Reflections

You mightn't think that penguins have all that much to do - go fishing, waddle about, slide across the ice, shiver a little - and yet, it seems to have been inordinately busy around these parts over the past few weeks. Here are a few snippets of the latest goings on...

Taking time to notice that things can be beautiful without being perfect
Studying colourfully, hopefully for the very last time - studying colourfully doesn't come close enough to embodying Kate Spade's maxim of living colourfully
Far, far too much caffeine (and far, far too little sleep)
A long walk in the sunshine, with a detour for gelato. This one was caramelised white chocolate and ‘the whole package’ (peanut butter, banana and salted caramel) from Gelato Messina. Much as I love to try something new, my heart (or its arteries, at least) belongs to the salted caramel and white chocolate. And my curiosity hankers after the strawbachio (strawberry and pistachio – another long walk will be needed very soon...)
A spell of subsisting on the offerings of the vending machine at work (thank goodness that's over!)
The cafe downstairs has wonderful chicken and avocado sandwiches on Brasserie Bread sourdough - a good way to recover from a deadline. Getting away from the vending machine's good, but getting further than the foyer will be even better
Making calissons for the first time – these ones are cherry flavoured, with lemon icing (a bit of pink icing never goes astray)
A very late night combining glamour (unusually for me, and apparently second nature for many of the others) and sobriety (second nature for me, and apparently entirely anathema for many of the others)
Taking time to prepare things that aren’t perfect to be a little more beautiful can be rewarding (I’m starting to realise that instagram is handy for test shots, too)
Fresh, warm potato and rosemary sourdough from the new Bourke Street Bakery in Potts Point
Some light and sugary reading for the week.
Because I can’t just bounce between Daring Bakers and batches of brownies forever, when there are so many wonderful cakes to be made
A little something sparkly picked up on the walk home – a flippy metallic skirt from Minty Meets Munt

Wherever you are, I hope you're having a lovely (and sparkly) week...

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A Gluggy Day In Sydney Town - Getting Keener On Quinoa

Grocery shopping on a Sunday night is not a relaxing way to finish the weekend, even if it makes Monday mornings look better just by comparison. Despite all of our better intentions, our (and everybody else's) plans get derailed and so there are even more wayward trolley-pushers, squawking toddlers, middle-of-aisle ponderers and an assorted cast of irritating extras cluttering and chattering at every turn. And yet, while everybody seems to be there right now, they all seem to have visited earlier, too. How else to explain the gaping, well, gaps where stock ought to be, the lack of any meat that isn't mince, the oddments stuffed on shelves when a better deal came along further round and the apparent dearth of any fruit or vegetable which isn't limp or squashed. It's bad when you just need to dash in for some milk and eggs and blueberries. It's so much worse when you're trying to be organised (but not quite organised enough to have got in before the ravenous hordes) and get all your shopping done for the week ahead. And when you're trying a stack of new recipes to kick-start a cleaner diet.

So a litany of excuses, circumstances, could-haves and ought-to-next-times precede this admission. I never knew there was more than one type of quinoa. Never mind the red and black varieties - I'm talking about the common, garden sort. Which, until a couple of days ago, I never realised came in flakes as well as in grains. I looked at the shelves where the quinoa should be. I debated getting something else to make for breakfast. But by then, I had a bee in my bonnet about quinoa porridge, and I was grimly determined. Several boxes on the top shelf finally got my notice. Quinoa flakes. Hmmm.... they don't look quite like the picture accompanying the recipe. Perhaps they puff up when you cook them. Half an hour later, while stirring a bubbling pot of runny gruel, I realised there would be no puffing. Copious amounts of cinnamon and a shake of ginger were added to liven up the flavour in the hope of detracting from the texture. The porridge eventually thickened to a pasty consistency which, while not pretty and perhaps better suited to sticking posters on billboards, tasted much better than it looked. I wouldn't go out of my way to order it in a cafe, but it was perfectly inoffensive and the cranberries, raisins and walnuts provided some much-needed bite. This was what it looked like...

All pictures in this post by the Sticky Penguin, who  was attempting to gussy up the general grey un-photogenic-ness of porridge by taking its picture with Hipstamatic... 

But I still had a hankering to start the morning with perky, fluffy quinoa rather than gloopy, sleepy porridge. In the hope of a corresponding boost to energy levels and alertness, perhaps? And so, armed with a list of all the things the supermarket didn't have on a Sunday night and the virtuous determination to walk home from work on Monday evening, I dropped into the more gourmet supermarket half-way between my office and the apartment. Apparently Sydney has decided to get in shape - quinoa porridge is one of the first recipes featured in Michelle Bridges' new book, Losing the Last 5 Kilos, and quinoa is in short supply.

Armed with two bags of royal quinoa, I set to porridge-stirring with renewed vigour. And it certainly looked more appetising, with the quinoa seeds interspersed with plump fruit. But, oddly, the earlier, runnier porridge seemed to be sweeter and more satisfying than the "proper" version. While the new recipe with whole grains certainly had more texture, it didn't extend quite as far as fluffiness, and even after rinsing the quinoa before cooking, a hint of bitterness lingered.

This was the second version (also eaten at my desk, although this time without the slothfulness of consuming it straight from the tupperware!)
Even more surprisingly, though, was that the taste and texture of quinoa in both its guises crept up on me, urging me to try it again. Just what was that taste that I couldn't quite pin down? Each morning, it grew on me a little more - perhaps it's an acquired taste like coffee or laksa? Although it wasn't enough to keep me completely away from my scone toast!

Still eating at my desk... penguins are creatures of habit!

The answer, it appears, has been to use a mix of quinoa flakes (¼ cup) and quinoa seeds (½ cup), for the perfect combination...

Just like Goldilocks - the third time's a charm!

Are you a porridge person? I grew up on porridge and honey on chilly mornings and find it cosy without being stodgy, while the Other Penguin regards it with the sort of suspicion typically reserved for telephone surveys. "It just looks gluggy", he says, edging almost imperceptibly down the couch. Despite having said the same of risotto many moons ago, he remains entirely unconvinced and unwilling to go near it, much as I do about his milkshakes! There's still plenty more experimenting ahead with the quinoa, both to improve the balance in the porridge, and to try out other ways of using it. If you have any recipes you love with quinoa that you'd like to share, I'd be very interested to hear about them...

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Meet You At The Local

Strange names for pubs have long been a source of amusement, and were anticipated as a bonus novelty of visiting London – surely, there would be eccentrically named drinking dens in abundance. The trip wasn’t overflowing with ale (more like beset with bakeries), but there were enough oddly named pubs to not disappoint.

One particular pub managed to fill the entire funny name quota in one fell swoop...

Badgers are quite entertaining enough by themselves, but a fat badger... that’s just almost too good to be true...

“D’you feel like a pint after work? Great, see you down the Fat Badger at six thirty”

“Sorry, going to be late home tonight – got to get to the Fat Badger for the meat tray*”

“So, you two met at the Fat Badger? Really?”

Lots of pubs are equal parts historical and funny, with long and convoluted tales of how they got their names. Names like the Elephant & Castle. If you feel like (depending on your point of view) being better informed, or ruining the magic, this might be a useful resource...

But I still think that this one might be my favourite pub name ever. The Tipsy Penguin might not be bad, either.

Sadly, since our return, I've discovered that The Fat Badger is no more, having closed. It used to be found on Portobello Road in Notting Hill, London. Hopefully the locals have found a new (and funny-named) watering hole to replace it...

* Or... the tombola. Oh dear.

