Boats and Beacons…

In case you hadn’t noticed, this weekend we’ve had the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations. I’ve had a lovely weekend doing all sorts of things – including going to see the Jubilee Pageant on the Thames (in typically British drizzle!) and going to another fantastic towpath barbecue before seeing one of the Jubilee beacons being lit in Mile End.

The flotilla of boats that made up the pageant included the Spirit of Chartwell, which had the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh and the other senior royals on it, but there were also hundreds of ordinary boats involved – rowing boats, working boats, narrowboats, military boats, all sorts. We probably would have been slightly more comfortable and warm watching it on TV (and we’d have had a slightly better view!) but it was great to be there on the banks of the river with over a million other people.

The beacon lighting was lovely, too – I also went to a little street party in Ealing before heading off to Mile End, and both that and the beacon really felt like proper community events, which was nice after the huge crowds of the pageant. There were fire-dancers and flares, and then the beacon was lit and everyone sang God Save the Queen!

Coming up…a whole blog post on the weekend’s food!

Zoo Lates!

Despite having lived in London for 12 years, I’d never been to London Zoo. It’s expensive and touristy and full of screaming kids, right? Well, yes, but not when you go to Zoo Lates. Every Friday evening in June and July, the zoo is open for adults only, and as well as being able to see all of the animals and all of the usual exhibits, there are bars and food stalls and all sorts of bits of entertainment.

I went with my friend Leonie and as neither of us had been to the zoo before, we decided to give the comedy/cabaret/silent disco bits a miss and concentrate on the animals themselves. With a glass of Pimm’s, of course.

We saw SO MANY amazing things! Glittery pirahnas. Gorillas. Giraffes. Okapis. Zebras. Meerkats. Coatis being fed. A SNAKE eating a WHOLE CHICKEN. And then we went into the rainforest bit and oh my goodness, there’s a SLOTH all reclined like he’s asleep. And another sloth going on a sloth-about and climbing (slowly…) around above everyone’s heads. It was brilliant!

Veg Box: 29/5/12

Definitely not soggy this week! And how lovely and summery does all of this look?

I’ve got butternut squash, beetroot, beans, mushrooms, vine tomatoes, onions, potatoes and some bonus free wet garlic (the leeky-looking things on the top there). One thing I do love about Riverford is that if you get one of the smaller boxes, they don’t give you whacking great squash or tons of beetroot or whatever – it’s all in nice manageable amounts.

Having said that, a weekend away and a few nights out meant that I still had squash, potatoes and beetroot left over from my last box! So I decided to have a bit of a clearout, and I roasted up a big tray of veg – the beetroot, potatoes and squash, plus some onion and some cherry tomatoes and carrots that were hanging around in the fridge. I like to give my veg a quick steam in the microwave before I roast them, because that way they take less time in the oven (definitely a bonus in today’s warm and humid weather) and they all cook evenly with fluffy insides and crispy edges. Yum yum! So supper was a big bowl of veg, topped with some basil and a little bit of super-spicy Reggae Reggae barbecue sauce…

I also couldn’t resist showing you this photo from earlier – I popped into central London for a meeting and Regent Street is all decked out in Union Flags ready for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee! I have to admit I’m getting sucked into the whole Jubilee celebration thing and am planning to go to a few events over the weekend – and of course, I can’t wait for a whole four days off!

Storm clouds gather over London…

…and I make a frittata.

Seriously, the weather is getting beyond a joke. We might have had the driest two winters on record, and we might be in the middle of a drought with hosepipe bans and all the rest of it, but you wouldn’t have thought it judging by this week’s weather! I couldn’t believe the sky on my way home this evening…

The photo doesn’t even do it justice…the bit of sky below the clouds was green. Just after I got to the station, there was a massive hail-and-thunder storm!

