The secret life of me...

These are for LBF's uncle's birthday drinks tonight.

Pics not great, but you get the general idea.

I'm itching to make further fraisiers (as demonstrated on previous post) now that I know how, but am trying to sit on my hands!
Maybe next weekend

Have nice Saturday, everyone!!

Last night was LBF's Cooking Night - he has decided that it would be a good idea to do one of these every week, and I'm certainly not going to argue .
He made duck and tasty chilli vegetables which were super-awesome
The reason I'm telling you this is that he cooked the duck using a cunning pan-to-oven method, which was extremely tasty, but culminated in some painful hand burning (and he LAUGHED at me when I did that) and he would like to show the World his injuries - thus:

Today - as previously advertised, we high-tailed it off to Richmond to make patisserie at William Curley's chocolate shop.

We made these:

And also a great big one the same but four times the size

Needless to say, I shall now be making these EVERY DAY for the remainder of my life...

We also got to taste a load of the William Curley chocolates (I know what I'll be getting everyone for their birthdays from now on ) and some tasty hot chocolate...

Was a really great experience - I thoroughly enjoyed it (as did LBF, in fact, even though he was a bit uncertain at the outset).

Hope everyone else has had a nice weekend.

xxx

.... I have been mostly making bread...

I got a new bread book a week or so ago, and have been dedicatedly feeding a sourdough starter every day for the last week.
Today I finally deemed it ready and have been making some slowslowslow bread...
I started it at about 11 this morning and the second loaf is just in the oven now.
Hopefully they'll be tasty

I've also been trying to tidy/clear/clean the flat a little bit today, as part of my 'Tidy the Flat' summer holiday project.
Not sure whether the results are visible exactly, but have rehomed the recipe books, rationalised some shelves and a cupboard, cleaned near the bin and the cats' food place, emptied the in-tray (hurrah ) and cleaned and cleared (to some extent) the balcony, in preparation for my lovely director's chairs, which should allow us to sit there and utilise what little outside we have in our third floor flat and which are due to arrive early next week...
I've also planted some new basil plants, which may or may not stay alive in the kitchen.

I really want to do a massive clearout of the books and bookshelves, but it's a dauntingly huge job, and I hate getting rid of books (I did a really big cull when we moved here two and a half years ago, and it seems really soon to be doing it again)... I might save it for another weekend.

Tomorrow, we're off to Richmond for (hopefully) a small amount of fun-in-the-sun as a prelude to my birthday patisserie workshop here, which I am looking forward to so much that it's pretty much taking over my life
Photos to follow if our patisserie efforts are successful (and if they're not, we'll be drowning our sorrows in expensive chocolate, so maybe pics of that instead).

Hope everyone else is doing ok.

One for me for a change

I'm not now, of course, but most likely I will be in future....