Bakedin Rainbow Cake Kit (Moon Pig) By @Cinabar

This fantastic looking Bakedin Rainbow Cake Kit came as a birthday present back in January from my brother and family. I think there might have been a hope that I would bake the rainbow Cake when they visited, unfortunately though the use-by was edging closer so I had to make it without them. We could call it is trial run. I also had the day off work so what better plan that to give myself a fun baking project and to stop worrying about what emails are waiting in my work inbox.

So the Bakedin Rainbow Cake Kit arrived with all the dry ingredients and the four foil baking trays as well a cake board and some grease proof paper. I simply added the fresh ingredients butter, milk and four eggs. 

To make the kit you start with the first bag of dry mix and add butter which is mixed in until it looks like bread crumbs. I rubbed this in and ended up with coloured fingers.

Next you add an egg and a drop of milk and whisk until you have a fluffy looking cake batter. There are four bags of dry cake mix and you have to repeat the process four times. The strong colours this means that everything needs washing (bowl / whisk / spoon / hands etc) every time in between. Once you have the batter you pour it into the foil baking trays which you’ve greased and lined with baking paper.

Next you bake them for 20-25 minutes. The colour of the cakes makes it difficult to judge when they are ready so I did the skewer test to make sure they came away clean. Then leave the cakes to cool in their tins, before turning out to cool some more. Never ice a hot cake, we’ve all watch The Bake Off.

Once they are cool you mix the icing bag with butter and whisk until fluffy. I am not skilled in neat cake decorating but I followed the instructions, a layer of of sponge topped with a layer of icing and repeat until all four layers are stacked and then you add the icing all around the edge too, finally topping it with rainbow sprinkles. If you can’t bake neatly I have discovered rainbow sprinkles and or edible glitter are heaven sent.

Next came the moment of truth and the cutting in to see how the sponges turned and what the colour looked like. I was really pleased, they were fairly bright and all looked pretty even. This is an amazing cake and I realise it is an even cake but in my head it is belated birthdays cake. The height of the cake in impressive too, it is a proper party piece. The flavour was wonderful and despite the four different cake batter was fairly easy to make with impressive results. Here is hoping the next time I make it all the family can share.

Naturally Nourished - by Sarah Britton, the perfect veggie starter book (@NLi10)

Occasionally I get something in the post that I personally find hard to review.  Maybe it's the simple pots of Peruvian Quinoa, or yet another quality organic cola - some things are good, but hard to put in to words.

While I was away in Italy a few 'food parcels' arrived and were looked after by neighbours including this rather large book.

Blogger Sarah Britton has brought together a collection of wonderfully photographed vegetarian dishes that reads like somewhere between a recipe book and a lifestyle manual.  There are lots of fundamentals (which I really get along with) before you get to the recipes so that you don't feel you have to just follow blindly and can tailor everything to your taste.

Some of these basics - like the building block idea are just more detailed versions of things most of us subconsciously do.

Essentially you choose a thing from each section - and end up with a meal.  A lot of the vegan things I review on here are essentially taking one of these steps out and then you add the sauce and the grain and you get a meal.  Fry's vegan bits and bobs are now completely essential for me as they have so many more complex flavours than the Quorn 'beginner veggie' foods can.  Here though it's stripped right back - which is great for budgets and picky eaters alike.

What I can't get on with is a couple of the 'flavour boosting' ideas - namely adding salt and oil to the dish as an auto-condiment topping.  Salt to really bring out the flavour, and oil to make the dish more satisfying and hunger busting both sound superficially fantastic but the Eat To Live/Nutritarian in me is horrified!  Both of these run completely contrary to what we want to be advising people.  If you want your food to be more fatty and flavoursome on top add some seeds!  Granted she has a section on adding vinegar too (the Joel Fuhrman approved smarter version of salting everything) so not all the ideas are bad, but this theme does carry over into a few of the recipes and there are a lot of nutrient free calories floating around that just plain don't need to be there!

