5 Great Brunch Ideas for New Year's Day

In between painting my nails and sorting my hair out for this evening, I’ve been thinking hard about what I want to eat tomorrow. It’s probably the most hungover day of the year, and so a good brunch is a must. Well – depending on how bad your hangover is – I wish you the ability to be able to eat tomorrow! Presuming you can, here are my top 5 brunch recipes. They’re easy, tasty, and will sort you right out for an arduous afternoon of watching bad movies and eating brown food and various dips.


Dip & Share Eggs
These Moroccan-esque eggs have been around for years, but I am a fan of The Londoner’s recipe. It’s very easy, and a great way to use up leftovers. I find that I usually have most of the ingredients on hand anyway. It’s super filling, and not too terrible for you either. We usually serve it straight from the frying pan, with warm baguettes that we buy part-baked. You will get tomato splatters on your pyjama top, but don’t worry about that. No one’s looking.


Chorizo Scrambled Eggs
This is a great recipe for if you’re feeling a little poisoned. Eggs will give you protein, chorizo will give you salt (I always want salty food when I’m hungover) and flavour, avocados are generally amazing for you and popping it all on a wrap stops it seeming too heavy. It’s not really a healthy brunch at all, but it’s much better for you than a greasy fry up, so hooray for that.


Overnight Cinnamon Rolls
This is a fantastic hungover brunch recipe, as you can do all the hard work the day before. Then, the next day, you just need to stagger out of bed, pop this in the oven and spend rest of the morning picking at them from under a duvet on the sofa. Sounds pretty ace to me.


Eggs Benedict
It’s an oldy but a goody! I'm sure you know the recipe, but this one's pretty good. Did you know you can make poached eggs in advance, too? Undercook them slightly, just pop them into cold water and put them, covered, in the fridge. To heat, pop them in a pan of boiling water and allow to heat through for a minute or so. The yolk will even stay gooey – it’s like magic! I like them on lightly toasted muffins with a some great quality ham and a drizzle of hollandaise sauce. I also like them over homemade guacamole with a drizzle of sweet chilli, which isn’t really Eggs Benedict at all, but it sure does taste good.


Breakfast Burrito Bites
These are a bit different, but perfect if you’re feeding an army on New Year’s Day. You can make them ahead and freeze them, or just do all the prep ahead and on the morning just pop on the egg mixture and cheese and pop them in the oven. If you’re like me, and want to eat everything in sight when you’re hangover, these are perfect for you as the recipe makes 12 bites and no one is going to tell if you eat them all.

Alternatively, you can do what my friends and I did a few years ago and get on the phone to the local pizza place! Even less effort... sounds good to me...

New Year's Eve Cocktails

Ah, that blissful post-Christmas period. Thanks to an inordinate supply of party food and leftovers, it's been days since I felt truly hungry and even longer since I was entirely sober. I love this time of the year. It's all about eating and drinking to excess, and no one can say anything about it, because it's just a last hurrah before January when all you're allowed is kale and water. Mmmm.

And on that note... fancy a cocktail?

What's in my handbag?

I always find that the contents of my handbag vary by the time of year. In the Summer, there’s usually about three pairs of sunglasses (and an umbrella). In Autumn and Spring, there’s always an emergency hat in case of terrible weather. And in Winter – well, it’s all about the layers.

Debenhams sent me this lovely Oasis bag recently and it’s barely left my arm. It’s the perfect size for Christmas shopping as it’s so big – no chance of losing tiny jewellery packages and makeup through a hole in a plastic bag! I speak, sadly, from experience. I've just been using it a lot as a general carry-all though, it makes an excellent overnight bag, too.

Ox Pasture Hall Hotel, Scarborough

Sometimes the best laid plans go awry. I was recently invited to spend the night in Scarborough at Ox Pasture Hall Hotel, and planned a fun-filled weekend for Matt and myself. We even went up a day early and stayed in a budget hotel so we could make the most of it. Oh, we had plans to spend the Friday in York, exploring the city, going round the Christmas market and having a lovely dinner. We’d even done some major research on eateries, including having a look at the recommendations on Quandoo for the best places to eat in the North of England. Then we were going to spend the weekend having a walk on the Yorkshire Moors near our hotel, before coming back to a bottle of fizz and a lavish dinner.

Gift wrapping a la Pinterest

I’ve written about my secret tips on Christmas wrapping before, such as buying plain, shiny paper that you can use all year round and adding loads of ribbon to everything so people are distracted from the badly wrapped bits.

