Hello Olympic Torch!

LONDON 2012 Olympics

The Torch

At:

 The Pantiles, Tunbridge Wells

Tuesday 17th July 2012 11.45am

Recipe of the week # Perfect Pasties

Everyone loves a pasty & I've made an easy delicious recipe for these July showers.

Vegan as always too!

Ingredients:

(Makes 10)

One pack of just roll puff pastry (or you can make it yourself)

200g potatoes

2 tins of chopped tomatoes

1 onion

2 cloves of garlic

50g frozen peas

1 tablespoon of tomato puree

1 small chilli

20ml soya milk

Vegetable oil

salt & pepper to season

A handful of flour

1 rolling pin

A large pan/wok

1 hob

1 oven tray

1 oven

Make:

1. Cut your potatoes into rough cubes of about 1cm (you can leave skin on) and put into the oven at 200oc for 20 minutes to bake with a little oil, salt & pepper.

2. Dice your onion and garlic, fry for 3 minutes over medium/high heat with a splash of vegetable oil.

3. Chop your chilli finely and add to the pan.

4. Add the tomato puree & stir for 30 seconds then add in the chopped tomatoes and season.

5. After 5 minutes of simmering add the peas and turn the heat down low.

6. Once the potatoes have cooked add to the pan and turn off the heat.

7. Roll your pastry out so it's about 5mm thick, use a little flour so the pastry doesn't stick to the rolling pin.

8. Use a mug as a template and cut around it making around 10 circles of pastry.

9. Roll each circle out so it becomes bigger but thinner (half thickness)

10. Add a table spoon (approx) to one side of each piece of pastry and fold the other side over, seal the edges and crimp them by either pinching or turning them up.

11. Brush each pasty with soya milk & put on a baking tray to bake for 20-25 minutes.

12. Once cooked they will be golden brown and you can eat the pasties hot or cold.

Tip: Add any left over vegetable in the fridge to the filling mixture for more colours and flavours

Perfect for a picnic <3

Hop Farm festival 2012

Hop Farm Festival this year was a beauty.

I arrived on Thursday without any problems as the festival is just a few miles from my home town and my first impression was that it seemed to have grown from last year with bigger stages and bigger names.

Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel & Suede are the headliners this year so hop farm was definitely aiming at a sophisticated crowd this year.

Gomez

My Line-up

Of course you sadly can't see everyone at a festival so I have listed below the acts I saw over the weekend

FRIDAY

Gomez

Jose Gonzalez

Billy Ocean

The Futureheads

The Stranglers

Peter Gabriel & The New Blood Orchestra

SATURDAY

Bellowhead

Sir Bruce Forsyth

Damien Rice

Maximo Park

Primal Scream

SUNDAY

Athlete

The Psychedelic Furs

The Levellers

Kool and the gang

Richard Ashcroft

Suede

Frightened Rabbit

The main stage

HIGHLIGHTS

Billy Ocean did a wonderful crowd pleasing show, everyone LOVED him.

Primal Scream were so energetic, the atmosphere was electric and everyone was dancing.

Toilet cleaners - yes the Hop Farm had people cleaning the toilets. Granted they will never be what we have at home but definitely the best toilets I have ever seen at a festival.

Sir Bruce Forsyth is a great man. At 84 he still entertained a huge crowd for his first festival ever! I hope it wont be the last.

Kool and the gang was a great show. This dancing, singing and music playing bunch made everyone happy and 'get down on it'!

Richard Ashcroft giving us what we all wanted by playing a selection of the Verve songs all afternoon to sing along to. Me being a huge fan loved this and wish he had headlined.

The legend Billy Ocean

Kids area

Damien Rice

Damien's crowd

Primal Scream

Primal Scream

Hop Farm Festival had some busking pitches around the site which you could come watch some bands, solo artists or just who wanted to play at anytime of day. Here are a couple of  buskers who caught my eye.

Two young girls

My favourite busker

PIMMS

Richard Ashcroft

Ghost train

Hop Farm Festival was a great weekend and I'm looking forward to next years line up! x

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Recipe of the Week # Thai Noodles

Noodles for 4 in just 10 minutes!

Ingredients:

Thai style noodles (enough for 4)
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
1 pack on mangetout
1 red onion
1 white onion
2 cloves of garlic
Sesame oil
Vegetable oil
1 pack of cauldron tofu buy me!
1 lime
Chilli sauce
Wok
Hob

Make:

1. Cut, chop and slice all your veg keeping them in separate piles.
2. Put your wok on the hob on a medium-high heat with a table spoon of vegetable oil, once hot add the chopped garlic & onion sauteing the mix for a minute.
3. Next add the peppers to the wok and saute for another minute.
4. Add the tofu and a drizzle of sesame oil and cook out for 2 minutes.
5. Now add the mangetout to the mixture.
6. Next add in the noodles and stir fast for 1 minute.
7. Before serving add a big glug of chilli sauce, this give the noodles a subtle sweet chilli flavour.
8. Serve the noodles in bowls with chop sticks and season to taste.
9. Cut the lime into quarters and put one wedge on the top of each bowl of noodles.
10. EAT.

