Stardust

This past week has been a bit tiring. Lois was out of school for half term and Andrew and Ellie have been ill most of the week. Lois has two speeds: high and off, so between her energy level and their colds, it was not the easiest of weeks! We did make our ice cream sandwiches on Monday, though, which was (mostly) fun. We made this recipe again. They are quite tasty and really cute too! 

Pistachio and Rosewater Meringues

Earlier this week I decided I wanted to make meringues. Inspired by a few ideas Beatrice has for our upcoming food styling and photography workshop, I thought I'd make some for practice and just for fun. I love meringues but I had never actually made them before. I decided to turn to a meringue pro for the recipe.

Making Time

It always seems hard to make time to do everything I want and need to do (I'm sure I'm not alone here in feeling this way). I'm a fairly productive person but I still often feel like a rat running on a wheel, leaving me frustrated at the end of the day for not having gotten more done. It puts me in a panic sometimes feeling time slip away! I'm glad that yesterday I decided to stop and smell the roses, or rather document the daffs and granola, as it were. It's been a while since I pulled out our macro lens. It's really fun to use. Ah, I love it! I should use it more often. I also used our 50mm 1.2 lens, which is wonderful as well. Much more lens for me really, but I'm very grateful to have it. Lately we've been eating lots of granola. Yum! I love homemade granola. I've been using the recipe in La Tartine Gourmande, which is delicious, but Beatrice also has a version here online. Though that one is a bit different and includes millet puffs, rice puffs and chocolate, everything else is about the same but also the one in the book includes pecans and walnuts. I like the idea of the puffs for cereal though, so I might have to try that one. I often eat quickly in the morning and usually just standing at the counter as I'm cleaning at the same time. Always busy, busy in the morning it seems. And messiness kind of makes me feel crazy so I'm pretty much constantly cleaning. But it's nice to look out the window and see the little daffodils blooming while I eat, even if I am standing and eating quickly. The last few times I made granola and stared out the window I thought, "I really should be taking a picture of this pretty sight!" But then it's rush, rush, rush and I don't get to it. So yesterday while Ellie napped I made afternoon granola and took time to take photos of it as well as flowers in the garden. Then I took some photos of Miss Ellie after she woke up. She's also long overdue for some proper photos. It reminded me of my blueberry breakfast with Lois when she was about the same age. How time flies! Here's a bit from our granola afternoon in bloom...

A Measured Heart

Yesterday I bought some very adorable and slightly impractical measuring spoons hearts. I love them! I saw them a few days ago at a local shop and really wanted them but resisted the urge. I don't really need new measuring spoons, and I try to avoid impulse buys (well, I do right now anyway). But they kept creeping back up in my mind so I decided to go back and get them. I just want to measure and measure and measure! Lois loves them too. I threw out the tag and can't remember the company who makes them right now, but I'll add a link if I think of it.

I made a recipe from La Tartine Gourmande, a yummy chocolate cake topped with seasoned plums. I've made the cake a few times and love it and thought I'd try them as little fairy cakes. I started to cut the plums as heart shapes but it wasn't working out so well, so I did slices.

The Making of Kedgeree

This week I received my copy of Pretty Nostalgic in the mail (a wonderful British magazine) and was especially excited about this issue because I have two articles in it, one of which is on Kedgeree, a delicious indian inspired British dish. Ah, kedgeree is sooo good! It has smoked fish, rice, coriander, lime, egg, cinnamon, and onions among other things. Sound strange or delicious? I had not heard of it before moving to London, and it's one of those dishes I wasn't too sure about after hearing the ingredients, but then once I tasted it, I became a kedgeree devotee!

A Healthy Appetite

We've had some ups and downs the last two weeks with a round of colds and tummy bugs, which affected the little ones. But for the most part everyone's managed to keep a good appetite, especially for sweets. The kitchen has smelled pretty good lately. I love cooking smells. It's one of my best memories growing up, that is, lying in bed smelling my mom's cooking, which would lure me downstairs. It was usually onions or bacon I could detect first. But just about all food cooking smells would make me pop out of bed. Maybe that was my mom's tactic to get a teenager out of bed. Lois is up before us 99% of the time, but every now and then either I or Andrew will get up first and start making something. I made crepes the other morning before Lois woke up, and she walked downstairs and said, "ooh, what are you cooking? it smells lovely!" So cute.

