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I’ve been meaning to try out the A La Mexicana Restaurant for a while, but the pandemic has got in the way.  The restaurant is situated on Sandon Road in Bearwood, close to T C Hayes, and diagonally opposite the Bear pub.  A La Mexicana is a family run, Mexican restaurant and it is decorate with bright primary colours and lots of authentic Mexican items.  Everything was spotless and the tables were cleaned down well after customers left.  It was a reasonably warm day and the door was left open, so there was plenty of ventilation.

We were greeted by a friendly Mexican host, who was keen to make sure we were comfortable.  He was happy to help guide us through the menu, which is just as well as it was tricky to pick out which of the delicious-sounding dishes to try. I think I’m going to have to go back to try out some more.

The Menu A La Mexicana

There are three sections to the menu: lunch (lighter items), dinner (bigger dishes) and drinks.  We visited at lunch time and could choose off both the lunch and the dinner menus.  Soft drinks and hot drinks are currently available and are reasonably priced.  The restaurant is currently unlicensed, but I understand that they hope to change that.

We decided against a starter of nachos because my friend had a tooth infection and wanted to eat soft things.  Our host helped us find just the right thing: burritos.  Despite eating at lunch time we ate off the dinner menu because we wanted a more substantial meal.  The burritos came with a choice of filling: steak, pork, chicken, ham, chorizo or vegetables.  My friend decided to go for the  chorizo, which is homemade on the premises.  I liked the sound of the slow cooked pork, but it was too early in the day for that to be ready (because it is cooked long and slow), so I went for the pork and caramelised onions.  This wasn’t actually specified on the menu, so it’s worth talking to your server before deciding on your choice.

Our Meal

Our burrito meals came similarly presented with salsa in the lovely, colourful mexican bowl.  There was an attractive side salad with peppers, tomatoes and avocado.  The burritos were well wrapped and easy to eat with hands: very little escaped. My pork was nicely spiced, but not too hot (I tend to prefer things to be reasonably mild). As you can see inside there was a mixture of rice (I could have chosen beans instead), pork and carmelised onion.  It was delicious, tender and moist .  My companion really enjoyed her chorizo burrito.  As I think you’d expect it was a bit spicier than mine, but I’m tempted to try that next time or maybe the slow cooked pork.  I’m spoilt for choice.

Portion wise it really was a main meal.  My lunch companion took the second burrito home to eat later.  I just about managed my two burritos, but didn’t have an appetite for the rest of the day.

The service was timely, attentive and friendly.  We had a warm welcome and my friend is already talking about taking other people there because she enjoyed it so much.  I know other people who have been and they have really enjoyed it too, so much so that they have already made a return visit.

Other restaurants to try in Bearwood include The Old Dresser.

We all love home made baked goodies.  I do quite enjoy making them at home, but often time and life get in the way.  If you are busy getting ready to host friends for the weekend, other jobs may take priority.  Wouldn’t it be lovely to be able to buy a homemade cake or some brownies?  Unless there’s a convenient cake sale or you know a good local baker, you probably can’t unless you make it that cake yourself.  Then Sponge Cakes Ltd got in touch and told me about their new brownies range.  I really loved the idea of ordering brownies and having them delivered by post.

Sponge Cakes Ltd’s new brownies range is full of wonderful things.  I tried out the Chocolate Orange brownies because chocolate orange is one of my favourite flavours.  The brownies had a great texture with just the right amount of gooey ness and crumbliness. It’s an orange flavoured brownie with orange chocolate chunks throughout the mix.  It’s topped with a white, dark and orange chocolate drizzle effect.

We tried the brownies out and home and I also took them around to a friend’s house for her family to try.  They went down very well with everyone.  I’d have liked them to be ever so slightly less sweet, but that’s a personal preference thing.  The proof is in the eating and the brownies certainly didn’t last long.

I love the brownies are full of good things: free range eggs, gluten free flour and natural flavourings. They arrive well packaged and mine were undamaged in transit.  Unusually the brownies come in a circular shape like a cake, rather than the square shapes that we have become more used to.  This works well for me as I find it easier to cut a round cake into equal pieces.

