Monday 30 January 2012

Thanks Dad


So this month I am dedicating a recipe to my dad. It’s the anniversary of his death on Wednesday so I thought it would be appropriate to thank him this month! My dad loved cooking (and drinking at the same time) and he was a bloody good cook even thought the kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it. I have fond memories of our holidays in France where my dad and Jed spent the whole day making 2 massive fragrant pots of muscles, listening to the Stones and drinking those little bottles of beer. I also specifically remember counting 4 boxes of empty bottles after that day! So this month it’s a simple recipe (I don’t want to get the kitchen in too much of a mess!).

The fried egg sarnie. My Mum worked on Saturday and this left my dad in charge of entertaining us. I distinctly remember days spent out in the garden messing about whilst my dad did DIY. Simple food was there for on the cards: bacon sarnies, fish and chips fish fingers but my favourite was fried egg sarnie. Oddly I had forgotten about the joy of a fried egg sarnie, until I met Simon, who taught me how to fry an egg easy over there for eliminating the snotty white but still enabling you to have a runny yolk.

My Saturday treat is a fried egg, fried in butter and some times lightly spiced (inspired buy the book “The bookseller of Kabul”) in-between 2 slices of home made ciabatta bread! Yum.





 

The older I get the more I realise how influential my up bringing has been and as sad and sentimental as it may sound how lucky I was to have such wonderful and inspiring (and slightly bonkers) parents. So thanks Dad for inspiring me, giving me the genetics to be creative, messy and to compulsively hoard especially coffee and tea pots (I knew they would come in handy one day!).

Tuesday 24 January 2012

Photo Diary

Some of you know the Bee Lady, she makes wonderous handmade bags and purses lined with vintage reclaimed materials (see the photos). Bee Lady’s company: Bee’s Make Honey is inspired by her love of the 70’s, this is defiantly reflected in her amazing house, there is no way you can miss that she was a child of the 70’s.
With that in mind she decided to host a 70’s style pop up in her amazing home. Here are some photos of the event (I think you will like having a sneak peek into Bee Lady’s house!).
the bee ladies hall way with Peters lovely bench


before the event

beautiful vintage orange glasses



it's all about the lava

who is this groovey lady!

check those specks!

1st course hot grapefruit (its nice really!)






stroganoff for main

poached pear in bee lady's lovely vitage cups!


who are those grovey geography teachers!



it's all about the Mateus!








check Bee lady's sexy vintage dress!

some of Bee Lady's beautiful bags on husband Peters prpper nice bench.

you got to love this phone!
 
As you may have noticed the valentine pop up is FULL! But keep your eyes peeled for the next one!

Wednesday 18 January 2012

New year new poster art

Hi
Just finished a blog post for Pop Up Nottingham which is an interesting Nottingham based creative network that I recon you should take a look at. If you follow me on face book you will have noticed the links to fellow creative’s blog posts. This month’s themes were inspired by the New Year so I did these posters to try and remind me what I need to do this year! hope you like them.


 Keep your eyes peeled for Anti Valentines pop up.
xbx

Monday 9 January 2012

Food to be thankful for!


I have been asked to write a guest blog for pop up Nottingham with a new year theme  the email was really good at providing some ideas or surgestions for posts, one that really grabbed my attention was who is deserving of your thanks for the last year?

Well quite frankly there are many, hundreds, loads, lots of people I need to thank but I thought I might make a feature of it by creating a recipe dedicated to a helper every month? How does this make you feel? I hope it’s not too sick making!!!! So just to make you wretch a little more the first recipe is going to be dedicated to my Mum. So Mum, this is for putting up with all the mess, hording, special needs diagnosis and the general turning upside down of your house quite often! Ow and the mess again.

A very strong food memory I have of my mum is her teaching me to cook Spag Bol so that I could make it when I got in from school. I loved making this dish it was like making a magic potion putting bits in here and there. I loved my Mum’s big wok and quite often did a voice over like I was on blue peter! So here it is mums amazing Spag Bol :
 
The thing is when I’m stressed the thing I love most is going over to my mums and cooking in her galley kitchen and chatting maybe have the odd glass of wine (which was not too dissimilar to the way she taught me to make spaghetti bolognaise). Any way thanks mum for picking me up when I fall even now when I'm 30 odd and thanks for letting me re artex the kitchen xbx

Sunday 1 January 2012

Cerys Matthews, French toast and coffee.






New year always fills me with dread, I can never make up my mind what to do and whether or not I want a hangover or not the next day ( and as my hangovers usually last a few days it has to be a good reason to get one). This year I opted for a quiet one with the boy and an unhung-over lye in.
Quite frankly I could not think of any thing better to bring the new year in, than making French toast, drinking coffee and making a photo dairy all to the sound track of Cerys Matthews celebration of the vinyl format on 6 music.

So here are the photos I hope you can enjoy them as much as I did making them.





aaa the joy of a gas hob!

 
I was introduced to the wonders of beautiful, exciting and experimental breakfasts especially French toast (which the thought of kind of turned my tummy until I ate it here)  in this cafĂ© Las-Chicas in Melbourne ( if there is one thing you should do, if you happen to be in Melbourne is go for brunch here). I’m working on ripping off there pumpkin bread which is nothing short of amazeballs!

I hated this table in our old house now simon is making me a new one I’m not hating it as much.
Check out my fruit bowl the only time I've been able to use my work and make it look nice!
Birrell road Blackberries(yum)
coffee to end 

 ANY WAY HAPPY NEW YEAR!
XBX