Epcot Food and Wine Festival Review - Hops & Barley

I decided to be brave on my next stop and to try lobster. There were two options on the menu - one was lobster claw and the other a lobster roll. I asked one of the cast members which they would recommend on the basis that I had never tried lobster before and I was told that the lobster claw was cold, so I should try the lobster roll.

I remember reading about snack credits on the Disney dining plan before I went and someone saying that the cost of the roll was over $6 as counted as a snack credit. Therefore, I think this was probably one of the more expensive tasters I tried. There was a fair old amount of lobster there though, so, for the lobster lover - it's probably not a bad price!

Review: Now to my review.. the roll was amazing. Warm, slightly crispy on the outside and soft on the inside with really tasty herbs atop. The lobster was cold though. And stringy. But not altogether unpleasant in flavour. For a first time lobster try, I did manage to eat it all... but I forced the last bit down. This is no reflection at all on the lobster itself or the cooking. I just don't think I liked it. I don't know if you ever eat lobster warm, but I think that'd be better! I guess for catering though, it probably goes very tough if overcooked?

Epcot Food and Wine Festival Review - Japan

I had read about kakigori all over the internet before our trip to Disneyworld (I had done many searches, such as "top ten Disney snacks") and kakigori had consistently come up on posts and articles all over the web. Having never heard of it (and being a bit of a Japan fan) I had made a mental note to try this on our honeymoon and there was no better time than during our tour of Epcot's Food and Wine Festival. 

My sweet tooth had not been satisfied by the cannoli from Italy (see my previous blog post as to why) and so we stopped for a rainbow kakigori. 

Kakigori is shaved ice, flavoured with sweet syrups. It comes in tangerine, melon and cherry or a combination of all three - rainbow. Obviously, we opted for rainbow. 

I had expected a more snow like texture, which melted almost immediately on your tongue. I guess I should have realised that (a) that would be hard to make and (b) the syrup would just have melted the 'snow'. This was more like a hard slushy. The flavours were good - unique almost (particularly as everything else in the US, and actually, from Japan, is usually grape flavour!).

I shared this though, purely because it was a little too cold. We had a nice sit down on a bench and watched the two Epcot Cast Members for Japan bow and welcome every single person who passed by. They really made you smile as they never appeared to get fed up of their job (although surely, they were).

Now technically, the kakigori isn't really a Food and Wine Festival Review because it's at a permanent Japan kiosk, so I'd better throw in a review of the chicken sushi I had from the special stand.

I love the idea of sushi.. it's practical, tasty, healthy (usually) and cute ^_^

I don't, however, eat raw fish. In the past I have opted for meat or vegetable options when sampling, but these are generally fairly limited so I was pleased to see a chicken option at Epcot.

As you can see from the picture, there was a cute little nori handhold which made it easy to pick up and eat and (for a piece of sushi) it was a generous size. This was my second favourite snack of the whole day (second only to the beef from Argentina).

Review: Good texture with super sticky rice, easy to eat and extremely tasty. The creamy sauce (which I would suspect is more American than Japanese...) was also a nice addition.

Epcot Food and Wine Festival Review - Cheese

From the cheese stall at the Epcot Food and Wine Festival, I plumped for the cheese fondue. This was a little pot of cheese dip and some bread (I would guess this was a sourdough bread). Unfortunately, it was at this point that I stopped taking photographs of my receipts (Doh!) and therefore, I have no idea how much this cost.

I know that most of this went in the bin.

I was expecting creamy, unctuous gloopy cheese. What I was got was hot wine with a smidgen of cheese in it.  Now, perhaps that's actually what cheese fondue is supposed to be like (I've never actually tried it before) but it's not how I would have invented it, if I was going to invent it.

The bread was nice (with little salt crystals on top) but once I'd eaten the bread with a little of the sauce on it, the rest of the cheese, sadly, went into the bin.

Review: Not to my taste but if you're a fan of hot wine - go for it!!

Epcot Food and Wine Festival Review - Italy

In Italy (which had not been one of my "planned stops" at the Epcot Food and Wine Festival), I decided that after all the meat, spice, cheese and bread it was time for a little something sweet. The cannoli at the Italy kiosk caught my eye. 

