Cardiff - Four months in

Time flies. I know I sound like a broken record or an old lady but 2016 has flown by. I have now been living in Cardiff for around 4 months. That's crazy. Although it does sometimes feel that I've lived here for much longer. For the last 5 months of 2015 I was clocking up to 500 miles a week on the road going to and from work. The milage itself wasn't the worst part of it, rather it was the time spent on the road. Living where I lived in West Wales the motorway is over an hour away thus if you get stuck behind a tractor/lorry/terrible driver then you're stuck behind them for at least 45 minutes. On a good day I'd be in the car for minimum 3 hours. BUT ALLAS, it's now motorway all the way. A cool 45 minutes and I'm sat at my desk at work ready for the day ahead. It's glorious.

It's not just the decline in hours spent on the road that makes living in Cardiff great - it's also the food, the people, the parks, the pubs, the cinema, the theatre, the CIVILIZATION! Now when I get home from work I actually have time and the means to go meet friends for a drink; I can decide at the last minute to go and watch a play in the local arts centre or a comedy show down in the Bay and I can choose from one of the umpteen restaurants on my street to go out for food.  On the weekends I don't need a huge plan to sort out lifts home from places I can either jump in a taxi or walk home. For the first time in a very long time I feel as if I am truly enjoying life.

So here are my top three favourite places in Cardiff right now -

Chapter Arts Centre

I love chapter not just because of everything that goes on there but also because it is literally a two minute walk from my front door. I can pop over there after work, have a drink, watch a film or a play and be home in a heart beat. For someone who grew up 45 minutes from the nearest cinema this is amazing. On Thursday night my housemate and I went over there after work to watch a play The Harri-Parris (which was great) and to have a glass of prosecco. I regularly set up camp there on a rainy Sunday afternoon with my laptop or a book and crack on with work or just to read for hours with a cup of coffee. It is always busy and without fail there will be tables and tables of people having food, sipping a drink, having meetings or just relaxing.


Yr Hen Lyfyrgell

Recently opened in the heart of the city , Yr Hen Lyfyrgell (The Old Library) houses a few shops inclusing Bodlon and Lampeter's finest Lan Llofft as well as a  large upstairs area where you can have a drink and some delicious food. A few weeks ago myself and a few friends headed there to have lunch and it was sooooo nice and when Wales were playing one of their Euro 2016 warm up games we watched it on their massive screen which makes it a perfect place to watch major sporting events.


Llandaff/Pontcanna Fields






























I usually end up venturing into Llandaff and Pontcanna fields everyday. Be that on my daily
run or for a walk in the evening. Having green space so close to my house has become very important to my life in Cardiff. Running/walking around these parks gives me time to think or not to think. Sunny Sunday afternoons are the best here - running past families on their post-lunch walk, witnessing dogs galloping around in the grass or simply grabbing a cup of coffee from Cafe Catsan and sitting watching the world go by. I think I've spent more time here than anywhere else in Cardiff over the last 4 months. Oh and in the last two weeks I've run passed THE James Dean Bradfield from the Manic Street Preachers and Gruff Rhys (aka the Coolest man in the world) from the Super Furry Animals in Llandaff fields. So yeah.

During easter holidays I was basically sat in my dad's big shed outside for around eight hours a day writing my dissertation and revising for my final exams and eventually my mam decided that I needed to have a break. I certainly was not going to disagree so we picked up my grandmother and the three of us headed down to Saundersfoot in Pembrokeshire.

The weekend before, mam had stayed in the area with her friend and she kept raving about Coast, a restaurant which is situated almost directly on the most beautiful beach. Therefore I obviously had to go there to see what the fuss was all about! 

Almost immediately after we arrived I knew that this was going to be a pretty great lunch. We were sat next to the window and our view was spectacular. While drinking our wine and waiting for our food we had a panoramic view of the glittering seas of Carmarthen Bay drenched in sunshine. It was pretty special. 

For starters I had the crumbled Pantysgawn goat's cheese which was a type of greek salad with watermelon. It was amazing. I'm not really sure what else to say about it other than I could have carried on eating it all day! For mains I went for the sea bass and I am so glad that I did. The dish was fresh, light and immensely flavoursome. The nut and seed couscous was the perfect accompaniment to the dish as not only was it tasty but it didn't make you feel uncomfortably full afterwards. Of course we could't leave without having dessert! The white chocolate cheesecake caught my eye and with strawberries, a ginger biscuit base and sweet basil, how could it not! 

