Hope & Anchor Launch.

Back at the end of September I was invited along to try out the menu from the launch of the new concept bar Hope & Anchor. I must admit I am a little late writing this post, I totally blame the madness of wedding planning on that one! I still wanted to share the experience with you guys as I thoroughly enjoyed the venue, not only did it have the seal of approval for interior design but the menu was also really good. I was brave enough to try things I wouldn't normally have done, which is always a good sign if you ask me!

The Riverside Sunday Roast Menu.

For anyone that knows me, a huge Sunday roast dinner with loads of veg and gravy is pretty much my favourite meal, I think I could happily eat it every single day. Although I'm not officially a real northerner, I think I secretly count as one because of my love for gravy and Yorkshire puddings, although between me and you, I suck at making them, I blame the oven!

So when I got invited to The Riverside to try out their new roast menu, I couldn't type back 'yes' quick enough. Nick and I drive past this place on our commute to work every single day and we always say we should go one day and of course that never quite happens, so it was nice to actually have a reason to properly go in and have a look at the place.

It's right next to the river, bet you could have already guessed that, huh? So it's got a really nice little scenic view and it has a pretty sizeable beer garden, which is always pretty full whenever we drive past on the way home! It's pretty sizeable inside too but when we arrived we were taken upstairs to a new function room, which is where all your Sunday roast dreams will come true.

After we'd sat down and settled we had a look at the menu, both Nick and I opted for beef, however I was a little disappointed that their was no chicken or turkey option, as I would have much preferred that. I did initially think that £10 for a roast was a little pricey but then when all the food started coming out it did seem like you got a lot of food for your money.

I really enjoyed the mixture of vegetables too, it wasn't your stereotypical roast potatoes and carrots, there was kale, broad beans and green beans along with roasted butternut squash, which I absolutely loved. Sometimes I really enjoy the veg on a roast more than anything else and I have to say I think this was true for this occasion. The Yorkshire puddings were also huge, they basically took up my entire plate, not that I was complaining!

The only thing I didn't like about the meal was the meat, like I said before I would have preferred to have chicken or turkey and the beef that Nick and I had ordered was a little tough and quite fatty, I honestly barely touched mine but I was pretty happy with the meal on the whole. Hopefully they'll have ironed out these little things before the launch early September!

I did like how they tried to be a bit different with the vegetables, I really like it when you get a cool little twist on a classic meal. They also do cover vegan and vegetarian options too for those that don't like meat, my friend Aimee had the nut roast and she said it was lovely!

Whats your favourite thing about sunday roasts? I honestly would love to know, I think a little blob of mint sauce really perfects it for me!

Weekend Brunch with All Bar One.

Brunch is arguably the best meal of the day, mix that in with a Saturday lunch time and you've pretty much described the ideal start to a weekend. So as you can imagine, when All Bar One got in contact and said would I like to try their brunch menu, I jumped at the chance.

I'd been to All Bar One briefly before for a drink or two but I've never eaten food here before so I was very excited about trying it out.

To start with we ordered drinks, Nick opted for a hot chocolate which came with a little pot of smarties (smarties for breakfast, yes please!) and I decided to go for Mango and Passion-fruit juice, which was really fresh and tasty.

Next up was the fun bit, picking which food to devour. There is so much choice I couldn't decide between sweet and savoury which is a debate I have with myself pretty much everyday. Nick went for the full breakfast and I however went for sweet and opted for the pancakes with fruit, bacon and maple syrup.

Firstly Nick's full breakfast looked amazing and the plate was pretty clean by the end of it, so I'm sure that means he enjoyed it, I was tempted to have a little taster myself but I was so stuffed from my pancakes.

The pancakes were amazing, they were so fluffy! I love fluffy pancakes and I really should make them at home for myself. The pancakes came with banana, strawberries and blueberries and I added some bacon to balance out some of the sweetness. I've had bacon and pancakes before and it's the perfect combination, so I delved in. I have to say though that the portion size is huge, 3 pancakes for one person is a challenge, I could only manage 2 and even Nick had a sneaky little try.

