Paris - signs

 

Graffiti

We're just back from a short trip to Paris to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. It's going to take a while to go through the photos, but the ones with graffiti in them were easy to pick out...

This one was at the top of Rue Edgar Quinet. We were checking the opening hours of our favourite restaurant and then picking up a metro straight over to the Trocadero. We arrived just before a weekly art market finished - my favourite was a stand with metal sculptures, but we were also attracted by some music-themed paintings. The artist used to be a professional sax teacher and musician, who had taken up painting in his retirement.

Favourites from May

Some favourite picks (non Christmas!) from May. It seems this was a creative month, hard to narrow the choice down...

And the two extremes that take me out of my comfort zone:

Orange

From the Botanic Gardens last Saturday. My own escholzia is a very pale buttery yellow.

Cormorant

Greenfinches

We've been seeing quite a lot of greenfinches recently - here's one adult, and  one very fearless young one I spotted yesterday.

Heron

MIB5 / Chicken Soup

Men In Black 5  ~ not that I've seen 1 or 2, but I've been seeing the poster ads for 3 around the place.


Last Saturday night I took two chicken breast fillets out to defrost. On Sunday morning I remembered that we'd decided that one was sufficient for the stir-fry that I was making.
So I took out a chicken carcase (I get them free from the butcher from time to time, and stick them in freezer) and made a good stock, poaching the spare chicken breast in it for a short while...
Then we had a lovely chicken and sweetcorn soup.

Chicken and Sweetcorn Soup: (serves 4)

 1 litre good chicken stock (with sliced ginger if you like, although I found that adding grated ginger at the end was sufficient).
6 spring (green) onions
2 slices fresh ginger
12 oz creamed sweetcorn
1 chicken stock cube if you like extra flavour - I don't like extra additives
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
2 tblsp cornflour
1 egg white
4 ounces /100g shredded cooked chicken

Strain the stock and remove excess fat from the surface.
Chop 4 of the spring onions, grate the ginger and  put in a pan with the stock, sweetcorn, stock cube and sesame oil, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Bring to the boil.
Blend the cornflour with a little cold water, stir it into the soup and cook for a minute till it thickens.
Whisk the egg white with two tablespoons of cold water and drizzle it into the soup, stirring continuously.
Add the shredded chicken and heat through.
Serve and garnish with the remaining spring onions finely chopped.

As I only made half the quantity, the remaining stock went into a green vegetable risotto which we had for dinner tonight.

...and blooms

As always my aunt's garden was full of flowers. Here's a small sampling, as it was only a short visit. Pear (I think) blossom, a clematis in the shade under a tree, osteospermum and a teasel.
It was a LOT warmer in her garden than it was down along the seafront. 

Birds...

We went out to my aunt's this afternoon when I finished work, to try to get a generic cartridge installed and working in her printer. Before calling up we had a picnic lunch (leftover Cornish Pasties from Saturday's major baking session) on the seafront in Greystones. Sunshine and blue skies, at last, but with a stiff wind from the sea it was quite cold and after we'd finished the pasties and fed the crumbs to the rooks, we went back to the car for our fruit and peanut-butter cookies.
One of the crows had a really deformed beak - you can see it in this picture, and also you can pick him out in the next one.

We saw some swallows, too - the first I've seen this year. And my aunt and I saw what looked like a juvenile coal tit on one of her feeders.
I've been seeing a robin more regularly too - usually with a beak full of insects as he flies back to the nest. The nest must be in a very different place to any other robins we've had, as he flies over the back gate and out towards the road. So I don't know if we'll be seeing any baby robins on the patio this year.