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• Mince Pie Appreciation

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 4 hours, 50 minutes

  

  I've enjoyed the ones I've had but I seem to have lost the love a bit this year if I'm honest :/

• Mince Pie Appreciation

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 6 hours, 19 minutes

  

  Had this today, chocolate and cherry roulade from Warwick Street Kitchen in Warwick (not the one in Leamington, which confusingly is the original one). The chocolate had gingerbread in, was banging.

• Mince Pie Appreciation

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 6 hours, 23 minutes

  

  I know but they're clearly mince pie adjacent. Often literally.

  What I will say is that I note the 'Good Housekeeping Approved' logo on the dreadful puff pastry pies @mespilus posted, which also appears on the Aldi yule log, but I found the icing far too sugary. Lidl is much better and a pound cheaper too.

• Mince Pie Appreciation

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 2 days, 17 hours

  

  Are we allowed to talk yule logs in this thread? I have sampled the Lidl and Aldi efforts so far which both have merit but I don't want to offend sensibilities...

• Mince Pie Appreciation

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 2 days, 17 hours

  

  Just realised I could fit Wild Grains into a run and do a literal mince pie run but no more time for runs before we leave for Christmas. Dammit.

• Mince Pie Appreciation

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 2 days, 17 hours

  

  If you do like thick pastry, Wild Grains (on the industrial estate off Blackhorse Lane) is good. I had this on the 8th so can't remember enough for a proper review, but IIRC the mincemeat was very good and the pastry speaks for itself. Can't remember what they cost but prices are normally very good there too.

• Mince Pie Appreciation

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 2 days, 17 hours

  

  I didn't have any problems with the DK lids, maybe it was a bad batch?

  They were good - nice chunky mincemeat - but I would agree that the filling is better than the pastry which is quite thin. I'm not sure that's bad in itself though, it would be boring if all pies had thick pastry.

• How do I bathroom / kitchen / extension? etc.

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 2 weeks

  

  I wonder if it varies from branch to branch, because while my experience of them isn't extensive from what I've experienced/heard the more typical experience is they pick a price out of the air, then if it's high you need to negotiate it down. But if you use a builder who's used to dealing with them they'll know what they should be paying.

  the days of trademans saving fortunes over the customer price is gone from experience

  It's definitely gone with Howdens as it's trade only :P

• How do I bathroom / kitchen / extension? etc.

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 2 weeks

  

  it seems like Howdens' is set up to allow builders to choose how much they can rip off customers by

  Yep exactly that. But in their defence if you do the admittedly annoying negotiation dance they can be very good for the money.

  I do hope your answer to his initial question was 'as little as possible'.

• The Great British Weather

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 2 weeks, 1 day

  

  According to one of the BBC weather folk the red alert is partly based on a very high degree of certainty at the Met Office. So they could of course be wrong but they don't think they will be.