Category: food

Blogmas 2023 Day Twenty Three: What’s on my Christmas table? 🎄

Hi guys 👋🏻

So we all have a Christmas table, right?!?!

That table in your kitchen or lounge that slowly gets filled with delicious Christmas nibbles throughout December, all ready to enjoy in and around the festive period.

It’s nice to have some festive nibbles around for any wrapping sessions, festive film nights, or if you have any guests pop over.

We have a nice mixture of sweet & savoury going on.

Let’s take a look at ours…

This is a new addition but we liked the look of this as I love chocolate and my husband loves sweets.
These are my favourite mince pies from the COOP.
Pringles are a must. These are mine and my husbands favourite flavours (Mine on the left, his on the right)
Heroes! The best of all the festive chocolate tins.
A tin of shortbread is a Christmas must have.
My Nana always had these at her house on Christmas day so I had to pick some up when I saw them.
A selection of festive chocs! Lindt originals alway look so festive.

It is mainly sweet goodies to be fair, haha, but we have savoury crisps and plenty of party food and cheese and biscuits to counteract the sweetness.

I also have keep my festive headbands/glasses/hats etc on here incase I need them or any guests need to be made more festive 🤣

What are your favourite festive nibbles?

Until Next Time,

Roseanne 🙂

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Blogmas 2023 Day Twenty Two: Easy Christmas treats to make with kids 🍫

Hi guys 👋🏻

Now that the Christmas holidays are in full swing and the kids are at home, I thought I would share with you a few fun, easy, and relatively quick recipes for little festive treats.

These ideas are so cute. I’ve either made them with my Nephews or made them with the children at work. Either way, they are lots of fun and great for keeping the kids occupied.

I’ve included links to help you with how to make them.

1. Chocolate Reindeer

Chocolate Reindeer Rolls Recipe

2. Rice Crispy Christmas Puddings

I have previously posted during Blogmas about this recipe.

Here’s the link to that days post:

Blogmas 2023 Day Three – Festibe Baking Blogmas 2023 Rice Crispy Christmas Puddings

& Rice Crispy Christmas Puds Recipe

These are my favourite of all the recipes!!

3. Hot Chocolate Snowman Jars

Hot Chocolate Snowman Jars Recipe

These are fun but would also make a great homemade gift.

4. Easy, Festive Cupcakes

Easy Vanilla Cupcake Recipe

Use whatever festive coloured icing/sprinkles that you wish to decorate them with.

3 days until Christmas!! Only 3!!!

Until Next Time,

Roseanne 🙂

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Blogmas 2023 Day Sixteen: Work Xmas Meal #2 🎄

Hi guys 👋🏻

Last night, I had my second work Christmas meal.

This time we went to Ask Italian.

I chose from the three course festivo menu.

I started with an Espresso Martini 🍸

Here’s what I went for…

Festive Sage meatballs. These were really tasty, soft, and delicious in the tomato sauce.

Festive Carbonara with Crispy Pancetta & Brussel Sprouts (Sounds weird, was amazing and a delicious way to serve sprouts!!)

Orange Panattone pudding with Ice cream 🍊 This was a really yummy mix between a sponge pudding and a Panattone. My only improvement would be that it needed more ice cream as it was quite a big pudding.

It was all really delicious. I particularly enjoyed the Carbonara.

We had a lovely time & it was good to have a chat not at work!

Have you had your work christmas meal yet?

Until Next Time,

Roseanne 🙂

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Blogmas 2023 Day Twelve: Bring a Board Night 🍴✨️🎅🏻

Hi guys 👋🏻

At the beginning of December me and a few of our friends got together for a little festive celebration, a ‘Friendmas’ celebration if you will.

It was great to be able to all get together as its often hard at the best of times, let alone at Christmas.

I suggested a fun little ‘Bring a Board’ night where everyone brings a themed board of food

We had a variety of sweet and savoury food.

I did two boards, a savoury festive crisp board and a sweet, hot chocolate station board.

Here are my boards:

My Crisps board.
My Hot chocolate board with my velvetiser.
My Hot chocolate board.

It was a fun night. We caught up, listened to some Christmas songs, and played some fun games.

Have you done a ‘board night’ before?

What do you and your friends do to celeb together?

Roseanne 🙂

Until Next Time,

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Blogmas 2023 Day Ten: Work Christmas Meal 🍸

Hi guys 👋🏻

So a few days ago I had the first of my work Christmas meals.

