Photo Diary: Project 365, weeks 29 and 30

A tricky week with our darling Sash meant I didn't manage to take daily photos, and also wasn't able to do a post for the previous week.

To compensate for the lack of photos for week 29, there are several extras for week 30.

A pink tart, with ricotta and remains of the berry compote I made the day before. I added the berries to ricotta and eggs, and poured over the shortcrust pastry case.

It might not be a GBBO material, but it was tasty, and colourful.

Since Boots have changed their points system, it takes ages now to acquire a decent amount. It took me a couple of years to get enough points for a new scent.

As it was Eddie's birthday coming, I have ordered a Lacoste Original perfume with a free gift of a sports bag. The perfume itself was also on offer. All paid in points, so I'm super pleased.

An exciting day for the Varese household. My husband received one of the signal copies of the forthcoming book Tradecraft/Writers on le Carrė. 

The book will be out in October, to coincide with the exhibition at the Bodleian library in Oxford. The book creates a portrait of the great writer and gives insights into his writing technique. My husband edited the book and wrote one of the chapters.

I read it when it was still a draft, and inside there are a couple of photos that I took many years ago.

If you're interested in le Carrė's life and work, visit the exhibition and read the book.

You buy expensive plants and bulbs for the garden, and they die. Yet so many wild flowers appear, that I haven't planted, and in spots where they shouldn't be growing, like this silly mallow, nestled among the flagstones. These flowers are really in the wrong place, and I should get rid of them, but I have no heart to do so.

The same with hollyhocks, there are some varieties that noone planted on purpose, the seeds must have arrived with the winds or perhaps in a bird poop.

One of my sketches for the ongoing Penandinkchallenge. Prompt: popsicle. I did a quick sketch in a vintage style palette, using Karin Realbrush Pro and Stabilo pens.

The fig tree has lots of fruit, still rock-hard, despite plenty of sunshine and heat. I was hoping to get at least another ripe fruit, and to my chagrin, the birds got to it before me, the other side was pecked to bits.

Monday school day was totally nuts. Eddie arrived home, covered in red paint, as they played games in different teams, representing their houses. They might have had a blast, but I wasn't amused. 

It was supposedly a water-based paint, yet the soap and water didn't help much. After Eddie had a bath, we had to clean it, as it was stained pink. And then I spent ages, trying to clean his face and arms with cotton wool and face lotion. 

On Tuesday morning I met up with one of my friends, who I haven't seen in months. I realised we haven't seen each other since before spring school break, as I still had a little gift for her which I bought in Paris (and that was in April). We went to the Middle Eastern cafe for a coffee. I also had a maamoul cookie with pistachios.

The last day of school... and freedom until September, when Eddie will need to think about his GCSEs. We met in town to buy a new wetsuit, as the last year's one is too short now (took it to the charity shop), and had some drinks in the bar. Sasha was out with his PAs, and enjoyed his trip to the cafe and the book shop.

My Pentire Coastal Spritz...

There are plenty of hazelnuts on the trees in the garden. The problem is: do I pick them up now while they are still green, or wait longer, and then they will most likely be bitten off and thrown on the ground by the thuggish squirrels. If they ate them, it would have been less aggravating, but they just throw them around.

On Thursday I managed to meet up with another friend. It's pure luxury to be able to see two of my friends in one week. It basically never-ever happens.

OK, now I have tried the overhyped M&S limited edition strawberry and cream sandwich. So much online furore over nothing, it being called a social media sensation. It is a bit bland, and while inoffensive, it was just about OK, nothing special, and I won't be buying it again.

Have you tried it? What's your verdict?

We don't usually have a cake for breakfast but as my husband was going away to Vienna to teach in a summer school, we decided to have a slice first thing in the morning and sing a Happy Birthday to Eddie. 

This is the Neapolitan cake that I buy for all my guys' birthdays, as it's their favourite. Sasha was very happy with the cake. 

One of Eddie's photos popped up on Facebook, from the day he turned one year old. And now my baby is taller than me, and is going to do his GCSEs next year.

