Malta Adventures

I managed to drag my boyfriend away from work for a week at the end of August, and we had a fabulous last minute holiday to Malta. Coincidentally, some very good friends also booked the exact same hotel, and were there for 5 days overlapping us which was great!!

We always try to go to at least one new country every year (although my boyfriend had already been sent to Finland and Barbados with work - grr I know!!) so Malta seemed like a fab new place to explore, and more importantly, so so hot and sunny!!

As it was so hot, we did mostly live in the sea and pool, but we did also manage a lot of sight seeing too. 

Here are some photos:

The pool at our fab hotel. We stayed at the Seashells at Suncrest Hotel in Qawra and it was gorgeous! The food choice was insane!!! Also there was an adults only pool....what's not to love!!

Visiting the beautiful old walled town of Medina. So nice and cool to wander the quiet, narrow streets.

On a boat trip to the Blue Grotto. Going in and out of caves around the rocky coastline was fab!!

And then jumping in for a swim afterwards!!! The sea was so lush and warm, it was dreamy to float around in there for hours!

Our view from our room. Such beautiful buildings. We were at the back, so didn't have a sea view, but got the evening sun on our balcony, after the pool had closed, which was lovely. 

Wandering round Valetta. Such windy, old streets, and very tall buildings. I hate to say it, but it was almost too hot in Valetta, so we escaped to the war museum, which was thankfully, mostly underground!!

The view from the old town in Victoria, on Gozo. So much fun to wander around. 

Swimming in the Blue Lagoon. Heaven! Just look at the colour of that sea!! We swam away from all the crowds and went over to the quieter side. 

I also went exploring and snorkelled into a cave!!

Beautiful fishing village of Marsaxlokk. So quiet and colourful. 

I would very much recommend a visit to Malta, and we will definitely be going back. There is so much more to see, and everyone was so friendly. Plus the sea was warm, the sun shone every day, and the food was delicious, so what's not to love?!?

London Balcony Garden

In our old rented house, we had a lovely little garden, which was great. But it never got any sun. And was very boggy....so even the grass repeatedly died. So not the place for green fingers. The house, whilst lovely, didn't really have any windows, or window sills (it was a tiny cottage) so I couldn't even have any house plants.

So when we bought our flat last year, my main criteria were light, and outside space. And we ended up with both!! Our lovely flat has windows on 3 sides, with really deep window sills, and a decent sized balcony which gets the sun ALL DAY!!!

So when we moved in in December, I immediately bought house plants for every room in the house. And then make me so happy.

Then, in the Easter holidays, I went a bit mad on the balcony. I bought pots that sit either side of the railings, so that they didn't take up too much of our precious space inside the balcony, and then planted everything I fancied. My idea was, that I'd plant loads, and if even half of it grew, I would be so happy.

Turns out, my balcony is a prime growing spot. I planted:

Strawberries
Raspberries
Rhubarb
Lettuce
Peas
Courgettes
Cauliflowers
Tomatoes

I've since added in: Chillies, Basil & Mint

Here are some photos.......I am SO proud!!

The first thing I do every morning now is go and check on them, and water them, and I love going out to make a salad, and picking some lettuce, adding some basil, maybe a tomato or two! I love it!

Gaya Street Sunday Market: Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia

So I'd read mixed reviews of Kota Kinabalu, mainly saying that it doesn't appear great on the surface, but if you give it a chance, you'll actually have a good time there. One thing that they all agreed on though, was that the Gaya Street Sunday market was AMAZING! Well, amazing, if you want to go and see weird things, mixed in with the general tourist tat, fruit and veg, dvd's, plants - this was all sorts of market mixed into one. 

Now, as a regular market trader here in the UK, I love a good wander through a market abroad, and this one did not disappoint, from 6am every Sunday, the locals here are busy setting up some weird and wonderful stalls....here are some of my favourite photos....

Starting off normal looking, just like Colombia Road, just a little more exotic...

I'm not sure Pets at Home would agree with these cage sizes....

I love you love fruit. The label says it all. Definitely an essential at 6am on a Sunday morning!

