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This month’s Degustabox has been a goody. I love the idea of combining one of my favourite foods: chorizo, and crisps.  These lattice style crisps from Seabrooks Crisps have a spicy bite. This week the itsu crispy seaweed thins have made it into the lunchbox and they are really handy for adding a bit of variety and they are full of good things too. Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles Infusions are a new twist on the traditional sweet with orange & grapefruit, raspberry & pomegranate and apple & elderflower flavours. Brookside Chocolates mix a smooth dark chocolate with blueberry: a perfect combination. Bahlsen Choco Leibniz have long been favourites of ours, but now they come in handy portion packs with two biscuits in each: again these are great for lunch boxes and picnics.

My normal breakfast is muesli, but I like to switch it around and try out different brands and flavours.  Jordans Swiss Style Muesli has given me something new to try with its blend of crispy wheat flakes,creamy oats, juicy raisins and finely sliced almonds. Sarsons Balsamic Vinegar is perfect for summer salads and I find it goes well with strawberries. For a bit of added crunch and spice to your salad or ploughman’s, there’s Felix Gherkins which are handpicked in Sweden in late summer.

For a great start to the day I’ve been trying Cracker Drinks’ natural fruit drinks. They have some interesting blends with no added sugar or sweeteners.  Another good way to breakfast is to have an ALO drink which includes the benefits of real aloe vera. Rejuvenation Water is an amino acid enriched spring water designed to help you deal with the rigours of modern life.Qcumber offers  refreshing blend of natural cucumber and sparkling spring water. We’ve also been enjoying berrywhite organic with lovely flavours such as sparkling cranberry & guava or sparkling lemon and ginger.

A little luxury we are indulging in just now is the first of the fruits of our labour from the vegetable patch.  Every year we try to grow a little more and this year we now have some crops ready for harvesting.  The sweetness and freshness of peas handpicked from the garden is difficult to beat.  Those peas that aren’t snacked upon by a hungry 9-year-old are harvested just a few minutes before they go in the pot.  They need hardly any cooking and they taste fantastic.

This year, like last, our black currants seem to be doing well.  We usually enjoy some Eton Mess or a homemade fruit pie or two from those. Raspberries aren’t due till later in the year (we have autumn fruiting ones) and it remains to be seen whether we get any fruits from our quince tree (had that for a few years now and nothing yet) or our apple tree (which went in last year).

Our potatoes are now ready to crop and I won’t buy any boilers or salad potatoes now for a few months.  There’s something special about homegrown potatoes: you can taste the flavour and they are grown organically too.  We have more potatoes planted in containers, but I staggered the planting so I am hoping that we can increase the season.

A few things have done less well this year and I’m not sure why.  Our beetroots don’t look too happy and are certainly less impressive than Monty Don’s plants were on Gardeners’ World the other week.  I’ve struggled a bit with beans this year, which is a bit of a surprise because that usually goes well.  It might not be too late to try planting some more.

I didn’t do too well with cucumber seedlings, but I have bought some young plants to make up for it.  Hopefully we’ll have a crop soon.  Tomatoes are doing well and I haven’t planted quite as many as last year, which I hope will be a blessing.

Do you enjoy growing and eating some home-grown veg?  How are you getting on with your garden this year?

From time to time I come across a nice place to eat or drink that I’d like to share with you.  Every few months I’m planning to pop a handful of them together in a post so you can see some of the nice places there are to visit in or around Birmingham.

Cafe Reem

Cafe Reem is hidden away in Harborne.  It’s not on the High Street, so you will have to seek it out on Grove Lane (around the back of Grove Park). There are lots of Mediterranean flavours on the menu and the influence is North African and the Middle East. So far I’ve been a few times for a mint tea and something sweet, but also for lunch – I can thoroughly recommend the falafel burger.