I was really impressed with the food and the portion sizes, it kept both of us full until the evening. I also think the pricing is pretty good, we both had a drink and a main each and it was just under £20, which for the portion sizes I think is pretty good.

If I were to eat here again, I'd try the granola or the full English breakfast, although there were some really lovely egg options too!

What are your favourite things to eat for brunch??


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Relaxing Coffee Lunch at Steam Yard.

I've been lusting over the doughnuts at Steam Yard in Sheffield for approximately for-ev-er and when Ocean Loans got in contact with me to work on a relaxing post, I knew immediately where I wanted to go.

I love exploring new places and I couldn't think of a better thing to do than sit chatting with Nick over some amazing food and drinks, so we took a stroll up to Steam Yard one lunch time to just chill out in what is pretty much my new favourite place.

I find it quite easy to slip into the same old routine and the daily grind of going to work, coming home, cooking some food and before you know it, it's time to go to bed and repeat the entire process. I find little adventures out like this really bring you back into balance and re-connects you with the people around you. Nick and I quite literally spend 24/7 with each other because we work together, so it can be quite easy to forget to take some time out as a couple to do something different.

What better way to do that than over some food and drink, right? Like i'd mentioned earlier, I was drawn to this place by the amazing selection of doughnuts, including a range of  'fro-nuts' which have frozen ice-cream in the middle (totally coming back for one of these over the summer). But on this occasion I decided to go for the glorious 'S'mores Doughnut' which consisted of marshmallows, peanut butter and Nutella all toasted slightly so they melted together. I have to say this was pretty good but I couldn't finish the entire thing, it's basically an oozey mountain of sugary goodness.

Nick opted for a 3 cheese toasted sandwich because I'm the sweet toothed one out of the two of us and we decided to share a hot chocolate, which looked as beautiful as you would expect from a coffee place now days.

I have to give a shout out to the interior of this place too, it's very cool. Lots of wood, decals on the walls and I loved pretty much everything about the interiors, I could imagine being one of those people that bring a laptop to write things in here and look ridiculously pretentious with peanut butter smeared all over my face.

I can't wait to go back again over the summer and relax on one of the benches in the courtyard with a cup of coffee and a fronut!

How do you like to relax in your spare time?

Sunday Sitdown #7

Yep, it's that time again! Grab a cup of tea, munch on a couple of biscuits and see what's been going on over the past month!

Twisted Burger Company Menu Tasting

When I was invited to try some tasty burgers by Twisted Burger Company at the Harley pub in Sheffield, I was very excited. I do love a good burger but I must admit I'm fussy about burgers and quite hard to please, so Nick came along with me to give a second opinion from a big burger fan!

Nick and I used to drink in the Harley and to be honest I had no idea they even did food, so it was quite nice to head there late afternoon and see the place in quite literally, a whole new light. 

Revolucion De Cuba Menu Tasting, Sheffield.

Last week I was very excited to get invited along to taste the menu at Revolucion de Cuba in Sheffield. I've been in here to drink a couple of times with Nick back in the early days of dating and haven't been back since. When they kindly said I could invite along a friend, I thought it would be lovely to go back with Nick and have a date night and try the food together.

When we arrived we were immediately asked if we wanted a cocktail, for those that don't know they specialise in Rum at Revolucion de Cuba, so Mojito's were on the menu immediately, it would be rude to say no, right? We were seated, waited for everyone to arrive and before long they started bringing out some tasty food.

The first course they bought out was a sharing tray with a very strange combination of  Pork Crackling, Dried Sweet Banana Flakes and Spicy Mixed Nuts, but it worked and they all got devoured pretty quickly, my favourite had to be the spicy nuts...followed closely by the banana flakes.

Shortly after we were presented with 4 main dishes, the first of which was my favourite, Beef Fillet Skewers with Sweet potato wedges and Home-made Black Beans. The beef was really tasty with the peppers, wasn't tough at all and worked really well with the the sweetness of the potato. I didn't try the black beans because I'm not a use fan of them but people seemed to like them when trying!

Next was Sardines with Smokey Tomato Salsa, I didn't try this as I'm not a huge sardines fan, but Nick tried these and enjoyed it, the bones were soft so you don't need to spend ages picking them out!

The next dish was Roasted Butternut squash with peppers, smoked chilli jam and goat's cheese and honey sauce. I didn't try this either because I really can't stand goat's cheese but again, people were saying it was nice! It's a pity because I love squash, chilli jam and honey, just the goat's cheese really put me off with this one.

Then the last thing I tried was this dish, that I can't for the life of me figure out what it is, it appears to be chicken but when I tried it, it tasted like fish? so I'm not really sure and browsing the menu hasn't helped at all. but it tasted alright haha.

We were given another cocktail from the specials menu, which means unfortunately I can't remember the name of it, but trust me when I say it was amazing, very tasty and easy to drink (so watch out for that rum!), this was so nice it was the choice of drink for the rest of the night! It tasted like fruit juice, sweet with pineapple and of course, rum.

Then began the fun part of the evening...the burrito making class from the chef's themselves. We were all given the same ingredients and taught how to roll the perfect burrito, which was really fun and interesting to learn how to properly roll one! We were all given a flag to write our name on so they could all be taken back into the kitchen and judged on which they felt was the best burrito! and whoever won, won a lovely dinner for 2!

Everyone had fun putting these together and unsurprisingly every single one looked different! Nick's actually looked pretty good in the end and mine fell apart because my wrap was a little dry and hard, so harder to roll, but we all had fun trying! :)

After the burrito's were taken off to be warmed up and judged, we were greeted by a lovely man who was their 'Rum Expert'. He spoke to us about the history of rum, what it's made out of, where it's usually made and some of the varieties.  He bought out 3 different bottles of rum which we of course got to try! I have to say I found this really fun and really interesting! I could certainly taste the difference in the 3 types of rum, the first and cheapest of the three, burnt more, the second one didn't burn as much but tasted of dark chocolate as it was soaked with cocoa beans and the third burnt less but was really tasty and was my favourite, Nick and I clearly have expensive taste!

I did learn that rum should be used only in equal part with coca cola, which is interesting! Cola is used because it compliments the flavour, so those that drown the rum in coke are doing it all wrong! I mixed in a tiny bit of coke with my rum and it tasted so much better!

I have to say I really enjoyed this evening and it certainly opened up a new option for date nights! I'm never normally a spirits drinker but I really enjoyed every single drink I had. The burrito was pretty amazing and I quite literally inhaled it. It was really nice to be able to bring Nick along to a blogger event, so he can see what I get up to when I leave him for the evenings! He had a lovely time!

Oh and we didn't win the burrito competition, much to Nick's disappointment.

Really recommend you head here for a fun date night, especially as there was a cool live band as well which I had no idea they did!

Let me know if you head here and what your thoughts were on the place!

Nourish Spring Menu Event, Sheffield.

Last week I was invited along to an independent food place in Sheffield called Nourish. This is a super healthy restaurant that I've popped into before and I couldn't wait to taste their new spring menu!

Before I delve into the tasty stuff, I want to talk a little about how inspiring I found this event. David the owner spoke a little about the company and his aims after we tasted the food and his passion for nutrition, health and tasty food really left me inspired. So much so that I went home and bought a Spiralizer, Quinoa, Buckwheat and a new passion for cooking some healthy and tasty food.

I can't wait to share some new discovered recipes and tips with you :)

Right, so onto the good stuff! When we arrived we were greeted with two very tasty smoothies!
The first, pictured below is the Strawberry Rhubarb Pie smoothie which was very refreshing and light. Then next (which was my favourite) we were given the Berry Kombucha smoothie, this was much sweeter (I have a serious sweet tooth) and thicker with a little more flavour in it, I liked it so much I had two!

Strawberry and Rhubarb pie smoothie

Soon after the food courses started to arrive, we were given 3 cold and 3 hot dishes to try. I'm going to be honest here, although I love a good salad, I wasn't blown away by the choices. We had a nice duck salad but I wasn't keen on the sauce that came on the noodles and the salmon was lovely but nothing that blew my mind.



However out of the 3 hot dishes I liked pretty much all of them.The first one I really liked was a baked sweet potato with turkey meatballs, I'd never had turkey meatballs before but this dish was lovely and gave me reason to use the sweet potato's I had knocking around in the fridge at home!
I was too busy scoffing this one down I didn't take any photo's!

Then possibly my favourite dish was the chicken tagine with lentils and red pepper. I've never had tagine before but this was lovely, lots of veg and very tasty, I did have to scoop out the hot sauce though because I'm a wuss! I suspect this is quite easy to make at home so this is a recipe I need to write down on the list of healthy things to try!

After trying all of the dishes we had a little Q&A with the owner David, who spoke about all the work he is doing in the local community, how he uses and buys local produce so he is putting money back into the local areas, which personally I think is amazing.

We were given some goodie bags to go on our merry way, which included a voucher for a dessert, which I can't wait to go back in and try, when I've finally decided what I want! We also got given a very tasty cranberry drink that started lovely, an orange and a little bag of yogurt covered bit of fruit, which tastes amazing and help with my sweet tooth cravings!

I can't wait to go on my healthier eating adventure and share with you all how it goes, all thanks to this event!

If you've tried Nourish let me know what your favourite dish is? or your favourite healthy snack? As I'd love to hear about it!


'Tasty' word count: 5

Sunday Sit Down #5

It's been almost a month since the last update, time just runs away with you sometimes. The run up to Christmas felt like an eternity yet January has well and truly gone in the blink of an eye. It's the first week into February already and we've got so much going on, I can see this month flying by too!

The main things I'd like to talk about with you today is a little update on the realistic News years resolutions I set myself as I've already done two of them, yep, look at me go!

The first one I want to talk to you about is saving money and spending bans. I went on a spending ban as an experiment for January to see how I got on with not buying anything, it turns out, it was pretty easy for me, which shocked me. I gave up buying rubbish that I saw in a shop that caught my eye or splurging on the dreaded Internet and making impulse purchases and I managed to nip the urges in the bud. What I did find though is that I spent my money on better things, like holidays, trips, plans and more experiences rather than physically things, which I am really really happy about. We've already booked a trip to visit Nick's mum in Cyprus for 2 weeks in May, I've paid for and booked everything for my friends Hen do next weekend and just generally had more fun doing things rather than owning  things. This is something I am really going to try and take with me for the next month and beyond, Buzz Lightyear style. It's already a week into Feb and I haven't felt the need to buy anything, which is a really good sign.


This brings me onto the next big, huge, massive exciting moment that is picking our wedding venues, saving the date and all those exciting beginning things. We officially pay the deposits on everything on Tuesday, so although it isn't official yet, it kind of already is. We had already planned to get married in 2017 however  due to our amazing parents, we can now afford to do it this year, that's right, I'm becoming a wifey in 2016. This is pretty mind blowing and exciting and nerve wracking all at the same time, but the only reason we were putting it off until next year was down to cash flow, which has been reduced greatly by our amazing families, so why the hell shouldn't we do it this year?! As thing are already been put into motion, I will be writing about this more in another post in the next week, so I can share the journey more with you and the things you learn when planning a wedding. It's such an exciting time and I can't wait to share that with you! From the tears, the worries, the panics, the stress, the excitement, the fun stuff, the dress!! and everything else that comes with planning a wedding.


The last thing I want to talk to you all about is my blog, this little old slice of Internet pie. I decided this year I was going to take a step back from forced posted that I felt I needed to post to be consistent and write more about things I care about, what interests me and really try not to be as materialistic in life (a personal choice). I have to say I have found writing so much easier since deciding to do this and have found it's much easier to think of ideas and plans when it's things I care about and I'm thrilled to say you guys seem to be enjoying it too! So I'm glad to say this will be the direction my blog will be taking in the near future and I hope you'll stick along for the ride with me!


If you'd like to hear more about my wedding plans, my most used make up brushes and something valentines themed check back next week!

Well, I could do with a cup of tea now, who's putting the kettle on, me or you?

Healthy Living Tips.

