Review : Pure Fresh Tea

Posted: April 20, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Reviews | Tags: , , , | 7 Comments »

This week I’m reviewing some Pure tea flavours which they kindly sent me to review. I’ve always been very low maintenance where tea is concerned, going for whatever English breakfast tea was on offer. Lately I’ve started liking some different flavoured teas too such as vanilla rooibos tea so I was interested to see what these herbal teas would taste like.

First, a bit about Pure Fresh Tea – they make organic, ‘premium’ tea which is packaged in very modern, stylish (recyclable) packaging. Their tea is apparently fresher than what you’d normally get in the supermarket, plus its made using only the best parts of the plant (as opposed to cheaper tea which can contain stalks and a lot of dust).

I tried some tea from their white range – shown here

I tried

  • natural mint – this tea has a very strong mint smell which reminded me of toothpaste…. (I’m not a big fan of mint tea!). The actual taste was fairly subtle – it tastes exactly like how I imagine mint leaves steeped in tea would taste -  not at all like a lot of the other mint teas you can get that are sweetened or use artificial flavours.
  • black lavender – i think this was my favourite tea – it tasted almost like ‘normal’ tea that I’m so fond of, but with a very understated lavender flavour. I liked it black and also added some milk and it tasted really good!
  • golden camomile – this had a really delicate taste without a dry (if that makes sense!) aftertaste that I’ve found with other camomile teas. Chamomile is supposed to have a calming, relaxing effect – I’m not sure it had this effect on me but drinking the yellow sunshiney liquid certainly put me in a happy mood!

You can order Pure fresh tea at their website here. They also do a black range of teas to be drunk with milk AND amazing looking macaroons, chocolate truffles and other gifts which are actually extremely good value, in my opinion anyway (£7 for 7 homebaked macaroons).

Do you like herbal teas? I never have in the past but I think I might be getting into them more as I get older… especially if they taste like marshmallows…

Review : 17 Peep Show Mascara, Barry M Wink Eyeliner and Bourjois Healthy Mix Concealer

Posted: April 13, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Beauty | Tags: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Oooh I have some new favourite beauty products to tell you about!

Lately I’ve been trying out lots of new products!

17 Peep Show Mascara - This mascara promises voluptuous volume – a full, flirty flutter with no clumps. I was a bit like, “yeah, whatevs” at first because its well known (by me) that EVERY mascara is clumpy at first, even the ones that go onto be amazing (except YSLs Luxurious Mascara).

Amazingly, this one isn’t clumpy even on your first use and with no wand wiping! Added to that, its the best mascara I’ve tried in a long long time. It thickens and lengthens lashes very well and stays put all day with no flaking.

I typically apply 3-4 little coats each on the top and bottom lashes (if that makes sense!) but you can add more mascara for a more vamped up look and still not get any clumping – check out the pictures below!

Please excuse the picture – hopefully you can see what I mean… this is definitely my new favourite mascara!

I got given this mascara (I work at Boots head office) – it retails for £6.29 online or instore

Barry M Wink Eyeliner - Barry M are marketing this as a ‘marker pen’ eyeliner, which is a cute idea and one that I’m definitely attracted to the apparent simplicity and ease of.

I love the cute bright pink packaging and price (£5.49) but I’ve found the actual product a little harder to get along with. I’ve found it difficult to do a very good eyeliner line with this pen. I’ve found it works well when I hold the pen vertically against my eye for a thin line along the lashes, but when I try to do a thick winged line its a lot more challenging. Thats not to say it isn’t possible – blogger LionLovingTiger is clearly an expert at it! – but its apparent from the mixed reviews that this isn’t the easy eyeliner wonderproduct I was hoping for. For beginners non-eyeliner pros, gel eyeliner applied with a brush is still definitely the easiest route to winged eyeliner perfection.

I also noticed that my eyeliner pen started to fade after just a few weeks, so although this product is cheap it actually doesn’t look like it will last long…unlike the similar Collection 2000 Extreme liner which is just £3 and lasts for months and months.

Bourjois Healthy Mix concealer  – I have a soft spot for Bourjois (and they’re really Chanel, don’t ya know!) as it was my makeup drug of choice in my teenage years (along with 17 and Natural Collection of course!). I bought this concealer after running out of Benefit Boi-ing which I sure wasn’t paying £15 to replace. I wanted something light and in a suitable skin tone (actually much harder to find than you’d think for pale ladies!) that also had good coverage.