If you aren’t sure which flavour to buy, maybe try the Four Sharing brownie, which has four quarters each a different flavour.

As well as trying out the new brownies range, I tried a Coffee Cake from Sponge Cakes Ltd too.  For someone who isn’t a coffee drinker, it’s perhaps surprising that coffee cake is one of my favourites. Again the cake arrived well packaged and looking fabulous.  It was very moist and did have that lovely homemade taste to it, whilst being a very professional looking treat.  It got a lot of compliments and I’d certainly get one again, especially if I was entertaining or celebrating a birthday or similar.

I liked to idea of using coffee beans on top of the cake to add some crunch instead of the usual walnuts.  Once again good quality ingredients are used in the baking, such as free range eggs.  We had no trouble eating it all whilst it was fresh, but you can freeze left over slices.

Sponge Cakes Ltd have 14 flavours of cakes available so there should be something to tempt you.  If you prefer you can have a sharing cake with either 14 flavours in one cake so you can have a slice of each one or a cake with four flavours that can be cut into slices.

Brownies are one of my favourite treats.  I do like making brownies myself too. There’s something very special though about having a delicious box of brownies pop through your letter box without any effort on your part.  The other advantage of getting them delivered is that you can pick a range of goodies.  If you make a batch then, they will all be the same type. This is a perfect gift to give to a lover of brownies.  Great for these pandemic days too because you can send them in the post. You can avoid the need to go to the shops to pick a gift.  Scrumptious by Lucy got in touch recently and Lucy offered me the chance to try her fabulous brownies.  I opted to try the Pick your own box of 4 as I loved the idea of picking out my favourite flavours. I picked out Chocolate Orange, Signature Chocolate, Lemon Blondie and a Bakewell Blondie.  These were the varieties that appealed most to me and I liked the idea of having a nice mix of brownies and blondies.

Scrumptious By Lucy offer around twenty flavours, including gluten free  and vegan varieties if you need them.  So you really are spoiled for choice. You can pick a chocolate focused brownie like the Signature Chocolate Brownie which offers all the chocolatey brownie goodness that you desire.  Or pick out a brownie with a flavouring like Chocolate Orange or Salted Caramel.  I’m a bit fan of chocolate orange as a flavour and that one certainly didn’t disappoint.  Both brownies that I selected were full of flavour and had that great moist, crumbly texture.  There are innovative flavours available like the Lotus Brownie Biscoff or the Oreo Brownie.

As well as brownies Scrumptious By Lucy offer a selection of blondies too.  These are great if you want something that tastes a bit lighter or has a more delicate flavour than chocolate.  I loved the lemon zing of the Lemon Blondie which is a packed full of lemon flavour.  The Bakewell Blondie is very moreish too and it is really difficult to pick out a favourite.

If you are buying a box of brownies as a gift, you can opt for a gift wrap.  It’s really easy to buy for those with restricted diets. Just pick out a vegan box or a gluten free one and all the work is done for you.

I have a box of Scrumptious By Lucy’s fabulous brownies to give away to one lucky reader.  Enter via the Gleam widget below.

Competition Terms and Conditions

1. No bulk, third-party or automated entries allowed.

2. Entrants must be aged 18 years or older and resident in the UK.

3. The winner or winners will be chosen by a random draw using the competition widget.

4. Promoter is responsible for fulfilling the prize and full contact details of the winner will be passed onto the promoter to enable prize fulfillment.

5. The winner’s name may be published on this site.

6. Competition closes at the end of Sunday 18th July 2021.
Scrumptious By Lucy Brownies

I’ve been thinking of trying a low carb diet for a while.  I eat a lot of carbs and I’m not sure I really should be.  I’d like to get out of the habit of being such a pasta fiend, but I’ve lacked the inspiration and the know-how to find the right meals to eat.  So when Love Yourself got in touch about their new low carb range, it seemed meant to be.

