So as promised, here are "a few" photos from the rest of the stay in Harbin. Mainly from the market, which was amazing. Deffo recommend popping in there for a stroll if you happen to be passing... erm. Here's a map to find it if you do fancy checking it out. Planning on updating this with other restaurants/interesting food places as we go around, so keep an eye out. Also there are pics from the ice festival, which wasn't quite what we expected. It seems from this year it has been taken over by Disney. You can imagine our joy when we were greeted by a huge Mickey Mouse, lots of merchandise and general selling out of a previously independent event. Booo. Still, we had a good time. Well actually it got 3.5 out of 10, but you know we had as good a time as we could at -23 surrounded by plastic Disney characters when we were expecting world famous ice sculptures. I have to start the post off with this though: It is the breakfast from the hotel we were staying at, The Lungmen, which was just opposite the station. Have you ever seen anything like it?! There was a ...

It's been a while since the last post, but there has been a reason for this. For the last couple of weeks I have been busy working on a project that started off as me wanting a way to calculate how much any particular recipe might cost to make, but ended up showing me things about ways of shopping that I never really expected, some of which I can't quite believe. What I started with was an idea for quite a simple spread sheet. I wanted to create a table which would work out how much a certain recipe would cost by calculating how much a specific amount of each ingredient would cost according to the amount used and price per kg and then add them all up to give the price of the recipe. So off I went to the shops with pen and paper in hand, happy that my life style now allows me to indulge in these odd ideas as and when then enter my head rather than just thinking "Hey wouldn't this be great!" only to forget a few minutes later as I get distracted by some important task... such as picking the dirt off the bottom of ...

Last week when I went to do my shopping at K+N in Birkenhead (top veg shop!) I saw they had a couple of crates of English tomatoes for sale at £2.99 each. £2.99!! The box was over 5kg! So that's less than 60p per kg or about £1 less per kg than normal price. I knew it was good, but I'd never normally get through so many before they went squidgy.  And then a flash of inspiration, I remembered seeing Hugh making tomato sauce for the year from his home grown yearly glut and decided this was my chance to do the same (shame they weren't home grown though). This is really good. K+N probably buy from wholesale market in Liverpool, which I assume works a bit like a normal market, only bigger. Often at the end of the day you'll get people practically giving things away, and they pass this on to their customers. Reminds me of I was walking through Kirkgate Market in Leeds a couple of weeks ago and a guy was shouting "Bag of bananas a pound! As many bananas as you can fit in a carrier bag a pound!" He had a hoard of ladies surrounding ...

Since leaving university Andy and his friends have met up once or twice a year in a gathering that has come to be known as "Harcourt" (named after the house/street they shared). Each year they take it in turns to organise the weekend, and this year it was Andy's turn, which meant I had the task of feeding this gruesome looking crew. Originally a strictly lads only affair the arrival of various small people has led to the invite being extended to wives, girlfriends and children. I'm pretty happy about this as although I've only known them for about 2 years rather than the 10 or more years they've known each other, it's a brilliant get together, always loads of fun, really nice to see how much of an effort they've made to stay in touch for all this time. Harcourt has become a definite highlight of the year for me. As we've not been working over the summer we've had a lot of time on our hands to organise things and after a brainstorming session at the pub we got a little over excited (drunk) and decided it should be a Hallowe'en themed fancy dress weekend, hired a clown and set ...

Here's a lovely recipe for a quinoa salad I got from Scrumptious a random food blog I stumbled across while wondering what to do with the jar of quinoa that's been sitting in the cupboard for well over a year. I've been a bit scared of these small grains ever since I saw them, not sure what to do with them, how to cook them, what they would taste like blah blah blah, but it turns out they're pretty easy going little chaps and they assisted in making this very tasty, hearty but fresh tasting salad. Apparently it's very good for you too. A 'Super Grain' no less. Wooo. I wonder if that's a bit like Super Gran. There's only one letter in it, must be. Maybe super grains turn you into Super Grans?! Now, I said I got the recipe from a blog, but what actually happened was I'd seen it and decided I was going to make it after I'd been to the shops, then got part way through and realised I was missing several of the key ingredients, so I would say this was influenced by rather than a direct cover of the original. I'd also intended to ...