Tag Archives: food

Nut Nutritional Comparison

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There are a lot of different nuts, and while they all have their benefits, their nutritional values and characteristics vary quite a lot. To make it a little easier to decide which nuts might be right for you, I’ve made this little table:

Nutrition per 100g

Nuts: Almonds Brazil nuts Cashews Peanuts
Calories: 575 kcal 655 kcal 574 kcal 567 kcal
Proteins: 21 g 14 g 15 g 26 g
Fat: 50 g 66 g 46 g 49 g
Saturated fat: 4 g 15 g 13 g 7 g
Dietary fiber: 12 g 8 g 3 g 9 g

I’m going to add more nuts and values to this table 🙂

La Gelatiera, The Bree Louise and El Parador.

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Yesterday after work, I met up with my lovely Katie at our favourite ice cream place: La Gelatiera in Soho. After some amazing basil and chili, strawberry yoghurt and our favourite the chocolate sorbet, we got a bus home. Or at least that was the idea at the time. But at Euston Station we decided to get off and find The Bree Louise; a pub we had heard so much good about. And we were not disappointed! Just west of Euston Station lay the pretty little pub. Even though it was very busy with loads of people thronging outside, it was still very friendly and service was fast. The beer selection resembled more that of a beer festival than just a pub, outperforming even the nearby Euston Tap on real ales.

The first beer I tried was the “safe bet” of a Tring – Side Pocket For A Toad. It was in a very good condition and tasted as fresh as when we got it straight from the brewery. I would even say that it was better than it’s been when we’ve come across it at some beer festivals.

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A very well presented version of the lovely Tring beer – Side Pocket For A Toad. 5/5

With such a wide selection of ales, I wanted to try something new. I went for the Third Switch from ABC Brewery. It was a good choice and just what I was looking for.

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A very dark beer with almost treacly coffee without being sickly. 5/5.

Katie had a very refreshing sweet cider from Hecks. We considered staying for tea, but felt adventurous, so we went for a walk down a road we’d rarely gone. We ended up on Eversholt Street where we found El Parador (the hostel) that despite its name was an interesting looking tapas restaurant.

We ordered five dishes, and while that was quite a lot of food, I wouldn’t have wanted to have gone without any of them.

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The pork belly was one of best examples of the dish I’ve had. It was extremely tender and masterfully spiced with just the right herbs.

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This octopus’ arm was amazing. It was soft and fresh. Not chewy like you might expect, but very tender and cooked to perfection.

We also had chicken livers that were like they should be, but how I would have no idea how to cook them; they were soft and creamy inside, without seeming too raw.

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Here’s a picture of the whole table, though the bacalao (salt cod) hadn’t arrived yet.

All in all this was simply some of the best food I’ve ever had in this friendly and popular little restaurant.

Food, oh glorious food.

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It might not have been obvious from my posts so far, but food is very important to me. Even as I child, I remember how one of the most exciting things when traveling was to try the food. Here is a blog post to show some of the culinary adventures of this year.

Dave and Laura's Wedding Buffet

Dave and Laura's Wedding Buffet

The London Burger at The Centre Page in The City (of London)

The London Burger at The Centre Page in The City (of London)

Pizza Emmigrante from La Forchetta in Islington

Pizza Emmigrante from La Forchetta in Islington. Notice how it looks just like the Italian flag.

Amazing sausage and mash from The Alma.

Amazing sausage and mash from The Alma when we were there for their beer festival.

The Sharing Starter Platter at The Alma.

The Sharing Starter Platter at The Alma when we can back for the beer festival the day after.

Amazing window in a food shop in Boulogne.

Amazing window in a food shop in Boulogne-sur-Mer. We stopped by and admired it several times over the weekend we were there.

Katie's tasty salad.

Katie "only had a salad" for lunch on our last day in Boulogne. It was quite amazing with herring, salmon and lots more.

Moulles Frites Creme Saumon

I had this pile of Moulles Frites Creme Saumon. There was quite a lot of salmon and in the end I couldn't finish the mussels, having hardly touched the chips.

Tiny Crab from my moulles.

This cute, tiny, little Crab was hiding in my moulles, and I very nearly ate it.

Food 2012

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The title says it all. This post is dedicated to food. Like the beer one, it’s going to be mostly photos and maybe a little bit of description with each one.

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First photo is of the lasagne I had today in the SCE canteen. Very well done by The Good Eating Company.

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More Italian with the amazing pizza I had for dinner tonight. It's from La Forchetta by Islington Green Gardens. A great find where we will most likely be back!

Sandwich from the good old sandwich machine at Jagex

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How I miss the sandwich machine that was installed for a while back in the Jagex days. Sad when they took it away. As you can see from my early blogs, I made the most of it while it was there, and it was a surprise my business alone wasn’t enough to ensure that it kept going. Maybe the problem was that I found their weakness and that they were losing money on my orders. I’ve found a couple of photos of the monsters, so I thought I’d bring back the memories.

Sandwich 2009-11-12

Sandwich of 12th November 2009

This is one of the earliest sandwich adventures and the list of ingredients can be found listed in my first sandwich blog post. It was very tasty and one of the meatier ones. Who needs protein powder when you can simply eat all the different kinds of protein all in one sandwich? As you can read on the blog post, I didn’t make do with the sandwich, but had a roll as well. That way I could have all the seafood proteins too. Tasty proteins…

Sandwich 2009-11-17

Sandwich of 17th November 2009

This one came a few days later, after a bit more experimentation. Though it still looks quite stuffed, it actually only contains three kinds of meat as opposed to four in the previous. Instead it has two ingredients that would quickly become regulars throughout the “sandwich era”: Stilton and Branston pickle. Raw red onion joined the fun to add an extra sharp kick.

