Uncategorized | with knife and fork

Now thats real cracking crackling

At the end of May I went to my first Dine with Dos Hermanos dinner.

It was at Forman’s restaurant right next to the Olympic site. We had pretty good views of the stadium.

And we were plied with great food and wine.

Naturally the smoked salmon was amazing (Forman’s are London’s oldest, most famous and highly rated salmon smokery).

But we were also treated to porchetta.

Just look at that crackling. Stunning stuff.

Mystery (to me) flower

The garden next to us has a flowering cherry. Its close to the fence so we get the benefit of admiring it from our window.

I’ve notice recently another plant that seems to be growing up into the flowering cherry.

Its in flower now.

Does anyone know what it is?

UPDATE: the very helpful @josordoni @ailbhetweets and @theamplecook all tell me this is clematis montana, thank you for solving the mystery

Cream tea for one

Last week I made scones for the first time in years.

I made them because I wanted to have cream tea.

I wanted to have cream tea because I had some Roddas Clotted Cream.

And some of Humbers Homemade wonderful raspberry jam.

And some rather lovely Darjeeling First flush from Rare Tea Company.

Here it is:

Fabulous.

As you can see I tried the cream and jam both ways up, cream first and jam first.

The latter won. Because the other way up the jam overpowers the cream but with jam first you can taste both jam and cream in perfect harmony.

I might make scones a little more often.

Fluoro light by Tom Dixon

Last week I went to a dinner at the Dock Kitchen.

Its right next to Tom Dixon’s design studio and is one of his projects.

This is the lighting in the dining area

I love it.

Its called Fluoro and is of course by Tom himself.

Smokey prawns and sunshine

Ok I know there is no sunshine right here or right now but…

They are predicting at least some for the weekend.

Which means time for salads (yes Mr Hayward ones with protein in) and maybe BBQ.

I quite fancy some smokey prawns like these from Pinneys in Suffolk.

Just remember they come ready smoked so you don’t need to BBQ them (as I once heard someone suggest they might in a farm shop).

Yum.

Supa dupa supaclips (TM)

Okay so I’ve blogged these before elsewhere.

But they are just so good.

Yeah paper clips are nice. But these are way smarter. They make your documents look all nice and professional in one easy move.

And they are fun to use.

They are Rapesco Supaclips. You fill the plastic gadget with clips. You find some paper you want to clip together and you slot it in the end of the gadget. There’s a sliding mechanism on the gadget that you push and hey presto a clip pops forward, grabs the pages and holds them together. Nicely and neatly.

And the clips are reusable.

And actually its quite fun to use the gadget to fire clips across the office. But thats a bit naughty so make sure the boss isn’t watching or you are the boss so you can do what you like ;0

Go on make your documents look supa (TM) smart….

Bag, chair

I like this bag and I like this chair.

I thought they looked nice together.

They make me smile.

The bag is by Orla Kiely several seasons ago.

The chair was from my grandad’s house. You can find similar ones in second hand furniture shops and probably on ebay.