This year was so great because it is the first year that we’ve been able to have a proper one since before COVID!!

So many people came and it was such a lovely and festive atmosphere, like the old times.

We went to a local pub which was so quaint and cosy.

I got myself a (or maybe a couple) of Claus-mopolitans (they saw me coming) which were delicious.

For my main, I ordered the festive burger – an unusual choice for me but delicious none the less. It had pigs in blankets on top and inside to make it extra festive was brie, and cranberry sauce. Brie on anything makes it better. It also came with some really yummy chips.

I was defeated by it though…

For dessert, I had the chocolate brownie with ice cream. The brownie was really chocolatey and had nice big chunks of chocolate in, but it would have been warm – that would have made it top tier.

The ice cream was amazing. It was honeycomb flavoured and had bits of crunchy honeycomb in it, which was delicious. There were also pieces of chocolate covered honeycomb and chocolate sauce on the plate, which were amazing.

It was so lovely to all get together, dress up, catch up and have a laugh together.

15 days until Christmas!

Until Next Time,

Roseanne 🙂

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Blogmas 2023 Day Four: Advent Calendars 📅

Hi guys 👋🏻

Welcome to Day Four of Blogmas!

And today I am going to show you which Advent Calendars I have this year. I’ve got a nice variety with a last minute addition.

Let’s take a look!

Up first, my chocolate advent calendar…

I got out my Harry Potter pocket advent calendar, this one you fill yourself.

I got me and my husband chocolate coins for each day.

It has 24 pockets, so I’ve put extra in for the 25th as I like yo have one for Christmas morning too.

Next up, I have my beautiful Pop up Harry Potter advent calendar. I bought this either last year or two years ago (I can’t remember)

It is so cool – and it’s great that you can refuse it!

I love the little decorations you get each day, to hang on the tree!

My final advent calendar is a F.R.I.E.N.D.S themed one. This was an unexpected one, but I couldn’t resist it. A bonus was that it was in a sale at my local bookshop, so it was a bargain.

This one comes with cool little F.R.I.E.N.D.S themed goodies such as decorations, bookmarks, puzzles (& I’m not sure what else yet!)

It’s fun to have a few different ones to open each morning!

What sort of advent calendar do you have?

Until Next Time,

Roseanne 🙂

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Blogmas Day Twenty Four: Christmas Traditions ✨️

Hi guys 👋🏼

Traditions are one of my favourite parts of Christmas and so I thought for my penultimate Blogmas post I would share some of ours.

December

  • Christmas Rock N Roll Panto, this is on every Christmas at our local Theatre. Me and Tim go every December.
  • Mince Pie taste testing, because how else will we know which ones are best?!? It’s a public service really.
  • Put up the Christmas decs, and LOTS of them. Nothing makes you feel more Christmassy!!

Christmas Eve

  • Christmas Eve boxes, for my Nephews and Niece. I make these throughout December and deliver them on Christmas eve for them to enjoy.
  • Making festive treats, usually for our Christmas day dessert. This uwat I made a Lindt Chocolate Cheesecake for Christmas Day and the Platinum Jubilee Lemon and Amaretto trifle for Boxing day (it was a hit in the summer!)
  • A Christmas Byron. Me, my twin sister and our friend Demi go out for lunch or dinner together at Byron. No idea how this started but we’ve done it for at least 5/6 years now.
  • Watching ‘The Snowman’. I always watched this on Christmas eve as a kid so I carry it on now! I usually watch it before I go to bed.
  • Going to look at the Christmas lights. We drive around our local town and have a look at all of the awesome lights people have put up on their houses. This is one of my favourite traditions.

Christmas Day

  • Opening up our stockings first thing. I still have the same sack that I had as a child and I love having that to open first thing, good old Santa 🎅🏻
  • Going to Mum and Dads in the morning. It would be so weird not to!! I’ve only ever either woken up there (literally the same house) or gone there first thing on Christmas morning, my whole life
  • Christmas lunch. THE. BEST. MEAL. OF. THE YEAR. My father in law makes an amazing roast each year too do I can’t wait.
  • Christmas games, one of my absolute favourite parts of Christmas. Having fun together- it doesn’t get better than that. I very luckily married into a family that probably loves games even more than my family do – winner!
Photos from Christmas 2021

Other:

  • A Christmas walk. When we do our Christmas with Tim’s Mum we always go for a lovely wintery walk somewhere. It’s so nice and we always discover so many hidden gems near us that we would probably never visit.