This is so quick and delicious so get on it boys and girls!

Noodles are great hangover food & I made these wonderful noodles for my boyfriend and he loved them.

Average ingredients spend £10.00

Egypt for 168 hours

EGYPT 7 days of my life in photographs and factor 20.

SHARM

Sharm el-Sheikh on the coast of the red sea is Egypt's metropolitan sunny getaway. With it's beautiful waters, great nightlife, friendly locals and grand selections of options how to spend your time here you wont be getting bored. Alice and I spent a week in Sharm el-Sheikh in The Hilton Sharks Bay. It's a giant resort with a selection of pools, bars, restaurant and a private beach. I have never stayed in an all inclusive resort before so this was a new experience for me.

DEAR DIARY

We started our week off at the pool bar. After arriving at 6pm local time we were tired after our day of travelling so we ate some dinner and drank some cocktails.

The following morning we met a guy from the hotel who told us all about Egypt, things to do, things not to do and we decided to book a couple of trips for our week. If you haven't been to Egypt then let me tell you  it's hot. We spent most of the day drowning in sweat and drinking bottled water by the main pool. There was also the choice of daily water aerobics and water polo which looked fun. 

After it had cooled (Egypt never really gets cool 40oc by day 25oc by night) we headed for Soho Square for some dinner and a look around. Soho square was just a few steps away from the Hilton so no need for a taxi or bus. Soho square has lots of little shops, a few bars and restaurants and lots of statues and monuments. 

Day two was spent at the private beach where you can do many water sports such as diving, snorkeling, boat trips etc. Our time was spent under beautiful umbrellas with occasional trips down to the jetty to go for a little dip in the clear blue water while surrounded by a variety of colourful fish and even some jellyfish. An evening of traditional food and mango flavoured Shisha followed, and we also watched a belly dancer. We had a lot of giggles.

I woke the next morning feeling awful, I had stupidly brushed my teeth with tap water which had ended up making me quite sick, later that day we had a trip planned to go star gazing so I had to recover. A few miserable hours later I was over the worst of it, so we got the coach that was taking us to the desert to visit a small village called 'Bedlam'. The trip began with a camel ride into the desert. I wasn't really comfortable riding a camel so Alice and I skipped this part. We arrived around 6pm to the village to a large tent area where we sampled local tea whilst we learnt a little about the community. There was a large dinner buffet prepared for us with lots of local food which everyone enjoyed as the sun set. They add vermicelli noodles to their rice which make it extra tasty.

Once it was dark, the villagers lite a fire and we all sat round whilst they sang traditional Egyptian songs and everyone started dancing around the fire with them, it was a special moment.

After returning home around 9.30pm we headed out with a group of people from the Hilton to Naama Bay to a club called Pache, this is a chain with another in Ibiza. We had a private booth which over looked the dance floor and they played everything from Will Smith to The Beastie Boys, it was a great night.

Day 4 we had a lay in after our late night so we spent some time swimming and reading at the pool. That evening we went to the traditional restaurant at our hotel and had an early night as we had an early start the next day.

Waking up at 7am wasn't too pleasant but we had 30 minutes to get up and out for our day trip of snorkeling off a boat around Ras Mohammed national park. We were giving a breakfast bag from the receptionist which has some juice, a banana and some bread and pastries to start our morning. 

There turned out to be 25 people on our boat which normally comfortably seats 40 so we had quite a lot of room. The views were amazing and the waters were so clear joining such dry desert it was truly gorgeous. We had 3 snorkeling areas planned for 45 minutes each and we saw lots of lovely fish. We were told that some people see dolphins if they're fortunate too but we weren't so lucky. There were many jelly fish and fish of every colour. 

We arrived back around 5pm and yes we were badly burnt. After spending hours in the open sun Alice and I were pink from behind. Gutted as we had both been using factor 20 all day religiously we had a few  vodkas to ease the pain.

OK so we did ruin day 6 by feeling so awful we spent the day watching film. We were too red to hit the sun and we thought we needed a chill out day so we watched 'The Island', 'The Help' and 'Mr Nobody'. It was great that made the most of our divine hotel room. In the evening we went to the old market to do a little shopping, we went with a guy who took us around as it was quite big and being two young western girls you can get quite hassled. My favourite thing from here were their hand made bookmarks.

So we  found our selves at the last day, how did that happen? Well we thought we needed to make the most of the sunshine so we spent the day reading by a quieter pool at the Hilton which had a slide! Both of us probably too old to use it we read and relaxed before the time came to leave our hotel at 4pm.

OVERVIEW

Wow, Egypt really is something. A week is really not enough time here, we barely saw the place!

If you are on a budget like we were it's quite expensive to visit Cairo and see the pyramids or visit Luxor to see the temple ruins but I think it is probably worth it, we had a great time in Sharm el-Sheikh. Remember bring a camera and factor 30! x

Visit me

http://www.pachasharm.com/

http://www.hilton.co.uk/sharksbay

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/egypt

We love you Queenie!

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01jmp4t/The_Queens_Diamond_Jubilee_The_Diamond_Jubilee_Thames_Pageant_The_Diamond_Jubilee_Thames_Pageant/