Chocolate and toothpaste with some bread

I found this palm oil free chocolate supplier through a link on Nature Alert (warning Nature Alert has upsetting content and unvarnished truths).

As well as not containing palm oil, 10p from every Chokolit bar is donated to various charities which help endangered animals. The different flavours all sound absolutely scrumtious. I'm not much of a dark chocolate fan myself but Milk Chocolate crunch (Amur leopard and tiger), Premium Belgian Milk Chocolate (lions) and Premium Belgian White Chocolate with hint of lemon (tigers) have all taken my fancy. I may even give the Dark Chocolate with a hint of chilli a try cos I really like chilli. :-) They do a gift pack of any five of the chocolate bars for £9.99 including post and packaging.

Apparently their products are being stocked by Sainsburys and you can also buy on-line. I'm skint after my holiday and buying a breadmaker but I have bookmarked and will be purchasing very shortly! I'll have a look in Sainsburys on Saturday in Cambridge to see if they carry it, it's not that big a store so I guess they may not.

My Riddells Creek Lemon toothpaste has arrived and I just tried some. Some small bubbles appeared when I squeezed it out on the toothbrush which I found slightly offputting! It kind of "blobs up" on the toothbrush so it isn't as "tidy" as using Colgate but it didn't fall off so it's still easy to use. I'm relieved to say that it didn't taste like soap, the lemon comes through nicely and it has a pleasant zingy aftertaste.

As I type, I am using my breadmaker for the first time ... more on that soon!

Bread ... I surrender!

As you know, I have been buying palm oil free bread from the Co-Op but it's expensive and not great for making sandwiches out of as it's more of a big roll than a loaf. I've made lots of palm oil free loaves myself in both wholemeal and white bread. The early ones all came out very "heavy" and although they were fine when toasted and eaten with soup, they're not very good for sandwich making either.

I have been varying the amount of yeast, doing more kneading, baking it higher and then lower temperatures etc. but the results of my later loaves are the same as the early ones. Home baked bread is supposed to be one of the epicural delights, people write poems about it. I get the smell ... wow, that's lovely, really really good but I have finally had to admit defeat - I just don't have what it takes to make good bread.

I've decided to see if a breadmaker can make a better job of it and have pondered where it could go in my kitchen. The worktops are already pretty full up, if truth be told, I don't have room. If I keep it in a cupboard, it will hardly ever get used (like the food processor). So I have to sacrifice something else. The microwave gets used very little and is actually the first microwave I ever bought - it has kept going all this time since about 1986! It's probably because it's only ever used for scrambled eggs, the odd reheating of leftovers and occasional in-a-hurry baked potato (the ones from the fan oven are much better!)

So, I have done my research at Which? and have purchased a Kenwood BM450; its scheduled to arrive on Monday. After the weekend, my microwave will be consigned to the spare room until I decide whether the breadmaker is of more value.