It's not easy to get the right gifts for a teenager. One of the presents I bought for Eddie is The Last of Us game. We recently watched two seasons of The Last of Us, and I knew he would enjoy comparing the original game and the series.

You can also spot the Squid Game Funko Pop figurine under the screen, which was another of his presents. 

How was your week?

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Photo diary: Project 365, week 12

It was a week of dichotomy, with tears and smiles in bunches.

Monday didn't start well, as Sasha got up in a bout of angst and temper. He was so stressed and kept hitting the wall in his room so hard that he actually hurt himself, and there was blood on the wall from his hand.

It's been over a year since Sasha's anxiety has peaked. Overall, the meds help, but still there are days like this, when his depression and anxiety rule. 

It's very hard to see my boy so distressed and unhappy, and I can only imagine how hard it must be for him, not being able to express his pain in words.

Later he was in a much better mood, going out with his PAs, and having a birthday cake in the evening. My guys love the Neapolitan cake from Waitrose, it's a tasty three-layer sponge cake, very pretty.

Eddie and I are big fans of the Hunger Games series of books and films, and were looking forward to the latest release, Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins. I pre-booked it a long time ago on Waterstones. The site doesn't give you an option of pre-booking for collection in store (as they used to), and insist on sending it to your home address, using the services of Royal Mail. 

Sorry to say, but Royal Mail is a pain in the posterior. They allocate the time slot by email, and never ever stick to it. Last week they were supposed to deliver a small parcel from the Sates on Saturday, instead it was delivered on Sunday. I detest waiting and waiting for them all day long.

I was super annoyed that the book hasn't been delivered on the publication day at all. Never again will I place a pre-order with Waterstones, and will just buy in the actual store itself, especially that we have a brilliant team at the local store, very friendly and knowledgeable.

The latest Tokyo Treat box arrived this week. This is the third, and most likely, final, box for us. As much as we enjoyed trying all the new foods and discovering new flavours, it's just too pricey to continue. It's a cool gift idea for a birthday or whatever occasion you celebrate.

The weather kept changing its mind from day to day, we had some very hot days followed by rather chilly ones. I keep pottering in the garden, as there is so much to do there. Love seeing life in the garden, already spotted a few butterflies, bumblebees and ladybirds.

On Friday Eddie was invited by one of his class mates for a sleepover, and I walked with him across the town centre, helping to carry his things. The evening sun was casting its rays on the cloak at Buttercross (clock turret).

The sakura blossom in town is so pretty. This tree is just outside the Nuffield clinic.

In the last week I was reading Dead of Winter by Darcy Coates, a psychological/survival thriller, set in a remote cabin in the winter snowstorm. Eight strangers go by bus on a trip to the Rocky mountains. On the way to the resort where they were heading, they are stranded by a fallen tree. While waiting for the road to be cleared, Christa (the main character who narrates the story) and her boyfriend go for a quick walk and get lost in the storm.

The group is forced to ditch the original destination and take shelter in a seemingly abandoned hunting cabin. The atmosphere is claustrophobic enough, and then the tour guide goes missing. His mutilated body is found the next morning. Is there is a murderer on the loose, playing sadistic games, or is someone from the group killing their tour mates for sport. Who, if anyone, can Christa trust, as the number of survivors goes smaller and smaller... Who is the culprit, and what's their agenda? 

The story is very graphic, so if you're squeamish, don't read it. I usually enjoy this kind of isolated setting, but the plot was rather convoluted and the reasoning behind the murder spree isn't convincing.

This is the first book by Darcy Coates that I've read. I must be reading way too many thrillers, because I somehow guessed the twist quite early. 

How did your week go?

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Photo diary: week 15, project 365

 Easter holidays seemed longer than usual, but it's back to school today. The morning passed in a blur, nobody was enthusiastic about getting up earlier. Sash was quite excited, as he missed his school, and he kept showing me pictures and PECs of school - his way of asking when he would be going back.

Looking back at the week, we didn't do much. We finished watching all four Hunger Games films, which I absolutely loved, and will be happy to watch again in the future. For some reason it resonated with me. We even started reading the first book together. 

