Currently reading...

  
...The Garden in the Clouds by Anthony Woodward. I got it from the library the second last time I was there. Last time I went,  earlier this week, I discovered that they have 'upgraded' to self-service. Which is a pity, really; I always enjoyed the personal exchanges with a librarian. The system is still not fully bug-free, either. Four of my books wouldn't return via self-service and had to be returned manually. While I waited for that to happen, so I could take out more without my card overflowing, I let someone go ahead of me. Ignoring all on-screen instructions he put his card in for returns, and then nearly left without it. And I can tell already that The Garden in the Clouds won't work as a self-service return, it doesn't have the requisite magnetic insert.
Anyway, it's a delightful book, which will be going on my list of suitable gift books, and taking a place in my favourite gardening-related books along with Amanda Hesser's The Cook and The Gardener, and James Fenton's A Garden from a Hundred Packets of Seed. I was reading his chapter on bee-keeping on the bus on the way home from work today, and I laughed till I had tears in my eyes. It brought back a lot of memories of when we had a hive in the garden - the stickiness that he wrote about when harvesting the honey, the intoxicating smell, bees trying to get into the house...

We had this lamb dish over the Bank Holiday weekend. I don't know where my sister got her recipe, which she calls Jammy Chops. Mine originally came from an Australian Women's Weekly book, Best Ever Slimmers Recipes. I once worked for a very weight-conscious woman, whose kitchen was well furnished with books like that, and Rosemary Conley's Hip and Thigh Diet. I have it titled as Herbed Lamb Chops.

Herbed Lamb Chops
1 clove garlic, crushed
4 loin lamb chops
1 tsp cornflour / cornstarch
1 tblsp chopped fresh mint
pinch of dried or chopped fresh rosemary
1 tblsp mint jelly ( personally, if I didn't always have plenty of homemade mint jelly, I'd use redcurrant any day, rather than a commercial mint one)
1/2 tsp sugar
2 tsp vinegar - I usually use mint sauce for this, as like mint jelly, I always have a jar of homemade mint sauce in the fridge.

Lightly oil a pan, heat and fry the garlic and chops, till chops are cooked as preferred. Remove from pan and keep warm.
Mix all the sauce ingredients together, add to pan and stir till it has come to the boil and thickened. Return chops to pan and stir briefly.
As C likes wet rather than dry dishes, I usually add about half a cup of cold water to the sauce ingredients, so that it's a sauce rather than a glaze.

Baby Blue

My intention for today was to share a couple of recipes, but time is short. C made a sudden decision to go to a BBQ we were invited to by a friend of the host. I presume the host knows we are coming!! And of course, being a Bank Holiday Monday, there's not much sign of any sunshine. But at least it's not raining, either...
Anyway, when I was going out to put the wash on this morning, little baby blue was around -we've seen a bit of this little juvenile blue tit. His head is so drab compared to the adult plumage, but you can just see a hint of blue in his tail feathers.

Swan Lake - Pas de Deux

It was a very showery day today, but in the evening we went for a walk along the canal after dinner.
I only did ballet very briefly when I was young - the year I started turned out also to be one of the years my mum had pneumonia, so then I just went straight back home after school instead of going to ballet. But I've always enjoyed watching it, even if I couldn't say what a pas de deux or an entrechat is.

Signs of rain

The rainbow became even more spectacular shortly after this, but with a handful of swans feathers I was too slow in changing to a wide-angle lens. As we were walking back up the main road we met an American family from New York trying to find the hotel where they had left their car. We weren't much help, I am afraid, but as he pointed out, it was still bright and he had a super-sized umbrella in case the rain started again.

Park Pictures

These are some of the photos from Tuesday evening. A couple more of the heron, one view across the city and some of the deer. It was so funny the way all the stags were lying together in two big groups, and the does and fawns were much more spread about and grazing.

This morning I spent a while watching the young gulls on the river - it was almost as if they were playing, drifting backwards on a strong current. But in case I sort out a couple of photos, I'll save a write-up till then.