Edgbaston Deli

The other week I tried out Edgbaston Deli for lunch. This area of Edgbaston (Highfield Road) is becoming a bit of a eating and drinking hub these days with the Highfield pub and Simpsons in the neighbourhood.  The Edgbaston Deli offers something a little bit different and I loved the Scandi vibe. We kept it simple for lunch with a fisherman’s (smoked salmon, cream cheese, dill and capers) sandwich on brown sour dough (there are a selection of artisan breads to choose from).  I think I’d like to go back to sample the breakfast and maybe try the bar (probably not at the same time).

Lots of lovely goodies in June’s Degustabox.  I am loving the little pesto pots from Sacla.  They are nice and small with a single serving in each one.  My main problem with pesto is that I don’t seem to get through a jar quickly enough, so this is a good solution.  I also think it would be good to take backpacking as they are very light and would be easy to prepare.  Heinz Amoy Coconut Milk is perfect for incorporating into a lot of Asian cuisine like a Thai Green Curry.  The Branston Spicy Tomato Relish would be perfect for a summer barbecue: it goes very nicely with burgers and hot dogs. While we are on the subject of barbecues, Schwartz have an American Smokehouse Homemade Burger Mix which has been formulated to make tasty, juicier burgers.  You just add the mix to your mince. Haywards Medium and Tangy Silverskins (pickled onions) weren’t for me as I am not a pickle fan, but my husband does enjoy this sort of thing and they do bring a little tang to a salad or a ploughman’s lunch. Miracle Noodles are a perfect addition to any quick, after-work meal and perfect with a stir fry.

Drinks from Zeo have appeared in Degustabox deliveries before and this Cloudy Lemon was a welcome sight.  We love a traditional lemonade and this one has natural sweetener stevia as well as sugar, so each 250ml serving only has 28 calories.  Marstons have created Kin Star a handcrafted lager with bold flavours, which is great as lagers can so often be a bit insipid.

There are some sweet treats too.  We liked the Destrooper-Oliver Butter Waffle Crisps and we partnered them with ice cream for a bit of crunch with our dessert.Have you tried a bake in a mug brownie yet?  This a fun one to do on a wet afternoon or when you just need a little treat: Bakedin Chocolate Mug Brownie Mix.  Butterkist Yoghurt Coated Popcorn adds something a bit different to popcorn and this is perfect for movie night.  Smooze Mango and Coconut is a ‘freeze at home’ fruit ice with all natural ingredients.  This one is for me as I’m the coconut fan in this house.  Perfect for those hot summer afternoons.

We went to Marco Pierre White Steakhouse Bar & Grill in The Cube in Birmingham the other week.  We’d had lunch bought for us there as a Christmas present and we needed to use the voucher before it expired.  Booking online was easy enough, but we got a distinctively unfriendly acknowledgement email laying down all sorts of rules and regulations: arrive 15 minutes before your booking; don’t be more than so many minutes late; we’ll charge you extra for a window seat; if you want a doggy bag you’ll have to sign a disclaimer.  It was all a bit off-putting and it didn’t get things off to a good start.

When we got there though it wasn’t quite like that.  We had a window seat and so did most people who were there for the lunch sitting.  There was no extra charge, maybe there is in the evening.  The room is what you expect from a high-end restaurant with thick white table cloths and the like, but what sets the restaurant out is its views.  Originally, my husband sat in the window with me facing, but he couldn’t cope with that (he’s scared of heights), so we had to swap.  Heights bother me not at all thankfully and I enjoyed looking around the panoramic view of my city.  It was really strange to look at places I know so well from high up and see how they join up including the bits you don’t usually see like the train line corridors.  I guess at night you can see the city lit up, but I think the daytime view was more interesting.

The lunch menu has a limited choice (as you’d expect), but we had no problem making a choice.  I went for the Caesar Salad which I was intrigued to see included avocado.  It didn’t work very well.  The avocados added nothing to the dish and it needed more crunch (there weren’t that many croutons).  A Caesar Salad is a classic dish that lots of chefs like to play around with to put their own individual take on things.  Generally, I find messing around with this classic combination doesn’t work well and this dish was no exception sadly.

My husband chose a little better with his crispy Calamari Rings served with a tartare sauce.  They were everything you’d expect: a simple dish executed well.