I tried to get the receipt this time but the wind was blowing (Hurricane Sandy was along the coast so the whole of Florida was a little chilly. I'm not complaining - just thankful that it didn't hit, but it explains why the picture has a vertical receipt in it!!). No prices for you there then...

The cannoli was a pastry 'shell' which was covered in chocolate and filled with what I would guess was cream cheese (perhaps ricotta or something). The filling also had dried fruit strewn throughout it, which added a welcome bit of sweetness.

I was not expecting there to be any chocolate. It didn't add a lot of flavour, surprisingly, and it took away from what I was anticipating to be a delicate pastry texture - instead it was just kinda hard! It was nice, but I was willing to give half of it to my husband, which considering the tiny size, speaks for itself.

Review: It was a little bland and the texture was not as delicate as I would have liked. I would like to try (what I would consider) a proper cannoli at some point in the future before I write this off completely though!

How to Make Chocolate 'Shards'

In my case, I'm not sure 'shards' is quite the right term - it was my intention to do this, but in the end (as I was making these as Christmas presents for 24 people!) I wanted to make sure everyone got to try each flavour, so I cut them into rather boring squares!! I would have preferred to have just snapped the blocks up into pretty shards but it just wasn't practical!

What You'll Need

Chocolate (I used milk, plain and dark in varying quantities - most of my trays had around 500g chocolate in total)

Sprinkly Bits of your choice - think dried fruit, nuts, you could use sweets - I added some chilli flakes

Baking Tray

Greaseproof paper

A means to melt chocolate (double boiler or microwave)

Spoon

Fridge

Method
Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper

Melt your chocolate (melt each colour separately).

If you're using the microwave, do this in 30 second blasts - burnt chocolate is NOT good.. If over a double boiler, make sure you don't get water in the chocolate and don't let the water boil. In both cases, it's good practice to remove the chocolate from the heat before it's 100% melted - if you stir the last few lumps, they will melt with the heat from the bowl/melted chocolate and you avoid over heating which causes all sorts of problems.

Next, pour your main chocolate (in my case, the milk chocolate) onto the baking tray and use your spoon to spread this evenly over the tray.

Add your secondary flavour chocolate (in the below picture, this was white) on top - I put it all down the centre as I was only using two colours. Where I used three flavours, I made stripes all over the place.

Use your spoon to make swirls in the melted chocolate and to marble the two colours up. 

Next, add any sprinkly bits to the top that you want - in these pictures, I used macadamia nuts and dried cranberries to give it a Christmas feel and some colour and crunch. 

Put the tray into the fridge to set. If you're making random shards, simply remove it once hard and break it into pieces. If you're being more orderly like me, remove it from the fridge when it is solid, but not rock hard and use a sharp knife to cut it into piece before returning to the fridge to harden up before wrapping.

In terms of flavour combinations, there are lots you could try. I did the following:

Milk and Dark Chocolate with Chilli flakes

Milk, White and Dark chocolate on it's own (see below) along with a Milk, White and Dark Chocolate with chopped dried tropical fruit and coconut.

To package these up, simply wrap in cellophane or put into sandwich type bags and tie with a pretty ribbon.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!!

Surprisingly I have not had to do any cooking today... I did spend the whole of yesterday making marshmallows and cookies (which have gone down very well as gifts today). The rest will go as get gifts tomorrow :)

So, no cooking or crafting to blog about - just wishing a Merry Christmas to anyone who happens to read today. Enjoy yourself!

Easy Embossed Christmas Card Design

So, if you've read any of my other posts (and particularly my Christmas card posts) you will see that I spent a long time making some of my cards. So long, that I actually nearly missed the last post before Christmas. For that reason, the balance of my cards had to be a simpler design and, actually, these turned out to be my favourites. There's something about embossing using embossing powder that is particularly satisfying and I think it gives a really nice finish. 

