Boiler Shop Steamer Event - Newcastle.

Earlier this month I went along to the Boiler Shop Steamer event at the Stephenson Works in Newcastle. I had been to Urban Night Feast in the same venue last September and absolutely loved it. So I had rather high hopes for this event too.

The event is basically a combination of live music, street food and awesome people. Each month (on the first weekend of the month) there will be a selection of street food vendors, bands and musicians, boutiques, comedy etc... etc... All coming together to make for a rather enjoyable evening.

We arrived for the event opening at 5:30pm, which meant it was free. After 6pm its £2 entry.

Being one of the first to arrive meant we got a table, then took it in turns to go to the various food vendors to try their wares. I started by inhaling a pork bun from Lulus Chinese, quickly followed by a vegeable samosa from Dabawal. The samosa was so full of flavour and spice I had to wash it down with a sloe gin and tonic from The Cumberland Arms.

After a brief rest I grabbed a mini pizza from the Pizzette van outside. Wild board, ricotta and artichokes (although there didnt seem to be any artichokes on mine). The pizza was OK, but to be honest I have had better. <>

After the pizza I was pretty full, so spent the rest of the evening listening to great music, chatting with friends and generally having a blast.

It started to get pretty busy by 8:30pm, so I headed home early to avoid the crazinesses of Newcastle on a Friday night.

It is so exciting to have an event like this in Newcastle on a regular basis (the first weekend of each month, on both the Friday night and the Saturday from 12pm). I look forward to going along to other events and trying different vendors, and hearing different music. My suggestions for future one would be more sweet options, like ice cream or even cake! Also, the porta-potties are pretty grim, proper toilets please!

Did you attend the event? What did you think? If you didn't go, seriously, get yourself there next month! (If you are not local, hop on a train, totally worth it!)

Lazy Girl: Barre Class

When I decided to broaden my fitness horizons and try new things, Barre was at the top of my list. A lot of people I follow on twitter are barre regulars and rave about the benefits. I have been wanting to try it for a while now but always came up with excuses not to. I watched youtube videos and decided it was far too intense and I was far to unfit to even attempt it. Of course this is utterly ridiculous but that little nagging voice of doubt tends to be pretty ridiculous.

So back to The Barre. What is it I hear you ask? Well, it is based around ballet/dance. It is a series of small intense movements which targets individual muscle groups to achieve a burn, followed by stretching. The workout not only burns fat but also tones and improves flexibility.

The Barre studio in Newcastle is located behind central station in one of the railway arches. It is a little on the small side, with room for only 10 people in each class. While this does make for a nice atmosphere, and ensures one-on-one attention from the instructer, it does mean that the cost of each class is quite high.

Each 60 minute session is £12, although the first one is half price. You can also purchase blocks to bring the cost down slightly.

So how did I find the class? Well, I did feel a little like one of those hippos from fantasia trying to get my legs up on the bar, and get into certain positions. However, I did really feel a good burn and got complete jelly legs afterwards which must mean it was doing something good right?

Personally, I would love to incorporate Barre into my weekly workout. It is low energy yet effective and really conveniently located for me. Unfortunately I just cannot afford to spend £12 a week (or fortnight) on it.

Here is me after the class, I worked up a bit of a sweat and felt pleasantly sore. I definitely was feeling those lovely endorphins at this point.

So I give The Barre 3/5 stars. The place and the people were amazing, but the cost just isn't practical for me at the moment.

Have you tired a fun new exercise class or routine? I am always looking for new things to try.

Photos courtesy of The-Barre.com, used with permission

Noughts, Crosses and Monkeys. Oh my!

Crisps, potato chips (for my American pals), beautiful little morsels of potato and pure heaven, am I right?

Despite my blog being named after a sweet little cupcake, I am much more of a savoury snacker. My total weakness is big ol' share bags of kettle chips. I could rather easily sit in front of Netflix and munch my way through a whole bag without batting an eyelid, and team that with a pot of hummus and I am in snack heaven.