There’s only one thing to do on a day like this, and that’s to get home as quickly as possible, pour yourself a glass of wine, and make something nice to eat. I’ve been rather busy this week so I’ve still got quite a lot of veg box veg in the fridge that needs using before Tuesday, so I decided to make a frittata, which I baked in the oven. I totally made the recipe up, but it went something like this…

Baked vegetable frittata

Serves 2

1 small onion, sliced
1 small potato, cut into dice
Six or so cherry tomatoes, halved
1 small chunk of frozen leaf spinach (you know, if you buy the bags it comes in those chunks…), thawed and patted dry
3 eggs
150ml almond milk (or regular milk)
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 200C and spray a small baking dish with oil.
2. Microwave the potato chunks with a little water for about a minute and a half, until softening. Add to the baking dish along with the onion, and roast in the oven for about 15 minutes until just starting to brown.
3. Add the cherry tomatoes to the dish and roast for another 10 minutes.
4. Beat the eggs and milk together in a bowl, then stir in the spinach and season.
5. Once the tomatoes have started to bubble, pour the egg mixture into the baking dish, return to the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes until just firm in the centre.
6. Allow to cool for 5 minutes before serving with salad (and I added a blob of mango chutney!)

Uniqlo and Laura Ashley

I’m a big fan of Stylist, the free magazine given out once a week at Tube and railway stations across the capital. It’s got a great mix of fashion and features and it’s the perfect length for my morning commute! Last week, I spotted an advert for a special event they were hosting with Uniqlo to celebrate the new Laura Ashley limited edition collection. A few of the girls from work and I all signed up for free invites, and I’m glad we did, because the event was great fun!

The evening had a Forties tea party theme, and we were greeted by some lovely ladies in vintage frocks bearing cocktails in teacups…

Apparently they were a mix of vodka, elderflower, cranberry and Chambord – they were very sweet, but quite moreish! There were also cake stands with mini Bakewell tarts and little brioche rolls with goats’ cheese and sundried tomatoes. Yum yum! And there was live music and a DJ playing Forties and Fifties swing and jazz. Not only that, we got 20% off everything instore, including the lovely Laura Ashley collection – tops, tunics and scarves featuring prints from the Laura Ashley archive. I treated myself to a couple of the scoop-neck t-shirts and I’m really pleased with the quality and the fit. I couldn’t resist wearing one of them today!

Weekend cooking…

I’ve done quite a bit of cooking this weekend, and most of it has been really very successful. As well as last night’s banana ice cream triumph, I made a tofu pilaf for supper – which was based on this recipe, but I roasted the courgette with some tofu and used that instead of the tuna. I’ll have to try it with the tuna at some point, though, and I reckon it’d be gorgeous with some baked cod.

Then this afternoon I was bored and I spotted this flourless chocolate cupcake recipe on Pinterest, so I decided to give it a go.

And the cakes turned out OK, but they weren’t really chocolatey enough and the almond flavour really overpowered the chocolate. That might have been because I used almond oil as well as the ground almonds, but whatever happened they were just a bit nondescript. I’ve put them in the freezer for chocolate emergencies!

After that slight disappointment, I was a bit wary of trying another new recipe, but I decided to give it a go anyway and I’m so glad I did! I made some gorgeous mini tofu quiches, using this Fat Free Vegan recipe. They were so easy to make and absolutely delicious – I didn’t have any peppers so I used onion and mushrooms, and I didn’t have any herbs so I used some chilli flakes. I also used a whole pack of Cauldron tofu (which is just under 400g) rather than the 350g specified, but I added a little bit more almond milk when I was blending it (honestly, my little blender has been a real workhorse this weekend!) and it was perfect.

I had them with a big pile of garlicky sautéed leek and spring greens – my mum’s dinner party staple when I was growing up was courgette and leek in garlic butter, and it really reminded me of that (without loads of butter, obviously!)

Apart from the cooking, it’s been a glorious weekend weather-wise – and spring is starting to show itself, with these lovely crocuses in the park!

More snowy photos!

