Prize Unboxing April 2019

Due to other commitments (more on which anon), I've taken my foot off the pedal these last couple of months. As a result, the wins have tended to be more modest. This month, however, has enjoyed a little uptick. That and a minor injury to my little helper - but don't worry, it grew back!

Be lucky!

When luck comes out of the blue

Some wins come out of nowhere. Literally nowhere. Like not even from a competition nowhere. You’re busy minding your own business, and then all of a sudden, a message slides in and you can't help but crack a grin.

Of course, mostly when this happens it’s spam. That much is obvious from the sender’s weird email address or the dodgy link you’re supposed to follow in order to claim your prize.

When this happened to me the other day, however, everything was above board.

I’d uploaded my son’s latest mad birthday list to Instagram and somehow it managed to end up getting seen by the sweet-hearted folks of Gentlemen’s Practice.

Just your average boy's birthday list, right?

As vendors of gentlemen’s accessories, they loved the idea that a wee lad was so keen to dapper up for his ninth birthday. The fact that he also wanted a “monk costume”, however, just made their day, and they asked if they could send him a little birthday treat.

A couple of days later the parcel arrived, and what a treat it was! It was so cool, that it took all my willpower not to hand it over there and then.

Four long weeks later, his birthday finally arrived, and at last I was able to tell him the story behind this extraordinary birthday treat. This got him even more excited - so much so that he decided to do a little unboxing video...

As if this generous treat wasn't bounty enough, it turns out that GP also sell very reasonably-priced pocket watches. Given that the little man has been begging for one since he was six (six!) and that for only a fiver more, you can get them engraved - how could we possibly resist?! When he saw his name on the watch, he was lost for words, which as anyone who knows him will tell you, is unprecedented!

Today we're sporting the matching bowtie & pocket square, which he's accessorising with a personalised pocket watch from the Gentleman's Practice store. Not shown here is the coordinating lapel pin (or the other tie and lapel pin)

Since then, his grandmother has given him a new suit, so all that remains to do is create a buttonhole in it so that he can wear his lapel pins (although, knowing him, he'll probably want a pocket in that monk’s habit so he can carry on wearing the watch, of course!).

I mention all this because even on the best of days, I'm terrible at remembering to water the flowers, much less stopping to smell them. Indeed, now that I'm coming off my pills, there are times when I'd cheerfully pave the whole front yard to put up that parking lot. I'm not alone in that. For this reason, when a complete stranger stops a moment not just to admire my hanging baskets, but also, through their green-fingered magic, make them bloom brighter and smell sweeter, I couldn't possibly feel more blessed. Thanks just aren't enough!

Prize Unboxing March 2019

It's short. It's sweet. And it's right here - enjoy!

#MeatMatters

I love red meat. I really love it. In an ideal world, I'd eat plates full of it every day. I don’t, of course, for reasons too numerous to list. That said, three key ones do spring to mind:

• Balanced diet: Beef and lamb may be naturally rich in protein, but they can’t compete with oily fish when it comes to omega-3 fatty acids. So yeah, I also eat fish.
• Environmental impact: While the extent to which livestock farming contributes to human produced greenhouse gas emissions may be disputed, my gut feels that it’s probably best to serve smaller portions of meat, augmented with pulses - something that also makes financial sense.
• Meat sweats: Had them once. Didn’t like them.

Nevertheless, even if I take the above into consideration, my initial point stands: I love red meat. It perks me up - literally.

Lamb, for example, is a natural source of niacin, pantothenic acid and Vitamins B6 and B12, all of which help reduce tiredness and fatigue, and goodness knows I have fatigue aplenty.

With this in mind, I was well chuffed when BritMums offered to buy me dinner on the proviso that I shared the recipe with y’all.

So here we go… Lamb chops a l’orange

Ingredients
6 lamb chops
200 g chantenay (or baby) carrots
1 bulb of garlic
3 oranges
15g fresh thyme

Method
1) Score the meat fat and season the chops with salt and pepper. Balance the chops on their fatty edges (imagine a rack of toast, but meaty) in a shallow pan on a medium-high heat and leave to go crispy (probably about 5 mins).

2) Top, tail & peel carrots and bung them in the pan, along with the unpeeled garlic cloves. Keep moving the veg around so it cooks evenly

3) Turn the chops on their sides and fry till golden (on both sides, obvs).

4) Bung in the zest from one orange, along with thyme, and stir for half a minute or so.