I wandered into Boots, tried a couple of different concealers and liked this one immediately. It feels very creamy and moisturising on the skin and is probably the lightest one I tried – no orange residue here! The coverage is medium, so more for hiding a few dark circles than for really heavy duty skin issues, but for general use it works really well.

Healthy Mix concealer is £7.49 so about half the price as my previous Benefit ones – plus I paid for it and the Barry M product with Advantage Card points, so I didn’t think of it as spending money!

Healthy Mix foundation is also supposed to be awesome – I’m happy with Max Factor Experience for now (and have a couple of bottles to get through!) but I’ll definitely check it out after that.

Have you tried any new beauty products lately, or seen any you’d like to try? Let me know!

x Kerry

Review : New Covent Garden Mushroom soup

Posted: March 2, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Reviews | Tags: , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Bias alert – I’ve always really enjoyed most of New Covent Garden’s soups (I also have their soup cookbook! – its very good!). I especially like their vegetable soups and their broccoli and stilton one  reminds me of Christmas.  I went a bit too crazy for their plum tomato and basil soup last summer, and now I’m not sure I can ever eat another bowlful, although I’ll certainly try!

But now I have a new favourite – MUSHROOM!

Source - New Covent Garden soups

Due to my striving to eat thriftily, I had recently bought some Sainsburys mushroom soup (not ‘finest’ but not value if you see what I mean) which was absolutely disgusting. So as soon as they were next on an offer (I tend to buy them if they’re either on a £1 or £1.50 offer but not above that) I bought this mushroom soup to try.

Thankfully it was absolutely delicious! I cooked some fresh mushrooms to go on top as a garnish but even without them I would definitely buy this soup again. Its very flavoursome and really tastes of mushrooms! Perfect if you’re a fan of the fungi!  I love the fact that New Covent Garden soups contain only what they would if you cooked them from scratch at home – you’re just letting someone else do the hard work!

Do you have a fab soup recipe? New Covent Garden run a monthly competition to get a recipe chosen for their ‘flavour of the month’ soup. Check out more info and submit your soup recipe for August here

Do you prefer homemade soup or do you go for the convenience of ready made? If you buy, whats your favourite brand? Let me know!

x Kerry

Review : Individual quiches by Higgidy Pies

Posted: February 24, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Reviews, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments »

This week I have been too busy to have time to perform my usual time-saving roasting lots of vegetables in a big batch and then using them for my weekly lunches and dinners trick. So I’ve been relying on Boots meal deals to get me through lunchtimes.* Since I resent spending money on lunches when I’m perfectly capable of making my own, I’ve been paying for them with my points so I can convince myself that I’m not actually wasting money as a result of my laziness.

I tend to steer clear of most of the sandwiches (I’m not really a hardcore sandwich lover) and while the salads can be nice I can’t physically bring myself to eat one during the winter months. So the last few days I’ve been going for a Spinach, red pepper and feta quiche!

The quiche is part of the range of food products by the cutely named Higgidy pie company (see all their products here). Based in West Sussex, the company started in a kitchen and grew bigger and bigger since people loved their pies! A quick look at the ingredients list of the quiche reassures you that this is real food – it contains exactly what it would if you made it yourself in your own kitchen. Happily, all of the products Higgidy produce are handmade – you can read more about their ethos here. It makes me happy when I find companies who make products I like, in a way that I’m happy with.

The packaging of the quiches is also super cute (if that sorta thing makes you happy!), with poems and other cute stuff, including a message on the bottom which says ‘Help, I’m a Higgidy quiche and I’ve fallen and can’t get up!’.

But what about the most important thing – the taste? I am NOT normally a quiche fan at all. In fact I don’t like anything that tastes eggy, such as omelette’s in general. But I like this Higgidy quiche since its packed full of red peppers, feta and spinach and isn’t too ‘eggy’. I think what also puts me off in general about quiche is flavourless soggy pastry but this has tasty poppy seed pastry. Overall its a very yummy lunch option! Its about 400 calories for this quiche which isn’t bad – and they are very filling.

As well as the individual quiches, I’ve also tried Higgidy’s spinach, goats cheese and pesto slice which is also very delicious and is the closest thing you can get to pizza in a meal deal. Fact.

*I work for Boots at their head office in Beeston.

