A few photographs of our trip on Emirates Air Line today.  Although a misty day it was the greatest fun flying over the Thames.

I went to Royal Arsenal Woolwich to watch some of the Tall ships coming in yesterday for the Tall Ships Festival, have a look on the net, its going to be amazing. Hubby had studied the tide times and been on the internet to work out that there were a few ships hanging around at Southend and between us we’d decided that they’d want a bit of water under them once the tide turned so I should turn up about three.  I wasn’t disappointed as they turned up in quick succession over the next three hours, well slightly that some weren’t showing off and still in sail, but it was fabulous none the less.

I’m drifting off to bed now, look out for the people perched in high rise places and my heart skipped a beat every time a ship came around the bend in the river.  I can just imagine how formidable they must have looked in years gone by.

Remember the shoulder of Pork?  Well I decided to make it into a nice sticky barbecue style mess.

First of all I soaked some black eyed beans overnight and then cooked them for nearly an hour until they were tender.

Then I fried some onions with some chilli, garlic, ginger and then peeled and chopped a Bramley apple, added a tin of tomatoes, some tomato puree, a good dollop of mustard, some sugar, some vinegar and the diced pork, not forgetting salt and pepper and then I had this.

And I let it simmer for a while until I had this.

And the apple had disintegrated to make it lighter and slightly tangier and sweeter and then I piled it ontop of a jacket potato and it became a thing of beauty.

And the rest was frozen for days when cooking seems either tedious, exhausting or boring…

I love woollen blankets, especially handmade knitted or crochet blankets, but it does have to be wool or maybe alpaca, I’d probably be happy with alpaca, hot, very hot, but happy.  I love the warmth that comes from animal fibres.  Even when its wet, wool keeps you warm, although it might be very heavy!  I know some people love acrylic, possibly for their bright colours or being able to wash it easily, but there are so many lovely washable wools on the market these days, at very reasonable costs and acrylic just does not keep you warm, well not like wool does.  And I especially love the tones that look like tweed, I told my gran that that was my favourite yarn, when I was about six, long before I discovered knitting in my forties.  She said it was her favourite too.  But there is one thing I always forget about woollen blankets..

They take a very long time to produce.  Well they do for me, I know there are some people who can just crack on with them and with a flourish produce a blanket in record time, I can do that for a quilt, I just can’t do that for knitting.  I get side tracked so easily, a pair of socks here, a few rows on a cardigan there, download that shawl pattern and spend the morning threading beads.. I’m just so fickle.  But my blanket is growing into nice long strips now, so the colours are coming together and I can get an idea of what it is going to look like, I’m so in love with it, its spurring me on.

I am not even sure where I came across this delightful dress, I just knew I wanted to make it as soon as I saw it.  I tracked it down quite quickly Meghan Peasant Dress as I lay in bed, bought it and then jumped out of my bed, wiping sleep from my eyes to print the PDF pattern out.  Soon I was cutting the pattern pieces out whilst having my morning coffee and listening to the washing machine whirr while it washed my fabric that I’d chosen for the dresses.

Then came the more technical work of adjusting the pieces to fit my problem bust area.  Thankfully it was a bright morning so my fabric dried in record time and I was cutting out before lunchtime. I then sewed up the fabric reminiscent of corinthian columns in a monochrome palate into a dress adding the frill the next day, which was a black cotton we had been given for pocketing,  I’m still working on a belt.  This was my toile, and from that I altered the pattern slightly to produce another dress in a paisley pattern which is a slightly better fit, but both are definitely wearable.

Please excuse the unironed nature of the dresses, I was rushing to get this post in.  They have been washed and worn for the last couple of weeks, they are so simple to wear and do the trick of looking a little dressed up in a nice cool cotton without any fuss, which in the heat of the summer can only be a very good thing.

I had a couple of egg yolks left over from a recipe and wondered what to do with them.  I didn’t fancy custard or ice-cream so after a little routing through my cookery books I adapted a recipe from Three Good Things by Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall

I cooked together equal parts of swede and potato, mashed them together with some butter, added a couple of ounces of cheddar and mashed that in, hollowed out a mound and popped the egg yolks plus a whole egg in and then placed it in the oven for a few minutes.

It became more than the sum of its parts, it was delicious, thanks Hugh.

We took a trip along the coast last weekend, firstly stopping at Southend.

The longest pier in the country, it even has it’s own train to get to the end.

I played on the 2p shoves.  I do love these, I’ll always love them.  

We trundled along to Leigh-on-Sea and ate the best cockles I’ve ever had, but the wind was fierce and soon we went home.

The next day we came back to explore Westcliffe-on-Sea and Thorpe Bay

It was lovely

and peaceful and definitely not London or landlocked Warwickshire.

I taught hubby about the wonders of seaglass and once explained he was off like a rocket picking up pieces as he walked, although once I’d got my eye in, I was able to keep up.   You should have seen how pleased he was with himself when he handed me the tiny blue piece of sand worn glass. 

And as we walked back to the car, the beauty of the beach huts.  Tiny huts and wider huts, new huts and old, painted in seaglass whites, greens and blues.

A snapshot of Camden Lock Market during one day in the middle of the summer.

Hubby and I seem to be living in a bit of a pork fest at the moment.  Tales of beautifully cooked shoulders of pork, cooked for upwards of five hours that melt in the mouth with the crunchiest of crackling abound from Warwickshire.   Although when asked if leftovers could be brought to London the phone seems to go quiet and the direction of the conversation is swiftly changed.

So I have had to cook my own or otherwise be left in a state of constant desire for sticky porky loveliness.

These are the left overs, I bought the biggest shoulder I could find, if your going to have the oven on for that long, you might as well make full use of it and have the basis for more meals.  I would have preferred it on the bone, but the Chinese supermarket had sold out and the big supermarkets in the UK seem to think we all want boneless items that are easy to carve.

I would have shown you the dinner, but we ate it very quickly, it was delicious.   Sticky dark amber roast potatoes, slightly bitter savoy cabbage, young carrots and a few spears of purple sprouting, it was everything it could have ever been and the gravy, oh the gravy, it was magnificent.

So I cut a few slices of pork off and chopped them up finely, added some Jamaican Jerk barbecue sauce which was very tasty and chopped up a few sprigs of coriander and mixed them up.  I’d cooked some Thai rice off which had gone cold, slightly stickier than a Basmati, I probably could have done better with a Japanese sticky rice, but it all worked fine.  Making sure to wet my hands to stop it all from sticking I made some rice balls stuffed with the barbecue pork. 

And then left them to chill in the fridge for an hour.

Next I pan fried them for a few minutes until they were crunchy on the outside and then finished them in the microwave – I didn’t want them to burn but wanted the filling hot and sticky.  You might call it slow food with a quick finish!   And of course, they were gorgeous.