All pictures on this post by the Sticky Penguin

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Start Your Day Well (And With Foolishness)

Fortnum & Mason is full of unusual, indulgent and just plain intriguing things to eat and drink. As well as the only-to-be-expected-but-by-no-means-pedestrian rows of buttery shortbread, brightly coloured boiled sweets, jams, marmalade, preserves and endless varieties of tea, there are giagantic candied fruits, potted meats, seasonal novelties of all sorts (witches' finger biscuit, anybody?)

But while the Other Penguin was distracted by (among other things) candied scorpions, baking supplies were being perused in a quiet corner. Given a choice between two-toned sanding sugar and ants disguised as a snack, there’s no contest What. So. Ever. Come to that, given a choice between attempts to make scuttling things edible and almost anything else in the world, I’ll take the Anything Else. With bells on.

The Anything Elses included, to my enormous amusement, this...

Stoats Oatmeal. Is that stoatmeal for short?

And, if other people don’t immediately think of oatmeal and descend into fits of giggles, that’d be because they haven’t met the Stoat Appreciation Society. Or maybe they’re just grumps the rest of the time, too...

So, start your day with a bowl of Stoats’ Oatmeal* – nutritious, tasty, and a great source of B vitamins... and mirth!

Stoats oats are available from http://www.stoatsporridgebars.co.uk/... that's right - they have bars as well. Stoats love bars...

* Which, I fervently hope, is solely a branding exercise and not anything akin to, for instance, civet coffee...

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More Than Kin

Before the enormous expedition (which there will eventually be more about, once I recover...), there was a smaller trip to the Hunter Valley. This visit was distinguished by large amounts of black, white, wine, cheese and general silliness. Another thing that stood out about the weekend was the sheer difficulty to get an ice cream.

Venturing through Pokolbin, a shop full of smelly cheese, snackish morsels and interesting condiments drew our collective eyes. It also had a large counter of gelato and ice cream, supplemented by an equally large freezer off to the side, displaying a range of other enticing flavours... including Kinder Suprise.

I don't quite know what it is, but there's something I love about Kinder Surprise (even the plain bars, without any surprises involved). And I had to try that ice cream. Well, I thought I did... inquiries about buying a tub of it to take back to the stoat / penguin lair were met with the response that that flavour was "just for display" and we couldn't buy any. Whether it was really a plastic imitation (unlikely, given how good it looked), or if they were just capriciously waiting for it to go slightly stale and not be the source of penguinlike avariciousness, we couldn't quite ascertain.

So, on the trip back to Sydney, we just had to venture past... to see if we were allowed any Kinder Surprise ice cream yet. Its availability on a quiet Monday morning was a welcome surprise better than all sorts of model racing cars and other miniature paraphenalia found in those little eggs...

Pictures: me (on an iPhone, so there is for once an excuse for some of the dodginess...)

And the verdict? Tasty, chocolatey, definitely something that I'd be quite happy to eat again (including for breakfast on a Monday morning). But not quite hollering Kinder Surprise at me. Although after that much of a build-up, it was always going to be a high bar to leap (slowly, full of ice cream) over!

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The Kitchen Keeper

Custardian – the keeper of all secrets (and portions) of crème brulee, trifle, clafoutis, crème caramel, crème patissiere and good old plain regular custard. AKA the trifle-eating cat’s mum!

Trifle: the trifle-eating cat's mum; picture: me

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Snack Hunting (Not Snark Hunting)

The problem with Twitter (other than the creeping realisation that you're not as witty as you thought you were, let alone as witty as everybody else), is that it makes you hungry. At least, it does if, like me, you follow all sorts of food bloggers.