Everything that made it on to our table was incredibly tasty and they were all dishes that I would recommend people to try. The food at Coast is amazing but also quite pricey - I would say that it's a perfect place to go for special occasions or if your going for a nice and relaxed day out. Also, with the views that come with the food I think it was worth every single penny. 

Upon finishing our meal (I think we were sat there admiring the views and slowly eating our food so that we could savour every bite for around two and a half hours! oops!) we went for a little walk on the beach. A perfect way to end an amazing meal. 

 

Cardiff, Floods & Coffee

We had 4 weeks off from uni over Christmas (which was awesome) and since it was quite a long break I decided to meet up with one of my uni friends, Ellie, in Cardiff (she lives near Bristol). However, we typically planned to meet up the morning after the night when the West was hit by masses of rain and train tracks were either flooded or broken. Thus, it was a bit of an adventure getting to the capital but after a short car ride, an hour on a bus, another hour on another bus, and a 40 minute train journey (yaay for living in the middle of nowhere) I eventually made it (getting home wasn't quite that easy)! First stop was Coffee Barker down Castle Arcade. If you ever get a chance to go to Cardiff I urge you to go down the little arcades and away from the big shopping centres for a bit. They have some jewels down there. Cool vintage clothes shops in the form of A Vintage Affair down Morgan's Arcade (along with others across the city) and the oldest record shop in the world is also situated down Morgan's Arcade - Spiller Records. Morgan's Arcade seems to have everything you need because on our little trip to Cardiff I picked up my new skateboard from Route One which is also placed down the busy arcade. Now back to Coffee Barker... Every time I make a trip to Cardiff I have to have a coffee or a milkshake here (they are insane). It's an awesome place to chill on their super comfortable sofas, have a chat with friends, play board games or do some work. I can honestly say that I had the nicest latte that I have ever had in Coffee Barker. Starbucks who?! So yeah, the next time you're visiting the Capital city of Wales steer away from Topshop, River Island and Hollister and venture down those little arcades, who knows what you'll find.

BOROUGH MARKET // LONDON

As you have most probably noticed I haven't been a very good blogger over the last month or so but I guess that's what being a History student does to you - you just don't have that much spare time but I'm not complaining because it is uni after all and you're supposed to do work (although 10 essays of 2,500 words in one term might be pushing it a bit!). But now it's christmaaaaaaas and I'm home for a month so it's time to get the blog back on track. 

A few weeks ago I jumped on the train to central London to meet my parents who were down for the weekend. They were staying in a nice hotel right next door to Buckingham palace so I got there reasonably early to have breakfast with them at the hotel. Scrumdidlyumptious! Once we had let the food settle a bit we began our day around London town. First stop was Tower Hill and a walk over Tower Bridge to Borough Market. After getting a bit lost we finally made it and my oh my was it busy. We should have guessed really with it being a Saturday close to christmas. Despite having to push our way through crowds of people we got to see/smell/eat many different foods and I had a particularly yummie Chorizo roll for lunch. If you know me at all, you'll know that I love me some chorizo! In the middle of christmas trees, wreaths and minced pies we found a little place which sold the most delicious mulled wine and each of us had a cup to warm us up on the cold winters day. Having decided that we'd had enough of the crowds we began our walk to Covent Garden, but not without popping in to cute little Paul Smith shop on the way. 

Having trekked what felt like miles  along the Southbank we finally made it to an incredibly christmasy Covent Garden. Covent Garden is one of my favourite places in London and while we were there I picked up a laptop from Apple and my dad bought another coat from Barbour and we had a little drink in a pub to watch the last few minutes of the Rugby League World Cup Final before making our way to the London-Welsh centre on Greys Inn Road to watch the Wales V Australia match. Even though we lost it was a very cool experience being in the heart of London but surrounded by fellow Welshmen. 

A Vietnamese was had for dinner just around the corner from the London-Welsh centre before I made my way on the tube to Waterloo to catch a train back to uni. A lovely christmasy day in London :)

ATTENTION!

