-
Is Hello Fresh Worth It? A Deep Dive into the meal kits subscription service.
I’ve been seeing more and more stories about meal kits, and specifically Hello Fresh meal kits on Instagram lately. Due in no small part to a very clever advertising campaign which uses approachable family and lifestyle influencers to communicate the message that a meal kit is the answer to planning your dinners. Is it worth it though? Is it all hype? Will the meal kits feed my hungry family of four? Does it generate loads of non-recyclable waste? Are the ingredients decent quality? And ultimately, will I buy it again? I’m going to try to answer these questions (and more) below in my Hello Fresh review. Since I announced I…
-
A Wrinkle In Time Movie Review
A couple of weeks ago the family and I were kindly invited along to a preview screening of A Wrinkle In Time by Disney Ireland. As the boys get older, watching movies together has become a special treat and they eagerly count down to ‘Movie Night’ which happens once a week. We turn off all devices and settle down for a few hours of escapism. Disney films are top of the list when it comes to Movie Night picks. Not just the more modern movies such as Star Wars, but the classics like The Flight Of The Navigator and Tron are huge hits in our house. Great books open a…
-
Morphy Richards Spiralizer Express Review
In advance of its launch on the Irish market, Dimpco sent me a Morphy Richards Spiralizer Express to test out at home and review. To be very honest with you, I’ve never bought a spiralized item in my life and don’t have a manual spiralizer in the house. Which sounds mad considering the glut of courgettes and vegetables I get at this time of the year. It’s something that I’d intended to rectify this Summer anyway so this offer couldn’t have come at a better time. If you’ve never eaten or used spiralized vegetables/fruit before it’s simply a different way of preparing your fresh items. You can substitute spirals of…
-
Warner Brothers Studio Tour Review
This family of muggles travelled to London and decided we’d like to visit the studios where the Harry Potter films were made. It’s not a theme park, it’s a genuine interesting, thrilling, and exciting studio tour. We thought it was well worth it; here’s a flavour of how we got on. If you travel to the Warner Brothers Studio Tour by public transport, please, please take the bus from the train station. It’s inexpensive enough (costs about €3 per person), and it’s mocked up to look like the night bus. If you’re not a Harry Potter fan, this is probably going to be the most boring thing you’ve ever read.…
-
Legoland Windsor Review
Both hands up, we love Lego, all ages play with it in our house, and the idea of heading to an entire theme park dedicated to Lego had us all excited. Legoland Windsor is located in a scenic location in, yes, Windsor. There are a couple of hotels nearby, but we had based ourselves in London City Centre so we used the rail network to get there instead. This was a bit of a kerfuffle as it involved taking a tube from our hotel, 2 trains and a shuttle bus. It took about 90 minutes excluding the tube journey on a rainy Summer’s day.
-
Budget Or Bust? Nutrition Blenders Put To The Test.
Please note. This blogpost was originally published on 18 February 2016. I’ve taken the most popular nutrition blender in the market, and tested it beside 2 other budget versions. How does the new Aldi Nutrient Blender compare to the Nutri-Bullet or a classic smoothie maker, and is it worth spending the extra money on the more expensive nutrition blenders? Yesterday I tested 3 nutrition blenders in my kitchen. What’s the difference between a nutrition blender and a juicer? It’s simple, with a juicer you’re left with juice in a glass, and the pulp in a reservoir. Most people don’t use the pulp at all and they’re missing out on important…
-
Irish Food Predictions 2015
Well it seems that quite a number of people searching on the blog remember I made some Irish food predictions in January last year about what I thought would be in store for Irish Food in 2014. In 2014 said that I thought that group dining/Sunday Roasts would be making a comeback. The Exchequer has been doing it for years, but I also believe that newer establishments such as the Brookwood have started doing a roast dinner. This trend will continue to increase in 2015. Juicing was my trend to watch and I was pretty much bang on with that too. There has been an explosion of juice bars in…
-
Review: Hairy Baby T-Shirts For Kids
5 years ago my other half went abroad with his 3 brothers for a few days. I figured that the best way to mark them apart from all the other people in the football stadiums in Madrid was to make sure they all looked the same. It was then that I placed my first order with Hairy Baby, choosing the “Paddy Irish Man” T-Shirts. They were pretty cool back then and the lads wore them with pride. It’s been 5 years since the t-shirt landed back in the laundry basket and it’s been washed many, many times. At the very least it’s been washed about 50 times. The colour has…
-
Review: The Happy Pear Cookbook
In this book we hope to inspire you to eat more veg. That is it, plain and simple. It’s a great introduction to a book that is packed with recipes from The Happy Pear in Greystones, Co Wicklow. Much more than that though, the book is full of the philosophy behind Dave and Steve’s journey to becoming vegetable evangelists, and retailers on a mission. The identical twins (for the shop, and book, are a play on words) are the best advertisement for the way of life that the book espouses. While the recipes are at the heart of The Happy Pear cookbook, woven throughout are experiences of their family, employees,…
-
Inis Mór
Just 24 hours. That’s all we had on Inis Mór. It’s not enough time to do all the things we wanted to do. The last thing we wanted to do was to climb on board a tour bus. Hubby spends enough of his time driving buses so even if it meant we missed out on some of the landmarks, for the most part we walked. Journey It takes about 3 hours from Dublin to Rossaveal Harbour, where you can park your car to get aboard the ferry. You can also travel to the Aran Islands via Clare but this was the best option for us. It’s a further 40-odd minutes…
-
Stokke Steps Review
A couple of weeks ago I took delivery of a Stokke Steps Chair for a review. Here’s how I got on and what I thought of the new system.
-
Tea Biscotti & Teaology
A couple of weeks ago I was invited to a tasting with Barry’s Tea and their master blender Denis Daly. I didn’t need to be asked twice. If there’s tea involved, I’m there with bells on. We were treated to tea based cocktails, iced tea and got to see some vintage stamps, order books and other items inside. I was particularly taken with these: We ventured into the main room and Mr Daly turned into a tea tasting and teaology machine. It was a lovely evening and I went home with a bag of specially blended tea from the master himself.What do you do with a bag of specially blended…
