The Bretton Crepes/Galletes of Girona (@NLi10)

 While in Spain we visited a smaller town called Girona to the North of Barcelona which has a more eclectic vibe - and had an interesting little Crepe shop - which is one of the top restaurants in the region on trip advisor!

We got there a bit early, and were among the first to sneak in on this cold evening and ordered up some sweet treats (I think the savoury ones are the reason they are famous).

The crepes have their own Bretton style with harsher grains and very specific flavours - here we see chocolate and marmalade!

Girona is very pretty - but I wanted the food to appear first on the Instagram story :)

I had the alcohol & applesauce gallete (not the official name) and it was incredibly potent - almost a little 'wet' for my tastes compared to my partner's crispy one - but it was gorgeous. 

And they even gave me a table with my name on it!

Everything is cooked fresh to order so you get exactly what you want - but in luxury surroundings and with a hint of French flair.  If we'd stayed longer I'm sure we'd have gone back for the 'mains'!

Jack Ratt Christmas Mead (Lyme Bay Winery) By @SpectreUK

Well, it's that time of year gain. It's the silly season, there's a tree in the lounge, wrapping paper in rolls in all sorts of places, baubles banging together from the stress, and good food waiting to be cooked, baked, boiled, fried, chewed and digested, after belts have been duly widened.

It's only in the last year or two that I have known and supped many of Lyme Bay Winery's flavours of meads.However, here is a mead I haven't tried, Christmas Mead. Produced with "festive spices" this 10% in volume Christmas Mead is recommended with strong cheeses and casseroles. However, I have found that mead goes very well with fig biscuits.

My favourite habit for pudding is where I enjoy a glass of Lyme Bay Winery mead with a full packet of fig biscuits. It takes a bit to juggle the calories, as a 250ml glass of mead is generally 180 calories, whereas a packet of my favourite fig biscuits is 770 calories. I have a healthy lunch and a healthy dinner to match up with the not so healthy pudding. I have always loved fig biscuits, and have a special variety I eat quite regularly. Some fig biscuits can be quite tough, but these are not too hard and are fairly chewy. They are sweet and as I say go rather well with any mead.

Getting into the Christmas spirit, I popped open this bottle and was pleased to find that Christmas Mead also complements fig biscuits very well. It was difficult to pick out the "festive spices", but I am sure with all that sweet honey came a little nutmeg, cloves and even some cinnamon. I shall try my next glass with a good fruit cake, maybe even the Christmas cake Cinabar has baked for me.

Merry Christmas :-)

Starburst - 12 Macarons (Iceland) By @Cinabar

I’m not sure how much of a natural product progression it is for Starburst (which my brain will always pronounce "Opal Fruits") to venture into macarons, but this did take me by surprise. I’ve seen variations of different sweets over the years, but this is the first time I’ve spotted biscuits. Not just any biscuits either; these are found in Iceland, so they are frozen, and you simply defrost them before eating. They aren't designed to be eaten cold.

Inside the box are 3 flavours, strawberry, orange, and lemon. I gave one a try and found the texture lovely; they were perfect despite being frozen. They're soft and crispy, and the filling is firm but not hard. What was amazing was the flavours, you could really tell they were based on Starburst sweets. The lemon was sweet and zingy, the orange was tangy and sweet, and the strawberry had a delicious berry flavor. They were just so similar to the sweets that I was very impressed. All I could think when I was eating them was that they were made to make your mouth water. Yes, stop judging my age already. 

 

Candy Cane Peeps Marshmallow Chicks (Candy Mail) By @Cinabar

I think I may have mentioned it a few times on here, but I love that there are so many hot chocolates around right now. I can’t help stocking the cupboards because I drink this all year, and outside of the Christmas season, interesting flavours are hard to find. The other awesome thing about hot chocolate is marshmallow, and I couldn’t resist trying the Candy Cane Peeps Marshmallow Chicks.

 

Peeps are traditionally shaped like chicks, but they come in a variety of designs and flavours. These are traditional chicks, but they are speckled and mint-flavored, which makes them ideal. I layered a bed of cream on my hot chocolate and let one of the Candy Cane Peeps Marshmallow Chicks float on top. Because I love theming, the hot chocolate was also peppermint. I gave my marshmallow a try, and it was lovely. The mint was sweet and fairly strong; there was plenty of peppermint, but not enough to be overpowering. It was just the right amount, and it worked perfectly with the hot chocolate. These look super cute and very Instagrammable on top of a hot chocolate, but they are also tasty and well flavoured which is what matters when you are drinking it. I think these might be my favourite variety yet.

A Vocados - Barcelona! And general Christmassyness (@NLi10)

Bon Nadal - and welcome to Barcelona! We went away for a week (and a bit - flight delays) to get some winter warmth and a little bit of cultural tourism.

Just look at how Christmassy everything is - even though the weather was like England in March - around 15 degrees.

The squares were dressed festively and everyone was all having a good time watching their respective favourites loose in the football.

And it was busy too - lots of locals and tourists looking for festive bargains and a bite to eat.  For night one we settled on a little place called A Vocados - which I’m sure is a pun on Avocados but I don’t know enough local dialect words to understand it.

It was pretty empty - but we were still eating on English time and a couple of hours early.

When in Spain… I had the pizza! But I did have the one with the local ham on it.  My partner had the avocados which was the specialty and it worked quite well.

They even had cold-pressed cafe style drinks for me to sample - this was nice but not too exciting. Banana and strawberry? I get confused with the fruits.

Well worth the visit and a lovely place (we were convinced it must be some local super-chain but its just a few scattered places) I’m surprised we didn’t go back on a later night.