FOOD: Family Food Fun - Italy (YB)

Inspired by our Japanese sushi making fun last weekend, we decided to have a fun foodie weekend every week, based on a different cuisine of the world. But something we could all make together, as a family.

This weekend, we decided to go for Italian. I'm not a big fan of pizza myself, but Paul and David love pizza, so we decided to go for that.

We cheated a little bit and bought ready made Napolina mini pizza bases, but we decided we might try again in the future from fresh dough.

For our Saturday dinner and Sunday dinner, we had pizza both times, this is what we made and what it looked like.

Well, yesterday (Saturday), I had tomato & basil sauce base, topped with sliced mozzarella. For my toppings, I chose smoked sausage, turkey ham, mushrooms, red peppers, jalapenos and red onion.

Ready to go in the oven

Cooked & ready to eat

David also had tomato & basil sauce base, topped with mozzarella. For his toppings, he chose red onion, turkey ham, pepperami, red pepper, jalapeno and olives.

Ready to go in the oven.

Fresh from the oven and ready to eat!

Paul also had tomato & basil sauce base, topped with mozzarella. For his toppings, he chose meat free balls, red onion, jalapenos, mushrooms, red onions, olives, red pepper and extra mozzarella. As you can see, he really overdid it with the toppings (oink!) and it ended up looking more like a triple burger than a pizza! Paul's pizza is vegetarian as he is a vegetarian.

Before cooking

After cooking

Today, I had reggae reggae jerk sauce base, topped with sliced mozzarella. For my toppings, I chose smoked sausage, turkey ham, mushrooms, jalapenos and red onion. The jerk sauce didn't work well as a base as it resulted in all the toppings sliding as it cooked :(

Before going in the oven

Jerk sauce was too runny and toppings slipped during cooking :(

David also had reggae reggae jerk sauce base, topped with sliced mozzarella. For his toppings, he chose yellow pepper, smoked sausage, pepperami, turkey hame, olives and jalapeno.

Prepared for cooking...

Ready to eat, but the toppings slipped :(

Paul also had a half reggae reggae jerk sauce base and a half tomato & basil sauce base, topped with sliced mozzarella. For his toppings, he chose meat free balls, red onions, jalapenos, yellow peppers, olives, mushrooms and extra mozzarella. Again, he went crazy with the toppings (oink! oink!) and it ended up looking like a giant burger!

Before cooking

Straight out of the oven

We had fun making our pizzas. And there's no better way of making sure you get the toppings you like best in the right amounts!

FUN & FROLICS: Competition Madness - Singing For Our Supper! (YB)

Well, if any of you seen the competition from Just Eat to sing for your supper, you may well have already seen our madness, but in case you didn't, I thought I'd share with you our video's that we made to enter each weeks competition.

The point was that you'd sing a song about food asking Just Eat to feed you, hence the title of the competition being "#SingForYourSupper" and if picked as a winner, you had a chance at winning a weekly takeaway voucher prize or one of the 3 grand prizes.

We entered each week, when it came to the final though, they only uploaded 2 out of our 4 videos and I'm not sure why as when I contacted them to ask about it on their Twitter account, they just ignored me :( Great customer service, NOT :( I was particularly annoyed as we'd spent ages on our 4th one in particularly and were very pleased with the outcome, so for it not be included in the videos to be judged for the final, was very disheartening :(

We only won once overall, and only an £8.88 voucher, yes it's a freebie, but some of the rubbish that won more was appalling. I did notice that they seemed to be quite short on entries a lot of the time though. They also seemed very sporadic announcing winners, and I never did see a complete list of winners. A lot of people don't like 'effort' competitions, so I guess their competition didn't really go as well as they had hoped for.

Anyway, to save our mad video making going to waste, I thought I'd share them here with you and give you all a laugh! Enjoy...

WEEK 1 ENTRY

WEEK 2 ENTRY

WEEK 3 ENTRY

WEEK 4 ENTRY

REVIEW: Yutaka Sushi Kit For 2 (YB)

I was sent a Yutaka Sushi Kit For 2 to review here on my blog...