What You'll Need

Card Blanks

Individual Letter Stamps

A Clear Acrylic Printing Block

At least 2 colours of embossing powder

Clear Embossing stamp 'ink' (I use a versamark watermark stamp pad)

A heat gun

Method

Using your letter stamps, make a square spelling out the word "Christmas" over 3 lines - I used a combination of capitals and small letters.

Next. remove every other letter so you're left with "C r s m s" as below. Use this to stamp your watermark 'ink' onto the card black and use your powder and heat gun to emboss the first five letters. 

Once you've done the required number of cards to this stage (I would recommend doing them all to this stage, rather than one at a time!) add back in your other letters (h,i,s and a) and remove the ones you've already stamped so that you're left with "h i t a".

Ink your stamps up and line it up on the card inbetween the letters that you've already embossed as shown below. Use your second colour of embossing powder to complete those letters and hey presto, an easy embossed Christmas card design. Very simple yet effective.

As you can see, I did these in a range of different colour combinations - red and green glitter, metallic silver and black, some gold etc. They're really pretty and I was very happy with them :)

Easy Cheese Biscuits

I am making cheese biscuits as part of my mini Christmas hamper style gifts this year. These are so easy to make and sooo yummy (my brother specifically requests them every Christmas). This year I am doing real little bite sized biscuits, but you could make less in a larger size with this recipe.

Ingredients (makes around 60 small biscuits)
250g mature cheese (I used around 2/3 normal cheese and 1/3 low fat cheese)
250g butter
250g plain flour

Optional Ingredients (to add some pizazz!)
Dried Oregano
Paprika
Black Pepper

Preheat the oven to 180ºC

Method
This is one of the recipes I get the food processor out for, even if it's a bit of a nightmare to clean. The reason being I hate grating. I also have hot hands which aren't good for pastry.

First off, grate all the cheese and the butter.

Combine the grated cheese and butter with the flour in a large bowl and return to the food processor.

This is where to decide whether you want plain cheese biscuits (which are delicious) or flavoured ones. I made two lots of mixture - one as plain cheese and the second with 2 teaspoons of dried oregano and some black pepper added at this stage. This will flavour from the inside.

Combine the ingredients until it starts clunking around in the processor (or to phrase it normally, until it forms large breadcrumbs of dough!!).

Remove from the food processor and use your hands to bring the mixture together. This should be very easy and should be done in around 20 seconds - don't knead too much or let it get hot; just combine.

Divide the dough into 3 equal lumps and roll each into a long sausage. Put the sausage on a baking tray or plate and once all the dough is rolled, put these in the fridge to chill for at least 30 minutes.

You will see from my picture I made the recipe twice so I have 6 sausages - you will have 3.

Once chilled, remove from the fridge and using a very sharp knife, slice each sausage into discs. I aim to get 30 discs or so from each sausage. Lay the discs onto some greaseproof paper on a baking tray and oven cook for around 12-14 minutes. Keep an eye on them though, sometimes they need longer, sometimes less. Just remove them before they burn!! They will be fairly soft when they're still hot so leave them to cool for a minute or two on the tray before moving them onto a wire cooling rack.

If you want to make, say half plain and half flavoured biscuits without making two separate doughs it's still easy. Once the discs are on the tray ready to go into the oven, simply sprinkle with your flavouring of choice - I'm using some paprika on mine for the lovely colour :)

How to Make a Gift Bag from Wrapping Paper

It might nearly be Christmas Eve, but it's not too late to make some pretty gift bags (and some biscuits to go in them!) for last minute gifts. I had around 25 sets of biscuits to give away this year and I decided to make my own gift bags, purely because to buy 25 would be so expensive. Here is a little "How To" make a gift bag from wrapping paper. This could be for any time of the year - just use paper to suit your occasion.

What You'll Need
Strong Wrapping Paper (mine was described as 'foiled' and it was pretty strong, although not expensive)
A Ruler
Scissors
Double Sided Tape (or some glue)
Thin Card
Hole Punch
Sewing Machine (again, you could use glue, or even a stapler instead of stitches)
String or ribbon

Method

Cut your wrapping paper into rectangles 21cm by 42cm

Fold your paper in half (to make a squareish shape) and sew a line of stitches half a centimetre from the edge down both the folded side and the opposite side where the two edges meet (It's kinda hard to see on my awful quality picture, but my stitching is along the top and bottom on the photo below).