I posted several book reviews, including for The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex, which I found fascinating and beautifully written. It is a ghsot story, set in Cornwall, but it's also much more than that. It's an exploration of grief, and mental anguish. 

Our friends invited us for an hour of tennis at the Leys. I wasn't sure if we would be able to go, as we woke up to a layer of snow on the ground. Not exactly a tennis weather.

We walked to the tennis courts past the church: the daffodils were poking out like yellow rebels from the snow. I didn't realise my iphone touched the drops on the flowers, so the snap appears slightly ghostly, with the flower's stem almost invisible and the flower "floating" in the air.

An hour later it got so hot at the courts, that we had to take off the coats. Utterly crazy weather. On the way home we visited the book shop, where we bought Hunger Games book 1. This was the first and only non-food shop we've visited in a while. 

Eddie spent quite a lot of time, playing in the garden. He loves climbing on the apple tree. This is a snap taken by my husband. 

The red car in the background is an old bed which we bought for Eddie several years ago. It was the worst purchase of my life. He hated it so much, he probably slept only one night through in it. It is made of hard plastic, and when he moved around, it made loud banging noises, and was also super uncomfortable. It's been in the shed for some time, and I am thinking of turning it into a bedding frame for flowers.

This week has seen a caterpillar cake war on social media. M&S is claiming Colin the Caterpillar cake and suing Aldi for the copyright. Except that all the other supermarkets have the same style cakes. Every single store. There are some amusing tweets on the topic.

On Friday Eddie had a friend over for a day. And again, it was one of the firsts in a long while. I didn't mean them to spend just so many hours together, but they had so much fun.

On Saturday the Brits said Farewell to the Duke of Edinburgh. We didn't watch the whole ceremony, as we were out, and only caught the very end. We did observe the minute of silence at 3pm. 

I've read that thousands of people lodged complaints to the BBC about the non-stop coverage of the Duke's life on the day when his death was announced. Could they not have found a different channel among hundreds? With so many good causes to fight for they choose this occasion to complain? 

I'm not a Royalist at all, but reading about these complaints truly irked me. Where is the so called national tolerance? "...send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee".

And how was your week?

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Photo diary: week 14, project 365

 The weather can't decide, what it's going to be. On Easter Sunday we had sunshine before lunch, and snowflakes melting mid-air in the afternoon. I had to cover up the potted tulips, as I was worried they might not endure the frost well, then uncover, then cover again. It was as if the weather was playing silly games with us.

I cooked most of the Easter lunch apart from the dessert, which was a winter berries meringue wreath from M&S. It was tasty but a pain to slice, even after it was completely defrosted, so after I took the pretty photo and started to cut, the cake was a big mess of broken meringues, cream and berries. Though nobody complained. 

On Monday morning we had a long walk around town, catching Pokemons. I saw this funny-shaped cloud, and thought it looked like an angry bear trying to swallow the small cloud.

I've been feeling stressed recently, and when I am, I turn to retail therapy and buy books. Whenever I read an interesting review, either online or in the newspaper, I add the books to my TBR list, and regularly go through it, checking if the price has gone down. Truly bad habit. This is the stash I bought in the last few weeks.

I follow quite a few authors seen below on Twitter, like Robin Morgan-Bentley, Matt Haig, Maisie Thomas, Amanda James etc. 

I started reading Sisters by Daisy Johnson. It had great reviews which must have influenced my choice. I'm half-way through, and so far not impressed. The author tries very hard to be edgy-intellectual. The style of writing is convoluted, and there are big passages with hardly any punctuation. I want to finish it, and hope my first impressions are wrong. Have you read Sisters?

More cloud shapes - this one made me think of an angel flying horizontally over the trees, with his beautifully shaped wing.

The sight of chickens roaming around always makes me think of my grandma who kept chickens. She lived at the end of the village, with the forest blending into the garden, and steppes all around. 

This lovely view is of the Cogges Manor Farm. We didn't venture inside the compound, as the air was nippy. Hopefully once the weather makes up its mind and gets warm properly, we can visit Cogges and look at the beautiful garden.