Between this and the kitchen staples section of the book at the end there are 10 pages of 'me' style tips and tricks which I found fascinating (I always love to see how other people think about food whether I agree with them or not.  The other 230 pages of the book are the recipes, which realistically I'm going to skim read.  There are some fab ideas in here too, like the three different seasonal variations on the Minestrone soup, but for me the stars are the pictures.  Not only are they bright and colourful but they don't feel staged and forged like a lot of books do.  These look like someone has just taken pictures of their meals as they made them, and they did a great job!  Dirty bowls and spoons and real cutlery help bring home the honesty of the food thats here - and being a vegetarian book I can take any of the ideas and run with it without too much effort.  The food labelling is great too with vegan and gluten free options highlighted.

This book would be ideal for a newly converted veggie (or upgraded vegan) and is almost the perfect gift for a parent who is looking to say "I approve of your new lifestyle choices".  Heck I know a few people I'm going to link the blog to after I finish writing.

For my cooking style though - I have all the vegan basics down. I have the Eat To Live cookbook to ignore and do my own thing instead of, and I have At Home In the Whole Food Kitchen to try and skim the basics from too.  Naturally Nourished has some great higher end recipes that I'd love to try, but I'm not sure that I have the time, patience or skill to try.  So I'm going to pass the baton. While I can totally review the lifestyle section and the achingly beautiful pictures I'm going to need to recruit one or two veggie friendly people I know to make some of these things to try out.  And you know - I don't think the author would mind that.  The book was written as a way to bring people together over food so hopefully I manage to do that and I'll report back in the future.

In the meantime you can look at Sarah's blog My New Roots for a few of these very recipes and some lifestyle tips, but be warned - it's very mouth watering stuff.  It also looks like there is an app version of this which I'd probably get along better with as I can just say "I have these three things - what do I make".

Gousto Cooking Recipe Box (@GoustoCooking) [By @Cinabar]

The lovely folks from Gousto asked if we wanted to try out a Gousto Recipe box, and we thought it would be fun to give it a try. The idea is that you go on the website and pick one or two recipes from their selection and the numbers of people you want it for (2 or 4) and they send you all the ingredients, including the meat, in a cold box via courier. Exciting stuff! There recipes change every week, but for ours we went with ‘Greek Lamb Pasta with Feta and Dill’ and ‘Lemon and Chive Crusted Salmon’.
When the box arrived we were all very impressed, it was still very cold, it had been packed with ice packs and wrapped in excellent insulting material, and split into sections, chilled and non-chilled.

All the items were fresh and measured into portions and we couldn't wait to get started. There was enough ‘sell-by’ for us to have the meals over the following three days, but we had them the first two consecutive evenings.

Greek Lamb Pasta with Feta and Dill
The instructions were easy to follow, we started off by chopping the herbs and veggies in preparation. The onions were their usual painful selves, but I was pleased that the olives had been pre-pitted. We fried off the onions then added the lamb, tomato paste, oregano and garlic and got that browned.

Meanwhile the pasta went into boiling water to get that started. Next we added the chopped tomatoes, olives, bay leaves and ketchup (never underestimate the addition of some ketchup in your pasta dish).
We added a little water from the pasta pot to get the Ragu to the correct consistency and gave it a good stir. The bay leaves were found and fished out too! The dill got added next and the crumbled feta cheese topping.
The dish was fantastic, I loved the rich herby tomato flavour. I am a fan of pasta, but not usually with lamb. It was an easy to prepare recipe with results that meant every bowl was cleared.

Lemon and Chive Crusted Salmon
Next up we went for a fish dish. Again we started by prepping the veg, this time chopping the potatoes and trimming the green beans. The first thing we did was heat a shallow pan very hot and put the salmon in skin side down to cook the skin. It sizzled pleasingly in the pan.
In a bowl we mixed the breadcrumbs, half the chives and lemon zest. We also added olive oil which I think was the only ingredient we took from the cupboard that hadn’t been included in the box. We placed the salmon on a baking tray and topped it with Dijon mustard, not ingredients I’d normally combine but thats the point.

On top of the mustard we added the breadcrumb mix and then baked the salmon. The potatoes were simply boiled and dressed with the rest of the chives.
The beans were cooked in a way I'd never done before. They were essentially cooked in the shallow pan with a splash of water and capers. Not sure I have ever had capers on their own before, just in tartar sauce. They were served with mayonnaise mixed with olive oil and lemon juice.
The dish looked stunning when served, I loved the arty drizzle of lemon mayo on the beans. The mix of texture on the salmon were spot on, the crumble added such a nice mix crunch and the mustard was fab. I would never have combined mustard with salmon, but the mild Dijon worked very well with it. It was such a good meal.

