Wilfreds Pies - Lovely Welsh Bakes

Back in January a rather exciting email landed in my inbox. A local Welsh brand called Lewis pies were launching a premium range called Wilfreds. Lewis pies was set up in 1936 by Wilfred Charles Lewis and the new range of pies focus on using prime Welsh ingredients.

Fast forward to early March, and I had a rather exciting delivery of 6 Wilfreds pies. Given that we were starting Slimming World just 3 days from taking delivery of these, we needed to nom them up quickly!

Each pie in the range has a quirky Welsh themed name, like 'The Gower Cwtch' (named after a pub in the Gower) or have a local ingredient in them like Collier's Powerful Welsh Cheddar, nom!

All together in the range there is:

The Saucy Cow - PGI Welsh beef steak with Gower Power ale gravy.

The Steak & Tatws - PGI Welsh beef steak in a rich gravy with chunks of British potatoes.

The Gower Cwtch - PGI Welsh beef steak with leeks and a hint of horseradish.

The Fiery Chick - British chicken in cajun spiced sauce with Colliers Powerful Welsh Cheddar.

The Clucking Valleys - British chicken and vegetables in gravy.

The Lamb of my Fathers - PGI Welsh Lamb and vegetables with mint, faggots and a dash of local laverbread.

All pies are in a hot water crust pastry.

You can either warm them in the oven, or in the microwave. We opted for the microwave as it was much quicker - you just need to remove the foil dish they're in. We warmed them for 2 mins each - although the instructions said 1 min should be enough.

The important bit, how did they taste? One word, delicious! I had two clear favourites, The Gower Cwtch (the subtelty of the horseradish really made it) and The Fiery Chick (so full of flavour!). Each pie we had was lovely, the pastry was lovely and the pies had lots of filling in them. The hubby really liked The Lamb of my Fathers too (I don't like lamb, so that was earmarked for him).

You could really feel and taste the high quality ingredients. In The Gower Cwtch pie, there were really big chunks of beef in it, which fell and pulled apart with the fork, the beef was so tender.  We didn't find any gristle or anything nasty like that in them, just nice good quality ingredients and lots of yummy flavour.

This range launched on the 22nd February so keep your eyes peeled to see them in the shops! I'll come back and update where you can get them from and how much they cost once they have published a list :) 

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*Post contains PR samples

FOOD | Autumn afternoon tea at the Celtic Manor

Remember at the end of October I posted about 'an Autumn meetup' I'd attended here in Cardiff? Well, inside the lovely goody bag was a voucher for afternoon tea for 2 at the lovely Celtic Manor 5 star resort.

I went along with my mother-in-law a couple weeks ago to sample their Autumn themed afternoon tea.  It's the third time I've been there, each time the theme and food has been different.  The service has always been fantastic, and no matter what day of the week you go, every lunch time their special afternoon tea restaurant gets very busy.

The staff were fantastic with Squidge, he loved them!

Our afternoon tea started off with some warm Winter Pimms which I must admit, was my favourite part of the whole meal - it was absolutely fantastic. 

After confirming that I'm vegetarian, they brought out our baskets.  Inside was a pumpkin and rosemary muffin with curried pear chutney (I wasn't a massive fan of this), 2 wild mushroom, tarragon and creme fraiche tartlet (this was gorgeous), and an Y-Fenni Welsh rarebit on toasted onion bread with piccalilli (also lovely).  My mother-in-law had the same, but in place of one of the wild mushroom tartlet's she had a pulled pork mini sub roll.

For tea I chose raspberry (which was lovely!)

Next we moved onto the sandwiches.  I think the staff got a little confused here... we'd asked for a couple extra finger sandwiches for Squidge (literally 2 sticks would have been fine), but asked that they don't give him any smoked salmon as he can't have that.  Obviously I couldn't either being vegetarian, but my mother-in-law could and was looking forward to it.

But when they turned up, they'd missed off the smoked salmon and replaced it with egg mayonnaise instead.  We could have said something and I'm sure they would have fixed it immediately, but after a little wait for these (they were getting busy) we decided to just continue.  Instead of bringing out a couple fingers of sandwich for Squidge, they brought an entire plate that doubled up our sandwiches! Lovely, but more than we could eat, and most definitely more than Squidge could eat!

The sandwiches were nice, but would have been nicer on home made bread (forgive me if they were on home-made bread, they just didn't taste or feel like it).  Inside was egg mayo, chicken & stuffing and Caerphilly cheese with spiced tomato chutney - strangely though it didn't taste like Caerphilly, it tasted more like mature cheddar, which is fine by me, I much prefer that!  It also would have been nice if they'd separated out the meat-eater sandwiches from the vegetarian ones, instead of giving us what looked like 2 identical servings just without smoked salmon (not sure if they forgot about me being vegetarian).

