A Stag and The Crown





If anyone is ever within driving or hitch-hiking distance of Amersham Old Town, I implore said person to go to The Crown for dinner. 

Chris and I ate out as a rare treat, but at £25 for three courses it was a bargain! I had the most delicious duck liver pate for starter, tender pork cheek with macaroni cauliflower cheese for my main and a 'milk and cookies' dessert - white chocolate and cardamom panna cotta with a chocolate chip cookie (which I took home for later). Chris has an artichoke and truffle soup with roasted lamb which he raved about. But he wimped out at the dessert menu and opted for an expresso, which came with his own mini cookie.

The Crown can be booked out for weddings, I think if we'd moved here before planning ours it might have been tempting! But the Normanton Church is second to none for the ceremony, if only they were closer to each other!

Speaking of weddings, the invites are ready to go out I just need to finish the RSVP tags and confirming everyone's addresses.

I had these invitations done by RSVP Candy which have our story on the front and all the invitation details on the back.  I wasn't going to bother getting invites done professionally, I was just going to print some up myself, but as soon as I saw these in a wedding magazine I couldn't not have them. The artwork came back really quickly, they cost no more than generic staionary suppliers, and they never made me feel silly for having to go over 4 versions to get the wording just right.

In other news I bought this laser-cut stag head from Cox and Cox to hang on our brick fireplace in the dining room, it just needs painting...

It was a bit of a faff slotting the pieces together but I think it'll look really cool once we've got the floorboards sanded and some dining furniture for the stag to proudly gaze over.

Four months, three weeks & two days

Well that was a productive weekend.  I was back in the shire to get some stuff done for that wedding thingy that's coming around in 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days time.

I went to Stamford florist Miss Pickering who is doing my wedding flowers, it transpires that I'd underestimated the budget needed for 2x small bouquets and 8x button holes. But she was very nice and went through it all with me, and I'm very excited to see what she comes up with out of the flowers that will be in season in September. My only stipulation was to have lavender feature throughout, and that the button holes are all different.

Or maybe I should be doing my flowers like the Whitestuff window display, where they'd taken old computer technology and rampaged it with faux blooms (with a stuffed cat eating a mouse).

I'm not sure I get the relevance of the tins of tomatoes, but I won't argue with a shop that serves complimentary sweet tea to its customers.




I also went for a nice walk around Toll Bar with the fiance's parent's dog, who absolutely refused to go into the water and would not hear a word about it.

And I had a catch up with a friend at a local pub which featured a very cool custom made car and very rude design on my glass of diet coke.

And I've also finished making my guest book for the wedding. 

 I took a kraft paper scrapbook from Paperchase and filled it with mini coloured envelopes glued to the pages.

The idea is that our guests write us their note or message on a piece of kraft card, pop it in an envelope and seal it shut with one of these personalised stickers from Vintage Princess on Not On The High Street.

Ambiguous weather app

Holy crabapples I cannot tell you how much I love this weather symbol depicting the conditions in London today.

It could possibly be the most ambiguous weather prediction ever.

IT’S SUNNY!

NO WAIT, IT’S CLOUDY!

AAAHH IT’S RAINING!

THUNDER! LIGHTNING!

I do believe it is the bipolar schizophrenic of the meteorological world.  It is the indecisive goldfish of climatology with a short term memory deficiency. 

Or maybe it’s just Michael Fish covering his behind against all the possibilities. 

It did forget the hailstones though.  Get it together, BBC News.

Tho shalt not consume Subway again

A colleague of mine recommended to me a Vietnamese cafe called Pho on Great Titchfield Street, which has now become my new favourite lunching spot. I also introduced some Texan colleagues to its delights when they visited London a few weeks ago, and as fellow cultured foody enthusiasts they loved it too, which was a relief. I realised I'd actually been there before, to the Subway next door to get an Italian BMT with extra cheese. Never again!

I highly recommend the Bun Tom - rice noodles with juicy tiger prawns, herbs, veg, peanuts and a yummy nuoc cham sauce. Also grab a portion of the cha goi - pork spring rolls with satay dip!

Lessons on how to pronounce Pho:

I thought it was pronounced like 'foe', so I took great pleasure in telling my colleagues that I was going to get some 'Pho to go'. Until the one who had introduced me to it spoiled all my fun and informed me that it's pronounced 'foo'.  Saying I'm going to get some 'Pho to goo' just makes me sound like a prat. He's not on my xmas card list anymore. Not naming names. Mark.

Another smashing place to smash some smashing food into my face (ok I'll stop it) is the health food cafe Abokado on New Cavendish Street.

I particularly enjoy their sushi selections, salad boxes and flavoured popcorn. nom nom nom.

I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a light and tasty lunch for a reasonable price. Except you Mark. You can go eat a Subway.

In other news the cat decided he didn't like his left ear anymore and tried to scratch it off. Result? A scabby ear and a cone for a week.

stupid cat

Chris also had a crack at the weekend at putting up some coving in the master bedroom.  Once it's been tidied up and had a few gaps pollyfilled it'll look pretty darm good. 

