A trip to the country

I went for a little get away with some of my lady friends recently. We don't get to see each other very often so we hired a place out in the coutryside and drank wine and chatted for hours.

The place where we stayed was beautiful and even kept chickens and alpacas. The alpacas were lovely. They came over to investigate us, but I think they were dissapointed that we didn't have any food for them.

are you ready for your close-up?

 We also visited the town of Ludlow. Some parts of the castle there date back to the 13th century. The whole town is beautiful though, very old-fashioned and full of little independant shops and cafes. I got some really tasty Mango Ketchup from the market.

My awesome birthday and cake

Its been a while since my birthday. A few months actually, but I really wanted to write about it because everyone made it such a special occasion for me!

Let me give you a little back story. I had a big birthday this year. Okay, I was 30. As you know we are getting married this year so I didn't want to make a big thing about it as all my family would be coming over later in the year the wedding anyway. My folks however, got together with Marc and arranged a surprise party for me. Yep, a real surprise birthday party. I had no idea. I nearly cried when I saw everyone there, I didn't know what to say.

Marc also made me a cake. Remember some of the cakes I've made for him? Turns out he has a talent for baking, himself! Check out his awesome and huge 'cupcake'. I've seen people use this mould before online, but he even used chocolate to make a cupcake 'case'. There was cake inside it too. Very impressive for someone who has never made a cake beyond rice crispy buns.

So I'd like to say another big thank you to all my friends and family for making my birthday amazing.

Caramalised onion and sun-dried tomato palmiers

These pastry based savouries are perfect for a picnic. They are only two bites big but huge on flavour and use only three main ingredients. Okay it is a bit of a cheat as one of the ingredients is ready made pastry. And I cheated even more by using ready-rolled pastry ... but who's counting?

I think the impressiveness to difficulty ratio is pretty good. They are a bit fiddly, but also very forgiving because of their 'rustic' look.

Ingredients

- 1 pack of ready-made puff pastry (if it's not ready rolled roll it out into a big rectangle about 5mm thick)
- 1 jar of sun-dried tomatoes in oil
- about half a jar of caramelised onion chutney/sweet onion jam
- an egg mixed with a little milk for egg washing
- salt and pepper for seasoning and maybe some herbs (I used a bit of dried thyme)

Method

- Drain and chop up nearly a full jar of sun-dried tomatoes (my jar was about 280g)
- spread some onion over the whole surface of the pastry
- distribute the tomatoes over the top of that and season with a bit of salt, pepper and thyme
- roll both sides of the pastry into the middle (the long sides) and stick together with a little egg
- pop the roll into the fridge for about half and hour (you'll really want to do this or pop it in the freezer for a bit so that it hardens up some)
- start to slice 1cm pieces off the roll with a sharp knife
- lay them on a baking sheet, cover the top in egg wash
- bake in the oven for about 10 minutes at 180c

I actually made these to take to a social at my work with what I think is called a 'potluck' meal in the US but we sometimes call it a 'fuddle'. However I ended up being poorly and not being able to go, so I can't let you know how they went down. Marc seemed to like them!

Wedding plans

Well hello! I've not been around as much as usual lately as I've been kinda busy with wedding stuff. It seems to take up a lot of my time. Actually thats not -technically- true. It takes up a lot of the time I would normally be blogging or making disasterous recipes.

Some of it has been a lot of fun - I've been making things. Lots of things. Some of them are really easy to do and look cool - like these hearts. I found the tutorial for them over here. I think they make nice decorations even if you're not getting married. I've got a couple strung up in our bedroom which are very pretty.

Some of the other things have been really difficult or taken ages. Mainly is because I had to multiply them by the number guests we have invited!


I'll show you some more after the event, I want everything to be a surprise for people on the day,

Biscuiteers - the real thing

Remember a while a go I was all excited about the Biscuiteers book? Well recently I had occasion to actually order some biscuits from them.

The service was awesome - I ordered a tin of biscuits online on thursday morning, I chose express delivery as I had left it a bit late ... but they were waiting for me when I arrived at my work. They were there by 9am the next morning! They were well packaged and inside the tin the biscuits were secured to the different layers with a drop of icing so they didn't move around.

The quality was beautiful. We nearly didn't want to eat them, but I'm glad we did. They tasted lovely. Not too hard, not too soft and very chocolatey.

They were expensive. Even with £5 off. But I would recommend them if you want to send someone a lovely treat. Especially if they are the kind of person who would appreciate the craftsmanship.

Experiments in pasta: Fregola

Fregola. Fregola? Have you heard of it?

I hadn't seen it before today. I just happened to be watching a programme about Italian cooking and saw them making it. It's a pasta made from semolina. Kinda like cous cous but a bit bigger and weirder. I've never had much success making actual pasta but this turned out really well.