Next onto the cakes! I really, really loved ALL of these and yes, I ate all mine!  All together there was a lemon, raspberry and coconut madeline, a ginger and candied pineapple layer cake, a chocolate and orange shortbread, a date, walnut and caramel cupcake (holy moly that was nice!) and a prune, armagnac tartlet with white chocolate and cinnamon crumble (also delightful).

Last but not least, to finish they had stunning warm cherry bakewell scones.  By this point we were stuffed, so we made them up and put them in a box to take home (psst, it was delicious!).

As we left the restaurant and walked out towards the entrance, Squidge noticed some bronze figures of children playing and we couldn't keep him away! It was the cutest thing!

All together a lovely afternoon tea, but not the best I've had from them.  If this was a £15 afternoon tea I'd have been perfectly content, but considering it's £24 off peak (Mon-Thurs) and £32 Fri-Sun, I expect complete and utter perfection - it's a 5-star resort after all.  The first time I went there that's exactly what we had, perfection - but the previous 2 occasions haven't been quite on pointe.

Don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful afternoon tea with fantastic service in a lovely setting, I would definitely go there again, but I might leave it a little while first :)

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*Afternoon tea was complimentary for review

FOOD | Beefeater - Walston Castle

Sorry for being absent for so long, I've been taking a much needed blogging break.  I was starting to feel really overwhelmed by it all and needed to take a step back.  I've got a few reviews that I need to get live, but once they're done, expect lots more crochet posts & tutorials and mummy posts :)  Don't worry, there'll still be some beauty posts too :)

A little while ago the hubby, baby and I headed to the Walston Castle Beefeater, it's not far from Barry here in South Wales.  It's one we've been too with friends a couple years ago, so we were a little familiar with it.

When we got there, they didn't have any record of our booking, but were easily able to accommodate us and get us seated, also giving us a high chair :)  They did also give us a colouring in sheet and crayons for Squidge, but he's about 2 years off being able to have them :)

Despite it being a 'BEEF'eater, they had a reasonable selection of vegetarian options, including my favourite quorn burgers (yay!). 

For a starter we opted for the garlic tear & share flatbread, it was ENORMOUS!  It came with a dish of herby balsamic vinegar to dip it in which was really yummy - my tip is to only order this if you're sharing it with more than 2 people due to it's enormity! 

Mains! The hubby couldn't help himself, he just *had* to order the fillet steak.  He had it cooked rare and without any sauces - he demolished it pretty darn quickly.  The chips were lovely, crisp on the outside and soft and fluffy in the middle, and nice and chunky.  There was a lightly dressed side salad to accompany it too.

I opted for the 'Veg-out burger' which was a quorn burger (I think the quarter pounders) with monterery jack cheese and chargrilled red peppers, ranch dressing and smokey tomato sauce.  It was lovely, and also very quickly demolished by me! It was served with fries and coleslaw, all were lovely.

Dessert! We couldn't have left without sampling some dessert. The hubby has always loved a good black forest gateaux, but as it's so 80s, you don't really find it anywhere anymore, but I think it's making a comeback, I mean hello, it was on #GBBO!  The portion was massive.  It was moist and super tasty (despite being very full, the hubby managed to make short work of this too).

I opted for the Popcorn & Caramel Sunday.  I have such a soft spot for vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce, I'm not sure I can think of a better combination!  Looking at this I did think the popcorn was just on top but it did run all the way through.  I loved that it was caramel popcorn too, extra yummy!

I didn't manage to get a photo, but we did also Squidge a kids meal - chips and strips of chargrilled chicken.  He managed 2 sticks of the chicken and lots of chips (he LOVES chips) and a couple of peas :)  They got a high chair for us and for the most part he was happy while we were there - he did get tired and a bit bored towards the end, but that's just because he's a baby and doesn't like to be immobilised, he wants to crawl and walk everywhere.

All in all we really enjoyed our meal there, the staff were really friendly, the food didn't take long to come and was really tasty.  It came to just over £50 for 3 courses, a drink each and a childs meal, I think that's a brilliant price, especially considering the hubby's main was nearly £20.  We'd definitely go back and would be happy to have all the same things again - well, maybe not the tear & share flatbread, it was lovely, just a bit too much for us with everything else :)

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*Food was complimentary, opinions are my own

August Degustabox

Welcome to the August Degustabox - my first ever one!  As you can imagine I was very excited to give this a try as I've seen so many great reviews about it, the only trouble with food boxes like this, they often contain meat, and being a vegetarian that makes things difficult.  Well, this time around it's more awkward as due to the pregnancy I have gestational diabetes, so other than the tonic water in this box, none of the rest of it I can actually have.  However, my dear husband can have all of it - and it's literally some of his favourite food (croissants, brioche, tortillas etc).  So, he's VERY excited to delve in!  

