Student Survival Favourites
University starts back this week! Our Angel Delivery hampers are the perfect care package to send to students who are missing your home-cooked comforts and need a little help staying healthy.
Available for nationwide delivery to all of the university flats and halls, we've rounded up our most popular delicious hampers for students for you here... At least you know they'll be eating well!
"My daughter is studying law at Otago... I wanted to send her a care package that would boost her energy, cheer her up and be able to share some of the good cheer with her mates. The "Fresh Fruit and Wellness" hamper was the perfect choice to send - she was delighted and over the moon! There was plenty to share and it was good healthy nutritious food!” - Cathy
Our Student Survival Favourites
The Ultimate Student Survival Box Click here
Gourmet Soup Box Click here
Fresh Fruit and Wellness Click here
Recipe - Valentines Day Home-Made Chocolates
Did you know you can make delicious chocolates at home with just an ice-cube tray…?!
This is a really simple and fun way to make a thoughtful home-made Valentine's Day gift for a friend, partner, kiddies or teacher.
Pack them up in a cute box and tie with heart ribbon, to finish the gift off perfectly.
Here are the steps
Happy Valentine's Day! xo
If you get stuck, remember we have some gorgeous Valentine's Day hampers available to order for delivery directly to your Valentine or to a family you love on Valentine's Day. Order soon so you don't miss out on this popular delivery date - Click here to order.
Recipe - Our favourite lunch-box filler
After a wonderfully long (or too long, depending on who you ask!) summer holiday, school finally returns back this week for most. One of the biggest challenges during this time can often be getting back into the routine of filling those lunch-boxes every day. It can be hard to think beyond sandwiches!
We've dug out our old favourite pinwheel scroll recipe to share with you – they are pretty simple to mix up, and perfect to grab and pop into a lunch-box for a filling wee treat during the week (remmeber to include lots of fresh fruit & veges as well!). Here's the recipe...
Ingredients:
Method:
Heat your oven to 180 degrees celsius.
In a large bowl, add the flour and butter, and run-in the butter with your fingers until it's bread-crumb texture. Add the cheese, salt and parsley or dried mixed herbs (optional) and combine.
Make a well in the centre, pour in the milk and mix it all quickly with a dinner knife until the dough comes together in a bowl.
Tip the mix out onto a floured bench and bring together into a rough ball with your hands. Roll out with a rolling pin until it's around 25cm x 10cm in size, just under around 1 cm thick roughly.
Add your toppings – spread evenly around the whole rectangle. We suggest starting with a sauce (relish or paste), then some veges/meat, and finish with cheese to stick it all together. It's fun to add a mix of toppings (meat, cheese & vege), but don't go too crazy loading up or the pinwheels won't hold together when baked. In ours in the photos, we have relish, baby spinach, courgette, feta and edam.
Roll up your pinwheel from the longer side. Once rolled, cut along the log approx. 2cm rounds.
Place the rounds on a greased or lined tray, leaving a little room between them for growth.
Optional: You can add a milk / egg wash here if you want, which gives you a more golden finish in the oven.
Bake for 10-12mins, until golden brown.
** Recipe adapted from an old favourite Woman's Weekly recipe.
Helping to ease the load
With school and work heading back this week it might be a hectic time for a family you love. Send them an Angel Delivery meal hamper might help ease the load (and fill the fridge) – we find the Family Meal Hamper (complete evening meal) is a favourite for this, or you can always go big with a whole week of meals delivered to their door with the Here to Help (for a whole week).
What are your New Years resolutions for 2019?
We're back! Welcome to 2019.
After a refreshing break with friends and family, we're thrilled to be back in the Angel Delivery office, ready to head into an exciting new year together. We hope you had an enjoyable break and happy holiday season too.
As with most people at this time of year, our minds are turning to our New Years resolutions and goals. Although of course you can set goals and make plans anytime during the year, there really is something special about the New Year that presents a great opportunity to start fresh and create new habits going forward. A new year is like a blank canvas!
With this in mind, we've been researching New Years resolutions, finding out a bit about what the most popular ones are and some tips on how to keep your resolutions after the fresh-start buzz of January fades, and we thought we'd share some of our favourite tips with you here...
