the...