Cocoa Patisserie Cafe, Brighton, UK

Cocoa Patisserie Cafe produces some of the most visually beautiful pastries and tarts in Brighton and Hove. I first came across the pastries in the Brighton and Hove food festival a year or two ago.  I remember the pastry I bought quite vividly as it stuck in my mind as being very yummy and unusual in that the caramel was salted (a taste I had not come across before.)  The Salted carmel shortbread tart can be seen in the image below, it is the second from the right.


                  My grandmother was in town the other day and I was stuck with somewhere to go for lunch, so I decided that we would try the Cocoa cafe, being that it is in a quite central locale.  You could quite literally step off the train and go there for lunch.  Lunch ended up being quite an enjoyable experience.

The cafe is very nicely decorated with the companies cocoa theme colours and features nice wooden furniture that was surprisingly comfortable to be seated at.  This was a nice change.  Each table was decorated with a fresh cut yellow rose and our tea came served in lovely china teapots with matching tea cups.

For my lunch I ordered a Char-grilled chicken Caesar salad, mostly because I'm supposable on a health kick. :)  However salad is always a good test of any kitchens food hygiene as it features fresh vegetables that go off very quickly if kept in poor conditions.  Much to my delight the salad was crisp and fresh, this is always a bonus.  It was also beautifully presented, I could really tell that the chef was a first artist when it came to food.  It's no wonder he's won awards.  The chicken was grilled just right and the parmensan cheese came in a caramelised section (An absolutely yummy way of eating cheese).  My one concern was the the salad leaves were drenched in olive oil which tasted good but made for an oily meal.  However it was a very nice meal all round and as you can tell from the photos of the pastries it was very hard to resist having a yummy yummy desert.

The desert are what make cocoa worth the visit.  They are as tasty as they look.  I would highly recommend trying them if you are in Brighton :)

Cheap ways to to avoid the laundrette

I have not fallen off the face of the planet, although it feels like it this week.  I have been called in for extra work shifts almost every free day this week.  This is fantastic money wise.  It means I can start replacing the items that got destroyed/broke down in the past few weeks (it's been a really bad few weeks luck wise).  But I'm shattered and have no energy to do anything but sleep. (Working from 7am to 8pm has that effect). Today is the first day off in a what feels like a looong time.

One of the items that broke down recently was my twin-tub camping washing machine.  After nearly 18 months of constant use (definitely not what it was designed for!) my twin-tub stopped draining.The annoying part is that the wash tub and spin tub are both still in working order - meaning i can wash and spin dry clothes but can't drain the wash tub of water.  This actually made me a little sad because it has been such a good machine and, it still usable fir the most part.  However once they stop draining getting the water out will take the better part of an hour or two, so it needs to be replaced.

I live in housing which has no proper clothes washing machine or anywhere to hook one up.  I used to use the laundrette down the road.  However, at £3.80 at wash, this was getting very expensive.  Depending on what I needed to wash during the week I was spending between £16-£24 a month on laundry.  This is a lot of money when on a limited income so I was desperate to find a way of cutting down.  Then I came across these twin-tubs on amazon.co.uk.

The twin-tubs are electrical, but they use very little power.  Every function, aside from spin and agitation, is manual.  Water has to be poured in through the top and clothes have to be moved manually from the wash tub to the spin tub.  IT does do a good job at cleaning everyday stains, however I have needed vanish for stronger stains.  It is overall a very practical option.  They are ideal for shower cubicles however mine has been rigged up my desk in my room as my kitchen and bathroom do not provide the appropriate set-up for the twin-tub.  I find it need a level surface or the spin tub will not balance correctly.  The drainage pipe also needs to be horizontal for it to drain correctly.  These factor catered to and it makes for a very good washing machine.  I would recommend it highly for anyone in a situation where they can't have a household washing machine.

Virgin Media, for all your hassle needs

There are days when I'm so glad that I'm only on the most basic broadband contract Virgin Media offer, because days like yesterday would be all the more insulting.  My network signal was out for the entire day and now I'm actually convinced it's due to a fault in the local area network cables because last night at 11pm I was out checking those attached to my house.  I went outside, to the exposed connection point and unscrewed each cable, checked the sockets for damage and screwed them back in (given this was an outdoor connection, not only should that have been in a covered box to prevent this sort of tampering but the cables should have been so tightly screwed that I couldn't get them loose in the first place.)  Despite all this effort I still had no connection.  However my Internet was magically connected again the next morning.

This is not the first time it happened.  In fact it happens so often that I begin to worry about it when it rains.  The worst part is I've given up calling Virgin Media to involve tech support because £10pound worth of credit it mysteriously fixes itself and I have to call them back and cancel the home support team because they are no longer required.

Blogger is not my friend

Sorry, I'm having a little trouble with the blogger publisher.  No matter what i do my post text keeps coming out wrong - like in the last post, half the text was huge and the rest was too small.  And there's that stupid highlighting thing it is doing with my text.  Can't seem to figure out why it's doing this to me.

Basil Pesto; Dairy free

Pesto is a tasty and highly nutritious pasta sauce, but it is always frustrating that commercial brands contain cheese.  Depending on your level of sensitivity to lactose/dairy, the level/kind of cheese contained in pesto can irritate the digestive tract.  If you find this is the case then this recipe can be a nice substitute to classic pesto.  I found this recipe at Vegan Spoonful. Other recipes can also be found on many vegan sites.  If you dislike the taste of the yeast, this item can be left out.  Once you have your pesto simply stir t through some cooked pasta. :)

Ingredients:

Basil; 3 cups

Garlic; 2-3 large cloves

raw pine nuts; 6 tablespoons

salt; 1 teaspoon

olive oil; 6 tablespoons

nutritional yeast; 1/4 cup

Directions:

Place the nuts, basil, garlic and salt in a blender or food processor and blend until finely chopped.  Add the olive oil and blend again.  Finally, add the yeast and blend until the pesto becomes creamy.