Packit: A lunch cool bag with a difference

Usually when we go to Norfolk a cool bag is one of the ever presents that I pack in the car. Sometimes it comes home empty, but mostly not as quite often I’ve made a stop at either the Fish Shed, the Cley Smokehouse or the farm shop at Norfolk Lavender, or if I’m lucky all three and more. Mum’s got used to keeping some shelf space free in her fridge, and a spot in the freezer too for the ice blocks.

This time though I took my new Packit lunch bag, which is a cool bag with a difference. It needs no ice blocks, which I always resent for taking up valuable space. I know they have a use, but when I was offered the opportunity to try out a new-style cool bag without ice blocks, I was definitely in.

UNFOLDED TO HOLD YOUR LUNCH

And it looks great too doesn’t it? But does it work?

It folds flat so it fits easily into the freezer, and yes, no ice blocks so you freeze the whole bag. The walls of the bag are gel-filled and keep the contents cool and fresh. You only need to freeze it overnight, and as you can see on the website it says it will also ‘chill items that are at room temperature’, which I know would be handy at times too.

TAKE A LOOK INSIDE

There’s also plenty of room inside, definitely enough for a hearty lunch. While I didn’t have a hearty lunch to pack, or not one meals worth anyway, I did manage to put it through its paces, and it was still cold when we got home some three hours later.

I was impressed with how much the Packit holds

This visit to Norfolk was one of those fruitful ones food-wise, and from what I managed to include in it here, I’m confident that it will easily hold lunch for one, and possibly even two so will be useful for those picnics I plan this summer in Greenwich Park.

Arriving home from this trip, I unpacked:

• some locally grown purple sprouting broccoli

• Baron Bigod, cheese made in Suffolk

• A tupperware tub of Gurney Gold, made in Norfolk

• Binham Blue, another Norfolk cheese

• two ‘spare’ gin-in-a-tins and

• the leftovers from our roast haunch of venison (which has since been demolished stroganoff style)

Which all adds up to more than a hearty lunch I’d say, not even I could eat that much cheese for lunch. Clearly, I’d give it a good go…

UNPACKING MY PACKIT

The colourful design is perfect for me, but there are other options available whether you’re into stripes, checks, plains or even unicorns - something for everyone I’m sure. They also have larger tote-size and backpacks which could be useful to hold your whole picnic.

What do you think, are you ready to ditch the ice blocks? I am!

* I was provided this lunch cool bag for the purposes of this review, however all views and opinions are, as usual, my own.

Reflecting on my week #72

As ever it’s been a busy week, which started with a couple of nights in Norwich. I’ve been there before, but not for many (many) years and had no recollection of what it was like, other than there were lots of small roads with shops, which I’m sure now are The Lanes. This time around we spent a fair amount of time wandering around them again, as well as catching up with some more everyday shopping which we rarely get to do at home without making a special trip.

In fact browsing shops, both interiors and antiques was a bit of a theme for this trip to Norfolk as a whole. I think MOH was concerned at one point that we’d have more than a full boot-full for our journey home, or perhaps that his bike would be deemed superfluous to our luggage requirements, cast aside for newer more treasured items.

He needn’t have worried though as my purse strings, for big purchases at least for now, were tied. Mostly because I wasn’t quite sure where I would put them. I fell in love with the dogs, but wasn’t sure I’d want to leave them to the mercy of the foxes in our garden, although at one point - in fact more than one point - contemplated storage in London. Hmmm, now there’s an idea to check out further.

We spent some time in the cathedral in Norwich, actually more time than we anticipated, joining one of the c40 minute tours, which after an hour we baled from. It was really interesting, which is why we stayed for so long, but we were also keen to see more of the city.

And one of the best ways to do that is wandering around on foot, and we saw some great architecture and some unusual shop windows. No surprises for guessing why I was drawn to this one.

I hadn’t realised that Norwich was such an important city in the past, coming only second to London. That’s changed now of course, but it’s a great place that’s full of history. I’ll share some more of the architecture there, and no doubt more, over the next week or so.

We stayed at The Assembly House, which is right in the centre of town and is gorgeous. This was our first view, from the car park - and doesn’t it look promising?

And it really was. We opted for a bit of luxury, even choosing the room when we booked, and we weren’t disappointed. I was definitely missing my Eggs Royale and Eggs Florentine when we were home on Wednesday. I’ve a feeling that we’ll be back in Norwich, and at the Assembly House again. And yes, I’ll be sharing more of our room here too.

POM POMS…. I TOLD YOU, THEY’RE COMING BACK

Back home and back at work Wednesday, the rest of the week was intense.  Starting out with good intentions of leaving on time, and managing OK-ish, I’ve set myself something of a challenge to carry on with as big a workload as before, but actually knowing I’ll never get to the bottom of the list is kind of reassuring, in a peculiar kind of way.

