{"id":99,"date":"2010-06-10T22:05:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-10T22:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.leilappetit.com\/blog\/?p=99"},"modified":"2010-06-10T22:05:00","modified_gmt":"2010-06-10T22:05:00","slug":"happy-birthday-leilappetit-hey-if-i-knew-you-were-coming-id-have-baked-a-cake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/?p=99","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday Leil’Appetit- Hey, if I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Leila-Land has been a busy place of late, and recent foodie adventures have nicely rounded off what has been a treat of a first year for my blog. Back in June 2009, for some as yet unexplained reason, I decided to get the food in, and made a new connection with getting some words out. <\/span><\/div>\n


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As most bloggers do, I started with a vague idea of what I wanted to achieve, and so without any specific (self-imposed) remit have put a few thoughts down for the sake of prosperity. With some common theme, I guess in broad terms it’s what’s called a food blog. There’ve been random recipes, some reviews, a little bit of travel and events, and a few booze-related posts too. Not to mention the obligatory macro photos of eats that I’ve made, or (Giles Coren, look away now…) photos of things I’ve ordered in restaurants.<\/span><\/div>\n

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Whilst by no means an oeuvre for all time’s sake, it will at least prove helpful in my twilight years, those hopefully long-away days when I might not instantly be able to recall ‘that dinner we had at…’. My boyfriend (AKA the Silver Fox) has had to put up with many a breathless, arm-waving extolling of what to him just looked like ‘food’. My mum suspects she may have created a monster who can easily re-tell the recipe for macarons in r<\/span>eal time<\/span><\/i>. My camera now sports a giant of a 8GB memory card, just in case something exciting and edible should cross my lens before it crosses my lips. <\/span><\/div>\n

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Recent fun include having been invited by AEG<\/a> to a grand day out at The Taste of Edinburgh Festival<\/a>, writing a review for Bite Magazine<\/a>, and the making of my first Hollandaise sauce. Some of the girth-related effects of my tendency of bon manger<\/i> have been combated more recently with a course with fantastic personal trainer Tracy Griffin<\/a> . Ohh, and get this, a gift of bottle of Egyptian Leila wine from Ian at The Wine Experience. <\/a><\/span><\/p>\n
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It’s also been a year of discovering that this town (some say village) of Edinburgh, has some super-fine dining spots to become more than a little fond of. <\/span><\/div>\n


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As a birthday treat, here’s my fantasy dinner, based on the past 12 months of munching. <\/span><\/div>\n

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Amuse bouche- A bowl of The Basement<\/a>‘s behemoth olives. <\/span><\/div>\n

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Starter – The scallops with bacon and leek tart from A Room In Leith<\/a> – pastry was amazing. <\/span><\/div>\n

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Main course- Hotel du Vin’<\/a>s succulent Donald Russell steak and crunchy frites- simple perfection which I’m still known to rave about, six months later. <\/span><\/div>\n

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Dessert – The wacky lime and peppercorn meringues from L’Artichaut<\/a>, with chocolate sauce <\/span>

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Random Dish that just has to be mentioned- CentoTre’s<\/a> frighteningly addictive Pasta Contadino. <\/span><\/div>\n

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To Drink: Another bottle of the 1998 Vintage Pol Roger, please! <\/span><\/div>\n

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To totally fudge some Neil Young lyrics- keep on rockin’ in the food world!<\/span>

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Leila-Land has been a busy place of late, and recent foodie adventures have nicely rounded off what has been a treat of a first year […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leilappetit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}