It's February and that can only mean one thing. Pancake Day is just around the corner! I like to think of it as the Christmas-after-Christmas. A time just far away from the big day to feel like you deserve to treat yourself. Pancake Day is coming soon on the 16th of February!

To celebrate Pancake Day this year I've teamed up with JimJams to provide the toppings and Griddle to provide the pancakes themselves. JimJams have recently launched 2 new vegan flavours of Chocolate spread. Dark Chocolate Orange and Dark Hazelnut. Griddle sent me a chocolate chip pancake mix which I prepared with soya milk to keep it vegan.

I used half of the provided mix to make 6 small pancakes stacked high and drizzled it with the melted spread. Pictured are the pancakes drizzled with the melted dark chocolate orange spread (which was my favourite of the two) with some icing sugar sprinkled over the top. I tried some the next day with the hazelnut spread which was just as delicious.

Now, this was only using half the mix and only a couple of tablespoons of the spread so there's plenty to go around and at only 83 calories per pancake and 50 calories per dessert spoon of the JimJams spread it's easy on the teeth too. JimJams contains only plant-based ingredients and no added refined sugar.

The pancakes were incredibly easy to make and only required you to add the milk. You can add an egg if desired or you can even replace the milk with water! You would never be able to tell that what you were eating contained no dairy whatsoever so it was refreshing to try something so tasty yet not as bad for you as you would initially think.

JimJams is currently on offer for only £2 and you can grab a jar of either flavour from Sainsburys, Morrisons, Waitrose, Asda and Ocado just in time for Pancake Day on the 16th of February!

Make sure you come back and share some pictures of your Pancake Day creations on here or tag me on Twitter @MrAdrianJones

You can follow JimJams and Griddle on Instagram just in time for Pancake Day by clicking below.

@jimjams_spreads @wearegriddle

Note: I was sent this product to review. I try to write all of my reviews as honestly as possible but it's important to be transparent when I was given the product for the purpose of this review.

Follow @MrAdrianJones

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Hello! My name is Steve from stevesincomestreams and Adrian has been kind enough to invite me to talk with you all about Cryptocurrencies. I'd like to explain how they work and how they can be part of your financial strategy.

You may have heard about these mysterious things called "Cryptocurrencies" in the news - anonymous money that seems like it can quadruple in price over night! Luckily, it's not as complicated as sensationalist media may have you believe. A cryptocurrency is any form of currency whose transactions are cryptographically validated by a decentralised network. More simply put, it is a type of money that derives its “authority” as real money from a mathematically proven history of transactions rather than the arbitrary say-so of a centralised authority. This kind of money gives power to everyday citizens to control our currency.

The first technology to use this concept on a large scale was the famous Bitcoin. Since its transactions were validated by math and not bankers, there was no way for the government or anyone else to track who owned which Bitcoin when. This anonymity revolutionised online economics and naturally lead to a black market, while also having legitimate uses. After the government’s crack down on the largest Bitcoin vendor, the Silk Road, Bitcoin went largely clean and is used for legal purposes in the vast majority of transactions.

The mechanics of Bitcoin involves two groups: the miners and the users. Miners are the people who connect their computer to the Bitcoin network to validate transactions. Since these transactions must be mathematically unable to forge, validating transactions requires an enormous amount of computing power. When the network was small and there were few miners competing among each other to validate a “block” of transactions before other miners did, many people just mined with laptops. But as more transactions flowed in and more miners entered the game, people switched from graphics cards to specially built mining cards and eventually were forced into pooling their resources among miner allies. Miners get rewarded 25 Bitcoin for validating a transaction, a vast sum that now ends up getting split among 1000 or so pool mates.

This serves the dual purpose of introducing new Bitcoin to the system as well as validating transactions. Miners tend to sell their rewards off for fiat currency or other cryptocurrency and the newly mined Bitcoin enter the system of users, being traded and used for purchase.

As an open source project, Bitcoin opened a world of opportunity for developers and to a whole world of altcoins all claiming to make improvements off of Bitcoin’s model. These improvements include new validation algorithms, new ways to distribute coins and coins revolving around drawing support to special causes. I hope to take you through all these altcoins over time, but for now I hope you have a solid understanding of cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin.

For more tech insights, financial advice, and general tomfoolery check out stevesincomestreams.com and @StevesStreams on Twitter!

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What is it?

Game Off - Celebrities is one version of a set of games created and promoted by Captain Fats. The game is centred around a group of family or friends having to perform different tasks in order to collect each of the 5 types of card in the game. This version of the game is based around British, or well-known in Britain, celebrities or historical figures. Other versions on offer include Adult, German/Spanish Celebs, as well as of course the original game.

These 5 types are Mind, Body, Courage, Skill and Luck. I won't be listing out the full rules of the game 1-by-1 here but the objective is to challenge someone else in the group, determined by a dice roll, to play against in order to obtain one of these cards.

Each card relates to a certain type of challenge which can be summarised as:

Mind - Coming up with the best idea or answer to a specific scenario.
Body - Doing something physical or in a race against your opponent.
Courage - Performace sort of challenges. Singing, doing impressions.
Skill - Challenge along to lines of draw something, make something, think of something.
Luck - As the name suggests, it's luck. You don't have to do anything to win this card, you simply get it if you beat our your opponent in whatever characteristic is on the card.

The rest of the group take a vote on the person they think completed their challenge the best and that person wins the card. This is why 3 players are needed as a minimum. In the event of a tie, a luck card decided the winner. The first to collect one of each type of card wins!

What did I think?

Now, I managed to play this game with the minimum of 3 people, I would have preferred more but for obvious reasons that aren't workable currently. (Note: If you're reading this from the future, google the history of 2020). Anyway, the game definitely had the feel of a party game.

The rules were quick to pick up and the 3 of us were promptly getting competitive in an attempt to beat out the others. As with most games, of course, some cards offer more fun than the others. My personal favourite that I had to do was the 'Ronnie O'Sullivan Off' where my opponent and I had to take turns hitting the dice with pencils into the game's box, like in snooker. I won this of course.

The Mind cards were especially fun too as they allowed to debate and argue your case, vying for the judge's vote. I can see a few heated discussion cropping up among a larger group of friends and a few drinks.

The game doesn't take too long, it depends on how many players you have and the speed at which you perform the tasks. For our game, it took up about 20-30 minutes since there were a lot more opportunities to win the 5 cards and there was only 1 vote needed to decide the winner each time.

Once able to start-up my group's Friday night table-topping session I will certainly introduce the game to the mix, I would love to see how this plays out among a group of 6+, all of whom are have a 'jolly' time of it.

I believe this game would be perfect for students at university looking for something to spice up their pre-drinks or for a family get together at Christmas.

Due to the nature of the game, replayability is not an issue unlike with question0based card games, making the price point acceptable in terms of how much game time you can get out of the set.

You can pick up the game for the price of £12.99 on Amazon by clicking the link below.

Click here or below to get yourself a copy of Game Off - Celebrities from Amazon!

Note: I was sent this product to review. I try to write all of my reviews as honestly as possible but it's important to be transparent when I was given the product for the purpose of this review.

Follow @MrAdrianJones

What is it?

What did I think?

Click here or below to get yourself a copy of Game Off - Celebrities from Amazon!

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