I really enjoyed using flavour combinations I’d not tried before, lamb and pasta, and who would have thought salmon and mustard would work so well. Both meals resulted in completely cleared plates and were thoroughly enjoyed dishes. I like that the Gousto boxes add a bit of adventure to cooking but in a safe way. The recipes are easy to follow and in terms of convenience you cant beat having the ingredients measured and delivered to the door.
I realise the boxes aren't cheap, but you do get a fab selection of food and well thought through interesting recipes. Plus you can have as many or as few boxes as you like, so there is no long lasting commitment. If you want to give Gusto a try, yo can what recipes are available this week at: https://www.gousto.co.uk

By Cinabar

Delimano Ceramica Suprema 20cm Frying Pan [Review by @NLi10]

When someone offers to send you a frying pan to review you have to presume they are pretty confident that it's better than the one you have.  I know I've cooked at a few other people's houses before (and in hostel kitchens) and had some fairly useless lumps of metal to work with, but at home I have a lovely little wok and a much larger wok pan which you'd expect for someone writing a food blog.  It was with some trepidation then that I accepted that I'd try some ceramic cookware and see what the fuss was about.

The parcel was delivered to my elderly neighbours and the man of the house suggested that bacon and eggs would be the best things to test it with.  And I agreed!

I added Udon noodles as these are the thing that most often sticks to my existing pans.  It does mean they become super crispy - but takes some effort to clean off.

First up an egg.  I did nothing to the pan except for washing it before use.  See how the little red stripe before the handle has appeared - I guess that means it's hot enough!

The egg fried and then slid straight out of the pan leaving no mess at all.  This was fun.  I then put the cheap, water and salt filled bacon (that I got from our little shop on our street as I was out of the good stuff) into the pan with no oil or fat.  I whacked the temperature up to get the fat out of the bacon to crisp it up.

While this did leave behind a lot of bacon residue the plastic spatula I used for cooking these easily wiped that off.  I added the cooked bacon to the bowl and moved on to the noodles.

These I softened with water and then added some Kikkoman Soy Sauce to the pan while cooking to give it that authentic flavour.  This usually causes the noodles at the bottom to stick to the pan.

In this case it didn't happen.  The noodles didn't seem to dry out as much and didn't crisp up quite as much as I'm used to, but also didn't stick at all.  They were evenly coated and all cooked well.

And with no water at all I used my puple spatula to remove all the bits that would usually require a scrub to get off.  This made washing up a very quick and simple affair.

I'm sure for big stir-fry that this wouldn't be able to replace my giant wok pan, but for general frying it's a lot easier and requires less heat or oil.  If your looking to reduce the amount you need to use then this could be for you.  I also think this range would make very good gifts as it's something that most people are unlikely to go out and look for - unless they've tried out someone else's and decided their kitchen needs an upgrade.

I doubted that adding a bit of science to kitchenware would make that much difference, but it's surprisingly effective.  At £33.99 it's not going to be the cheapest on the market, but it comes with a 5 year guarantee which is essentially a manufacturers way of saying they'd be surprised if it didn't last 10.  The full range is here and I'm very tempted to hunt these out as some of my family would definitely like one as a birthday present.

This said - it may be that all ceramic pans are simply more effective than the thin metal ones I'm used to - i'd be interested to hear other peoples opinions on this in the comments below.

Mrs Crimble’s Home Bake Pancake Mix (Avail Asda) [By @Cinabar]

It is really not long until Pancake Day! Shrove Tuesday is 4th March. Every year we have pancakes on Pancake Day, really enjoy them, and say that we aught to have them more often. Then a year later we repeat the cycle!
This year the folks from Mrs Crimble’s got in touch and asked if we wanted to try their Home Bake Pancake Mix, which was an excuse to at least have pancakes on two occasions this year! We gladly said yes, and wondered what their take on pancakes would be, as they are gluten-free.
The box is 200g, and states that it makes 10 pancakes. We managed to make 9 from ours, but I guess it depends on your pan size.