Review : Waitrose Vanilla and Chocolate Whoopie Pie and Marks and Spencer Chocolate Covered Pretzels

Posted: January 20, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Reviews | Tags: , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

This week I ventured into Waitrose for the first time in quite a few months to get a pre-cinema snack (we saw The Artist and it was AMAZING). I was excited to see that they’ve now introduced whoopie pies to their range of cakes (their cherry cupcake is amazing). There are two flavours available -

  • Vanilla with chocolate buttercream
  • Red velvet with vanilla buttercream

There is also a cookies n cream (chocolate cake, white frosting) version in the range which they weren’t stocking at the Waitrose in Nottingham, and they’re all £1.09.

I went for the vanilla/chocolate flavour. To be honest neither looked massively appealing appearance wise (kind of flat and shiny) and the fact that the red velvet whoopie pie didn’t have cream cheese frosting put me off as I thought it would probably be too sweet.

20120120-112135.jpg

Here’s what I thought of my whoopie pie -

The cake -As you can possibly see in the picture, the cake had quite a few air holes through it which was probably as a result of being overmixed in the Waitrose cake making factory. The cake was also a little tough which could have been for the same reason, or could have been just because it had been sitting on the cake counter for a day plus.

The cake didn’t actually taste of vanilla or have any evidence (like flecks of vanilla bean) to tell me that any real vanilla had gone into it.

The buttercream – The chocolate buttercream reminded me almost exactly of the chocolate cake I used to make constantly when I was a teenager, with frosting made from butter and cocoa powder. That was before I grew up and started using real chocolate to get a better depth of chocolate flavour in frosting. This was more overpoweringly sweet that it was chocolatey.

Having said that, I didn’t hate the whoopie pie, but it was a disappointment and I certainly wouldn’t recommend them. I’m still quite tempted to try the red velvet one but I’m sure I would be disappointed there too.

Onto the chocolate covered pretzels! When I saw these in M&S I think I literally jumped up and down with excitement and put 2 bags in my basket. I was tempted to buy many, many more, but after the debacle of the much-anticipated Princess chocolate covered marshmallows I decided to exercise caution until such a time as I’d actually tried the new snack….

So first, here’s the backstory to my love of chocolate covered pretzels…. back in the 90s, Nestle introduced Flipz to the UK

And every child in the kingdom went crazy for them! Or at least I did. And then in a cruel and horrifying move, Nestle withdrew Flipz from the UK, leaving us painfully devoid of chocolate covered pretzels. Fast forward to 2011 and Marks and Spencer fill the gap in the market by releasing their very own chocolate covered pretzels as part of their snack range!

20120120-090354.jpg

They’re £1.19 a bag for a generous amount. The chocolate seems to be more plain than milk and the pretzel inside tasted slightly stale (not in a bad way if you see what I mean!).

Sadly I didn’t think these pretzels were the holy grail replacement for Flipz! Its not that I didn’t like them at all, but they didn’t blow me away. The chocolate wasn’t very tasty (creamier milk chocolate would have been better) and the pretzels didn’t seem to be salted which was a shame as I think its the salt/sweet contrast that makes chocolate covered pretzels so interesting.

I think that in order to get my dream pretzel I’m going to have to resort to making my own…. M&S’s giant pretzels (which are awesome) half dipped in melted Cadburys dairy milk and then left to dry……. amazing!

Pretzels have been on my mind lately…… I’ve been thinking about pretzel cupcakes, pretzel cookie bars and pretzel brownies!

What do you think of pretzels and whoopie pies? Let me know if you’ve tried any great ones (or made any great ones!)

 

 

Review : Le Bistrot Pierre

Posted: December 30, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Reviews | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment »

I went to Le Bistrot Pierre in Nottingham recently for the City WI Christmas meal! A good time was had by all! Here’s a picture of us all enjoying a festive evening!

I'm the one in polka dots making a weird face

Located somewhat inauspiciously between a newsagents and a burger king on Milton Street in Nottingham (opposite the Vic centre!), Le Bistrot Pierre is nevertheless a little gem thats well worth a visit. I really enjoyed all my food there – it was fab!

To start, I had a goats cheese atop a slice of toasted brioche bread with salad and dressing – delish! I love goats cheese.

My main course was butternut squash risotto with rocket, parmesan, pine nuts and sage. Our risotto arrived fairly cold so we had to send it back, but rather than blast it in the microwave, we received a brand new meal each. This was absolutely delicious! I want to recreate it at home soon!

For dessert I went for chocolate torte with marsapone. This was just…. incredible. It was SO unbelievably rich and tasty. It was like the most amazing chocolate brownie you can ever imagine. YUM!

