Its not all about winning, its the taking part that counts!

Domesticity reigns in my house tonight................yep I've been left to cook . How rubbish is that, Carmine has been so busy in the garden tidying it up in the hope of sunny weather and I'm left to organise dinner. Well I'm trying to recreate one of the dishes from the menu for the simple reason we didn't go shopping and the freezer at home is dismally stocked. We will be having Tagliatelle with a sausage and tomato sauce, minus the olives and Pecorino as De Pasquale Mansions doesn't run to exotic ingrediants. I really wish Carmine's secrets page was up and running on the website then I would have a better idea if I was doing it properly. Oh well, he always knows that I won't cook again if he moans too much. Vindictive or what??  Oh for those who don't know my house here is called "De Pasquale Mansions" and the one in Italy is "De Pasquale Heights" I forget why Liz named them that but its stuck and its what we call home,

Getting back to my cooking abilities, well I'm not that bad, nowhere near as good as Carmine obviously but If it's just one meal then I usually can cope fairly well, unless I'm left to do breakfast. That's where it gets dicey and the one day of the week we see how well the smoke alarm works. We had a bit of a competition going at work some time ago as one night I cooked Risotto for the staff and they said it was better than Carmine's ! Flattering but a sure fire way never to be fed again Then with her competitive spirit, Emma challenged Clare...........you would get the impression we had nothing to do?

Talking of Risotto, it has been fun to have a different flavour every day, so far we have had, mushroom, chicken and mushroom, mediterranean vegetables, seafood, squid ink and my favourite so far, Chicken and Asparagus.I'm sure that we'll probably have a competition to see what absurd creation we can convince Carmine to put on the menu. We do that sometimes, create a competiton for the restaurant staff just to give us a bit more of an incentive, not that we get bored or have an amzingly short attention span, but sometimes its just nice to do something a wee bit different. Usually the winner has early signout, a glass of wine or the likes. Just now I think the best prize would be a bottle of the Redorvelik Cider. Its got a hint of Strawberry and a twist of Lime through it. Now I don't particularly like Cider but this is amazing. Quite far up the list of staff favourites along with the chocolate beer I was telling you about last week. We really do have some amazing new products and Cary was telling me that she stumbled across the website for our designer champagne and seemingly this guy designs clothes too that are worn by Beyonce, Madonna, Paris Hilton and David Beckham. Ha, does that mean I'm finally cool, hip or trendy..........using those words possibly not. What is the word of the moment?? Ooh before I forget he's called Cristian Audigier and one of his designs is Ed Hardy............my thoughts exactly...........WHO?? anyway in keeping with our staff theme, we have a competition on the new website to win a fantastic bottle of his Rose Champagne. Just visit               http://www.lth-wrexham.com/ and pop in your details  and soon my blog will move there too although I will still post it here too as I know you would miss me if I disappeared. Actually, I'm still amazed how many people read it although on Saturday someone had visited the website and asked if I would be beginning the blog sometime soon. Guess she's not a facebook or twitter fan?? and here was me thinking I had finally become famous...............guess we'll have to wait a very long time before we have Champagne Colette, still it never hurts to dream

See you soon

Colette