I’ve been putting off writing Happy Sunday for a few weeks because I have so much to catch you up on, both new products in the food world that I’ve had a look at and the other random Cate things you all (for some strange reason) seem to be fond of reading each week. Instead of continuing to let them build up, I’ve decided to just spill some onto the page to lessen the load a little bit. So, as usual, please scroll down for a load of cool stuff that I haven’t bothered to categorise or organise in any useful way. Thank you and sorry.

Starting, as always, with the best things I ate this week. From top left to bottom right..

• I think the best dried pasta I’ve ever bought. I need you to try it. Reginette from ALDI, pictured here in the cheese and marmite sauce I’m still incredibly fond of.
• I made breadcrumb chicken with waffles, crispy bacon and maple syrup for me and two dearly loved ones on a very hungover Friday morning and it was perfect.
• This is how to make a crisp sandwich on the go. Cheese and onion filling (nice and cheap usually) and prawn cocktail crisps. Trust me on this one.
• Potato salad with celery, spring onion and radish. Quite special so I think I’ll do you a recipe soon..

I don’t know why I didn’t try The Loving Hut during Veganuary, it being an entirely vegan cafe less than 10 minutes from my house, but it took me this long. I popped in last month because I was feeling very very cakey, and wanted something that had been baked by an actual person, not a weird synthetic tasting factory job. I can’t remember exactly how much this huge slab of chocolate cake was, but it was less than £3 and it was really delicious. You can find this place on the corner of The Level on the St. Peter’s Church side, I definitely recommend going and having a look at what they’ve got, whether or not you are an actual real life vegan. I’m half tempted to try their £8.50 Sunday roast.

Pretty much everybody in my life is forever taking the piss out of me for never leaving Brighton. So a couple of Sundays back, I proved everybody wrong by going to Devil’s Dyke (technically still Brighton, but honestly further than I’ve been in possibly months, they’re all correct I’m an actual hillbilly). It was the best day. The best. A long walk, a roast dinner at Devil’s Dyke Pub, I saw bunnies. Oh, also, I met my boyfriend’s chickens. A good good good good day. I just might leave the comfort of my own postcode again some time soon, seems it’s worth the trip.

As you may remember from my wedge spice mix post, Albert Bartlett sent me a ridiculously large box of potatoes recently, and once I’d exhausted my appetite for wedges I had to find a way to use the rest of them up. You know me, I don’t do anything by halves, I spent an entire morning before work cooking up potato dauphinoise (using this recipe, so so worth the effort I promise), potato salad (celery and spring onion, may well post a recipe soon cause it’s real good) and hash browns. I later learned that homemade hash browns are not good to eat later in the day. They do not stay crispy. It was a sad lesson and a dark time for me.

There’s not an awful lot I can say about fancy chocolate that you haven’t heard before. Milk chocolate truffles coated with cocoa powder. They’re a no brainer. We ate them for pre-breakfast when they arrived because that’s exactly how you should do weekends.

Ordinarily, cooking sauces are not my bag. They’re notorious for being full of crap and they make me feel like I’m “cheating” at cooking to a degree that genuinely makes me feel uncomfortable. However, Sharwoods sent me their new range of sauces at a time when there was little in the house but chicken and rice so I thought I might as well give the nicest sounding one a go. I was expecting toothache from cloying sweetness and a deep sense of regret, what I got was a pleasant surprise and lots of nodding and “yeah this is quite nice actually isn’t it”. Korean BBQ, look out for it on the supermarket shelves. But please don’t use it all the time, cooking from scratch is easy and fun and helps you live longer and happier lives.

I made fudge with coconut condensed milk and it got me a marriage proposal. It was more like tablet (a delicious Scottish confection) in texture but it tasted honestly mindblowing – and actually not coconutty at all, to my delight. I followed the recipe on the Carnation website for fudge and if I had subbed out the butter for something plant based, this would be an amazingly real tasting vegan fudge situation. Vegan readers, I challenge you! The brand of sweetened condensed milk is Nature’s Charm, and they’re a new addition to online Chinese food store Wing Yip.

I’m so so excited to say that I will, one again, be taking part in the bake off bake along this year. You’ll see my first post next week, in the mean time check out some of the gems from last year, there are some epic epic fails in there (don’t even want to talk about the biscuit structure situation) and some bakes I’m actually proud of (do you remember the tennis cake?). I’m very very very pumped..

I just thought it’d be nice to end on a picture of me and Molls cause it’ a while since I posted one here. I hope you all had beautiful weekends and are looking forward to Bank Holiday Monday.

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