The kit is actually intended for 2 people, but we decided to make it as a family and include our 11 year old son, David, as I'm quite a small eater anyway, so there was more than enough for all of us.

The kit included everything except the fillings - so it contained the nori, sushi rice, sushi vinegar, wasabi paste, soy sauce, ginger and of course, the sushi rolling mat.

We all enjoy sushi, so we were really looking forward to making it ourselves for the first time and it's really not as difficult as it seems!

We had to cook the sushi rice, then add the sushi vinegar and allow it to cool. This took around XX mins.

Next, we just had to make the sushi. We had to put the nori (seaweed) on the sushi rolling mat and then add a relatively thin layer of sushi rice onto it, leaving a centimetre or two at the top and bottom so there was space to seal it.

There were two sheets of nori, so me and David used one to make some together and Paul (my husband) used the other to make his as he is vegetarian anyway, so he had different fillings to us.

Me and David chose to have cucumber, sweet red pepper and prawns in ours. We added the fillings together. I did the rolling, however, and I didn't do too bad a job for my first ever sushi-making experience! Then we just had to cut the sushi roll into 8 pieces. It was really much quicker, easier and fun than we thought it would be.

Paul just had the cucumber and sweet pepper for fillings in his sushi roll, like myself and David, he thought it was nice and quick to make too.

We served them along with the wasabi and soy sauce. And also the ginger (which I actually can't stand!) which is intended to cleanse the palette between eating.

If you're a fan of sushi, or would like to try sushi, or simply enjoy trying new foods and making them as a couple or a family, you should definitely give this a go. It was a lot of fun and it was very satisfying to have made it myself instead of buying it in the supermarket.

RANT: Media: A Scourge (YB)

OK, as always a ranter I am, but this one really needed saying. I am so fed up of the media, be it newspapers or television and their ill portrayal of anything that actually matters in the world. Maybe, even worse still, is the people listen to it, get sucked in by it and then actually start to believe it!

When are people going to learn that the media only shows what is provocative to gain the best response from their readers/viewers and that they are not showing a broad spectrum of things as a whole.

One of the biggest culprits in my opinion are The Daily Express (a newspaper which has the audacity to call itself 'The World's Greatest Newspaper'), who are always spouting propaganda and spreading xenophobia. Some examples:

EXAMPLE 1:
Today, whilst perusing Facebook, I came across an article (here) from them about a man who has been unemployed for 20 years and is demanding the council create a bigger home for him and his 18 children at the cost of the taxpayer.

As soon as a story such as this is run, everyone starts having a go at everyone who claims benefits and casting them all with the same negative opinions. So basically, The Daily Express finds the most outrageous thing they can to publish as they know it will provoke the biggest negative response towards people claiming benefits and then everyone 'gets their guns out' for each and everyone who claims benefits, regardless of their individual circumstances. So people who have been working for many years and lose their job through no fault of their own and then claim jobseeker's allowance are then cast with the likes of this person. So too are disabled people who are genuinely unable to work and the list goes on.

Personally, I see a story like this and other than knowing it is just provocative crap, I think far better than giving them a big house and lots of benefits, would be to find a piece of land and a cheap home, stick them in it, give them a stack of seeds and say get planting! No more benefits, this is all you're getting, use it and survive or rot. They can grow their own stuff and live off that. That's the best way to deal with breeders in my opinion. Mine is a far more viable option than the mindless responses on their post on Facebook or on their website such as 'cut it off' or 'set fire to them' which are quite frankly mindless and childlish in my opinion. I do feel with a family of that size, they need to do something other than cater for their every whim, but silly answers like those are just ridiculous.

EXAMPLE 2:
This article (here), in my opinion, was again published solely to provoke rather than to supposedly question if the sentence was correct. This sort of thing happens around the UK regularly, but The Daily Express chose to publish a story where the perpertrator happened to be a black person, in my opinion, this was published with the sole intention of inciting race hate, something The Daily Express seem to do on a regular basis.

