Christmas Cooking, Celebrity Cook Boots and Nigella Lawson's Triple Cheese And Onion Strata Made Gluten Free

One of the reasons that I think I like Christmas so much is because of the food. I love my food and at Christmas time we seem to eat so much, and so many yummy things that don't appear on the menu at any other time. I'm not just talking about the Christmas dinner itself I'm talking about all those little treats that make Christmas, Christmas. For us it's the inevitable cheese board, an assortment of spicy and creamy dips, homemade sweets, cakes and pies, those overpriced party nibbles that you would normally baulk at and an array of meals, nibbles and bits that are either too complicated or too expensive to make that any other time of the year.

Yes a lot of things that we make and eat are traditional and have been part of my family Christmas for what seems like forever but over the years we've introduced a lot of new things that fall under that same celebratory banner. A lot of things are made up recipes and concoctions but we do get inspiration from elsewhere, mainly Christmas cookery programmers, and Christmas themed cookery books.

Both me and Mummy Lou have been pretty much glued to Good Food and Food Network since November, revelling in droolworthy, festive recipes from esteemed cooks such as Delia, Nigella, The Hairy Bikers and Nigel Slater. Yes they can over complicate things at times, but we've been so inspired by the delights on show, that we actually now have a couple of festive cookbooks in our rather extensive collection.

Delia Smith's Christmas is probably my mums favourite. First broadcast in the 1980's the TV series, was legendary for sparking the country's obsession with lattice pastry cutters, and fresh cranberries. Some of the recipes in this book are designed to impress for example the Chocolate Truffle Torte and of course her Creole Christmas Cake, but this book is a pretty traditional Christmas recipe book with the odd twist.

As much as I love St Delia my favourite festive recipe book has to be Nigella Christmas. I'm a huge Nigella fan at the best of times, but I have a particular fondness for her Christmas offerings. This book pulls nearly all of her Christmas specials pre Nigellisima. The book covers all of her Christmas dinner offerings from her turkey in brine, to her cranberry sauce and gingerbread stuffing but it also covers more general ideas for entertaining over the festive period as well as numerous ideas for edible gifts.

I know it's probably obvious from the rather dishevelled appearance of my copy but we've given this book a lot of love, and we've tried quite a few of the recipes inside. From her Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups, to her Chocolate Fruit Cake, and Christmas Puddini Bonbons, her Corn Chow Chow and her fabulous Chilli Jam, there really is a recipe in this book to cater for the spice fiend, or the person with the sweetest tooth on this planets.

Something I tried for the first time last year, was her Triple Cheese And Onion Strata. Cheese is one of my big weaknesses and any recipe that contains it, I'll probably like, but this one is just a little bit special. A cross between a savoury bread pudding and a  cheese souffle, the taste reminds me a little bit of that slightly addictive cheese and spring onion sandwich filling. I'm replicating this recipe almost to the letter here because I don't really think it can be improved. Obviously I'm using gluten free bread but more on that later x  The cheese and cream elements make it a little bit pricey to make but it a great way of using up stale and old bread.

Nigella Lawson's Triple Cheese And Onion Strata

225g Stale Bread - Baguette, Ciabatta, etc.

6 Spring Onions

1 Ball Mozzarella

50g Parmesan, Pecorino or Gran Padano

100g Cheddar Cheese

100ml Sour Cream

6 Eggs

1. Starting about 24 hours before you want to eat this line a large baking dish with slices of stale baguette or bread. Gluten free baguettes are quite hard to find so I'm using a mixture of dry bread buns, ciabatta and a couple of bagels. This dish is great for using up old and dry bread.

2. You can make this recipe by hand but in my opinion it's way easier with a food processor. First of all you want to flake your Parmesan. The original recipe contains Parmesan but any Italian hard cheese will do. If you're vegetarian like mine you can often find Pecorino or Grana Padano which are made with vegetarian rennet.

3.Then roughly chop your mozzarella and your cheddar and add them to the food processor, and give it a quick zap.

4. Next roughly chop your spring onions, and in a small bowl beat your eggs and add them to your food processor bowl.

5. Finally add the sour cream

and zap until you get a smooth, creamy, cheesy, egg sauce flecked with green

6. Then pour the sauce over the bread, pressing it down with a spoon as you go. Unlike what I've done here you might want to leave some edges of the bread exposed so they go crispy when baked.

Then cover the dish with cling film, and either refrigerate it or put it in a cool place and leave it overnight - I normally leave it for about 24 hours. This will allow the bread to soak up the cheesy egg sauce.

7. About an hour before you going to bake take it out of the fridge or cool place (I put mine in our unheated porch) to allow it to come to room temperature. 