Make a fold 3cm from each line of stitching, folding the paper both back and forward

Now for a slightly tricksy part - open the bag out, so it's like a ring and tuck the stitched lines in, using the folds you already have (these will form the sides of the bag). It's hard to explain in words - see the picture below!

Next, flatten the whole bag and make a fold 1cm up from the bottom edge. Sew this flap down along that line. Make a further fold 3cm up from that line of stitching, again, folding both back and forward. This will form the bottom of the bag.

This next step is most definitely the hardest bit (and where it's important your paper is strong!!). Open the bag up and push against the sides to flatten the bottom out. You will end up with two small triangles on the inside which are tucked in from the sides. You should simply be able to use the folds you already have in the paper and the seam along the bottom should line up with the seams down the side.

 


Right, that's the most difficult bit out of the way - the rest is plain sailing!!

Use some double sided sticky tape on some thin card to make two rectangles approximately 5cm x 2cm and  stick these to the insise of the bag, along the top two edges. Use your hole punch to make holes opposite each other in the card (the card is to strengthen the holes - if you are intending to use the bag for something really heavy, you could put a rectangle of card in the bottom too).

The final step is to use your string/ribbon to either tie some handles through the holes, or alternatively, use it to tie the bag shut.

How to Make Origami Lucky Star Christmas Cards

I have now made all of my Christmas Cards - I made two designs which I put in the post (see here for my machine stitched design, which was a pre-cursor to this one). I will also post my embossed cards shortly (see the labels section along the right to navigate to this one). Both the machine stitched and embossed cards went in the post, but this design I have only hand delivered. The reason for this is that they have these cute little origami lucky stars, which I'm pretty sure would be squashed by the post man and they would lose the impact. 

What you will need

Card Blanks (Mine are 5" x 7" white card)

A Sewing Machine

Some Scrap Card

White Paper

Pencil, Ruler, Scissors (or craft knife)

Strong Glue (I used 'all purpose glue')

Christmas Phrase Stickers or Stamper

Patience...!

Method

1. First of all, I started with my scrap card and made a template of a Christmas tree. If you see my tutorial here you should be able to get a close up of the template, with all of the measurements. 

2. I used the sewing machine to stitch around the template so that when the template is removed, you just have a tree design sewn into the centre of the card. If you use the needle as a pivot on the corners, it's very easy to do this type of design as it requires no more skill than being able to do a straight line with the machine. A star would work just as well. 

I stitched my tree in white as the theme of my card was "I'm dreaming of a white christmas", however, if you were just saying Merry Christmas as your phrase, I would go for red, green or maybe metallic thread. 

3. The next step was to add the Christmas Phrase. I used a customisable stamper - you could use stickers or even just hand write Merry Christmas. I also toyed with the idea of printing out little phrases and sewing them to the card, or printing them directly onto the card.

4. This is where your patience comes in. I made lots of miniature origami lucky stars... (As I made around 15 cards and each card needs 6 stars I did this in front of the tv in the evening). Once you get the hang of it you can do it without really looking. 

First, take an A4 sheet of paper and cut across the width of the paper into strips 7mm wide. I used a craft knife and a ruler, rather than drawing a line with a ruler and then using scissors as it was quicker. 

Next, tie a "knot" in the end of your strip and flatten it, as in the picture below. You should basically have a flattened pentagon at the end of your strip. 

Fold the extra short bit in along the line of the pentagon. 

Next, take the long strip and fold it up with the fold being in line with the bottom of the pentagon. This should fold at an angle that means it will line up with one of the top sides. Continue to wrap the strip around the pentagon tightly, keeping the folds so that the underlying shape is a pentagon. 

Once you get to the end of the strip, tuck the last part of the paper into the fold (you may need to cut a little bit of paper off, this depends on your initial knot though and may differ from star to star, so I'd wait til the end). 

Next you have to dig your nail into the middle of each of the sides of the pentagon and this will make the star puff up into a 3D star. If you don't have strong nails, I would suggest using the edge of a ruler. 

