Winter Garden

As the winter sets in good and proper with a white dusting of snow I am wrapping up my little garden for next year. Having planted all my tulips, daffodils and assorted 'bargain bags' of bulbs from the pound store I've nothing to do but stay indoors and hope that life begins again in Spring.

With overwhelming enthusiasm last year I planted out garlic, carrots and other winter veg but with the late extreme snow at the beginning of year I got a measly return for my investment. This year as I now own a house (scary!) and with an allotment in the pipeline I thought I'd take more time and plant a few things a bit of a time and see how they go.

In the meantime, bring on the poinsettia and amaryllis and I can't wait to get some indoor seedlings started next month!

Snow in Salford!

Celebrating the nearing of December today as I wake up to a dusting of snow across Salford. Only one more sleep until I have an excuse to create a tacky nightmare in my house - only twenty more origami baubles to make, recycle recycle is the theme this year!

Find some good starting points for origami decor here

Or try this origami wreath, a nice 15 minute project.

Jessica Harrison

I know what I want for Christmas this year! Love, love love these porcelain figures by Jessica Harrison, there's something of a Victorian macabre about this. Amazing stuff. Makes me feel a little depressed, she graduated at Edinburgh School of Art (our rival to Glasgow School of art!) the same year as me, damn you successful people! Best get on with my work then!

www.jessicaharrison.co.uk

Halo Folded Wrap - Flat Toaster

With our kitchens getting smaller and amount of appliances increasing we are desperately in need of some new ideas in space saving. Lo and behold, what do I see today - a flat toaster. I am so impressed by this ingenious idea and the design, I was semi-impressed by the see-through toaster, but a flat sheet that folds and toasts - holy moly.



The Halo Folded Wrap is a flat sheet, almost like a silicon baking sheet, you put on the toast, fold over wrap and press the button, even better the toast shows through the folded side as a blue shape that turns red when ready. I can't express how much a I want one of these, they can even be rolled up for storage like a place mat!

Read more here.

Halloween Finger Biscuits

Found a fabulous recipe from bbcgoodfood.com for biscuits in the shape of fingers for creepy Halloween party food. Easy and anything, you just put the ingredients together in the food processor blend away until it forms a dough, then roll out with your hands, make some crease marks with a knife and push on an almond for the nail. Creepy.




Finger Biscuits
100g caster sugar
100g butter
1 egg yolk
200g plain flour
½ tsp vanilla extract
20 blanched almonds
red food colouring

Method

Place the first five ingredients and a pinch of salt in a food processor and whizz just until a ball of dough forms. Tear off a golfball-size piece of dough and use your hands to roll into finger-size cylinders - you should get about 20. Place on a baking sheet lined with baking parchment - a little apart as they will spread during baking. Use a knife to make a few cuts, close together, for the knuckles. Place an almond at the end of each finger and trim away excess pastry around the edge to neaten. Place in the fridge for 30 mins, heat oven to 180C/160F/Gas 4, then bake for 10-12 mins just until firm. Leave to cool a little, then paint the almond with food colouring, if you like. Makes 20.

Get the full recipe from BBC Good Food here.

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Rocking it in Red

Showing that red and leopard print really can look elegant Georgia May Jagger really won this week in the style stakes, managing pretty and edgy all in one with this amazing red lace-trimmed Meadham Kirchoff dress and Charlotte Olympia leopard print heels. Looking every bit rock royalty the 18 year-old daughter of Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall attended Vogue's London Emerging Designers cocktail party this week in New York working a youthful scarlet showing us that red can really work on lighter skin-tones. Does this girl ever put a fashion foot wrong?

Photo: Handbag.com

Lanvin for H&M

The wait is nearly over! Only ten days to go until we can get our hands on Lanvin’s collection for H&M launching 20th November. France’s oldest couture house as seen on the likes of Anna Wintour, Rihanna and Katie Holmes to name a few is bringing luxury to the masses with this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us regular girls to get our hands on these beautiful clothes. With dresses starting at £90 this 48-piece collection isn’t cheap but worth splashing out the extra cash in time for Christmas. My favorites include the bright yellow one-shoulder ruffle dress and black ruffle prom dress. Get saving those pennies!