Right about now everyone will be on the healthy eating and going to the gym hype after new year resolutions so cue all the healthy eating and recipe posts. I thought I would throw in my 2 cents on the topic as someone who has recently revamped my entire eating habits, lost the weight I wanted to through healthy eating and managed to maintain this for over a year now.

I'm not going to preach that I am the perfect example of health, I still don't eat amazingly healthy 100% of the time and I'm not super fit, but I have changed my eating habits to much healthier and feel much better about it. I mean whilst writing this I am about to order a take away because I can't be bothered to cook but please know that sometimes it's OK. It's OK to have a treat sometimes and yes it takes a long time to learn not to feel guilty about it, but you can't eat perfectly 100% of the time and having a treat from time to time stops the binges. I was a self confessed chocoholic and I still find it really hard to stop myself eating an entire family sized bar to myself.

Buy Smaller Plates.

One of the first things I did when I decided to change my eating habits was to buy smaller plates. The plates we had were huge and when cooking you tend to fill your plate which equals much larger portions. Having smaller plates that look full with less food on it, not only is this just much better for you by not over eating it also does some kind of mind trickery. I found this really helped get my portions under control. Another thing I'll tag on here is to give yourself a smaller portion to begin with, eat it and then wait a little while to see if you are still hungry and if need be have a little more but give yourself time to tell if you are actually still 'hungry'. Same goes with being 'full', eat slowly and listen to your body, if you feel full, then stop eating food, it's pretty simple really.


Go au naturale.

One of the easiest things I found helped me was to live by the rule of natural food. With any type of food I pick up if I have no idea what goes into making it, I tend not to eat it. For example, so much frozen food, oven meals, pre-made meals are full of crap. Lets say for example you pick up a ready meal that has sausage and mash in it, if you made that at home, it would include sausages...and potatoes, it shouldn't include a bunch of other products you have no idea what they are. So strip back your meals to basics, vegetables, meat, some kind of carbs. It's not crazy complicated. Don't eat fried chicken everyday, don't eat deep fried crisps or chocolate bars and eat more fresh food, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, easy peasy.

Now some of you will be saying, but I don't like many vegetables or fruit, so this makes eating harder, that's OK. You need to experiment a little with things and see what you prefer. If you only like peas and sweetcorn, that's OK, you can use these in a variety of ways and it's great if you could get a portion of each everyday. One of the things we eat often is jacket potatoes, don't buy the biggest potato you can find but an average sized one, add some salad, add some meat, heck we even have it with rice, but you made it from scratch, you haven't added a bunch of random ingredients you didn't need. Food can be tasty and easy and simple.


Exercising...ugh.
The dreaded exercise chat, you can totally join the gym or go for a run or you can just do little things like increasing your steps per day. I did find that changing my diet and starting the gym at the same time was too much and I found it hard to stick to everything at once so I, personally, decided that my diet was more important to change first. 

I work in an office and drive to and from work, so I basically do no exercise, so I tend to go out and have a walk about in my lunch hour to just get your body moving around and get out of the office environment. This could be a great time to go for a walk with your partner in the countryside, this could be walking your dog once or twice a day, but get your body moving more than you were before and it doesn't have to be crazy intense..you can increase your exercise as time goes on.

When we slip up.
This really is inevitable and when it happens, accept it and move on. Don't wallow in the pizza you had last night, pick yourself back up again and start over, don't let yourself think 'OK well I had that pizza, so this chocolate bar will be OK and I'll just start again tomorrow'. That might work sometimes, but in most cases that one pizza will turn into a 3 day long binge, a mountain of guilt and feeling like shit. I found allowing myself to make mistakes and moving on from them made it much easier because after all we are all human and lets face it, pizza and chocolate are amazing.

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I really hope this didn't come across as preachy I just thought I'd give some tips that worked for me over the past year and a half. I've managed to lose 1 stone in total and keep it off but most of all I regained my confidence, I just feel so much better in my own skin and it's been a long time since I've felt like this. So I'd love to think someone could take something from this.

Tell me about your weight loss stories or any tips you might have in the comments, I'd love to read them.

Sunday Sit Down #3.

It's that time again to have a catch up and let you know what's been going on with me!