Birthday Baking

Last week Lois had her 5th birthday. I can't believe she's already five! I think everyone who has children can't believe how fast their children grow up and remark on that as they get older, but time does fly. We had a really fun party over the weekend. As soon as I get the party photos on my computer, I'll do a party post. But before the party we had to bake a few things.

Sunday Stack

This weekend we made some yummy pancakes. Lemon poppyseed buttermilk pancakes to be specific! Sounds good, don't you think? And they are gluten free, and so light and fluffy and you don't get that puffy, "dang I ate too much!" feeling after having a stack of them. These are from La Tartine Gourmande, a great cookbook that is especially good for anyone who needs (or just wants) to eat gluten free. Gluten aggravates the hubbers so we try go do gluten free when possible. We've made these a number of times and love them each time. You can find lots of gluten free recipes on the La Tartine Gourmande blog. This recipe is not on her blog, but I found it here. But you should just get the cookbook! You won't be disappointed. Hmm, I couldn't decide which photo I liked more, the one above or below. What really matters, though, is the pancakes! So good. 

Muffin Morning

I love blueberry muffins, especially Mark Bittman's recipe for them. The little bit of lemon zest and little bit of cinnamon make these stand apart from some other recipes I've tried in the past. Actually I've made these so many times I can't really remember what other blueberry muffins taste like. And sometimes they are cause for celebration! I never buy blueberry muffins when I'm out because I know I won't like them as much as these. This recipe is also great because he gives some nice variations. And you can use fresh or frozen blueberries (I used frozen here). So, if you like blueberry muffins, try this recipe. Remember to read all the way through, though, because the ingredients vary a bit from the original base recipe.

Easy as Pie

I love Alicia Paulson's blog. It's one of my favorite blogs. She's a great inspiration to me. I don't read many blogs regularly these days because my time is limited and there are just so many lovely blogs. But hers has stuck with me. It's the sort of blog I read and always feel inspired by afterwards. She just has a special, and very consistent, way of capturing ordinary everyday life in a beautiful way. Every once in a while I'll read about something she cooks and I get the urge to make it right away. Like Tuesday, right after I read her blog post, I had to make this apple pie asap!

Tasty Bakes

That book cover is adorable, isn't it? It reminds me of Lois helping in the kitchen. I found the image on pinterest of course and put it on my "because it makes me happy" board. I think it's fun to cook when I have a recipe. I get really excited to try new recipes. Without a recipe though I'm totally clueless, and I find cooking frustrating. It's sort of like understanding the words of a language but not how to string them together to make sensible sentences. I can cook a few things without a recipe, but not much! I'm not creative at all when it comes to cooking. Andrew, on the other hand, is very creative in the kitchen and can whip up something delicious out of practically nothing. He's spontaneous and intuitive when it comes to cooking so he does especially well with savory dishes. I like structure and specific instructions, so I'm more suited towards baking, and I do love to bake!

The Perfect Scoop?

If I had an ice cream shop, I'd have to have a display like this one above! Only mine would read "ice cream" of course. Ice cream and fabric? Yes, please! A perfect scoop indeed. (It appears those are scarves to me, but I'd be happy just to ball up some fabric). And of course my ice cream dress would be the uniform. I wonder if I could have a few made in different colors? Because at the rate I'm churning it out, I'd need a number of different styles. And then we'd need ice cream cups... I think Lois would agree these would complement our cart.

Homemade Ice Cream Sandwiches

And speaking of ice cream... it's finally warm enough to eat it outside without freezing. This weekend for a bank holiday BBQ we went to we made ice cream sandwiches. Yum! I'm not a huge fan of the store bought ice cream sandwiches mainly because I don't really like the ice cream in them. I'm a bit of a vanilla ice cream snob and really only like sort of expensive brands like Haagen Dazs, which is my favorite vanilla. But homemade ice cream sandwiches seemed fun to make and, well, you can pick your ice cream, so that's what we did. I followed this recipe here. The pretty photos made me choose it over a few others I read, but there are plenty online. Speaking of pretty photos, I learned in food styling and photography class not to take photos at an angle like the one above (or usually not to), because then it looks like your food is sliding off the table, but that's one of the better photos I took so I decided to post it anyway! Do you have any thoughts on this matter in food photography?

