Category: stuff

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Puxton Park Burger

Anyone who has small children will know that they really like going to animal or country parks. The place will generally be based around a farm and within it you get animals (mainly farm animals and the odd small rabbit), usually there will be a barn filled with large slides and playground equipment and more often then not a café of some sort. Anyone who goes to these cafés will know that nine times out of ten the food is either crisps and biscuits, uninspiring sandwiches or kiddie food, ie fish fingers, chicken nuggets, etc….

Our local park, Puxton Park, has the animals, the play areas, but also has a rather nice café. It serves very nice food at reasonable prices. It is not just visited by families with small children, due to its proximity to the M5, it is used as a motorway service station by coach tours who descend on just the cafe with hordes of holiday makers.

If you are unlucky you may find that what was going to be a quick lunch is scuppered by a horde of old people in front of you desperate to buy a pot of tea, order dinner and get some chocolate bourbon biscuits. So desperate that they are willing to push aside anyone who gets in their way….

However if you are lucky and miss the coach trip you can choose from the menu and the specials at your leisure. On a recent visit I went with the burger.

The burger arrived, I was pleased to see that it had come in a seeded bun, but this was no plastic sesame seeded bun, this was a proper bun with a range of seeds. Removing the top of the bun showed a proper homemade burger, just slightly too chargrilled for my liking, but not too much to impair the flavour.

Within the bun was some fresh onion and tomato. To be honest with the top of the bun removed it didn’t look that appetising, but with the top back on of course you didn’t notice how it looked, and the bun did look nice. Served alongside were some very nice crispy chips and a simple salad. The only thing I didn’t like was the sticky BBQ sauce served alongside, so that go moved off the plate.

Overall it was a really nice burger, tasted great and well presented and good value at £5.40 too. Recommended.

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How to make Fried Butter

This is one recipe I will not be trying….

I blame this photograph from the Guardian on why I did a quick Google search and yes you’re right I won’t be trying chocolate covered bacon either…

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Thorntons Caramel Shortcakes

Though I like caramel shortcakes, they can be a bit rich and sickly. When I saw these Thorntons Caramel Shortcakes on special I decided to give them a try.

They are smaller than your average shortcakes, caramel and a layer of chocolate. As a result you don’t feel so icky when you have one (or two).

I much prefer them chilled, they are less sickly and the chocolate goes all hard and adds a nice crunch as you bite into them.

Thorntons also do flapjacks and brownies in the same range, however I’ve not tried the flapjack, the brownies aren’t too bad, but don’t come close to the caramel shortcakes.

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Fudge

I quite like fudge, even the hard stuff you buy from most sweet shops.

Today though I was lucky enough to find a proper fudge shop that sold real crumbly freshly made fudge in Minehead.

Roly’s Fudge Pantry is a really nice little shop and I thought it was a one off, but looking at their website with shops across the UK and a few in the US, not the one off shop I thought it was… No it’s a franchise!

Though their clotted cream vanilla fudge was fresh, sweet and creamy. It melted in the mouth and was delicious. They had a large range of flavours, but I am a bit of a traditionalist so went with the plain stuff.

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French Picnic Lunch

Picnic lunch

This photo appeared in David’s photostream recently from his holiday in France. It reminded me of the typical French picnics I use to eat in France when I was young and on my last visit there (back in the 1990s). There is something very French about a French flute or baguette, pate, cheese and fresh tomatoes. Maybe some saucisson sec or other dried salami. Washed down with a small bottle of French lager or possibly a glass of red wine. Just hungry thinking about it.

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Houmus or Hummus

I go through phases with houmous, sometimes I like it and buy it on a regular basis and other times I think, nah, no thanks.

I am also pretty conservative when it comes to houmus, I much prefer the plain version and ignore the versions with olives, tomatoes or other added flavourings.

I have made it in the past, using chickpeas, olive oil and unfortunately way too much garlic… as a result I now rely on the version you can buy in the shops.

As for eating it when going out, usually I ignore it.

So are you eating houmus?

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Blast from the past

Yay sweets

At a recent event I was at there was a jar full of sweeties for delegates consisting of Wham and Refreshers chews.

I don’t recall eating Wham chews when I was a kid, but did certainly eat Refreshers.

So grabbed a handful and ate them on the train journey home.

Thoughts?

Way too sweet… though the nostalgia of the sherbet was nice.

