Monday - Jo is the Debating Champ of Leeds!!!

On Mondays and Tuesdays I usually work late - in the recruitment world 5pm till 7pm is the best time to speak with the candidates that you want place into jobs and get juicy bits of information from! Jo was in the final of a debating competition as one half of team Ford and Warren (other half being Work David), against three other teams from high profile law firms in Leeds. The event took place in a very swish part of Malmaison and was hosted by James of Michelsberg Tailoring based in the very fancy Victoria Quarter - his blog and some background on the event can be found here.

As I said, Monday would normally be a late one but I decided that I would cut off a little early to go and see Jo in the debate, with no idea what to expect as a non legal eagle!

I am not going to go into a huge amount of detail as this is a light-hearted blog, but there were 4 teams of 2, split into 2 teams of 4 with the motion "this house believes East is better than West....." Jo was arguing against the motion. It was really fun to watch: I  was pretty impressed as they were only given a few minutes to get their points together and the hour debating was all free-styling!....see my tweets about Jo from during the event - look bottom up!;

After over an hour of heating debating, the judges went away to decide on the winning team, and the overall individual winner. The team award went to Pinsent Masons but they judges were all unanimous that......

JO WAS THE BEST INDIVIDUAL SPEAKER AND THE OVERALL WINNER!!!!!

Obviously I was very proud that she had done so well (and relieved that I had turned up!!).....below is a picture of Jo and the judges:

The best bit was the Jo won, but second best was that the prize is a bespoke suit from James Michelberg which will be my suit for our wedding - get in!!!!!!......Thanks baby!x

Oh yeah - here is dinner....beans on a bagel:

Sunday Lunch at Fazenda

Back in April, our first ever blog review was of Fazenda in Granary Wharf.   We had a great time, and decided to revisit it this weekend for a bit of pre-Christmas cheer!  Admittedly Fazenda hasn't really embraced the Christmas spirit as yet, but a good lunch and some booze was fun anyway.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time writing about the food, save to say we really enjoyed it.  If you want a bit more info, check out the original review. As we were there for lunch, the choice of salads and meats was smaller than in the evening (and it costs about £7 less) but we all enjoyed some good food.  I wasn't a huge fan of the pork, which seemed to be cooked with cheese and was a little odd, and a bit over cooked, but the joy of Fazenda is that if you don't like it, you can have something else!  The staff were also very attentive and made sure we were properly looked after. 

Some form of meat in pastry thing - very nice though!

An Argentinian Malbec and a Modelo - perfect

The salad bar

A man with meat

Chips - the first of many portions - these were very good!

Chicken wrapped in bacon - a fave

Chicken thighs

Sausages

Joe's amaretto coffee

Petit fours

And our wonderful lunch companions - The Wolf and Gelt

Saturday Crispy Pheasant

So as regular readers of our blog may have realised, after a night out I generally suffer fairly badly the next day.  Well, even though I thought I hadn't drunk that much on Friday, I was still definitely feeling it on Saturday morning!  Definitely getting old now....

The good thing is, I now know how to get over my hangovers - more sleep, tea, and spicy food.  So cue a proper fusion evening - because Saturday was also designated pheasant eating night!  I did some research, found out that there were some Asian pheasant recipes out there, so decided on crispy pheasant with plum sauce.  Being slightly dubious of our pheasant butchering skills, I brined the bird in salt and sugar water, citrus fruits and spices, before roasting it.  The end result was pretty good - moist breasts, fairly crispy skin, served up with pancakes, homemade plum sauce, duck spring rolls (bought in case the pheasant didn't work - and we ate them anyway!) and a super spicy cucumber and cashew salad.  All in, I was pleased!

Crispy pheasant

Home made plum sauce

Shredded pheasant

Spicy cucumber and cashew salad

Duck pancakes - naughty!

Joe's rolled pancakes - not so spectacular!