Since being on Weight Watchers I have avoided crisps completely. A lot of the "healthy" alternatives masquerading as crisps leave a lot to be desired. So I think it best to just avoid them and dip cucumber and carrot in my hummus.

Walkers sent me some of these new "Noughts & Crosses" to try. They are 85 calories a bag and 2 Propoints. Which is perfect for a pack lunch, or mid-afternoon snack for me at work. Often if I am having a sandwich or wrap for lunch I miss having something crunchy for afterwards.

The packaging and branding seems to be geared towards kids, and the promotional material was all about increasing how much wholegrain we eat. I am not too concerned about this, but if I had a child it would definitely be a factor.

Me and the Boyfriend sampled the Roast Beef flavour which I personally did not enjoy, not because they were bad in any way, I just don't like roast beef flavoured crisps. The Boyfriend however really enjoyed them! He likened them to Monster Munch in texture with the signature walkers flavour. I would definitely be up for trying the salt & vinegar flavour, and a little birdie told me they are on special in Asda and Tesco.

So that is next weeks packed lunches sorted.

Along with my sample bag I got this adorbs little monkey toy. Although I am a big kid at heart I decided to gift this little cutie to my little godson Louie. He is nearly 2 and loved the little cuddly monkey.

What are your thoughts on "healthy" crisps? Worth the effort, or just not as good?

This is a sponsored post, all opinions are my own

Quick One-Banana Bread.

We've all been there, you are all ready for a nice lazy weekend when unexpected guests descend. Maybe they just were passing and popped in, or maybe your boyfriend claimed he told you weeks ago, but alas you completely forgot. Either way, I am the kind of person who likes to be prepared for visitors.

I like the bathroom scrubbed, living room looking semi-respectable and smelling nice, and something yummy in the kitchen. However, when you roll out of bed at 10:30am and they are arriving at 12pm it really doesn't give a lot of time for rustling up a tasty treat.

If in doubt, bake banana bread.

I stumbled upon some lovely looking banana breads on pinterest and thought it would be the perfect sweet treat to go with a cup of tea. I set about weighing ingredients for my usual recipe when I suddenly realised I only had one banana! The downside of my new running habit, is I love a nice banana afterwards, so I go through them twice a fast now.

In desperation I quickly googled "Can I make banana bread with just one banana?" and I found that you can! There were lots of american recipes and a couple of scaled down versions so I sort of combined them all into this delicious recipe...

print recipe

Quick One-Banana Loaf

by May-8-2013

Ingredients

• 1 ripe Banana
• 75g Plain Flour
• 75g Caster Sugar
• 50g Butter (Softened)
• 1 Tablespoon Milk
• 1/2 teaspoon Bicarb of soda
• 1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder
• 1 whole Egg
• 50g Blueberries (frozen or fresh)
• a pinch Ground Cassia or Cinnamon

Instructions

This is an all-in-one cake, so I just popped all of the above in my Kitchenaid and mixed until a batter formed.Pour the batter into a small greased loaf tin. I sprinkled the top with some demerera sugar for crunch.Bake at 180C for 25-35 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

I managed to cut this small loaf into 12 slices, which worked out at 2pp per slice. *bonus*

I threw in some frozen blueberries and some ground Cassia (cinnamon bark), it added a little more interest to a plain banana bread. I wish I had had some walnuts or hazlenuts to hand, as they would of made a perfect addition.

What is your go-to recipe for last minute guests?

Lazy Girl - a new adventure.

Well, you all know I have been following the Weight Watchers plan for about 21 weeks now. With around a stone and a half lost I am finally getting around to upping my activity levels. I am inherently lazy so gaining motivation and momentum is a rare thing indeed. So I have decided to incorporate some of this new found fitness into this blog.

With the warmer weather and lighter nights I seem to have come out of my winter hibernation with an unnatural (for me) desire to exercise! Needless to say I am taking advantage of this rare moment of energy.