All you have to do is tip the contents of the pack into a large bowl, add two eggs and 400ml milk and whisk. You then pour just enough of the mixture into a hot oiled pan and cook on both sides until golden.
From this point you can choose to go savoury and add tuna with sweetcorn, go traditional with lemon juice and sugar or my personal favourite spread them with jam before rolling! Ice-cream on top is then optional.

These were easy to make, and certainly looked the part, taste wise they were spot on too. Despite the ingredients including maize, rice and potato starch they tasted just like regular pancakes. The texture was right, fluffy, but just needed a little effort to break apart with a spoon. If you hadn’t told me they were gluten-free I wouldn’t have know, so that does make them a total success. So if you or a loved one is gluten intolerant and is worried about missing out on the great Shrove Tuesday tradition, you needn’t be as Mrs Crimble’s Pancake Mix gets a total thumbs up.
The only very slight negative point, and it is me being a bit pedantic is it is called Home Bake Pancake Mix, and there wasn’t any baking, as such, involved. :-D

By Cinabar

Making Mince Pies (Preservation Society @angharadtps) [by @NLi10]

While in Cardiff at Chapter Arts Centre to see comedienne Josie Long I spotted a few interesting snacks.

Green Chocolate Stegosaurus? Don't mind if I do! Locally made white choc just coloured a bit to get me overexcited and shaped into my favourite of the dinosaurs.  Very Nice!  The carob was OK, but the texture is essentially glue after the first few mouthfuls so less enjoyable.  The cookie was not for me but the nibble I had was nice enough.  What was worth mentioning was the following day they had a food fair - so we braved the Welsh rain and came back.

I had a good look round and would say that it was more diverse than our own Good Food Show a few weeks before and more focused to things you'd want to share with others than your own kitchen supplies.  While sitting sampling the hot chocolate as we'd arrived too early we also (in a typically bizarre twist) got invited to a screening of a Charity documentary about cataract operations in India (which was a lot more interesting and uplifting than it sounds) by the charity Second Sight so enjoyed that too.

Our chosen table looked out over this little corner which had a lovely home made stall on the far side, a stall stacked with loads of amazing looking cupcakes made by Mel (that I didn't try due to the usual practice of having to ration what I could eat or carry home) and one round the corner selling preserves.

I picked up a little present from the home made stall (which I shan't discuss or photo as it's for Xmas) and gazed restrainedly at all the cup-cakes... I also looked at the preserves, and my tiny brain hatched a plan.  My office/laboratory were holding a Mince Pie Celebration that would result in prizes and glory, but I can't stand mince pies (raisin/sultanas again)! I used to love baking, but had never made mince pies and decided that I could probably make a dried-fruit free version that both qualified for judging and was edible by me.  As the deadline approached and I'd not managed to do anything about it I spotted this on the stall.

I had a chat with the lady running the stall both then and afterwards on Twitter and the idea of Mince Pie Samosas was born.  I mentioned my chocolate and orange version too, but felt that while this would work (as would adding cocoa to the Buttery & Boozy Mincemeat) it was too much for a first attempt.  If you want to pick up a jar yourself then you can do so on their website. They also have lots of things that I do like to eat that in hindsight may have made more sensible long term purchases...

I marked out the tri-force and folded up some oddly misshapen parcels.  At this point the lovely smell of the apple and cinnamon was trying to convince me to eat the mixture, but I just couldn't get over the whole shrivelled grape thing and stuck to making some for the judges.

Here we have the raw item - wrapped up in their Jus-Roll pastry (yes - I know it's cheating but it's a lot quicker this way - I've made puff pastry from scratch a good few times though).

And 10 short minutes later we have a finished product!  Two of them really didn't last long as Ms. NLi10 gave them their first review by eating them as pudding and saying they were nice.  I also made and baked some chocolate ones, but I'll save that one for another day (I still need to write up the Gran Marnier baking disaster actually)!

The Christmas Party was tense, with the Mince Pie results jammed in between the eating of snacks and the Secret Santa.  The following was read out about mine (and featured in the department newsletter):

"Excellent novelty value scoring very highly for innovation.  We know that Rich couldn't decide whether to bake these or fry them, and we think that perhaps he should have gone for the fry. Nevertheless, excellent thoughtful mincemeat and a great fusion food idea."

