SPORT: World Cup 2014 (YB)

Well, with the impending World Cup 2014 in Brazil this year, I just had to do a blog post about it. I'm a MASSIVE football fan and it'd be a sacrilege for me not to!

I'm a lifelong Liverpool FC fan, but in the World Cup, I am all in for Brazil - yes, I am from England, but let's face it, they're a pretty rubbish team and I much prefer the skill and flare of the Brazilian players, so made an informed decision that I wished to support Brazil.

It was my Uncle's fault I got into football. I grew up living with my Mum, my Uncle and my Grandma. My Mum and Grandma had no interest in football (though my Mum calls herself an Everton supporter - "BOOOOO"!), but David (my Uncle) is a big Liverpool FC fan too and always watched the matches on telly and I watched with him. I used to play football with him too, I really enjoyed the sport, I was a bit of a tomboy as a little girl. At about 11 years old, I outgrew my tomboy stage and became very feminine, but my love of football never went away. I still loved to watch football and play football, including playing for the girls team at school. It was something I was very enthusiastic about and still am.

My son, David, is also a Liverpool FC fan, but he supports England in the World Cup (well, someone has to, I suppose!). Hubby, Paul, isn't much of a footy fan (much to my dismay). Paul and David have been to a couple of Liverpool matches though, thanks to a lovely friend on Twitter giving me some tickets she won and on a separate occasion was thanks to my comping hobby and I won some tickets myself. Sadly, I've never been to a Liverpool match myself :( I know it's very unlikely I'll ever get to see a Brazil match either :( David might one day get to go to an England match though. He'd have loved to have been a mascot for Liverpool or England, but he's 11½ now and at the absolute maximum, the cut-off age for mascots seems to be 12 years old. I should have discovered competitions to be a mascot sooner than in the last year (I've only been comping for 3½ years overall though).

Anyway, I thought I'd compile my own World Cup 2014 dream team and share it with you:

And I also will be playing lots of fantasy World Cup football, so I'll post my league details here, and I hope to see some of you come and join me and see who wins :) I'm also going to post up some links to World Cup related competitions and other fun stuff too...

Win £300 Cash - Peachy's World Cup Predictor
Win £500 Cash - Totesport's World Cup Predictor
Win £10,000 Cash - Football Fanager Fantasy World Cup (join my league: FB Twitter MRB)
Win £1,000 Bet - Bet McLean  World Cup Predictor
Win £1,000 Bet - Betfred World Cup Predictor
Win Various Prizes - Bet Vernon
Win £100 Cash - Bets Of Mates
Win £40,000 Cash - Sun Brazil Dream Team (join my league: ID - 8204770 PASSWORD - Blurby)
Various Prizes - RedSpottedHanky (join my league: ID - FB, Twitter & MRB PASSWORD - Blurb2014)
Win 1/50 Speaker Pillows - The Bedding Company
Win Ice-World Watch - Ice-Watch

Collect your FIFA World Cup Brasil 2014 Stickers - Panini/FIFA (join my collector's team: ID - 333003 PASSWORD - AlienNation)

Who are you supporting in the World Cup and why do you support them? Would love to hear from other football fans, male and female :)

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COMPING: Win A Trip For Two To Vegas (YB)

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Entry is quick and easy and involves a quick selfie entry via Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.

Enter now: Win A Vegas Holiday - be quick, it ends on 1st June 2014!

FOOD: Family Food Fun - Caribbean (YB)

Our family food this week comes as a taste of the Caribbean.

We decided to make a delicious brown chicken stew together, we all shared preparing and cooking duties.

Not knowing how to make it, we followed a recipe from the UKTV website.

We had to coat chicken fillets (or in Paul's case chicken-style pieces) in a mix of lemon juice, salt, black pepper, all-purpose seasoning and chicken seasoning, rub it in and leave it in the fridge for 30 minutes or more. Nice and easy really, David did that bit all by himself.

Marinated chicken fillets

Marinated chicken-style pieces

After that, we had to heat half pans of oil until they were really hot and deep fry the chicken fillets (and the chicken-style pieces separately) until browned. That bit was something David couldn't participate in and something I let Paul do as I always seem to manage to get burnt by hot oil, not least of all from spits of oil getting in my eye - ouch!

Then we had to remove them from the pan and tip away all but about 2 tablespoons of oil.

We had to chop spring onions, onions, scotch bonnet peppers, red peppers, green peppers and garlic - David and Paul did the chopping - Paul chopped ours and David chopped Paul's, just to be confusing ;)

Then we had to gently fry all of those in the remaining oil for a few seconds. Then we returned the chicken to the pan along with the remaining marinade from earlier (that which wasn't stuck on as coating to the chicken). We added water and butter then brought it to the boil, then lowered it to simmer and covered it to allow it to thicken into a more gravy like substance. We cooked some basmati rice to serve it with. It was very, very, very nice, we all enjoyed it and will definitely be making it again in the future.

Our finished brown chicken stew

Paul's finished vegetarian brown chicken-style stew

FOOD: Family Food Fun - Mexican - Cinco De Mayo (YB)

Well, in the spirit of our newly found family food fun days, how could we not get involved in Cinco De Mayo with our very own Mexican feast!

We didn't go for anything too extravagant though, but we wanted some family food fun, so first of all we made fajitas.

I had a delicious fresh chicken breast fajita with red peppers and onion cooked in smokey bbq fajita seasoning (this time I used Old El Paso), then added crispy, fresh cos lettuce and jalapenos, a stack of hot salsa and a few splodges of soured cream.

Similarly to me, David had fresh chicken breast, red peppers and onions sizzled in smokey bbq fajita seasoning, with fresh lettuce, jalapenos, hot salsa and a smiley face of soured cream added!

Paul tried out Tesco's new vegetarian fajita mix (which he recommends by the way), with added fresh lettuce, jalapenos, hot salsa and plenty of soured cream.

We decided to churros a go for dessert, we were badly planned though as we didn't have a piping bag and they came out looking a little more like something you'd find in the toilet rather than on a plate!! They were tastier than they looked though, even when we dipped them into our homemade chocolate dip and they looked even more like they were straight out of the toilet!

We had fun as usual though and we are enjoying experimenting with our world foods, wonder what cuisine we'll take on next?!