Basically, a white man (who suffered from aspergers) had said something (not sure what as the story seems to purposefully refrain from giving all of the facts) to the black man who had taken offence and punched the white man once. The white man fell and hit his head which resulted in his death.

The black man shouldn't have hit the white man, that goes without saying, but if you punched someone, you wouldn't expect them to die as a result. My point here, is not really about the outcome, so much as the choice of story they chose to run - there are more incidents such as this that occur in the UK, but they didn't choose to run a story where a white man punched a white man which resulted in death or where a white man punched a black man which resulted in his death. Because they like posting racist propaganda, they chose to run this story instead.

At the end of the day, this person took someone's life and they should be punished, and normally I am all for life-for-a-life, but I don't think this was an intentional murder - if I punched someone once, I would not expect them to die as a result, so it is manslaughter. If this person had intentionally aimed to kill the other person, I'd say a life sentence was't enough, I personally think life-for-a-life should be just that - if you willfully take a life (murder as opposed to manslaughter), then in return your life should be taken too. I'd have this opinion regardless of the race of the perpertrator. The person did not lie either, they took responsibility for their actions and pleaded guilty which should count for something.

The Daily Express never pick up on stories (deliberately, in my opinion) that portray racism from white people to black people in action, such as this horrific attack from 2 Scottish white men on a black man who has never claimed benefits and busks to earn a living which was published by The Daily Record in an article (here).

Anyone would think The Daily Express bosses are in the pockets of those who are high earners - those favoured by and including the current government (Conservatives) and also big corporations, hence the constant posts supposedly 'in favour' of the taxpayers, slandering absolutely everyone who claims benefits, regardless of circumstances or who is on a lower income.

That plus they must get nice sideline bonuses from the likes of the BNP, EDL and UKIP for all the racist propaganda and xenophobic views they seem to spread on a regular basis.

Isn't it about time people stopped being so single minded and realise that media publications printing crap like this are probably in the pockets of relevant companies and organisations and only print what they know will provoke the biggest reactions from people and help spread hate. Before people respond to their purposefully provocative posts with mindless insults, they should at least look up facts and see that the shit being spouted by the media in no way offers any sort of factual information which can be found by looking at an unbiased source instead.

Another on my list of shit-stirrers is Channel 4 - they love nothing more than to show programmes that will provoke the nastiest responses. Whenever they run a so-called 'documentary' - they find the worst of the worse people in the communities they are 'documenting' to portray on television - because it makes 'good viewing' - if they made a documentary that actually showed the majority of what each group is like, it would be dull, boring, average people who wouldn't make for interesting television.

EXAMPLE:
Benefits Street - Here's another fine example of a media outlet showing the worst of the worse to provoke a response.

So many people watched this programme and even the most unbiased person was coaxed into believing this was representative of everyone who claims benefits. Responses were very violent and threatening, with people wanting to burn, mutilate or otherwise harm everyone claiming benefits.

But this show is no more of any real value than the Jerry Springer show or the Jeremy Kyle show - 2 programmes whereby the most outrageous stories and the most outrageous people were allowed on because it made entertaining viewing. Let's face it, no self respecting person would want to drag their private business through the public like the type who go on these shows. And Benefits Street is no different. Channel 4 sought out the most outrageous benefit claimants they could possibly find and put them on telly because they knew that would be far more entertaining than putting a true representation of benefit claimants on TV. After all, would it make good viewing watching someone scrape together the pennies to put their electricity or gas back on or to buy a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk? Of course it wouldn't!

My next example of crap comes from the online media section, and this one falls a lot closer to home. It was an online reality series on Vimeo called 'This Is Liverpool' - quite frankly, this could be made by a bunch of foreigners who have never visited Liverpool before in their lives and it has caused quite a stir amongst us Liverpudlians and this is a very poor portrayal of even the dregs of Liverpool (or anywhere else in society for that matter!).

Our city has had its ups and its downs. We are not the only city to have ever had problems, but we've come a long way from that now and it's crap like this series that drag it straight back down into the dumps.

