Jo Herrings Adventures

I woke up at 7am Tuesday 22nd of February to to 3 text messages (with 2 messages from my Mum) and I KNEW something was gravely wrong in my world.  Mum wrote " Hi. There has been a massive earthquake in christchurch. At about 1pm. It is on tv " Chloe's was a little more to my understanding at that time of the day " Sorry to txt so early but huge earthquake in Christchurch Hun, lots of damage....looks far worse than first one. Pls call your friends and fam to make sure they're ok xxx much love " Mum again " Jenkins, Boyd and simon family are all safe. Kerry is in pink on tv she has her arm in a sling. Not broken though. Will call later. Nellie " I went straight to the tv and the internet to seek out more information. To my horror during the lull of a Tuesday lunch time, Christchurch had been struck by a 6.1 earthquake, 5km deep, 10km from the central city and 2km from the port town of Lyttleton. Seen as an aftershock to the Sept 4th 2010 7.1 ...

A pologies in advance for the lack of images but due to Copyright rules no photos inside the studio were allowed.  On Sunday night after a previous failed attempt, two of my darling friends and I were Prioritised entrance into Comedy Rocks hosted by the Twitter banned Jason Mansford. We arrived to the ITV's South Bank studios in the rain and were greeted with mulled wine which was a nice touch to get the punters giggling. On entering we sat ourselves plonk in the middle section. Later we were to discover that this meant we could only see the heads of the comedians and not their full bodies. Top tip to future TV live audience goers - go to the sides not centre!   Alas the night was a great hoot featuring the Rocks from the one and only Paloma Faith and her band. Paloma should be kindly creditted also for being a great house band lead with a brilliant cackle and a constant support to the acts and host himseld Mr Mansford. Jason was clearly jilted from his time on telly hostin...

On New Years Eve on the shores or the Dead Sea I was drawn into eating some lamb after many years of pescotarianism. I topped it off with lamb again later that night in Amman as part of the New Years festivities.  So when I realised that New Zealands national day - Waitangi Day - was to be a Sunday I sent out a commited email to my London Kiwi friends inviting them over for a first ever Lamb Roast. To my surprise they all said yes! I went to my local Waitrose and had the help of my friendly Butcher  to advise me that a Lamb Shoulder roasted on a low temperature is the best kind - and super easy. I wanted super easy. So I picked up a whole shoulder and a half shoulder (and bagged a half boneless leg cos it was on special). the whole shoulder would feed 6-7 apparently and I didn't want to leave anyone hungry. All NZ lamb to support the industry that reared me and the future of my nephew.  I got online and found a recipe by Jamie Oliver. And found this great recipe and ...