Advertisement feature in association with Competition Finder
I don’t know about you, but over the last year my life feels like it has got smaller and smaller.
I not unhappy for the most part, but it has shrunk down until now it’s really just about food, drink, walks, cats and Instagram stories. And let’s face it, even some of the walks and the food is really just about the stories.
It’s quite an exposing state of being when you think about it. I imagine it like a series of concentric circles, with the furthest out ones being all of the things you do and the people you see that you normally engage with the least – in my case gym classes, children* etc – and gradually each layer has been peeled away until we are just left as these exposed inner cores, clinging onto the few keys things that make us human at least. I feel like the connections I do have with people are more real – there’s no small talk, you both know you’re in that park for a reason, so you get right down to it.
Food has become a much more significant pleasure too. I’ve taken to just eating whatever I want, whenever I want, but in an almost spiritual way. I don’t just munch on snacks for fun – I take my time choosing, and I savour the experience. When your pleasures have become fewer, they deserve taking more seriously.
What I do miss about food though is constantly being the one to have to cook it and wash up. Eating out has always been one of my best things, hence brunch club, and I miss the novelty of something new, of not being sure what something is going to look and taste like until it’s on your fork and in your mouth.
If I had endless wealth and lived somewhere cosmopolitan then a substantial part of my diet would be takeaways, but as I didn’t even qualify for any freelance financial support, it seems a bit foolhardy to spend all of the money I’m saving on my mortgage repayment holiday on satay chicken sticks and king prawns with cashew nuts.
I’m rambling. I apologise.
The point of this post is that I’ve teamed up with the competition website Competition Finder to provide you with some lockdown food inspiration and relaxation in the form of a selection of easy recipes and £50 TO SPEND ON TAKEAWAY.
That’s right. Read on and you could be the proud owner of £50 of vouchers to spend on the takeaway of your choice, courtesy of Competition Finder. Competition Finder brings together competitions from all over the internet and beyond, and pops them all in one handy place so that you can easily find and enter the competitions you’re interested in. I had a quick look now and the first dozen or so listings include a KitchenAid mixer – *swoon* – £2,021 cash, a holiday home and a 2 night break at Middleton Lodge in Yorkshire, which feels like one I should definitely enter.
It’s a perfect partnership really – win my giveaway, order your takeaway, enter 27 competitions while you wait for it to arrive, win a holiday home… it’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Three easy lockdown recipes
As a bit of a warm up act to the takeaway vouchers competition, I thought I’d tempt you with a few fun lockdown recipes. You’ll need to eat something if you don’t win after all. My original idea was to scour the internet for ideas, but then I remembered that I do actually write a half food blog and so I thought sod it, they can all be my recipes. I’ll know they’re edible at least then.
Chocolate star bread
First up, chocolate bread. Yep, two words which honestly, I don’t know why we don’t put together more often.
This chocolate bread was my first ever attempt at getting Instagram to like me by making a reel, and I was pretty impressed with myself to be honest. It’s a cute little video, which I made by balancing my phone on the shelf of the cupboard above my worktop, and holding it in place with two tins of peach slices. Full instructions are in the caption so just click on it and head over.
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Lockdown banana bread
Have you even been in a global pandemic if you’ve not made banana bread? No is the answer. I’d been a banana bread regular for many years already so I had to up my banana bread game especially for lockdown by getting a special tin and making MINI banana loaves.
I know, your mind is blown right?
Get my mini banana loaf recipe here.
Game of Thrones rack of lamb
I’m slipping this one in here because, well, it’s a Game of Thrones rack of lamb people! Okay, so what happened was this… I was doing a project promoting lamb. (It was EU funded, so if you voted LEAVE you cost me money, just saying.) Every month I had to come up with a lamb recipe, inspired by something fun, and one month I was asked to make a recipe that tied in with Game of Thrones.
Lamb challenge accepted.
Now as you may know I am a big lover of lists, especially when it comes to giving my life any kind of meaning or purpose, and so I have a list of 50 things I want to do before I’m 50, and I had a similar one for 40 things before 40. One of the items on the latter was to visit the Dark Hedges in Northern Ireland, which I did, and very nice they were too. It’s basically a road of ancient trees, where they’ve grown up and over the road and made a tunnel, which is one of my favourite things that trees do, and it was used as a filming location in Game of Thrones.**
Anyway, one thought led to another, and then there I was with a rack of lamb that I’d tried to make look like a row of trees. Perhaps you had to be there.
Win £50 to spend on takeaway
I know, I know, you want the competition and I’ve just been stalling you with my weird meat inspired by trees. So let’s cut to the chase – you want free takeaway right? Of course you do.
In conjunction with Competition Finder I’m giving away a £50 takeaway voucher of your choice – UberEats, Deliveroo, Papa Johns – if I can buy a voucher for it, you can win it. To enter, simply complete as many of the entry mechanisms as you can in the widget below. The more you do, the better your chances of winning.
The competition will close at 11.59pm on February 1st. Full T&Cs apply.
Good luck!
*How we joke
**I’ve never watched Game of Thrones and didn’t know this when I decided to go there, I’d just seen a picture in a magazine and cut it out.
This site is great
The Game of Thrones Rack of Lamb. Needs reproducing. You can cook. I be there x