A WEEK IN MEALS #5

time goes by so quickly lately and I just can't believe that it's sunday again but I guess time does that when you're having a good time. and even though I'm not in the UK anymore I'm most certainly still having a good time as it's summer here at the moment (which seems to be too warm for me though) and I'm having good food as always.

monday started out lovely as we didn't have to get up early and my mum had gotten us croissants for breakfast which we enjoyed with some hot chocolate watching the nice weather outside.

if you've seen last week's post you'll know that we made pork fillet on the sunday and as we still had some onion gravy left we decided to put that to good use making some pork steaks with rice and adding some fresh parsley to the gravy.

monday was also a big day for a big football club (manchester united of course!) and we went to the office pub in graz (here) to watch it. this lovely pizza called grazer pizza with bacon, ham and egg was definitely worthy for the night. but nothing could beat united's performance that night securing their 20th english league title.

on tuesday we were invited over to my dad's place where we were presented with a lovely meal including fritattensuppe as a starter (pancake strips in case you were wondering), salad, lovely beef with mushrooms and potatoes and greek coffee to go with a lovely slice of baklava (a typical greek dessert). no one in my family is actually greek but my dad has always loved it there and greek food is really lovely.

as a second dessert we even got some ice cream in five different flavours. needless to say that was all the food we needed for that day. probably even longer than that.

wednesday we actually managed to get up kind of early to go to uni. my boyfriend went with me to my antibiotics lecture bless him as it was all in german. but he was productive writing down some blog posts as I was taking notes in english. 

as it was a very hot day over here we went for a greek salad for dinner followed by some ben&jerry's as a dessert. got to have ice cream when the weather's nice (and whenever else you want to really.)

in the evening we went to a restaurant with my mum and her lovely friend to have some traditional austrian food. me and my mum shared a backhendl (find more about it here as well as better pictures) which was lovely. find the restaurant here.

thursday was a busy day starting by meeting a friend at uni for a few drinks and then heading into town to do some shopping. we then headed back to uni for my english class and had some food on the way which somehow managed to escape my camera (it was a sandwich with mozzarella and tomato - surprise). 

as we came back home after a successful and exhausting day we made ourselves some lovely and filling pasta bake. it's admittedly not the best choice for a very warm evening but it's a good choice none the less. for any day really. (recipe here)

friday was the most memorable day this week as we made a trip down south to show mr pies the mediterranean. we visited three countries in a day (not including austria) and of course had some lovely food too. 

starting off by going down to novigrad in croatia where we enjoyed the sun and took a nice walk along the sea before having amazing dinner. the region is famous for it's truffles so we had to have some sheep's cheese with truffles as a starter. but of course we were by the sea so seafood as the main thing here. octopus salad as a second starter (we were all sharing though) which is one of my favourite things ever. as a main I had spaghetti with seafood and they were lovely. al dente and the sauce couldn't have been better. perfect.

we then went along to slovenia and a town called piran where we didn't have any major food experiences as we were pretty full after all that. I shall be doing a post about the whole day though so I'll try to only talk about the food now.

on our way home we popped to triest - italy to spend the evening there. it was still lovely and warm when we walked around town on our hunt for a pizzeria. it took as longer than you'd think but hey, we found one and yes that was pizza like only the italians make it! I had a pizza called regina margherita which is basically a margherita but with buffalo mozzarella. can't do any better than that in my opinion. 

many thanks to my mum for the trip and all the food. she's the best.

after a very late night not coming home until half twelve at night we were sort of useless on saturday but still had a lot to do as it was our mission to recreate easter for what I'd like to call easter2.0 to sound as stupid as possible. mainly I just wanted to show mr pies what easter in austria is like. 

in order to successfully complete that mission we had to get ourselves outside and to the market where we firstly got some breakfast at the schnabelweide. I had a lovely bagel with smoked salmon.

after doing a lot of shopping around the market and the supermarket we started making some hot cross buns (no they're not austrian of course). 

we'd bought some philadelphia with milka before. well the boyfriend grabbed it as we'd been discussing whether it's just wrong or could be good. you can also get it with cadbury in the UK. after trying it I have to say it's really nice when you don't think about it being philadelphia and as the boyfriend said: 'it tastes like chocolate cheesecake'.

and then of course in the evening we had our osterjause which is the austrian way of doing easter. but I talk about that more here. I will try and get mr pies to do a guest post about what he thinks about the austrian easter food. what do you think about that?