8. Then bake for about 30 - 40 minutes in an over preheated to around 180 C until it's gold brown and puffed up.

I'm going to hold my hands up here and say that this one didn't go quite right. I think I used too much bread and being gluten free which absorbs liquid differently it ended up quite solid, but it's horses for courses. If you like it softer and more eggy and pudding like use the amount of bread in the recipe, if you want to make it firmer, drier and slice able use a bit more bread.

No matter it still tasted amazing eggs and cheesy with just a hint of onion. This would easily serve 6 people but it's okay for a day or so in the fridge and is equally nice served hot or cold. We just had it on its own but it would also be nice with a green salad and Nigella herself recommends it alongside some slices of crispy bacon, not for me obviously but I'm sure it would work.

This recipe has became one of mine and Mummy Lou's new festive favourites and it takes so little effort that it's a brilliant recipe for when you just can't be bothered or you don't have much time- just remember to start it the day before you want it. 

Nigella Christmas is filled with mouth watering recipes that are ideal for the festive season and beyond. I've already tried quite a few of the sweet and vegetarian recipes and their are plenty more that I still want to try, which is always the sign of a good recipe book.

Are you a fan of festive cook books and cookery programmes? Leave me a comment and let me know x                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Welcome To The LouLouLand Festive Giveaway Featuring Next, Make Up Revolution And More

I'm late again with this one, and for that I'm sorry. My intention was to have two Christmas giveaways, one at the start of December and one at the end. As per usual though with me nothing ever goes to plan, illness, parcels arriving too late, you name and over the last month it's probably happened. I thought about combining all of the goodies that I'd picked up and hosting just one huge giveaway but I decided against it and instead I'm going to host one giveaway now, and one earlier in the New Year. There are a couple of festive items in this one but the items can still be used all year round.

So what can you win? Well first of all there are a few Make Up Revolution items, 3 of which you saw in yesterdays post. First of all you can win The One Fluid Blush in Pink Dew - a gorgeous, fresh and pretty pale pink

You can also win 2 mono eyeshadows in Frozen and Insomnia x Frozen is a gorgeous metallic silver and Insomnia a lovely burgundy, plum.

So your cheeks and eyes are covered, and your lips will be too. You can also win two Make Up Revolution Amazing Sheer Lip Glosses - Baby Try - a bright pink and Must Be Strong, a pink, red.

Continuing with the lip theme you can also win an  Avon Colortrend Naughty Or Nice Lipstick in the shade High Society.

I already have this lipstick and I love it. You can read about it here but you get two shades in the one lipstick, a pale fuschia and a deep raspberry.

I'm also giving away a Maybelline Baby Lips SPF 20 Lip Balm in Mint Fresh. Just what you need for this time of year, with all that wind and the cold!

If you're my lucky winner you will also receive something else that you may have already seen. This lovely Next make up bag.In an iridescent nude, with a black trim and a gold star zip pull, it features the words "Don't Let Anyone Every Dull Your Sparkle" in a mixture of black and gold. It's isn't huge but it's the ideal size to throw in your handbag, and you can actually get quite a lot in it.

The final two items are the most festive themed ones, but don't worry I have these socks in the blue and I'll be wearing mine all year round,

and of course it wouldn't be Christmas without candles, but whilst they are quite Christmassy they're really about the fruit. You can win 2 Yankee votive / sampler candles that when you burn them properly will burn for around 15 hours each. The two fragrances that you can win are Mandarin Cranberry and Red Apple Wreath.

So one lucky winner will get all of these lovely goodies, and to enter all you need to do is fill in the Rafflecopter form below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This giveaway is open worldwide, and in order to give the post a chance to get back to normal to give as many of as possible a chance to enter, in it will close on the 11th January 2015.

Good Luck x and if you have any questions please leave me a comment x  

Make Up Revolution - The One Fluid Blusher In Pink Dew And Mono Eyeshadows In Frozen And Insomnia

Hey Everyone x I hope you've all had a safe and successful Panic Saturday :) Apart from a trip to the vets surgery this morning I stayed well clear of anything even resembling a shop. I'm still waiting for a couple of parcels but other than that my Christmas shopping is done. There is still so much to do though around the house, and I still have presents to wrap so I can't kick back and enjoy the festivities just yet. 

Although I have pretty much a chockablock schedule leading up to the big day I'm still going to be popping up with quite a few blog posts between now and then, including a recipe, a haul, my Beauty At Tesco advent calendar update, and maybe even a little giveaway. I'm going to start off though, with a review post.

In my last haul post I showed you quite a number of Make Up Revolution items, I promise I'll get round to reviewing them all in due course, but for starters I thought that I'd feature a review of 3 products that you can win in my up and coming giveaway.

