Cheese and wine pairings

Now I love cheese and wine pairings and the lovely people at Aldi were kind enough to send me these to review. They have paired up with Master of Wine Sarah Jane Evans to create some cheese and wine combos. 

Now as mentioned I unfortunately am on a pretty restricted diet so I had to ensure the torture of watching my other half tuck in! I did have a tiny mouthful, all in the name of research of course ;) 

The Wensleydale with cranberries was delightful, one of my favourite cheeses and beautifully crumbly and went well with the richness of the Fletchers Ruby Port. Perfect for the Christmas table! 

My other half enjoyed the garlic and herb cheddar and said that the crisp Chardonnay was a good match. I thought it would be nice used to stuff a chicken breast before wrapping in pancetta. 

They are in store now in time for Christmas. 

Enjoy! 

First Birthday Chocolates

I was recently contacted by the PR company of a boutique chocolate club. I only like to give reviews of products I would potentially buy and chocolate is definitely one of them! Plus as it is my blog's first birthday I thought it would make a good present!

The Cocoa Boutique is a chocolate club who send you handmade chocolates through the post. I love the idea of receiving a surprise, handpicked selection of chocolates.

The chocolate are made by various people, including master chocolatiers.

The box and packaging was beautiful...







As were the chocolates...




I tries really hard to savour the chocolates, but after one sitting there aren't many left. They were too good! My favourite was made by Barry Colenso and was a Cocoa Dusted Dark Chocolate Salted Caramel. The balance of sweet and salt was just perfect.

Personally I wasn't keen on the ones with alcohol in but I'm sure some people would love them.

I think this would make a great, unusual gift for a chocolate loving friend.

Hotel Chocolat Goodies

So the lovely people at Hotel Chocolat sent me some goodies from their Christmas selection and I promised to write a review so here goes.

The first one was a beautiful box of Turkish delight. It was bigger than I expected it to be and in a wooden presentation box so perfect for presents. I'm not the biggest fan of Turkish delight but this had a good texture, not too gelatinous and the flavour wasn't over powering. They tell me it's handmade in Turkey so maybe that's why it's so yummy! Here is a picture of the Turkish Delight and also a link to their website.







The second one was some tiddly caramel penguins. These little cuties would make a perfect sticking filler or (as I am going to do) a filling for crackers if you take them all out of the box and put one in each of my homemade crackers, much better than a set of screwdrivers in my opinion! And a great substitute for any friends and family who now want a baby penguin for Christmas after watching Frozen Planet.

Again here are some piccies and a link to the product.










In case you want to have a look here are all of their Christmas chocolates and here are their stocking fillers Enjoy!