5) Remove the chops and set them to rest. Squeeze the juice from all three oranges into the pan and reduce until sticky. Bung the lamb & its resting juices back in the pan for a couple of minutes, and rattle it all around the pan.

6) Serve with roast potatoes. Oh, I forgot to mention them, didn’t I? Oops! You might want to start over then. Except with the spuds this time. Sorry!

So … what did it taste like?

In a word, nice - although if you use a vegetable peeler for zesting, do be aware that you're going to end up with big strips of orange peel that look like extremely finely sliced carrot. With this in mind, do advise your fellow diners not to eat these bits as fried orange peel isn't for everyone. Yes, that is the voice of experience...

My dinner... Apologies for the terrible photography. And presentation. My wife doesn’t plate up too well, and I'm rubbish at snapping food!

This post is an entry for the #MeatMatters Challenge, sponsored by Simply Beef and Lamb. Learn more about the benefits of eating beef and lamb along with recipes and inspiration here: https://www.simplybeefandlamb.co.uk.

Happy (professional) hunting!

'Job vacancies have opened for professional Crème Egg hunters with an hourly wage starting at £45 an hour.'

This from the same people that reckoned if you could ‘find at least five competitions an hour and, if possible, enter them’, then you could make £20 an hour as a ‘professional competition enterer’.

Where to begin? The idea of taking just over ten minutes to complete an entry form sets the bar so low as to make it a trip hazard. With a work rate like that, you wouldn’t get return on investment even if you paid minimum wage. Given also that third-party entries are generally forbidden, this hypothetical employer would also be disqualified for breaching terms and conditions.

‘The service launches thanks to increased demand for professional “compers”, as it’s revealed many can quit their jobs thanks to competition success.’

Who exactly are these 'many' people - and who is revealing them? Yes, there are people without conventional salaried employment who devote a lot of time to comping, and who may even be really successful, but you can’t pay the mortgage with nut butter and Nutribullets. Lottery winners might quit their jobs. Compers, not so much.

Around this time last year, the same company suggested it was possible to earn upwards of £45ph plus expenses as a professional McDonald’s Monopoly player. It’s a sorry sign of the times that even fictional jobs are losing their perks.

Prize Unboxing January/February 2019

January didn't make for exciting viewing, so this month's upload is an unboxing rollover - but don't get too excited! As ever, I'm outgunned by the little one, and in case you're wondering - it's a cough sweet in my mouth :D

Thanks also to Laura for being my biscuit tag-buddy and Davina for tote-tagging!

Be lucky!

The little things in life

Never work with children or animals. I’ve tried both. Which is worse, I couldn’t say: cats by their very nature cannot, do not and will not cooperate; my first-born likewise.

That’s an exaggeration - he did cooperate once, when he was four. Since then, his behaviour has - as they say - explored boundaries. Combined with his extreme control-freakery, he’s not a natural at taking direction, generally only playing ball once you’ve tears in your eyes and are genuinely about to throw in the towel.

Exhibit A: Cooperating child

The net result is that every video comp I try to recruit him for turns into a complete ordeal with my wife asking why I keep putting myself though this. To be honest, I don’t really know. Time after time, I somehow manage to convince myself that if I chuck a kid or two into my video then the judges will love it. Sadly, and much to his frustration, the results don’t bear that out, making him even more reluctant to cooperate next time, meaning that the next video is even more likely to miss the mark. It’s a vicious circle. The cat, at least, is always consistently uncooperative.

There’s also the problem that having put in the effort, he feels the prize should be guaranteed. I get that. Failing to win an entry-form or like-RT comp is a statistical doddle; it’s also emotionally straightforward as there’s little to no investment. When you’ve spent hours on an entry but fail to make the podium, however, it’s disappointing, no matter how old you are. And more effort equals more disappointment.

He’s gutted that he’s not modelling for Gap, so I have to remind him how much he enjoyed doing his photo shoot. Likewise, he was disappointed not to win a heap of books when we spent the best part of a weekend turning a cardboard box into a Noddy car - but he was so proud of his work that he asked to do it again just a few weeks later. The video we made for an Oreo comp was an even greater success, although since that involved eating biscuits, perhaps there’s no surprise there.

There’s no point comping with children if they don’t enjoy the process. Of course, you could always say the same about adults.

If you have any tips for getting children to cooperate, PLEASE let me know in the comments below!