Autumn colours

Good afternoon all!! First of all, thanks very much for your encouraging messages yesterday. It's so nice to know that you're not the only one feeling the way you do, it can be such a struggle at times! But anyway, one day has gone by and still no crisps or muffins!!! I feel thinner already ;-) - and yes, I'm planning on going to a class tonight - make way girls!!! I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow.

Now, lets get back to business!! I've decided to start my holiday show down with some flower photos. I think people always like to see nice flower photos, it brightens your day doesn't it? Well it certainly does mine, and I never tire looking at them. I hope you feel the same! So there, sit back and enjoy while I decide which photos will make it in my other holiday photo categories later this week!

I thought these looked wonderful and the colours were so so full on, so deep, nearly too strong for autumn, but definitely perfect on a sunny October day after all.

And these were a lot more mellow, more autum-ny, but still so terribly beautiful. I love the one in the top right hand corner, it was a seaweed growing in huge amounts near Brancaster beach  sorry my mistake, Boyfriend reminded me this was at Holkham Nature Reserve. Do let me know if you know what it is! xx

Back and fat

Hello all!! I’m back! Finally!!! It seems like absolutely ages actually, and it’s pretty weird being back. I have a million and one things to talk about, things I want to tell you, photos I want to show you, but weirdly I have no idea where to start. Well, how about the beginning? Thank you for your messages, I had a lovely birthday. Actually, it was a lot better than lovely. Try amazing. Fantastic. Surreal. Boyfriend proved he was the best boyfriend ever by booking us (this was my birthday surprise/ present) into a posh b&b, but not the type where you have to watch how you hold your knife and fork. No, it was just stunning, all the lush little extras, ooh I’d love to be there now!!! I’ve got to sort through the 700-odd photos we managed to take, after which I’ll get a best-off organised. Do come back later on in the week for a little sneaky peak. So the holiday went really well. A bit of rain (ok, how about pouring rain, let’s be honest!), some beautiful sunshine (especially on my birthday – lucky me!), beautiful places, amazing scenery, and lots and lots and lots of nice food. Have I mentioned the food? Well, I’ll save all the nice holiday stuff for later. Need to get my thoughts in order otherwise there’s a risk I’ll just carry on babbling. And trust me I can babble. You haven’t seen the worst of it here yet, but I’ve been told I can speak for England – Anyway! I digress!!! I wanted to talk about the food. So there it goes, I have been indulging big time. For a while now. So much so that my wardrobe is growing smaller and smaller every week. Things that really can’t be worn anymore because the buttons threaten to pop or my chubby arms don’t fit it. So Boyfriend took me shopping on Sunday to try and find a new pair of jeans (one of my favourites died over the holiday, there’s now a massive hole around the bum area – not a good look!). But then it started. Trying on jeans in what I thought was my size. Then trying the one above. And another. Still no good. Still tight around the thighs. By that point, I was close to bursting into tears in the shop so we left. Best for everyone. Boyfriend’s sister did WeightWatchers last year and she lost loads. Now she’s nearly too skinny. That’s not about to happen to me, so I thought about it. They have this online thing so you don’t have to go to meetings. I don’t fancy meetings. But then I saw the price and this month is really tight, with the holiday and a weekend visiting friends coming up, I just don’t have the spare cash. So I’m making my own WeightWatchers plan. I’ve decided to give up my gym membership (I hate the gym and can’t bear to go anymore) and take up classes at this other gym instead. Better for what I need at the moment I reckon. Some group energy you know. So there, haven’t been to any yet (Monday nights are knitting group nights!) but hopefully I’ll pull my finger out this week. And goodness do I need it. So today there will be no packets of crisps or chocolate muffins. Instead I will be eating the fruit that I buy diligently every week. And there will be some portion control. Big time. Because that’s my downfall you see. I don’t really stuff my face with fast food, not at all really (apart from crisps – who’s the evil person who invented crisps?!!!!), but I do tend to eat a lot of the good stuff. A. LOT. So there, I’ve said it. I’m at the biggest I’ve ever been and the biggest I ever want to be. It’s all going to be downhill from here. The weight that is. Fingers crossed. Wish me luck?

