Curiously Charis

A classic Pinoli pizza at Zizzi Our final week was here! Back from a week holidaying in Lanzarote, we kept our promise of completing our challenge when we got back. We headed to the supermarket and rather than having a set list of meals to make, we decided to just have a look in the fridges and freezers and see what Morrisons had to offer! I was completely over healthy eating the week after I got back from holiday. It was sooooo cold when we touched town, I'd got used to eating big portions on holiday and just thought, well, might as well have another week off the calorie counting... Veggie sausage, mash and a northern amount of veggie gravy... We ate a few different dishes, Phil fancied a curry so we had butter chicken curry with quorn pieces, I made a tagine with quorn pieces another day, we had a lasagna made with vegan mince, and we had some easy meals like sausage and mash when I craved some classic British food after a week abroad (none of that foreign muck, ...

The lovely beach at Playa Flamingo We all love being on holiday. For many of us, the highlight of our year is when we get to set foot in the place we've never been and go explore. Or even reconnecting with good memories somewhere we've travelled to many times. Sometimes holidays are busy and hectic but exciting, sometimes they are chilled out and soothing for the soul. But everyone dreads coming home. So I had a few thoughts about how we can bring that holiday feeling back home with us, to make the weeks we while away at work and home that bit brighter... (some are more serious than others!) Bring that holiday feeling home on the plane! 1. Being friendlier : When we were heading out in Lanzarote, I left the hotel room while Phil was dillydallying and when I realised it was raining out I called back: 'It's spitting!' just as a British bloke walked by at the exact moment and shouted "Everybody in! Everybody in!" a la Peter Kaye... Can...

Los Hervideros I've got to admit, when I thought about Lanzarote I thought it would be all Brits eating fry ups and drinking lager all hours of the day and turning into lobsters on sun loungers by the pool. Don't get me wrong, if that's your cup of tea then who am I to judge? Each to their own! But it's not really my kind of holiday. Me and Phil were in real need of a holiday, but neither of us felt like a chilly Northern European city break, so we looked for somewhere cheap and cheerful in The Canaries where the sun would hopefully shine and we could get some relaxing done and spend some time reconnecting. We found a bargain flight and hotel combination on the volcanic Spanish Island and soon after I started researching the place, not really knowing what was on offer! Cheap but cheerful: Hotel THB Flora, Puerto del Carmen I started on Tripadvisor, where someone who had recently stayed at our hotel praised its location in Puerto Del Carmen next to a sh...

I had a goal in mind. Lose 9.5lb in 25 days. Can't be that hard right?! I have my holiday at the end of the month, I thought it was a good enough challenge for the timescale. But this is me we're talking about. Not only am I slow to lose weight anyway, I also hate restricting my diet too much. A nice, normal achievable goal for me is 1lb a week, then I can still have a few treats, so long as I workout, too. There was pretty much no way I was going to achieve this - still, I set my mind to it. How good would I feel on the beach on holiday if I got to my goal?! Well, turns out it wasn't to be. Friday weigh in one - maintained. Friday weigh in two - down 2.5lb. Hallelujah! Friday weigh in three - down 1lb. Friday weigh in four - up 1.5lb. WTF?! As you can see, I didn't make it to 9.5lb. As I realised I wasn't going to reach my goal, I did the unhealthy thing and decided to beat myself up about it. I thought to myself - "If only I'...

Peppers stuffed with quorn mince  So, this week was the week we struggled a little bit. And mostly, it wasn't really the choices for the dinner we were cooking, but the lack of options for eating out, buying our lunch or having a takeaway. I went to Costa for breakfast this morning and had a long sigh looking at the egg and mushroom sandwich. It's just not a sausage sarnie is it! If they'd have sold a veggie sausage sarnie, I would massively have gone for it. I guess there's just not the demand for it - so there's not the choice! My version of huervos rancheros  But dinners have been good again - apart from all the cooking from scratch meaning the dishwasher has had to go on everyday haha. Swedish quorn meatballs!  This week for dinner we've made a veggie ploughmans, mac 'n' cheese, quorn stuffed peppers, Swedish meatballs and Huevos Rancheros amongst other things, but lunches have been difficult again. I made wraps, Phil had s...

