in pursuit of organised-ness

My name is Rhian and I like a glass of wine. There, I said it! I don't drink every night, but I will have a glass of wine more evenings than not. Sometimes with water or as a spritzer, and I am happy to just have the one glass. One of my favourite quotes is: "I love to cook with wine....sometimes I'll even put it in the food!" And it's true. If I am cooking a nice meal, I'll get out my knife, chopping board, ingredients and a glass of wine. Mainly it will sit there until I've finished cooking, but there's always something missing if it's not there - especially on a Friday night. My preference is white wine, but if the mood or food is right, I will have a glass of red and I do tend to use red wine rather than white in cooking.  Item number 52 on my 101 things list to to learn about wine. I know what I like and I enjoy finding new wines, but I don't think I could identify grape types and I can't pick out flavours or match with food (...

l Ok, so it's not the most appetising of photos - but it tasted lovely! For those that don't know I have a list of 101 Things to do in 1001 Days . On this list is to cook every recipe in Rachel Allen's Home Cooking book. I tried a version of Red Wine Risotto a few months back , but didn't have an chorizo, so thought we should try it again. Yesterday my copy of Eclipse (the third in the Twilight saga) finally arrived, so my friend (Mrs M) - who was as excited as me - and her husband came round for food & DVD watching. Boys in the kitchen making food, girls watching Edward & Jacob on the TV. I was a little wary of the risotto (the first time I made it) as it brought back memories of trying to make a red wine sauce with cream when I was in uni...it did not go well! So I have limited my red wine in food to a bolognese sauce or Coq au Vin. However the feedback on the risotto was good. It does completely change the flavour and the chorizo gave it some extra dep...

As we have done the last few years, hubby & I have decided to have a sensible Christmas. Making presents, not spending a fortune, and generally trying to be thrifty. But I love Christmas - and am excited, so will try to post an update every day to let you know how our countdown to Christmas is going. So, on Sunday (28 Nov) we bought a Christmas Tree - pre-lit! It's great. I put it up on Monday (30 Nov), which took 15 minutes rather than the usual 2 hours finding the right parts, clipping it all together, arranging the branches and then dancing round and round and round the thing to put the lights on! Anyway - here it is: Then today I have started with phase 1 of decorations. This photo is taken with my new favourite app for iPhone : instagram . I also have a bit of a thing for snowmen. Have been collecting them for a while, so here's a few of my favourites.

OK, so, here's the deal. I am going to a charity dinner on Friday. it's black tie & there are going to be lots fo fabulously dressed ladies. I am not going to buy another dress to only wear once but can't decide on the ones I have - so it's over to you! :) What do you think I should wear & how can I bling it up? I will apologise for the very dodgy photos, but have loads to be getting on with tonight and you should be able to get the general idea from the pics. Outfit #1 : Red dress from coast with embroidery detail. Outfit #2 : Purple dress from Per Una Outfit #3 : Black & White dress from New Look (Bargain - cost £3!!) Outfit #4 : Skirt from Warehouse - not sure what top to wear with it. What do you think?

After seeing Atul Kochhar on TV, I bought hubby his book Simple Indian: The Fresh Tastes of India's New Cuisine . It's excellent. We have made lots of the recipes and not one of them has disappointed. Some of the ingredients may need a bit of searching (or online shopping) but it's definitelty worth it. The recipes are easy to follow, the pictures are great and there are sample menus and ingredient descriptions. Last night I made Palok Diye Tikha Murghi Kalia from the book. Translated as Spicy Chicken Curry with Spinach. With it we had basmati rice & homemade chapatis. And it was gooood! The chapatis were delicious and easy to make - just chapati flour & water, mix to a dough, leave for 10 minutes, then roll out & dry fry. Mmmm. Just buy some chapati flour and follow the recipe on the packet. :)

I have a real issue with soggy bread. I can't touch it or look at it - let alone eat it. Makes me shudder just thinking about it... bleuch. This means I have never tried bread & butter pudding. I imagine it's much nicer than it sounds and isn't really just bread soaked in milk.....I hope! My husband really loves bread & butter pudding, so being the good wifey that I am, and in the spirit of trying new things I made it for pudding. Hubby is on the Weightwatchers plan, so I found this recipe and thought I'd give it a go. However, I'm a bit of a bugger for changing recipes to suit, so while my pudding is based on the weightwatchers recipe, I have made a few changes to create one 'normal' pudding with vanilla & nutmeg and 1 chocolate version with Baileys. As baby puddings this recipe is ideal for trying new combinations without having to make one huge one that may not taste right. Here's how I did it. Get  2 ramekins and cut 6 circles of w...