Above each picture will be a description of the product & how much it costs etc.

Lindt tin of heart chocolates - £3.49

Who doesn't love Lindt?  Personally I'm a big fan of their chocolate, and the hubby even more so.  It's fair enough to say, these were demolished as soon as the pics were taken by said hubby.  He assured me they were up to their usual nommy standard :)

Schwartz flavour shots - 2 for £1.39

These work as a base and shot of flavour for your meat, or if you're me, your Quorn.  At the moment, I'm struggling with Quorn (thanks to my pregnancy tastes) but as soon as the baby is born I'll be back all over it :)  My plan is (and let me know if you'd like to see a recipe post about this) so use the paprika chicken one with Quorn fillets or chunks, and serve it with white basmati rice - the other one (mexican fajitas) will be used with Quorn chunks and served in a tortilla with sour creme, grated cheese and lettuce, nom!

Dr Oetker edible wafter cupcake cases - £2.50

These you can pick up at Tesco or Asda and mean that when you make cupcakes, you don't need to take the paper off, you can eat the whole thing!  Funnily enough, since GBBO has been on, the hubby has had the urge to bake, not something he's done before - so I've set him a challenge to make some cupcakes with these :)

Fever tree tonic water & ginger beer - £1.69 each

Specialising in tonic waters and other mixers, they only use the highest quality natural ingredients which gives them a clean, subtle and balanced taste.  I'm really looking forward to trying the ginger beer once the baby is born, I think it'll be lovely and refreshing, mmmm :)

Cawston press Apple & Pear juice - £1.89 for 3

These are formulated for kids and mixed with 40% water to make it a little lighter.  There's no added sugar (so hopefully your little ones won't get hyper) and nothing artificial added :)  This is another thing the hubby demolished after I'd photographed it - he said it was very yummy :)

Berry White peach & goji berry - £1.59 each

This is one product I'm considering packing into my hospital bag - I'll need something to give me some natural bursts of energy when I'm in labour, so this'll be one to take with me.  It's an organic drink made with fruits and healthy extracts with no added sugar or fruit sugar.  You can pick these up in a range of stores as well as Ocado and Waitrose.

Brioche Pasquier - £1.69

Now, these are not going to last long in my home, both the hubby and I love brioche, except it's only him that's able to eat it at the moment, so it'll be his to enjoy :)  The Pasquier family started baking brioche in 1936 in the west of France.  They're freshly baked, I can vouch for how soft and squidgy the feel.  It's going to be hard resisting these!

Croissants by Pasquier - £1.79

These butter croissants feel so soft, you just know they're going to taste amazing (hubby gets the pleasure of tasting these).  They make a delightful addition to breakfast, or just as a snack.  You can either eat them as they are, or cut them open and add a filling, like nutella, jam, honey, butter, or something savoury like ham and cheese.  This range is free from artificial colours, flavours and preservatives.

Caribbean twist (Strawberry daiquiri) - £2.50

This will either be a treat for me post-baby and breast feeding, or it'll be one for the hubby, either way I don't mind :)  It's a ready to drink Caribbean style cocktail made with 7.5% real fruit juice.  Best kept chilled they suggest pouring it over ice for perfection.  It's available in a range of UK supermarkets like Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys, Iceland and stores like Bargain Booze and Savers.  Early Sept it'll also be available in Morrisons.

Mexican Dave's tortillas - £1.00

Now, this is definitely one for the hubby, he LOVES tortillas (I'm not such a fan), so when we pop to the supermarket later, no doubt he'll pick up some salsa and sour cream and have himself a bit plate of nachos with cheese, salsa and sour cream tonight :)  Mexican Dave's don't compromise on ingredients, flabour or quality.  Nothing artificial inside, they're cooked with sunflower oil and contain no MSG :)  They're available in Tesco stores from the 25th August.

Also included in the box was a voucher for 'Degustabox Fridge' - this is a coupon that they've launched this month for something chilled, mine is for Moma breakfast pots (yoghurt with muslei).  I popped to my local Sainsburys but it seems they're not being stocked at any Sainsburys in Wales just yet, so instead of holding up this post until I can get hold of them, I thought I'd just give them a mention :)

Given that this is my first Degustabox I have nothing to compare it to, however I have been really impressed with what's inside.  It costs £12.99 a month and you're getting close to £20 worth of goods, what's more, the lovely people at Degustabox have given me a discount code for you for your first box, so if you want to give it a try you can have... 

