Category Archives: Life & Style

Celebrate Valentine’s Day with Cramele Recas  by Milly Adams

Posted on by

 

My mum always said ‘a bit of what you fancy does you good.’ And I love Pinot Grigio but have not associated Romania with this wine. A bad mistake, because here at Frost Magazine we’ve been sampling again. Tough job but someone has to do it.

 

 

To mark Valentine’s Day, Cramele Recas, the booming Romanian winery, has chosen a selection of wines from its portfolio as the perfect way to celebrate. Whether to serve at that special dinner yum yum – or to give as a gift, not quite so yum yum, these wines are well worth considering.

There is an  ancient Romanian spring tradition, Martisor, where men offer the women that they love a gift to mark their respect and admiration. A custom that started 8000 years ago, the gift was often two twisted threads of wool, one colored red and one white with a trinket attached that woman wore as a bracelet, often for the whole month of March. So yes, give a bracelet but drape it over Cramele Recas’s new Pinot Grigio.

Cramele Recas’s new Pinot Grigio has a delicate salmon pink colour which hints at the flavour of fresh pear with a crisp acidity. This is an elegant  Pinot Grigio Rosé and pairs well with a romantic seafood pasta dish.

RRP £6.00

Martisor Pinto Grigio Dedicated to the romantic tradition, the Martisor Pinot Grigio is available to purchase now at Waitrose nationwide, (RRP £7.49). With a touch of light peach, the Martisor Pinot Grigio has a scent  of melons, figs and peaches.

The wine’s dry palate with gentle flavours of peach and red apple gives the wine appreciable richness and substance – but with sufficient acidity to provide vitality and freshness.

Incanta Pinot Noir has all of the classic bright fruit flavours and spicy notes that are associated with this iconic grape.  The nose has delicate aromas of cherry and raspberry and these flavours are matched on the palate with the addition of hints of flowers and sweet spice.

A smooth finish to this wine, and with a modern, floral label to highlight the wine’s qualities it makes a nice gift.

Available from Majestic Wines, (RRP £6.49), this wine is ideally paired with cured meats and cheeses.

 

Milly Adams is the bestselling author of The Waterway Girls. pub Arrow.

 

 

Melissa’s Life-Changing Carrot and Olive Oil Cake

Posted on by

Makes 1 x 23cm round cake

Equipment 23cm round, deep, loose-bottom cake tin

Sorry for the melodramatic title of this cake but to be honest it was life-changing for me, so please just go with it. It’s the complex play of the spices that really brings this cake to life. Cloves, cardamom and cinnamon combine to heighten the flavours and aromas to an almost intoxicating level. With 500g of grated carrot in this cake there’s no getting away from its presence, though it’s surprising how the cake doesn’t really taste of it. Its purpose is to bind in the flour – in this case spelt, that is higher in protein and fibre than wheat. The fruity olive oil unifies all the other flavours. This recipe is so forgiving. Even overcooked, it’s still moist and delicious!

215 ml extra virgin olive oil

250g coconut sugar

4 eggs, beaten

250g spelt flour

2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp ground cardamom

1 tsp salt

125g pecans, coarsely chopped

500g carrots, grated

Vanilla cashew nut icing or Maple cream

cheese icing (see below)

Roughly chopped walnuts, for topping

1 Preheat the oven to 190°C/fan 170°C/

Gas mark 5 and line a 23cm round, deep loose bottom

cake tin with baking parchment.

2 In a bowl mix together the olive oil, sugar and

eggs until well combined.

3 In a second bowl combine the flour and the

other dry ingredients and make a well in

the centre. Add the egg and oil mixture and

stir thoroughly until it is all blended. Finally,

add the pecans and carrots and mix again.

4 Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake

for about 1 hour 20 minutes, until a skewer

inserted into the middle comes out clean.

5 Allow the cake to cool in the tin for

10–15 minutes, then turn it out onto a cooling

rack. Once it’s completely cool, top it with

either Vanilla cashew nut icing or Maple

cream cheese icing.

Nutrition Note:

The olive oil is rich in monounsaturated fats that are better for your heart than the saturated fats in butter.

Vanilla Cashew Nut Icing

Equipment High speed blender

GF, DF, V+

We have to get really creative when it comes to ‘icing’ our cakes as we don’t use icing sugar. This recipe is one of our go-to icing recipes, it’s really easy to make and absolutely delicious. The basic recipe is for a vanilla icing, but it can easily be adapted to different flavours – we particularly like to add matcha for a vibrant green colour!

