Category Archives: Share

Lunchtime Reception at the Royal Wedding

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The Queen is giving a lunchtime Reception at Buckingham Palace for around 650 guests drawn from the Wedding Service congregation, representing the Couple’s official and private lives.

Guests will be served a selection of canapés, including:

* Cornish Crab Salad on Lemon Blini

* Pressed Duck Terrine with Fruit Chutney

* Roulade of Goats Cheese with Caramelised Walnuts

* Assortment of Palmiers and Cheese Straws

* Scottish Smoked Salmon Rose on Beetroot Blini

* Miniature Watercress and Asparagus Tart

* Poached Asparagus spears with Hollandaise Sauce for Dipping

* Quails Eggs with Celery Salt

* Scottish Langoustines with Lemon Mayonnaise Pressed Confit of Pork Belly with Crayfish and Crackling

* Wild Mushroom and Celeriac Chausson

* Bubble and Squeak with Confit Shoulder of Lamb

* Grain Mustard and honey-glazed Chipolatas

* Smoked Haddock Fishcake with Pea Guacamole

* Miniature Yorkshire Pudding with Roast Fillet of Beef and Horseradish Mousse

* Gateau Opera

* Blood Orange Pate de Fruit

* Raspberry Financier

* Rhubarb Crème Brulee Tartlet

* Passion Fruit Praline

* White Chocolate Ganache Truffle

* Milk Chocolate Praline with Nuts

* Dark Chocolate Ganache Truffle

uests will be served Pol Roger NV Brut Réserve Champagne with a selection of other soft and alcoholic drinks.

The wedding cake and a chocolate biscuit cake will also be served at the Reception. The wedding cake, designed by Fiona Cairns, is made from 17 individual fruit cakes (12 of which form the base) and has eight tiers. The cake has been decorated with cream and white icing using the Joseph Lambeth technique. There are up to 900 individually iced flowers and leaves of 17 different varieties decorated on the cake. A garland design around the middle of the cake matches the architectural garlands decorated around the top of the Picture Gallery in Buckingham Palace, the room in which the cake will be displayed. The chocolate biscuit cake was created by Mcvitie’s Cake Company using a Royal Family recipe at the special request of Prince William.

During the course of the Reception, Governors-General and Prime Ministers of Realm Countries will be presented to The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh, The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall and the Bridal Couple. The Reception will include the cutting of the wedding cake and some speeches.

Guests at the reception will be entertained by Claire Jones, the official Harpist to HRH The Prince of Wales.

Notes to Editors

All the ingredients for the canapés have been carefully sourced from Royal Warrant holding companies using UK-based ingredients. These include:

* Gressingham Duck
* English Goats cheese from Paxton and Whitfield
* English Asparagus
* Welsh organic Celery Salt
* Langoustines from the North West Coast of Scotland
* Pork from the Cotswolds
* English Crayfish
* Windsor Estate Lamb
* Smoked Haddock from the East Coast of Scotland
* Beef from the Castle of Mey Selections in the North Highlands of Scotland
* English Rhubarb

Approximately 10,000 canapés have been prepared by a team of 21 chefs, led by Royal Chef Mark Flanagan.

Benefits of Buying from Military Auctions

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Auctions are excellent ways to purchase items. Most of the time, this is where you chance upon hard to find items, antiques, and vintage stuff. Most importantly, auctions could be a great opportunity to get an item at a really low price. When it comes to auctions, some people specifically wait for military auctions to buy military-related items. A military auction often features surplus military items like vehicles, camping equipment, military tools, clothing, helmets, field gears, and many more. If you are looking for guns then live military surplus auctions offer these along with rifles and other ammunitions. Below are some of the benefits of buying from military auctions.

• Good condition. A lot of items sold at these auctions have only been slightly used. Also, since are government issued items, they are well taken care of. Vehicles, in particular, are usually in excellent condition because military vehicles are regularly maintained.

• Low price. The usual reason why these items are being auctioned off is to replace them with newer stuff. Hence, these items are simply being discarded by the military which explains why they are so affordable.

• High quality. Since these are bought by the government, you can be assured that they are of good quality because they have been chosen from among many different suppliers.

Shopping for Party Supplies: Thanksgiving Parties

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Whenever I think of Thanksgiving, aside from the obvious reason of being thankful for everything in my life, I think of all the food in the table I can eat – it is the next best stuffing celebration aside from Christmas for our family! While we pretty much have a formal dinner with the family and some relatives for Turkey Day, having children has made us realize to adjust our tradition and include ways to make it more fun for them and less stressful for us.  That is why I have games and shop for some party supplies for our annual tradition now.