One Single Heron

One photo only, today was too busy. Well, making Cornish Pasties took most of the afternoon, more like...
We went for a late, sudden walk in the park last night. At first C decided he was too tired. Then he decided he wasn't, so around ten to eight we hopped into the car - one camera lens only was allowed, and when we got there the battery was showing low.
I did get some lovely photos - the light was beautiful, and the deer were all resting in the grass. I'll try to upload a few after work tomorrow. The real reason for going, apparently, was that the grass smells lovely now that they are cutting it all and drying it for hay; C says he has been enjoying it on his way to work. We only passed one area where they had cut the grass, though...
The light on the pond was singularly lovely, the heron was right in the sunlight, the one and only lens I had was my wide-aperture one and my battery held out. This is the only photo I can quickly access, because I've just set it as my desktop on the downstairs PC so it's on a USB stick.

Back in the North

Well, in fact we were back up on Sunday, as C left his birthday present guitar tuner behind the previous weekend. But these are a few more photos from when we were staying - yesterday was just up in the afternoon and back in the evening. We stopped for some chips (fries) in Newry at a chippers he'd been to before - they were really lovely, but I didn't so much appreciate the smell in the car this morning.
Here's hoping that August is not going to be such a mad and manic month. I still haven't even finished sorting and deleting my June photos!

Ballycastle, where we stopped for a HUGE fry which kept us going all day.

This was taken through the restaurant window - I just liked the way the t-shirt the guy in the phone box was wearing matched the phone box.

Along the cliff walk at the Causeway

And just some more photos of the Causeway itself  - I did say I found it fascinating, didn't I!

Quick Snaps

This has been such a busy week. I'll be glad when Monday afternoon comes and things settle down again.
Tonight I had to drive C over to get his new motorbike - there was a beautiful sunset which I couldn't really enjoy.
The pictures of the cormorant are from yesterday morning. He was behaving very different to normal - instead of diving and disappearing underwater, he just kept ducking his head under, and was swimming along with his body mostly underwater and just his head up - almost like a periscope!  Not great photos because of the overcast day, but I like the reflections and ripples.

 The drop of water on the dahlia was this morning, near the bus stop.

 
Still trying to remember exactly where the cross is - I took it because I have a noughts and crosses theme in mind for a photo challenge. It's either on James' Street or Steeven's Lane.

The Liffey reflection was also this morning - it was as still as a mill pond. Why is a mill pond still? I'd have thought it would be turbulent...

Giant's Causeway

We had a lovely drive up to Lisburn on Friday, and were able to change C's leaky motorbike boots on our way through Newry, which was great. He's had them since the end of March, but in the heavy rain one day the week before last they let in water very badly.
It was raining on Saturday morning but cleared by the time we were setting out to drive up the Antrim coast to the Giant's Causeway, and we had beautiful weather most of the way. As a bonus our hostess was driving, so we were both able to enjoy the scenery. I'll have a few more photos tomorrow, I hope, but I wanted to show something to be going on with. I don't know why we've never been there before - it was totally fascinating and beautiful. I suppose most of the times we've been up North have been on business, without time to spare for sightseeing. Apart from around Enniskillen and along the Erne, from a cruise and visiting friends...

First photo is my great grandfather (centre) in 1896.

Love the colours in this with the yellow raincoat and green weed.

I made a few photos into a card to send to someone in America...(sounds as if I should have made two cards, Pat - one for you as well as Shirley's!)

Where Does Time Go?

It's already Friday, and I haven't had time to size down my photos from Farmleigh. We're leaving work early today and heading up to Northern Ireland for the weekend, so it certainly won't get done in the next couple of days either. One thing we are going to do is change C's motorbike boots. One day last week he came home with wet feet! Or a wet foot - one was still dry. The boots are quite new - he only bought them in March, and in the summer he usually wears different ones anyone. But it just goes to show that it's the first drenching rain we've had on a weekday since he bought them! I made some delicious Cashew Brownies to bring with us. Now, I like rich, dark fudge-like brownies, (and chocolate cake) but C likes lighter cakey things, so he thought these were way nicer than a regular brownie. The recipe comes from Linda Burum's book Brownies, which has some wonderful luxury brownie recipes, as well as some "healthy" ones.