and last but not least (as always) there's sunday (aka today) which was the perfect sunday. being tired after a busy week we got up late and I had a lovely salmon sandwich for breakfast. we then were lazy again watching house as the boyfriend hadn't seen it before (I know right?) but he loves it now! we then started preparing our sunday roast while watching the football (not as successful as last week but hey, it was arsenal after all and the lads were probably tired after the celebrations, just like me). 

the sunday roast turned out really well and it was all homemade. shared credit though as me and my boyfriend did it all together. he also took some lovely pictures so I'll be doing a post about that soon.

and here we are again. that was a rather long post but that's what it takes to get a whole week full of food into a tiny little blog post (which isn't so little this time).

there are a few more posts coming this next week as I'm going to get more into blogging again and I got some really nice posts lined up (mainly recipes). if you have any suggestions or inspirations let me know in the comments. and of course also let me know what you had to eat this week? what was your favourite?

A WEEK IN MEALS #1

A WEEK IN MEALS #2

A WEEK IN MEALS #3

A WEEK IN MEALS #4

Magdalena.

Flight Food #2: LONDON STANSTED - KLAGENFURT

it has been a while now and I want to thank all of those who keep coming back to my blog. I am used to having 0 views a day when I don't post for a few days (and let's be honest it's really been a while now) so it means a lot to me that there's still people out there who somehow found there way over to my little space of the internet to read about my food adventures. 

so this is part of a series I started last time I flew over from the UK because I wanted to document the food I had on my journey. to be honest I go to the same place most of the time and it's the same this time aswell but the food is just very good there so I'll keep going back and just hope you don't find it too boring. but I might not be flying from stansted too many times in the future anyway so you are likely to see a bit of a change in the food anyway.

yes it's pret again. I have done a few posts about them and they deserve any good review they get. as you can (hopefully) guess not all that food is for me as I was traveling with the boyfriend. I love pret for food on the plane as it's fresh and light so it's everything you definitely won't get on a plane.

in the first picture you can see one of the new additions to the pret menu it's their Chicken Sesame Sushi Wrap. you'll be like ok, what is a sushi wrap? well it's one of their lovely wraps but asian style with a lovely sauce and not only is it wrapped in a flour tortilla but also in seaweed which gives it a distinctive taste which we both loved.

also in the picture is my boyfriends drink which is the pure pret grape and elderflower. all the pure pret canned drinks are only 99 p which I find really good for a natural and very tasty drink. also in the picture is our slice of banana cake which was really lovely which a lot of banana in it. 

in the next picture you can see our Hoisin Duck Wrap which is probably one of the pret classics. all their wraps are really lovely and a wrap is always a great alternative for a sandwich if you want to save yourself some of them carbs. I don't really care about that too much I just love wraps in general because you get a lot of stuff in them and tortillas are extremely yum in my opinion. also featuring in the second picture is my drink which is pret's yoga bunny. sounds weird but actually tastes really nice. I just wanted to try something else this time. their ginger beer is amazing though if you want to give one of their cans a try.

picture by Geraint Photography but taken with my
not so good camera. still wanted to give him
the credit as he has the eye for everything
photographic.

we'd deserved this lovely meal after a very long journey from cardiff to london and stansted. we would have deserved it anyway but I can always still use that as an excuse right? I hope you enjoy reading what I eat on the plane (saying that it sounds incredibly boring) but maybe if you're in stansted think about taking something from pret just to avoid starving on a ryanair flight. hope I can provide you with more interesting food next time maybe flying from a different airport soon. but we'll see about that when we get to it.

have you been to pret in stansted before? and what do you eat on your journeys? let me know in the comments!

Magdalena. 

FlightFood post #1

A WEEK IN MEALS #4

it's sunday again which means it's 'a week in meals' time. which also always means that I'll tell you a little bit about what's been going on that past week, not just food wise.

most of the week I spent in the UK and had a great time and actually really nice weather aswell. I know everyone is tired of talking about the weather now because it's just always been horrible but it was quite nice so I thought I'd mention it quickly.

on thursday we had a long journey back to austria and have had a nice time here so far. a bit of football today and yesterday and some good food bits too which I will tell you about now.

as you might know on mondays we like to go to revolution because it's mega monday there which means it's 50% off all food. (read more about it here)

this time we had chicken satay skewers as a starter which we had before and they are lovely indeed. then we had the vodka pizza which is not as weird as it sounds really, but really lovely. then we had a chicken milanese focaccia which is just delicious and possibly one of the best things we had there. and for the first time ever we actually had dessert there, brownies with ice cream which were chocolaty gooey and lovely. all you can ask for in a meal.

