Wine & Cheese & Quiz night

Last weekend Leigh and I hosted our first (of many I hope) Wine, Cheese and Quiz night. I had been given a couple of quiz books for my Birthday and as a group of friends we do rather enjoy a quiz. We asked everyone to B.Y.O.C and they all stepped up their game and in the end we had 17 cheeses! We actually ended up with a couple of doubled up cheeses which was fine by me.

Leigh and I provided crisps, dips, quiche, bread, pickled onions and 2 melted Camemberts and then we were provided with a large loaf of tiger bread, baguettes, grapes, Port sault, Caerphilly, Brie, Wensleydale with cranberry, Smoked cheese, Edam, Cheddar with garlic and chive, Smoked sausage cheese, and Boursin.

We all tucked in, with the Cheddar being the surprising favourite and the melted Camemberts not far behind that. We managed to polish off both. In fact we managed to eat practically all of the cheese and drank all of the wine that had been bought along for the occasion too, although I have a distinct lack of wine glasses as they keep smashing so I gave my remaining wine glasses to my guests and I drank my wine out of a mug!

We left the cheese on the sideboard whilst we played several quiz rounds. We had some incredible cheese themed team names, such as, 'Your team may be Gouda, but this one is Feta' and 'I used to work as a cheesemonger, but I camembert it any longer', and they got more creative the more wine that was consumed.  We also kept stopping every so often to nibble at a little bit more cheese, it's quite addictive! I wish I had got more pictures but to tell you the truth it all went so quickly it was quite impossible to.

Say Cheese!

We sent everyone home at around 1am, wishing them all very pleasant cheese filled dreams.

xxx

Market at Christmas

With only 3 days to Christmas what better way of celebrating the Christmas spirit than with a trip down to the wonderfully festive London Borough Market. 

At this time of year there are so many festive stalls and things to try. When you first walk through the gates the smells of cheese, meat, flowers and mulled wine float aromatically around you and it feels safe and warm inside although the warmth is probably from the hundreds of people that were crammed in which I suppose is only to be expected so close to Christmas!

There were so many lovely things to see:

Pretty flowers, including some lovely Christmas berries

Tons of vegetables are to be found in numerous vegetable stalls

The smell of oranges always makes me feel Christmassy

And then there's the glorious spice stalls with the different exotic smells

And all the mushrooms which are a favourite vegetable of mine although Leigh is not a fan.

There are lots of tasty saucisson's to be tried, that range from the standard to Duck and Pistachio.

And of course the most exciting bit about the whole trip was the amount of cheese that I got to eat. You just need to ask and they will let you try little bits of cheese. We tried all sorts including a 36 month matured cheese which was full of flavour.

We bought several cheeses and once home arranged them on our lovely slate cheeseboard

But back to the market...


There are lots of places to get something warm to drink

And you can finish off the day with a piece of cake or chocolate on the side...

It was lovely to spend a few hours soaking up the atmosphere and if you want to feel festive and eat a lot of cheese I would definitely recommend it.

xxx