The mornings here have been quite foggy but have cleared into glorious days.  Friday I was out early with an appointment at the local community hospital for my foot and it seemed peculiar to be driving in the fog.  Not expecting my appointment to actually be on time I paid for a couple of hours in the car park opposite, so of course you can guess what happened.  Not only was my appointment on time, but I got back to the car park before the charging even started.  Typical, hey?  There wasn’t even much of an outcome on my foot either, I’m now being referred to podiatry.  I know there’s processes to be gone through and all that, but it does seem a bit of a delaying tactic before I get to see someone with some actual, practical advice.

Even with our north facing garden we’ve enjoyed the sun out there, and ventured out for some ‘light gardening’ - although this extended to cutting a third of the dogwood stems, and the vine from next door which seemed to have got quite attached to our cherry tree.  Two trug loads later and the green bin was pretty full, for the first time this year.

The garden is springing back into life, there’s plenty of bulb growth with some crocuses and daffodils in flower, with more to come and delicate muscari just starting to turn blue. The skies have been ultra blue, and it’s been glorious - the pear tree is in bud, which seems early, and is definitely in need of a prune when we know the frosts have passed.

The ornamental quince bushes are also in their element right now, with reddy-orange blossom glinting in the sun and bringing real colour into the garden. I walk past one on the way to work too, and it really seems to herald spring each year, so let’s hope it’s not a false alarm.

Alongside the gardening, popping into town to see England lose to Wales (boo!) I’ve also made a few pom pom sheep for a craft session that I’m hosting at work at the start of March. I’ll save the full post until then, but in the meantime here’s a glimpse of my sheep, and yes, it’s entirely plausible to have a lime green sheep - I’ve pastel pink ones too!

More on those soon though, in the meantime have a great week and let’s hope I stick to my resolve of leaving the office at a respectable time.  To be honest, I’ve as much to do at home, so I really should…

* This is a collaborative post, but all views and opinions remain my own.

Reflecting on my week #71

Last week was one of those doubly manic weeks. You know the sort, you’re busy anyway and are looking forward to a much needed break, but that much needed break brings with it the compulsion to get things done that you’d normally do if you weren’t having that much needed break. So it short, it’s a week where things have come to a head (simmering, not explosive) and one that almost broke me (but didn’t).

And because i refuse to let it break me - I can be stubborn like that - I needed to find another way to deal with it, and that’s been compromise, prioritising and useful. And what needed to be done, got done and so we escaped to Norfolk, for that much needed break.

Phew.

I’m sure that you have your Valentines traditions and recently ours has also included cheese, and most often from the cheese shop in Greenwich. However this year my cheese exploits were thwarted as I discovered the shop shuts at 1pm on Thursdays. Knowing that we were heading to Norfolk, I wasn’t too worried as the deli in Hunstanton also has a good cheese selection.

However as I was standing outside it I discovered that too shut at 1pm on the day I visited. I was beginning to think there was a cheese shop conspiracy, but one I knew we’d overcome, even if it was a little later than usual. And so after a visit to the farm shop and Norfolk Lavender and later at Creake Abbey, we had our cheese.

Not any old cheese either, both are local. The Binham Blue is made just up the road in Wighton from where we bought it, and the Baron Bigod has had a slightly longer journey over the border in Suffolk. In fact we’ve had a truffled version of this before at our most recent trip to the Gravetye Manor, and it’s been on our radar ever since, so it was nice to spot it relatively close to its home.

And it was great to try them both along with some Gurney Gold and some goats cheese we’d brought from our local farmers’ market too, even if it was a few days afterwards. Actually this year I think we probably had the least romantic Valentine’s Day ever. If it’s a weeknight we’ll usually open a bottle of red, but not this year. This year we ate out, at McDonalds! We tried KFC first, at the Ely retail park on the way to Norfolk, but they were only doing takeaways, and I didn’t want the car smelling for the last hour or so of our journey. Romantic hey?!

So I’ve had a chilled few days in Norfolk, with some time for pottering, some for craft and still not enough to catch up with everything I want to. We’ve found cheese (yay!) and eaten local venison, which we roasted with locally grown potatoes and vegetables. We’ve been out for cake, wandered around villages and towns and shops and the week has ended in a much less frantic state than it started.

i even forgot my phone, and was without it for the whole day. It was quite liberating, but then often there’s not much signal up here anyway, but also a little restrictive as there were many photos I wanted to take. MOH had managed to bring his phone along and so that was commandeered at times for a photo or two, and completely relinquished by the time we got to the shops at Creake Abbey!

I’d been following the progress of the new arts centre at Wells Maltings and I was keen to see it for myself - it’s billing itself as “North Norfolk’s Cultural Landmark” and certainly had much on its programme. It’s here that we wandered around the local art exhibition, re-learning that we have different tastes in art. It looks a great place, there’s a cafe, activities and classes as well as a heritage centre (which we didn’t go into, as it was only a flying visit and £3.50 while not extortionate, seemed a little steep for the time we had available), exhibitions, cinema screenings and shows and it’s something I’m going to continue keeping an eye out for.

The photo below is of the cafe with its Wells Community Tapestry, which tells the story of the town’s heritage in textile reflecting the “vibrancy of the community groups that are active within it” and has seventy-five panels created by thirty seven community groups which highlight everything from the granary building on the quay to knitted shells and starfish.

Isn’t it great?