I know this is a bit of a departure from the usual food-related fare, but I hope you don't mind. I mean this blog is a bit of an extension of me, so if I am running/zumba-ing/bootcamping etc... Expect to hear all about it.

Don't panic though, I shall still be cooking and baking up a storm.

So, where does the Lazy Girl element come into it? Well, I have spend an exorbitant amount of time googling various fitness classes, gyms, crazes etc... And there is so much out there but a lot of it seems to be targeted at people who know what they are doing or who already exercise a lot.

What I really want is someone like me to try these things, then tell me honestly how horrible/tiring/impossible it all is, or hopefully the opposite. So, rather than wait for this magical person to do this I decided to simply try things myself and review them from my unique slightly lazy perspective.

So these posts will all be entitled - Lazy Girl's review.

If you have any recommendations, tips, tricks, warnings please feel free to share. Wish me luck!

Roasted Red Pepper Soup & A Giveaway!

Soup is a wonderful, magical thing. No matter what mood you find yourself in there is a soup to match. When you are feeling under the weather there is earthy vegetable or chicken/noodle varieties. When you might have overdone it with cake and chocolate there is light miso or broth.

This weekend I was completely bitten by the fitness/health bug and knew I had to consume as many vegetables as I possibly could so decided to make soup!

The timing of this could not of been more perfect as I had just received my shiny new hand blender. The lovely people at Littlewoods sent me this beast of a blender to road test and review.

I have been eyeing up hand blenders for a while now. Previously I had been using this old smoothie blender that I acquired when me and Paul moved in together. It was not particularly powerful and always smelled like burning when you used it in anything more than short bursts. I had a brief flirtation with one of those £5 supermarket hand blenders but it broke during a particularly thick butternut squash soup recipe. Not ideal.

This beauty came with a few different attachments; the regular blendy one, a whisk, and a mini food processor bit, which will be great for making pesto. At 700W it certainly is powerful and it made short work of the below soup recipe.

I also made a quick smoothie and a tarka dahl with it and it was flawless everytime. It was very easy to clean and easy to store as it comes apart into quite small pieces.
My only criticism would be with the mini processor part. It didn't seem very powerful, although I do have a Cuisanart mini chopper/processor which would be hard to beat. To get your very own Tefal 700-watt Hapto Hand Blender, enter using the rafflecopter widget below

I have to say I would never of thought of buying homeware or electricals from Littlewoods but I was impressed with their small collection of brands. *pst* they also have a sale on at the moment...

Anywoo, back to the delicious food...

I decided to make something light yet flavour packed. I popped to my local food market in search of vegetables on Friday and saw these amazingly huge red peppers. I decided to run with this and grabbed some red chillies, plump tomatoes and a handful of basil. I salivated all the way home.

I started by roasting all of the above with some garlic and a drizzle of olive oil.

print recipe

Rad Red Soup

by Nelly April-30-2013

a fresh and flavourful summer soup.

Ingredients

• 1 XL or 2 regular. Red Pepper
• 1 (whole) Red chilli
• 4-6 cloves Garlic
• 3 medium Tomatoes
• 1.5 Pints Stock (veg or chicken)
• A glug Worcester sauce
• 2 good pinches Kashmiri chilli powder

Instructions

Roughly chop and roast all the vegetables in a drizzle of olive oil. Keep the garlic cloves in their skin. I slit the chilli down the middle and left it whole.Bring the stock to a boil and add the Worcester sauce and chilli powder. Boil for around 10 minutes until reduced by just under half.Take stock off the heat and squeeze the roasted garlic out of its skin into the stock.Add the rest of the roasted vegetables (I de-seeded the chilli before adding) Blend with the hand blender until smooth.I added a pinch of salt and pepper to taste.

I served my soup with a handful of peppery rocket and a sprinkling of Parmesan.

This soup is jam packed with flavour, with a beautiful warmth. It is not too heavy or thick so perfect for a light summery supper.

To win your very own Tefal hand blender worth £69 enter below:

UK participants only I am afraid.

a Rafflecopter giveaway