The new Low-Carb meal plan is available at LoveYourself.co.uk who prepare fresh food each day with the finest ingredients. With no additives, preservatives, or processed foods, each meal plan is available in a range of calorie options. All food is prepared by a gourmet Chef and Nutritionist to ensure each meal is balanced and tasty.

Love Yourself’s low carb diet is really easy to tailor to your needs.  They have four calorie options (1200, 1500, 2000 and 2500) depending on whether you want to lose weight, maintain or to allow for different calorific needs. There are loads of different ordering options, so you can buy a day’s worth of meals to try it out.  You can get a week’s worth (either 5 or 6 days) and you can buy for 1 week, 4 weeks, 8 weeks or subscribe. Each day’s worth of meals includes breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner.  It’s good to have eating healthily made so easy.

As I eat a lot of carbs normally the meals did seem on the small side, but because they contain plenty of protein you don’t feel hungry.  They are also packed full of good things, so you feel virtuous too.  There’s the snack too too keep you going if you feel peckish mid afternoon say.
The meals arrived by courier.  I had a few deliveries, as I had a few days of the plan to try out. A lot of effort went into keeping the meals cool whilst they were transported and the packages were well insulated. A lot of effort has gone into to making the packaging sustainable.   All the containers are biodegradable and 90 days compostable – I rinsed mine out and sent it off in our garden waste bin for the council to compost. The bags are made of paper and the bottles (I had a flaxseed and berry smoothie as my snack one day) are made from 100% recyclable plastics.

Generally the delivery went well, but on one occasion there was a bit of leaking from one of the meals.  It proved salvageable though. The other small problem was that the printing on the labels was a little faint (like the printer cartridge was running low).  I could still read it, but needed good light to be able to do so.

Just to give you a bit of an idea of the range of dishes, here are some of things I got to sample whilst I was trying the plan:

• baked beans & turkey with gluten free veggie bread
• lamb & feta meatballs
• shredded Vietnamese chicken salad
• Mediterranean frittata
• chocolate almond butter balls
• chicken with lemon and tarragon sauce

Every meal is scannable via the MyFitness app to help you keep track of calories and macro-nutrients. Meal plans start from just £15 per day from LoveYourself.co.uk

These meals arrived just as I was recovering from a minor operation.  It was great to have healthy meals ready to go to help me during my recovery.  If you lead a busy life this would be ideal too, as you can eat well without needing to do all the shopping and preparation that normally goes along with that.  The meals were extremely tasty and I really enjoyed eating them – I don’t think there was anything I didn’t like.  The low carb side of things worked well too, as I felt less bloated and had more energy.  I was really pleased with the meals and would happily order again.

Disclosure: I was sent a few days worth of Love Yourself low carb meals for the purposes of this review.

One of the things I’ve most missed about lockdown is eating out and having friends around to entertain.  For me sharing food is a great way of cementing and developing relationships, or simply enjoying each other’s company.  As a food writer though I’ve also missed writing about the food that I try in the various eateries that I visit and also photographing the dishes that I sample.  I’m hoping that all that will restart very soon and to get be started I’ve been sent just the right thing to try: the Instagram Bag from Paper Bag Co.

#TheFoodieBag comes complete with a great amount of kit:

• Stylish 12oz black canvas bag with internal pocket, mesh divider and zip closure
• 5 in 1 pop up reflector
• 8 postcard set with handy tips
• 4 photographic backdrops

One of my favourite items is the 15-inch photographic reflector and diffuser. It will help you to brighten and enhance both highlights and shadows depending on the mood and look you are trying to evoke.

I also loved the set of four beautifully crafted papers from Black Velvet Styling, the photographic backdrop company.  They are a little smaller than the ones I tend to use at home, but the advantage of the smaller size is that they are that much more portable.  So they are great when you are out and about as they fit neatly into the canvas bag.  I loved that there was a good range of colours and styles.  As you can see there are two lighter ones and two darker ones.