Popular New Year Resolutions
If you're looking for some inspiration for your New Year resolutions for 2019, research suggests some of the post popular ones this year include:
Tips for Keeping your Resolutions
Stats suggest that while over 60% of people make New Years resolutions, only around 8% actually manage to achieve them! How can you set yourself up to succeed in your goals and resolutions for the year? Here are some ideas we found to share with you...
- Choose one resolution to focus on – Don't go for a full life overhaul all at once. You're more likely to succeed if you pick one or two areas to focus on at a time.
- Write them down – According to studies on goal setting, people who write down their goals are more likely to achieve it than those who don't.
- Start small – When forming new habits, baby steps are key. If you want to start jogging, don't kick-off with a half-marathon, just try and get out for a 5 minute run and work your way up. Break your big goals into smaller attainable goals.
- Reward yourself – Along the way set small milestones and reward yourself as you go. Don't beat yourself up if you take some missteps as you go – if you go off track, just get back on the wagon as quickly as possible (the longer you leave it, the less likely you'll resume).
- Share with friends and family – Talk about your resolutions and plans with people, they'll be able to support you, but might also hold you accountable down the line – the guilt of being caught slacking off can be quite motivating!
- Use technology to help – Lots of apps, blogs and websites are out there to help you remember, track and motivate your goals, make the most of what technology can offer.
Keeping in Touch with Friends and Family
One of our favourite popular resolutions is to keep in touch with friends and family. We wanted to share a quick tip that we have a special new hamper ready for order now, especially for those final beautiful weeks of the traditional summer holiday time in New Zealand.
Our Summer Holidays Hamper is packed full of meals, treats and delicious extras - perfect to make beach day lunches, summer picnics or lazy late-night dinners a piece of cake (scrumptious lemon cake, that is!).
Orders are open on our website now (click here to order), so you can send a hamper directly to friends or family with a personal note, or arrange one to be delivered to your own doorstop to lighten the load while you're travelling.
If your new year's resolution or goals included reaching out, keeping in touch with friends and family, or aiming to show a little more kindness, sending an Angel Delivery hamper could be the perfect way to kick of 2019 the right way.
Good luck with your resolutions for 2019!
Tips for a clutter-free Christmas
Christmas-time can sometimes be a bit overwhelming, and a big reason for this is simply the huge volume of “stuff” that comes along with it. Tacky decorations, piles of discarded wrapping paper, packaging galore, un-wanted gifts... While we love this time of year, we do find that Christmas always come with lots of stuff that we don't necessarily want or need – Kiwis spend over $6 billion on gifts at this time of year, and lots of it end up on the landfill. This got us inspired us to research some ways to aim for a clutter-free and minimalist Christmas, so we've bought together some of our favourite ideas here to share with you too...
Clutter-Free Gift Ideas
Here are some of what we think are the best clutter-free or minimalist gift ideas for this time of year. These gifts are also great for that "person who has everything". Best of all, lots of these gifts can be ordered last-minute this week.
Low-waste and clutter-free holiday season ideas
Make sure you choose recyclable wrapping paper (you can't recycle shiny foil wrapping) – classic brown paper with twine looks really clean and modern. Or why not use fabric wrapping they can re-use, in the Japanese style called “Furoshiki” - click here for a tutorial we found online. Remember to save un-crinkled wrapping paper to use next year!
Hand-make as many gifts as you can, to avoid unnecessary packaging and waste. Check out our post on DIY gifts here for some inspiraiton.
Get a real Christmas tree – they smell and look great, plus they can be planted to be re-used next year or taken to the green-waste tip. Better than having more plastic in the house!
Make your own decorations (glitter isn't good for the environment) - paper decorations, tied bows, or baked cookies look great on a tree (check out our Gingerbread cookie post for a great recipe for this!).
Reduce leftover food waste by looking up recipe ideas to use leftovers (we found some good ideas here).
Re-gift, donate to charity, or sell un-wanted gifts. Why not have a gifting box tucked away, where you store excess presents you know you won't use, so you can re-gift them throughout the year.
Ask people for a wish-list of what they want, to avoid getting unwanted gifts.
Remember, it's not too late to order the perfect minimalist gift of food, or an Angel Delivery e-voucher, on our website - click here to check out our 2018 Christmas hamper range, so your gifts end up in happy bellies, not the landfill.