Liverpool was crowned 'Capital Of Culture' back in 2008, quite a prestigious title for our fair city. This year, we were placed 3rd in the top 10 cities according to the highly respected Rough Guides. Yet what this video will show you is enough to scare off even the most open-minded person from visiting this city. To be honest, it doesn't even bare mentioning. But I feel it is important for people to realise this is not what Liverpool is like at all.

The people of Liverpool are mostly very approachable and friendly. I guess scousers as we are known, are quite loud (but not in an abrasive manner) and that might be a shock to people from certain places, but they soon realise that everyone is friendly and approachable. I'm actually not very scouser-like despite being born here and living here, I'm quite quiet (not that you'd know that from my ranting!), and there are other people like me in Liverpool as well, but for the best part, scousers are quite chatty and outgoing.

Of course, I wouldn't claim all Liverpudlians are saints, just like in every other part of the country, you get some good-for-nothing types, but no more here than anywhere else. It's certainly not something you encounter all over the place.

People have the attitude like we are all scallys who take drugs, drink too much and steal cars and you couldn't be more far from the truth. Like I said, you get some trash here, but no worse than anywhere else. In fact, in the most recently published crime statistics, Liverpool where nowhere to be seen in the list of worst offenders! So to all those who claim other wise, let factual statistics prove you wrong! In fact, it was actually our 'beloved' capital London that came out worst through and through!

Anyway, I've come to the end of my rant, else I'd be here forever, I just wanted to vent about how annoying I find the media. I wish people would start to think for themselves instead of paying attention to the scourge that is modern day media and realise they only show you what makes for good entertainment. I'd love to hear other people's constructive thoughts on the matter - please, if you only have a mindless comment, don't bother as I don't want to hear it!

REVIEW & COMPETITION: MusicAdWorld (YB)

I was recently asked to review some original music advertising material from MusicAdWorld.co.uk.

If you are as big a fan of music as I am, you will be proud to show off your musical taste and I really love having original advertising from my some of my favourite singers/bands to display on my walls. Just to emphasise, their items are brand new and original pieces of advertising material.

If you are confused as to what they are, they are basically matted posters/prints in varying sizes, that were used as the original advertising for new releases from the artists.

I was allowed to review 2 posters of my choice - I picked these:

T-Rex - Electric Warrior (see on website)

Bob Marley - One Love: The Very Best Of (see on website)

The best thing about these is they come ready mounted in black or white mounts ready for you to frame and the prices are fantastic too. Prices seem to range from £4.99 and postage is a very reasonable £2.25 within the UK + 75p extra for each additional item. They also ship items around the rest of the world too and again, the postage charges are very reasonable. Just to point out, mine were very well packaged and arrived safely, with no damage whatsoever.

They have a HUGE selection of posters to choose from, from many different artists over many generations - whilst I didn't choose to get it, I was surprised to also see one available for Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons (another of my favourites), as I didn't think they would have any, so I was very, very impressed.

Their range is so varied, that I'm sure you might even find the most obscure artist in there somewhere!

MusicAdWorld have kindly given me a 15% off discount code for my readers to use to purchase some advertising material from them - to take advantage of this offer, visit the MusicAdWorld.co.uk website, add your item(s) to your basket and then enter the code MYRBLURB during checkout.

If you follow @MusicAdWorld on Twitter, they will be running at least 3 competitions every week for your chance to win some fab advertising material for FREE!

If that's not enough, they also gave me another poster to give away to one lucky reader of my blog. I'm a fan of David Bowie, so I hoped some of you would be too and as such I picked out this one for the giveaway:

David Bowie - The Singles Collection (see on website)

You can enter this competition by entering using the Rafflecopter app below.

PLEASE NOTE: The top SIX tasks in the Rafflecopter app are COMPULSORY - if you do not complete all of them, you will not be included in the draw! There are more OPTIONAL entries available for which you can gain additional entries.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

PLEASE NOTE: The top SIX tasks in the Rafflecopter app are COMPULSORY - if you do not complete all of them, you will not be included in the draw! There are more OPTIONAL entries available for which you can gain additional entries.