It's cocktail o'clock at Walt Disney World

This post isn't entirely about cocktails, but I love to alliterate.

I've already blogged about my favourite snacks, quick-service restaurants and table-service restaurants from this year's trip. As those posts were obviously very food focused, I decided to write a separate post all about the drinkilicious beverages we tried at Walt Disney World this year.

Most non-alcoholic drinks at your resort and at the parks are included on the Disney Dining Plan as a snack. Each person gets two snack credits per day on the regular Dining Plan, so these drinks are a great way to use up your credits as well as quenching that humidity-induced thirst. 

You also receive a free refillable mug as part of the Dining Plan which means unlimited soft drink refills at your resort for the duration of your stay. 

As well as all the free non-alcoholic drinks, the Disney Dining Plan recently announced an exciting upgrade.  Your table-service credits now include one alcoholic drink along with your main meal and dessert. We like to have an alcoholic drink with our evening meals and have previously just paid the extra for them, so this was a welcome addition for us. 

Here are my top ten non-alcoholic and alcoholic drinks from this year's holiday. Enjoy! 

We had two LeFou's Brews from Gaston's Tavern this year. They're absolutely massive and great value as a snack credit on the Dining Plan. 

We visited Dockside Margaritas in Disney Springs many many times. The cocktails are really tasty (I always order the Rum Runner) and the outdoor seating area boasts this amazing view. 

I ordered the 'It's Showtime Mojito' at Planet Hollywood. I was expecting it to be a bit watered down but it was actually very potent! 

South Sea Breeze cocktail at Nine Dragons in Epcot's China pavilion. Always a winner.

I don't even like tequila as a general rule, but this Frontera Margarita from Frontera Cocina was pretty spectacular. 

Night Blossom from Pandora: The World of Avatar. Basically a huge tumbler of colourful slushy sugar with edible beads on top, so obviously I loved it. 

No visit to the Flower and Garden Festival is complete without a Violet Lemonade. 

We love wandering around Epcot in the evening with either a Prosecco from Italy or a glass of wine from France. 

My standard cocktail order whenever we go to Shula's Steakhouse. Blueberry Martini! 

Glow-tini at the Yachtsman Steakhouse. You'd have thought the lure of this cocktail was all in the souvenir glowcube (some of it definitely is), but it does taste really good too. 

What are your favourite drinks at Walt Disney World? I'm forever on the hunt for tasty (and instagrammable) beverages! 

Restaurant Review: Restaurant James Sommerin

Last Friday, I reached an important milestone in my recovery journey - all clear for a whole year. We always eat out somewhere nice after my three monthly appointments, but we decided we needed to go somewhere extra special on this occasion. It's been an incredibly tough year for both of us so I think it's fair to say that we deserved to treat ourselves.

After much deliberation, we took the plunge and booked dinner at the Michelin-starred Restaurant James Sommerin on Penarth Esplanade. If we can't treat ourselves to an extravagant meal for this level of occasion, when can we?!

In an extremely rare burst of optimism, I bought my dress for the occasion from New Look months ago.

When we arrived at the restaurant, we were shown to our table straight away. As we were visiting on a Friday evening, the tasting menu was the only option on the menu. A few people had already told us that we might as well go the whole hog and opt for the tasting menu if we did go there, so we were perfectly happy with that. We were presented with two options - the standard tasting menu or the surprise tasting menu. As there were a couple of items I didn't fancy on the standard menu, and just because it was a special occasion, we decided to go for the six-course surprise tasting menu with wine pairings. When I told the waiter that I don't like fish, he was very understanding and assured me that my menu would be planned accordingly. 

Before I get started on talking about the food, I should make a few things clear... firstly, I apologise for the terrible photo quality. The lighting wasn't very good in the restaurant (and I didn't think using the flash would be appropriate!) so my photos definitely don't do the food justice. Secondly, as I've admitted before, I'm a terrible food blogger. This means that any detailed descriptions below have either been taken from Google or just vaguely guessed at as I could never remember all those intricate ingredients myself. I also haven't gone into detail about the specific tastes and textures because I'm rubbish at doing that, quite frankly. All you need to know is that everything was amazing. 

We were served a few 'snippets' before the first of our six courses which were a pleasant surprise. These were made up of a wild garlic espuma with toasted seeds, cheese gougères, and tapioca crisps with taramasalata and hummus.

We were then shown a huge platter of different breads and asked which we wanted to try. I assumed we could only choose one but Neil chose two, so I went ahead and chose the same two - a caramelised onion wheel and a rosemary focaccia. The bread came with a dollop of unsalted butter and a seasalt and seaweed butter, served on a pebble from Penarth beach! 

Next up, it was time for our first starter and our first glass of wine. Although I was quite nervous about the prospect of drinking lots of red wine as I'm not usually a fan, I've since come to the conclusion that I must have only tried rubbish red wine in the past as I loved the varieties we had on Friday night. This course was a lovely concoction of wood pigeon, black pudding, raspberry and beetroot.

It was soon time for our next savoury course and our first glass of white wine. Neil was served trout for this course and I was given the vegetarian option as I'd asked for no fish. I can't find a detailed description of this course anywhere, but it was basically made up of mozzarella, basil, pine nuts and heritage carrots. I never thought I'd say this sentence, but they were the best carrots I've ever had in my life. 

