Monthly Archives: January 2012

A Sweet Treat for Valentines and a Giveaway!

Posted on January 31, 2012 by | 133 Comments

Valentines Day is only around the corner and with that in mind, Lovetubs are calling for lovers to feel the love and share the love! You can show your loved one your sweeter side this Valentine’s Day by treating him or her to a lovetub – or even show yourself that little bit of love! lovetub is a warm, rich, melt-in-your-mouth pudding which can be found in the dessert chiller in selected Sainsbury’s stores!

Available in both Sticky Toffee Pudding and Chocolate Pudding flavours, lovetub can be microwaved to lip-smacking perfection in just 30 seconds, and eaten straight from the tub. Usually priced at only £1.29, it’s a Valentine’s treat that’s easy on the pocket!

To celebrate the release of Lovetubs, they are going to giveaway 15,000 100g puddings between the 1st and 7th February on their Facebook page.  Why not share the offer with your friends or loved one and ‘feel the love, share the love’.

Lovetub Hamper Giveaway

To make Valentines Day go with even more of a bang, you can win an hamper for you and your loved one and have it delivered in time for Valentines Day. You can win:

  • Moet Chandon Champagne
  • Hotel Chocolat Chocolates
  • a £10 M&S food voucher
  • Teddy Bear
  • and lovetub samples

To be in with a chance of winning, all you need to do is leave a comment on this post by 5pm GMT on Monday 7th February telling me what would be your ideal Valentines Day treat (keep it clean please! – this is a family blog) :-)

This giveaway has now closed. Thank you to everyone for taking part

Good luck and I hope you all get spoilt on Valentines Day! :-)

Giveaway Terms and Conditions

  1. Only 1 entry per person
  2. The competition will close at 5pm on Monday 7th February 2012 GMT
  3. The winner will be chosen by Random.org and will be contacted via email as soon as possible after the competition has closed.
  4. The competition is open to UK residents only
  5. The prize will be delivered by Lovetubs once the winner’s contact details are confirmed, hopefully in time for Valentines Day.
  6. Any questions or queries, please email joskitchen@hotmail.co.uk 

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Posted in competition, giveaway, Valentines Day

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I’m still here!

Posted on January 29, 2012 by | 1 Comment

Hello everyone. I am sure you are beginning to think I have disappeared into thin air or have lost my blogging mojo completely. Well I can ensure you that this is not the case.

I have got lots of great things to tell you about but I have not had the time to tell you about them. Since Christmas, Thomas has virtually stopped sleeping at all during the day and when he goes to bed at night, all we have time for is dinner, a bit of tv and then bed ourselves. I want to blog but do not feel I can give it the time it deserves at the moment. I am hoping this will change in the next month or so as we are moving Thomas into his own room and making efforts to make him sleep through the night. I will be back to my normal blogging schedule asap and I appreciate your patience at this time.

Thank you for reading Jo’s Kitchen :-)

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Posted in blogging, Thank you, Thomas

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River Cottage Rocks!

Posted on January 12, 2012 by | 19 Comments

I have been a fan of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and River Cottage since I was at university. To avoid university work, I used to watch repeats of the very early series wishing that one day, that kind of life would be my own.  Now, as I have not won the lottery yet and it does not look like it is coming anytime soon, I have decided to set up a monthly blogging challenge that everyone can take part in and hopefully, bring us a little bit closer to living a lovely life in rural Dorset.

I have decided to call this challenge ‘River Cottage Rocks’. All you have to do is blog a River Cottage recipe on a chosen theme for that month, tweet your post if you are on Twitter using the hashtag #rivercottagerocks and send me a picture and a link to your post in an email. Its that simple! I am hoping to do prizes for the best recipe soon but have not got anything sorted for this month. The theme for this month is ‘everyday easy’ which is means you can cook any River Cottage recipe you like as long as it is simple, easy and suitable for midweek cooking. The closing date for this month’s challenge is Sunday 12th February. I will announce February’s theme before this one closes as I have put this post out a bit later than I intended.

I have included a few rules below to make sure it is fair for everyone.