This year, I decided to go full-on Pinterest and wrap my gifts in brown paper with stripy string. It’s ridiculously trendy at the moment – stylish Instagram queens like Liv and Carrie are all over this look – and I can see why. It’s simple but festive, trendy but traditional. I always hear Julie Andrews singing ‘brown paper packages, tied up with string…’ as I wrap my gifts, because, um, that’s what they are.

The other reason I went this route though, was cost. These materials are so much cheaper than any other giftwrap (and brown paper’s always a useful thing to have in the house for posting ebay sales, covering textbooks, etc). It may be a little late for this but if you're a last-minuter, here's where I got my wrapping material:


10 metres of red & white string = £2.49 (free shipping)
I wasn’t sure 10m would go that far, so I bought 20m, and it seems plenty. I think you can get it even cheaper – it’s basically butcher’s string, so available in lots of places in bulk.

25 metres of brown paper = £3.49 (plus £1 shipping)
There’s tons and tons here. It comes in a neat little roll and is nice and thick which is great - I thought for that cost it might be the paper thin stuff.

50 x red luggage tags = £1.49 (plus 99p shipping)
I always buy these for Christmas as they last and last, and 50 tags should see me through pretty much everyone. They’re nice and chunky, easy to write on and – most importantly – match everything else.


If you want, you can add other funky things (I did consider buying real, fabric ribbon instead) but I like the simplicity of this look – especially because it’s so purse friendly!

How to build a Gingerbread House (and what not to do)

So I shared some photos of my gingerbread masterpiece (ahem) the other day, but I thought I’d do a how to, too. My gingerbread house wasn't perfect, but I felt it was charming in its own way. And, hopefully, if you're making one for the first time this year, I can help you avoid any potential problems.

Gingerbread Christmas Cards

I used to always do a Christmassy illustration and send it out as my Christmas card. It was fun, and always really well received (I usually posted about it here, too) but lately time has not been my friend and I’ve not done it for the last year or two. I do still really like the personal touch though and often think that it would be nice to send out a more individual card… but, you know, there’s that whole time thing again.

So step in, Postsnap! Postsnap is an app that turns your photos into postcards and greetings cards, and they asked me if I’d try it out. I was sent out to buy props, and it didn’t take me long to think of what to purchase…

I love, love, love gingerbread houses. I’ve only made one once, and it went ok, although I didn’t realise that you’re best to decorate it before assembling it, and my roof had a massive gap in it as it didn’t want to stay together. It wasn’t a failure (and it looked fine once I covered it in sweets) but it wasn’t as good as I could do, I felt. This time, I allowed myself a lot more time, and that’s really the key. I made the gingerbread a couple of days beforehand on Friday night, then did the decorations on Sunday morning, then assembled on Sunday evening. I’m going to do a full post on how I made it later in the week, and there were a few pitfalls along the way, but for now, I just want to show it off. I was going for scruffy, yet charming. I delivered, right?

I chose my favourite photo and did a bit of tweaking on my phone, mostly on the Postsnap app, but I used PicFX a little too for the light textures. Here's the final photo:

And here's my final card! You can customise much of the text including colours and fonts, and choose from various different designs. You can even personalise and send them out from the app, although I chose not to so I could have them all delivered to my house and I could send them out myself.

They cost £3 each, but you get discounts the more you buy:

1 cards for £3
2-4 cards for £2.50
5-9 cards for £2
10-29 cards for £1.20
30-49 cards for £1
50+ cards for 80p

I'm really pleased with them - they're personal, they came quickly and they look great.

Disclaimer: Postsnap sent me some money for ingredients and supplied me with 50 free credits to buy cards with. But I really rate this app! The cards look great and it was so easy to use. I’ll definitely be using it again.

~+~ 

Four Cheese BBQ Pulled Pork Mac'n'Cheese

Sometimes I get food obsessions into my head. I’ll think about them for ages and ages, and eventually I’ll stand up and scream ‘I CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE! I HAVE TO MAKE THIS!’

And then I do.

One such obsession was pulled pork mac’n’cheese. The last-but-one time we made pulled pork, we talked about doing this with the leftovers, but then time and whatnot intervened and it didn’t happen. So then the LAST time we made pulled pork, I was like ‘Right, this lot is going in the freezer and then will be reborn as mac’n’cheese. Reborn!’ It ended up being a Friday night dinner, which was the perfect excuse to make it incredibly rich and decadent. This is not a healthy dinner, my friends. But it is incredible.