view the menu here if you want to find out more.

tuesday we had a nice day around town starting off by going around the bay in cardiff (definitely go there if you're in the area). the weather was brilliant, windy, but lovely and we picked up some welshcakes at fabulous welshcakes (here) I shall be doing a post about those soon. 

in the evening after a long day we made up our own little pasta dish with sausage meat and vegetables and it was amazing. let me know if you want a recipe to that.

wednesday was our last day in cardiff and the mr was in work so I had a bit of time to walk around town and get some last bits I wanted before leaving the UK. we were going to have an early night due to the fact that we had to get up at 3 in the morning so we made some lovely lasagna which was in the oven while we packed the rest of our stuff. and we were still packing while we ate it but it was really lovely. can't go wrong with lasagna and a bit of garlic bread.

thursday was the day of the journey. and it was one hell of a journey getting up at 3 to get the bus at 5 to go to london where we then missed our bus to the airport. even though we didn't miss it it was actually late because parliament square was closed so we were at victoria station hoping the bus would get there and leave in time for us to get to the aiport. well it all went alright in the end and we even managed to go to pret before boarding (yay!). 

we picked up two wraps. one of their new creations a sushi style wrap and a duck and hoy sin one which were both really nice. we also had two of their sparkling drinks in cans which are really lovely and only 99 p each. and we had a slice of banana cake which was soooo good indeed.

after arriving in austria we were in a bit of a state and really really tired. but we somehow still managed to get a bit of a meal together. rice with vegetables and chicken breast steaks.

on our first full day in austria we got up late first of all and a late breakfast at around 12 (croissants my mum got us but I was still too tired to take pictures of) kind of got us back to normal. we then decided to go into town where we had this lovely prosciutto and parmesan bagel at baristas (more here) which is a lovely coffee shop place in the city centre.

in the evening me and the mr made dinner for us and my mum. we decided to go for something austrian and made little chicken schnitzels which actually turned out really nicely, we're a good team I think 

saturday was a rather busy day and we didn't really have a proper meal just bits and bobs here and there that's why I haven't got any pictures. we did however make a banana and chocolate milkshake in the morning to watch soccer am. it was amazing. homemade milkshakes are the best.

and here's today and the reason why this post is going up quite late it's because we only had food about an hour ago and I wanted to include it in this post.

in the morning we had a lovely mozzarella and tomato sandwich with fresh basil leaves from our balcony garden. (I'll always need fresh herbs no matter where I live).

and tonight we had a lovely pork fillet with polenta hearts, carrots and onion gravy. I will do a recipe post about that very soon.

it was a good week food wise I think and as always make sure you let me know in the comments which ones you like and which ones you might want me to do a recipe post about. hope you all had a lovely week with some lovely food too.

Magdalena.

Eating Out: REVOLUTION - CARDIFF

It's been a while since my last on the go post and this one isn't technically a new one either. well the post is new but it's been a while since the actual visit to revolution. I went there with my boyfriend a bit over a month ago but because I'd already done a post about our visit to the revolution in chester (here) it seemed a bit weird to do this one straight away and that means of course I forgot about it so I'm doing it now. I really did want to do it though because we went to the one in cardiff twice and had some really lovely food which I wanted to recommend and also my boyfriend took some amazing pictures of it which I definitely need to show you all.
today we went there again because of course it was a monday and we had a lovely meal including some of the things mentioned below.
 so here it goes (I hope I remember everything correctly).

Starters

for our first visit we had those two starters, 'sweet sizzling sausages' and 'toasted focaccia with oils and balsamic'. 

the sausages come with a honey and red onion marmelade and are probably the yummiest way you can enjoy a sausage. I based one of my recipes on this dish (here).

the focaccia is lovely and you can't go wrong with balsamic vinegar and olive oil if you ask me, this is a lovely starter.

you will by now have realised that we usually get two starters. well I love starters and since we don't tend to get dessert I think it's a great way to try out new things.

so for our second visit we had the 'italian nachos' and the 'garlic pizza bread with tomato and pesto'.

the italian nachos are one of my favourite things ever since I had something similar at jamie's italian a while ago. they are basically crispy pasta style parcels filled with loads of lovely italian cheese giving them a great flavour by themselves. they also come with lovely fresh pico de gallo.

the pizza bread just like all the pizzas at revs is lovely. their dough and tomato sauce is really nice which is key to make a great pizza. lovely and tasty starters altogether.