150g unsalted cashew nuts, soaked for

At least 4 hours but preferably overnight

300g full-fat coconut milk

2 tbsp lemon juice

75g maple syrup

1 tsp vanilla extract

100g coconut oil, melted

Drain and rinse the soaked cashew nuts.

Put them in a blender with all the other

ingredients and blend until completely smooth

and creamy. Pour into a container and chill in

the fridge until firm. We usually leave the icing

in the fridge overnight, but around 4 hours

should do the trick.

Maple Cream Cheese Icing

GF

This is our take on classic cream cheese icing. It’s a lot less sweet and totally delicious.

2 tbsp maple syrup

225g organic full-fat cream cheese,

straight from the fridge

2 tbsp coconut oil, melted

1 Stir the maple syrup into the chilled cream

cheese until completely combined.

2 Add the melted coconut oil and mix very

quickly to prevent lumps from forming.

Modern Baker: A New Way To Bake by Melissa Sharp with Lindsay Stark (Ebury Press, RRP £26). Photography by Laura Edwards.

 

BUSINESS OF BOOKS: FIRST, LAST, EVERYTHING – AUTHOR JOHN JACKSON

Posted on by

Kicking off a new series for 2018, Jane Cable talks to romantic novelist and former seafarer John Jackson

What was the first writing advice you were ever given?

The first piece was one I worked out for myself before starting to write fiction.

In a previous life, I spent many years preparing safety manuals, policies and procedures. In the main, these were for non-native English-speaking ship’s crew, from the Philippines, Burma, Poland and the like.

Back in the day, companies, especially shipping companies, all thought that the only good manual was a BIG one. This saw many shipping lines having massive and all-encompassing manuals that nobody read. These weren’t written to help seafarers be better at their jobs, they were written with the sole aim of stopping the Company being sued.

To me, it soon became clear that “It’s useless writing something that nobody can read and understand.”

So, clarity is everything – and it’s a trait that I hope I bring to my fiction writing. Certainly, a feature of Heart of Stone’s reviews is that it is a “fast read” and a “real page turner”

I got into writing fiction at the behest of some friends who happened to be members of the Romantic Novelists Association. Their advice to me, to try and get onto the RNAs “New Writers Scheme” was certainly the best advice I received. As a man trying to make it in a genre dominated by women writers, I can only thank the RNA and its members for the unconditional help and support I have been given.

What was the most recent writing advice you were given?

With just one published book to my name, I know I am still “learning my craft.” Publishing, with all the ancillary professions, such as editors and agents, is an enormous and diverse business.

It is also a business that is changing and changing fast. Writing is a famously lonely occupation. In many ways, we are the bottom men on the totem pole. It is also very easy to forget that this is a BUSINESS. We might write because it’s just something that we want or have to do, but for everyone else, it’s a business, and their only decision is “can they make money from your work.”

This might not be advice that anyone would give you directly, but it is true, nonetheless.

Self-publishing and the rise of Amazon has also shrunk the market for the other professionals; it has made them even more reluctant to take on any but the most immediately marketable authors. The days of a publisher taking on a young author and nurturing their career in the hope of a bestseller down the line are long gone. Self-publishing is no longer considered vanity publishing. It is a valid and popular method of getting your work to market.

What is the piece of advice you’d most like to pass on? (writing or otherwise!)

Every manuscript needs a good editor. It is someone else’s eyes giving a professional and fresh look at your work. So many self-published books show very early in the read that they have never been properly edited.

I am very lucky in that Sue, my editor, is also a friend, and we work together well. Other friends are not so lucky, especially when contracted to one of the major publishing houses. Sometimes you may have to fight for what you want, but always remember – this is YOUR story, You have to have faith in it.

That’s what we are doing Telling a story – and everything you write should be towards that end. We are not writing textbooks or reference works, we are STORYTELLERS!

Keep the faith! Your writing WILL get better, and you WILL succeed. Sometimes this is hard but you need to believe in yourself.

Keep up with John on Twitter @jjackson42

 

How To Make Your Blog Posts Go Viral Part Two

Posted on by

blogIn the first post on how to make your blog, and your blog posts, go viral we covered content, social media sharing, titles, tags and keywords. Next up we have more advice for helping your hard work pay off.

Post at The Right Time

Doing a post on Christmas Day probably won’t get a lot of hits. Posting on a Friday evening is not ideal either. Have a think when people will be more likely to be online. You can research when people are on Twitter and Facebook. Use your Google analytics to find out when the ideal time is to reach your readers.