This wasn't quite enough to win or place as runner up (far more experienced bakers received those accolades with pies made entirely from scratch so sweeping the bonus points up there), but it was good enough to get the Highly Commended certificate which is one for the trophy cabinet.

I think that The Preservation Society (whose name I love) can be proud of this, it was a universally loved mincemeat and all the secondary judges in the consultant's offices really enjoyed finishing off the batch.  So much so that I have to now use the last third of the jar to make a few more for those of us in on Christmas Eve, but may need to resort to more mass produced varieties such as Waitrose for those to take to the Boxing Day family gathering.

Merry Christmas readers - I hope that you can find something similar lurking on the local stalls to add a touch of hand-made magic to your Christmas experience.

Forman & Field Luxury Hamper (by @NLi10)

Forman & Field Luxury Hamper (by @NLi10)

We often get requests to review odd products that don't really fit under the 'snack food' umbrella, but there is usually one of the three of us that is willing to try it.  I have a tendency to gravitate towards the convenience foods - proper nutrition in convenient forms - than the others, mainly because this is where my shopping list takes me.  I love finding new and exciting ways to make meal times fast but tasty.  When the team at FoodStuffFinds got asked by www.FormanandField.com if we'd like a hamper to review it seemed more up my street.

After-all, what could be more convenient than a little wicker basket arriving on the doorstep full of food!  The problem with this is that there is such a variety in one of these that it's not really possible for one person to offer a detailed opinion on all these things - especially when the hamper contains both fish and cheese, two things I'm not usually inclined to eat voluntarily.  The best reviews look at the situations you are most likely to need the products in - so today we are holding a virtual diner party!  I carefully selected the people in my life who would make a b-line to the specific sections of the table with those foods on and got them to either give me mini reviews or let me watch them eat them.  Like most dinner parties this review goes on a bit longer than usual.

I think I've always secretly been jealous of the people who get hampers for Christmas.  I've seen them in the back of the catalogues for various shops & societies growing up, but have been convinced by more frugal members of my family that it's just cheaper to source the individual things.  I think the problem with this approach is that it's fine if you just want 'some ham and a pork pie', but if you want a treat for a specific event and want the best ham and the best pork pie then these hampers could be then next step up from my now traditional Ocado delivery.  The hamper we received was a 'taster' hamper and is both a scaled-down in terms of the portion sizes, but ramped up in terms of the variety of the items included compared to the versions on the website.  This is perfect as giving someone 100g of salmon to try is a nice gesture, but 400g may come across as a bit odd!  Opening it up was certainly a wow moment, and you keep finding extra stuff in the straw - like the ham down the side & the cheese hiding underneath the packing.

So without further ado - the contents!

Mrs King's Melton Mowbray Pork Pie (Eaten by me)

 

If at any point a large selection of food is placed in front of me at a family social gathering I'm probably going to go straight for the Pork Pie.  Granted, I'm probably going to start piling small deserts such as profiteroles around it, but the pie is the priority.  I'm not a massive expert on them, I've reviewed a few on here over the years but it's more of a special occasion thing than a normal purchase.  And this pork pie certainly is special - I mean look at the meat in this!

The thickness of the pastry is making me hungry just typing this up.  I took it in to work - expecting to be able to eat it in one sitting for lunch.  I managed just under half!  I did share little bits of that half with other colleagues who said that they really liked it.  The second half was consumed on the following day, a similarly filling experience.  The flavours were a little spicy, but overall well balanced.  I don't think it was designed to be eaten in a single sitting and a sixth of this with a buffet lunch of left-over turkey on boxing day would be amazing.  If I see these in the regular shops I'm almost certainly getting one.

Potted Lobster (eaten by Jon) & Lemon Curd (eaten by me)

With our friend the pork pie for scale we now find two little taster-jars in the hamper, one of lobster & one of lemon curd.  I had absolutely zero desire to eat the lobster so my good buddy Jon volunteered to eat this.  Lemon curd is great stuff, but I really didn't know what to do with it!  It's a bit lower than the lobster as it leaked in transit, but the straw-like paper seemed to help mop it up.

