Saturday 9th January

The first week into the new year we had guests who were out of the house at 7 am with only one wanting a breakfast-to-go.  We made the most of the moment in that Zuzana and I had the rooms and bathrooms cleaned and the house was tidy by 9 am!  Absolute bliss, and if only that were the routine every day! 

This made me start to think of changing our breakfast menu and as I was given two books at Christmas by my two sons, written by Honey & Co, one on baking and one full of middle eastern recipes. I have been flicking through picking out several that I will make during the coming weeks and seeing if it will work for our guests at breakfast. 

During the past four weeks, I have been to a local café in Balham called M1LK and have tried a few of their breakfasts.  They are based on Australian dishes and are very tasty, and I think healthier than a full English.  So it has got me thinking that we need to overhaul the Parklands breakfast over the next few weeks and look at making more in-house products and hope that we have it more or less perfected by Easter when it usually gets busier with guests.

I’ve always been interested in who is No1 on Tripadvisor in hotels and what makes them stand out amongst the competition. Hotel 41 seems to tick all the boxes and after reading the reviews which all more or less said the same thing as to why it stood out for them I became interested in the background of the Founder Bea Tollman, who has just published a book – A Life Time in Food. 

I bought the book which contains some great classic recipes that are still in demand nowadays.  I love reading stories about how people fell into this industry and discovered their passion for food.  This is a great chain of hotels and when I next take a long haul vacation I will try and book myself into one even just for a night or a couple of days.

As there were no breakfasts to do this week – I made a Pecan and Banana cake with a fudge icing topping – it went down a treat and was nearly polished off in one sitting.  Recipe to follow on Tuesday – So keep an eye out for it!

Whilst doing research, I noticed that the Evening Standard has got their special offers from now until mid-February in London’s top 25 restaurants from £15.00 per head. 

I was also at the National Gallery yesterday afternoon and picked up a leaflet with a £10 offer of a glass of wine and a vegetarian main – which is a good price as I paid nearly £9.00 for a Ginger Tea and a slice of chocolate cake!