Share your post in your Newsletter

A newsletter is a brilliant way of making sure your great posts get another chance. Even your most loyal readers may miss a post or two. Build up the people on your newsletter list by doing competitions and having one of the entry requirements signing up to your newsletter.

Press Release

Writing a press release, and distributing it to the media, is a great way to get traffic and build on your reputation. The way to do this is to have an angle and then write about 500 words on that, along with a good pictures and then sending it out to the media. Channel Mum do this well by doing surveys and then releasing the results to the media, along with a statement. A lot of companies and publications do this. You could also write about a relevant subject, or have a personal story. It is all about the angle. Start building a media list. You can do this by signing up for Gorkana’s Consumer Alert or the Diary Directory. You can also find out who the editor of each publication is by looking on Twitter, the actual publication or websites. Getting a copy of the Writers and Artists Yearbook is also a good idea. It will be full of contacts.

Create Evergreen Content

One of the best ways to turn your blog into a success is to write evergreen posts. What is an evergreen post? It is a post that keeps getting hits. Even years later. These kind of posts tend to be informative or educational. Frost has a number of posts that are still getting hits up to seven years later. Imagine if you wrote an article and it still got thousands of hits years later. That is a great source of traffic and the only effort you had to put in was writing the initial post. Win win.

Get creative with Design

Creating pictures and graphics to go with your post is a great way to market them and improve engagement. Graphically engaging people can be done in many ways.  You will get more pins on Pinterest and more clicks on other social media too. Frost writer Jane Cable uses Canva to great effect. Canva is a free design tool which is easy to use. You can also create banner ads, headers, marketing material, ebooks and documents with it. Other design tools to use include Piktochart, Venngage, Infogr.am and Visual.ly

Optimise Your Images

Optimising your images is one of the easiest ways to get more traffic and also one of the most effective. Give your images a title using relevant keywords before you upload them, then add in a few more for good measure. Fill out the Title and Alt Text. This will optimise your images and you will get a lot of traffic through sources like Google Images.

Write Long Form Content 

Apparently long form content gets more shares than short form content according to Blog.visme.co in their article 10 Ways to make your content go viral. BuzzSumo did a study in which they found out that posts between 3,000 to 10,000 words were shared the most, while posts that were 1,000 words or less were shared the least. I am quite surprised at this but it is worth thinking about. It is a good idea to make most of your posts over 500 words.

 

I will be telling you all you need to know about blogging in a series of articles. You can also check out my book, The Ultimate Guide To Becoming a Successful Blogger which is available in ebook and print. 

 

A Taste of Italy – Book Series by Richard Walmsley review by Dr K Thompson

Posted on by

 

There’s a bit of Italian in all of us – don’t you think? Who of us hasn’t felt a little flutter at an Italian waiter’s wink, or, maybe an attractive Latin lady’s smile? Italy is sunshine, laughter, family values, beautiful people and the Mafia. Richard Walmsley’s series of crime/thrillers capture all of this, perhaps because he spent several years teaching English at Lecce University Southern Italy.

The  Commissario Beppe Stancato series: The Case of the Sleeping Beauty, A Close Encounter With Mushrooms and The Vanishing Physicist are set in Abbruzzo, whilst the others are set in Puglia.

The books are all written in a typical and attractive Italian style – reminiscent of Giovanni Guareschi, for those familiar with Don Camillo, and with just a touch of Montalbano. The plots are clever with surprising twists and the books are downright funny as we experience life in rural Italy. Some of the (very likeable) characters reappear in the different books – Rosaria and family in the Puglia books and Beppe and his police team in the others, however each book can be read independently.

If you feel like a really good read – give them a try. Personally Leonardo’s Trouble With Molecules is my favourite.

 

Others in the series:

Dancing to the Pizzica

The Demise of Judge Grassi

Leonardo’s Trouble With Molecules

 

Dr K Thompson, author of From Both Ends of the Stethoscope: Getting through breast cancer – by a doctor who knows

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01A7DM42Q http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01A7DM42Q

http://faitobooks.co,uk

 

 

 

Valentine’s Day is on the horizon, so what gifts to give?

Posted on by

 

I thought this Bath Gem Spa Light was fun. It is actually shaped like a gem and ‘the beloved’ floats it in the bath, but it needs  3 x 1.5v AAA batteries so make sure you buy those too. It floats on the surface and projects a light display across the bottom of the bath.

