Peapods

little holiday

If you have been reading this for a while you might remember that when we were coming back from Paris earlier in the year we got trapped under the sea in the dark in an airless train for a very long time? Not fun but the compensation was our money back for that trip plus two free return tickets to anywhere on the Eurostar train. Fair enough really. So where to go with our tickets... well we could have gone back to Paris but as we have never been to Belgium, and quite possibly might never have gone to Belgium, we decided to spend our free tickets on a trip to Bruges! Yippee! So we are heading off to Bruges for a few days with a quick stop off in Brussels. The weather sounds like it is going to be amazing, fingers crossed.

I quickly made a new washbag for the trip. I am packing really light with my shampoo and lotions decanted into little bottles, so I wanted a new small drawstring bag to keep them in.

Oh this is a little bit random but this is a hasty snap of our dinner the other day which was something that Simon made that was really good, salmon with a watercress, mint, and cucumber sauce. The recipe for the sauce is here. There was some sauce left and I had it the next day for lunch over watercress and radishes - yum!

I shall be back very soon to report on the legendary Belgian chocolate... :)

bits of the weekend

It is a long weekend here so it still isn't over yet but these are a few pictures I have taken so far:

1. An Oric Atmos at my friend's mother's house
2. The petrol station
3. View from my deck chair
4. More planning of the next trip to Japan
5. Tulips at my dad's house
6. Lights on the drive home
7. Some Japanese magazines that my dad brought for us back from Japan

Not pictured are burgers and drinks with friends on Saturday night, spending hours and hours getting quotes for a new kitchen (all too costly for us so far), our grocery delivery arrival, my complete clean out and tidy of the freezer and kitchen cabinets and my wardrobe, planting out spring onions and more French beans, us both hoovering and dusting the house, a couple of hours working on finishing building a website, trying to mow the lawn, yummy lemon pasta, and I am sure a whole bunch of other things :)

gocco swap

I keep forgetting to mention that I am signed up for a gocco swap that Sarah at cloth.paper.string is organising. Click on the image below for more information if you are interested. The deadline for sign-up is Monday 26th May. The theme is 'one'.

This is the third one that I am taking part in and can say that it is really fun to get all that exciting mail from all over the world. This is one of the cards that I did for the last one:

A golden ship. You can see my garden in full bloom behind the card, I hope it gets like that again soon!

anticipating the weekend

Sounds like it should be hot. Yeah!

on the upside

 

Yesssss new shoes. I am still without a bike but on the upside this means I get to do a lot more window shopping on my morning walk :) They are from here of all places, I had never considered entering this store before.

The picture at the top reminds me to mention that Simon writes about his record collection here. He knows a lot about records.

herbs and elections

 

 

I grow most of my basil inside on the window sill and when it is getting dark as I lower the blind it brushes past the plants making a lovely smell.

I also keep in the window some of the seedlings I am keeping a particular eye on - such as these baby spring onions which are like reverse exclamation marks.

It is our European Parliament and Country Council elections here soon, for some reason where we live is quite the hotbed of local politics. We get bombarded with leaflets and visits from all the parties. When I lived elsewhere in this same city I don't think I ever got even a quarter as much attention from the candidates! Anyway I am quite looking forward to it, I like voting.

town planning

For my degree (which seems ages ago now) my final work was on the suburbs, after looking at these pictures today I am thinking that I might revive this topic as a photographic subject.

I took these in Wellington in Telford where Simon grew up. We went to visit his family, as usual they fed us very well :)

Weekend breakfast: Wholemeal Scotch Pancakes

My favourite thing to do on the weekend is to get up really early in order to get in plenty of time to be lazy and relaxed before having to be out and about :) It is nice to make a proper breakfast too, rather than my usual oat cereal, especially as I don't usually get lunch until 3-4pm as I will be across town being busy with music stuff. Normally I might have a boiled or poached egg but today I made some little wholemeal Scotch Pancakes, I guess that these are a little like American pancakes or drop scones? I am pleased with how quickly this recipe came together. I am writing this on here partly also so that I don't forget what I did! I have many little pieces of paper pinned to the fridge scrawled with recipes that I am working on and eventually they fall off and get tidied away or I can't read what they say.

Wholemeal Scotch Pancakes

50g Plain white flour
75g Wholemeal flour
1tsp Baking powder
Pinch salt
25g Unrefined cane sugar
150ml Milk
1 Egg
10g Butter

Melt the butter gently in the frying pan and leave to cool a little.
Meanwhile sift the flours, baking powder, and salt into a bowl.
Add the sugar, milk, egg, and the melted butter.
Whisk together, it should be quite a thick consistency.
Pour a little oil onto a piece of kitchen paper and wipe the frying pan with it to oil the surface.
Heat the pan to a medium heat and pour dollops of the mixture into the pan.
Makes 7-8.

I served with a little bit of acacia honey and an apple. Delicious, and all this before 8am ;)

river

 

Sigh, my new bike had to go back to the shop for adjustments so I am bike-less for the next few days. I am trying to get a positive outcome from this state affairs by doing things that I might not do if I had my bike. So I walked a route back from the bike shop by the river and took this picture, and then on my way home I went to an exhibition at the Modern Art gallery.

chilli and garlic tofu

What do you have for dinner when you can have anything? My go-to treat type dish is chilli and garlic tofu. I may well have mentioned my chilli and garlic tofu addiction before, my old housemates talked about staging an intervention as I used to make it so often :) Mmmm, anyway this is the quick and easy way that I make it.

Get a firm block of tofu:

Pat dry and cut into cubes:

Put the cubes with two heaped tablespoons of cornflour into a box and shake until the cubes are completely coated (I find this the quickest way and stops cornflour getting everywhere):

Then fry the cubes on a medium heat for 6 minutes or so in a tablespoon of groundnut oil (or any other oil you won't mind these tasting of).

When lightly golden on all sides add the flavour ingredients to the pan. I would suggest minced garlic, a little bit of fresh ginger, and some chilli. My 'cheat' ingredient is ready crushed chilli that I keep in the fridge. Fresh chilli tastes much better so if you have it then use that. You could also add sliced spring onions and a few drops of sesame oil. Fry these added ingredients for a further 4 minutes until the garlic is cooked (make sure not to burn it!):

Then serve :)

In this particular version in the picture you can see I went quite chilli mad so they are bright red however you don't have to have that much.

I had a look in my recent photo archives for other photos I have taken of this dish and here is one from another week with soba noodles, beans and sesame:

And here it is cold in my new lunch box:

Isn't it the box awesome! It is a Sigg mini food box. What with the general worries about using plastic to store food I had been looking for a nice non-plastic lunch box for ages, this fits the bill exactly! It wasn't cheap but it seems very durable. Even though it is called 'mini' it is easily big enough to fit a lunch.

Also if we are talking about new things here is my new work bag that I have had for a couple of weeks:

I love it! Exactly the kind of thing I needed for cycling around and carrying all my things to and fro. There is this black foam block in the back that I sewed a piece of red and white checked cloth around, you can see it on the right. Makes it much more chic I think :)