We had another dusting of snow yesterday morning – just enough to cover the branches and make everything look like a bit of a winter wonderland! It was very pretty but I do hope things thaw out just a little by tomorrow morning – it’s long run time again and I don’t want to fall over!

Hello winter!

On Christmas Day it was 13 degrees and mild…now it’s about 2 degrees and very icy! We’re expecting snow any minute and it’s absolutely freezing.

This morning I put my big snow boots on and walked to my Pilates class – a water main had burst just down the road, and I saw these amazing icicles!

Then I came home, dyed my hair and put on about twenty layers of clothing, before making a batch of Lorraine Pascale’s pumpkin and rosemary muffins. I had half a butternut squash in the fridge, and happily it ended up being exactly the right amount for the recipe! They’re cooling at the moment, and they look and smell lovely…

I’m meant to be going for a long run tomorrow morning (last Sunday I totally surprised myself by running 14 miles – that’s further than I’ve ever run before!) but I suppose it depends on how much snow we get! I’ll be keeping a keen eye on the running club’s Facebook page to see whether we’re going to brave it or not!

Cocktails at Big Easy

On Thursday my boss decided to take us all out for lunch, and, as often happens where I work, ‘lunch’ meant ‘staying out all evening’. We ended up at Big Easy on the King’s Road – I’d never been before but I’ll definitely be going back again! They have a brilliant happy hour all evening on Mondays and from 4pm until 7.30 Tuesday-Friday, with two cocktails for £7.45, and the cocktails were fab.

We started with frozen strawberry margaritas…

…then tried the Starlett (which involved gin and passion fruit)…

…then the Mint Julep (I’m not usually a bourbon fan but this was gorgeous)…

…then the Rum Runner (white AND dark rum with Galliano, passion fruit and tropical fruit juice)…

…and finally a mango margarita!

Unsurprisingly, I had a rather good night…

It’s also a proper American-style steakhouse and crab shack, and the food looked amazing – I think I’ll have to go and try their lobster one day!

Tea and pampering…

I’ve had the nicest couple of days! I had two days’ holiday from last year to use up, so I sneaked them over into this week and I’m halfway through a fabulous four-day weekend. Yesterday, my mum came up to London (it actually worked really well, as my dad had meetings up this way as well, so they drove here and back together and we all went out for Thai food and lots of wine last night) and we made use of a brilliant LivingSocial voucher we’d snapped up last year. It was for a massage, facial and champagne afternoon tea each at the Hilton Park Lane, and we were seriously impressed. The massage was wonderfully relaxing, the facial – with Dermalogica products – was amazing (we couldn’t stop going on about how plumped and soft and brightened our faces looked and felt afterwards) and the tea was utterly delicious.

We started with a peach Bellini each and some beautiful little open sandwiches – I had prawn, smoked salmon, egg and cucumber, and my mum had the same but with a ham one instead of one of the cucumber ones.

Then we had tea – I had jasmine green tea…

…and THEN, the tower of cakes and scones and pastries came out!

There was a plain scone, a raisin scone and two chocolate chip scones, with strawberry compote, cream and chocolate ganache…

…mini cupcakes, which we cut in half and made into hybrid Frankencupcakes (this one is half raspberry and half lemon)

…and an amazing selection of little chocolates and pastries and things (the tray they’re sitting on is made of chocolate too!)

We did our very best and ate everything apart from two cupcakes and two chocolate things, but we got to take those home with us in a little box! After all of that we had a lovely walk in Hyde Park, where we saw swans and daisies (in January!)

Then this morning we popped to the shops, where I bought some new bras (I’ve been wearing the wrong size since losing weight *slapped wrist*) and a couple of jumpers and a gorgeous blazer from Zara, and Mum bought some lovely jumpers too, and then we had lunch and then I saw Mum off to the station and went and had my fringe trimmed! It’s been a thoroughly brilliant couple of days – and I’ve still got the actual weekend to come! Hoorah for days off!