As part of a healthy work lunch Jon said the best way to try this would be on some cracked black pepper Ryvita.  The big Fentiman's D&B was deemed too overpowering compared to the nicely delicate lobster and so saved for later on.

The moment of truth!

A success! The lobster crumbled with ease and didn't fill the canteen with that fishy smell you sometimes get.  It was a delicate flavour and well balanced with the crackers.  The whole pot was finished in one sitting, but the ones that you get in the normal hamper are much larger so I think this was a single serving.  Lobster isn't something I tend to see served at dinner parties, so I think that this would be a big hit and definitely count towards the luxury quota of the package.

The lemon curd was an odd one.  I'd no idea how to sample it!  Cassie, A friend from work, suggested that I should have it on toast - so I did!  This worked pretty well, it was runnier than I expected and had a very natural lemon flavour and went well as a kind of lemon marmalade experience.  I shall have to think how best to use the rest of the pot as it didn't require much to give it a lovely flavour.

And now we move on to the meat section of the hamper - with two kinds of salmon and one kind of ham.  As the reviews for the fish would have been 'it tastes like fish' and probably involved me grilling or frying it as I really don't have a clue I gave these to other people to eat (I kept the ham.  I love ham).

H. Forman & Son Scottish Wild Salmon (eaten by my neighbours)

My elderly neighbours two doors down are a very British, elderly couple.  I've tried to give them foods that I've had in the post before, but they tend to eat very traditional things and most of the selections I'm sent are a little too exotic!  As they are often the people receiving the food sampling parcels for me when I am out at work I was very tempted to let them have the whole hamper - but that would make for a very short review!  As a nice compromise I discussed the contents with them and the lady of the house said that she does like a good bit of salmon.  I chose the unsmoked as I already had a person in mind for the smoked variety.

About a week later I caught up with them to see what they thought and she had shared it with her son on one of his visits and they had really enjoyed it.  She suggested that it was much posher than the usual salmon she had (co-op I think) and that it was a nice treat.  The official tasting notes for the salmon suggest that its flavour is gamey and its texture creamy - I'm sure these are good things.

The smoked salmon went to my boss Nick, who has spoken on many occasions in our office about his love for these things.  Here are his thoughts on it:

H. Forman & Son Scottish Smoked Salmon (eaten by Nick)

"It had been hoped, in reviewing this product, to make a direct comparison with a budget smoked salmon from a well-known ‘pile-it-high’. Until, that is, examination of the fridge revealed the budget salmon was no longer there. “Gone off” was the reason given by the lady of the house “and that cheese”. This was Tuesday, the fish had been purchased on Monday and half of it consumed immediately, along with a nice bit of brie. Apparently and allegedly, the intervening day spent at four domestic-fridge degrees centigrade had caused a spontaneous decomposition of both which resulted in the need for immediate black-bag burial in the outside bin.  I felt sorry for the salmon (and brie) and jealous of the neighbourhood fox who, unlike his forbears who were pursued by smoked salmon eating aristocrats,  was pigging my smoked salmon watched by the ally-cats.

In fact, this episode reflects the great conundrums of smoked salmon consumption. Smoked Salmon is still regarded as a ‘posh food’ ; despite thirty years of intense aquiculture resulting in a relatively cheap product,  us plebeians still have the idea that smoked salmon is the slivery alternative to prawn cocktail that you have with brown bread before a sirloin (medium), chips and seasonable vegetable followed by a choice of ice-cream.  Furthermore, and hence my previous purchase's hasty demise, it smells like fish so, ergo, it must be ‘off’.  These social anthropological circumstances combined to cause myself to only eat half of the first sample (too good to eat in one go) and my better half to throw this out (it smells like fish).  This despite the fact that the salmon, cheese and indeed some nice brown-bread rolls, from the pile-it-high, cost less than a salmonella kebab. Thus are ones proletarian origins revealed, and thus I resolved to scoff the new smoked salmon sample in one (so I imagined) Edward the Seventhish sitting; the budget comparison meanwhile being a mental one.

