Picking Time

My head is still buzzy over the release of my book and I have more photos from it that I'd like to share. For each shop feature I could only choose a handful of photos for the spreads, and for some shops, like Loop, I had about 75 that I would have liked to include! It was sooo hard to choose the final photos. I thought I'd do a few posts on some of my favorite shops in the book and post some of those photos that didn't make it in. But there is life for us outside of my book! A few weeks ago we went fruit picking and all had a great time. How could you not have fun fruit picking?

We went to Maynard's Farm in Wadhurst, which is right around the corner from one of my favorite shops, The Old Haberdashery. If you go fruit picking, be sure to stop into Sonia's shop. If you appreciate vintage trinkets and haberdashery, sewing, knitting, embroidery, handmade items or crafts in general, you will love her shop! On this day that we went to Maynard's, Sonia had a stall at a vintage fair, so we drove a few minutes to see her there rather than her shop.

I love watching Lois and Ellie fruit picking. I think it's important for them to see that food doesn't simply show up on a grocery store shelf by magic and I want them to have a sense of where their food comes from. I hope we'll have our own garden one day, but for now, it's good to be able to do a bit of picking at a PYO farm. On the weekend we went, apples, raspberries, blackberries and plums were available to pick. We mostly picked apples but got a bit of everything.

Lois and Ellie did about as much eating as picking, but that's half the fun!

I've also been getting my cooking mojo back, which had escaped me for a while. Andrew and I both go through ups and downs when it comes to dinner inspiration. The best thing I find to do when I'm in a cooking slump is pull out a favorite but easy recipe, like a lemon ricotta pesto tartine with a bowl of soup from La Tartine Gourmande. A perfect, easy dinner on an autumn day!