Being cooked for!

One of the pleasures of being on holiday, staying with friends, is that someone else does most of the cooking (either because you are eating out, or because the person you are staying with cooks, or both). With my friend KA, this is particuarly lovely because she bakes a lot more than I do, so there is always dessert. Like this extremeley tasty apple and berry pie

and a chocolate cake with buttons (which I'm sure was yummy, though I myself only had pie). 

And there was dinner as well!  Of course, I didn't think to photograph it, until she suddenly said - "you haven't taken a photo of your dinner!" - She knows me well...  Luckily, there was just enough left on someone else's plate for me to snap a shot of our supper of sausages, roast potatoes (fresh from their garden) and salad...

A walk along the canal in Skipton

After our gorgeous lunch, on the way back to where we are staying, we stopped in Skipton, for a walk along the canal and a browse down the high street. 

It was drizzling a tiny bit, but not enough to be a problem, so we just wandered along the tow path, along the canal, behind Skipton Castle (we didn't bother to go actually tour round it) and then wended our way back to our temporary home...

[I'm really missing my camera at the moment - it's being repaired as it had a problem with the electronics - wouldn't turn on - I'm using our day-to-day point and shoot but it's not the same thing at all.  Sometimes I'm using my phone, which is REALLY not the same thing.  Oh well, I guess I'll have it back soon,  but it's a shame not to have it on holiday!]

Everywhere we went, there were brightly painted bicycles and bunting shaped like t-shirts in the various jersey colours of the Tour-de-France, as it went through Yorkshire this year in the beginning, before it moved over to France. Must have been exciting having it come through your town!

Bistro Saigon, Ilkley

If you ever happen to be in North Yorkshire looking for a good meal, I highly recommend Bistro Saigon, in Ilkley. Our friends who we're staying with recommended it, and the food is great. Alex had fried tofu with crispy noodles to start - looks fantastic from the photo and tasted great as well. 

I, predictably, had squid to start (my family laughs as me about this, as I frequently order squid when it's on the menu) - this was beautifully tender as well as tasting fantastic...

...followed by chili beef. 

KA had a pho with prawn & pork dumplings, 

Alex had sea bass with black beans and ginger (he's also predictable)

and Sarah's was a noodle dish with chicken. Didn't manage to get photos of everything else, but all the food was very good, particularly the spring rolls... Yum!  Too bad Ilkley is a bit far from home to visit regularly.

Dinner, 22/8/14: Stir Fry with Noodles; Dumplings

As we are shortly to go away on holiday, we are trying to get rid of all the perishable items in the house, so a veggie stir fry with noodles seemed a good way to use a lot of them up. The dumplings were in the freezer, so they made a nice addition on the side. 

Very fresh eggs...

Olivia seems to have taken on the job of neighbourhood pet watcher this summer, a job mainly involving feeding cats, but also involving looking after a friend's chickens. The side effect being, we get the eggs. And lovely they are!

Dinner, 21/8/14: Pasta all' Arrabiata

One of those fantastic quick dishes - a couple of tins of cherry tomatoes and some spices, and you have a sauce in no more time than it takes to cook the pasta.  Good for nights like tonight when kids have diving until 7...

A Day in Portsmouth

The girls and I fancied a day out a little further away than simply up in town, so we chose from among the various destinations on Southwest Trains (who were offering a £15 return ticket anywhere they went). We decided on Portsmouth as being not too far away (2 hours on by train) and interesting, both historically and otherwise.  We explored a few things in the Historic dockyard, such as the HMS Warrior, the HMS Victory (Nelson's ship) and the Mary Rose (Tudor battleship, sank in 1545, located and raised in the 1970s/80s) Museum. Not a lot of photos, as many of the places were pretty dark for taking pictures...

but a few fun shots, including the practically obligatory ship-related pose:

We also had a little wander around the dockyard area, where there were other, more modern ships hanging about (just to look at from the outside). 

This one is the Victory - can't imagine being cooped up inside that one - I'm not at all claustrophobic but I found it cramped - the ceilings are just so low!

This little fellow was just sitting there waiting for the tide to come in...