At inopportune moments of time, you can be beset with a burning need for something obscure and unattainable to eat, and the immediacy of Twitter somehow gives it a stronger pull that than the regular food blogs. Ages ago, at an unpleasantly late hour of the night to be studying (although any hour is either unpleasantly late or unpleasantly early to be studying), Helen from Grab Your Fork was sharing her evening snack of malt loaf... unfortunately, not literally! And it wasn't just any malt loaf. It was Soreen*. And it was sliced! Previously only encountered verging on stale, and very much unsliced, I was keen to go on the hunt. Strathfield not being in the direction os the usual stomping ground while in the recent mad skittering mode, I quickly got in the habit of popping into all and sundry other Woollies passed by, to check if they could satisfy the craving... Bondi Junction? Nope**. City? Nope. Yes, while the website says all Woolworths, beware. Otherwise there will be fruitless (and maltless) hunting...

And then... Good morning Neutral Bay... And hello malt loaf.

Waiting results in... overindulgence...

Pictures: me

Not just for evening snacks - it's also handy for breakfast, and little occasional morsels... especially now it doesn't have to be rationed out anymore! And it's actually pretty healthy, too.

It's great all by itself, but doesn't hurt to add butter. Or - I have to see if this is as tasty as it sounds - marmalade... Even better, it could be the source of the next pud.

* Malt loaf is one of those fondly remembered food from childhood. For a very brief time, we lived in a house with a walk-in larder, and it seemed to always be full of all sorts of interesting things we never got to have (I suspect the brevity of living there meant we were keen to eat English food while it was there to be eaten). And the larder always had a wonderful smell, a bit of which was that rich fruity malt loaf aroma... yum...

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There's A Hole In My Bucket

Picture: taken by me at Doug Up On Bourke

How do you capture a thought? OK, so you start with a butterfly net with very tiny holes. This line of thinking has the potential to become very BFG*. But following on from a previous post about escaping thoughts, it seemed worth considering. Maybe not for long, but still. I always find that thoughts come along when I'm supposed to be doing something else. Just like nothing fills the brain like trying to mediate or be mindful (it's like if somebody tells you repeatedly not to think about elephants, whatever you do... it's then impossible to do anything else), nothing clears the brain more than an empty page. Or screen.

The idea of keeping a note pad by the side of the bed is all well and good until you wake yourself up repeatedly while trying to remember and express things. It seems to be most useful to find something to do that isn't really doing something. The inconvenience of writing stuff down while doing said activity is inversely related to how many thoughts it helps produce. Showering seems to fit this bill perfectly. Heaps of ideas. Nowhere to write them down. Harrumph.

* And the BFG now always makes me think of the GFC (well, really more the other way round), ever since there has been such a disagreeable thing...

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I’ve Got The World On A String

I’ve got the world a tail on a string

I’m sitting on a rainbow coffee table...

Got that string them wrapped around my finger

The trifle-eating cat’s parents arrive today for a visit, so it seemed an opportune time to finally share a picture of the aforementioned cat...

Curious? Tick!

When a little less distracted, and from a more flattering angle, he is much more photogenic!

How could you resist the trifle-eating cat? Although, this time, there is neither cat nor trifle – but lots of other things. I might even remember to take a camera along. And write about some of them before the next blue moon! Certainly before the next trifle...

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Breakfast With A Llama

A little while ago now, there was breakfast with a certain llama-loving friend. Breakfast at quite an inappropriately early hour of the morning (my fault), having risen even earlier to do some baking (also my fault, and more on that tomorrow - the baking, that is, not the culpability).

And, after procrastinating in putting up photos of both breakfast and baking, I came across this...

Picture: One Drawing Each Day on Etsy

In this case, there was perhaps a little lacking by way of alertness given the early hour... But there was an abundance of both good conversation, and good breakfast. And there was (figuratively, at least) a llama!

The breakfast was from my ever-reliable local, First Drop in East Redfern...

Singing llamas may make it good, but breakfasting llamas make it better!

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Following Sweetness

The past few weeks, as well as the usual insanity, have involved a small food expedition. Better still, an expedition in search of baked things (which means provisions for the trip aren't even required - but are still optional!).

I first discovered Sweetness via The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry* and, after pootling longingly through their website, decided they had to be sussed out. Far too many options...