Verdict – this is the way to eat salmon and this salmon is the way to go. And the difference between Forman & Son and pile-it-high is...water. Yes, OK, so salmon and water do posses a kind-of go together inevitability; but the difference here was that Forman & Son's salmon felt as though it contained only such water as the salmon itself had found conducive to its own watery well being before its smoky demise, whereas the other had, by comparison, apparently ended the smoking process via a good dousing from the local fire brigade. Its’ good; and my advice for those who are lucky enough to be first to open a Forman & Son's hamper is to snaffle the smoked salmon and consume the contents directly, in one go, and without reference to matters of class consciousness. Though, of course, you will smell of fish (and bonfires).

Lovely."

And finally for the meats we have the ham.

Hand Carved Alderton Ham (eaten by me)

I'm not sure what it is about ham that's so deeply ingrained into my psyche.  I know of tales from my family of me sitting in the pushchair being pushed around supermarkets happily eating the ham brought seconds ago from the butcher's resulting in my mom paying for the empty pack at the checkout - like other mothers do with chocolate or sweets. This is essentially the sample size portion of a full leg of ham that is in some of the super-deluxe hampers , and was perfect for a cold meat supper with some pasta (and a solitary leafy green).

I think that I've been spoilt with hams before as this was merely very good ham.  It wasn't salty at all which was a very nice surprise, but was otherwise like top quality butcher's ham should be.  It was suitably crumbly, and had the right balance of fat to meat.  I'd happily eat this on a daily basis (probably not wise) but it didn't feel quite as luxury as some of the other items.  I guess if the whole ham was sitting on the table and I could carve it myself then that would be the pinnacle for this particular item, and possibly it's main selling point.

A Selection of Neal's Yard Dairy Cheeses (eaten by Ms. NLi10 and her dad)

 

Buried under all the straw in the main picture was this little box of cheese.  I'm not an expert on cheese, and am more than a little repulsed by the stuff so I passed it on to my partner who assured me that it was 'very good cheese'



I think that some of the varieties of cheese were a little too strong for her so we are taking some of those this evening for her dad - who likes the kind of cheese that you have to keep in the out-house or garage to prevent the house from smelling like some kind of mouse party.  I'll see if I can get a few comments on these to add in later.

Wow - what a long review you are thinking!  And you'd be right - but it isn't over yet as they also sent us puddings!

On the left we have banana loaf which was very, very nice, but not especially interesting so I shall focus on the other two.  On the right we have:

Forman & Field Chocolate Brownie Loaf (eaten by me and Ms NLi10)

Note the grown-up plates.  We are so classy!

The brownie looked really posh in it's little wooden box (that you can reuse to bake your own) and has a great texture which is both smooth and has crunch to it in places.  As any brownie aficionado knows you should take one of them (or a slice in this case) and pop it into the microwave for a 10 count to return it to it's former squidgy glory.  When you do this it elevates this to being an amazing brownie.  A little more interesting than it's Gu counterpart, but I suspect harder to get hold of (although F&F do have a big patisserie section online).  We'd have this again in a heartbeat!

Paul Wayne Gregory Pure Indulgence Chocolates (me & Ms NLi10)

The final thing to eat at the end of the diner party is the little chocolates.  These are rectangular and decently sized with a soft centre which is tea flavoured - result!  There are better pictures here as I didn't really capture the elegance of the little guys.

The flavours vary by chocolate and neither of us were sure which one we had eaten, despite being tea aficionados.  They were very nice, but I think the chocolate is stronger than the delicate tea interiors.  This heightens the indulgence factor, but at the expense of the flavour.  The tea is the stronger of the two aftertastes - but if you are eating this at the end of a meal you are likely to have a tea already. Better stashed away for a secret nibble late at night I think (this is what happened to the third one :D )

This leaves us with one remaining thing - the hamper itself!

Once I figured out that the straw-like paper was very off-putting for them and replaced it with a blanket this has become a very classy cat bed.  Unfortunately they are still in the 'shy phase' and keep getting out of it whenever we approach.  If you frequently had picnics then this is certainly robust enough to be reused, but buying a hamper for someone with cats really does add value to the deal as it's perfectly sized for them.  When I get a picture I will add it.

Thanks go to Forman & Field for sending this out.  We've had a great time trying it all, and really must now sleep it all off.  If you want to see pictures of their food being used in it's intended environment (and pictures of the cheese still on it's wheels) then their Blog is pretty good.