More Nigella

It's been a while as I've been spending some time at my parents, but I have managed to do two more recipes from Nigella's "Kitchen", both of which were actually a success!

The first one was the "crustless pizza" which is kind of like an omlette/frittata (not sure if I've spelt either of those right)!  And after an inital panic when it behaved more like a souffle in the over, it worked very well, looked fairly similar to the picture, and led to a request for second helpings from my daughter!

I think I will definately be doing this one again for a quick tea.

The next one that I have attempted is the BBQ mince recipe, which is very much a spag bol type mix, but with slightly different spices in it.  It was yummy though, and as suggested I served it which a bread roll and cheesy nachos.  Again, approved by the 5 year old critic!  I especially liked the idea of just peeling and halving the onions, carots and celery and thowing in the processor to produce a finely diced mixture, then softening in the pan.  As one who is is no good at chopping, this idea was great, and why I hadn't thought of it before I don't  know.

Boggle Flash Reivew

I was so excited when I actually got asked to do a review of something on my blog.  I had seen lots of other people doing reviews of things ranging from toys, to books, to make-up, but thought it would never actually happen to me.  But it did, so here goes, my first ever review. 

When the parcel arrived at my door I was rather too excited I think based on my age, and ripped the paper off rather quickly, behaving a bit like my 5 year old will in a few weeks time.  I was really excited to see how exactly these 5 letter cubes talked to each other.

There are 3 different game settings, but the main ideas is that you get a random set of five letters generated on the cubes.  You then score a point every time you rearrange the letters into an actual word of three to five letters.  Once your time runs out, the cubes show your score, followed by the maximum score you could’ve got.  This was actually very depressing as I frequently got less than fifty percent of the total points available!!! (Not sure I can blame the toy manufacturers for my lack of brain power though!!)

I tried it with many different people ranging from my five year old (even though the recommended age was 8) through to my in-laws who are, how do I word this, retired!

Everybody enjoyed it, and easily understood the printed instructions.  It even held the attention of a group of 16-20 year olds at a youth group I help run!  My five year old did manage to play as well, as there is a setting where you only use three or four of the cubes, and she could manage to make three and four letter words.

For me the biggest plus point is that it comes with a very robust little box with a lid, which is small enough to fit into a handbag for entertainment on the go, or on holiday etc.  The only downfall that my testers came up with is that although there was a multi-player setting, it didn’t really feel as though you were competing against each other as you each got different letters.  The other improvement that was suggested is for it to list all the words you didn’t get in the time, as some of the testers, especially the teenagers, didn’t believe the max score quoted.

Overall I think it is a good, educational game.  The RRP is £24.99 and it is available now from all good toy retailers such as Toys R Us and Argos etc, although some searching will find some offers just ready for Chris