Pictures: Sweetness (above), me (all the others)

The first part of the expedition was to the Northside Produce Markets. It was my first time at these, and they were a pleasant surprise, with a good mixture of growers and sellers... the beautiful, sunny morning didn't hurt, either. There was that lovely clear, crispness in the air**, combined with the virtuous feeling of being up and about early on a weekend... which leads to justification of baking for breakfast...

There was a chocolate gluten free brownie...

Any brownie that doesn't taste gluten free is onto a winning formula, and this was sweet and moist without being cloyingly rich.

And there was a white chocolate and raspberry muffin...

...which was also gluten free, and was also very more-ish. You can tell it was good, as it was half demolished by the time I managed to get near it with a camera... Although the brownie may have pipped it to the finish!

This weekend, a more serious foray was called for, and there was hiking out to the Sweetness shop, itself a charming little pistachio confection, somewhat incongruously situated in Epping. And everything in it looks both astonishingly photogenic and delicious. And there are little samples of almost everything, to help you decide just how much just has to come home with you.

The spoils of the afternoon were a lemon and coconut cake...

And also a pair of blueberry marshmallows...

There were twenty-two flavours of marshmallow. Narrowing down the choice (and limiting it to just one) required an inordinate amount of dithering, and several samples. And they have about as much in common with those pink-and-white marshmallows that come out of bags in the supermarket as Buzo's vincisgrassi*** does with fried lasagne.

The final part of the baking expedition was the discovery that there are vanilla chiffon cakes. With creme patissiere filling. I'm not sure that even superfluous use of italics can express how exciting that prospect is. One very such cake is lurking quietly on the horizon, biding its time before making an appearance.

* When I mentioned having found her online, Gena, who owns Sweetness, was interested in which blogger I'd found her through, and was very kindly disposed to food bloggers in general - yay!
** This gives away how long ago it was - that clear crispness has lately turned into a grey shiveriness which is much less appealing.
*** Which approaches astonishing.

P.S. Big apologies to anybody who got the draft version of this yesterday... mysterious Blogger fail. Harrumph!

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Penguin In Paddington

What's the best thing to do on a wet and murky Sunday? For this easily distracted penguin, a pootle in Paddington is perfect... Well, actually it started in Woollahra, but that was less alliterative.

Beautiful jade green eggs in Orson & Blake...*

Late brekkie at Micky's (vegetarian breakfast... with home-made hash browns. And really good spinach, mushrooms and tomato combination. Yum!).

Picture: Micky's

Gazing hopefully (even after all that breakfast) in the window of the best chocolate shop in Sydney...**

At the best fudge anywhere...

A pootle with beautiful flowers along the way is also good...

And finishing off with some shopping and then a heap on the couch... perfect Sunday. Prostrate penguin.

* And I should go and edit out a very badly positioned price tag... but that goes in the too hard basket...
** Which is not being done justice by my questionable iPhone photos - too wet to risk getting the new (photographic) pet out. Boo!

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Sensing A Theme

Picture: Bill Hogan / Chicago Tribune via Seattle Times

Last week, I went browsing through some recipes I’d collected*, in search of interesting things to bake. It was soon clear that a few common elements are developing... This is quite like my wardrobe, which tends to contain large numbers of black tops with elbow length sleeves**.

The first thing is ginger. Lots and lots of recipes using ginger. Which can be less than helpful, given that the other penguin (who is the main recipient of my sporadic baking efforts) is not a ginger fan (substitute chocolate, caramel or vanilla for ginger, and it’s a big improvement in that quarter – no complaints from me on any of those three, but they can’t hold back the tide of ginger recipes that leap out at me***). Anything containing golden syrup seems to end up on the list as well. Also, cinnamon, honey and (yum) dark brown sugar. Anything that combines all of these ingredients is likely to result in unseemly gluttony. More so if it also involves icing.