We made the mistake of using a multi-purpose adhesive, but I've been advised by a very reliable DIYer that No Nails works better so we'll be getting some of that before we move onto the living room. At the very least it'll dry clear, unlike the adhesive which has left some unsightly orange stains that'll need painting. 

The key with the polysterine coving is to use a spare offcut to lightly apply even pressure, not your hands unless you want to leave some finger dents all over it. Good luck polyfilling that.

We've got it cove-ered

On a separate note - I'm not a praying person but if I did it would be for the people of Boston. My thoughts are with the families and friends of those affected by this evil act.

Goodbye Maggie

"I love argument. I love debate. I don't expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me - that's not their job".
Baroness Thatcher

There's a lot about the late Margerate Thatcher that I can relate to.  I like that she was opinionated but didn't expect everyone to agree with her, which as an opinionated but open minded person myself I can identify with.  

I don't consider myself a Conservative supporter because I struggle to entirely align myself to any one political party. My views drift across a spectrum of parties and stand-alone politicians so it's hard to lable myself with any of the coloured ribbons. 

My ribbon would be a rainbow of political observations, in different proportions and capacities depending on the subject matter.  And they would be interchangable, depending on the mood I'm in, what conversations I've had with others, the stage of life I'm at and what kind of week I'm having.  

Margaret Thatcher wasn't little miss popular, and her methods were questioned by many, but she was a gutsy woman in a tough job and for that alone I have a lot of respect for her.  I'm saying this because since the news broke that she departed this world earlier today, there's already a lot of people spouting a lot of negative views against her and the actions she took when she was in power.  I can't help but feel though, in that particular job description, if you've not fallen out with half the country you must not doing very much. 

Whether you agreed with her views or not, no one can deny she was a formidable woman and a pillar of strength who believed in the greatness of her country.  She was brave, bold and bright, in outfits and in business. 

The weekend, aka two days where meal times are not as strict and we eat what we like when we like. Shortbread for breakfast anyone?

How weekend salads differ to weekday salads

It is perfectly acceptable to add a good quantity of bacon and/or chorizo to a weekend salad.  It is perfectly acceptable to add an excessive amount of feta to a weekend salad.  It is also perfectly acceptable to spend over 15 minutes assembling a weekend salad and arrange on a plate in a way that is aesthetically pleasing. 

Weekday salads are healthy, quick and intended to make your colleagues feel guilty about their Subways and MaccyDs.  For shame.

 

Weekend salads are just pretending to be healthy. Yes, with those copious amounts of bacony goodness we aren't fooling anyone but at least there's no one around to judge us. Then I  eat cake as well.  Because I just ate a salad, so surely I've earned it?

Weekend salad for two

• 1/2 bag of mixed leaves - ideally rocket, spinach and watercress. Maybe leave out the watercress because it's like eating a small shrubbery and life's far too short.
• 200g bacon lardons, grilled until very crispy.
• 100g sliced chorizo, grilled until fairly crispy.
• 100g feta, chopped into cubes. Cubes of halloumi would be ace too, grill with a splash of lemon juice until golden.
• 4x tomatoes, sliced.
• 2x avocados, cut into rough chunks.
• 1/2 cucumber, sliced then quartered.
• 1x handful of pine nuts, toasted.
• Optional dressing - 3x tablespoons of honey with 1x of balsamic vinegar, heat in a pan until bubbling then pour over salad.  Careful, this stuff is like napalm if you get it on your skin.

Follow up with homemade in Banoffee pie
(using a pre-made sweet shortcrusy pastry, because the weekends are far too short and no one will ever know you didn't make it cos you'll gobble it all yourself).

Banoffee pie, because you just ate a salad 
and you deserve it.

After all this scoffing I set to work making our wedding guest book and RSVP cards.  

For the RSVP cards I've used parcel tags from the kraft paper range of paperchase and printed on one side where people tick to say if they are coming or not, and on the other side they tick to tell us what dinnre they've chosen - the hog roast or chicken.  The ribbon is from Cox and Cox and will be appearing all over the wedding stationery and decorations.

 

More to be revealed in due course...

A letter to the coldest March in more than 50 years

Dear cold weather,

Kindly sod off. We've had quite enough of it being -3C when we leave the house in the morning.  We've had enough of frozen toes and drippy noses. We've had enough of the sky high heating bills and I personally have had quite enough of the skin on my hands being so dry I could use them to sand back my dining room skirting boards. So please kindly do sod off, at least until November and we can pass you off as being 'Christmassy'.

Sincerely
Everyone

Happy Zombie Jesus Weekend

Happy Easter everyone, hope you all had lovely weekends.

dados - not to be confused with dodos

We had a very productive weekend, including fixing the dado rail to the walls in the dining room. The first one we had a bash at fell down after a few minutes of suspended animation but we got there in the end - not an easy task when the walls aren't flat or even.

Oh the charms of quirky victorian cottages.

   

I also discovered that the Lindor bunnies have been operating under covert identities:

 

 

And I learned that going to a Starbucks that isn't your regular spot is a daft experience because they will take the spelling of your name far too literally: