Apples and leaves

Autumn's beauty always takes me surprise. I dread the loss of summer so keenly that my misery seems settled for the long haul of cold, till next June at least. Then, one crisp afternoon the air is smelling of burning wood, the outrageous golds and reds of trees are illuminated by the cloudless sky and I feel the tingling of a kind of enlightened joy; like in the outward thrust of summer something was missing, that now is returning - a welcome home-coming of the soul.

Easy food

Here's some shots I did with a talented young photographer, Mr John Latham, using only daylight in a garage out on some country road somewhere between Manchester and Liverpool.

I kept the recipes simple; baked egg and steak, garlicky mushrooms on puff pastry with watercress, the last of the summer nectarines and plums grilled with sugar and vanilla. Easy food with a British bent.

Grapes on a plate

In a largely domestic life, in a country without civil war, with my health, my children happy, my husband loyal and with money enough in the bank, these grapes looking pretty on a plate makes me smile.

What a luxury, to stop and notice their perfect tense skins. To choose a fetching purple plate to put them on. To waffle on about it here. What a blessing that I can concern myself with the details of my life in such a languid manner. To contemplate pomegranates.

Back!

Can you guess where I've been?
 
Holland!

Well, it was a while ago, but that's my excuse for not having posted for so long.

Summer in Sicily

I am waking each morning wanting to be back, to open the door of our little farm house and to breathe in the fragrance of figs, green, earth and distant sea, to say good morning the skinny cats mewing at my feet for sweet milk from the cereal bowls. I want to be thinking about what to wear to the beach, where I left the sunscreen, how long we have until it gets too hot to bear, to wake and be in Sicily again.

Absence and presence

I have been working so much this blog has been impossible to find time for, but  to let you know, I am travelling to Sicily in 10 days staying on an organic farm. I fully expect to come back with many food ideas and images and will put a Sicilian post up on my return.
In the meantime, check out my other blog work, for Phood Studios.
happy summer to you!

Dawn raiders and raspberry ripples plus pretty portfolio pics

I made ice cream! The first time in years and years, since we used to make it at De Los Santos, where the richest chocolate icecream was served with petite little cinnamon churros.

Amazing, the quality and amount of food we prepped in that small kitchen now that I reflect. We made an unctuous cheese dough for cheese balls that were sprinkled with smoked paprika salt when fried, I gutted buckets of squids every second day, pulling whole fish from their bellies sometimes, before skinning and preparing them for calamari, sinks full of spiky shrimp needed veining and shelling, fillets of salmon had their bones delicately tweezered out for curing, an orchard of lemons were preserved in cinnamon and bay leaves, rabbits came delivered whole for boning to be cooked for hours in stews.