Tex Mex Tuesday: Chilango...might be a bit of a no go!

So you may have been noticing since moving to London I have mainly been eating tacos, enchiladas, tostadas and chimchangas...and you may have been wondering why no burritos??

Well...to be honest, I'm not that into burritos.  They're essentially just a wrap filled with meat and salad/veg and since I'm not the biggest lover of salad and veg my burrito always ends up being just a tortilla filled with chicken and cheese!

....but I have been waiting to try Chilango for a while now mainly because I love their story! and a good story really gets me on side! Eric was a Mexican loving American who came to the UK and was disappointed to see how lacking we were in the Mexian food department (oh how times have changed now!) He met Dan, a Mexican loving Englishman and the two of them quit their jobs and travelled to Mexico City and a few other big U.S cities who know how to make good Mexican, and they picked up enough tips to come back to the U.K and start up Chilango.

So you see I was rooting for them...and I wanted to fall in love with Chilango, but I didn't.  I was obviously never going to be their biggest fan, considering my lack of appreciation towards burritos.  They do sell Taco's and I could have tried one of those but since burritos seem to be 'their thing' I really thought I ought to give them a go.

I love the feel inside of the shop and the decor is fun, and you are constantly reminded all around of great reviews and how they won the best Mexican of the year in London! One of the good reviews advertised on our table said 'you won't find a bigger tastier burrito'.  They were right about one thing, you probably won't find bigger and that was one of my slight negatives - I could not eat my burrito gracefully, and it wasn't through lack of trying.  I ended up with black beans all down my jeans and found bits of rice on me even on the tube ride home! I feel they are perhaps verging on a little 'too big' and they could have cut mine in half and charged me a much more appropriate price.

I felt £20 for 2 burritos, 2 juices and a bag of tortillas was a little on the steep side considering we've paid that amount to eat Mexican in a proper sit down restaurant recently and it's been far nicer.  My other problem with my burrito was distribution.  Besides the fact that I was apparently given the two people behind me in the queue's helping of black beans too, I just ended up with the top half full of rice and the bottom half full of black beans with a few pieces of chicken somewhere in the middle.  So I would either get a mouthful of rice, or one of beans and if I struck lucky a piece of chicken and a sprinkling of cheese.

I know there are alot of great reviews of Chilango, and people do seem to love it, and I did really want to love it like I said but it just didn't wow me.  One thing I will give to them is that yes they do have 'great fresh flavours' and my chicken was really tasty but the whole experience wasn't enough to make me want to go back, I have eaten waaaay better Mexican recently and so I don't see why the trek to Chancery Lane would be worth it in the future.

Now onto a much better dining experience! On Monday I met up with the lovely Jade.  We arranged to meet in Soho and were planning on going for some shakes so there were a few different options, but with the thoughts of corn dogs in my head I knew there could only be one and we headed to The Diner.

For those of you who follow my cupcake blog, you will know I've been on a bit of a coconut kick recently and so I ordered a coconut milkshake without hesitation! There is nothing better than a thick American diner style shake served to you with refill in the silver container, but in one of my fave flavours right now - what could be better! It was delicious, and Jay-dee was pretty pleased with her chocolate malt she picked too.

We gossiped for ages and caught up over some corn dogs and cheesy fries. It was a perfect night, except for the fact I forgot my camera so excuse the poor quality phone photos!

In other blog worthy news, I had my first skiing lesson last Saturday at Sno-dome in Milton Keynes.  I saw a discount on groupon for a beginners lesson and decided while I'm sort of around Milton Keynes for the summer, now would be a good time to learn...who knows when it may come in handy - within the next few years hopefully!

Here I am with my instructor Tom, listening very carefully to the tasks he was asking us to do - like performing heads, shoulders, knees and toes on the way down the slope to get us to work on our balance! I was certainly better at that than my taller counterpart was!

and in this picture my task was to go as slow as possible, so I'm actually right on task! It was pretty fun, and not as scary as I was anticipating and actually much easier to pick up than I had imagined...so I'm excited for my next lesson in a few weeks time where I'll get to learn how to turn left and right!!

Tacuba: a mini Mexican feast!

This past Monday we ventured to South London for our Mexican.  This is because we attend Family Home Evening in Clapham and we didn't want to miss it so we googled a good Mexican nearby and found Tacuba.  It is currently 20th place on Trip Advisor for the best Mexican restaurants in London and we figured it would be a good idea to start by touring the top 20 to begin with! Loco Mexicano where we visited last week was ranked 15th

The first thing about Tacuba is that it is small! and has a very limited seating area.  It is really just a bar, and can probably seat around 20ish people at max.  The tables are also tiny! Mara and I had just a narrow plank of wood between us for a table and we were wondering how both of our plates would fit on when the food arrived, but as you can see from the photo above the plates are quite tiny too so that's how they manage it! 

I get the feeling Tacuba would be a fun place to go to with a group of friends and you could all order different dishes and feast away.  Mara got 5 mini pork Taco's and I got 5 mini chicken enchilada's so we did a bit of swapping, the food was delicious and reasonable priced too.  We were also impressed with their range of fruit juices, I hate when restaurants only offer apple, orange and pineapple so our mango and passionfruit juices made a welcome change! 

So if you're ever in Balham and in the mood for some cheap yet tasty Mexican, I can recommend Tacuba! 

On Thursday night we went to an awesome 20% off night at Carnaby Street.

It was absolutely buzzing and there was so much fun stuff going on! Check out the super cute popcorn machine outside Tommy Hilfiger, they were giving away free popcorn in awesome stars and stripes cups...needless to say I was loving it! 

The queue for Mac was ridunculous and everyone was loving their discount shopping! We went back later in the evening when things had calmed down a bit for a spot of shopping!