A Big Birthday

Definitely a big one this one. Not exactly today though, but thought I'd give it a mention as we're off on holiday tomorrow. I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!!!! *calm down calm down breeeaathe!!!* - phew, sorry about that. So, I was saying! The Big Birthday. This weekend. Oh my goodness, time flies hey? I've got a little over my panic mode a few weeks back but still feel slightly unsettled by the whole thing, turning one year older - officially. I don't know what it is, I guess I'm at a point in my life when I could do anything, literally, and therefore I keep asking myself if what I'm doing now is what I really want to be doing... argh so many questions! Anyway, I won't bore you with this today, but hopefully you'll help me celebrate in style? Here we go, I've got something to help:

It's a peanut butter and chocolate cake I made last night to share with my work colleagues today. Lucky them!! Recipe can be found here. I wholeheartedly recommend it. Last time I made it for Boyfriend to take into his work (some charity thing), I got the most amazing feedback. Hopefully my colleagues will like it too!!

I hope you like it too! ;-)

So Happy Friday to you all! I hope you have a nice weekend whereever you are and a nice time next week. See you when I get back in 10 days!!! Hooray!!!!!!!!!!!!! (hooray for the holiday, not not writing here for 10 days!) :-)

Food explosion

Well, thank you for your comments yesterday, I'll have to keep my eye out for a little wooden frame then! No cushion cover for me though, I guess I forgot to include a scale in my photo, it's only about 10cm2!!!

Anyway, had the most emotionally draining day yesterday. Thought I'd wait until today to mention it, because I was all over the place and it wouldn't have been a pretty sight! Basically, we're off on holiday on Saturday. We'd booked this lovely b&b but yesterday, the owner called to say her husband had been rushed off to hospital and our stay was cancelled. CANCELLED!!! 2 days before?!!! Now I know her husband must be in quite a serious state, and I'm sorry about that, but that's not what I was thinking about yesterday. More along the lines of oh-my-goodness-we're-meant-to-leave-in-2-days-and-have-nowhere-to-go!!!!!! That + really boring work + ever expanding waistline = crying at lunch on the phone to Boyfriend. Not. Good. Anyway, Boyfriend did a really good job at finding us a replacement, albeit a little more expensive, but we didn't have much choice at such short notice. Phew!!!!!!!!!! So all is good in the land of Petit Filoux today! Well apart from the waistline which is still inflating day after day... hum must do something about this. Soon.

Talking about waistline, lets talk about food now!! Ha!!! I titled this post Food Explosion. No literal explosion as such, but it really was an explosion in the sense that so much came out of my little kitchen last weekend. It all started with some bread. As mentionned last Friday, I tried my hand at making this bread.

Only I didn't get Black Sheep Riggwelter Ale, just Black Sheep Ale. Yes yes I know, did I not stop to wonder why 'Riggwelter' was not written anywhere on the bottle? Well no, I don't know much about ale and it didn't bother me in the slightest! And to be honest, it didn't stop the bread from coming out fantastic. I haven't made bread by hand for a while now (tend to use the bread machine these days), but I have to admit, I really enjoyed the kneading part. And the shaping and the slashing. Oh yes did I enjoy the slashing part!!

And the dough came out really nice, not too airy, but not too compact either. Just how I like it :-)

I also tried another recipe from the Madhur Jaffrey curry book, but I'm afraid I have no photo to show for it. It was just tooooooo good, and I couldn't wait to try it out!! I made the Singapore-style chicken curry with some plain basmati rice, and a potato and cauliflower side dish. Yum yum yum!!!! That was Saturday nigtht's dinner. For Sunday dinner, I made another lush meal, but slightly less labour intensive. Actually, it was a lot easier to make than the curry! We had a nearly 100% French dinner: rabbit in a mustard sauce with gratin dauphinois and french green beans. Another yum yum yum all round!!! We got the rabbit from our local butcher a few weeks ago (it's been in the freezer since). You just can't get it in the supermarket here, it's dreadful! Anyway, we were told it was being caught locally by ferrets, not shotguns, during the corn harvest (that's where they like to hide) and it was only £4 for a whole rabbit. What a bargain! So if you want to make the following dish:

here's what you have to do:

1. peel a couple of very large potatoes and slice (no more than 0.5cm thick) - you need enough to fill whatever oven dish you're planning on using
2. prepare the gratin by pouring single cream in the bottom of your oven dish, followed by a layer of potatoes, some chopped garlic and a good grind of pepper and salt. Carry on alternating cream/ potatoes/ garlic until you run out of potatoes. Finish by pouring some cream over the top.
3. place the gratin in a preheated oven (190C) for 55min. After 15min or so, cover with foil to stop it from burning on the top.
4. now prepare your rabbit. Place the various bits and rub with two large tablespoons of Dijon mustard. Place a couple of knobs of butter in the dish. Cover in foil and place in the oven with the potatoes (give the potatoes 15min on their own first) for 40min.
5. 10min before the gratin and rabbit are meant to come out of the oven, steam some green beans.
6. 10min later, it's all ready!!!! Take the foil off the rabbit, place the rabbit on plates and pour some single cream in the dish you cooked it in. It makes the most delicious creamy mustard sauce. Enjoy!!

Hearts and thread

Can you guess what I've been getting up to? Here's another clue...

Surely you've guess by now? No? Well let me have a little ta-dah moment then!!! I present to you the hearts needlepoint!

I've never tried my hand at this craft before but was inspired to give it a go after reading one of Attic24's posts a while back. Not sure what I'll do with it though, maybe frame it? But I'm not sure what type of frame would 'show it off' the most... any suggestions welcome!

Blackberry party

Last weekend was another rather successful weekend in terms of berry picking: we managed to pick 1.6kg of blackberries! I kid you not!!! After picking lots the previous weekend, I just couldn't resist - their fragance is simply exquisite!!! And Boyfriend had found an interesting recipe which he was dying to try out: blackberry brandy. So here it goes! Take 1kg of blackberries (clean of course!) and place in a large glass container (I used a demijohn found in Wilkinson's):

Add 500g of caster sugar,

Add 1L of brandy (not the cheap stuff, the aim is to drink this!),

And there you go! Easy peasy!!!

Finish off by giving it a good swirl.

The plan is to give it a good swirl every few days to start with, then once every two weeks I think. Might have to put it in my diary to make sure I don't forget! Also have to store it in a cool dry place. And hopefully, fingers crossed, it'll taste really nice and we'll be able to bottle it in small bottles and give some out at Christmas! [I reckon we could add another litre of brandy in there, there's plenty of fruit to flavour more so we just need to get some more at the supermarket - so if you try this, get 2 litres to start with].

You might be right to point out that we collected 1.6kg, not 1kg as used in the above concoction. Well rest assured I put the rest to good use! I'm planning to make a blackberry and apple crumble later on in the week (with apples found at the weekend too!),

but even better, some I made some blackberry icecream on Sunday night!! I don't have an icecream maker because there's simply not enough space in the kitchen, but I've managed fine without it to be honest. I've got a fool proof recipe that works everytime:

1. 
   
   whisk some double cream (a large pot of 600ml is good) until you get soft peaks
   
   
   
2. 
   
   add in a couple of heaped tablespoons of icing sugar (add more later if it's not sweet enough - remember, it should almost taste too sweet at this point, as it will taste less so once frozen)
   
   
   
3. 
   
   mix in whatever it is you fancy (mashed bananas, some chocolate chips and fudge pieces, blackberries in my case this time)
   
   
   
4. 
   
   put in a tupperware in the freezer, mash with a fork after an hour and then again an hour later
   
   
   
5. 
   
   enjoy the next day and try not to eat the whole thing at once!!!
   
   
   

Happy Tuesday all! xx

Summer....

was back for a few days last weekend. I hope you had as nice weather as we did, it was simply amazing! We definitely made the most of it: 4hours and 13km of walking!!! Needless to say, we were knackered at the end of it! But it definitely was worth it, we saw the most amazing landscapes, and I squeeled numerous times at the most amazing flowers. In this case, a picture definitely speaks a thousand words, so please, enjoy the view:

And now for the most gorgeous looking flowers...

So, what do you reckon hey? Not bad I reckon!!

Friday food!!!