Just in case you don't have an HD TV. Plus they are wrap around so if you have to squeeze onto the sofa sideways, you still get HD vision.

Goldfish anyone?

And finally, the weirdest thing possibly ever: a purse, made out of a genuine dead frog skin. Fit.

Cauliflower Pizza

I posted about my boyfriends love for pizza in my last update, and then realised I hadn't written anything about my new found love for cauliflower pizza!!

I discovered this amazing recipe, after reading an article in stylist magazine about cauliflower being a new superfood, and so I just had to try out the recipe.

Here is the recipe:

makes one approx. 10-12 inch pizza

1 small to medium sized head of cauliflower
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dried basil (crush it even more between your fingers)
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano (crust it even more between you fingers)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 cup shredded parmesan cheese
1/4 cup mozzarella cheese
1 egg

Myself and a friend made the pizza on a fun baking Sunday, and fed it to my boyfriend (the pizza expert) without telling him what it was made from!

To start, we put a sheet of baking paper onto my pizza stone, and then lightly covered it in olive oil. If you don't have a pizza stone then a baking tray will be fine. Preheat the oven and place the pizza stone in the oven to heat up while you're making the dough.

Here's what to do:

1. Chop off the stalk, and blend the whole head of cauliflower until it's like breadcrumbs.

2. Put it into a microwave safe bowl, and microwave it for 4 minutes.

(If you don't have a microwave, chop the head into small florets, then steam them, and then blend them)

3. Put the cooked cauliflower into a clean tea towel, and squeeze it until you think you can't get any more liquid out of it. Then squeeze it some more. The more liquid you can get out, the lass soggy your base will be and no one wants a soggy bottom.

4. Put this cauliflower flour into a bowl, and mix in all the dry ingredients listed about.

5. Whisk an egg in a bowl, and then mix this in, until you have a crumbly, mushy sort of dough. It's best to mix this with your hand.

6. Put the dough onto the baking parchment and press it out into a circle with your fingers. Do not worry that at this stage it is not making any effort to stay together - it will.

7. Place the pizza stone in the oven, and cook for about 10 mins. At this point you will start to see the dough binding together.

8. Take it out and add toppings. Cook for another 10-15 mins then enjoy!!

Although it is more fragile than normal pizza base, you can still cut it into slices and pick up a slice to eat it! It's amazing!

So amazing, that my boyfriend didn't even guess that it was any different from normal pizza (he is very unobservant!). When we told him that the base was made of cauliflower, he didn't believe us!!

If you don't believe me - try it out, you will be amazed!!

Pizza-fest!

I have a boyfriend who is a pizza addict. Thankfully, his metabolism is amazing, so he can eat loads and not get fat, but he would happily eat pizza every day if he could. That is what he did before we met, and that is what he does when I go away.

So I thought it was only appropriate, to take him to some pizza making classes for his birthday, oh and make him a pizza birthday cake.

We went to the lovely Franco Manca's in Chiswick for the classes and it was great fun! It turns out it's a lot harder than you'd imagine to actually make the pizza dough round without making holes in it! It has now also made me really want a wood fired pizza over in my garden as it makes the pizza taste amazing!!! Details of how to book are here: http://www.francomanca.co.uk/information-pages/faq/ but for £20 each it was amazing!

Yum! So on that note, when thinking about what sort of birthday cake to make for him, I decided it would only be appropriate to make a pizza birthday cake!!

I made 2 flat-ish victoria sandwiches, so it would look about the thickness of a very deep pan pizza, and then covered it with natural marzipan which is conveniently a very good dough colour. I then added various icing and marzipan toppings to make it look like a pizza (pepperoni of course) and viola!

  

I think he liked it (and thought I was very strange, but no change from normal) and it was very tasty! So a very successful birthday!

Inspiralize Your Life!!

I bought I spiralizer last week, on the recommendation of my cousin and his girlfriend. I'd been slowly reading about them in more and more places, but as soon as I saw them and they raved about 'courgetti' I just knew I had to have one (courgettes were my vegetable of last summer with my courgette and lemon cake becoming my new cake speciality!!).

