[Menu Thoughts]

Goat's cheese sandwiched between Lidl's finest Ryvita equivalent topped with caramelised onions, more goats cheese and a sprinkling of freshly ground nutmeg. (1 rye cracker per person and 1 onion between 2).

Sit's very finely next to Malcolm's Reverse Manhattan:
2 shorts rosso vermouth
1 shot bourbon whiskey
a few drops Angostura Bitters

Shake with ice in your finest antique cocktail shaker. Serve in your finest Edinburgh Crystal cut glass.

 With gratitude (once again) to Mr. T W Smith.

Supplies

...for our upcoming holiday on the Grand Union Canal. More on that in a few weeks.

Ingredients:

Finely crushed loose leaf Ceylon tea
Cardamom pods
Chives
Broken cinnamon bark
Whole black peppercorns

I've also used a jar that recently contained crystallised ginger. I'm hoping for a whiskey barrel effect.

Happy Birthday Jack Adams

We hope you pick a finalist next year.

6 months of bliss

London Baby

Happy Birthday

Mum turned 50 this week so she and I hopped down to London to celebrate with Corinne. We found dinner in LEON then desert and champagne in Caffe Vergnano 1882.

And let our hair down in the hotel. 

Bathurst Mews- I'd take one of these houses for free. You might not be able to see it, but there is a horse standing outside its stable at the end of the street. And that Olive Tree is quality.

Mum and I strolled through Hyde Park and sat at the Lido by the Serpentine for some elevenses. There was a heron, plenty of other close-up birds and two chinooks, cue plenty of "oh wow, that's amazing!" from Mum.

Then we stumbled across the rose garden, which is incredibly scented and full of delicate colours.

We'd planned to walk past Buckingham Palace on our way to lunch with Corinne but this crowd persuaded us to linger and watch the Changing of the Guard. Reader beware: if you go to watch the Changing of the Guard, what you will actually do is watch the back of the crowd watching people marching around, while you shuffle around trying to catch a glimpse of some red and gold on your tip-toes. (And when you do finally get a clear view of the procession, your camera battery will have just conked out). Still, if its not raining, its pretty good fun.

P.S Does anyone know who any of these chaps are?

 Photos from previous London adventures are on our Flickr.

[Menu Thoughts] Breakfast

Get in!...

... the booth!

We've only had a couple of experiences of photo booths at weddings but that has been enough  to convince us that they are worthwhile. Its likely that you'll get guests in here who don't make it into other formal groups and that everyone will be much more themselves.

At their most basic it can be very easy to set up a photo booth for guests to take their own photos, and you can add in any extras to make it personal.

Here's an idea of a simple setup: camera on tripod (operated by a remote, by the user), back drop (could be anything), props and lighting if required.

Then you can add into the mix any number of elements: fruity fabric backgrounds, frames, masks, fancy dress, names, logos or other props, write your own message boards (black boards or simply cut shapes out of paper and laminate them). You could even use the view outdoors as your back drop. 

Jordan Ferney at Oh Happy Day has just done a free photo booth printable blog post, which is a cute set of props.

Outdoor and fabric back drops

Props

These streamers would make an awesome back ground

I wish I lived here

We visited Kirsty's flat in Aber, which is lovely, so I took some photos to show it off. I think its great the way people girls are forced to adapt their decorating skills in skanky student houses. 

Kirsty's bedroom makes me think she should come and decorate our flat full of lovely things. Or go straight into interior design.

Kirsty's flatmate Laura has a pretty cool room too

And the bathroom: It doesn't let the side down

Aber in the lungs again

Another lovely weekend in Aber with friends (and cake!). Malc sang his heart out and Nom sat around in girlie houses with cups of tea and sunshine. We watched a sunset, laughed a lot then had a picnic in the castle and laughed some more before the rain came and we had to go home.

[Menu Thoughts]

Mint iced water and spaghetti with lemon and olive oil.

P+M The Preview

We're very excited to give you a glimpse of the wedding we photographed this weekend. It was utterly beautiful.

Pip and Monty are in our portfolio.

Pip & Monty

There are more photos of Pip and Monty's wedding in their preview.

Dunker

 

There are no words

Gifts

From the top: fimo cake flags (suitable for posting), jon's birthday box (with ingredients for salmon fishcakes, sparkling wine, some purchased beers and...), the birthday beer (brewed by Malc, labelled by Nom) and the sticky labels. 

We named the beer in Jon's honour, Dudley is his middle name. He got the name from his Grandad who died before Jon was born and it turns out Grandad Dudley was into a spot of home brewing himself

Jon's birthday

Last Saturday we went to Birmingham Nature Centre for Jon's birthday. A lot has happened since then, but here's some photos in the sunshine. 

p.s WOW

a giant wooden xylophone

[Menu Thoughts]

A post to summarise a lot of pictures of food that we've made and photographed lately. First up, some crackers, above with Moroccan spices and below with salt and pepper (in heart shapes). We packed them up with some mackerel pate (so easy to make) and took them as a gift to a party.

I also wanted to show you what a frozen banana (or two) looks like. Before we froze this bunch I a) had never seen one and b) didn't know you could. They were a bit mushy once defrosted but great for making banana cake with. I melted down some cheap hazelnut chocolate for a quick topping. 

Whilst my Granny was staying with us we knocked up a few tasty vegetarian treats. One of the days we had a desire to eat quiche (how Christian?) but very few of the necessary ingredients. Malc went out and bought some eggs and we filled the pastry with a chopped onion and some frozen veg. It turned out well.

Sometimes I work a shift from 3pm to 2.30pm the following day, this meal was made in preparation for such a shift and acted as a suitable pick-me-up (although I did burn my finger in the process and ate the meal with it in a cup of ice water). Sticky, roast chicken drumsticks with pistachio nuts, egg fried rice with coriander, with deep fried battered spring onions and sweet chilli mini pastries on the side. 

Inspired by the menu of pates at Henderson's on our Edinburgh visit we created a table of dips and dippers including: mackerel pate, hummus, baba ganoush, beetroot relish, tabbouleh, olives and peanuts.

A lamb stew pack, some tajine spices and veg in the magic pressure cooker made this:

And finally there was this soup, which our friend Jeffers first introduced us to at our recent soup swap. It's especially good made with coconut milk and garnished with sliced fresh chilli. 

wrapping

I'm enjoying wrapping anything and everything lately. Malc made me wait for both our Mothers' days to be over before I could post these presents, just incase one of our relatively technology-slow mums was super speedy reading the blog.

The pom pommed presents are for our Mums and the last gift is Mojito in a bag for Dunk's birthday (which is yet to be consumed).