Home Is…

…Dad’s fresh homemade bread.

…a quiet movie for free.

…looking over family photos while on the loo…

…the smell of burning wood.

…funny head decorations.

…raising a glass for Christmas.

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope yours is as merry and bright as mine was!

Photos From Home

Here are a few photos that I took at home on my phone…

First there’s a new Screme Egg from Cadbury! It was green inside!

Some nice ice tea from Giraffe back home. I LOVE this restaurant. It reminds me of Urban Kitchen in Frankfurt.

Tescos have this new system where you scan your shopping as you put it into the trolley. Opens up so many opportunities to steal stuff, I think…

I bought Super Scribblenauts to play on my 3DS. I typed in “mask” and got this…

My last taste of England before coming back to Frankfurt.

You know life sucks when this is your week’s alarms.

Hopefully I’ll be up and writing proper posts again at the weekend!

Scenes from China Town (London)

 

China Town in London is another must, after Camden Town! I took a short walk through it and saw some interesting things – not enough to write whole posts about. Hope you enjoy the snaps!

 

Sadly they wouldn’t let me take photos inside the shop, but they were chock-a-block with Japanese cosmetics and beauty products. In general, I saw so many Japanese products on sale, in shops and on markets. It seems that people can’t get enough of Japanese face masks, fake eyelashes, shampoo and everything in between.

 

I managed to find some awesome bubble tea in a place with hand made gyoza. I was going to order some gyoza after but the woman was slightly rude and snatched the menu from my hands…

 

Here’s another new thing – purikura. There were real Japanese machines in here. They were pretty expensive to use though.

 

But these guys sure enjoyed themselves!

Breakfast with Jamie Oliver

 

The breakfast in the hotel I stayed in at the end of my London stay was terrible, so I set off each day to find myself some food. One morning, I just happened to come across one of Jamie Oliver’s restaurant, Recipease.

 

I would never have noticed it if it hadn’t been for the absolutely delicious smell coming from the massive glass building. On the first floor there were lessons going on (some girls learning how to prepare fish and some boys learning to bake). Upstairs was the actual restaurant.

 

Little known fact – I love beans. So naturally, I had the bean breakfast. It was pretty spicy, but I scoffed the lot down and it was SOOOOO yummy. This was about 8 pounds.

 

And of course it would be really rude not to have their homemade lemonade. I must say, though, Frankfurt’s offerings are MUCH better. I wasn’t impressed, Jamie! Sorry!

 

Down in the shop they sold all kinds of yummy things, including these baking kits. All you need to do is as an egg and then bake! They looked so yummy.

A lot of people are very anti-Jamie Oliver, but I quite like him. He genuinely wants to improve Britain and he did wonders for the schools. This restaurant was everything Jamie stands for – learning more about food, simple, home grown yummy stuff and super down to earth and friendly staff. Nothing was ridiculously expensive and I knew I was being fed with good food.

I visite the Notting Hill location but there are 3 restaurants over England to go to! Check them out!

Wheat Free in the Wild!!

I come from a sleepy little town called Bury St Edmunds, in Suffolk, England. It’s pretty normal as far as towns go.

While I was back home, I was shopping with my mum and sisters when they wanted to stop off at Muffin Break, a new (to me, anyway) cake shop in the modern shopping area.

As a wheat free person, I complained loudly that this wouldn’t be the place for me. But how wrong I was!

They sold delicious WHEAT FREE muffins! Albeit it was only one kind, but this is the FIRST TIME EVER (look at all the caps!! The excitement!!) that I have ever seen a wheat free item in a cafe/restaurant.

This is a real step forward and I really hope that more shops will consider allergies like this in the future. The muffin was delicious AND it was jubilee themed! What more could I want!

I’ve noticed that I get a lot of hits from people looking for wheat free stuff. I’d love to hear from some people about their experiences being wheat free.

Scenes from the Jubilee

It was lovely of The Queen to hold a country-wide celebration when I was home the other weekend. She is SUCH a good queen. Here are some photos from when I was home.

Above you can see the bunting mum put up on the gates of our home.

British and royal themed cakes were everywhere!

 

I must say, as someone who never really feels that British, and certainly doesn’t feel patriotic, I really enjoyed the long weekend and felt proud to be part of a country that puts on huge celebrations like this. Britain has, and currently does a lot of horrible things, but even so I think it’s ok to step back once in a while and see all that is great with Britain.

Hope you enjoyed the photos!

Back!

Sorry for the lack of posts, I’ve been back home in England for the past few days. I should be back and blogging – I have LOADS of new posts – this evening.

Someone made me something and it was awesome – 05.03.2012

So a lot of people don’t know this but I am actually allergic (well, “sensitive”) to wheat. What this means is that I can consume (for beer counts too!) wheat in small quantities once in a while, but not all the time. A croissant as a treat on a Friday morning wont upset my stomach, but a thick cut sandwich or a bowl of ramen might set me off a little.

Mr’s wonderful flatmate who is super awesome in every way, made me this super yummy cake with almond powder instead of flour. The thing with wheat free stuff is that it’s usually dry and crumbly, making it difficult to eat. But this was so soft and moist. I must get the recipe from her.

Being wheat-free in Germany isn’t that difficult, actually. The bread is nice here but it’s not so very tempting. I prefer brown bread to white, and it’s all white bread here, except for things like rye bread or pumpernickel. In my local supermarket, Rewe, they have wheat free dry breads (similar to Ryvita) that are yummy and go very well with hummus, or goats cheese (some of my current food obsessions). The food courts of the department stores have some extra offerings, such as half baked wheat free bread (the stuff I tried wasn’t so good unfortunately) and wheat free pasta. The prices for these things are similar to those in England, (ie very expensive – maybe 4 Euros for a small pack of bread or a small packet of pasta. The drybreads in rewe are about 3 Euros.) But in England they stock stuff in most supermarkets so you don’t need to go hunting for it as much.

In Japan I found it quite hard, though people assume it’s rice everywhere. Especially with school dinners, I’d find terrible days where the lunch would be a bowl of wheat noodles, a large bread roll and soup with croutons (this actually happened). There were no goods made for people with allergies – it’s more common for Japanese people to be allergic to milk, or buck wheat, as opposed to normal wheat – but they seem to get by without having specific good for their needs, since there are none available.

One awesome trick I have for people who are wheat free like myself is to swap spaghetti with Asian rice noodles. You can find lots of different kinds in varying thicknesses and lengths, so there should be a kind out there to suit your tastes. The Asian supermarket would be the best place to look for this kind of stuff but it’s possible to find more obscure Asian foods in normal supermarkets these days, so there might be some there too.

If anyone else out there has some wheat free tricks, do let me know in the comments!