It's Friday!! Woop woop!!!! I hope you've had a good week and have exciting plans for the weekend. Or even exciting plans to do NOTHING at the weekend. That can be very enjoyable too!! I'm not sure yet what I'll be getting up to. Boyfriend is off to see some friends so I'll have the place to myself for a bit. I might try making some of this bread by Domestic Goddess in Training  because it looks really tasty.

Talking about food, I've been meaning to tell you about what I made last weekend. Why it was that I was soooooo busy!! But I obviously got distracted during the week - anyhow! Well a couple of years ago, Boyfriend's mum gave me a wonderful book for Christmas: Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible. It is so beautiful to look at, I thing I might have been slightly put off by it because of that reason. It just looked so perfect, I didn't feel I could achieve any of it. But I changed my mind recently and decided it was about time I tried some of the recipes in there. So last week, I went through the whole book and stuck post it notes on recipes that should be given a go. I think I picked some of the easiest ones, or at least some which take the least amount of time/ effort to get ready. You have to start somewhere!!! So anyway, as we had a whole chicken in the freezer, I decided to make a whole roast chicken curry. And boy was it good. I feel so proud of it, it was utterly delicious. DE-LI-CIOUS. I'm not joking. You have to try this!!!! I mean look at it, doesn't this make you want to???

It certainly makes me want to do it all over again! All there was to it was making a sauce to marinate the chicken in. That was made up of lemon juice, tamarind paste, chopped garlic, chopped ginger, chopped chilli (I used some of our home grown habaneros to give it a good kick), some ground coriander, ground cumin, a pinch of salt and a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. I put it all in a pestle and mortar, gave it a good bashing and spread it on the skinned whole chicken (yes you have to remove the skin, not exactly the most pleasant thing to do but oh so worth it - and make large slits in the breast and thighs). Wrap it in foil, leave to marinate for 30min, then put in the oven at 200 degrees C for an hour, after which you need to open the foil and baste the chicken with the juices. Close the foil and put it back in the oven for another 20-30min (depending on the size of your chicken). It comes out really wonderful, and so very moist! Yum!

To accompany the chicken, I cooked some plain basmati rice and a veg dish. The veg dish was tweeked to fit what I had: potatoes, mushrooms and frozen peas. It turned out delicious as well, even if I do say so myself! I pretty much followed another recipe from the book, and discovered this amazing spice: asafoetida. Has anyone else heard of this before? It was really interesting, and definitely gave an oniony taste to the dish. This was really simple to get ready as well. Basically start off by heating up some oil in a frying pan. When hot add cumin seeds and some asafoetida, followed by your potatoes cut in cubes. Brown off the potatoes, add the frozen peas and mushroom, barely cover with water, mix everything and bring to a boil. Turn the temperate down, cover with a lid/ foil and leave to cook for 15min. After that time, take the lid/ foil off and cook for a further 10min until the water has evaporated. Five minutes before the end, add some chopped fresh tomatoes and dried curry leaves if you have any. So there. I seem to have written lots about this, but honestly, it was easy. Try it, you won't be disappointed!

And now to leave you with something sweet for the weekend! I made little chocolate cookies for Boyfriend's family last weekend. I used a Nigella recipe but instead of making 12 (she is so greedy!!!!), I made about 20 bitesize ones, and I still had about 2 thirds of the dough left over. So it's now in the freezer, waiting to cheer us up on a cold day!

Sorry about the photo, I forgot to take one when the box was actually full! Have a nice weekend all!!! xx

Kitchen therapy - and a bit of knitting of course

Tuesday was a really boring day in the office. So I decided to cheer myself up and have a fantastic evening. Not that I don't usually have pleasant evenings, but you know how it is sometimes, you get home from work, potter around for a bit, make dinner, eat dinner, prepare next day's lunches and before you know it, it's time to go to bed. [You may have noticed washing up is not part of my routine, not because I've delegated this task onto Boyfriend (not anymore!) but because after a year and a half, we have finally started using our dishwasher - oh my goodness - we are in love with it!]. Anyway, I digress! In order to have more of a pleasant evening, I decided to skip the gym. This really isn't a good idea at the moment seeing that all my clothes have shrunk in the wash (wink wink), but honestly I just couldn't face it. So I indulged in an evening of kitchen therapy. I carefully washed my blackberries and made two lovely things out of them:

1/ blackberry crumble - also added a chopped apple in there and the juice of an orange, and added flaked almonds to my topping - what can I say - heaven in a bowl!