We also got 20% off when we ate at Carnaby Burger Co, which is very similar to Gourmet Burger Co but has the added bonus of serving hot dogs so I indulged in a chilli cheese dog with bacon fries! and one of my all time favourite flavour of milkshakes - the Oreo! 

By chance, because Las Iguanas was full to the brim and we would have had a 2 hour wait for a table, we ended up at Gourmet Burger Co in Milton Keynes last night for date night! and as luck would have it our waiter had gone to school with Byron so he gave us some discount vouchers and also made our Oreo shakes with extra Oreo which I appreciated greatly!  They also have a new menu with some great little gems like 'The Jamaican' burger with mango and ginger salsa so I tried it out as a little throwback to our Caribbean days! 

...and after a week full of indulging and of course eating far too much cheesecake we went bouldering today at Big Rock Climbing to work a little of it off! and it was a much harder workout than anticipated actually! I think it's going to become our new summer hobby, and I have a feeling it's going to have to be  so that I don't put on 2 stone by the end of our summer with my new job!

An egg-citing Easter weekend!

So lots has been happening! My blog has to be renamed...any ideas? Chilling in Milton Keynes just doesn't appeal! Yes the job search was proving fruitless in Shropshire, we headed down to visit By's family for the weekend in Milton Keynes and By found a job within one day and I found one two days later!! so we have relocated and will be staying here now until we head off to Bangor.  It's a shame we couldn't find anything in Shropshire, as we were quite enjoying the country life but you have to go where the work is!

After a week in Milton Keynes we headed back to Shropshire for a whole action packed Easter weekend with all my family.  The weather was amazing and I actually managed to break out the shorts to show off my tanned legs for once! 

By and Arne were in charge of BBQing us a Good Friday Feast which we were able to enjoy outside:

and after lunch we decided to make the most of the sunshine and harking back to our younger days we created a slip and slide and had hours of fun being as crazy as we could!  

Looking wet but happy!

...and after we worked up an appetite we gobbled down 1000 calories in my Easter Dessert Bar:

On Saturday we headed to Chester to the Crocky Trail, an outdoor adventure trail full of rope swings, mazes, slides and all kinds of challenging obstacles!

Here's Mara and Mel sliding around...

and us with a giant Iron Man! The boys were pretty happy that they finally had a weekend that didn't revolve around shopping...being surrounded by a family of girls can be hard on them sometimes! but we made sure this weekend was all outdoor fun! 

Mara won the challenge for staying upright the longest in the hamster wheel!

and she also won in our log wrestle, unfortunately as I fell to the ground I managed to take her down with me! The boys are looking on and loving it in this pic!!

and of course no trip back from Chester is complete without stopping of at The Ice Cream Farm.  They have over 30 amazingly yummy flavours...here's just a few:

It's always impossible to choose but I went with the White Choc, Raspberry & Oreo - it was delish!

Arne was less than impressed with his vanilla bean after requesting 'clothed cream' but someone mis understood his order, it must be that Irish accent of his! but he was still all smiles for this pic! 

After a lovely Easter service at church on Sunday we came home to a lovely Lamb roast, and Mom took a picture with her girls (or the ones that like to be photographed at least).

Then we heard the exciting news that the Easter Bunny had been! Yes we are 24, 28, 29 and 32 and we still have Easter Egg hunts in the garden...don't judge! We love it! and Easter certainly wouldn't be the same without them! 

It also has to be said that the Easter Bunny certainly hides them in trickier places year after year...this year I was having no luck at all until the last few minutes of the search when I finally found one! I was probably finding it so hard because Byron was finding all of them one after another...he is an egg hunting machine! 

Here's a few snaps of how it went down! Mel was her usual competitive self, taking out anyone who stood in her way of some chocolate! Luckily there weren't too many casualties and Arne didn't even have to be subjected to having an egg cracked on his head this year! 

After we'd all eaten far too much, we decided we'd walk it off by a hike up the hill to find a disused mine we'd discovered on a previous afternoon 'stroll'.  

This was inside the mine..

and this was a spot of tree climbing, check out the view!

Not to be outdone, daredevil Mara preceded to climb a tree twice as high as mine!

Luckily my dad brought along his rope in his 72 hour kit (incase we got stuck down the mine!) so we were able to do some rock climbing too!

 

It really was a lovely view from the top! 

and we had to snap this Converse shot for future scrap fodder.

The Bluebells were out in full swing on our walk back down the hill...

and my dad led the way...hat and backpack and all! 

On Monday we had some 'pre-birthday' celebrations for Byron.  As you may well know Byron is a meat loving South African so really there was only one option in my mind as to where we should take him, we headed back to Chester to track down Tropeiro - a Brazilian Steakhouse...but first a spot of pedal boating on the river to work up our appetite for what was to come:

I think has got to be one of the first bank holiday's in history where we have had sunshine and blue skies the whole weekend...amazing!

Here is our very own little Gaucho, a.k.a the meat man! who brought us 7 rounds of meat feast! 

Byron was absolutely loving it, in fact we all were...here Mom is toasting the meat! and if you're not a meat lover the banana fritters are worth the trip alone!

Here I am with the birthday boy...25 years old, getting old...

but never too old for ice cream, we had another pit stop and chocolate waffle cones were the order of the day!

He opened a few South African treats on the day...

and we celebrated with a Smarties and Kit Kat cake I made...By's fave choccies! 

which brings us around to the present!

Last night I headed off to Nando's to meet up with Jay-dee, or so I thought! and then these 3 little faces popped out hiding in the booth!

It was a lovely and unexpected surprise and so nice to not only be enjoying delish delish Nando's, after so long without it, but also with great friends!

It was great catching up and they even spoilt me with a balloon and giant cupcake - they know me so well!