Perfect summer recipes

While we’re sweltering through one of the warmest summers we have had for a while perhaps the last thing we want for dinner is stodgy traditional fare. Boiled beef and carrots anyone?

Perhaps not. What about fresh seafood, fruit and salads? Fresh fish is an excellent summer choice. Sea bass and mackerel with herbs served with fresh vegetables are a great choice.

You could serve other seafoods such as prawns, or lobster if the budget will stretch to it.

Barbecue is a summer favourite. Go for some high-quality beef if you are looking to impress. Try a succulent sirloin or rib eye of beef.

We have trawled the web and found a few websites that are just bursting with epicurean inspiration.

The Great British Chefs website has some terrific ideas for entertaining this summer – inside or out.

This is a great time of year for all you dessert lovers. With so much summer fruit around try Peach Melba, Eton Mess or Summer Pudding. You could also create a delicious jelly using Pimm’s and serve it with a palette-cleansing sorbet.

The key to a summer supper is to keep it light and ‘herby’. Try these summer recipes from the BBC Good Food website.

This website has a great list of ingredients that will give you the full flavour of summer. Savour the best the season offers if you are feeling adventurous in the kitchen.

And don’t forget other summer favourites like these soups, salads and trifles from Delia Smith.

We think that you will find plenty to tickle the palette with these choices. To work up an appetite why not come long and visit one of our show homes this summer?

Go Promming this summer

The BBC Proms starts today and runs throughout the summer until 8 September.

The Proms is a summer-long classical music festival based at the Royal Albert Hall with something for all you classical music fans to enjoy.

The First Night at the Proms features an all-British line up featuring two major responses to WWI; Holst’s The Planets (1918) and Vaughan William’s choral work Toward the Unknown Region.

A work by Ann Meredith called Five Telegrams draws on communications sent by young soldiers in 1918 and features specially produced digital projections.

The Proms, or Promenade Concerts, have their origins in the pleasure gardens of 18th Century London. Moving to indoor venues in Victorian London, the Proms were designed by impresario Robert Newman to popularise concert music to a wider audience, and he achieved that aim with the assistance of conductor Henry Wood with the first Prom in 1895.

Following Newman’s death in 1927 the running of the concerts was taken over by the BBC.

This year there are 75 different concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, including the famous Last Night of the Proms, and a series of related events such as the BBC’s Proms in the Park held in Hyde Park.

The Last Night of the Proms has a party atmosphere and will feature the music of Stanford, Parry and Elgar – think Songs of the Sea and Pomp and Circumstance.

For a full calendar of events, ticket sales, social media and broadcast details visit the BBC Proms website.

There's so much on the radio and TV that you could enjoy hosting your own Proms Party. Get your guests to dress as if they were attending the Royal Albert Hall and serve champagne, Pimms and cocktail food.

10 tips for caring for pets and animals in the hot weather

A lot us may be feeling the heat this summer. But spare a thought for your pets. Dogs in particular can suffer when the weather gets hot. Here are our top 10 tips to help you help your animals keep their cool this summer.

• Never leave animals in hot cars, conservatories, outbuildings or caravans, even for a short while.
• Make sure your pets have access to fresh drinking water. You could put ice cubes in the water to keep it cool.
• Put an animal friendly sun cream on exposed parts of your pets’ skin.
• Walk your dogs in the morning or in the evening. Avoid taking them out for a walk in the hottest part of the day to prevent them burning their paws on the tarmac or getting heat stroke.
• If you have fish or amphibians, keep their tanks out of direct sunlight.
• Keep your ponds topped up and create shaded areas for fish by planting aquatic plants such as lilies.
• If you have caged birds keep them out of direct sunlight and ensure aviaries have shaded areas.
• Make sure your birds have access to clean, fresh drinking and bathing water.
• Help garden wildlife by providing fresh water for drinking. Keep it clean and topped up.
• Set up a paddling pool in the garden that your dog can splash around in.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) has some more excellent advice on caring for pets, farm animals and wildlife of all kinds on its website.

Top 10 outdoor games to play in your garden

Now that the sun has got his hat on and he's come out to play it’s time for you to go out to play in the garden. You might not always want to get out the paddling pool or the water balloons. You can play these classic garden games and stay dry.

Here are the Allison Homes top 10 classic garden games for you to enjoy this summer.

1. Quoits – the classic deck game of hand and eye coordination where you try to get rope hoops over pegs to score points.
2. Skittles – another classic and there are several versions of the game available online.
3. Rounders – rounders is a great game but you will need to have some space to play. If there isn’t enough room in the garden, why not nip down to the local park?
4. Kwik Cricket – this is also a great game for all the family but, like rounders, you’re going to need some space to play in.
5. Giant Snakes and Ladders – the kids will love this classic game, upsized with a sticky board just for outdoors. There are also versions with inflatable game pieces available.
6. Croquet – this might sound painfully posh, but it’s a lot of fun to play, especially if you are having a few friends around for an al fresco party.
7. French Cricket – this is a favourite with younger and older children alike and you won’t need anywhere near as much space as you will for Rounders or Kwik Cricket.
8. Giant Jenga – using giant wooden blocks making ‘tumble towers’ is a lot of fun. There are several versions of this classic available online.
9. Twister – Twister is a classic party game and ideally suited for playing outside on the lawn. Guaranteed to liven up any BBQ.
10. Swing Ball – this is a fun game for the competitive members of your family. You could have your own Wimbledon knock out in your own back garden.