After the Mother's day was over, our local Waitrose had lots of potted plants at reduced price. I bought a pot with white hyacinths. They are in full bloom now, and the scent is so delicate and beautiful. The hyacinths in the garden are almost all wilted now, and I'm still waiting for the pricey tulips from the garden centre to start to bloom. 

I have quite a lot of red tulips along the garden path, which grow "in the wild", i.e. I never feed them or do anything, they just reappear every year, strong and intensely red.

My Mum was looking through her boxes of old photos, and have dug out this picture of me, when I was in my early 20s. She asked my brother to scan it and send to me. I think I was in my 1980s modern romantics' stage, wearing floaty long dresses and lacy tops. I loved that vintage top, it belonged to a friend of my Mum's who's found it in her closet from her younger days. It was knitted from white cotton thread, and I have added tiny little pearly beads along the edges. 

When I look at the photo now, I think I was very pretty, but I was so insecure about my appearance.  And gosh, my head was so full of romantic nonsense. It didn't help that the boy I fancied didn't even notice me. I wish I could tell my younger self not to fret, and that the boy I was pining for, was just not right for me. 

On a different topic, we watched Hunger Games (first two films) for two evenings in a row. I didn't expect that I would be so involved emotionally. 

And how was your week?

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Apple and marzipan loaf cake

Are you getting ready for the 2nd episode of GBBO tonight? Have you been baking, or bought something sweet to munch on, while chuckling at the terrible baking puns?
Last week's episode included a Battenberg- baking challenge. I've never baked a Battenberg in my life. It's Mr Kipling's Battenberg for me all the way, it looks pretty, and gives just the right amount of sugar rush.

Before I tell you what I've baked for tonight, let me share some interesting data. There were 7.9 million viewers glued to the screen last week, tutting at the bad jokes and gasping at the pineapple-upside-down-cakes-gate. The Showstopper was as silly as they tend to be. Why would you want to cut someone's head to eat it, even if it's a cake?!

I'm not a fan of Matt Lucas, and don't find him amusing. But I suppose, it's a GBBO tradition to have  cringeworthy presenters, whose jokes make you roll your eyes.

The restaurant discount supplier Enjoy Stevie decided to look at Google Search trend data on the bakery show, at the rise of different recipes, which have been discussed on the show, to see how searches increased or decreased. And the results are very curious.

The Key Stats revealed that:
- rise of the Marzipan searches increased by 4200%
- Bake-Off and Battenberg/Battenburg searches increased by 12000%
- The Upside Down Pineapple Revolution searches increased by 600%

The list shows just how influential the show has become.

And while I wanted to bake something with marzipan, I don't have time to make my own, and I'm also not feeling great (the seasonal colds have caught up with me). I popped into Waitrose today, grabbed a bar of Niederegger milk chocolate marzipan and this afternoon I baked an apple and marzipan loaf cake.
It's a quick and easy recipe. Don't think the GBBO judges would give me the Baker of the week badge, but my family would.

Apple and marzipan loaf cake
Ingredients:

2 medium eggs
80g demerara sugar
70g ground almonds
100g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
90g butter, melted
1 big apple, peeled and chopped into small cubes
half a bar of Niederegger milk chocolate marzipan
1tsp cinnamon

Beat the eggs with the sugar, mix in the ground almonds and sift in the flour with baking powder. Melt the butter, cool it a bit, then add to the cake batter.
Peel one big apple, core, and chop into small cubes. Add to the cake batter with the chopped chocolate marzipan bar and cinnamon. The cake batter is quite thick. Spoon it into an oiled loaf tin, place the tin in the oven preheated to 180C and bake for 35+ minutes. Check the readiness with a wooden toothpick.

Let it cool on the cooling rack before you start cutting it, it's rather crumbly.
Serve warm or cold, with single cream or ice cream.

If I'm not wrong, it's a biscuit week tonight on GBBO. Who are you rooting for?

Disclosure: The data above has been shared, courtesy of Enjoy Stevie. This is not a sponsored post.