University work is insane. When they said there was a jump from first to second year they weren't lyin'. I am basically in the library from 9am till about 5pm everyday then work at home until at least 9pm each evening but I think I've come up with system that might save me a lot of time and allow me more time to do other things such as sleep and relax! Because I am constantly so busy time flies by. I have no idea how it is already the weekend. I'm looking forward to next week a hell of a lot but you'll have to wait to understand why :)

Last Wednesday myself and Hollie headed to Kingston as I needed to take my laptop back to apple to be fixed and we thought while we were there we might as well make a day out of it. Neither myself or Hollie are big shoppers thus we spent most of our time in HMV, Disney Store and in Zizzis where we ate a delicious meal before heading back home.

It seems as though Wednesday is a day for little trips. This Wednesday myself and Hollie (again)  had to jump on a train to Ashford as we needed some fancy dress stuff for the evening as we were going to our lacrosse initiations and we were ordered to dress as army privates. After grabbing some camo bandannas and facepaint we stopped off in Staines where we bought some plain t-shirts and of course we had to stop in Starbucks for a frappacino. Later that evening we got ourselves ready and went to our initiations . . . It began with an assault course in a garden, then a funnel, a ring of shots, another few houses and some party poppers and then eventually we were awarded with a soldier that officially made us a part of the lacrosse team :) I don't drink so I was fresh (but tired) the next morning whereas others were, let's just say, not!

I LOVE SUNDAYS.

Sunday is the best day of the week by far. Not Saturday, but Sunday. It's a day, unlike Saturday, where you have no pressure to do anything. I feel like on a Saturday you have to go out, go to places, meet up with people etc. but not Sunday. For most of my school life Sundays were always busy be it going to Sunday school or travelling around Wales playing rugby but I liked it. When I'm home I wake up around 9ish, have breakfast, read the Sunday papers, take Hendrix for a walk, watch a film and then settle down for the evening with some Countryfile - yes I love countryfile everyone! In uni things are a bit different - I usually spend all my days doing work so I don't really have a Sunday in a sense but today myself, Hollie and Ellie went to a local café called Picnic on the Green  and we had some delicious cake and coffee :) Scrumdidlyumptious. I had a red velvet cupcake and a gingerbread latte - a must for autumn.

I've probably written this a million times on this blog but autumn is awesome (despite all the rain and thunder storms). There's this certain smell in the air - it's all crisp and smells of smoke (fire smoke not tobacco smoke!). It's telling you that Christmas is on its way and soon you'll be cwtched up in front of the fire watching Home Alone. Yaaaay.

GOOD MORNING WORLD JUICE

When I arrived home from Reading and V fest there was a new blender in the house which I was very happy about because our old one could barely blend a leaf let alone an orange. Also, living off peanut butter sandwiches and the occasional apple while sleeping in a cold damp tent for 7 nights isn't great for your immune system - as my cold later made clear to me. So, a revitalising juice is exactly what the doctor (me) ordered and here is one I put together last week. Even though it looks a bit funky with its vibrant green colour, I can assure that it was absolutely yummy and I had it for breakfast two days in a row. Oh, and it is also so easy to make - you'll probably finish making it before your toast has time to pop up. 

 This recipe makes about a pint and a half worth of juice. 

IT'S HOMEMADE BURGER TIME // Beef, Chilli & Sun Dried Tomato Burgers

Last night I decided to make some burgers from a Nigel Slater recipe I discovered in the Observer a few weeks back. They were slightly different to your usual plain beef burger as they were made up of beef, chilli and sun dried tomatoes. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of sun-dried tomatoes, to be honest that actually make me feel a bit queasy when eaten on their own but thankfully they were delicious when combined with the beef. I made about 14 burgers and I think the whole family liked them because by the end of the night there was only one burger left on the plate. If you'd like to try making these burgers for yourself then just click here for the recipe. I have also included some photos of me making this delicious meal if you would rather see the end product without actually having to make them yourself. I have to say that these burgers were super easy to make and only took a maximum of 30 minutes to complete - bonus! :)

*Makes 4* - I doubled the recipe but managed to make 14 burgers out of it. I'm not good at maths but even I know that that doesn't make much sense but it happened . . . somehow! 

1 medium red chilli 

6 tbsp of sun dried tomatoes in oil

Add everything together, mix and add some salt to season - (400g of minced beef)

Roll together and grill or fry, whichever you prefer. We did both to make the process a bit faster as the family were hungry!

