Birthdays, Cheesecake Parties, Night Markets, and Wimbledon Mania!

Get ready for a picture overload! I have sooo many things to blog about so this has turned into a bit of a monster post! Let's go right back to the middle of June when it was Mara's birthday...and what other party is more appropriate for the cheesecake queen than a cheesecake making party?!

You've never been to such a party I hear you say? well then you're missing out! We had no bake cheesecake, baked cheesecakes, chocolate biscuit bases, regular digestive bases and all the toppings you can think of! 

I made this oh so delicious coconut cheesecake (because as we all know I'm obsessed!) It was a chocolate base, chocolate no bake cheesecake, topped with sliced up Bounty and drizzled with some Lindt Coconut Creation! 

and the treats didn't stop there! Sophie made Mara this rather delicious carrot cake...

decorated with some milky way stars! 

Here are both the birthday girls, Mara and Naomi with their cake! 

As Nevada and I were guests to the YSA house for the first time, we had to add our portraits to the portrait wall.  This should have been easy peasy for Nevada as she's a rather amazing illustrator but the sneaky trick to this game is that you are not allowed to look down at your picture whilst drawing so you must look at the other person the whole time and you can't take your pen off the page!

So as you can see it was rather tricky! and the portraits came out rather abstract! 

but they made a nice addition to the wall! 

The next day on Mara's actual birthday she got more cakes - two birthday cupcakes from Kooky Bakes...

and the present opening began!

Hmm I wonder what that could be...

as if she needed any more recipe books! haha - she literally has the best collection of recipe books out of anyone I know! I guess it comes with the territory of being a pro baker!

and a little sisters frame from me so that she can have a little reminder of us when she's missing us!

and a whole lot of card loving - mine was the Hello Kitty one!

Now since Mara's was born in Australia, she's the honorary Aussie in the family and as a result of that she is a big fan of Bill Granger and has become an even bigger fan of his relatively new London restaurant - Granger & Co...so there was only one place she wanted to go for her birthday brunch...queues and all (that place is so popular that no matter what time of day you go there is always a queue!)

We got these super yummy sunrise smoothies to start...

and I got the classic ricotta hotcakes with fresh bananas and honeycomb butter - I can't even describe in words how delicious this was but if you live in London and haven't been yet then you really need to get down there! 

Mara opted for the sweetcorn fritatta with spinach and bacon which was equally as tasty...

and of course when we saw the words coconut on the menu I couldn't resist so we ordered a side of toasted coconut bread which was out of this world amazing! 

and because we're ginormous fatties we couldn't help but stop by Ottolenghi and pick up a peanut butter s'more!

and I just had to have my picture snapped in front of this Canadian pub - 6 weeks to go people - the countdown is seriously on! 

A couple of weekends later I popped back to London for the Bermondsey night market.  I was seriously excited to finally try Pizza Pilgrims but of course their popularity stopped me before I even had the chance because they had sold out before I could even get in their queue! Sad times, as I have only heard amazing things about their pizza.  Their little pizza truck was so cute! I am determined to make it back to them very soon! 

Luckily their was a biltong stall to console me - I got some of my favourite biltong snapsticks!

and in the end went for some curry and a mango lassi simply because it was the smallest queue of all! 

Mara braved it in a much longer queue to get this amazing piri-piri pulled pork from African Volcano, it was pretty inventive! very messy to eat but seriously delish!

We ended the night with some sweet treats from Crumbs and Doilies...

and a brownie from Yummy Boutique.

and we couldn't pass up the raspberry, lemon and mascarpone ice cream from Sorbitium Ices! I had a coconut ice cream from them before down at the South bank market and it was so good I knew I had to try more of their flavours! 

and I just loved this little thai street food truck that was a tuk tuk and the name of the company was 'Bang-Wok' - I thought that was a pretty clever name! 

and no weekend of Mara and Gem fun is completely without some Mexican!

We got some amazing burritos from Tortilla, which is one of the only Mexican places left in London that we haven't tried yet! 

and then it was time for Wimbledon fun! We got our queue cards, pitched our tent and got ready for the long night ahead! 

Last year we were 777, this year we were 1021 but as it turned out that worked out just fine because we wanted Court 2 tickets anyway as we know the Fish vs Tsonga game would be a great match! 

The next morning, when we arrived through the entrance it was raining! but luckily the rain stopped just before Court 2 play started! 

Here we are ready to support the American players on court! I was really hoping I'd be supporting Roddick (my fave!) but he went out on the Saturday evening...boo!

So we supported Serena instead, not that she needs much support with 112 mph serves! 

Shvedova gave a good fight and even looked to be worrying Serena at one point! 

and her coach decided to start a Mexican wave during one of the breaks in between games which was pretty funny! 

but Serena came through in the end and won the match - it must have been down to that awesome purple co-ordination! 

We also got to see Radwanska (who co-incidentally played Serena in the final this year so it was pretty cool we got to see them both!)

She played a young italian, Giorgi, who had a very powerful forehand but made a few too many mistakes in her game...

despite having a very cool outfit she didn't manage to outclass Radwanska. 

So we decided during the break to get some strawberries and cream, because it's not Wimbledon without strawberries and cream! 

and I got my flag out ready to support Mardi Fish! and if you want to read more about my patriotic style that day you can check out the style post I did over at Jacy's blog! and you can read all about how we appeared on T.V!

