Product Reviews – Page 5

Things you didn’t know you could recycle

Clever Products Made from Recycled Materials

For anyone who knows me I’m a rather curious soul, almost verging on annoying, spending hours trying to find the answers to things and get increasingly frustrated if I can’t work it out. I love weird and wonderful facts. Did you know bananas grow pointing upwards, the average person spends two weeks waiting at traffic lights and we grow 8mm while sleeping but then shrink again the next day. Fascinating!

It’s not dull, honest!

A few weeks ago I was sent a box of stationery to review from Memoetc, I know that doesn’t sound very exciting but I now have rulers, pens and colouring pencils made from corn on the cob, a pencil case made from tyres, a recycled leather notebook and colouring pencils made from recycled CD Cases.

How do they do that?

I’ve now spent most of the morning trying to work out how, when I should actually be working. How can you make pens and pencils out of corn on the cob? So far, all I’ve worked out is that it’s made from the starch of the corn.

As for the leather notebook, it’s not like they can melt down leather and reform it, so can someone please explain. And I’m thrilled that there is finally a use for all my old CD cases! Colouring pencils, who would have thought. Apparently in the UK we produce almost 50 million used tyres every year so it is great to see companies coming up with innovative ways to reuse the all the rubber.

Memoetc offers next day delivery and stocks some ‘Green’ products many of which come from the Remarkable Range. They are a bit more expensive but don’t forget some of the recycling processes will be labor intensive.

Easy Oven Baked Sausage and Tomato Risotto

Stir Free Sausage and Tomato Risotto

Everyone is a sucker for a photo of a cute puppy, right? Don’t worry it will all make sense soon.

I don’t often make Risotto as I don’t have the time or patience to be standing at the cooker for 40-50 minutes stirring. However, I came across this recipe for Sausage Risotto which is done in the oven and requires very little stirring just a bit when you brown the sausages and sauté the onion.

This reminded me how much I like risotto and now that I can do it without being chained to the stove I will be making it more as it’s such a quick and easy mid-week meal. I’m going to try and make a Prawn and Pea Risotto at the end of the week. I’ll let you know how it went.

I used Black Dog Risotto and Tomato but you could use plain Arborio rice but it probably wouldn’t have that extra zing.

Plus, A percentage of proceeds from sales of all Black Dog Deli products will go to The Labrador Rescue Trust, who have recently homed their 10,000th dog.

Hence the photo of the adorable Lab.

Easy Oven Baked Sausage and Tomato Risotto

Recipe Type: Main

Cuisine: Italian

Author: Mediocre Mum

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 30 mins

Total time: 45 mins

Serves: 4

Ingredients

1 TBSP Olive Oil
4-6 Pork Sausages
1 red onion chopped
300 g Arborio Rice
400g tin of chopped tomatoes
375 ml of chicken stock
375 ml of water
dried parsley

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 200. Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the sausages for about 10 minutes until they are brown and almost cooked through. Remove from the pan and set aside.
Add the onion to the pan, you may need to add a bit more oil. Sauté for about 3-5 minutes until soft.
Cut the sausages into bite-sized pieces, try not to burn your fingers. I wore an oven mitt.
Add the rice to the pan and cook for a minute, stirring continuously. Add the sausages, tomatoes, stock and water and stir. Bring to a boil then transfer to an oven proof dish. Cover with foil and cook for 30-35 minutes. The liquid should have absorbed. Do check to see if the rice is cooked.
Serve in large bowls and garnish with some dried parsley if you want.

What’s your favourite kind of Risotto?

Disclosure: I received the Risotto complimentary for review purposes.

Camping in Style? Co-ordinated camping gear? #giveaway

Family Camping has never been so glamorous!

I absolutely adore camping and spent a lot of my childhood camping in Canada. On occasion I’ve joked about being buried in my sleeping bag when I die. Please don’t hold me to this. However, we’ve done very little camping in the UK, I don’t know if this is down to weather, lack of camping gear or a misconception of UK campsites. But, we have dipped our toe into Glamping and are rather partial to it.

Pubs with Campsites near Hastings

We have been on a couple of occasions as I managed to borrow the missing bits of gear (e.g tent and camp beds). A few months back we went overnight camping in Boreham Street, East Sussex, near Hastings at the Bull’s Head. The campsite was nothing more than an open field with a loo block (tent pitch £15 a night).