The Christmassiest Weekend

I always find that in late November and all of December, my diary looks insane. I hardly have any free time, and so it was nice this week to have a rare weekend with no plans. We celebrated by having the Christmassiest weekend possible, starting on Friday night with a cosy evening of making gingerbread, accompanied by super rich homemade mac’n’cheese and red wine, Then on Saturday we went into London for the day...

We started out at the V&A as they had kindly sent me tickets to see the Horst exhibition. I don’t have any photos to share with you as we weren’t allowed to take them in the exhibit, but I really recommend a trip (tickets are only £10 each). Horst was an influential photographer from the 30s to the 90s, and worked a lot with Vogue. The exhibition shows the different stages of his career – from fashion (including some amazing dresses) to stage and screen (including photos of Marlene Dietrich, Ginger Rogers and Joan Crawford to name a few) to surrealism (including some collaborations with Dali). It was so interesting to see how his career evolved and all the different influences that affected it. It’s also a pretty large exhibition – we were probably in there for an hour – with loads of photographs, plus some of his cameras, sketchbooks and films of his work. I loved it. I'm thinking about buying a print or poster for my new flat next year too.

Next, we headed across town to Spitalfields as we were starving and obsessed with trying out the Hawksmoor Christmas menu. This is only available in Spitalfields Bar, which is next door to the main Hawksmoor restaurant. I was worried it was going to be busy as we couldn’t book, but we needn’t have worried – we were the first ones in there at 12ish, but once we left it had filled up significantly. I’d not been before but it’s such a cool bar – it has a grimy, hidden aesthetic but it’s actually super comfortable (and clean!). Oh, and the food… wow.


The Christmas nuggets are minced turkey and pigs-in-blankets, wrapped around a four cheese sauce with the consistency of melty camembert and then deep fried. They’re amazing. The cheese is gooey and great quality (nothing like that bright yellow plastic American stuff), they’re the stuff of dreams, basically.

And the burger. Ohhh, the burger. One of those ones you have to use a knife and a fork on almost instantly because it’s so huge. I’m just going to C&P their description: “A juicy slab of buttermilk fried turkey topped with a sausage stuffing patty made from Ginger Pig Tamworth pork, along with crispy smoked bacon, sprout tops, spiced cranberry ketchup, a cheeky slice of Ogleshield cheese (not very Christmassy, but a burger without cheese is a sad thing indeed) and turkey gravy for you to French Dip the whole thing in.” It was incredible. Run, don’t walk – it’s only around until the end of December!



We then headed to the Christmas market on the Southbank. It was ridiculously busy, but also very festive and lovely with cool things like a man blowing a flaming tuba and sand sculptures. We popped into the Rekorderlig Winter Cider lodge for a hot cider – I was invited to the launch party but sadly couldn’t make it, so I’m glad I got to try it. I will also be stocking up on their winter cider because it’s so very tasty – it’s not just your usual hot alcoholic apple juice, it’s got tastes of vanilla and oranges too. Yum.

All the food stalls at the Southbank market seemed to have ridiculous queues, so we wandered back a little into the food market behind the Royal Festival Hall which had much more acceptable crowds. I was a little sad I was still so full from my burger because I wanted everything! I did make an exception for a crepe, though – because who can turn down a gooey Nutella and peanut butter combo? NOBODY. Except Matt, who got Nutella and banana, because he actually prefers other things to peanut butter. Weirdo.



After a quick cocktail in Thirst, we then headed home for some quality sofa time.

On Sunday, we headed into Yateley to meet Laura and her gorgeous baby. I was really impressed by our roast at the White Lion – if you live in the area, the meat is good quality, there are loads of veg and they give you extra gravy without you asking. All ticks in my book!

We then headed home to do a bit of Christmas prep. I lit up some Yankee Candles which they sent me recently (the Candy Cane Lane one is sooo yummy) and had a play with the crafting kit they sent too. I must confess the artful lighting is to hide how terrible my candy cane star was – there was quite a bit of snappage from my clumsy fingers. But in the dark, lit by fairy lights, it’s not too bad! And my angel wings came out ok.

I spent the rest of the evening trying to build a gingerbread house… more on that at a later date, but it wasn’t all plain sailing. At least I had leftover mac’n’cheese to see me through…

Where I've Eaten Lately

Because my Instagram is mostly food these days, it’s quite nice to do a round-up post. I live in a small – but fairly popular – town and lately there seems to be lots of awesome little independents about, so it’s nice to give them a bit of a shout out. I haven’t actually eaten out that much recently though – we’ve been cooking more and more (let’s face it, it’s so much cheaper) and so going through my latest Instagrams, I was quite surprised to see that there wasn’t much on there!