Katsu tofu curry supplies! We've now done 16 days of vegetarian goodness and we're still feeling good! Apart from one morning when Phil had to have chicken nuggets (we went and got some quorn ones for lunch...) and me really fancying some sort of Chinese (well, I suppose you could have beancurd?!) We've not had any wobbles. This week we've had all kinds of food... A homemade leek and broccoli pasta bake, halloumi and portobello mushroom peri peri flatbreads a la Nando's, Linda MaCartney mozzarella burgers and a Tofu katsu curry and vegan schnitzel. All good all in all! Pretend 'Nando's' halloumi flatbreads  Lunches have still been tough. I've had feta and red pepper tarts with salad, as well as some salad boxes from Morrisons, which have quite a bit of veggie stuff in - from falafel to couscous to noodles. A working lunch as always! Meanwhile, Phil has been having soup and cheese and onion rolls, he loves the minestrone soup...

I love Christmas. And I love, love, love Christmas food. But come January 1, I'm dying for some fresh foods. I'm all down for salads and roasted Mediterranean vegetables and definitely don't want to see any sprouts. Nor any sort of desserts with raisins in. Stollen, Christmas Cake, Christmas pudding... why so many raisins?! The other thing I get bogged down with at Christmas time is the amount of meat I seem to consume. On Christmas Day, we're not just happy with a turkey, sometimes we'll even have three-bird roasts, and not content with the amount of meat we're necking we then have pigs in blankets, delicious meat-wrapped-in-even-more-meat concoctions. And sausage meat stuffing, this year ours was covered in bacon too! After all the big meals and the leftovers, I'm definitely in need of a break from meat come New Year. So it's time for a month off. I feel like there are a lot of very good reasons to eat less meat - ethical, environmental ...

There is no ballet that conjures up the image of Christmas quite like The Nutcracker, and Northern Ballet’s version of the classic ballet is a festive delight. Premiering at Hull New Theatre on Wednesday, November 14, this classic ballet was brought to life through stunning performances, magical staging and a full orchestra performing Tchaikovsky’s mesmerising score. Though the dancing took centre stage - with spellbinding performances from the cast - the special touches such as a mechanical sleigh and snow falling, as well as the glittering costumes, really took the audience’s breath away. Featuring all the main characters, dances and music everyone has come to love, the show had an English twist on it, with the action set in a traditional Recency England home, rather than in Russia. Highlights of the show included the family’s Christmas brought to life with the whole cast taking to the stage for an energetic Christmas Eve party, with the fabulous ‘mechanical dancers’ whose limb...

Hint: It's not usually like this for Goole Times reporters... So I'll start this post by saying I'm not really a court reporter, but being part of such a small team means you get to do so much different stuff. For example, Tuesday morning I was at the unveiling of some new playground equipment at a local primary school, then Tuesday afternoon I was at the scene of an attempted murder. That was an especially varied day! But I try to cover as much court as I can for the Goole Times. A few months ago I was speaking to a couple who had become the victim of a serious fraud and had wound up as witnesses in a crown court trial. They told me how surreal it was being in court, when they'd only ever seen court rooms on TV. This got me thinking about what a privilege it is to see the inner workings of the legal system, albeit from the slightly removed perspective of a reporter, to let you guys know what it's really like. On TV court is so dramatic. And someti...

I get it. The clocks have gone back, it's cold outside, work is dull and there aren't the kind of fun things going on like barbecues and beach trips since summer ended. Sure, summer was amazing this year, plus the fine weather lasted well into October, and we're all sad to see it finish. But why all of a sudden does that make November 1st the start of the Christmas period? What happens between summer and winter? Why is the whole autumn period just something we have to endure between the summer holidays ending and the Christmas holidays beginning? I walked into Tesco on Thursday morning and all the Halloween stuff had been replaced with Christmas decorations and wrapping paper! But the food has been in the shops since the end of summer. Everyone who knows me knows I like to be organised and do things early and I do normally start preparing for Christmas in November - stuff like buying a few presents and planning my decorations, maybe thinking of some nice things ...