If you'd asked my 5 years ago, what my make up thing was? the answer would probably have been eyeshadow or lipgloss, ask me now though, and there is no questions that my answer would be blusher. From being something that I used to be quite scared of, it's now something that I'm probably obsessed with. I'm a bit boring colour wise when it comes to blusher, but something that I do experiment with is texture. Despite having quite an oily complexion I don't just stick to powder, and loose mineral blushers I love liquids, gels and creams, and I love the different tones and finishes that they can produce.

Whilst cream blushers and rouges have always been popular, liquids seem to have been slower to catch on. Some of the liquid cheek colours like Benefits Benetint have been around for years and remain popular as do some of the high street dupes, but sit and think what other liquid blushers are out there and you'll probably be scratching your head.

Who am I kidding? You're probably a beauty junkie like me, so you'll love your products and innovations as much as I do, and unless you've been living under a rock you'll have heard of Daniel Sandler Watercolour Blushers.

These tiny little bottles are filled with an highly pigmented, almost water like formulation, that contains, silicone's, vitamin E and jojoba. I've never made any secret over the fact that I'm a huge fan. A little goes a ridiculously long way, and the wear time even on my greasy skin, is fantastic. I only own two Flush and Cherub, but if my finances would allow it I would happily shell out £14 a bottle and pick up some more of the shades.

I'd love to buy more and more, high end make up but like most of us I need to be sensible about what I buy and what I spend, that's why I love brands like Make Up Revolutions. I know some people aren't fans of drugstore versions and interpretations of high end products but for me you pays your money, you makes your choice.

 

A few months ago now Make Up Revolution introduced The One Fluid Blushers to their ever expanding range. Like the Daniel Sander Watercolours, The One Fluid Blushers come packaged in small 14.4g plastic bottles, and contain a ball bearing or shaker to mix the fluid. As well as intense pigments The One Fluid Blusher also contain silicone, vitamin E and jojoba - sound familiar?

There are currently 5 shades to choose from, ranging from peaches, pinks and nudes. I'm a bit of a pink girly so I went for the shade Pink Dew.

Pink Dew is a pale, almost blue toned, candy pink. The lighting played havoc with all of the photographs in this post so it's looking quite a bit warmer here than what it does in real life. It looks quite scary but when it blends down, the finish is actually quite sheer.

Like the packaging and the ingredients, the texture is almost identical to it's more expensive counterpart. It's very liquidy, and has a velvety, almost oily feel. All you do is apply a couple of drops to the back of your hand, then either using a brush or your fingers, you just blend it into your cheeks. It has quite a sheer coverage but you can repeat the application to get a deeper colour.

I'm not sure how well you can see the colour in these pictures but I hope it gives you some idea of the pretty, natural flush and glow that it gives.

I have to say that this product does compare pretty well to the Daniel Sandler Watercolour Blush. It is a very, very similar product in both texture, ingredients and packaging. I have to say though that I did find the texture of this one ever so slightly oilier and as result I didn't find it quite as long lasting. Because of the slightly oilier texture I also found that it was a bit more difficult to apply it on top of a powder, so if like me you have an oilier skin you might want to skip the powder and stick to either a matter or a satin finish foundation. For the price though I guess I can live without a bit of face powder on my cheeks. 

This product retails at a pretty fabulous £3 for a 14.4g bottle, compared to £14.50 for 15ml for the Daniel Sandler alternative. I still love my Daniel Sandler Waterblush and I'll continue to recommend it but this is a pretty good alternative, especially if you're on a budget.

The very eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed a tiny silver, purple flash on my eyelids, and it wouldn't be a Make Up Revolution haul if I didn't buy some eyeshadows. Unusually for me though I didn't go for a palette instead I went for a couple of their single mono eyeshadows - Frozen and Insomnia.

These two shades are perfect for this time of year. Frozen is a beautiful metallic silver shade, and Insomnia is a gorgeous wintry, shimmery burgundy, plum. Both of these powder shadows have an almost creamy feel, and the pigmentation as you can see is superb.

I've been wearing these two shades together with Frozen all over the lid, and Insomnia applied to the crease and in the outer corner. 

These pictures aren't the best (the lighting, the brows, the mascara smudges etc, etc.) and as a result they don't really do either of these shades justice. Insomnia is coming across as quite a cool toned purple here, where as in real life, it definitely warmer and more plum toned but hopefully they give you an idea of how easy these shadows are to blend. In my experience Make Up Revolutions shadows wear pretty well and these two singles, also wear well, with only a little bit of creasing and minimal fading.

I have to say I'm a fan, these shadows retail at just £1 each for 3.3g of shadow, and whether you're looking to duplicate an old favourite shade or try something new they're well worth picking up no matter what your budget.