Photo diary: week 31, project 366

It was such an uneventful week, and I think my mojo has deserted me altogether, I truly struggled with taking photos.
I just want to breathe some sea air, and feel the sand under my feet, not do the same things every week. Some people thrive on a routine, I find the sameness rather dispiriting.

On the plus side, I finished reading two good books - The Hopkins Conundrum by Simon Edge, which I bought a while ago, and The Surplus Girls by Polly Heron, sent to me by the author herself for reviewing.

On Sunday I baked an apple yogurt cake. And that was all the excitement for the day.

We're going to have a glut of apples again this autumn. These apples are late-ripening, and will need to be picked by late September - early October. They keep well in the cold, the skin acquires a slightly waxy feel about them, and the taste becomes sweeter. Sometimes I still have apples left in early spring.

Finally the first cherry tomatoes started to ripen. I saw a discussion on Mumsnet earlier this week about the green tomatoes, and nodded in agreement. Lots of tomatoes on the vines, but nothing ripe yet. The taste of the tomato picked fresh from the vine, still warm from the summer sun, is incomparable. I also love the smell of tomatoes, and could easily wear it as a perfume, if there was a tomato perfume.

The last day of July was a scorcher. I don't do hot weather. My brain goes in the meltdown mode. I had to go into town, and nearly fainted. It was like walking through a warm milk.

And a three-photos' lot from today. We accompanied Sash and his father to the Café Nero, and I asked Eddie to stop to take some photos of the clouds, and my sarcastic child uttered: "That could take a while".
I just thought this cloud looks like a snake.

We popped in the book shop to see if we could find The Unadoptables but they didn't have a single copy. I have plenty to read, but always like to check out the books of the month at Waterstones.

Thankfully, today wasn't as hot as the day before, and I'm feeling more human.

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Apple yogurt cake

My funny guy Sash loves watching cooking shows on YouTube, especially the cake-decorating videos. There is one particularly annoying creative lady who loves adding chocolate ganache to everything. And tons of frosting. Her cakes might look pretty, but the amount of sugar is staggering. Anyway, as long as it keeps my child happy, he  can watch any cake videos to his heart's content.
I prefer to bake easy cakes, with a minimal amount of frosting, or none at all.

Any bake with an added fruit or vegetables is a bonus for me. The last fruit and veg box had several green apples, not sure of the variety, but like small sized Granny Smith, i.e. sharp and sour. I know green apples are supposed to be better for you, as they have health benefits - more fibre, minerals, vitamins, blah blah. But my guys would only eat pink/red apples.
 A cake with apples is a perfect solution, and a crowd pleaser.

An apple yogurt cake is very easy to make, and doesn't use any fancy ingredients.

Apple Yogurt Cake
Ingredients:
180g sugar (I used a mix of demerara and caster sugar, 90g each)
2 medium eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
1tsp ground cinnamon
125ml Greek style yogurt
2tbsp polenta (optional)
190g self-raising flour
1tsp baking powder
2 medium apples

In a medium sized mixing bowl beat in the sugar and eggs, add the vanilla, cinnamon, yogurt, polenta, sift in the flour and baking powder and mix until well combined. The cake dough is quite thick.
Spoon it into a pre-oiled spring cake tin.
Peel two apples, core and slice into crescents. Arrange the slices on top of the cake.
Place the tin in the oven preheated to 180C.
Bake for about 50+ minutes. You might want to put a foil over the cake, so that the top doesn't brown too much.
Once baked, take out of the tin and place on a cooling rack. Add a sprinkle of sugar or icing sugar.
Serve warm or cold, with tea or coffee.

You can use either caster or demerara,or a mix of both. I've read somewhere (not sure who the celeb chef was) that adding demerara to caster sugar makes for a fudgier taste.
If you don't have polenta, it's not a must ingredient. I like to add a little bit to cakes for an extra texture, and it also helps with the soggier ingredients like apples, carrots etc.

I baked this cake in the evening, when the light wasn't the best for taking photos, and thought I'd take more pictures of the sliced cake the next day. By the time I realised I haven't taken any pics, the cake was almost all gone.