I ordered a morello cherry tree. I hope it does better than our lemon tree which eventually died.
It is a maiden tree, which means it will be 1 year old, and won’t fruit for several years.
In the language of flowers, cherry blossom signifies a good education.
I made the pheasant pie again, much better this time. Unfortunately I didn’t take any good photos :-(
The pheasants were from Gibson’s in Watford market.
I found three shot while I was making it, and N-sama found another two:
My not-so-new but favourite blog is Cooking Issues, which is the French Culinary Institute’s tech blog.
Some interesting articles to start with:
Paratha is a type of fried bread which I discovered and decided (wrongly) was naan. Anyway, here we’re eating it with a mouth-watering slow-cooked lamb curry made with shanks from the local butcher and sweet potatoes from the local shop. Oishii!
Sorry about the terrible photo. Notice in the background the JML pedometer which registered 3000 steps an hour on my treadmill before it overloaded and died. Bloody JML!!
This is ridiculously easy to make, and very tasty. It’s a kind of English okonomiyaki. Just mash up yesterday’s roast potatoes and veg and mix with lots of eggs.
Here is the Wikipedia page on bubble and squeak.
Oriental City was a large South-East Asian mall and community centre in North London, reasonably close to Colindale Station. It closed for redevelopment on 1 June 2008, though as of early 2010 the redevelopment appears unlikely to actually happen, and the new Pacific Plaza in Wembley looks much more promising. THIS LINK is a partial list of where the Oriental City traders have moved to. (Was it worth destroying a few acres of land and an entire cross-London community for this?)
Possibly Pacific Plaza might replace it. They have the Japanese crockery shop, but not yet the huge supermarket.
Image from NASA’s Terra satellite, huge version here.
I took this photo last week during the cold snap. It’s of a large field next to the house, covered in snow.
Click for the big version!
Here’s another — the enchanted forest:
Click for the big version!
Chipperfield Common, covered in snow:
I got a bit lost and had to follow my own footsteps back:
New sink …
Crazy Japanese …. One of them looks like lovely Yuka though.
Something of a lost opportunity. The Two Brewers is a traditional pub in just about the perfect English village setting (yet close to London). With the right owner it could be a great pub, but instead it’s a moderate chain pub with restaurant-cum-hotel pretensions. The food was 5/10, certainly not bad, but nothing of note.
I almost discovered this recipe by accident, by taking very thin, small strips of the pizza dough and frying them quickly in olive oil (over a very hot pan).
Mmmm delicious with home made sprout and sweet potato curry!