£3 off with the code XSWQ1

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*This post contains PR samples

Baker Days cake review

*** BakerDays.com birthday cake £14.99* availalbe on their website http://www.bakerdays.com/ ***

Who doesn't like getting cake through their door?  Yeah, I didn't think any of you would hold your hands up for that one!

The lovely people over at Baker Days approached me the day after my birthday to see if I'd like a nice cake, well, I'm not going to say no to a birthday cake!

On their website you can pick the type of filling (chocolate, choc chip, gluten free, dairy free, sponge

fruit), then you pick the size of cake (mine was 'letterbox').  There's loads of different designs to pick from, I opted for the one that says 'Georgina 365 days lovelier than before' :)

When it arrived, it was packaged neatly in a box.  My husband was amazed that the cake wasn't all smashed up - I think that's all down to how it was made.  Buttercream on the base (helps stick the cake to the board) then the sponge, and then the entire cake as well as the board is sealed in fondant icing.  Then it's put in a bag, and neatly into a pretty tin and then in a box - so there's not much room for movement.  It came with a pretty little card, and much to my surprised a bit of a party kit (3 balloons, 2 candles and a party-whistle-type-thing (no idea what they're called!).

The cake itself was the real surprise.  I'm not sure why, but I expected it to be a bit dry and uninspired, but it was really nice.  The sponge was moist, the buttercream was lovely, sweet but not too sickly and the fondant icing was lovely too.  We demolished it pretty quickly (it is a small cake after all) :)

Whilst I probably wouldn't go to the trouble to buy one of these for myself, I do think they'd make a lovely present, especially for a friend or family member you're close to but don't see very often - I know this would be a lovely treat for my friend Beccy, she's moved from Cardiff to Somerset so I don't see her very often, so maybe next Jan she'll get one of these through her letterbox :)

This months Biggest-Pixi3 advertiser is the lovely Jaina from Which Beauty Box UK

 

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Restaurant review - Le Bistrot Pierre, Cardiff

A couple weeks ago the hubby and I were invited to sample a 3 course meal at a new restaurant here in Cardiff, Le Bistrot Pierre.  Seeing as it's not long since we came back from France and sampled lots of fantastic French cuisine, it had a lot to live up to!

The decor inside really reminded me of 'Au Bureau' which is the restaurant we ate at every day we were in Bergerac, this was like a fancier version of that.  Our waitress was Veronica, she was super friendly and happy to go back and forth asking the kitchen if their cheese was vegetarian (I'll come back to that).  Chris had a glass of St Jean wine to go with his steak, and I opted for an orange juice and lemonade (since I can't drink at the moment due to being pregnant).

 Excuse the bad pic of me, I wasn't having a photogenic day!

My choices from the menu (baked camembert, onion tarte and gateau au miel)

They brought us some lovely seasoned olives while waiting for our starter to arrive, these were seasoned in what looks like shallot's :)

 Our starter was a sharing started or baked camembert - I've since read that pregnant women shouldn't have camembert, whoops!

 Now on to my main, the onion tart.  Very creamy, and served with what tasted like dauphinoise potatoes and vegetables.  Now, all of this tasted phenomenal, however, due to pregnancy, I'm totally off rich food, which meant my favourite part of the meal was the vegetables :)  If it wasn't for being pregnant, the potatoes would have been demolished!

 Chris suitably demolished his meal, and a fair bit of mine :)  The chips (I can vouch for this) were amazing, really crispy on the outside, very soft in the middle, lovely!  The steak was cooked rare just as he'd asked, and he chose to have the roquefort sauce over the top, which he later regretted just because he's not that into cheese, but he wanted to try something new :)

 This dessert was so tasty, the sauce was honey, the ice cream was ginger, and the sponge was also honey - yes this was far too rich for me, but I polished most of it off all the same :)

Chris' favourite dessert is creme brulee, so as soon as he saw this on the menu, it was going to be his!  He loved that it wasn't made up to be all fancy with special biscuits, fruit and a fancy flavour - he likes creme brulee nice and plain - this one was vanilla, which was delicious!

We really loved our meal here and would definitely go back there, the service was great, the ambience, the food (fantastic!), the only negative (and there's always one), was that meals marked with a green 'v' for vegetarian, didn't have vegetarian cheese in.  I'd expect anything with a green v to be 100% suitable for vegetarians and safe, and I was disappointed that this wasn't.  But obviously, I'm in a minority there :)

If you live in Cardiff, or fancy a day trip here for a free lunch, the lovely people at Le Bistrot Pierre are offering my readers the chance to win a lunch for 2 with a glass of St Jean wine, all you need to do is complete the rafflecopter widget below, making sure you follow Le Bistrot Pierre on twitter, and me.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This months Biggest-Pixi3 advertiser is the lovely Jaina from Which Beauty Box UK

 

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