J.Friend and Co New Zealand Artisan Honey

We all have a bit of a sweet tooth here at The Amazing Blog and love to indulge in some sweet treats, and treats don’t come much sweeter than pure honey. So imagine our delight when we received a box full of jars of J.Friend and Co New Zealand Artisan Honey. These adorable jars turned up in a variety of  flavoured honeys, and we just couldn’t wait to get stuck in – after all when it comes to honey it’s all about getting sticky!

Thanks to the wide selection of J.Friend and Co, we were able to sample a variety of their different flavours, so there was no fear of us not receiving our honey fix. But my personal favourite has to be the White Clover, this creamy honey was deliciously fudgy and unlike any honey I’d tried before. It was so smooth with a much mellower sweet honey flavour, I could happily spoon it straight from the jar.

Each of the flavours we tried were completely unique, this is down to the various combinations of location, climate, soil and temperature giving them each an individual personality and taste. Who knew honey could be so diverse? What’s more is that each jar of honey comes with a little bit of information tracing it back to its source, vintage, region and even the name of the beekeeper, so you know exactly where your little jar of honey has come from. We think this is a lovely touch and actually makes your honey experience that little bit more special.

I also have to mention the fact that this honey is completely organic and environmentally friendly, another great reason why we love it. There are no chemicals used on the land where beehives are kept and no chemicals are used to treat the hives or during processing the honey. Their honey is also the first in the world to achieve carboNZero certification thanks to their low emissions. Turns out J.Friend and Co Honey is sweet in more ways than one.

New Zealand Artisan Honey is available to buy from their website, with prices starting from £4.32 for a 160g jar.

Happy Kitchen Brownies

We all know that it is alright to have a naughty treat once in a while, personally anything involving chocolate hits my treat sweet spot, but what if you could have a treat that is healthy, but still tastes naughty? Here at The Amazing Blog, we recently found out about Happy Kitchen, a bakery and canteen in London offering up healthy and delicious dessert. When we heard about their famous Brownies, we had to get our hands on them.

Happy Kitchen was started by two best friends who shared the same love for baking, and wanted everyone to benefit from their love of food, thus Happy Kitchen was born. They make healthy and eco friendly foods which they sell both through their bakery, and through various stockist. We opted to try their Brownies, and we were not at all disappointed. The brownies are individually packaged and come in four delicious flavours: plain chocolate, pecan, raspberry, and orange. The best part is: they only contain seven ingredients! They are vegan, gluten-free, and sweetened with fruit instead of refined sugar. Oh, not to mention that they are absolutely scrumptious, moist and packed full of flavour. The best part is they are good for you! It has certainly made us feel a lot less guilty about our afternoon snacking.

If you are interested in trying out these tasty Brownies yourself then visit the Happy Kitchen website, Brownies retail at £1.49 each. There, you can also learn more about the other delicious desserts that the baking duo sell in their shop as well as how to get to their bakery/canteen.

The Clerkenwell Vintage Fashion Fair

As you know, here at The Amazing Blog, we LOVE fashion! If you do too, then there is only one place to be this weekend. The Clerkenwell Vintage Fashion Fair. The fair specialises in vintage pieces, including fashion, accessories and collectible textiles. The collections will consist of key iconic pieces from various eras so there will be something for all lovers of vintage whatever you era of preference. So you are bound to come across something that will spice up your wardrobe.

Over the last four years, the fair has become a key fashion event for not just lovers of vintage, but also leading figures in the fashion industry. Alongside the vintage collections you will be able to find numerous vintage lifestyle brands selling everything from brooches to teacups.

Onsite will be a fabulous vintage salon run by Nata­sha Hall, the founder of Lip­stick & Curls who will be there all day to help add a touch of glamour to your look whether you want the look of a Gatsby-esque flapper girl or a sixties go go dancer. And to top it all off, when you are all shopped out you can take a break in the Tea Salon, which will be serving all the traditional English favourites from vintage china. Between 12 and 3pm you will find a wealth of entertainment here. You can try your hand at some etiquette training or relax and take in a range of performer showcases.