  1. You cook any recipe you like related to the theme from any River Cottage book, TV programme or from Hugh’s weekly column in the Guardian.
  2. You must not copy the recipes word for word onto your blog posts. Quite a few of the recipes are already online so please link to them if they exist or put the book and the page number on your blog post so other people can find the recipe.
  3. If you make a couple or more adaptations to the recipe then please put the new version of the recipe on your blog if you want to, but always link to the original recipe in the same way as described in 2.
  4. You can submit the recipe to other blogging challenges as long as the other challenge allows it. 
  5. Please link to the post announcing this month’s theme in your blog post or to the ‘River Cottage Rocks’ page on this blog if someone else is hosting the challenge.
  6. If you are on Twitter, please tweet about your post using the hashtag #rivercottagerocks and include @Jos_Kitchen in the tweet. I will retweet any that I see.
  7. Please email a picture and a link to your post to joskitchen@hotmail.co.uk by the closing date to have your post included in the monthly round up. 
  8. Please add your posts to the River Cottage Rocks group on Facebook too and we can get a bit of community spirit going. 

Above all, I hope you all have fun with this challenge. I can’t wait to see what you create.

Happy Cooking! :-)

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Posted in #rivercottagerocks, Blogging Challenge, Dorset, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstal, River Cottage, River Cottage Rocks

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Happy New Year 2012!

Posted on January 3, 2012 by | 5 Comments

Happy New Year everyone! Hope you had a great Christmas and New Year. We did. Now the festive season is over, its time to look at resolutions. Here is mine from last year and whether I achieved them or not.

  1. Post on my blog at least once a week – managed most of the time except for when being pregnant/having a newborn baby prevented it.
  2. Get fellow bloggers to get post on my blog and do some guest posts for people in return – did not really happen.
  3. To create a regular series of events for the Midlands Food Bloggers (with help of fellow Midlands based bloggers) – managed one main event with a couple of smaller events. Plans for more in 2012.
  4. To set up a blog for the Midlands Food Bloggers with a list of members, people/companies who support us and get people to regularly contribute - was set up in March 2011, looked after by myself and Louise of Comida Y Vida.
  5. Make more use of the lots of cookbooks that I already own – did not really happen.
  6. Expand my cooking repertoire – I now know how to make pasta so want to start making it regularly and cook more seafood dishes – have cooked a greater variety of dishes, not really seafood dishes though.
  7. Get better at food photography – my Dad is making me a food stage with a white background so that I have something to put my dishes on to take a photo of them. Stuart and I have just purchased a second-hand Canon EOS 400D Digital SLR Camera, so with practice I am hoping that the images on the blog will improve. – I am hoping this has happened. I think the images have improved but do you, my readers agree?
  8. Meet Sarah and her goats at Brockhall Farm - I met Sarah but not her goats at the Ludlow Food Festival in September.
  9. Go to The Wild Garlic Restaurant in Dorset - I went there twice but have only blogged about it once.
  10. Take part in more blogging challenges especially Fresh From The Oven and Forever Nigella – managed a few at the start of the year but did not really happen once I got pregnant. Hoping for better in 2012.

Therefore, my resolutions for 2012 are:

  1. Clear the large backlog of posts I have including my day learning to make bread at Loaf, my visit to the BBC Good Food Show Winter 2011, my visit to M Kitchen and various review posts.
  2. Keep making Midlands Food Bloggers bigger and better and host many more events in and around the Midlands.
  3. Start up my own monthly blogging challenge (details to follow as soon as possible) and try and take part in as many others as possible.
  4. Keep improving my food photography.
  5. Go to Simpson’s Restaurant in Birmingham.
  6. Go to BritMum’s Live and get sponsorship to attend.

That is it for my resolutions this year. Not as many as previous years but am hoping they are all achievable. I will be back as soon as possible with details of my new monthly blogging challenge.

Happy Cooking! :-)

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Posted in Andreas Antona, BBC Good Food Show Winter, Birmingham, Comida Y Vida, Forever Nigella, Fresh From The Oven, happy cooking, Loaf, Midlands, Midlands Food Bloggers

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