The Beesley Buzz: September 2014

Book review: Angelica's Smile, by Andrea Camilleri

Review by Richard Beesley. If you've read our previous book reviews, you will know that I love a good mystery. Having never read any of the Inspector Montalbano Mystery series before, I wasn't sure what to expect. But Andrea Camilleri does not disappoint. Angelica's Smile is a...

Book review: Southern Cross The Dog, by Bill Cheng

Review by Richard Beesley. This book is simply stunning. The evocative language, the writing style, the descriptions. The characters jump off the page, and you can see, hear, sense and smell them. The landscape emerges and engulfs you, and the river, swamp and forest fill your...

Crossing three counties and then into Wales: Arriving at St David's Hotel and Spa, Cardiff Bay.

We seem to have totally lost track of days of the week with all the travelling we've been doing. Despite today being filled with a huge long journey spanning three counties before crossing the Severn bridge into Wales, we still seem to have crammed loads in and there seems to...

Blackberry Bakewell tart

Well Autumn season is well and truly in full swing as our conker haul bears witness to. And we finally got the chance to go blackberry picking too. This is on our autumn bucket list each year but we hadn't got around to actually doing it for years! I've also been craving a...

Fish fingers and Custard anyone?

We spent years feeling smug in September. When everyone else was stressing about getting back into the school routine, we had none of the rush to get out of the house in the morning, or the after school hunger pangs and needing to get tea on the table by 5pm. Nope - we...

Minute make cake: Carrot Cake

A little while ago we made a minute make chocolate cake, that is, a chocolate cake that cooks in a minute. So I wondered whether we could do the same for carrot cake. I often think carrot cake is a 'healthy' cake with all that carrot in it and with wholewheat flour instead...

Quick Bircher musli (no overnight soaking required)

For those days when its too warm for porridge and regular musli just isn't filling enough. This recipe is perfect for eating some fresh fruit with your breakfast. It also softens enough with the milk and yogurt if you add these to the oats first that you don't need to make it...

Kids in the Kitchen: Making Sushi

I just can't figure out why we had never made Sushi before. In my mind it was one of those things that I imagined to be extremely difficult to make so we had never tried. Spontaneously, I had added some sushi rice, rice wine vinegar and nori (seaweed sheets) to my last online...

Day 5 of our Road Trip and Seal spotting in St Ives

We woke up to a rainy start. It was nice to have breakfast here with some simple mini packs of cereal and milk which daddy did well to get hold of in a town which seems to have very little in the way of late night opening stores and no petrol station here either apparently. We...

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