Mains

first time around for mains me and the boyfriend both went for this 'blackened chicken burger'. we're both big burger lovers and need to try everything out there that sounds interesting. he also loves a classic beef burger though. this one was definitely worth a try, very juice and spicy with amazing chips on the side. 

for the second time I went for something that has me written all over it. 'king prawn and smoked salmon linguine'. yeah right? it comes in a creamy sauce with asparagus peas and rocket and not only a few prawns like many places would serve this. also the rocket on top gives it a really nice fresh touch. loving this and would definitely recommend it.

Have you been to Revolution before? let me know your favourites in the comments so I can try them next time.

Magdalena.

the foodography in this post has kindly been taken by Geraint Photography. 

find more of his pictures on his website http://www.geraintphotography.co.uk/

and on his blog  http://foot-ography.blogspot.co.uk/

A WEEK IN MEALS #3

believe it or not this time I am actually doing this post on a sunday like I'm supposed to. feels like you only just read the last one a few days ago? well that's right because last week I messed up and didn't have my laptop with me over the weekend only to realise that I was supposed to be writing my 'a week in meals' post. so it went up on wednesday in the end. well but today I'm doing it on the exact day I wanted to and I have quite a few things to show you. I've been over in the UK for just over a week now and is it happens when I'm here we always end up having (a lot of) good food.

my first day in the UK that wasn't extremely busy was a very nice spring day up in north wales. we went into town and had a cheeky creme egg mcflurry at mcdonalds. I don't usually go there but can't really say no to some ice cream on a lovely day.

then in the evening my boyfriends lovely mum made us a rather lovely sunday/monday lunch. we took part making our first ever yorkshire puddings which I have to say weren't all that bad.

as we can't do nothing especially when we're up north we went to liverpool for the day on tuesday as it's not far at all and we wanted to go to the cinema to see finding nemo in 3D. before the cinema we got a little boots meal deal including this (rather lovely) pulled pork and apple sandwich and a new spring edition to the innocent smoothie range which is peach and apricot. I adore smoothies.

I knew I had to go to barburrito when we went to liverpool because there are none down south and we missed out on going to the one in manchester. they made me fall in love with burritos so you should definitely get one if you ever find yourself near one of their shops. (find out more about barburrito here)

did I say I have a lot of food when I'm in the UK? well I meant A LOT. after we got back from liverpool us and my boyfriends mum went to the chip shop to get some fish and chips. proper british and proper lovely. 

wednesday was the day we went back down south so we had a rather early start and a breakfast at pret when we arrived in cardiff. I had an artisan baguette with italian ham and basil. (more about pret in my post here)

in the evening we were just rather tired and couldn't get our brains to come up with anything more creative than pasta with red pesto and chicken. can't go wrong with that though can you.

thursday was our first proper day down south and we had things planned. we wanted to go to morrisons and get shopping for the week. but as it started raining (quite a lot) and morrisons is a bit of a walk away we decided to just pop to tesco and get the things we really needed. 

this meal was entirely my boyfriends idea and it was a brilliant one I must say. well it's basically an omelette but after frying it as you do he put cheese on top and put it in the oven like a pizza so it wasn't all that runny on top. to go with it we had some greek salad. (find the boyfriends blog here)

friday we did all the shopping we were meant to do thursday and that took us quite a while as we like to spend some time looking around. I love shopping for food a lot more than shopping for anything else that's for sure.

in the evening I made a little salmon risotto kind of meal because we found some lovely salmon the day before and I love it. (find a similar recipe here)

yesterday mr was in work in the evening so we decided we'd have a 'light snack' before he went to work and I went into town. ummm well that didn't go too well did it? our light snack is a cheddar and onion muffin with scrambled egg and sausage. might have to practice the light snack thing, but it was delicious anyway.

for late dinner I made a simple pasta dish which is penne with truffled mushroom sauce. I'll post a little recipe for that if you'd like? let me know in the comments!

and today, yes exactly today! I managed to get something on here on the same day as I'm posting it (even though it's quite late now I admit that). 

today however, I met my boyfriend for his dinner break and we went to a pub in the city centre for some food and football. I had this lovely meal, sausage and mash.

three sausages (!) with a lovely homemade mash, gravy and onion chutney on top. you just got to love a pub meal and some football on a sunday. 

(and yay for united winning 2-0!)

so that was another week full of food. 

if you want me to post a recipe to any of the above just let me know in the comments.