Image: Lanvin

Feminism Posters

A few new posters I'm working on here over at E&Sh for my office wall, I'm awaiting the new A3 printer so printing a go-go soon!

French Brocante: How may plates do I need?

Having spent the summer trawling the regional brocantes (antiques markets) of the Lot region of France and having come home with armfuls of strange items for my new house I was perusing my new items thinking I should never ever buy another tea cup in my life! (I have over 60 now...)

One of the benefits of buying antiques in this region is the many chateaus in the area selling their wares. Dinner services, for example that are seen as fussy and old fashioned by their owners, but the city dweller picks them up as vintage chic. I did see a dinner service that brought out the seven year-old child in me, the princess fairy castle style, vile and pink but something of it reminded me of my youth.

When I was about seven or eight my sister and I visited the vicars' wife Lesley Condor at the vicarage to spend an afternoon making our own Faberge eggs (Ok I realise I am only 26 and this was about 1990 not 1920 but I had a rather Enid Blyton childhood). So we carefully blew the eggs which I seem to remember were the size of my head, but must have just been goose eggs not dinosaur.

We cut out the front, make a little interior platform, painted them and coated the inside with sparkle before affixing golden legs and a gold top. The best part however was choosing the tiny figurine to put inside and a transfer on the back. Being about seven I went for a Marie Antoinette looking fairy inside and affixed similar themed transfer to the back - this memory, stored in the far recesses of my mind flew straight into the present when I saw a dinner service at the brocante this summer. The motif was almost identical and this nearly saw me depart with €150 for a 53 (yes 53, must have had a breakage) piece dinner service complete with gravy boats, serving plates and an alarming amount of dinner plates! In which lifetime did I think 23 dinner plates would be necessary?!




This said however, since researching the practicalities of holding our wedding in France, buying these antique dinner services would be cheaper than renting them from the caterer! So next summer I shall take the plunge and get one, just maybe not with a pink Marie Antoinette figure on!

Hate to Love: Jamie's 30 Minute Meals

Ok, so here's where I come across as a food snob, but I am just so over the Jamie Oliver early 2000's 'scrunch it up', 'bish, bash, bosh' style of cooking, or so I thought until I got hooked on Jamie's 30 minute meals. On Channel 4 daily at 5:30pm this programme is aimed at the stay at home mum, the student or the one person who managed to negotiate flexi-time, not so much aimed at the rest of us who don't even dare sit back in their office chair until 6pm for fear of being branded a part-timer.

However, with the brilliance that is 4OD (if you don't know what this is either you're from outside the UK or have such an exciting life that watching the entire series of Kitchen Nightmares in one sitting doesn't appeal) I can sit back and watch the 30 minute show that I do hate to love. What I usually love to watch in intricate towers of patisserie glazed with sea urchins tears and sprinkled with diamond-dust a la Masterchef, but this programme has got me downloading the recipes and giving a few things a go.

The main thing that really appeals in that he cooks a main, sides and dessert in 30 minutes that no only goes but creates a great meal. Ok, so most twenty-somethings won't go for dessert seven nights a week, but as an avid dinner party holder I really appreciate this menu construction angle. I think most of us struggle to pith a main and a dessert with complimentary flavours and a good balance of portion size, so here Jamie has cracked the 30-minute berry sorbet, accompanied by sea bash on sweet potato mash with Asian spiced green AND a lemon ginger cocktail on the side. Blimey, this man is on fire! (See here is you don't believe me!)




So after my long standing anger with Delia Smith for her Frugal Food series involving tinned mince and pre-chopped onions, Jamie has restored my faith that cookery fashion is headed the right way - towards those who enjoy Moroccan lamb with a mango kulfi, not a cottage pie made from tinned goods. What's more every recipe that you see being made is available straight away on Channel 4's website!

Great programme, but I'm looking forward to the next Jamie's revolution. Vive la Food Revolution!