The last few months

It has been a VERY long time since I wrote! Turns out buying a house takes up quite a lot of energy.. Since my last post Christmas has come and gone, we’ve packed up our old flat and moved into the new flat and we’ve thoroughly warmed the flat with a good old Birthday Bash. Allow me to give you a little tour of the new pad:

This is the Sitting room..

This is the bedroom..

This is the spare room..

and THIS is the balcony!

It’s still unbelievably exciting, every day I look out at London and feel like somebody must have made a mistake for us to end up here; we feel incredibly lucky. Praise be to shared ownership schemes! We are on the corner facing South and East so get the sunrise in the morning out one side and the other looks out towards central London.

We spent the weekend buying plants and pots and setting up a little garden, the sun shone all weekend and we had a little taste of what it might be like in Summer before temperatures plummeted again.

We’re not allowed any pets in the new place so I fairly speedily bought a fat ball container and hung it out on the balcony, the first few days nobody touched it but then a crow started coming and not long after a starling appeared! The Starling comes every day and ate so much in the first few days that I’ve named her Fatima.

I’ve not done any art of late, partly because I’ve been doing Jess & Ben’s Wedding invites, partly because of the upheaval of moving, but mostly I think because I’ve just been so over-excited about everything else that I’ve not given it a thought! I’m starting to get pangs now though so I’ll get back into the swing of things soon, hopefully this weekend.

I had some very exciting post this week; two recipe books that I’ve been wanting for months: GAIL’s cookbook and a modern way to cook by Anna Jones.

There is a GAIL’s near my work and so having eaten there regularly for the past five years I can vouch for everything they make always being unbelievably delicious. Anna Jones I’ve only heard of much more recently – my mum passed on her kale, tomato and lemon one pot spaghetti recipe a few months ago (with glowing reviews) and it was so easy and SO tasty that it’s become one of my veggie favourites. I cooked it recently for a friend of mine who recognised it as an Anna Jones recipe and told me that both her books are fantastic so without further ado I invested in one. So far so good – I tried my first recipe last night and it was delicious! I’ll share it with you so you can see for yourself.

Spiced pea and paneer chapattis

1 small bunch spring onions
1 tbsp coconut oil250g frozen peas
1 small caulifower
2 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp ground turmeric
2 unwaxed lemons
1 green chilli
1 small bunch of fresh coriander
150g paneer (optional)
4 rotis or chapattis
1 small bunch of fresh min

The recipe also called for a small handful of curry leaves but I couldn’t find any in Sainsbury’s and didn’t have time to look elsewhere! If you can get some they go in at the same time as the spices.

Finely slice the spring onions, fry on medium heat with at least half the coconut oil until turning golden. soak the peas in boiling water for around 5 minutes.

Chop the cauliflower into 1-2cm pieces and add to the pan along with the spices, cook for a couple of minutes until the florets of cauliflower are coated in spices and are less raw then squeeze over the juice of one lemon and allow to evapourate before taking off the heat.

chop the chilli and the coriander stalks, put the leaves aside. drain the peas and mash with the zest of one lemon, the juice of half a lemon, the chilli, the coriander stalks and some salt and pepper.

If using paneer transfer the cauliflower to a bowl and put the pan back on the heat – add the coconut oil and once very hot crumble in the paneer and cook until crispy.

Warm the chapattis and top with the pea mash, cauliflower, paneer, chopped coriander leaves and chopped mint.

It makes four chapattis so I had it two days in a row for lunch and supper. IT’S YUMMY!

 

Spots, cousins, planes

Well last time I wrote I thought I was almost recovered from the dreaded lurg, that weekend however the last remains of my heat rash became HIVES! Quite horrid – at it’s worst I was awake at 2am shaking, crying and passing time imagining how much I would rather be in extreme pain than be that itchy ever again – anything to let me get some sleep! Luckily that is all behind me now and there are only very faint scars where all the big red spots were.

That weekend other than the lack of sleep and constant itching was lovely; if I’m going to be ill anywhere it may as well be my favourite place in the world! We were back in Wales meeting cousins on my Dad’s side that I had never before met! Very jolly garden party with endless delicious food and drink – here we all are toasting the occasion and a photo to show just how spotty I was!

The garden was looking amazing and the farmyard full of beautiful young Muscovy ducks – another batch soon to arrive so I’m told. I spent a lot of the weekend ambling through the garden taking photos.

Since then we have had a potentially exciting development with the budgies – Gertie has started exploring the nesting box! It could mean nothing but at least there is now a chance of budgie babies – time will tell!

We have just come back from a jolly weekend in Farnham, lots of fun with Nick’s family and a lovely day at the Farnborough Airshow. The weather was so fantastic that I had to hide under an umbrella for most of the day!

We also had a lovely evening with Bruno & Julia last weekend during which I somehow managed to steal Bruno’s camera (it’s identical to mine). This resulted in a second evening with Bruno which was also completely lovely and inspired me to have another go at Threadless! I’ve uploaded endless T-shirt designs in the past few days, it may be that noting will come of them but it’s still fun to have a second attempt. I’ve done a few new designs specifically for it.

I’ve also FINALLY finished reading the Mabinogion! Absolutely brilliant – it’s given me lots of ideas for linocuts – hopefully you shall see them in due time!