Dinner, 19/8/14: Chinese style Noodle Soup with pork and Pak Choi

Mucking about in Camden Market

Geoff's office is in Camden, so once in a while we pop up to see him and then have a poke around the market - we won't be able to do this much longer, as they are moving to the City in December... Doesn't mean we can't go up to Camden, but can't grab Geoff and go out for a bite to eat, as we did yesterday. 

After a half an hour wandering around the food stalls on the Lock side of the market (here are some of them on the Camden Lock Global Kitchen website), we finally chose what we wanted to eat. Geoff had some polish sausage (no photo of that as he'd finished by the time I made it back to the table with my food - it might have been from this stall, though), but the rest of us ended up with different kinds of ethnic wraps. Not surprisingly, a lot of street food is wrapped in something - makes sense as it's easy to eat on the go. Sarah had a wrap from a Turkish stall, with minced beef, feta, spinach, etc in a thin, almost filo-style wrap. Olivia's was also Middle Eastern - she had a Lahmacun from this stall. 

And I had a chicken masala wrap from Food in the Middle's roti stall...  Just wish I'd been able to eat two or three lunches as everything was VERY tempting...

I don't have many photos from the day, unfortunately, as my camera is not well and is being made better by my local (ish) camera guy.  So I just had my phone, which takes good snaps for posting to social media, but doesn't handle REAL photos...

I did, of course, manage to take a photo of the girls drinking outdoors (actually, Olivia is holding my drink at the moment, but who needs to get technical about things).  They are standing waiting for a chap on the other side of the market to cook some churros. Mmmm. Alex, who is at Scout Camp this week, will be sorry to have missed the food, but probably not that bothered about missing the several hours of poking around market stalls (many of which are jewellery and clothes) we did after lunch - Geoff, of course, went back to work...

Dinner, 18/8/14: Jambalaya

First of the tomatoes

Finally, after aeons of waiting, the first of our tomatoes are ripe (there were two, but we ate one before I took this photo!). More will hopefully ripen soon, as we are away next week and will miss the best of them, otherwise...

...mind you, all these tomatoes are serendipitous anyway, as I didn't intentionally plant any- these are some from my class last year, which hadn't ripened enough to eat before the end of school, so we took them home so as not to waste them.

Plum and Blueberry Clafoutis

First time I've made (or eaten) a clafoutis, for all that they seem to be trendy at the moment and recipes are everywhere. It was dead simple - stoning the plums was the hardest part of it - and very tasty as well - definitely one for the repertoire - and versatile as you could use whatever fruit you have to hand...

Dinner, 17/8/14: German sausages, sauerkraut, various salads

Dinner, 16/8/14: Ham and Cheese Quiche

Hey, you got your chocolate in my peanut butter...

A recent visit to a little local shop with an excellent import section landed me a bag of peanut butter chips (like chocolate chips except, well, peanut butter flavoured). Some chocolate/peanut butter cookies were called for... And those of you old enough to now have a certain jingle going through your head ("two great tastes which taste great together...") - well, that's just too bad!

Rhubarb, blackberry and apple crumble

Dinner, 15/8/14: Pretzel Chicken with new potatoes and green beans

This was pretty much like chicken in bread crumbs to make, except you use bashed up pretzels. It worked very well, as they were still nice and crunchy even though they were baked in the oven, not fried. There was a honey-mustard sauce, as well...

Dinner, 14/8/14: Mince Masala with courgettes

A nice, easy, curried mince dish. With rice. And courgettes.

Modern Day Vermeer...

If Vermeer were alive today, he might well paint something like this scene (but without the chair back, which ruins the balance) - perhaps he'd call it Girl with Purple Hair Hanging Laundry?  Something about the light really struck me - even more so in person than this photo shows...

Dinner, 11/8/14: Sausage, Vegetable and Bean Casserole

...or, what can I make from all the leftover bits and pieces in the house, including a package of sausages, half a butternut squash and  half an aubergine... Also added some beans and a tin of tomatoes. Worked pretty well, though not my favourite sausage casserole ever...