Great tapas in Marbella
Not only great tapas in Marbella but great tapas in a commercial shopping centre where you wouldn’t expect to be served great food.
I’m talking about Lizarran tapas bar and restaurant in the commercial shopping centre La Canada in Marbella. You can choose the cold tapas, help yourself, but we always wait or order freshly cooked hot tapas and the tastes are absolutely delicious. Prawns, chicken with garlic, croquettes, mini kebabs, the choice is amazing and all served on a portion of crusty bread with a slither of pepper or courgette. Absolute heaven.
The staff at Lizarran in La Cananda are always “up”. They always have a smile on their faces, tell you exactly what each tapas is in either Spanish or English and the whole eating experience is a pleasant one. This evening they brought out white plates of gorgeous looking desserts, we were too full to try but the rice pudding looked particularly good.
If you need to stop for something to eat in La Canada, Lizarran for tapas or the Block House Restaurant for burgers and steaks gets the thumbs up from all my family, young and old.
Lemon drizzle cake recipe
A tried and tested multiple times recipe ( my hefty thighs prove it ) and it is absolutely lemony snickety divine. A great way to use up your lemons if you lucky enough to have a lemon tree growing in your garden.
Ingredients
225 g butter ( don’t use margarine)
225g sugar
225g self raising flour
4 eggs
2 lemon rinds finely grated.
FOR THE DRIZZLE
Juice of 2 medium lemons
85g sugar
METHOD
Mix the softened butter ( I put mine in the microwave and try to catch it before it turns into a yellow puddle and curdles the eggs…) with the sugar.
Add the flour ( you can use plain flour, I do, but I add 2 raised teaspoons of baking powder) whisked up eggs and lemon rind.
Pour mixture into two small loaf tins that have been lined. If you are making one larger cake then obviously the cooking time will take longer. Cook on 180 degrees for around 25 minutes or until the skewer comes out clean.
Whilst still hot and in the loaf tins mix together the lemon juice and sugar for the drizzle. Pour with a spoon onto the cakes, it will sizzle. Prick the cakes a few times to allow the drizzle to flow into the cake, pay special attention to the edges of the cake.
Leave to cool in the tin. The drizzle will form a crusty, sugary, lemony glaze which will look fab and taste even better!
UK mum thrown off a bus for breastfeeding her daughter
Yes, that has really happened. A bus driver told her to get off after a passenger complained and in the pouring rain she had to get out with her hungry 6 week old baby girl.
Anyone that has had a baby knows that you can’t always time feeds around being at home. My youngest needed a feed every 2 hours. I had two other children and couldn’t just lock myself away for a year. Yes you can be discreet, but not always. At the end of the day if you are going to breastfeed you do have to get your breast out and that is what they are for.
Fortunately the bus company have apologised but it does make me angry that there are still people that think it is disgusting and obscene to feed your baby as nature intended.
What type of web animal are you?
The BBC is hosting a huge survey into finding out how the last 20 years of having the web has changed us and to find out more about the type of people that use the web and how our brains are affected by it.
They have created a 20 minute survey which will reveal more about you and how you use the web. Their theory is that younger people are more into social networking and multi tasking and older people well, they aren’t…and whereas young people use social networking sites to find and source information, older people rely on single source academic webpages.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution/
I’m a web leopard…..what are you?
Like eating with Italian friends
We have come back today from a lovely informal Italian restaurant in Marbella called “The Italian Kitchen.” It reminds me of what it would be like to eat great food cooked by some Italian friends in their own home. The wife and husband team are always so welcoming and cheerful and like all Italians so passionate about their food. Children made to feel welcome.
They have a large choice of pastas and pizzas and most of the meals are around 7.50 euros for a main course. They are substantial meals and cooked from scratch by the husband. We are a family of five and had five full sized main courses, five drinks ( each one is a can, so one drink is usually enough) one dessert ( I do prefer their main courses) and 2 coffees and the bill was 55 euros.
http://www.italiankitchenmarbella.blogspot.com/
Replacement mobile phone batteries
It can be tricky to buy mobile phone batteries here in Spain. I ordered mine over the week-end from http://www.battery-megastore.co.uk/ and delivery to Spain was £2.99. It took four days to reach me. Excellent.
Hold onto your toddlers
If you are passing by La Canada near Habitat and walk past the 2 salespeople selling skincare products. I spent a fun 30 minutes watching them from the balcony and the sales techniques they used. It’s good to learn from pros.
The salesman would get onto his knees and wave a pretty skincare bottle at any straying toddler. The idea was that the toddler would come to him and a young yummy mummy in desperate need of a moisturiser to make her stretch marks disappear would soon come running.
The saleslady didn’t seem to mind whom she sold to. She approached one man in his late 70′s who seemed to have no idea why a Gothic looking young woman was running after him waving skincare products. She developed what we called a Meerkat pose. Hand on hip and the other holding the skincare product. It looked quite non threatening if a little “simples”.
My son offered me a euro to go down the escalators and walk past the salesman so he could have a laugh. I declined, saying that after watching them make no sales for 30 minutes and run quite a distance after anyone with so much as a heartbeat, it didn’t seem fair.
I had also run out of money on Ben and Jerry Strawberry Cheesecake ice-creams.
Had anyone actually bought any cosmetics or skincare products from this booth in La Canada?
Did they wake up 10 years younger or just 10 euros poorer?
Day one…half term, six to go
Day one of half term this week. Job was put on hold so that I could put my ” mummy hat on” and I was really looking forward to doing some outdoor things…..so waking up to pouring rain wasn’t a good start.
Found a great way though of keeping everyone happy. I turned the whole day into school. We had homework hour….well 2 hours. We had break time, I couldn’t find a bell so made up the sound of one. Then we had playtime……children could do whatever they wanted so long as it didn’t involve killing each other and then we had sports….ping pong or table tennis as I’m told it is called and a go on the community walking machines etc.
It worked REALLY WELL and didn’t cost a penny….children didn’t mooch about like they do at the week-ends in their dressing gowns for hours upon hours, everyone had purpose, we got lots of that horrible holiday homework given out by Gremlin Teachers out of the way and my eldest daughter even had time to help me make a curry. So she is now in charge of school dinners.
Tomorrow we start school at 10am.
Just need to find my cane.
Advertise your property with Trip Advisor
I use Trip Advisor all the time if I am booking or looking at hotels abroad or here in Spain. Reading other people’s comments really helps me decide if I go ahead or not.
I have seen that there is a division of Trip Advisor called FlipKey which means you can now add your holiday rental property on Trip Advisor. They offer 60 days advertising free of charge and will send you a reminder a week before the end of your trial period to give you an opportunity to cancel it.
Trip Advisor is a site with a huge amount of traffic so it is worth a go if you are wishing to look for new marketing opportunities for rental and with the free trial you can really try it out before you decide to go ahead and actually pay.
I found it very easy to add my property. It took 48 hours to be approved and said it may take another 48 hours to go live onto the Trip Advisor site so if it works out and I start to get a huge amount of enquiries I’ll let you know.
I don’t know if it is connected with my comment on how I like to kiss strangers in the street but I keep getting complete strangers asking me to be their friend on Facebook.
I look at their list of friends in case the person is a long forgotten fireman boyfriend or a long lost relative.
No, they are definitely strangers and very strange too.
Shirley Hollman, Jamie Davis and Marie Woods, I have no idea who you are.
And Jude Woods I’ll only be your Facebook buddy if you are related to Jude Law otherwise forget it…
However if the tall smooth singer from JLS wants to text me….I’ll happily be a buddy with your Face or any other part of your anatomy.