I feel very tired and happy this evening. I've spent the day with my mum at the Knitting and Stitching show at Alexandra Palace in London and we think we must have been walking round for about five hours in total with only a short stop for a cup of tea! There were many, many great finds during the day, and some quite exciting purchases as well. Details and some photos just as soon as I've recharged my batteries... ... read more
My Sister’s Keeper – Jodi Picoult
Another Jodi Picoult book, and another that came to me second hand (my mother in law originally bought this as it was the book at her book group). Having read My Sister's Keeper I can certainly see why this book would stimulate enough discussion at any book group due to the subject at its heart.The main character in this book is thirteen year old Anna. Her sister is fighting leukaemia and Anna was a "designer baby" conceived to be a perfect genetic match for her sister and to help her sister live. She has now reached the stage where she wants to ... read more
Rich Fruit Scones
As Mr C and I drove back from my parents this evening I have to admit to starting to feel a little hungry. There was one thing that I particularly wanted though - scones with raspberry jam! Therefore within less than one hour of arriving home I was eating just that. I pulled out the rich fruit scones recipe from The Delia Collection, Baking book that I've had for a while now and quickly gathered together the ingredients. In the recipe Delia says that the scones are "so quick and easy to make that you can have them on the table in less than half an hour after ... read more
National Railway Museum, York
Mr C and I spent the weekend staying with my parents and as the weather wasn't looking too good my dad suggested a day out to York and a visit to the National Railway Museum. I hadn't been to the museum since childhood, but do remember really enjoying looking round all the large engines. I figure there must be some part of me that's a train spotter!Saturday's trip was fantastic fun though. In addition to the main hall where all the engines are is a separate area called the warehouse. In here are keep a variety of items that have all come from the UK railways. There's ... read more
Book browsing
After work on Monday I had some time to kill in central London before meeting up with Mr C to go and celebrate a friends birthday with a meal out. I was determined to leave work on time and have some nice "me time" browsing the shops, so I headed up to Marylebone High Street where you can always find a fantastic array of things to buyThis time I ended up in Daunt Books and spent nearly an hour browsing the shelves. They have a fantastic, unique way of arranging the books, which is quite simply genius. In addition to the usual shelves separated into fiction, non-fiction ... read more
Potato and Cauliflower Dauphinois
Reading this post over on Cornflower's blog all about cauliflower cheese made me realise just how much I enjoy cauliflower and reminded me of one particular recipe that I just had to do over the weekend as a bit of autumn comfort food.Jamie Oliver's Cook with Jamie features a fantastic recipe for potato and cauliflower dauphinois which we have recreated many times as an accompaniment to a variety of meat dishes and stews. It's quite simply delicious and something a bit different from "straight" cauliflower cheese (no doubt helped by the huge ... read more
Zesty Flapjacks
I needed to make something to take along for the tea break at Sunday's WWA working party so I decided to look in some of my newer cook books for inspiration. I thought that flapjack may be an option, but as I've written about before my experiments with flapjack haven't always been that successful.All the recipe's in The River Cottage Family Cookbook are designed so that they can be made by children (with adult supervision), so when I found a flapjack recipe in there I thought I should have a reasonable change of it working out OK.The difference ... read more
Red, red wine
I can't disguise the fact that I am rather partial to a nice glass of wine, especially when curled up with a good book or my knitting. I've done an evening long introduction to wine tasting course at my local independent wine shop which certainly taught me a lot, but I'm still much more of a James May than an Oz Clarke when it comes to knowing about wine. I generally buy things that are on some sort of a special offer in the supermarket and go back to the ones that I discover that I really like.One that I found recently in the Waitrose new world wines offer ... read more
The last time they met – Anita Shreve
I can't say too much about Anita Shreve's The Last Time They Met for risk of ruining the experience of reading it for yourself. I will say that having read quite a few Anita Shreve books now I think this one stands out as being pretty special.The story starts with Linda Fallow and Thomas Janes meeting up at at writers' festival in Toronto and we learn that this is the first time the former lovers have met up in twenty-six years. The book also takes us to Kenya where they last met and back to Massachusetts where there love first started. Throughout the book the ... read more
Books, books, books…
I love reading and I also love telling others about good books that I've discovered and sharing them around. Last Saturday was a fantastic day for new books though.Firstly Mr C and I went to visit my mother-in-law and I took with me some books that I'd read to pass on to her. In exchange she presented me with a pile of books that she had picked up - a mix of charity shop finds and ones that she's read for the local book group that she attends.After a quick cuppa Mr C and I then walked into Harpenden to do a spot of shopping. Of course no trip to the shops is complete without a ... read more