Magdalena.

#36 TRUFFLED GNOCCHI WITH PARMESAN

You might have seen my last my(homamde) post where I explain how to make your own gnocchi (if you haven't seen it, find it here). and I promised I'd also share some ideas and recipes for what you can do with your gnocchi. so here's the first one. this one is more of an inspiration than a recipe though since there isn't a lot you have to do, but I thought it'd be nice anyway. (and it's soooo delicious!)

this is just something really simple but oh my god I just love truffles, don't you? If you've never tried them it would really be worth it. I know they are famous for being really expensive, but you can get truffle oil for much less and it tastes sooo nice. it's a great way to try out if you actually like the taste, because I guess for some people it might be a bit too strong because it's a very unique taste indeed. but if you like truffles or if you want to try them out, this would be a perfect thing for you to try out, truffles work sooo well with gnocchi.

Truffles Gnocchi with Permesan

Gnocchi (recipe here)
Truffle Oil
Parmesan
Salt

right so this is really as simple as it gets,
after you cooked your gnocchi all you do
is put them on your plate, add a bit of salt,
a few drops of truffle oil (not too much,
it does have a very strong taste to it)
and then some grated parmesan cheese.

you can then decorate it with some herbs if
you want. and enjoy by itself or with
a lovely bowl of fresh salad if you like.

Magdalena.

Easter Giveaway Winner

Congratulations!

to Tilly 

(find her at Love, Tilly)

she wins these easter goodies from austria.

the winner has been selected at random and drawn out of a hat by a lovely helper of mine. I had no influence what so ever.

Thanks to everyone who entered and I hope you enjoy your prize Tilly. also I did this giveaway to celebrate 5000 pageviews and I am now up to almost 8000 so thank you all so much for supporting my blog and I'll make sure I do another giveaway when I reach my next milestone.

Magdalena.

thanks to Geraint Photography for taking the picture of the flowers. find his football blog  here

Away Days #7: Cake&Bake Show Manchester

Thanks to winning a giveaway over on Jaim's Kitchen's blog I got the chance to go up to Manchester and attend the Cake&Bake Show. it was basically the perfect thing for me to win since I was going to the UK that weekend and wanted to go up to Manchester anyway. luckily it all worked out and we had a lovely day out at the Cake&Bake Show.

and of course I can't go to an event like that without taking pictures and thinking about what to share with everyone on here and well let's just say there were so many things to look at and especially to try. and to buy aswell of course. and you can imagine someone like me doesn't go to an event like this without taking home some foodie and baking treats and well you're not wrong. I have picked out some lovely treats I will be doing separate posts about over the next few days. but for now I just want to share some general impressions with you.

we got to oxford road just after 12 on sunday and it was actually quite lovely in manchester. you can't see the sun in the picture but it was bright all day and no sign of rain, well done manchester.

from the station we made our way to manchester central where the cake&bake show took place, it's truely a lovely location and not far at all from the station. I like this part of manchester anyway, for several reasons. but let's be honest I like many parts of manchester.

but it does look impressive right? that's manchester central inside and it's a cool building. I am very easily impressive when it comes to things like that because a nice location just makes an event even more pleasant doesn't it.

and of course a food show involved sampling and trying things and that's the part I love the most. and yes it's the part everyone loves the most. I just think it's a great way to try things you would never think about trying otherwise like the peach fudge shown above. it was delicious by the way.

there were also several baking demonstrations which were rather interesting to watch. I guess I just find all the local produce a lot more fascinating. 

these were two of my favourites. Joe and Seph's is probably the best popcorn you'll ever have and those lovely homemade steak pies by Nova Scotia Farm are literally the best steak pies ever, I wish I would've bought more of them.

I won't go too much into detail since I'll be doing separate posts about them as I said.

that's us trying to choose all the renshaw icing we want. well we ended up getting loads (believe me it was heavy!) and I can't wait to get into some cake decorating. they have the loveliest pastel colours you can imagine.

it was such a lovely day and I am very thankful I got to go. I would recommend this show to everyone who loves food and baking and even those who don't do it that often, my boyfriend loved it aswell so don't be scared to ask your friends who are not that into baking. I'm not the biggest baking person myself to be honest but I was rather impressed. 

the Cake&Bake Show will be back in London in september (13-15) find out more about it here. if you have the chance I'd definitely recommend going as it's not too expensive either and you'll discover loads of things.

thanks again to Jaim's Kitchen. you should definitely go and check out her blog.

Magdalena.