Picture: The English Kitchen

The now-not-so-recent foray down south involved a visit to Oaklands, a nearby garden centre / antique place / café. Websites don’t seem quite as ubiquitous down there (given the availability of internet access, this isn’t a huge surprise. While I couldn’t survive without it for long, an occasional weekend of falling off the connected world can be a good break), but if you’re interested, there are some details of it here. Oaklands also has flying pigs, and camels (the camels, as far as I know, don’t fly).

Picture: me, at Oaklands

The café has all sorts of promising options for lunch and morning and afternoon snack-ish things. I began with a special of a salmon and dill frittata, which was light, tasty, and reminded me that I really would like to try making frittata at home.

The cafe also does, rather randomly, croque monsieur (and madame). I’m not sure I ever met a croque madame I didn’t like, but after being spoiled with so many good options closer to home, it wouldn’t be my first choice from the menu. However, for those without a wide selection of local croques, it adequately fills the need.

The frittata was followed by triple ginger cake, shared with my mum. We were told this was their most popular menu item, and it was not at all hard to see why. The cake was spongy and treacly, with a rich ginger flavour. It came with rhubarb and apple compote, which matched beautifully with the sticky cake, and would also be great on porridge, muesli, with custard, or just in a large bowl with a spoon.

I had intended to take some photos of the beautiful and delicious cake. Unfortunately, this was as close as it got – a very empty plate with a lonely dollop of cream (having forgotten to order it without)...

So now, as well as the assorted ginger recipes that catch my eye, I’m on the lookout for something like the triple ginger cake, to see if it can be replicated at home.

* Google Reader is a wonderful thing for gathering recipes... For people that only like cookbooks with beautiful photos of what it ought to look like (which have the dual benefit of providing much greater motivation to cook something than happens with just a description, and also a yardstick of whether it turned out ok – much as taste is the main thing, if it doesn’t look like the photo, that tends to mean something went awry...), it’s very useful (and also fun) to look at what other people are cooking. And they’re normally more interesting and personal than the average cookbook. OK, this is way too long to be a note at the end!
** It also appears to be gaining momentum in gathering metallic tops, stripy things and interesting coloured ballet flats. Out loud, that sounds like I should never have a what-on-earth-do-I-wear?! day again. The reality, however, does not bear this out...
*** A leaping tide. Wow, there really are some badly mixed metaphors going on today.

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Very Like A Whale

Last weekend involved running about like a mad loon at just about every turn (or tern*). There was cleaning. And stocking up on groceries. And baking (more on that tomorrow). And dancing. All before lunch time. Somewhere in all that chaos, time was found to venture over to the Finders Keepers market at Carriageworks.

I was interested to see what Carriageworks would be like, having seen it on TV and in magazines as a venue for all sorts of things. It felt a lot less cavernous than I had expected, but I suspect there must be quite a lot of other sections to it – it was a bit of a rabbit warren. The exterior is the most striking part of the place; inside is similar to a lot of other studios and warehouses.

And the growers market was also on, so it was a bit of a hive of activity (in a good way – I’d actually expected it to be swamped and overcrowded, so finding it just usual Sydney-on-a-Saturday busy was a pleasant surprise). I would have loved more time to have a look round the growers market, but this wasn’t going to be the weekend for it. Instead, there was a quick reconnoitre to establish that the place I really had wanted to check out wasn’t there that month, and then on to Finders Keepers.

Finders Keepers was a lot like the good bits of a usual market collected into one spot. Interesting jewellery without all the mass produced sparkly tat. Papers and cards with unusual pictures and intriguing wording. Hand-sewn and knitted items that didn’t look like you were paying your nanna by the yard. And almost everybody seemed to have intriguing business names (A Skulk Of Foxes might have taken that prize out, as far as I was concerned).

