Month: September 2016

Travel Diaries: New York Pt. 2

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Brooklyn Bridge

As you’ll have seen from Part 1, I recently travelled to New York. If you want to see what happened on our first couple of days, or even how the trip came about, then go read that. This post picks up on Day 3 and runs through to our journey home.

Jack's Wife Freda

The Sunday morning wasn’t quite as early, but we were still up at about 7am. First up for the day was breakfast at Jack’s Wife Freda, which even at 9am on a Sunday was bustling. We took advantage of their bottomless drip (coffee) and while Maddie had a Rosewater Waffle I tucked into a Madame Freda (Pressed sandwich with duck prosciutto, cheddar béchamel, gruyere & a sunny side up egg). Out of the two main breakfast spots we tried this trip, this one was the better. The setting is charming, service friendly, polite & quick and the food was spot on. We’d booked in a slot to visit the Top of the Rock (Rockefeller Center) so this was our next stop. As someone who has been to the city before, and done the Empire State, I can safely say I prefer the view from the Rock. Coming out of the elevator after a, very short, queue you instantly get a view across central park, something the Empire State doesn’t offer, and the view the other side has the Empire State and the southern end of Manhattan. After 25 minutes of indulgent selfie taking and view admiring we went back down in the lift and walked from the center down towards Grand Central(via Sephora so Maddie could look at make up she couldn’t afford). We deliberately zigzagged on this walk so we could soak in the noise and sites of Manhattan. Next was a walk over to Time Square.
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Eating Out: Pergola on the Roof

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Pergola on the Roof

No one ever really has much of a reason to head west in London. Shepherds Bush in particular is somewhere I’ve only ever been for the odd gig, Westfields doesn’t appeal to me and generally I’ve no other reason to even go out that way. The other big reason to head out that way is the Television Center, historically the home of the British tele, and now newly converted into flats. The building itself is much the same from the outside so you can still go and reminisce about the golden days of UK TV, or you could go and climb up to the roof and fill your face with some of London’s best Street Food. Pergola on the Roof has been running all summer and only has a week left to go, but it’s worth a visit if you’ve got the time. I was overdue a catch up with some workmates from my last job, including Dan at City & Cinema. So this was the perfect opportunity to see people, hear all about their new office move and generally talk about what’s been going on over the last few months.
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Cardamom & Chocolate Braid

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Chocolate & Cardamom Loaf

I’ve just returned from a week up in Scotland at my parent’s on Mull. I’ll be writing up a travel diary of the week soon, after part 2 of my New York trip, but while I was away I baked a number of things. Rainy days on the Isle of Mull are ideal for baking. You’re not going to get much else done, apart from a quick walk of the dog around the loch all wrapped up in waterproofs, so what better way to spend a day than in the kitchen baking? I made a number of things on this trip, but with the Great British Bake off well underway (and the possibility that it could all go to shit with a move to Channel 4) and bread week featuring a challenge for baking chocolate bread, I thought I’d start with the Cardamom & Chocolate loaf we made on the first day.
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Travel Diaries: New York City Pt. 1

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Manhattan at sunrise

Jet lag is a hell of a thing. When you find yourself sat on a balcony at 5.30am, already having been to a coffee shop, to watch the sun come up over the Williamsburg Bridge and you’ve not even considered going back to bed despite having a completely full day planned, you know its hit you. We’d landed the day before at about 11.30am New York time, after getting up at 4am UK time.Despite it taking 1.5 hours to get through passport control and lugging our bags across a hot & sweaty Manhattan, we pushed on, grabbing food at Tiny’s Giant Sandwiches while we waited to check in, and freshening up super quick so we could make the most of the afternoon. The buzz of arriving in New York helped us power through the tiredness that kept threatening to hit. We’d only found out a couple of weeks before that we’d even be doing this trip, having won it through the post I wrote on London’s food scene, and in a couple of short weeks we’d organised our flights & hotel and created a list longer than all of our arms combined of things to do and places to eat.

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Bloggers Blog Awards Nomination

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 Bloggers Blog Awards

So this year some pretty cool things have happened because of my blog. I got to go to New York City when I won a competition for this post. I also got nominated in the Great British Food Awards, and while I didn’t win, I got Highly Commended. The nomination was completely out of the blue and the fact that a bunch of my readers voted for me is incredibly humbling. Hot off the results of that, I then found out that I’d been nominated in the Bloggers Blog Awards.

GBF_highcomm

These awards were founded by Hayley at TeaPartyBeauty, and while I attended last year’s there wasn’t actually a food category. This year she’s upped the number of categories and I’ve managed to get myself nominated in the Best Food Blog group. This is really exciting.

What’s just as exciting is that last year there wasn’t a single man in the whole thing and this year there’s 3 of us! There’s a whole host of incredible bloggers nominated in the awards, all of which deserve the attention they are getting. I feel a little out of place amongst some of them so I’m particularly humbled. If you wanted to go and vote for me though, you can do that here, and the closing date for votes is 18th September

Vote for me!