By Alice | Published:
October 21, 2009
Coffee break. At lunch I gave myself a break and went out for coffee. It’s good to get away sometimes as you come back fresher than if you had ploughed through. I am thinking about making ‘coffee Wednesdays’ a regular thing.
As far as I can tell looking out the window is the cats version of watching TV, there was particular excitement when a ladybird landed on the outside of the window. They also seem to have fans amongst the other people who live in the street, there is a window by my desk and when I look up I often catch people looking up at them!
I found another way to keep the cats from drinking my tea – use a cup with a lid :)
By Alice | Published:
June 22, 2009
For Father's Day my dad came over for dinner. I cooked fish coated in polenta, with fresh pasta I made, and a pesto with basil from the garden. For desert I made tiramisu as it is one of his favourites. Homely cooking :)
Pesto.
Making pasta. I like best the bit when you cut it into ribbons with the tagliatelli cutter. 6 eggs + 600g flour makes loads and loads with enough left for the next day. Maybe 6 portions total?
It was quite hard to get Vin Santo for the tiramisu so I spoke to the wine man who suggested this dessert wine. It worked in the recipe and is nice on its own too if you like fruity dessert wines.
My dad brought over a peony from his garden! So nice!
The meal. I wasn't going to bother to take any pictures but my dad said I should :)
The tiramisu. This picture is of the leftovers today. Delicious! I used this recipe from Jamie's Italian. Really easy to do. My notes to myself are to next time make the coffee a little stronger.
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Ps. The peony is still going strong the next day :)
By Alice | Published:
June 9, 2009
One more burst of flowers to brighten up the day. These are the chrysanthemums that I have in a pot on our dining table. I associate this kind of bright fushia pink with my mother who wears colours like that :)
By Alice | Published:
June 8, 2009
At the weekend it was the annual village fair at which my friend (and former housemate) used to run a skittle alley. I say 'used to' as the skittle alley got crushed by a falling barn since last year. Here is last year's post. It threatened to rain the whole time but we were lucky. I had lunch of a piece of fruit cake, these country ladies make the BEST cakes :)
Some of the activities on offer were:
- egg throwing (two people throwing an egg back and forth at increasingly large distances until it breaks)
- ferret roulette (they put a ferret in a box and you have to guess which hole it will come out of)
- yard of ale competition (who can drink a yard of ale the quickest)
- Punch and Judy show
- pony rides
- raffle
- Morris dancing
- watching the blacksmith making horse shoes
- tea and cake tent
- local Old Father Thames ale and Pimm's
- dog show
- archery
- pet the goats
and many more.
Being in prime retired-rock-star territory, as most of Oxfordshire and Berkshire seems to be, there were raffle donations from Simply Red and Pink Floyd. However the actual pop stars that I saw in residence were these chickens which had apparently been in a Kasabian video the week before.
By Alice | Published:
May 18, 2009
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.
