My banishment

So, we've been spending a lot of time at our school at the moment... Teaching, planning, painting... Yep, we volunteered to repaint the school to make some extra shopping money for LA... Which brings me to my current banishment. Apparently paint and I do not get along. Or rather, we get along a little too well... As I am currently resembling some kind of crazy paint monster. It's not so much that I got a little paint on me, but that it at some point it looks like I rolled around and swam in the paint. Which has led to me sitting on a table, updating my blog while Michael paints. Oops!

Creativity in the Kitchen

When it looks like this outside:



It tends to make me want to do something like this...




...Make a big plate of something warm and comforting!


I love being creative in all manner of ways, and one of those is cooking and baking, and generally experimenting in the kitchen. Since Michael and I are both vegetarian, and Puente Genil is not very vegetarian friendly, living in Spain requires more experimentation for us.

Luckily, I find it a great challenge, and although I had to give away my recipe books (very very heavy!), the last few days I have been cutting out little recipes from my mom's box files of recipe ideas, and stashing them in between the pages of the one, little recipe book I kept. And, yes, it is a chocolate recipe book. It contains my old, trusted recipe for making home made chocolate truffles. I make little batches of these as thank you gifts, xmas gifts, or for a nice gesture. They always go down very well! I tend to make my own little boxes for them out of black card as well. 

So now, I am looking forward to trying out new things. Especially pies. I love how Americans have so many different sweet pies. 

Like sweet potato pie:

Or pecan pie:

And let's not forget, the Mississippi mud pie:

Mmmm...

I have been baking a pumpkin pie every year for the last few years on Halloween, and am looking forward to making this again, this year:

But of course, I am still on a diet (most days), and I still need to fit into my wedding dress! So I am going to be making different main dishes that are lighter and healthier. 

Like a traditional Spanish tortilla:

Other favourite meals, I shall be finding new ways to cook, to replace the quorn, like my invented lasagne. It looks something like this:

And instead of having the two classic layers of minced meat in a tomato sauce, and bechamel sauce, I used red peppers and garlic in a tomato sauce, and red onion and spinach cooked in a mixture of fat free natural yoghurt and cream cheese. It's very yummy! You build the layers up as normal, then top with a light spread of cream cheese and grated cheese. 

Although I have taken these pictures from Google images, I shall be taking my own photos of my creations soon and posting them here! 

Next stop... Spain

It's the end of an era. We've officially moved out of our apartment and London, and aside from a brief stay in Chelmsford, we'll be graduating and looking for work for the summer. But the next big thing ahead of us, is Spain. Yep, the return to Puente Genil.

Only this time, there will be no reason to leave, as we always knew we had to before. We also already have an apartment provisionally reserved over the summer for us, and my thoughts and dreams are full of ideas to make it pretty and home-like. Michael and I have been together for four and a half years, and during that time, we've lived in Aberystwyth, London, Birmingham, Puente Genil, Northampton and London again. So we are extremely happy and excited to live somewhere for more than a year together! We've wanted a more permanent base for a while now, and all the cleaning and packing and leaving our apartment yesterday only cemented this further. So, provided everything goes well with the jobs and we are wanted there, we'd ideally like to stay in Spain for a while now.

Which means that this will be our Pueblo:

With little cobbled, winding streets  

And enigmatic, old buildings peeking around corners

I've already started daydreaming about decorating ideas, and have ordered this to take with us: 

(the following images thanks to Google)

Yes, I know it's French, but I've always wanted a copy of this print! 

And I also would really really love this: 

And since we're talking about dream apartments, none would be complete without one of these:

But I might be getting a bit carried away now...