Tag Archives: st valentine’s day

Romantic Food Ideas For Valentine’s: Queen of Tarts

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Romantic Food Ideas For Valentine's Queen of TartsThe perfect savoury starter developed from the Good Housekeeping Institute’s famous Triple-Tested recipes, a team of expert GHI chefs have created and tested this dish to ensure it satisfies every time.

 

Queen of Tarts

 

 

Hands-on time: 15min

Cooking time: 25min

Serves: 6

 

Ingredients:

For the puff pastry: 

  • 225g (8oz) strong white bread flour
  • 225g (8oz) butter, chilled
  • 1tbsp lemon juice

For the filling:

  • 300g (11oz) light cream cheese
  • Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
  • 2tbsp fresh dill, finely chopped
  • 200g (7oz) pack hot-smoked or smoked salmon, skinned and flaked
  • 4 spring onions, finely sliced

 

Method:

  1. Sift the flour into a bowl with a pinch of salt. Dice 50g (2oz) of the butter. Flatten the rest into a 2.5cm (1in) thick slab.
  2. Rub the diced butter into the flour. Then, using a knife, stir in the lemon juice and about 280ml (9½fl oz) cold water to make soft, elastic dough. Knead on a lightly floured surface until smooth. Cut a cross through half the depth.
  3. Open out the ‘flaps’ and roll out the dough, keeping the centre four times as thick as the flaps.
  4. Put the slab of butter in the centre and fold the flaps over it. Gently roll out to make a rectangle measuring 40.5 x 20.5cm (16 x 8in). Mark off three equal sections from top to bottom. Fold the bottom third of the pastry up over the middle, and the top third down. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for 30min (or freeze for 5-10min).
  5. Repeat the rolling, resting and turning four more times, ensuring the folded edges are to the sides each time.
  6. To make the tarts, preheat oven 200°C (180°C fan) mark 6. Unroll puff pastry and cut or stamp out six individual-sized heart shapes, about 9cm (3½in) diameter. Arrange hearts on baking sheets, spacing a little apart. Score a border 1cm (½in) from the edge of each heart. Use a fork to prick pastry well inside the border.
  7. Bake pastry hearts until golden and risen – about 20-25min. Remove from oven and use the back of a spoon to press down the pastry carefully inside the border to make room for the filling. Cool completely, then tip/scrape out any loose crumbs from the cases (so they won’t get into the filling).
  8. To make filling, mix together cream cheese, most of the lemon zest and dill, and some seasoning (if mixture is too thick, loosen with a little milk). Spoon into cooled tarts, level gently, then top with the flaked salmon and spring onions. Scatter over the remaining lemon zest and dill, and some freshly grated black pepper. Serve.

 

 

 

 

The Ultimate Valentines Gift…

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The Ultimate Valentines Gift…
And a good investment in your relationship!

 
Why not treat your loved one to the ULTIMATE Valentines gift this year – a new luxurious bed and mattress. It’s the obvious place to get ‘lovey dovey’ but a new bed will ensure couples get a good night’s sleep – a vital ingredient in any happy relationship!
A favourite with customers, the Siesta has a super large sloped headboard perfect for lazy Sunday mornings, and its extra height clearance facilitates extra deep fitted drawers neatly hiding items away underneath. A double is only £395 throughout February.
The Cuba, with its hot spice fabric, adds a glorious splash of electric colour to any bedroom and is part of the Warren Evans Space Saving range where the mattress sits on top of the frame, taking up no more of your valuable room space than necessary. Price is only £395 for a double.
Warren Evans, the award winning bed specialist, handcraft all of their beds and bedroom furniture with love from sustainable solid wood in their environmentally friendly workshop in London, and also supply top quality mattresses.

 

 

How Much Does Valentine's Really Cost?

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Who says romance is dead?

Standard Life’s ‘Your Commitments, Your Future’ report reveals the nation’s true spending on their other half – a clue to what we might expect this Valentine’s Day.

Spend on your partner:
– Each month couples splash out an average of £34 treating each other, with men leading the way, spending £42 compared to women spending just £26
– However, 18-24 year old males spend only £20 a month on their partners on average.  To put this in perspective, 18-24 year old males spend an average of £27 a month on paid for TV subscriptions
– But there is good news; as men get older their generosity increases, with men aged 45-54 spending nearly £50 (£49) on average each month on their partners
– Women are at their most generous when aged 25-34, where they spend an average of £32 a month on their partners

Thinking about your partner
– Men and women devote nearly an hour each day (50 minutes) to thinking about their other half

– 18-24 year old men are the least romantic, thinking about their partners for only 36 minutes a day on average, whereas 18-24 year females spend over 59 minutes on average every day thinking about their partner (this is more than one whole day a month)
– Men over 55 are spending almost an hour (55 minutes) a day thinking about their partners, the highest of any male age group, while women spend the most time thinking of their partners when they are 18-24
– Nearly a quarter of people think that if they spent as much time thinking about their finances as they do on their emotional relationships then their finances would be in far better shape.

John Lawson, Personal Finance Expert at Standard Life said: “Despite the tough economic climate, it’s good to know we are still able to spoil the most important people in our lives. We devote a lot more to time thinking about our loved ones than we do to our finances, but it’s worth remembering that planning our future finances plays a key role in our relationships.  Whether it’s starting a family, a home in the sun, a romantic break or a financially secure retirement, budgeting and planning ahead is essential to a happy life. And with the end of the tax year looming, it’s a great time to sit down with your partner and think about how your finances can help you enjoy your life together.”  

To help people better understand their financial and emotional commitments, Standard Life has published knowyourcommitments.co.uk with an interactive tool and thoughts on financially preparing for the future. Further help with financial planning is also available at yourfuturemoney.co.uk

 

 

Make Your Valentine Count With Smilers

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Ah, l’amour.

Just before Spring comes boinging out of Winter’s clutches and a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love – or more likely, peeling their beloved’s lingerie off with their teeth – comes Valentine’s Day.

I won’t bore you with the history, but it came about after a Christian martyr called Valentine forgot to give his beau a felled ox or some such, so put together a hastily hand-drawn etching and grabbed a bunch of daisies pulled from the nearest horse trough stop – or something like that. Since then, countless love-lorn people have sent anonymous cards in the hope of winning said crush, only to find them go off with someone else who had the foresight to sneakily gain credit for someone else’s hard-earned efforts, cash and card.

Anyway, if you want to enhance your chances of getting your girl – or boy – to disrobe sensually for you, prove just how much you care about your loved ones by attaching your very own Smilers stamp to your Valentine’s card, courtesy of our very own Cupids at the Royal Mail.

Smilers allow you to personalise your post by combining one of your own photos with a Royal Mail stamp – guaranteed to make your card or love letter stand out from the rest and thus stop anyone else claiming ownership!

Smilers can be ordered online, where after uploading a chosen image, users can pick from a range of different stamp designs and background themes, with the option to create either round or rectangle shaped Smilers, and designs available to suit all occasions. Royal Mail also recently launched their first Smilers app which lets people instantly create their own personalised postage by downloading photos taken on their iPhone.

The Smilers app is free through the App Store and, as well as grabbing your lovers attention on Feb 14th, is also an ideal way for people to share celebrations such as birthdays, weddings and new arrivals.

Smilers are available in sheets of either 10 or 20, and prices start at just £7.80 for a sheet of 10 1st Class stamps. With secure payment through PayPal, customers will receive the sheets within five working days.