Sugar and Grain-Free Banana Bread Recipe

It's been eighteen months now since I gave up sugar. Yeah, you heard it right; this previously cake-obsessed afternoon tea addict gave up sugar. Actually, that's slightly misleading. I gave up eating all sugar except for a couple of small bits of fruit a day. I had realised I was just eating far too much of the sweet stuff, either in cakes, biscuits or desserts, but also, more insidiously, in the supposedly healthy things I was eating: dried fruit, maple syrup, honey and even an abundance of fruit. It's shocking how many equivalent teaspoons of sugar you're eating when you tot up a few day's worth. Many of us are busting the WHO's guidelines on daily sugar consumption by the end of breakfast time without even realising it. The time came when I didn't feel happy ignoring my spiking and crashing blood-sugar levels so I just cut my sugar-eating right down.

Sugar and Grain-free Blueberry and Banana Muffin Recipe

Well hello there. This poor old blog has been languishing for quite some time (but thank you to the people that have continued to stop by). Partly this can be explained by the blog fatigue that seems to have affected me, like so many of my favourite bloggers, in recent times; but also by something of a lack of afternoon tea in my life. In September I gave up eating refined - and many natural - sugars. I was becoming increasingly concerned that eating sweet things was becoming the norm rather than a treat for me and I wanted to reverse that.

East Frisia: Tea Drinking Capital of the World

On our way to Berlin, where we have been spending the summer, we decided to take a little detour for a few days. After some consideration we chose a place that can quite rightly call itself the tea capital of the world. No, we didn't detour via Turkey or Morroco, but East Frisia. Where, I hear you ask? If like me the most you knew about Frisia was that it was somewhere that produced a lot of black and white cows, prepared to be amazed.

Taste test: Premium Everyday Teas

I've been struggling with what to call or how to classify this blog post. In truth these teas don't necessarily have a lot in common (price per cup ranges from 3.2p to a whopping 27.7p) but none of them are the standard big four - recently reviewed by me - and all of them are well-known and readily available in supermarkets and the like. Similarly none of them are loose-leaf choosing instead to offer their tea in convenient bags. These are the teas you might choose when you want the convenience of a teabag but think you'd like something with a bit more finesse than the average cuppa.

Taste Test: Everyday Teas

I realise I am in a fairly small minority in that I always drink premium loose-leaf tea. Despite loving a cup of splosh I only tend to drink one or two cups a day so I figure that it's worth spending a bit extra to ensure they're of a really good quality. But for many people the supermarket is where they do their tea-shopping and I can't deny that for a famously tea-loving country like Britain, teabags are where it's at.

Review: Butter, Prenzlauer Berg

 
There was a time when Berlin was full of cafés like Butter: large, airy, bright, lots of wood and great lighting. At some point those cafés started to disappear and get replaced by trendy coffee shops and fancy restaurants. Now, it's not like I'm not a fan of those too but sometimes when I'm in Berlin I just want to go to an old-fashioned corner café that serves good coffee and great cakes.

Coffee: Going Over to the Dark Side

I have an admission to make: just lately I have been drinking more coffee than tea. This came about for a variety of reasons, the most important of which was our summer trip to the midwest of the United States. I have always drunk coffee (albeit decaf for some years due to boring health reasons) but have generally favoured an espresso with various milk options: a latte; a cappuccino; a Milchkaffee; whatever the local variety happens to be. I drink one of these most mornings but at other times of the day it just feels like too much milk.