I also snapped a few pictures of the desserts that some of the other girls enjoyed – here’s the sticky toffee pudding. The portions were very generous and this was also amazing!

Heather had the spiced berry cheesecake with a crumbly almond base – again, it was delicious!

Yum! All in all I heartily recommend Le Bistrot Pierre to anyone in the midlands.They serve breakfast, lunch and dinner, and have some good value offers on their lunch and early evening menus. They’re always very popular so be sure to book a table!

Le Bistrot Pierre is a local company which originated in Nottingham, but the restaurants have done so well that there are now a number of locations, including Derby, Harrogate and Sheffield – click here for more details! I think its great to support local businesses, so check them out soon if you can!

Review : New Fox’s Ambers biscuits

Posted: December 2, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Reviews | Tags: , , , | 4 Comments »

Just so you know – the biscuits were provided to me by Fox’s for review purposes. I accepted no payment and the opinions below are all my own!

I’m not a particularly middle ground person, as you’ve probably noticed! I LOVE lots of things, but when things are bad, I point it out. Pretty loudly.

I LOVE Fox’s biscuits. I didn’t realise quite how much until I came to write this review and realised that all my favourite biscuits are ones they make. I’m not sure why I didn’t realise that, it could be that I’m not looking at the labels too closely, or maybe that I’m just gobbling them down too quickly to see the brand. They make all these amazing biscuits…

Shortbread chocolate rounds.... 3 : 1 chocolate to biscuit ratio. Oh yeahh.

The original and amazing chocolate crinkles

Chocolate caramel biscuits

Melty viennese biscuits........these are tremendous

Chocolate crunch biscuits... I eat a lot of these!

The new biscuits are called Ambers and they taste similar to the crinkle crunches to me. The biscuit base is described as a ‘crunchy golden honeycomb biscuit’. It is indeed crunchy, golden and delicious. There are three varieties of the new biscuits – caramel, praline and original – all coated in a thick delicious layer of chocolate. I think the reason Fox’s biscuits are so good is that they use good quality, creamy chocolate, and you can tell. Other products let themselves down by using low quality chocolate, and other ingredients. Now I know more about them, I like that Fox’s use good quality ingredients and the fact that they manufacture them in the UK.

Here’s what I thought of each type of biscuit!

Caramel – The caramel biscuit was not my favourite. It doesn’t have liquid caramel in the biscuit, but has caramel flavour, similar to the Kit-Kat caramels, and I’m not keen on that flavouring. Having said that, they are still delicious and I they would still definitely not last long in my house!

Praline -The praline variety have little nibs of hazlenut baked into the biscuit base. The little bits of nut add some nice interest and flavour to this variety. I think ‘nutty’ may have been a better name as I was expecting some kind of chocolate hazlenut paste (a little googling informed me that thats actually belgian praline that I’m thinking of). This caused some confusion with my workmates too but they still polished off the biscuits pretty quickly…

Original – My favourite! Crunchy and moreish in the extreme. Each biscuit can be easily dispensed in two bites and they weigh in at only 65 calories each, which is really good for a tasty biscuit! They remind me of a crinkle crunch but the honeycomb adds a lovely golden flavour (if golden is a flavour).

New Fox's Ambers

Overall I really liked the new biscuits and will definitely be buying them again, especially if I spy them on offer.

Have you tried the new biscuits, what did you think?

Review : New Twix Fino bar

Posted: November 4, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Reviews | Tags: , , , , , | 3 Comments »

I spotted this bar in the Boots shop where I work (yes there is a Boots shop in Boots head office! There are also 3 starbucks/costas and a newsagents/dry cleaning place). I thought I’d pick it up to review as I’d never seen them before. Apparently they’ve actually been around for almost a year so clearly I’m just not very observant! Regardless, the new bar is called a Fino and is quite similar to a Time Out and Kinder Bueno. I’m not sure I’ve EVER eaten a Time Out or a Kinder Bueno so I’m probably not the best person to compare them, but I can give you my review of the new bar!

Photo from Jim's Chocolate Mission

The Fino is like a normal twix except instead of thick biscuit in the middle, you have curled wafer. Its quite disappointing how little wafer and how much fresh air is in the middle of the bar. It feels like you’re eating something very insubstantial. It would be much better if the wafer was thicker, or layered with chocolate.

If you like the wafer/chocolate combination, I’d recommend this Lindt wafer bar which is amazing.

