Sadly, no pictures...

I guess there are too many pictures lurking on my computer for me to download anymore at the moment. I will sort it out one of these days, but till then, this is sadly going to be a quick post without pictures. Not much fun in that, but I hope you will bear with me anyway.
The other day I went to The Hague with my mother, which always makes for a nice day. We went to the Gemeentemuseum and saw some pictures by Lord Leighton, William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. There was also a show on about painters of roughly the same period, from the Netherlands. It is really fascinating to see how different those pictures are in feel and subject, from the English ones.
The Hague is lovely in summer, they always have a sculpture exhibition on one of the main streets, this year it was all by a Brazilian sculptur, Javier Marin. I thought they were great, as soon as I can get pictures again, I will post them.
Oh, here is one picture of the bowl I bought at the fleamarket, I was particularly pleased as you never see a lot of Carlton ware around here. For me it has such a 30's feel.
One last thing and I will close this boring post, (just felt I had to post though as I had not written anything for a while), it now definitely looks as if I have got my old job back. Next week I have a week off, but after that I start again... it is just too funny. But... I am glad to be working again!

Enjoy the weekend and do something wonderful!

A bit of gratuitous ogling...

But oh so much fun! Do you ever get the feeling that you just need to watch something lovely and romantic? I know I do, and that was certainly my mood this weekend... There are two staples I will always return to, anything with Colin Firth, and Richard Armitage in North and South ( or the Vicar of Dibley, come to think of it). So North and South it was this weekend, and generous spirit that I am, I just felt I had to share some of it with you all.
Well, this meant that I had to spend another (happy) hour or so on finding the best trailer on youtube, it was an awful job, but someone had to do it;). There are actually loads of trailers, so have a look at the other ones if you do not like this one. By the way, do not forget to turn off my playlist at the bottom of my blog, otherwise this will not play... and that would be a waste! If you have never watched this series, go and get it on video. It is a real treat, I promise you, the last scene is one of my favourite moments ever.
Other than that, my weekend was nice but unremarkable. However, on Friday I met up with one of my old friends who I do not see that often and we spend a gorgeously girly afternoon. We went for lunch into town, then did some shopping and later we sat in a cafe and had a couple of glasses of wine. There was loads of chatting and lots of laughter, I love these girly times. We are planning a trip to Paris in November, maybe I should warn the French!

Have a lovely week, I am off to brush up my French!

A lemony weekend and a fun tag...

Is not this the most gorgeous image? I feel I can smell the lemons... at the moment there is almost nothing I like better than the scent of lemons. It is really fresh and uplifting.
I got myself the August edition of Good Food the other day, it is one of the best ones ever! I almost want to make every recipe. Because of a small matter of size etc. that is probably not recommended, but it really is that good.
However, I really could not resist the two recipes below... I unfortunately could not find my camera, so there are no pictures, but they should speak for themselves.

Ginger lemon fizz
makes ml of syrup

50 g/2 oz fresh root ginger, roughly chopped
300g /10 oz caster sugar
2 lemons, sliced, plus extra to serve
Sparkling water

Place the sugar, ginger and lemon slices in a pan. Bring to the boil, then cook until the sugar dissolves. Take of the heat, leave to cool, then press through a sieve.
You can store the syrup in the fridge for up to a week.
To serve, pour into a pitcher and top up with sparkling water and extra lemon slices.

See... it could not be more simple and it tastes great! I used an extra lemon, as I like things quite sharp, but will next time also use less sugar, however that is a matter of personal taste. The ginger just adds a bit of warmth to it and works very well with the lemon. There is an almost citrussy quality to fresh ginger I always feel.

A slightly more fiddly recipe, but so worth it, is the following:

Blueberry lemon cakes with cheesecake topping
makes 12

100 g/ 4 oz butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
100 g/ 4 oz golden caster sugar
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
zest and juice one lemon
140g /5 oz self-raising flour
50g/ 2 oz blueberries

For the topping
250 ml/ 9fl oz soured cream
25 g/ 1 0z icing sugar
1 large egg
1tsp vanilla extract

Lightly grease a 12-hole deep muffin tin. Cut out 12 strips of baking parchment, each about 1,5 cm wide. Cut each strip in half, then lay inside each muffin hole to make a cross. Trim the ends so that they rise about 1 cm above the rim of the holes. You'll use these as handles to remove the cakes when they are cooked.
Heat oven to 180C/ gasmark 4. Beat together the butter and sugar until pale and creamy. Beat in the eggs, a little at a time, add the lemon zest and half of the juice. Mix together well, then stir in half of the flour. Stir in the remaining lemon juice, then the remaining flour.
Spoon the cake mixture into the tins, about 1 heaped tbsp per case, then smooth over with the back of a spoon. Sprinkle a couple of blueberries over each cake, then bake for 10 mins.
To make the topping, whisk together the soured cream, icing sugar, egg and vanilla extract until smooth. Take the cakes out of the oven, they should be pale and just firm. Gently press down to make a flat top, then spoon some cheesecake topping over each cake- the holes should be filled almost to the top. Scatter over some more blueberries and bake for 5-7 minutes more until the topping is just set and gives only a little wobble when tapped.
Leave the cakes to cool in the tin, then gently ease away from the sides of the tin and lift out using the paper handles.

Enjoy, these are really quite special.

One last thing to mention is that I got tagged with quite a fun tag by Lisa from Jumble and jelly. Hers is a truly lovely blog, if you do not know it yet, hop over and have a look, it is great. Really colourful and lively and fun to read.

The tag works like this. Grab the book that is nearest to you and write down the 5th sentence on page 161. Then you get to tag 5 more people.

The book I grabbed as it was on top of my to be read pile is: The perfect summer, by Juliet Nicolson. She is the grand daughter of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson. The book is about the summer of 1911. I really want to read this book because of my obsession with Bloomsbury and that period in history in general.

The sentence is:Yet another Times contributor quoted Juvenal to demonstrate that human nature had not changed for many centuries.

These are the people I am tagging:

Heidi The cranberry chronicle
Michelle Chocolate and marmalade tea
Diane Heartshaped
Angie A book a day
Sibylle In training for a heroine

These are all gorgeous blogs, so if you have time, have a look at them.

Enjoy a warm and sunny week!