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Whatever happened to…

On my way back from Birmingham recently I stopped off at the services to grab a coffee and stretch the legs.

As I walked around the services with WHSmith, Costa, Krispy Kreme, Starbucks, Burger King, KFC… it occurred to me how much motorway service stations have changed. You can also find Waitrose and Marks & Spencers at some too.

Motorway services have become mini malls and tiny high streets with familiar names. Obviously to entice drivers in and with a familiar name probably have the confidence to buy something… It would appear that the more you have heard of something, the more likely you are to buy from it.

It wasn’t that long ago that motorway services were brands in their own right, Granada (that became Moto), Welcome Break and so on… within their confined walls were unknown brands of coffee and fast foods as well as the main “canteen” style cafeteria.

Big brands started to make inroads into the services and these must have worked as now the services are awash with familiar names from the high street.

Of course the same is happening with our local shops, Tesco Metro, Sainsbury Local are now our corner shops and in many cases are on our local high streets (as well as their big edge of town stores).

When our local shopping centre expanded and a rank of smaller shops were made available next to the Morrisons, Boots and Matalan; I know i hoped for an independent baker, butcher and candlestick maker. What we got was Costa, Subway, Dominos and a Sue Ryder charity shop!

The sad thing is that, we in survey after survey, indicate how much we like our local shops and despair when they get “eaten up” by large chains. The reality is that as a society we say one thing and then go and do something else. We like the idea of local and independent store, but prefer to shop at the familiar.

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Making Pancakes

For breakfast this morning I had pancakes.

Well it was pancake time again for breakfast on Sunday, one advantage I guess of getting woken up early.

I make a simple batter of flour, eggs and milk, with a spoonful of caster sugar and some vanilla extract; and then cook using a hot pan. I really should measure the batter, but I find that experience allows me to “guess: the flour and milk. The key is the ensure that the mixture is smooth and coats the back of a spoon.

I have one just for pancakes, well I sometimes use it for omelettes or when I need an extra frying pan… shouldn’t really, but like any good cook, I need more pans. As it is getting old, though non-stick I do use some sunflower oil. I use a pastry style brush, it was a free gift from Jack Daniels and was designed to baste barbecue food with a Jack Daniels sauce. It therefore works really well in brushing oil onto the pancake pan.

If I am making large pancakes then I have the pan hotter than if I am making small ones, partly as the smaller ones are thicker, whilst the larger ones are made by swirling the mixture across the pan (and therefore are thinner).

I serve them with proper maple syrup. Personally I can’t stand the maple flavoured syrups you can buy, and will only buy the proper stuff. Yes it is expensive, but I would rather have the good stuff now and again rather than the horrible stuff all the time.

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Is this self-catering?

Generally when we go on holiday we go self-catering, mainly as it gives us the option to eat when and where we want to. The problem with self-catering is that you don’t always get a decent kitchen and nearly always the equipment leaves a lot to be desired. I want to cook a nice meal, what usually happens is that I get so frustrated with the lack of space, lack of decent pans, blunt knives and rubbish cookers that I get all annoyed.

On a recent holiday after struggling to cook a simple pasta dish in the kitchen in our self-catering accommodation I was so fed up that when I was in the local Sainsburys I decided to purchase a processed meal and heat it up in the oven. To be honest I was quite surprised by how nice it was. Yes if you got all the ingredients yourself and cooked from fresh, yes it would be much nicer, but in the assumption that you have useless cooking facilities, this was certainly much easier.

We had the Roasted Pork Belly with slow cooked roast potatoes and red onions, served with a tangy apple and cider sauce.

If you are regular reader of this blog, then you will know I have a fondness for pork belly so as a result I know what it can be like and what it should be like. The dish is quite simple to “cook” place in a pre-heated oven for 35-40 minutes. No slicing, no dicing and no preparation.

So what was it like?

It was rather quite nice. The combination of pork belly and potatoes worked well, the pork was quite tender and tasty, though I could tell it had been cooked and then heated up. It could have done with some more onions, whilst the potatoes were a little too salty for my tastes. The cider sauce was really nice, this did need to be heated up separately, but easily done in the provided microwave. Both myself and my wife enjoyed eating it and she said it was the best meal we had on that holiday, though to be honest it didn’t have a lot of competition!

A little secret, we had it again a few weeks later when we were back home, and then I did have some decent cooking facilities…