Belated Valentine's

Happy after Valentine's day day! I meant to write this post yesterday, but as is often the case, the day flew by and I didn't get to it before I was too sleepy. Ah, well, hearts are always pretty, right? And love, that's a daily thing too, or should be anyway. I really like this blog post about Valentine's day and what celebrating love and gratitude should be about. I had fun the past two weeks making heart-shaped things with Lois, most of which were edible! She loves to help in the kitchen and though it can be extra messy with her "help" and a little frustrating sometimes, I pretty much always let her help with something.

Festive Eats

I love Halloween, but it's not that big of a deal here in the UK compared to the US. But we still celebrated and had a lot of fun. Lois dressed up as a witch and we went to a small Halloween party and did some trick-or-treating. We also made some festive food. One of my pin boards is "recipes and pretty food." Mostly I've just pinned those because they're mouth-watering eye candy. But sometimes I actually make the recipes I pin. Two that we tried were pumpkin spice pancakes, which I read about on Alicia Paulson's beautiful blog, and then some gingersnaps. I have some cute cookie cutters in the shape of cats, owls, and bats, which I tried to use for the pancakes, which was, er... a bad idea. Didn't work. They actually didn't work well for the gingersnaps either, so I went with round snaps.

Four!

Lois celebrated a birthday a few weeks ago. We had a great day on her actual birthday. We made a cake, same as last year (a delicious cake!), went to her favorite candy shop, and she got a new haircut. Then on the weekend we had a fun party with some nursery school friends. I made a batch of party hats, which took about a week. They were just for a handful of kids, but they are time-consuming to make, and I'm a little out of practice making them. But I'm glad I did.

Sweet Cakes

I'm still loving the recipes in La Tartine Gourmande, especially the baked goods lately. I think I've mentioned that gluten aggravates the hubbers' acid reflux, so we try to go gluten free with most recipes. The baked recipes in La Tartine Gourmande all gluten free (I think so anyway), and delicious! I haven't found a few of the flours she uses in some of the recipes (amaranth and millet flour), though I could probably find them online. I've substituted a bit of something else, another alternative flour, depending on the recipe. My most recent favorite recipe is the lemongrass-blackberry tea cakes. These are so moist and flavorful! I've made them twice. The lemongrass is a great complement to the blackberries. If you make them, do be sure to chop the lemongrass very fine--nobody wants stringy lemongrass in their tea cake. She uses brioche molds for the recipe, but I didn't have those but found some cute flower molds at a gift shop near our house. These are so easy to make, and with a cute mold like that, it looks like a lot of work went into them, but no, they were a snap.

Baby's First Week

We've had a very good first week with Eleanor. The second time around is much less stressful than the first, at least it has been for us, and she's been sleeping very well, which is great. The first three days were the hardest. I was really sore all over and felt very sluggish. I had her naturally, which was incredibly painful, but I do think it helped me to have a quicker recovery than the first time around, with Lois when I had an epidural. It took about a week before I felt sort of normal then. Lois has been a good little helper but we've had to watch her closely to make sure she doesn't squeeze lil' miss too hard or let her head wobble like a bobble head.

Popsicles!

Between unpacking and exploring our new neighborhood and getting ready for the baby, we've been having fun making popsicles. We bought a Zoku popsicle maker, which freezes popsicles in under 10 minutes (above is strawberry-lime). My favorite part has been looking forward to different recipes. They're all really simple, but it's fun to have some kind of small treat to look forward to. And it's really fun for Lois too. She's just old enough to help (and actually be helpful) and her attention span is long enough to make a batch of popsicles. We've made peaches-n-cream, cherries-n-cream, grapefruit-mint, strawberry-lime, chocolate-banana, and creamy maple-banana. Some of those are from their recipe book, some from their blog, and a few we just made up. It's been a lot of fun, and I think I'm on my way to becoming a  Zoku door to door salesman I'm so excited about it! 

France Photography Workshop Update

I'm back from France now but had a nice time at the photography and food styling workshop. Unfortunately the weather was a real drag. It was rainy, windy, and cold for 4 out of the 5 days of the workshop, which threw off the itinerary and prevented us from getting outside much. It was a shame in such a beautiful place (southern France, in the Languedoc wine region) where the weather is normally sunny and about 75 degrees most days this time of year. Alas, we can't control weather, so nothing could be done about that but make the best of our indoor time. But it was great to meet and learn from Beatrice Peltre and Lara Ferroni, and I met a lot of nice people who came from all over the world for the workshop. Here's a peek into our workshop days.