Banana Cake

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Yesterday, we noticed that one of our two bananas was almost black, and Katie said “We should probably eat that banana today”. Casually I replied “It looks like it would be good for a banana cake”, to which Katie replied “Are you going to make a banana cake?”. This first seemed like a joke to me, as I’ve (practically) never baked a cake in my life, but Katie found a recipe in her big cake book, and it didn’t seem that hard (and I had half an hour before football), so I thought “Why not?!” 🙂 And it was quite easy. Managed to pop it in the oven just before leaving for football, and when I came back I was greeted with the lovely smell of banana cake 🙂 As we didn’t prepare for this we didn’t have all the exact ingredients, so it became our own, and possible much better, recipe. Therefore I’ve posted it below so others can share the joy of cake. First, however, a picture of the cake 🙂

Banana Cake

Banana Cake

Ingredients:

  • 90 ml olive oil
  • 250 g plain white flour
  • 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 170 g muscovado sugar
  • 30 g vanilla flavoured pure whey protein (instead of extra sugar and vanilla)
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 ripe bananas
  • 125 ml yoghurt
  • a small handful of chocolate chips (we used little dark, milk and white buttons)
  1. Preheat oven to 180°C.
  2. Sift the flour and baking powder together.
  3. Stir in the sugar and protein powder.
  4. Mash bananas, eggs, yoghurt and oil together.
  5. Combine the dry and mushy ingredients together until an even mixture.
  6. Spoon into a greased and lined 1 litre loaf tin.
  7. Bake for 1 hour or until nice and golden in the preheated oven.
  8. Cool it for 15 minutes and then eat it all! 🙂

Bruges – the loot

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A great weekend in Bruges came to an end yesterday. It was very hard to leave, but at least we didn’t leave empty handed. Below is a photo of the loot!

Loot from Bruges

I really recommend Bruge as a holiday destination to everyone. There’s lots to see and do, and definitely plenty to drink and eat, and not just chocolate! Saturday night we went to a very nice restaurant where we had moules frites. For starters we had some very tasty, juicy snails and a lovely creamy fish soup. Here’s a couple of photos just to show that it wasn’t all about the beer and chocolate (or food). Bruges is full of amazing historical buildings and the canals give it an extra cosy atmosphere.

A house at night by the canal

The bell tower

The bell tower - famous from the film "In Bruges" (and through hundreds of years of history)

La Margherita and glow worms

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Today we finally managed to get organised enough to book a table at La Margherita. It’s a very nice Italian restaurant on Bridge Street. It’s always looked interesting and tempting but also rather busy, so we were surprised to find it almost quiet when we arrived. It also turned out that booking the table probably wasn’t necessary even if it had been more busy as there are several more tables in two first floor areas. The food was tasty and we had a fruity fresh Pinot Grigio Blush. We both had risotto, but they were rather different. Mine was with sea food while Katie’s was with mushrooms. We aimed for something that wasn’t too heavy because we wanted to make sure we’d have room for pudding. The photos below show how that was a very good idea 🙂


After dinner we realised we’d missed our bus to the glow worm location (an abandoned chalk pit in Cherry Hinton), so we ended up walking almost all the way there. That wasn’t necessary a bad thing because the later we’d get there, the greater chance of seeing some glow worms. This might have been why we no more than arrived before we saw the first one. This was the second time I’ve gone looking for these little fellows, and it’s still hard to believe when you spot them. They really look like small, slightly green LEDs that have been installed in the grass. It’s a rather amazing phenomenon and I recommend anyone to try it at least once. Our trip ended up being a short one as it started raining more and more heavily, but we still managed to find 7 happily glowing worms (they’re not actually worms, but larvae of beetles).

Berries

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Just to following up on my previous post, we didn’t see an elk on our walk. However, we found 3 kg of berries (that’s about 6.6 lb). This was mostly blueberries and raspberries with some wild strawberries as well. See the photo 🙂

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Sweden part 2

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Here is more from our holiday in Sweden. Since my 20 MB of internet seems to be lasting well there’ll be some photos too 🙂

The first photo documents something that is very important on any holiday we go on (and our everyday life): food. This is the famous smörgÃ¥sbord with schøøødbullarrr, lots of herring, blood sausage (like black pudding, but with different herbs and spices) and more. This goes with lots of light Swedish beer and fruity ciders. Of course we’ve also had lots of pike, even though the fishing since the first day has been fruitless.

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Another thing that dominates our holiday and Sweden in general, is the wildlife. My sister and her husband are enthusiastic birders, and the species list has just reached 71. This includes exotic and exciting birds like cranes, osprey and a woodcock. But it’s not limited to birds as we’ve also seen hares, foxes, deer and a chick-hunting mink (that really shouldn’t be here). And we’ve seen paw prints from a lynx, which is probably as close as we’ll get to seeing one … but we still haven’t seen an elk (moose for the Americans), and if that doesn’t change it would be the first elk-less Sweden holiday of the family, which could possibly be attributed to the size (and audio volume) of the kids 😉 Now we’re off for a walk up a mountain, so maybe we’ll be lucky…

I’ll leave you here with a photo of a giant Vespa wasp that came through our door this morning. It’s about 5 cm long or about 10 times as big as a normal wasp or “scary big”. And the noise it made was that of an approaching speedboat.

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