5. Once you have all of your stars, the only remaining step is to glue them into place on the stitched tree as below. 

Although they're not ideal for the postal system, they're great for hand delivered cards or to put vouchers in as a gift to show some extra thought. 

If you don't have a customisable stamp or would rather have a more colourful card, I would suggest making the stars out of christmas wrapping paper strips and stitching the tree in coloured thread as a pretty alternative. 

Christmas Preparations...

Well, as the world didn't end yesterday (21 December - sorry I didn't post!!) I now have an awful lot of Christmas preparation to do.

It started yesterday - I painted a picture for my mother in law's Christmas present (which I don't want to post a picture of for obvious reasons!!)

Today, I am making chocolate fudge cake. Nigella's chocolate fudge cake - the recipe for which can be found here. I made this for my brother's 20th birthday recently, and it was so popular that one has been requested for Christmas day and one for a family party later in the week.

Here is a picture of the original birthday cake:

I disagree with Nigella slightly and if you're going to make her recipe as set out on her website, cover the bottom of your oven in foil or something. The first time I made this it overflowed my cake tins - you either need slightly bigger cake tins or like me, make another cake. As I am making the recipe twice, I put a little of the mixture (perhaps a fifth or sixth of the entire mixture) in a separate cake tin and I will end up with two big cakes and a mini one (and hopefully a clean oven!). Because of this, I have also adjusted my cooking time to around 40 minutes.

Once the cakes are made I have the following tasks lined up:

Make chocolate shards. I'm making this up as I go along so I'll post a 'recipe'

Make cheese biscuits and cookies

Attempt to make marshmallows. I say attempt because last year I attempted to make Turkish Delight to give as gifts, and it failed miserably. I have a similar worry with the marshmallows for some reason!

Make gift bags to package my edible gifts..

It's a lot for 3 days but that's the plan!!!

I also plan to blog and post some of my other Christmas makes - some Christmas Cards (although it's too late to post them, you could make some to present gift vouchers in to show some extra thought) and my wrapping paper, which I'm very happy with.

Waste Not Want Not - How to Fix a Tired Jumper

It's an old saying, but true! I have just 'saved' my husband's work jumper from the bin and avoided the need to buy a new one. It was looking a little tired - some of the stitching on the collar was coming away and there was a (growing) hole in the armpit, but with a little blue thread, a needle and about ten minutes of my time it's looking good as new. 

For the collar area, I anchored my thread on the inside and simply put a loop through the little bit that was rolling upwards on the front and secured it in place.I then used a backstitch just to sew a line along the bottom so it matched better.

For the hole, I closed the small holes with a basic stitch which looped around the stringy bit in the middle. Once I just had one larger hole, I just pressed the two sides of the hole together and looped stitches along the length of the hole, joining the two sides together on the inside of the jumper. There was no magic to my stitching (and it's certainly nothing professional!) but with the right colour thread it's not noticeable and now the jumper is good for at least another few months.

Pork and Cider Casserole with Roast New Potatoes (14pp - WW Friendly Recipe)

This serves as a nice Sunday Dinner and benefits from a couple of hours in the oven. If you had extra points available to you (perhaps you have saved some weeklies or are on a higher amount of dailies, I would perhaps add a couple of yorkshire puddings for some extra points and to soak up all the lovely sauce).

It comes out at 13pp per serving, however, I did find it very sweet. If I made it again, I would probably use 250ml cider and 250ml ham or chicken stock to balance it out a little. This would reduce it by at least 1pp too.

Ingredients (Serves 2)

210g Pork Loin Steaks
1 tablespoon flour
400g New Potatoes
500ml Dry Cider
1 large leek, sliced
1 onion, diced
2 sticks of celery, sliced
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
calorie controlled cooking spray
2 teaspoons wholegrain mustard
Half teaspoon of dried thyme (fresh would be better, but I don't have it!)
Salt and Pepper

Pre Heat the oven to 180ºC

Weight Watchers notes - the points per serving come from the pork (5pp), potatoes (4pp), flour (1pp) and Cider (3pp).