Lots of things jumped out. Angus & Celeste had porcelain bangles with silver spots on, and hand-painted milk bottle vases. Ginny and Jude had silk skirts in interesting patters. Made 590 had dresses with printed silhouettes (and they had jackalopes, too – brilliant!).

My purchase for the day was a pair of Paper Boat Press earrings. I came across PBP online last year (great quotes and wording, and all sorts of interesting things). Up close, they have a mix of fragility and resilience that I liked. And they had earrings in the shape of clouds. All of them, just like real clouds, were slightly different. Unusual, but not hit-you-between-the-eyes unusual. Just quietly whimsical.

Clouds can have so many different sorts of associations. The small neat fluffy sort (whether white or grey) remind me of Winnie The Pooh. They feel like you should be able to tie a ribbon to them and take them around above you. The larger ones that move into ever evolving shapes remind me of Hamlet. As you do.

* Sorry, just had to go there. Should know better than to start a post with a bad pun by now!

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Same But Different

While visiting the trifle-eating timeshare cat and his family recently, there was eating. Much eating. Some might even say gluttony (and very accurate they would be, too). The trifle eating cat's mum* is a wonderful cook. She also has a love of gelato which, while maybe not as extreme as my own, makes her a great partner in crime**.

Over the past year (time moves in strange ways down the coast, meaning I'm never entirely sure exactly when things happened, but anyway, relatively recently) a new ice cream place opened in the town centre. There were already two ice cream places, so arguably a third might be stretching the friendship. However, this one is a highly welcome addition, which makes its own gelato and also its own chocolates. It was paid a visit on the recent trip***.

It is an old source of amusement to my mum and me that we often choose the same things on a menu, usually discovered when one orders and the other one either replicates the entire thing, or tries hastily to change their mind in the interests of variety, originality, or something else to try around the table****. This time, however, something slightly different happened.

This was my mum's gelato...

And this was mine...

The same? Visually, very nearly. The taste, though, was very different.

On the one hand, there was bubble gum and licorice. On the other, there was cherry and crème caramel. I had been a little dubious about the bubble gum, and even more so about the licorice***** - to my surprise, both were delicious. The bubble gum was up there with the mint green concoctions I fondly remember from childhood, but with a little more subtlety. Although it would take a lot to displace cherry from its position as my favourite gelato du jour (despite this being a hotly contested role, with pistachio and cassata always in the background, and all sorts of other distracting flavours from time to time...).

A little more locally, there may be a need for a visit to Gelato Messina, which is the main source of those other distracting flavours. Roast almond and amarena cherry might be the best one I've heard of lately (and have yet to try). Also burnt caramel and ginger (yum). Although peanut butter and chocolate sounds intriguing. And the recent suggestion of bread and butter pudding flavour is just inspired!

* Also my mum, although I would stop short of calling the trifle eating cat my brother (this may be disputed by the rest of the family, who might argue that I don't know my place. I suspect the place is quite likely to be lower on the list than the said cat, and that would be entirely reasonable...).
** In gelato, and in many other things besides.
*** Only one visit. By coastal standards, this was positively restrained.
***** This sometimes works. The rest of the time, it leads to food envy on the part of the person who changed their mind (oh, for the vindication of food envy on the part of whichever one of us didn't change our minds, though!).
***** Which is odd, really, given my love of most things licorice related. Perhaps it's just suspicion on my part about the ability to translate an unexpected and very specific flavour into gelato. And after the apple pie gelato at Gelatissimo, I should be over that... (it appears to have vanished from their website though, which is a worry).

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Pricking The Balloon

What was it about pops of colour? Maybe it just set me off thinking, or maybe it was the novelty of a new camera* and a house with interesting bits and pieces at every turn, but I just loved the colours of these two photos together. Also, the triangle shapes in both shots in different ways. The chillis are the first ones from my mum and dad's chilli plant.

There is likely to be a serious glut of photos from the visit south over the next few weeks...

* A new camera? A camera that isn't attached to a phone at all... Woo hoo!

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