Cashew Nut Brownies

9" square metal pan, lined and greased.
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1 cup sifted flour, sifted again with 1/4 tsp each salt, baking powder and baking soda
2/3 cup butter at room temperature
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup light cream or milk
1 1/4 cups coarsely chopped roast unsalted cashews

Gently melt chocolate and let cool a bit.
Beat butter till soft, and then beat in the sugar in three parts, beating well after each addition.
Add the egg and beat till smooth.
Stir in the vanilla, milk and chocolate to mix thoroughly.
Fold in the flour mixture and 1 cup of the nuts.
Bake in an oven preheated to 350F for 25 -30 minutes, till the centre is just cooked.
Cool in the tin, then frost if required, sprinkling with remaining 1/4 cup of nuts) and cut into 20 or 24 brownies.

One of the suggested frostings was a coffee brandy buttercream which sounded lovely, but I wasn't sure it would stand up to a whole day in the car, even in a cool bag. So instead I made this one:

Fudge Frosting (enough for an 8" or 9" square tin)
1 ounce unsweetened chocolate
2 tblsp /  1 ounce unsalted butter
1 large egg yolk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup powdered sugar (icing sugar)
1 tblsp milk or cream.

Melt butter and chocolate over a very low heat.
In a small bowl, mix egg yolk, vanilla, cream and sugar. Stir in chocolate mixture and blend till smooth. Let cool, and add a little more milk if it's too thick to spread.

When we holidayed in Brittany, C fell in love with the sweet crepes they make there - totally unlike what we get here. You can buy packs of them, like the one shown here - and we used to have them for breakfast. We picked up a couple of packs at the airport when we were over for the funeral - alas, all finished now. They also make a savoury one with buckwheat flour - these ones are often served with ham and a fried egg, or other savoury fillings. In the local restaurants and snack places, they are traditionally served with cider in a little earthenware bowl.Much lower alcohol content than our Irish cider, and delicious!
Again when we holidayed there, Pierre brought us to an old lady who used to make them for tourists - she'd pretty much retired by the time we visited, but as Pierre was a local, she was happy to oblige. I still remember her old-fashioned kitchen!
 For a couple of years one of the restaurants in the Tuilieries Gardens in Paris served Breton style crepes and both dry and sweet ciders in bowls, but then the franchise changed.

This is a large dinner plate - the crepes must be at least 12" diameter.

Staying Cool

The SCS challenge this week was Beat the Heat. Well, it's not quite so hot here as it has been, and it's been pretty rainy too, so I had to do a bit of lateral thinking on this one. As I had 3 egg-yolks in the fridge waiting to make icecream, that quickly gave me one photo. It was going to be vanilla, but C has requested rum and raisin - again....

 I make the custard base for my icecreams with 3 egg yolks and 3 ounces (just under half a cup) of sugar beaten together. Bring a half imperial pint (1 1/4 US cups) full fat milk to the boil with a bit of vanilla pod split open. Mix the milk and yolks together, and then stir over a low heat till it thickens. Chill, and then churn along with just under a half pint of cream  - a 250ml carton, or a US cup. With an icecream machine you don't need to whip the cream, because the churning adds a lot of volume. Before we had one I'd whip the cream and fold in in, and whisk a couple of times during freezing. Mostly we have vanilla from this recipe, but sometimes I add Baileys, chocolate chips and some homemade praline, and C's current favourite is rum and raisin. He was wondering would it not just be cheaper to throw the egg-yolks out - but who would want to do that!

My other picture is a fan - and it's terrible, I can't remember whether we got it in Barcelona or in Paris. I slightly think Barcelona, but Paris would be more fitting as I have displayed it on an original 1940's Dior New Look dress which was my mothers. I've worn it a few times to parties, but at this stage I'd need to drop a dress size if I wanted to. It had lovely cream satin cuffs and collar with black braid, but the satin has got very yellow with age.