It was a really great match, we reckon it was even better than the matches on court 1 and centre.

Tsonga was as unimpressed as we were with how cold it was! He kept wrapping himself in his towel! 

Fish was on fire and playing so amazingly well! I just know that he would have won had rain not stopped play...

but just as common as strawberries are at Wimbledon, so are the ball boys pulling the rain covers on unfortunately! and rain halted the play for the night! 

Remember this match? 70 games! how crazy is that! I love that they have a plaque to commemorate it! 

and we finished our Wimbledon day of fun by sitting out on 'Murray Mound/Henman Hill!' sitting under tons of Umbrellas wondering whatever happened to our English summer! 

So that concludes part 1 of our London fun...stay tuned for London part 2 - can you believe that some people don't like London?! I can't...I love it! and I could keep spending every weekend for the rest of my life there and never get bored! 

Meat Market...a little slice of America in Covent Garden!

Happy 4th July to all my American friends out there and also my American loving friends! 

I'm bringing you this post out of sequence of events because I'm just too excited by this place and want you all to go eat there because it's AMAZING!

I had read about Meat Market on quite a few blogs over the past few months, they opened back in May and they hail from the same people that created Meat Wagon and Meat Liquor so I just knew it was going to be an awesome place to eat! 

I had read about crazy queues so we decided to be super prompt and arrive just before they opened at Midday on a Saturday - this was a great idea on our part because it meant we had the place to ourselves when we arrived, I could take photos galore and our food came super quick! 

I absolutely loved every detail of this place, from the metal cages they store all the condiments in....

to the alphabet magnets dotted all over the place...

and even the jokes on the ice machine!

They have a whole lot of signs, most of which are pretty amusing.  I enjoyed this one the most...

and they have a chalkboard of converted veggies! Now that is impressive...

and then we come on to the menu! Ohh the menu, how could I choose between a chilli dog and a burger? Chilli dogs are my fave! but I had heard their burgers are similar to In-N-Out burgers so I just had to give them a try.

I ordered the Black Palace burger which was every bit as delicious as it appears in the picture below! It was a double patty filled with gherkins, melted cheese and ketchup.  The last time I had the pleasure of eating an In-N-Out burger was over 7 years ago so I can't really remember it well enough to compare but Mara had some just last summer and definitely felt like Meat Markets burgers were the winning burger out of the two!



She ordered the Dead Hippy burger! smothered in Dead Hippy sauce which is a mix of ketchup, mustard and mayo and we shared these amazing corn puppies on the side! They are essentially mini corn dogs without the sticks hence the puppy name! and I could have eaten these by the trayful!



We also shared a 'side' of chilli cheese fries but check out the size of it! The portion sizes are awesome for the prices and I felt like the overall meal was definitely great value considering just how tasty everything was! If you don't like things too hot maybe skip the chilli fries...they made my eyes water! but they were so tasty I just had to keep eating them!



Of course no American meal is complete without a milkshake.  Unfortunately the only flavour they had was vanilla which is a little boring in my book, but it was such a good vanilla that I was actually won over! It was nice and thick, just how I like them and the vanilla flavour was so creamy and delish!



All in all, Meat Market is amazing and if you live in London and haven't been there yet then why not! I will give you advance warning that this meal filled me up so much, I literally couldn't even think about food for the following 6 hours...and if you know me that's pretty unusual! I even turned down free sweets and free Krispy Kremes in Selfridge's because I was just that full! but after we went back to Mara's and had a lie down, we were both making plans about when we can go back and stuff our faces again! 

The final wave to Wales...for now!

Sooo much has been happening! and I have just had 3 amazing weekends in a row in London that will make their way into an enormous blog post sometime soon, so I realised it was time to get these pics from my final days in Wales out the way! 

I returned to Bodnant the week before I left with my friend from uni, Sarah, because last time I went the world famous Laburnum arch wasn't in full bloom and I definitely didn't want to miss out on seeing it! 

Somehow the dreary day we awoke to gave way to an amazing sunny and hot day! so we started off our day at Bodnant with a little picnic...

complete with coconut scones and homemade lime curd!

The blue skies made everything look more brilliant!

and I was loving all the water lilies.

The flowers weren't blooming last time I was there so it was exciting to see!

I was just loving being able to soak up the sun, it had been a good few weeks before our trip that the sun had shown it's face around those parts! 

I took Sarah to all the best spots for posing! after I had scoped them out a few weeks before with Nadira!

I didn't get a pic of these waterfalls last time and everything was just bursting with colour!

Now, here's what we were waiting for! 

The gorgeous Laburnum arch! 

I have seen tons of pictures of it, it's on lots of postcards you can buy from local shops but seeing it in real life was pretty spectacular! 

The yellow was so vivid! and it's certainly one of the prettiest things I've seen in a while! 

While the sun was still shining we popped over to Aber Falls because Sarah had never been before...

so we had a little whistle-stop tour of all the worthwhile things to see in North Wales!

and ended it by driving up to the awesome view point just above our village...

and of course no sightseeing tour is complete without a trip to Beaumaris and to the yummy Red Boat Ice Cream Parlour which we did the following morning!

It was a fun few weeks spent with lots of different friends coming to stay and keep me company while By was in England already! and although I wasn't sad about leaving Wales I was sad to be leaving lots of good friends behind.