Nonetheless, the location was brilliant close to many local beaches and backing onto to a fabulous pub (stumbling distance) with an amazing menu, wine list and garden. I had a perfectly cooked rib eye steak with a very nice glass of red wine or two. The landlord was also very helpful when I needed to ring him at 6 am to get him to let my daughter out of the loos after locking herself in by accident. Now that’s what I call child friendly. I must also add that it is dog-friendly as well.

We do hope to start doing more camping next year and I’m slowly starting to amass some gear. We’re still in need of a tent but for the time being will continue to borrow, but I do now have a lovely set of Berrow Hill Melamine Dishes from Olpro that I can’t wait to try out camping. They’re not only stylish and great for camping but perfect for picnics and BBQs.

Win a Sleeping Bag

The lovely folk at Olpro have offered my readers a chance to win one of their lightweight Witley Sleeping Bag with red on the inside. It comes in its own stuff sack with draw string and if you have two you can zip them together to make a double. I quite fancy getting the Berrow Hill one to match my new dishes. Camping really is getting rather civilized.

Enter by simply using the rafflecopter form below. The full terms and conditions are at the bottom of the form. But, in short, it’s open to UK residents aged 18 +. Competition closes on the 17th Sept 2013.

Good luck and happy camping.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This competition is listed on Loquax, Prize Finder and Competition Hunter.

Disclosure: I received the melamine set free of charge for review purposes.

It’s that time of year again! School Uniform Review

Where is the best place to buy school uniforms?

Last year an experienced mum said

‘Don’t wait until the end of August to buy school uniforms’

I’m so glad I listened or my daughter wouldn’t have had any uniforms to start school as most places would have sold out. We had some left over M&S vouchers so kitted her out with winter uniforms. They may have been a bit more expensive but they did last the entire school year.

However, during the year we have managed to accrue quite a few summer uniforms, some were hand-me downs and others were sent for review purposes. We have uniforms from Aldi, Asda and BHS. When I asked my 5-year old which ones were her favourite, the Girl’s Classic Gingham Dress (£4) from BHS have come out on top!

She loves the ones with the two pockets, the bow at the back and hair tie. As a mum, I love the fact that they are knee length as I find a lot of the summer uniforms are far too short. They’ve also stood up to numerous washing and if I hang them up straight away there is no need to iron them. However, I do find the buttons a little fiddly and would prefer the zipper from the Asda one, however that one is a bit short for my liking.

This year there seems to be a price war between the big supermarkets with some offering uniforms for as little as £4. I’m a little dubious about the ethics behind some of them as I don’t know how they can ethically source them for that price. There is an interesting article ‘Why I would NEVER buy into cut-price supermarket school uniform deals on Parent Dish.

This year I’m hoping to get away with using her summer uniforms for September and buying winter ones later. I do hope this isn’t a bad idea. Do let me know otherwise.

The perfect thank you gift for teachers

Where has the time gone! First year of school done!

It’s almost the end of my daughters 1^st year at school, where has the time gone. It seems like yesterday that we were walking to school for the first time! Now the conversation in the play ground has turned to ‘what to buy the teacher as an end of year thank you present?’

Hopefully her teacher doesn’t read my blog or I’m about to spoil her surprise. We’ve been very lucky this year with our daughters teacher, she’s amazing, I’ve never seen some one with so much enthusiasm who obviously loves her job.

We’ve watched our daughter embrace her love of reading going from a non reader to a reader and I’ll miss the days when she no longer wants me to read to her at night, putting herself to bed. She genuinely loves school and runs through the gate every morning.

There has been whispers about doing a collection for the teacher, but apparently, this is discouraged by senior management as it may put pressure on some families and I totally understand. I’ve heard of intense competition amongst parents in the playground with large amounts of money being spent on gifts and that’s just not my style, I want my daughter to be involved in the choice of gift, as after all, the teacher has suffered 30 kids, like her, for the past year. My hat goes off to her!

My daughter’s class is called Butterflies and she wanted to buy her teacher a present related to that theme. As a teacher myself I know that the endless boxes of chocolates rarely leave the staff room, the flowers have nowhere to live and I wanted a more personal, but practical gift that the teacher can use or wine and lots of it!

Coincidentally, I was sent these Butterfly post it notes, a practical gift that the teacher she can use in the class next term, every teacher needs post it notes from marking a page in a book to jotting down notes after listening to a child read of difficult words they need to work on. We’ve stumbled upon the perfect present!

When the chocolate has been eaten and the flowers have wilted, the post it notes will still be there and the tin the post it notes come in can be reused.

Disclosure: I was sent these post it notes for review purposes, but you have to admit they’re rather fab!

Do you buy presents for your kid’s teachers? If so what do you suggest?