On the weekend I was asked to make a cupcake tower & cake pops for a friend's son's naming ceremony. The civil ceremony version of a Christening. So I made 50 each of chocolate fudge and vanilla cupcakes and cake pops, with a blue & white colour scheme. Although a little stressed (beacuse I left some of it til the last minute) I was really pleased with the way it turned out and had lots of compliments - which is always nice! Not many people in this part of the country (Swansea, South Wales) had come across cake pops, so it was very much a novelty and very well recieved. This was a first for me in a few ways (hence worthy of a blog post!). 1. My first naming ceremony/christening cupcake tower. 2. My first cake pops order. 3. My first chocolate cake pops. Cupcake Tower & Cake Pops Vanilla & Chocolate Fudge Cake Pops Close up of Cupcake Tower Close up of Cupcake Tower Top of Cupcake Tower with Personalised 'S' toppers.

This month over on the Beckicklesie blog , the Oui Chef Challenge theme is - Chocolate ! Wonderful! :) I bet there's a few things I can write about on this, so there's likely to be a few blog posts. My husband has told me that I am a snob. And I'm quite happy with that in some ways. I like to own nice things, (can't always afford to, but I'd like to!) I like to eat good food, drink nice wine....but I also LOVE a bargain. Chocolate, I think, is a luxurious product, and one that doesn't always come with a high price tag! I am a fan of chocolate, and am a bit of a sucker for packagaing, gimmicks, brand, marketing etc, so anything new or different I am more than happy to try out. Like the recent 'Screme Eggs' - Halloween themed Cadbury's Creme Egg, with a green 'yolk'. I read a book called The Chocolate Connoisseur: For Everyone with a Passion for Chocolate which discusses how chocolate is made, types of chocolate, even how to taste it. ...

Vlogging or Video Blogging means using a video as a blog post. It intrigues me. I am a big fan of social media, social networking, social marketing - whatever you want to call it - and really wish I had the time to really understand it. I love Twitter and Facebook, have finally set up a You Tube account. I'm on LinkedIn, goodreads.com, I have a digg and StumbleUpon account - but don't use them enough to really 'get it'. I'm going off on a tangent a little bit... Vlogging has been around for a while, but it's not something I've particuarly followed until recently. And I quite fancy having a go. There are a lot of people doing it, and I've done a bit of research looking at different styles, etc. I'd also like to do some quick videos for the web design company I work for. My problem is this - will people be interested in what I have to say? What do I talk about? In some ways I figure if people are reading my blog (and yes, I do have the odd visito...

In June of this year I recieved a phone call in work from a lady called Melanie who wanted me to do some work on a website for free. I admit that at first I was not overly impressed and didn't really want to get involved. We had already sponsored websites for Llys Nini, a local animal centre, Waunarlwydd RFC and The William King Educational Trust (of which my parents are patrons) and didn't feel we had time to get involved with another project. However, Mel explained about TREAT and what their aim was and told me a little bit about herself, so I had a chat with my boss and we decided that if the time we could spare was enough to help them achieve what they wanted, then we'd go from there. So we arranged a meeting with Mel and Mike of TREAT and myself and a designer from work and off we went for lunch. I spent a few hours with Mel and Mike and couldn't help but be impressed by Mel's drive and ambition. Despite being in a wheelchair following a motorbike accident ...

Today is Halloween - but as it falls on a Sunday we decided it would be best to celebrate it on a night when we didnt have work the next day. I've never been a huge fan of Halloween, didn't go Trick or Treat-ing as a child and don't like the fact that teenagers feel they can put on a mask, come to my house and expect sweets! Last year hubby & I decided we would host a little gathering (fancy dress a must) to celebrate Halloween as there were a few friends we hadn't seen for a while and, well, it was just a good excuse. Everyone really enjoyed, and it saw the start of the 'Chilli-Off' between hubby and one of our friends, Mr M. Anyway, here is a tiny selection of photos from this year's Halloween party. Hubby's (rather happy) Pumpkin My Vampire themed pumpkin Yes - I event dressed up the bears! Bella (as Bella Swan), Edward (as a Mummy) & Sookie (as a Witch) Matthew (my hubby) as Zombie Huw (long story) Me - as The Evil Dri...