What are your Christmas traditions?

Until Next Time,

Roseanne 🙂

IT’S CHRISTMAS DAY TOMORROW!!

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Blogmas Day Twenty One: Christmas Hampers 🎁

Hi guys 👋🏼

So another nice little DIY Christmas gift I like to out together are Christmas hampers.

Now of course you can theme them however you like, depending on who they are for, but the ones that I usually do are foodie hampers.

Lets have a look!

I like to go for a good mix of different things:

  • Typical seasonal items such as Pannetone, Christmas pudding, mince pies etc
  • New Christmas/festive themed bits that are out that particular year, such as new flavours of crisps, nuts, different cakes.
  • Specific things that you know they like eg a chocolate orange, certain chocolate, fave sweets etc

And I usually do a mixture of both sweet and savoury.

I start picking up bits for these in late November, early December so that when I visit different shops you get a good variety and choice, and you often find different bits depending on where you go.

Most of the stuff that I pick up for these hampers is the sort of thing that has a long life but I am always sure to check as sometimes I get carried away and then remember I need to be careful or the things will be out of date before they’ve received it 😅

I think these hampers make such a nice little gift, with lots of little suprised and interesting bits to look through and taste.

They are one of my favourite bits to out together! I often find it hard to stop once I start buying the bits for them as there are alot of delicious treats out there.

Have you made Hampers before? What sort of hampers do you like?

Until Next Time,

Roseanne 🙂

4 days to go!

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Blogmas Day Seventeen: The ultimate hot chocolate 🍫

Hi guys 👋🏼

At Christmas time one of my favourite drinks to have is hot chocolate. Me ans my twin sister were visiting London this weekend so we thought we would try out the ultimate hot chocolate that London has to offer.

The cafe is called ‘Italian Bear Chocolate’ and they are a chocolate lovers heaven.

You cam choose your flavour of hot chocolate from milk, white or dark. We both went for milk chocolate. We also both went for a small (which was more than enough!!) As we wanted to try the chocolate cake.

We added ‘triple chocolate’ to both our hot chocolate and the cake, which is the drizzle you can see cascading down the side of the mug and the cake.

It was so rich, thick and decadent. It starts off like normal hot chocolate but definitely gets thicker as you get to the end. The triple chocolate drizzle is amazing too. You can taste to good quality of each type of chocolate.

This is the cake that we got to share. This was decadence with a capital D. We had to take at least half home with us. The chocolate ganache and fudgey filling were amazing.

It was so good.

What’s your favourite festive beverage?

Until Next Time,

Roseanne 🙂

8 days until Christmas

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Blogmas Day Thirteen: Festive Food 🍴🎅🏻

Hi guys 👋🏼

Food is one of my favourite things – I love trying new things.

Some of the best food is ‘festive food’ that surrounds the season… so let’s take a look at a few of my favourites in general (and so far, this year!)

Festive hot chocolate

My favourite way to make a hot chocolate is in my Hotel Chocolat Velvetiser. I use the Mint Hot Chocolate Sachets, topping it off with chocolate whipped cream (that I found in Asda) and Christmas sprinkles.

Mince Pies

Mince pies are one of my all time favourite festive treats. I am taste testing lots of different ones (for the good of the people of course) Sainburys have come out on top so far but I am yet to have one of my favourite COOP locally sourced ones so the jury is still out.

Crisps

You can get lots of delicious flavoured crisps at this time of year and these sounded insane – I cannot wait to try these.

Cheese

Cheese is always a winner in my eyes, but a cheeseboard or cheese and crackers just hits different at Christmas. I am also very partial to a camembert.

Party food

I always get very excited to see what ‘party’ goodies are available each year. I love all the mini versions of something of your favourite foods. We are very partial to the cheese options that are usually available – (popcorn Halloumi in the photo above) Mozzerella sticks etc. I also love the crispy/tempura prawn options.

Roasts

I try not to have too many roasts close to Christmas so that I am ready to fully enjoy the main event, but throughout late November and early December, when the supermarkets start stocking all the pigs in blankets and stuffing etc, I really start to fancy a roast. I picked up some bits so that we can have one later roast.

Christmas Dinner is a my absolute all time favourite meal so I am buzzing for it.

What is your favourite festive food item?

Until Next Time,

Roseanne 🙂

12 days until Christmas

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