Method

1. Spray a Heavy Bottomed Pan (preferably one you can transfer to the oven) with calorie controlled cooking spray and heat to a medium heat.

2. Remove all visible fat from the pork so that it is extra lean and cut into chunks. Coat the meat in the flour and add to the pan to seal. Once sealed, remove from the pan and set aside.

3. Next, soften the onion, leek, celery and carrot in the pan.

4. Place the pork on top of the vegetables and pour over the cider (and stock if using).

5. Add the mustard, thyme and black pepper and mix through thoroughly.

6. Transfer the Casserole Dish to the pre-heated oven and cook for 2 hours.

7. The potatoes need to go into the oven after the first hour of cooking has elapsed. To prepare the potatoes, cut them into cubes (around 2cm or so across). Spray a deep sided baking tray with calorie controlled cooking spray and add the potato cubes. Sprinkle with salt, black pepper and thyme and add to the oven.

7. Keep an eye on the potatoes, they make take only around 40 mins - they may need a little longer. Remove from the oven when they're starting to brown and are cooked through before serving with the casserole after cooking.

Epcot Food and Wine Festival Review - South Korea

My eat around the world adventure at the Epcot Food and Wine Festival took me to South Korea next. The  stand was just before the bridge between China and the Outpost.

On offer were Mung Bean Pancake with Shrimp and Kimchi Sauce or Lettuce Wrap with Roast Pork and Kimchi Slaw.

I opted for the Lettuce Wrap with Roast Pork (I had no idea what kimchi was) as I had already tried a shrimp dish and variety is the spice of life, so they say!

Now this dish was particularly good value at only $3.25.

The pork had obviously been cooked for a very long time, it was moist and soft and had a stringy feel to it (which sounds bad, although it wasn't a bad thing - just the best description I can think of!).

I still have no idea what kimchi is - it didn't have a particularly strong flavour (and from the picture, just looks like shredded carrot!). Wikipedia seems to say it is different all over Korea and can even differ depending on the season, so not much help there.

Review: What I will say about this dish is that it would have benefited from something pourous! The lettuce just could not cope with the amount of liquid in the pork/kimchi mix and there rather a lot of 'run off', making it a messy one to eat. The overall texture was soft meat with crisp salad and some creamy mayonnaise style topping and the taste was mild. Although I enjoyed eating it, it didn't excite me and I don't think I'd buy it again.

Egg (Fried) Rice - 8pp (Weight Watchers Recipe)

I have put part of the title in brackets on this because in truth, although I've made it in a large frying pan, there's no oil (other than a little calorie controlled cooking spray) so it's not really fried. It's just tasty chinese style rice, perfect as an accompaniment to some chicken and stir fried vegetables or just on it's own for lunch. As I have made it for lunch, I cheated and used ready cooked rice so it was quicker, but you could just as easily boil your own rice. I also used ready chopped and frozen garlic and ginger, again, to make this quickly. Fresh would be fine too


Ingredients (Serves Two)

1 portion cooked wholegrain rice (either half a precooked pack, or 60g dried weight cooked - this should be freshly cooked)
2 medium eggs
2 tablespoons Soy Sauce
2 tablespoons dry sherry
1 bunch spring onions
1 tsp finely chopped garlic
1 tsp finely chopped ginger
a few red chilli flakes (optional)
Calorie controlled cooking spray (I use Fry Light - 1 calorie per spray)

Weight watchers notes - pp per serving are as follows: rice is 5pp, egg is 2pp, sherry is 1pp

Method
1. Chop the spring onions finely and hold back a little for garnish
2. Spritz a large frying pan with calorie controlled cooking spray and heat it to a high heat
3. Add the garlic, ginger, chilli (is using) and spring onions to the pan and stir fry gently for around 2 minutes

4. Add the rice, soy sauce and sherry to the pan and stir fry until combined
5. Beat the eggs and add them to the rice, stirring immediately to try and avoid any sticking and continuing until the egg is cooked through.
6. Serve and garnish with the reserved chopped spring onion

Yum! (And, if you cheat like me, quicker than ordering take away!)