Mushrooms are amazing ingredients to use in the kitchen and they are a solid *need to buy* item on my weekly shoping list. Sometimes when we go for a long walk in the Pentlands or even around Water of Leith, I can see wild mushrooms but I never know whether they are edible or not. For a number of years now, learning more about foraging was on my to do list *yep, right after buying mushrooms* and seems that this fall we finally made it. What is foraging? Foraging is going ourdoors and searching for wild food resources that are in the nature. If you have even gone berry picking in the forest or ..read more

November is already here and I cannot believe it. The last couple of months have gone by so fast that I feel like coming out of the spin cycle of a washing machine. I have been busy living and the main consequences are the abandonment of my skincare routines, the lack of funny Edinburgh lifestyle blog posts and a complete let go budget wise. But hey! We are here for having fun and even though I have moved from my childhood where I would spend days without a shower being a wild kid, you still have to enjoy the season, right? Right. But now it is time to come back. I have a ritual to ease myse ..read more

Whilst some of my friends developed an interest for the culture, arts and other aspects of the East Asian countries, such as China, Japan or Thailand; I never felt particularly attracted to them. Perhaps I was more of an East Asia girl, with a passion for India, Israel, and other Arabic countries. The culture, love for food and family values are something that I appreciate hugely. Even though their understanding of religion might be different to my own views, I can see the spirituality in some of the things they live on the day to day life. Until now. Around a month ago I discovered a Youtube ..read more

After spending some time in Birmingham, we jumped on the train again, this time to visit Oxford. This very English city has been on my bucket list for some time now, as Oxford was the home of Tolkien, one of my favourite authors and the creator of the Middle Earth universe. I remember being 19 or 20 years old and falling in love forever whilst reading the Lord of The Rings and to this day, I always have my Annual Lord of the Rings weekend where I am allowed to watch all the movies and cook some food from the Hobbit Universe (lembas bread, anyone?). It is only fair to admit that I had huge exp ..read more

A couple of weeks ago, we decided to go for a little weekend escapade to Oxford *a great way to break the routine!*. I had never ever been there before I as a huge Tolkien fan, I definitely had this English city in my bucket list. Also, there is so much hype about the Oxford University that I needed to see it with my own eyes! We travelled by train to Birmingham and stayed in the Brummie speaking city for a couple of days. Then travelled to Oxford, however this post is to highlight some of the things we did and discovered in Birmingham! Birmingham back to backs. I loved this living museum and ..read more

Remember that blog post that I wrote a while ago about deciding where to spend my summer holidays? I was pondering whether the perfect holiday for this year could be a trip to Mexico, a week in Menorca or even a city escapade to Denmark. However, life is funny in its own way and as usually happens with you are trying to make plans, something gets in the middle and you have to improvise. Unfortunately, some family commitments mean that my husband and I cannot take the same time off during the summer months this year. Whilst he needs to save some of his holiday allowance towards year end, I fin ..read more

I have lived in four countries and as the extrovert that I am, I have made loads of friends everywhere. A question I get a lot of the time is how do I manage to keep in touch with my friends and what strategies do I have in place to ensure that we do not lose each other in the chaos of day to day life. I am no friendship guru but I am fortunate enough to have a bunch of really good friends, and I mean “good” not because they are good to me, but because they are amazing people, an extraordinary group human beings that don’t exist in abundance. Social Media: less is more I have this feeling tha ..read more

Most of my day to day work at the office involves meeting with other people. Sometimes are more of a “one to one” thing whilst in other occasions meetings become a crazy get together with more than 10 people sitting around the table… or on the phone lines, as we live in the era of conference calls and videoconferences. The first meetings I chaired were not very successful. Managing a room full of people to listen, engage in the conversation and agree a way forward was challenging. Some of the meeting attendees were more senior than I was, others would question everything and there would be la ..read more

A few years ago, when I was 21 years old, my period stopped coming. After having some pregnancy tests done and getting absolute confidence that I wasn’t expecting *big phew here as I had a boyfriend at the time but we were nowhere near the building a family stage* I went to see my GP who sent me to a gynaecologist to have my ovaries and other sexual organs checked. After some scans and blood tests the diagnosis was polycystic ovarian syndrome (also known as PCOS). For those unfamiliar with PCOS, this chronic disease affects one in 10 females. As with all syndromes, there is a number of sympto ..read more

Supermarket meal deals are the most boring food ever and I don’t understand why people buy them. Eating then occasionally is understandable, even though I can only really imagine a very limited number of situations in which this option would be logical to me. For example, if you just came back from a trip, your fridge was completely empty and there is no other option available in a 3 mile area. *I have been thinking for 10 minutes and I cannot imagine any other circumstances in which a meal deal is an acceptable lunch* What food means To me, food is not just what fills your tummy when you are ..read more