Bank holidays were made for eating

I love food... I assume you already know this by now if you follow me on any kind of social networking channel. I usually manage to be relatively healthy during the week and have been known to display some strong willpower, but I'm not usually so disciplined over the weekend.

Bank holiday weekends are no exception. Liz and Pete came to stay with us over the most recent bank holiday and it's fair to say that we ate ourselves silly. I obviously took photos of everything so this post focuses on some of the best things I ate (and drank).

We started off the magnificent weekend of indulgence by visiting Penarth's Villa Napoli restaurant on the Saturday night. Neil and I hadn't been to Villa Napoli for over a year and Liz and Pete have never been so we were all very excited. I had the goat's cheese bruschetta to start and the tagliatelle ragú for my main meal. Not the best quality photos due to the lighting in the restaurant, but definitely good quality food! We also shared a bottle of Pinot Grigio between the four of us and it was a really lovely evening.

After we got home, we cracked open a bottle of Ice Wine. After bringing a few bottles of this wondrous discovery home from Canada, we've now found out that it's sold in our local Lidl restaurant! We're introducing it to all our friends because it's that good. Unfortunately Ice Wine bottles are half the size of a standard wine bottle, so of course we had to move on to normal wine next. Liz had also made her legendary Rocky Road for their visit so we had that for dessert! I feel I must warn you that this is only the beginning if you're already silently judging. 

Sunday was a hotly anticipated day as we were all going to Pettigrew Tea Rooms for afternoon tea! We bought Liz and Pete a voucher for two for their wedding a few weeks ago, so obviously we had to accompany them because it would have been rude not to. 

We headed into town a couple of hours before to do some shopping, then collectively decided to have a quick stop in Caffé Nero before our 3pm reservation at Pettigrew Tea Rooms. I know I know, coffee/hot chocolate before afternoon tea doesn't really make sense, but we were tired and I'm powerless to resist the temptations of a small skinny hot chocolate. 

As usual, afternoon tea at Pettigrew Tea Rooms was everything we dreamed of. I usually have hot chocolate rather than tea as I naively used to think I disliked every variety of tea. However, I've recently discovered flavoured teas so I thought I'd try a simple organic peppermint tea. It was really refreshing and meant I got to have a pretty teapot and cup and saucer like everyone else! Bonus. 

When it came to making our cake choice at the end of the afternoon after scoffing the above, I chose the raspberry and white chocolate cake. It was a bit of a risk as I usually stick to either the carrot cake or the lemon drizzle cake because I know how amazingly good they are. However, the raspberry and white chocolate didn't disappoint! I sincerely hope it's still there when I visit again at the beginning of next month. 

After getting home, we complained about being full for approximately an hour before eating more Rocky Road, Doritos, mini savoury eggs and some tiger bread. There was also a lot more wine. We were all in quite a serious food coma by midnight ('are you surprised?!' I hear you say), and yet I still couldn't stop thinking about that one last mini savoury egg. Snacks are dangerous little beasts!

After Liz and Pete left on Monday morning, Neil and I had a leisurely day of pottering around the house and garden, doing the food shopping (our lives seem to revolve around food in one way or another) and catching up on a few TV programmes. In amongst all this, we finished off the tiger bread and had a fairy healthy berry smoothie!

What did you get up to over the bank holiday weekend? Did you also use it as an excuse to eat EVERYTHING? Please send me your links if you've written similar posts, mostly so that I can console myself with knowing that I'm not the only one!