Thanksgiving party supplies and decorations can be things from the garden or the farmers market: corn stalks, sun flower bouquets, hay bails, varieties of squash and gourds, and a nice collection of colored leaves. Themes like the first Thanksgiving Dinner (including Pilgrims and Native Americans), Abundant Crops (cornucopias and scarecrows), Turkeys, and football are great ideas. I actually like the pilgrims theme for the kids.

 

Another tip: Use your leftover Halloween pumpkins in your Thanksgiving decorations. Bring a Thanksgiving scene to life on the front of your pumpkin by using paint with stamps or stencils. Cut a hole out of the top of the pumpkin and use it as a vase to hold gold or orange mums or carnations or daisies.

Un-Sporty

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I have never been a sporty person. My family are just into books, TV and dining out – total couch potatoes really. So it is quite a blessing I married a man who is very active in sports. Edil is good at every field of sport he chose to learn. But it is basketball that remains to be his first love. Up to now, he wants me (and now his kids) to be present whenever he plays basketball in tournaments he joins in. For the next three months, our Saturdays will be booked in the afternoons for basketball games. The Parents’ Association in Matthew’s school has launched a parents’ basketball tournament that will run until early February next year in time for the Foundation Day. And we have made time for it, even making it special. It is an added bonus that Edil’s team has never lost a game until now. Now, we are trying to get Matthew involved in sports too, as he has inherited my love for the couch :). We have tried involving him in basketball but he prefers swimming and taek wan do. We might enroll him in a class if ever we find out. Baseball is another sport he was interested to try after seeing it played in a movie (High School Musical 2 it is I think). Baseball Equipment are hard to find here, I must go check it out first.

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Pollan’s simple eating wisdom

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While most people are looking for the best (and easiest + fastest) ways to lose weight (www.bestwaytoloseweight.org), I chanced up some simple eating wisdom foodie and journalist Michael Pollan in his book "Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual."

Here are some points in his book that I want to highlight:

No. 1: The "Western diet," of processed foods and fats and sugars, is not good for the body.

No. 2: Societies and groups that eat a diet rooted in tradition, even if it is an American Indian diet built around maize and beans or a high-fat Inuit diet, overall do not suffer the same diseases seen in Americans today.

 

Eat food: Real food. Not edible food-like substances, as Pollan describes them.


Eat your colors: Fruits and veggies are naturally colorful, an indication of the nutrients in them. A real food rainbow.


Don’t eat foods made in places where the workers have to wear surgical caps.


Don’t feed yourself with "food" from the same place where you buy fuel for your car.


Shop the peripheries of the supermarket: The produce, dairy, and meats are on the outside. The Pop Tarts, chips, sugary cereals and other processed junk tends to be on the inside aisles (coffee, oatmeal and whole grain breads are a few exceptions).


Don’t eat anything Grandma or her Grandma wouldn’t recognize:


Avoid foods with ingredients a third-grader cannot pronounce: Disodium guanylate, anyone? Sounds like a spelling bee tie breaker, huh?


Get out of the supermarket when you can: Those produce markets and local spots have real food, real nuts, locally made baked goods. Real food.


If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.


It’s not food if it’s called the same in every language: Think Big Mac, Cheetos.


Stop eating before you’re full: Want to know why the French tend to be leaner even while eating cheese and bread? They follow this practice. So should you. So leave the pooch pants and the adjustable waistbands to Grandpa Fred. Japanese, Chinese and Indian Ayurevedic cultures all advise eating only until you’re  between 70 and 80 percent full. It shows in their lower rates of overweight and obese citizens.


Leave something on your plate: Mom isn’t around anymore to make you clean it, and this goes hand in hand with the rule above.


Treat treats as just that: No cake every night. Ice cream only as a special occasion. If you need dessert everynight, plan it into your caloric intake and make it usually healthy and only occasionally decadent.

Weekend FoodFest

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Here is what you can expect from me this week:
1. Recipes (Chicken and Pasta)
2. Meal Planning
3. Grocery Shopping and Coupon Hunting
4. Turbo Broiler Finds
5. Food Experience: RSM Lutong Bahay

We had a pretty eventful weekend filled with good food, but moreso, better company (family is the best!) so it will be a great SHARE week!