I had the Fish and Chips for my main course.  It was a lovely piece of fish which had been nicely cooked.  The fish was enormous though and I struggled to finish it (but I didn’t dare ask for a doggy bag). If I was going to criticise I’d say that it would have been nicer to have had less fish and few more chips to achieve a better balance.

My husband’s burger arrived on a wooden board which was a bit disappointing.  I really wish restaurants would move away from this nonsense: I’d rather have my meals on a plate.  Also I prefer to have my food together, rather than divided up with the chips in a separate little copper pan as they were with this dish.  No complaints on the taste front and this was a quality burger (my husband is very fussy about his beef).

We both went for the Creme Brûlée with Raspberries for our dessert.  This looked lovely and was nicely prepared.  The only thing was that using a shallow, wide dish meant that you got a lot of the burnt caramelised layer in proportion to the creamy layer beneath and we felt that the balance was out because of it.  It’s a shame because if it had been served in standard ramekin, it would have been perfect.

The service was good at Marco Pierre White Steakhouse Bar & Grill and we liked the fact that they had a bar area so you could have a drink before or after your meal if you wished.  The food was good, but nothing outstanding, so you are paying a premium for the name and the view at £25 for a three course meal.  That said, it is worth visiting for the view alone.

As ever May’s Degustabox was full of new goodies to try out.  The drinks selection has been very popular with all the nice weather we have been having.  Cranes make a very nice 4% alcohol alcoholic drink that is brewed from crushed cranberries – really refreshing. Fruit flavours are very much in evidence with the other drink being Pomegreat which is a lovely fruit drink made from pomegranates.

My son is a bit of a rice cake monster and he has been trying out the Kallo rice cakes: one pack was coated with Belgium milk chocolate and the other with yoghurt.  Yum!  I used the Garofalo pasta in a tasty pasta salad which I made for my sister and her children when they came to visit over half term.  I think the quality of the pasta enhanced the dish.  We have still to try the Beloved Dates Date Nectar, but I can see that adding a lovely caramel flavour to my baking. All about the flavour too is the Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey Barbecue Glaze.

Breakfast has been made a lot tastier by Brioche Pasquier’s croissants and they are very handy to have in the house for an after school snack too I find.  Our Mrs Crimble’s Gluten Free Madeleines were virtually inhaled by the children visiting us at half term. Get Fruity kept us going on the move with their award-winning fruit and oat bars. The Wonderful Company’s bags of Wonderful Almonds and Wonderful Pistachios were handy handbag standbys for me. Pechkeks Misfortune Cookies went down very well in our house.  These are fortune cookies with a difference.  They are coloured black, but taste like regular fortune cookies, but the message inside has a bit of black humour rather than the usual ultra-positive stuff.  A great box of goodies this month.

This month’s Degustabox was a goody with lots of lovely things to try.  Bebeto Fruit Strings make a handy snack and are perfect for having in your handbag for a hungry child or packing in a lunchbox.  Parle G were a bit hit particularly their biscuits, but we were also sent their rusks to try (crispy and crunchy with some cardomon flavouring in case you’re wondering).  Popchips are a favourite in this house because they provide a healthier alternative to crips.  These were very tasty with their seasalt, garlic and rosemary seasoning. Milky Bar Milk & Crunchy and Smarties Sharing Block have proved very popular with my son, but the adults haven’t been able to resist a bite or two.

I love a refreshing iced tea in the summer so I was interested to try Green Lady which uses Green Darjeeling tea leaves and natural ingredients to create a refreshing drink.  Thor is a range of sparkling apple drinks: we tried apple & mint and apple & ginger and loved them both.  Another nice one for a warmer day is the Rejuvenation Water which helps fuel the immune system with its amino acid profile.

Canderel Sugarly is a calorie free alternative to sugar which I am hoping to use in baking to make me feel a little healthier when I am scoffing a homemade cake.  Veetee microwaveable rice range has proved a godsend on those days when you have barely got time to eat, never mind cook. Levi Roots Coat ‘n’ Cook Sauce is perfect for serving up with that rice to make a quick meal very tasty.