All of the items in this post are available from either the Make Up Revolution website, or on the Superdrug website or in selected Superdrug stores. If you want to be in with a chance to win both of these eyeshadows, The One Fluid Blusher in Pink Dew and lots of other lovely things then you might want to read one of tomorrows posts ;) 

If you have any questions on any of the items in this post then please leave me a comment. I've been a bit rubbish with responding to comments lately but I still love reading what you have to say and I promise I will get better in 2015 x Thanks for reading xx

A Last Minute Gift Idea - The Emjoi MICRO Nail Electric Nail Polisher*

It really is make your mind up time now, with less than a week to go now to the big day, we need to start picking up those last minute gifts and checking those names off on out lists. If your still looking for a pressie for that awkward mum, gran, friend or sister then I might have the answer for you.

Whether you like your nails long or short, above all you want them to look healthy. Giving them the occasional file, and slathering them in moisturiser can make a real difference to their appearance but sometimes they need something a little bit extra. As much as I love them, I'm not talking about nail strengtheners, I'm talking about nail buffing.

Ill health, not using a base coat, diet and ageing can all play havoc with the surface of nails, leaving them dull, ridged and uneven. Like every other part of our face, and body a little bit of exfoliation can make a world of difference.  A rub over with a nail buffer can instantly leave the nails smoother and shinier, as well as increasing the circulation which can in turn help your nails to grow. You can pick up nail buffers for less than a pound pretty much anywhere but they don't last very long, and if your nails are really bad it can take a lot of effort to achieve that perfect finish. Recently though I was sent a gadget to take the time and effort out of buffing your nails.

Famous for their MICRO Pedi foot file, earlier this year Emjoi introduced their MICRO Nail Electric Nail Polisher.

This isn't the first battery operated or electrical nail polisher to hit the market but having tried a few in the past, in my opinion it's one of the best.

The slim pink unit comes boxed, and comes with two AA batteries, 4 rollers, a storage pouch for the heads, and full instructions.

The batteries slip into a locked compartment on the base, and the unit operates with a simple slider switch and the unit features a removable cap for safety and to keep your head clean.

The rollers are very easy to change and just slip on and off the head of the unit.

The unit comes with four rollers, two of each type. The first head that you have is the green MICRO Smooth Roller. This is a slightly rough, roller that is designed to remove ridges, and roughness on the surface of the nail. You use this roller for only a couple of seconds on each nail. This is the most abrasive of the two rollers and you only use this roller once every two weeks. This roller rotates around 1800 times a minute, can you imagine using a manual buffer that many times? You just couldn't do it by hand.

You also get two MICRO Shine Rollers. These rollers are white in colour, and have a smooth, almost rubbery feel. They are designed to add shine and gloss to the nails, and can be used as often as required.

I was going to just show you some basic before, and after photographs, but feeling inspired I've recorded a short video demonstrating just exactly how easy this is to use.

As you can see I didn't demonstrate this on my own nails. Instead I decided to give it a real test and try if on my beautiful, 84 year old Godmother. She has beautiful nails, but due to age and illness her nails are now quite ridged and dare I say it a little bit stained. She is a regular nail buffer so I was interested to see how this compared to the cheap manual buffers that she usually uses.

Before

After

Before 

After

After just one quick treatment, you really can see a difference. Her nails are a lot healthier looking, they're definitely pinker and they're definitely more shiny. Yes, there are still ridges there but with continued use I'm sure that the Emjoi MICRO Nail would make a significant difference to her nails.

Manual nail buffers have their place, but this gadget takes nail buffing to another level. It's quicker and easier than a manual buffer, and the results it leaves speak for themselves. As well as my Godmother, both me and Mummy Lou have also been using this for a little while now, and all of our nails were left feel very, very smooth and looking very glossy and shiny. After using this gadget,my own nails personally looked as though I was wearing a clear nail polish. If you can't wear nail polish for work or for school, then this tool is a good alternative and will give you shiny nails that will last for at least two weeks. If you're like me though and you do wear polish then the smooth and glossy finish, that the MICRO Nail produces makes your polish apply more evenly and gives it a smoother finish.

Are there any drawbacks? well not really, as long as you follow the instructions this gadget will benefit your nails and not damage them. If you press too hard the tool stops, you just need to make sure that you don't over use it.

If your nails are more ridged or your using it on your toenails then you may go through the rollers more quickly but you can buy refill packs of 4 rollers, 2 of each kind for around £12.99.

I think that this would make a great gift for anyone who cares about their hands and their nails, or even as a treat for yourself. The Emjoi MICRO Nail Electric Nail Polisher retails at £39.99 but it's currently on special offer at both Boots and Superdrug for £29.99. 

(*PR Sample)