The first prompt for the Oui Chef challenge is: Mum's Cooking! I am not a mum, but have borrowed and adpated many of my mum's recipes. I enjoy cooking, have no problem trying anything once but do have a tendency to just chuck stuff in a pan and hope for the best. I have always helped my mum out in the kitchen, whether measuring & mixing or washing up, but I never paid much attention to the actual recipes until I left for university and realised I had no idea what the 'secret ingredients' were for bolognaise, chilli, stew etc. One of the big things I learned from both my parents was to just try it out, to experiment. Once you have the basis of a curry or chilli - try adding other stuff and see what happens. Carrots maybe, a different type of bean, even a touch of cocoa powder. My dad was a big fan of getting out a pan and adding whatever was in the cupboard (hence my tendency above!) - baked beans, crisps, tuna - most of the time it was quite awful, but sometimes...

So last week hubby & I decided that we would try to be vegetarian for a week . No particular reason really, just to see if we could do it & to save a bit of cash. Hubby didn't manage the full week, but I'm not going to go on about it! I did 'cheat' a little - at about 10pm on the Saturday night (we started on the previous Sunday). 10 of us had gone for a Chinese to celebrate a friends birthday. I was determined to stay veggie, but they had all of about 6 vegetable options, 4 of them containing fish. So, it was (very logically) pointed out to me that technically I had managed 7 days, from 10pm the previous Saturday to 10pm this Saturday....so I tucked into Spare Ribs, Aromatic Crispy Duck, Fillet Steak cantonese style, King Prawns, Chicken in Black bean & Special Fried Rice - not all to myself, obviously! :) What did I learn from Vegetarian Week? 1. I 'could' be vegetarian, if I had to. I didn't miss meat - well, not until we went to The B...

So apparently life isn't challenging enough and I need to seek out challenges to keep me on my toes. So far I am in the middle of Lottie's Finishing School and have started a 101 Things in 1001 Days challenge , which fetaures a few mini challenges. I have just finished Vegetarian Week, am trying to read 52 books in 52 weeks, trying to not buy clothes for 3 months ..... um ..... I think that's it for now! Today I discovered beckicklesie.com and their Oui Chef Challenge . I love my food - so how could I not get involved? First challenge is due end of the month - watch this space.

Lottie's next challenge it to look at our current image, write down what image we'd like to have and how to get there. 1. Write down 3 words that describe your image now. Grey : because I tend to opt for dark, grey/black clothes. They are easy to match and I don't have to worry about standing out.  Quirky : this one I actually borrowed from a friend who once used it to describe my dress sense. I quite like it and want to keep the 'edge'. My sister, on the other hand, laughs because I try to match everything - but I put this down as another quirk. :) Casual: I love my jeans and denim skirts, and often get told I'm too casual for work. I suppose this could also be described as sloppy . Often I will dress up only to leave the 'glamour' behind but wearing my Ugg  boots or chucking a chunky cardigan on top, rather than some nice shoes and a blazer jacket.    2. Write down 3 words you would like to use to describe your image. Professional : for me ...

I first came across Cake Balls & Cake Pops via @cakeballsuk and @mollybakes on Twitter. This lead me to the cakey genius that is Bakerella ! A cake ball is cake that has been crumbed, mixed with buttercream (or alternative frosting) then covered in chocolate or candy. A cake pop is a cake ball on a stick! How can you not like them? I decided to have a go back in May, with some chocolate cake & dark chocolate coating. They looked ok [pic below], but had a very strange texture. But I hadn't tried a cake pop/ball myself and didn't really know what to expect. Then, in June, we went to London. I dragged my family to Selfriges where I knew I would be able to get hold of one of MollyBakes cake pops.  Here's my lovely hubby with his. He opened it before we left the shop so had to get a quick photo. They were lovely!  But it wasn't until last weekend that I attempted them myself. Mainly it was down to a lucky coincidence that meant I had 'spare' cake and candy ...

I have been wanting to try a Giant Cupcake since I first heard about them. But didn't want to fork out on a proper tin pan until I had at least given it a go. Then I found a silicon baking mould in The Works for £6 and couldn't resist! So I made my standard Vanilla sponge mix (175g flour/sugar & 3 eggs) and filled the base and made a 100g/2 egg mix for the top. And this is what happened: Apparently the mix is too light for the depth of the mould and I needed to add some plain flour (about half the quantity of self-raising) to the mixture, thanks to @icemaidencakes . So, here's my second attempt: I did lose a little bit of the top to the mould - because I forgot to grease the pan in my excitement - and the top was a little.....overdone in places. But it was nothing a knife and some buttercream wouldn't fix. Here is the final cupcake. And here it is in comparison to a standard cupcake: According to the box, the giant cupcake is 25 times the size of a normal cupcake, ...