You make it by laying out semolina on a tray and then sprinkling it with water. You swirl it with your finger tips and tiny pasta rubble appears. I think you are supposed to dry it out after that in the Italian sun, which we are supremely lacking ... so I baked it in the oven for a bit.

You cook it in boiling water like any dried pasta for 8-10 minutes. It's very filling. I made it with tomato sauce but it's meant to be good in soup and stuff too. Apparently they save the smaller bits for soup, but I currently do not have a sieve so a colander had to do. You get the picture.

Frankly, I still can't believe it worked ...

Ah, I found the program, it was Lidia's Italy. She explains it way better here: http://www.lidiasitaly.com/recipes/detail/1029

I am rather interested in Italian recipes (and wines) at the moment as we have booked to go to Italy on our honeymoon. Whoop! Very exciting :)

Photography: urban exploration & post processing

This week the weather has been really changeable. Sunny one minute, raining the next, not great for taking photos. So I ended up bypassing my Saturday morning lie in to take some pictures before the rain started. For a while now I've been planning to investigate a row of houses which have had some of their walls removed leaving them with an odd inside/outside effect. Some demolition work was done after a there was a fire a few weeks ago but I think the houses might have been empty before that.

I've also been playing more with Pinik, the online photo editing software. One of my current favourite features is the 'cross process filter'. It's a bit like the ones you get on those iphone apps which take 'vintage' photos.

Here are a few of the pictures I took and processed. There are more natural looking ones on my flickr if you'd like to see the originals.

 

 

 

 

Do you think it's cheating to use these kind of filters? I really like the effects but part of me feels you should have to use the appropriate film camera to get them.

Home made granola bars recipe

Did I mention I'm trying to cut back on my baking? Well, not so much the baking as the eating of the baked goods. These are a bit of an in-between. I'm not sure they can honestly be called 'healthy'. They have about the same calories as a Mars bar, but they do have way more nutritional value. Pretty easy to make too, and very tasty.

Ingredients makes 12 bars

100g butter/marg
200g porridge oats
50g sunflower seeds
50g chopped walnuts
3 tbsp honey
100g light brown sugar
100g dried fruits (I used apricots)

 Method

- Put the oven on 160c or the equivalent
- Put the oats, nuts and seeds on a baking tray and toast for 5-10 minutes in the oven
- Melt the butter, sugar and honey together in a pan
- Mix the oats, nuts, seeds and fruits in with the butter mixture
- Tip it out on to a baking tray (25cm x 18ish) which is either greased or lined with baking paper
- Lightly press the mix into the tray so that it will hold together
- Bake for around 30mins
- I suggest cutting it before it cools as it gets quite solid once it has set
- Enjoy for breakfast or as a tasty snack :)

New project: wedding bolero prototype

Yes, a new sewing project! Wow it's been a long time. I suppose I've had less reason to sew recently but with the wedding planning getting going again I was inspired to start something new.

It's quite exciting actually. I've chosen my wedding dress, I can't show you because it's a surprise, but it's very cool. I did originally think that I might make my own dress, but I'm glad I changed my mind. It's much less stressful to know I can leave that up to someone else.

I do want to make some things though. It seems silly not to use my skills and also it adds a more personal element, knowing you've put work into creating something. Since we are getting married in October I thought a jacket might be in order in case it's chilly. You never know with the weather in this country, it might be a bright autumn day or a dark winter one.

So here it is - a prototype for a wedding bolero/shrug type thing. I started off with New Look pattern 6507. I changed the shape of the front quite a lot and made it shorter. I also thought about maybe making the top of the sleeves a bit puffier? I've been very good and transferred my changes back to my paper pattern for when I make the real thing.

The final one will probably be a different colour so I'll need to find some more lace or create a ruffle for the edge. It's a shame really as that one works nicely!

What do you think?

Easter baking

I hope you had a nice Easter if that's your kind of thing. We had a lovely long weekend off work and the weather was absolutely beautiful on Friday.

Marc was working on his latest comic creation on Saturday afternoon, and I did some baking. First off I made some cookies with 'caramel cubes' in them. I found a new range of baking bits at our local cake decorating shop. It's a range called 'divine deli's decorate!' I can't find a lot about them online, but they are very tasty and everything comes in cute little jars.

We were invited to have dinner with my family on Sunday and I volunteered to bring dessert. Since it was Easter I thought we might be a bit chocolate-d out, so I went for a spiced apple cake. I'd not made it before but everyone seemed to enjoy it. It had chunks of apple in the cake as well as the slices on the top. The 'spice' was mostly just a big spoonful of cinnamon but it balanced out the sugar nicely. Great with custard too. (I can post up the recipe if anyone is interested.)

Now there is just one more day of work and then we'll be having another long weekend! I'm hoping to start a new sewing project, its been so long since I've sewn anything. However, if it's nice outside, that might all go out the window ...