We both had a vegetarian offering for the next savoury course - potato, garlic foam, mushroom shavings and an additional mushroom concoction (you might have guessed by now that I often use the word 'concoction' when I don't know what something is called). I don't like mushrooms so this was probably my least favourite dish, but that potato really was spectacular. 

It was time for our main course and I think this was my favourite dish of the night. I could have eaten it three times over! We had a beautifully cooked steak, shallots, roast parsnips, mushrooms, root vegetable puree and a red wine jus. It was absolutely spectacular and blended perfectly with the accompanying wine.

In the blink of an eye, we moved on to desserts. I was THRILLED to discover that there were two dessert courses, as you can imagine. The first one was the best dessert I've ever had (and I've eaten a lot of desserts). It was a deconstructed lemon tart with blueberries, shortbread, meringue and the most amazing lemon sorbet. And who doesn't love a bit of lemon-scented dry ice action? The accompanying wine was my favourite of the evening as it reminded me of the ice wine we sampled in Toronto. 

While I was still waxing lyrical about my first dessert course and the wine, out came the next one. The second dessert was a raspberry souffle with a quernell of violet ice cream, and it was absolutely exquisite. This was actually the biggest course of the evening and I struggled to finish it, but I was determined to finish every bite. It was too tasty and too expensive not to! 

We absolutely loved our experience at Restaurant James Sommerin and I wish we could eat there every weekend. All the staff members we spoke to were very attentive and every course, both food and wine, was described in great detail. We ate at our own pace and were there for a good three hours in total. 

Although it's not cheap and is by far the most expensive meal we've ever eaten together, it definitely lived up to our expectations and 100% deserves that Michelin star. 

Have you ever been to Restaurant James Sommerin? What did you think?

My 30th birthday weekend

It was my birthday last weekend... I turned 30! Don't you just love it when your birthday falls on a Saturday? I enjoyed a whole weekend of lovely activities so I thought I'd blog about what I got up to.

My Friday evening started well when I got home from the gym and found Neil baking a summer fruits cake. An excellent start to every weekend! It was a total surprise so I found the whole thing very exciting.

We continued our weekend of indulgence later that evening with a couple of glasses of wine in the sunshine while we waited for dinner to cook (hence the R2D2 kitchen timer). I love sitting out in the garden on a quiet evening... it makes me feel relaxed, which is often a difficult feeling for me to achieve.

We tried Tesco Finest's 'two dine for £10' deal for the first time on Friday night and decided on potato wedges, beef and pulled pork pizza with salsa verde, and mango and passionfruit torte. All three options were amazing! 

I woke up early on Saturday morning to squeal excitedly and to open all my presents and cards. 30 or not, I'm like a child when it comes to my birthday. I'm planning to write a separate post on my fantastic presents so I'll save all those photos and descriptions for a later date. Taking the perfect photos of all my gifts before finding a home for them is definitely a #bloggerproblem and took me a good half an hour!

When I went downstairs later that morning after getting ready, Neil had a surprise waiting for me in the kitchen... our very own afternoon tea! He'd gone to loads of effort and made cheese & tomato and ham & mustard sandwiches, as well as the star feature of the homemade summer fruits cake. 

After eating the delicious sandwiches, scones and cake and drinking our fruity green tea, we hopped on a bus to Cardiff Bay for the afternoon. Cardiff Bay is one of my favourite local places to visit, particularly on a sunny day. We wandered around for a couple of hours to take in the sights, and I had a very decadent hot chocolate in Cadwaladers! 

We sat in the garden for half an hour after getting back from the bay, then I went to get ready for my surprise birthday evening meal. I decided to wear my Christmas sale dress from New Look for the first time, along with a couple of my new jewellery pieces (more on those in my upcoming 'birthday haul' post). 

I was very pleased when Neil drove me to Miller and Carter as it's one of my favourite restaurants and always feels like a special treat. We ordered the bread sharer to start then I had a tasty fillet steak with all the trimmings, washed down with a glass of Prosecco. Top marks! 

Neil had yet another surprise planned for me on Sunday afternoon... Llanerch Vineyard for Sunday lunch! The weather was beautiful so we were able to walk around the vineyard and soak up some sun after our massive meal. I had the butternut squash and ginger soup to start, roast sirloin for my main, and lemon posset for dessert. It's fair to say that the whole lot was spectacular and I can't wait until our next visit. We sat in the conservatory section of the restaurant, right next to the window, so we enjoyed a nice view with our lunch!

After we got back from Llanerch Vineyard, my in-laws came around for an hour to sit in the garden as it was such a sunny evening. It was lovely to relax in the sun and chat for a while about what we'd all been up to over the weekend. After they'd left, we finished off our day with a stunning evening walk to Penarth Pier. The beautiful views and the tranquil experience encouraged us to go for evening walks more often! 

I feel so fortunate to have had such a great birthday weekend (good planning, Neil), and I'm looking forward to going to visit my parents and friends in West Wales next week for part two of my 30th birthday celebrations. You definitely haven't seen the end of my birthday blog posts... watch this space! 

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!