So I bought the Hemsley + Hemsley Spiralizer from Amazon and I think it is amazing! I'd read reviews that said upright ones were best, because the vegetables don't slip out, but then everyone who had bought one, seemed to have one like this so I decided to go with the masses. And IT IS AMAZING!!!

I have used it every day so far and without really trying have massively upped my vegetable intake. Plus anything spiralled looks really cool. I have always been a stickler for my 5 fruit and veg a day, but have recently upped this to 10, with the aim of eating more veg as a lot of my intake tends to be fruit which is not so good for me.

Since last Tuesday, when it arrived just in time for dinner, here's what I have spiralled....

TUESDAY: Thai red curry (onion, pepper, tomato, mushrooms, sweetcorn, aubergine) with courgoodles (courgette noodles). I did also try and spiral the aubergine but it just went a bit mushy and shredded and didn't really work.

WEDNESDAY: The classic, courgetti bolognese (with onions, tomatoes, mushrooms and carrots in the sauce)

Verdict = courgettes are super easy to spiral, if they're a bit wonky I just cut them on the bendy bit and spiralize them in sections which works perfectly. They are also nicely soft so very easy to spiral. And both nights we ate just one courgette spiralled between the 2 of us and a normal portion of the rest of dinner and were nicely full.

THURSDAY: Chorizo sausages with spiralled potatoes, spiralled carrots, mushrooms, onions and garlic.

Verdict = I thought the harder veg might not work as well but the blades are so sharp that the carrots went through with little more effort. The only downside is that you need really fat carrots to make proper spirals, but my thinner carrots gave nice arcs, and then I munched on the middles whilst cooking. Yum!

The potatoes worked amazingly and I just steamed them in with the sausages so they got a lovely chorizo-y flavour. Curly potatoes taste so much nicer than plain boiled potatoes for some reason, and we weren't tempted to add butter which we normally would have so well worth it!

FRIDAY: Wraps with humous, courgetti and peppers. Amazingly delicious!!

SATURDAY: Wraps with boursin and courgetti. Again, AMAZING!!!

I own a fair few kitchen gadgets which I do use fairly often, however, never have I had one that I am so in love with that I want to use it every day! I think the fact that it's not electric so you can dump the whole thing in the sink to wash it if you want helps too so I would recommend to everyone GO AND BUY A SPIRALIZER!!!!

Weekend Break in Copenhagen

Some uni friends and I met up in April last year, and decided we should all go away on a weekend break together. Sadly the first available date we all had was the 9th January but actually it was lovely to go away the week after New Year as it definitely helped to get over the January blues!

So off we went to Copenhagen for a lovely weekend of wandering, cycling on the super safe roads, pastries and general hygge (no real English translation but general warmth, cosiness, friendship, happiness - you get the idea).

Here are some photos:

New Years Resolutions

I've had the same few new years resolutions for the past few years, and have just managed to become to frantically busy that they get pushed to the bottom of my list of things to do. So I decided, this year, to write them down in black and white on here so that I might feel more inclined to actually complete them and blog about updates on my progress. So here goes:

1. Knit myself a jumper. 
Last year I knitted, amongst other things; tiger, penguin, about 20 different shaped hats, over 100 baubles, and a camel. I feel that I now have all the skills to knit a jumper, and even picked up a cool pattern to adapt for 10p in a charity shop. I've even chosen a wool I love in John Lewis. So this year I MUST actually get round to knitting myself a jumper. Maybe I'll start tomorrow....

2. Make myself another knitting needle case. 
I have one roll for my standard needles, and then a bag full of a confusion of different sized double pointed and circular needles. I must sew myself a double point and a circular needle case to make my life so much easier when I am looking for a certain size.

3. Read more. 
I managed to join the library last year and went along with brilliant intentions of reading more and would take out 4 books at a time...only to return them on the due date with 3 unread and the 1 read one having been finished at 2am the night before. I used to read before I went to bed every night but now somehow end up only going to bed after midnight every night and so just being too sleepy to read. I have a huuuuuuge list of books I need to read so I must make more time for that. Maybe I could knit myself some more time....hmmm

4. Make more of my own clothes. 
I'm still hanging on to having a ridiculous amount of free clothes from my last job, and so haven't really been clothes shopping at all for a year, but I do have a drawer full of beautiful fabrics and so I really must sew some more outfits for myself.