For ideas to improve my food photography, there’s an exclusive set of ten beautiful postcards, with tips on the reverse of each explaining how to use light, think about composition, choose your background and more.

The bag, that the set comes in, is a limited-edition bespoke double-sided tote bag, with internal zip pocket.  I think I’ll carry the backdrops in the cardboard roll they come in, but there’s plenty of space, even when fully packed, to store other bits and pieces like props. You’d probably want to keep your camera in a more padded container, but most photographers will already own a camera bag.

I’m looking forward to using this kit to create some fabulous new pictures. When ordering you’ll find dispatch is very quick and I had my bag the next day.

Disclosure: I was sent this bag for the purposes of this review.

Last year was the summer of the garden party or get together and it looks like that could well be the case this year too.  I’ve been having more drinks outside when I’m entertaining and in nice weather it’s important to have something cool and refreshing. We get through a lot of ice cubes in our house and we use the ice dispenser in the freezer, traditional ice cube trays and buy ice too. However, none of those solutions work that well for us.  Buying ice is fine for a party, but it takes up a lot of room in the freezer the rest of the time.  The ice dispenser has been disappointing and I find ice cube trays are often too rigid or too easily damaged. The other problem is that traditional ice cubes are quite small and you need several to keep a drink cool.  You end up with lots of pieces of ice floating around in your drink.

So I was interested to try out the large ice cube trays from Oliver’s Kitchen. The main advantage of large ice cube is that you only need one of them for the average glass.  There’s a choice of square or sphere shapes too, so there should be one to suit every shape of glass. Because the ice cubes are so big they take longer to melt so they are able to keep your drink cooler for longer.  The giant ice cubes were perfect for my gin and tonic.  You use the spherical shaped moulds and fill to the top with the help of the little funnel provided with the pack.

One thing that I found really helpful was the silicone material of the moulds.  This made it really easy to push the cubes out when you are ready to use them and so much better than rigid trays.  The top trays act as lids which means you can stack one set on top of the other really easily, so freeing up space in your freezer.  Obviously it’s difficult to know how long they will last, but they feel really durable and I have high hopes that I’ll be using these for a long time to come.  They come with a 30 day money back guarantee and with a 1-year free replacement warranty, which is very reassuring.  You can just pop them in the dishwasher after use and they will be ready to go again in no time.

I use my normal grater several times a week, but it’s not without its frustrations.  I’ve a couple of graters and one of them doesn’t grate very easily.  So I appreciate a grater that is up to the job.  I’ve tried the Oliver’s Kitchen grater and it’s very easy to use.  The various sides grate easily and there’s a rubberised bottom, which means it stays in place and doesn’t move whilst you are working.The various sides mean you can grate many different things: I’ve used it for cheddar, parmesan and carrot, but you can use it for so many things.  It’s easy to clean and comes apart for easy dishwashing – just pop it in the machine or wash by hand.  It’s easy to see how much you are grating because of the see-through box that fits onto the bottom, plus it means there’s no mess.  I like that it doubles up as a handy way to store stuff too – there’s a lid.  You can easily grate your cheese in advance and pop it in the fridge until you are ready to use it.  I’ve found it really easy to use – it sits well in the hand.

I’ve teamed up with Oliver’s Kitchen to offer readers a chance to win some of their lovely kitchen products.  You can win the following Oliver’s Kitchen products:

– Garlic Press
– 4X Ice Cube Trays
– Chopping Board Set
– Cooking Tongs
– Salt & Pepper Mills

Just enter via the Gleam widget below.

Competition Terms and Conditions

1. No bulk, third-party or automated entries allowed.

2. Entrants must be aged 18 years or older and resident in the UK.

3. The winner or winners will be chosen by a random draw using the competition widget.

4. Promoter is responsible for fulfilling the prize and full contact details of the winner will be passed onto the promoter to enable prize fulfillment.

5. The winner’s name may be published on this site.

6. Competition closes at the end of Sunday 16th May 2021.

Oliver’s Kitchen