Overall, I wouldn’t buy this bar again – a regular Twix is much, much nicer. Okay a regular Twix is around 80 calories more, but personally I’d rather have a nice chocolate bar for 80 more calories than one that leaves me feeling dissatisfied. And given that these are a not inconsiderable 190 calories for the whole bar, there are much better alternatives out there for the same or not many more calories (flake/flake allure which would be far better in terms of satisfying a chocolate craving, and eat natural bars which would also keep you fuller for a lot longer, and are very tasty too – except the yoghurt ones, bleurgh).

Have you tried the new Twix or spotted any other new chocolate bars lately? Let me know!

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Review : Zizzi restaurant Nottingham

Posted: October 21, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Reviews | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

I have a soft spot for Zizzi since its where I had one of my first ever dates with my boyfriend many many moons ago. The place has since been completely refurbished (and its much nicer) but it still offers the same casual italian dining.

Since it was a friday night there was no voucher offer available to make the cost of the meal any cheaper, BUT we discovered we could get free garlic bread and glasses of prosecco with 02 priority moments. So yay!

I ordered the clarissa calzone (£9.50) – a folded over pizza with tomatoes, goats cheese, and veggies. It was very delicious – and it wasn’t easy but I managed to eat the whole thing!

One of my colleagues ordered this pizza – it was HUGE and looked very tasty.

For dessert, I had  a chocolate melt with marscapone (£5.50). I was really too full to eat much of it, but it wasn’t great. It wasn’t piping hot in the middle as it should have been, more lukewarm. Someone didn’t microwave it for long enough!

Good points -

  • Nice food
  • Offers to keep the price down, even at the weekend

Bad points -

  • The service was pretty inattentive – the staff are always young and inexperienced seeming and don’t seem to have a plan when it comes to checking on tables
  • The food can be a little cold when it gets to you (sometimes) probably due to the staff not being that organised. This is why I always order a calzone!
  • The whole place is VERY loud – its not a quiet intimate dining experience and you can struggle to hear your dining companions speaking!
  • If that kind of thing bothers you, Zizzi is also a chain, part of the same group as Ask and Pizza Express

Do you prefer to eat at chain restaurants, or individual ones (or are you not bothered)? What’s your favourite type of food – mine would definitely be Italian – Pizza, pasta, ice cream…. amazing!

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Reviews : New Tropicana Orange & Watermelon and New Galaxy a gift for you

Posted: September 23, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Reviews | Tags: , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

I noticed this new drink as I was dashing through my local Tesco picking up a few essentials. I’m normally pretty focused when I’m shopping and don’t usually grab stuff that isn’t on my list, but this caught my eye. I absolutely love the flavour of watermelon and have had a lovely summer eating copious amounts of it, but sadly, watermelon season is now over! So even though this drink was about £2.20 (more than I would normally pay), the lure of watermelon drew me in!

I was worried when I first tried the drink that the watermelon flavour wouldn’t come through (the drink is made of about 12% watermelon) When you first try it, the first thing that you can taste is normal orange juice. Before I had a chance to get too angry at being tricked into parting with £2.20 for zero watermelon flavour though, the delicious watermelon flavour came through.

This is a really refreshing and lovely drink (perfect for hot summer days – damn you Tropicana for not bringing it out sooner). It would also be absolutely perfect as the base for a cocktail, and mixed with some vodka and lemonade would taste like a much more difficult to make/expensive drink. It definitely has the Kerry seal of approval!

Next up is the Galaxy Caramel ‘A gift for you’ which I spotted in the local Co-Op along with lots of other new christmas chocolates, including the my purple bar and aero christmas tree (plus all the usual stuff from previous years). I admit that I did a little squeal of excitement when I saw the christmas chocolate on display.

The RRP for the new chocolate is 65p but they were on 2 for a £1 in the Co-Op which I imagine would be a frequent offer since the chocolate really is quite small. It does make a fantastic gift though as its pretty cute – it would be nice as a stocking filler.

The chocolate is moulded into the shape of a gift wrapped in a bow and looks absolutely adorable (I LOVE bows!). The two thicker squares on the left are caramel filled and the two squares on the right are solid chocolate.

I really enjoyed the variety of caramel/sold chocolate and its a perfect chocolate to have with a cup of tea – it tastes indulgent but its less than 200 calories which isn’t too bad for a chocolatey treat (equivalent to an Eat Natural bar!).

Have you seen these in the shops/tried them? What did you think? Have you tried any other new products lately that you loved or hated?

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