........in Tintagel, Cornwall

Tintagel is a tiny town on the coast of Cornwall and is supposedly the seat of King Arthur's Castle. Unfortunately we arrived too late to make it to the Castle and back (for someone so tall, I walk surprisingly slowly!!) but it looks amazing!

We decided that we would stay and potter around the village as rumour had it that there was a lovely fudge shop and oh my was there ever! It's called Granny Wobbly's Fudge Pantry and they have all kinds of beautiful, sugary flavours. If you time it right, you can also see the fudge being made and they also have very yummy testers:

As a simple country girl I stuck to plain old vanilla and it is the most gorgeous creamy, treacly fudge I've ever eaten. Unfortunately for me they also deliver slices of gorgeousness by post!!!

One of the best presents I received last year, was a 12 month membership to the National Trust and I know that we used the cost of the membership within about a month of having it. One of my favourite things about it is being able to explore places that I either wouldn't normally think about or might think is too pricey. A good example of this is the Old Post Office in Tintagel. It's a 14th Century Yeoman's farmhouse with a very wibbly roof:

They have the cutest little cottage garden at the rear of the property where I spotted these real unusual flowers that look like they are made of linen:

If ever you are in the area, I would say that Tintagel is well worth a visit if only for the fudge alone!

Our favourite hidden eating spots in London

There are many restaurants serving traditional English cuisine in London. In fact, English cuisine is a mix of various national cuisines. That is why it is absolutely normal to try Turkish, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Indian, Greek cuisine in London. As for me, the most reasonable prices can be found in Arab cafes and bars.

In general, you can find interesting places to eat in any area of ​​London. Due to the fact that I’m still a student, we ate mainly in the areas near the student living London. So let’s start with the most inexpensive hidden eating spots in London.

There are many decent cafes scattered across London such as EAT, Pizza Hut and Pret-A-Manger. I can safely advise them in terms of price. If you don’t mind Asian cuisine and are not afraid of food experiments, go to Soho where you can find a range of inexpensive restaurants including Thai and Chinese. As for Chinese cuisine, I advise Young Cheng in Soho. It has a simple scheme to attract customers: the buffet is located at the entrance so that you can see from the street what you get for the quoted price. You can take rice with seafood, shrimps and various vegetables. So if you want to have a square meal, come here or visit one of the neighboring Chinese bars with a similar system.

Another branch is Indian cuisine. We often go to Chambeli restaurant (close to Holborn tube station). As a result, I would call this taste the “taste of homemade food”. The food is very spicy because of sauces and spices, but quite tasty. So all in all I can recommend this restaurant to visit.

Of course, London is full of Italian restaurants and cafes. We have been in many of them. The most common is the Strada. The quality of food is quite decent, the prices are quite affordable. We had a chance to dine at Strada right next to the City Hall. We can also advise Ciao Bella near Russell Square. It's very popular mostly among local residents.

Do you still think that you won’t be able to find some interesting places to eat in London? I hope that our personal overview of hidden eating spots has changed your opinion about London as the most expensive city in the world!

Adventures of an English Mum in........ Padstow, Cornwall

I like to think that I'm a well travelled kind of gal but then when I realise that I've never even been to Cornwall it makes me laugh at myself and think, maybe not! We're very lucky that the Man's family have a caravan in the lovely village of Coombe Martin in Devon, so on the last bank holiday when we were there, we decided to day trip to Cornwall so that I could see what I'd been missing out on.......oh my goodness, it was so lovely. How I've never been there is beyond me!

First stop on our list was the very lovely Padstow. Driving down from the top of the hill and passing all of the regular houses it just looks like another seaside town but when you come down towards the hair pin bend, you start to get a bit more of the flavour of the village. We parked in a rather scary car park right alongside the harbour where you could see right across the beach and down through the Estuary, toward the sea:

I love being beside the sea, I think it's a throwback to living next to the sea when I was growing up. There's just something so calming about it and it seems to put things into perspective for me, probably the vastness of it making me feel smaller and putting my worries into insignificance! 

Anyways I also love to sit and watch how the other half live, some lovely boats to sit and dream about going on for an adventure. It always makes me wonder at the stories of the boat owners. Where have these people travelled from and what is their story? One lovely boat was all the way from America, not sure I'm brave enough for that sailing adventure!

Obviously this is also one of the best places for people watching and munching on amazing fish & chips. I wonder why they always taste so much better by the sea? Yum!

We happened to be in Padstow on Mayday weekend and they had one of the coolest maypoles I think I've ever seen. It was just so colourful and vibrant and my photo really doesn't do it any justice:

I think one of my favourite things about Padstow was meandering around all of the little crooked streets and passages in the sunshine, looking at shops with very beautiful clothes, pottering in many lovely art galleries, glimpsing the sea every so often and oh my goodness the food. I very stupidly missed out on getting a traditional Cornish pasty but I made up for it at Stein's Patisserie. I was totally drawn in by the window display:

As well as these HUGE meringues (which we managed to split between four of us) they also sold the best tasting scones I've ever eaten outside of The Ritz! I may have also consumed a couple of very dainty macarons and cornish clotted ice cream! Yes, I did come back from the day about 5lb heavier as we also bought some fudge to take home with us!!

Padstow was such a lovely vibrant place but with a very family feel. The Adventures of an English Mum family will definitely be back for a return visit!

3D Chocolate Tree

So y'all know that I'm a big fan of companies emailing me to ask if I want to try out their products but I'm an even bigger fan when those products potentially involve chocolate or cake!! When the lovely folk from www.meincupcake.de gave me free pick from their website, I was in my element!!

I would suggest that the only downside (if I had to find one) for this review would be that the website is ever so slightly clunky and that on some of the products there wasn't a size, for instance, on one of the rolling pins which makes it difficult to know if it's suitable for your needs or not. Some of the descriptions could also be slightly more detailed as I couldn't decide if the item I ordered came with a stand or not so ordered a second one unnecessarily.

That said there was a selection of choice and it took me ages to decide on which items I might like. As it was ever so slightly different, I chose a 3D tree mould which you can use for chocolate or biscuits (or both). The finished product looked amazing....at least in my opinion :)

The mould is a pretty straightforward piece of kit:

I'm pretty sure this is still one of my favourite things to do even as an adult:

At this point it would've been useful to have a proper chocolate thermometer so that the chocolate could've been tempered instead of us trying to guess at the right temperature.....but that's my lack or organisation rather than a fault of the company. It would've also been less messy to have a proper funnel for the chocolate but it worked ok as The Man is quite talented and obviously you can eat the mess anyway:

Once this had chilled then started the fun job of construction. Again this was slightly messier than it needed to be but only because we hadn't tempered the chocolate as above:

I have to say that I think this is where the product came into its own. There was no problem at all getting the chocolate out of the moulds, which I was actually expecting to be really tricky, and each piece had its own tiny number so that you didn't have to figure out the size of each piece and where it needed to go. 

I really like that this product is ever so slightly different and a bit quirky, I think that we'll be using this to impress all of our guests for the next year at least. I'm very much looking forward to trying the biscuit tree next!!

As stated this product was sent to me by the lovely folk at www.meincupcake.de I chose the product from a lovely selection of goods on the website and all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Silent Sunday