You can select various modes, from relaxing to all singing all dancing. It’s fun.

£12.00 from Hawkins Bazaar shops or www.hawkin.com

For those who’ve come a cropper, Valentine’s Day can be a gut grinding time, so be a friend, buy her/him The Ladybird Book of The Ex. Go on, raise a smile.

It’s £7.99 from Hawkin’s Bazaar shops or www.hawkin.com

A brilliant book by Rory Clements – CORPUS, could be a winner for anyone who loves Robert Harris, and who doesn’t. This is as good, of course it is, it’s Rory Clements after all, the award-winning Sunday Times bestselling author.

It’s 1936, the war has already begun and in Berlin a young Englishwoman evades the Gestapo to deliver vital papers to a Jewish scientist. She is found dead a few weeks later…

This is the first of a series: the atmospheric tension is superb, the research and imaginative range impressive. Loved it. So will ‘the beloved’ if they like this sort of book.

Corpus by Rory Clements. Hardback pub Zaffre: £12.99

The Story of our Lives by Helen Warner

I am preoccupied with friendship at the moment, after seeing someone I know being looked after by teams of her friends; meals cooked, people keeping her company to help her through the gruelling treatment. Unasked, but there for her.

Helen Warner has written a novel about the highs and lows of female friendship as she follows four inspirational women over the course of twenty years of friendship. But of course, that’s not all. There is a lie which could tear them apart – but does it? Read it and see.

Warner writes a pacey thoughtful exploration of friendship: whoever receives it will enjoy it.

The Story of our Lives by Helen Warner. Pub HQ on 8th February. Hardback/ebook/audio

Chris Pratt “My Son Thinks Acting is Stupid”

Posted on by

Chris prattIt can be hard to impress your kids. Parents are often thought of as uncool and poor Chris Pratt has found that even being a famous Hollywood actor does not help. Chris’s four-year-old son Jack thinks that acting is “stupid”.

The truth came out when the 37-year-old was doing a Reddit Ask Me Anything segment where someone asked if his kid thought he was a firefighter. “”He knows I’m an actor, but he thinks it’s kind of stupid. haha! I suppose he’s right!!!”

He also said his wife Anna Faris was his favourite actress and that he would love to work with her one day.

He also told Entertainment Tonight that his son was a natural behind the camera.

“Jack has been on set to visit me on every movie I’ve done since he’s been alive, he’s getting really comfortable with the idea of sitting behind the monitors. He’s like a little director! There was a moment when he was behind the monitors where the director and the producer sit, watching what’s happening on camera. He had his cans (headphones) on and he was looking through his little glasses at the monitor, and he just said, ‘Can I get a coconut water? And he wasn’t like talking to anyone necessarily, which is totally terrible behaviour that we do all the time, where you just like throw a random request into the ether and expect someone to deliver it cause we’re totally spoiled brat baby actors.”

 

Our Top Picks For Valentine’s Day | Editor’s Pick

Posted on by

Valentine’s Day is almost here and people are wondering what to get their loved ones. Well look no further. Frost Magazine’s favourite champagne house Taittinger has two superb choices. You cannot go wrong with a bottle of one of these rosé champagnes. Taittinger’s Brut Prestige Rosé

RRP £50.60 (Silver Decanter World Wine Awards 2017)

Waitrose, Asda, Wine Rack, Majestic, JohnLewis.co.uk, The Oxford Wine Company, North and South Wines, Bacchus Wines, Harrods.co.uk, Fenwick, Ann et Vin, The Leamington Wine Company, www.champagnedirect.co.uk

A beautiful, vibrant rosé which makes for a brilliant aperitif and is sure to be an excellent start to the evening. Vitalie Taittinger describes drinking the wine as the ‘sensation of having a big kiss of the wine’ – very fitting to the occasion.

This champagne has just the right amount of sweetness. It is instant happiness in a glass.. Fun and vibrant, it is a great way to start the evening. A gorgeous champagne that makes you instantly happy. 

Taittinger Nocturne Rose ‘City Lights’ NV

RRP £54.50

Harrods, Campbell Moore, Ann et Vin, Edencroft Fine Wines, www.champagnedirect.co.uk

A voluptuous wine that will add a touch of sweetness to your Valentine’s day. This rosé is soft and mellow and is perfect to drink well in to the night

A luxurious champagne that lets someone know just how much you love them. Full of flavour and just the right amount of sweetness. Low-key with a big impact. This champagne is divine.