Then I have the usual ones about eating more healthily, going to the gym more often, travelling more, making time to see friends. I actually did quite well on these last year - I started cycling to work, and managed to go on holiday to France (skiing), Poland, Russia, Italy, Switzerland and some lovely seaside destinations in the UK.

Now I must go and finish some work quickly so I have time to read for at least half an hour before bed....wish me luck!

Happeas!

I love knitting, I love smiling and I love vegetables.....so here are all those 3 things in one....

The Broad Beans Are Sleeping In Their Blankety Beds

Autumn has definitely set in. Even though the sun has still been doing its best to shine through the London London smog, there is definitely a chill in the air, and there are plenty of goldeny orange leave on the floor.

Although the lovely British berries are slowly declining from the supermarket shelves, there are plenty of earthy root vegetables available, and I got very excited when I saw these massive Broad Beans in Sainsburys recently. I got especially excited when I opened them up to discover just how fluffy the insides of the cases were and just how large the beans themselves were. Mmmmmm

Whilst shelling these, to add them into dinner (an exciting combination of singapore noodles and bubble and squeak) I couldn't help but think of the Autumn song we used to love in school assemblies: Cauliflower's fluffy, and cabbages green:

Cauliflowers fluffy and cabbages green, 

Strawberries sweeter than any I’ve seen. 

Beetroot purple and onions white, 

All grow steadily day and night. 

The apples are ripe, and the plums are red, 

The broadbeans are sleeping in the blankety bed. 

Blackberries are juicy and rhubarb sour, 

Marrows fatt’ning, hour by hour. 

Gooseberries hairy and lettuces fat, 

Radishes round and runner beans flat. 

The apples are ripe, and the plums are red, 

The broadbeans are sleeping in the blankety bed. 

Orangey carrots and turnips cream, 

Reddening tomatoes that used to be green. 

Brown potatoes in little heaps, 

Down in the darkness where the celery sleeps. 

The apples are ripe, and the plums are red, 

The broadbeans are sleeping in the blankety bed, yeah!

Foraging For Dinner & Other Outdoor Adventures

How has it been a month since my last post!! Wow time flies when it's sunny. Apologies, I have been holidaying in exciting places and generally hanging around outside in the sun and away from my laptop. So here goes with a few short posts which have been drafts for ages to make up for it.

I've been reading a lot of articles lately (and most recently in the current Stylist magazine) about eating local, eating in season, and also about foraging for food. When we went skiing over new year, the friends we went with brought a few delicious bottles of sloe gin and plum vodka with them, and I was really impressed to find out that they had gathered all of the sloes and plums from Battersea Common and the surrounding area. They both, by the way, did a fabulous job of warming us up and giving me a little Dutch courage on the slopes and

I've always dreamed of having a vegetable patch in the garden, and just being able to go out and rummage around for something to add to your dinner, however my parents have a very big slug problem in their garden, and so everything I tried to grow growing up got severely munched, even before it was 5cm tall! Very disheartening!

Just over a month ago, a group of us went to stay in a friends gorgeous beach house in Wrabness (Essex). It was right on the beach, with only solar panels for lights at night, and water if we filled the tank up, it was peaceful and so relaxing. On our walk along the beach on the Saturday morning, the friend mentioned that there was a shipwreck which at low tide was completely exposed,and covered in mussels!! So we decided to go for a forage!

When we got there, we were a bit late and so the tide was more like knee deep and on its was in, but we had a lot of fun rummaging around and got a fantastic number of mussels to cook for dinner, along with a few whelks and one lonely oyster. 

It was fantastic, adding in some cream, garlic and onions, we made a very professional looking dinner, and there was no way we could have had it any fresher. 

There's something about eating food outside that makes it taste better, barbecues, camping, all food tastes better when you're outdoors, but when it's only been a few hours from sea to plate, it is unbeatable.