There are plenty of places to find these classics. Online, simply look at Amazon, Ebay or any one of a hundred specilaist retailers. On the high street, you could try your independent toy shop, although these are becoming increasingly rare these days, or visit your local garden centre.

Is the ‘Waitrose effect’ reversing?

It’s been documented that living near a Waitrose supermarket can boost house prices. But what happens when the high-end supermarket leaves your area?

It’s called the “Waitrose effect”. Studies have shown that living near to a branch of the high-end supermarket can add thousands of pounds to the value of your home. Just last month research from Lloyds Bank found that homes in the same postcode as a Waitrose cost on average £43,571 more than those in the wider town in which they’re located. Living near a Marks & Spencer or Sainsbury’s can boost house prices by £40,135 and £32,707 respectively but it’s Waitrose that has the biggest impact.

So, what happens then when your local Waitrose closes down? It’s a question some homeowners may be asking themselves following the news that the supermarket is set to close some of its stores in the wake of a profit warning issued by the John Lewis Partnership.

While some high-end outlets tend to be positioned in more affluent areas property values are unlikely to plummet as a result of Waitrose vacating the area according to emoov.co.uk.

While the general decline of a high-street may impact the local market, these desirable shop spaces will no doubt be repopulated by another business. This is already happening in some areas where former Waitrose premises are being taken over by the likes of the Co Op and Aldi.

That’s good news for homeowners as the Lloyds Bank survey also revealed properties near an Aldi have seen their values rise by 15 per cent over the past four years.

Paula Higgins of the HomeOwners Alliance summed up the situation, “While the amount added to the value of your home can be even greater if located next to a brand which is perceived as upmarket, there are many other drivers of house prices beyond having a high-end supermarket on your doorstep. The most important thing here is that large flagship stores near your home aren’t left empty. ”

Let’s have a look at some of the stores that you can find around some of our developments.

Pinchbeck Fields, Spalding – Morrisons
Oakley Rise, Corby – Aldi, Lidl, Morrisons, Tesco, M&S, Weldon Supermarket
Collingham Brook – Co Op, Morrisons, Asda, Lidl, Sainsburys

As you can see, there are plenty of options for grocery shopping around our developments and prices as a result are unlikely to be adversely affected by the departure of a flagship supermarket any time soon!

‘Staycations’ are the in-thing this summer

As the British summer weather becomes increasingly reliable, more and more of us are staying at home to holiday rather than travel abroad.

Especially since the current heatwave is set to continue for a few more weeks.

There are some great destinations in the UK for a holiday – from Cornwall to the Western Isles. But staying in the UK for holiday comes with its own problems, particularly when it comes to insurance.

According to recent research over 60 per cent of people who stayed in the UK did not insure themselves adequately.

You wouldn’t dream of going abroad without adequate insurance. But millions of holiday makers are potentially at risk during their summer staycations should something go wrong such as a missed train, loss or damage of personal items, or hotel cancellations, according to personal lines insurer Liverpool Victoria.

Things that you can get cover for a staycation include cancellation; personal effects/baggage, medical emergency, travel delay/abandonment and personal liability.

But where can you go? With award-winning beaches, internationally acclaimed cultural and historical attractions and 15 national parks, the British Isles have something for everyone.

Go here for a list of Britain’s best beaches and resorts.

If you prefer being more active and hillwalking and rambling are more your thing here is information about what the UK’s national parks have to offer.

If a city break is more your cup of tea this blog has more information.

And everywhere you turn in the UK there is culture and history to enjoy.

You might even visit a showhome or two while you are away!

Summer books for the beach

July is here, the school year is almost over and many of us are looking forward to the beach, either here in the UK or further afield.

Even if you’re simply spending time at home in the garden soaking up the sun what better way to pass the time than by catching up on your reading.

Whether you’re into history, art, sport, literary fiction or a quick ‘pot boiler’, we’ve got something here for you.

Fiction

• Lincoln in the Bardo - George Saunders
• Warlight – Michael Ondaatje
• Circe – Madelaine Miller
• The Ministry of Utmost Happiness – Arundhati Roy
• The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock – Imogen Hermes Gowar
• Ordinary People – Diana Evans
• The Shepherd’s Hut – Tim Winton
• The Only Story – Julian Barnes
• The Lido – Libby Page
• Fear – Dirk Kurbjuweit
• Friend Request – Laura Marshall

Non-fiction

• Arnhem – Anthony Beevor
• First Man in – Ant Middleton
• Factfulness – Hans Rosling
• Spitfire – John Nichol
• Everything I know About Love – Dolly Alderton
• Ikigai – Hector Garcia & Francesc Miralles
• The Language of Kindness – Christie Watson
• Lose Weight for Good – Tom Kerridge
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*@k
• Coming Home – Fern Britton
• The Summer of Impossible Things – Rowan Coleman
• Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls – Elena Favilli & Francesca Cavallo

Children and Young Adult 

• Children of Blood and Bone – Tomi Adeyemi
• The Moxie – Jennifer Mathieu
• The Start of You and Me – Emery Lord
• Not if I Save you First – Ally Carter
• One of us is Lying – Karen McManus
• The Hate U Give – Angie Thomas
• The Kissing Booth – Beth Reekles
• Letters from the Lighthouse – Emma Carroll
• The Legend of Podkin One-Ear – Kieran Larwood
• See you in the Cosmos – Jack Cheng
• The Girl Who Drank the Moon – Kelly Barnhill
• The Book of Dust – Philip Pullman

There are some great titles in here. There’s nothing wrong with getting your books online, but if you can, and there is one where you live, do consider using your independent bookshop.

Hope you have a great time this summer.