Nigel Slater also gives us a recipe for a suitable salad to accompany our tasty burgers. Once you've done all of the above steps (about 7 basil leaves, 1 lime, two avocados) mix them all together to make some deliciously zesty side dish. 

We served our burgers with an array of cheeses - Mozzarella, Mature and Edamer. Instead of buns we opted for some rye bread on the side (that's because we didn't have any bread buns in the house!). Absolutely yummmmmie :) 

Give it a go yourself and tell me how you got on! 

Twitter - @lisagwawr

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SALADS CAN BE A REAL PARTY . . .

Recently I have been loving a good salad. Not those kind of salads you see with a few lettuce laves a sliver of tomato and, if you're lucky, a chunk of cucumber on the side. No, I'm talking about salads which include bacon and pears, halloumi and chorizo - you know the fun kind. It might have something to do with the sun we've been having but recently we've been eating salads all day every day. When people hear talk of salads they think it's either because their friends are trying to lose wait or they don't think at all as the monotonous green colour that they imagine is enough to send them in to a sleep or at least in to a day dream about that juicy steak they saw on TV the night before. But guys, salads can be quite the party, if you allow them to be that is.

One of my recent favourites has been a recipe I discovered whilst roaming the Internet for Glastonbury inspired food to celebrate the awesome weekend of music we were treated to and it is the halloumi, chorizo, asparagus and spinach salad. The recipe I used was one from Red Magazine (here). It sounds a bit weird but man it's incredible. The cheese is so unique and I think we as a family have come to an agreement that it actually tastes and feels more like chicken than any sort of cheese. The best thing about this dish is that is basically takes 20mins max to complete from start to finish. (Yet another plus to the good old salad.) Add a little balsamic syrup or vinegar on top (what ever you have in your cupboard) and, bish bash bosh, your finished!

Another one that I kind of made up the other day while trying to think of what we could have for dinner after a day where temperatures soared up to 32 degrees, was a bacon and pear salad. The combination of bacon and pear is something that I only discovered a few years back and even though it might sound a bit strange to eat bacon with a sweet fruit it so totally works. I threw in loads of spinach (I am now addicted to spinach) quite a few pears chopped up in to squares, lots of bacon (just add as much as you wish), tomatoes, cucumber, asparagus, peppers - you can basically throw in whatever veg you have in your fridge. To top it off I made a dressing which consisted of 4tbs of olive oil, 1tsp of Dijon mustard and some salt to season - easy pips - put it in the fridge to cool and then you're ready to go! Another healthy meal you can prepare in less than 15mins! Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it, (well, both actually) it was so damn delicious(!) so I have found an example picture of a pear and bacon salad online.

Do you have any favourite salad recipes? Please share them with me, thank you :)

GLASTONBURY WEEKEND // BBQing in the sun

This weekend is Glastonbury weekend and oh how I wish I was in Worthy farm listening to the Stones, Arctic Monkeys, Primal Scream, Elvis Castello, and the list goes on and on but alas I'm home in Wales. It's not all bad though because the sun has been beaming down on us here in the countryside and that calls for one thing and one thing only - BBQ! We turned the radio on outside so we could listen to Glasto while enjoying the sun. We made awesome salads, had loads of burgers and had the chiminea going to keep us all warm. Before we began our food we had a bottle of Bollinger to celebrate Owen getting a 2:1 in History from Aberystwyth university. Radio 2's coverage of Glasto was sounding as we ate our food just as the sun went down. After being filled to the brim with BBQ food I had a little skating session around the house which is always fun. I genuinely think that my Penny Nickel board is one, if not the, best present I have ever received!

We went in side just in time to watch the Rolling Stones absolutely rock Glastonbury. They were superb, even though at time is thought Keith Richards was on his way out! Mark Radcliffe (whom I absolutely love!) said that he has never seen such a big crowd congregating around the Pyramid stage to watch a band before. It was crazy - well over 100,000 I'd say. Satisfaction, Sympathy for the Devil and Brown Sugar were just some of the amazing songs they had in their set. Once they were off stage we watches some more highlights. I first heard The Strypes play on Jools Holland a few months back and I though they were superb, I even wrote their name down so I could include them in a future Super Song Sunday. Their set on the John Peel stage was incredible. Some have been saying that they are as good, or even better, than the Stones were at their age. To think that they are only 15,16 and 17 year old is mental but exciting. They are also playing in Reading and I will definitely be there to watch them.