2/ blackberry and apple leather - I mentionned this a couple of days ago and you might be intrigued (or not!) to find out what they are. Well let me lift the cloud of mystery! This is what it looks like:

And it couldn't be easier to make. I found this recipe in an old Waitrose Food magazine. You need 500g blackberries, 400g roughly chopped apples and 200g caster sugar. Put it all in a large saucepan with 100ml of water, cover and cook on a medium heat for 5min. Then uncover and simmer for 10min until the apples have collapsed. Let cool for 10min. Put in blender and blitz until it's a thick mush. Put the mixture through a sieve to get rid of all the pips/ apple skins etc. Line two baking trays with baking parchment and divide the mixture between the two. Make sure it doesn't reach the edges of the trays. Put in an oven overnight at 75degrees C. The next day, cut in strips, roll the strips, sprinkle a little icing sugar to prevent them sticking to each other and store in an airtight jar. Can't tell you how long they last for, but the recipe did say they freeze very well too.

So my evening was pretty amazing by then. Pottering around in the kitchen is an activity I very much enjoy. The next part didn't involve standing in the kitchen but it did involve making Boyfriend happy. And that is even better. What I did was finish a little knitted 'pillow' cover I started a few months ago. I got fed up with it and put it aside until last weekend, when I found it while tidying up my yarn stash. Did any of you watch this programme that was shown on the BBC earlier on in the year about growing your own drugs? Well if you did, you might remember the presenter's solution for people who have trouble sleeping: mixing dried hops and lavender in a bag. Apparently the smell of hops sends you to sleep, and the lavender is relaxing (and stops the bedroom smelling of real ale!). So there we went, got some hops from the internet and lavender from our local farm.

And I started to make a nice little cover for the pillow. But it took me for-e-ver to make the back and I got bored. Bored. How terrible. So last weekend, I decided enough was enough, and on Monday evening, I finished the front of the cover whilst attending my local knitting group. I can now reveal the hop and lavender pillow!!!! Ta-dah!!!!

It's far from perfect, but I'm so glad I've finally finished it, and I think it looks kinda cute ;-) xx

Indoor sunshine

If you came here last week, you would have seen these. They are still going strong!!! I think they are absolutely amazing  and I am still mesmerised by them. Hope you don't mind seeing them again ;-)

I've also got some of these at the moment, Boyfriend's sister gave them to me at the weekend when they came over and they are so lovely!!! Sorry about the light in this photo, I took in on Sunday evening! But you still get the idea, they are lovely!

And finally these. Again, if you've been reading my blog for a bit, you'll remember my lavender frenzy. Well I've still got some of the little bouquets I'd made and here's one I've got on the window sill in our bedroom. It was in the vase the white flowers are now in (anyone know what they're called by the way??) but I had to use that for the flowers, so I moved the lavender into a kilner jar. And I love it!! It looks a little rustic, I hope you like it too!

Now, onto the second part of my indoor sunshine - it's not all about flowers you see! It's about.... wait for it.... a hand towel! I know this may sound odd but who doesn't like flowers and a bit of knitting hey?!

After reading Fancy Elastic's post about a knitted hand towel, I knew I had to have one. Now I know it's not the first time I get inspiration from Fancy Elastic, but I thought it was such a clever thing. I have that problem too with tea towels slipping off the oven handles, and I thought it would be perfect! I also found a similar project on Ravelry with different colours and completely fell in love with it. So there, here it is.

 
Do you like it? I think it's really cute! And made with 100% organic cotton! I'm planning on making another two, one slighly darker in the same kind of shade, and another white. It could make a nice present too, but it does take a little bit of time to make, and I'm trying to get on track for Christmas presents (sorry, I've mentionned it again!!!) so it might have to wait for a bit.
 
Anyway, come back tomorrow and I'll show you what I did with my blackberries! Have a nice day! xx