If you would love to attend this fabulously vintage event then get down to Old Finsbury Town Hall on the 15th September between 11am - 5pm. Entry will cost you just £4 and if you are a student with an NUS card, just £2! For more information about the fair visit the Clerkenwell Vintage Fashion Fair website.

Sweeten Up Your Day With Butlers Chocolates

If there is one food we all seem to be able to agree on here at The Amazing Blog, it is chocolate. No, maybe not the healthiest option, but certainly a delicious one. Whether it is a bar or a truffle, one of us in the office is always craving this sweet treat. When we heard about Butlers Chocolates, we could not even begin to decide which flavours we wanted to try, as all of them sounded delicious. Thankfully though we were sent a variety of flavours to try out, so there was something to match all of our tastes.

Flavoured chocolate bars aren't for everybody, so of course Butler's have Milk and Dark chocolate bars, which are luxuriously rich tasting. However, for the more adventurous, Butlers offer a wide range of flavoured chocolate bars too. Personally, my favourite is Mint Crunch. It is a dark chocolate bar with crunchy mint pieces, and frankly it is the best mint chocolate I have tried. We were also able to sample a White Chocolate with Mixed Berries bar that was delicious; the sharpness of berries cuts through the rich sweetness of the white chocolate. This bar is absolutely perfect for dessert, and it went down a treat in the office. The Milk Chocolate with Honeycomb was our next try; if you like honey, you will adore this bar! We also sampled some of the Butler’s Boxed Chocolates, which were a lovely treat and the perfect for a gift or to serve with coffee after a dinner party.

In addition to the bars that we sampled, Butlers Chocolates has an extensive range of products. The bars retail on their website for £12.95 for a pack of 6. They also have plenty of options when it comes to boxed chocolates and gift sets. If this isn’t tempting enough, we have one last trick up our sleeve, from now until the end of September you can get a 10% discount your order if you quote ‘amazing’ at the checkout. Now go on, and get your cacao on!

The Beauty Detox Solution

Here at The Amazing Blog we firmly disagree with faddy celeb style diets. We know that eating one type of food for two weeks while standing on one leg is never going to give us a healthy body. If anything, it has been proven that these crash diets lead to you gaining more weight in the long run despite losing a few pounds initially.

We know that a healthy lifestyle, including eating the right foods and regular exercise, is the only way to beat your body blues. So we were very pleased when we came across Kimberly Snyder’s book The Beauty Detox Solution, a diet that is not a fad, but a way of rewriting your lifestyle habits and getting you eating food that is good for you.

We really liked that the first part of this book explained how our bodies really work, and why silly diets do not do any favours for our health. Did you know that just like primates we are designed to live off a diet consisting of mainly plant based foods? Kimberly then explains that we should be eating lots of Alkaline Rich Foods, in order to maintain optimum health.

The next section is our favourite part. It explains what types of things we should eat to keep us looking beautiful. There is a great list of all the types of food that have wonderful beauty boosting properties, and I have to say we have stocked up our cupboards!

The final section is dedicated to the healthy living plan consisting of three distinct phases Blossoming Beauty, Radiant Beauty, and Pure Beauty, the first of which is designed to cleanse your body of the bad things you have eaten, and to introduce healthier alternatives that have health and beauty boosting ingredients.

The book contains a whole host of delicious recipes specifically designed for each phase of the programme so Kimberly really makes these diet changes easy for you. These changes are not a calorie restricted diet, but instead are based on the principle that if you eat the right foods, at the right times, in the right order you help out your body’s digestion and in turn you can lose weight. This is the perfect solution for anyone looking to get healthier and look after their bodies, and this plan is even being followed by celebrities such as Drew Barrymore!

If you are interested in revamping your diet and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, then this book should really be on your bookshelf. Kimbery Snyder’s book, The Beauty Detox Solution is available on Amazon for £7.00, and you can find out more information and articles about her beauty detox on her website.