Market Days

It's been another busy week in the Norris household, and we have been continuing to enjoy the festival summer season. First up, for the bank holiday weekend the French market is in town. M and I both have a love of all preserved meats and we have stocked up as you can see below. Parma ham, chorizo, and various sausages. Who could pass up the oppertunity to try kangaroo sausage? The meats and smoked garlic are making our kitchen smell divine! We also treated ourselves to fresh goats cheeses, bread, olives, and artichokes.

To celebrate this culinary haul, we had a gorgeously smug lunch with fruit and veg entirely home grown. Rocket, melon and radish salad with your parma ham? Oh, yes! I opened a bottle of 2001 Cairanne bought when I was a house officer eight years ago and it set off the food brilliantly. It's a hard life!

My mum is staying this week which is really nice, and yesterday we had a day out in Bridport for the Open Studios weekend. They also had a Vintage Market with mainly furniture and had a lovely time mentally rearranging and redecorating the house to accommodate the pieces for sale. In the studios I discovered one artist in particular called Paul Blow. He is an illustrator working predominantly for magazines and I was instantly struck by his work. I'm definately going to keep an eye on his work and aim to invest in piece one day. I had to rein M in a bit and remind him we didn't have any room for another vintage electric fire... We were really excited to find a set of rare Woolworths 'Homemaker' 1950s crockery at the market, which we snapped up in a blink. Amazingly the lady had had them for a while and having trouble selling them as a complete set. Annoying she sold a singular teacup and saucer from the set, but it's still the largest collection I've seen for sale. Most of the pieces are the early Ridgeway prints.

We already have some Jessie Tait 'Quite Contrary' ceramics from Midwinter, also from the 1950's. I can see a collection growing here! I am embracing the era by watching Mad Men as I put this blog together.

On the sock knitting front, I have finished my latest pair as a gift for Christmas. Another design from 'Knitted Socks, East and West', this time using 'Casbah' by Hand Maiden. They were lovely to knit and I'm very happy with the end product. Next project is a cable tank top from Easy Knits.

I made use of the buttons I bought at Goodwood on this high street cardigan. I was really pleased with the result - they match better than I could have hoped for and instantly made it something special.

Last weekend, my sister and her husband came to stay, and we had a lovely walk around Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens. I bought a Taipei Silk plant (with flowers as pictured below) for my patch at the allotment. I'm trying to record all my flowers here so that I have half a chance of remembering what they all are.

I don't tend to talk about my family and friends on this blog, but my Grandma died this week. This is for her.

Flowers!

This week has been interesting for me. After a long enforced rest brought about by sickness, I returned to work. Great for self esteem and bank account, but a bit of a shock to the system if I'm honest. Glad to report it felt much easier by the end of the week. The unfortunate side effect of actually having a job (of sorts - I'm self employed and book work where and when I can) is that I don't have so much time for crafting and blogging. The horror! Because M and I have relatively little time together, we have decided to make the weekends count by making an effort to go out. Today was gardening day.

As I have said previously, we are lucky enough to have an allotment rented from our council, and M works incredibly hard to put veg on the table. Up until recently we have shared the plot with friends, but now work the whole area. M has allowed me a raised bed to plant flowers, the idea being that we don't have a sunny garden at home in which to grow things I like, and it will help to encourage the bees. Above are pics of todays work, and below are stock images of the flowers I have planted. If you have never smelled chocolate cosmos, it is a revelation. Gorgeous. We have two types of lavender for cakes and scented pillows etc, marigolds for colour and edibilty and other bits for pure prettiness. There is a good range of foliage for year round interest (they seem to say that a lot on gardening programmes) and I think they all have long flowering periods so we'll have colour all summer. Next to the plot we have a home-constructed obelisk with sweet peas, and a small bush made up of lemon balm and oregano. M has also planted sunflowers along the end of the plot which will look lovely. I wonder if he'll let me grow a globe artichoke... (they're huge but pretty AND edible)

So, we have down the middle:
Gaillardia 'Goblin'
Liatris spicata 'Kobold' - otherwise known as a 'Gay Feather' (tee hee)
Euphorbia martinii

Lavenders in 2 corners:
Lavendula 'Blue Star'
Lavendula 'Fathead' (tee hee again)

Other larger plants:
Cosmos 'Chocolate'
Petunia 'Littletunia Ultra Purple'
Marigold 'French'

Small filling/trailing plants:
Brachycombe 'Blue Champion'
Bacopa 'White'


Lastly, on the allotment front, our little patio apple tree is doing rather splendidly this year:



Apart from finishing one sock, I've not got much more to report on the craft front. Photos only permitted when I have two! We have discovered via Radio 4 that there will be a vintage design festival at Goodwood next month. Check out the website - 'tis FABULOUS. We have booked a day ticket for the Saturday and can't wait. Now to plan outfits for the occasion. Mmm...

Foodie Day

What better way to enjoy lunch than this? Pasty from up the road, quality ale, and my favourite paper in the seclusion of our back yard on one of the hottest days this year. We have had a bit of a foodie day today, having got up early to harvest our first potato crop of the year at the allotment. I can take very little credit for the produce from our plot. That is M's domain, and I have to say he works incredibly hard. He chronicles these adventures on his own site here. We are very fortunate with our plot, being in a beautiful location next to the river. I went down there this week to be greated by a majestic family of swans.

Here are a couple of pics of the plot itself. I am always pleased to see the broad beans come up, not only due to my love of the vegetable, but because the flowers are so pretty. Much underrated in my opinion.



We had a rather successful dinner today. We go to the End of the Road festival in North Dorset every year, and last year tucked into a cheesy lamb bourek. I thought I'd attempt to develop my own recipe, and have to say it went rather well. So lucky readers, here it is....

Lamb and Mozzarella Boureks (makes 2)

1 red onion, chopped
2 red chillis, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
250g minced lamb
1/2tsp coriander seeds
1/2tsp caraway seeds
1/2tsp cumin seeds
3/4tsp sea salt
1/2tbsp tomato puree
2tbsp lemon juice
2 tinned chargrilled red peppers, chopped
1 ball mozzarella, grated
1tsp dried coriander leaves
6 sheets filo pastry (pre-prepared)
butter for brushing

Preheat oven Gas Mark 6/200C

Dry fry the spices and grind in a pestle and mortar with the salt.
Fry the onion, garlic, chilli until soft, add the meat and brown. Add the spices, cook for 2 min and stir in the tomato puree, lemon juice and chopped peppers. Once cooked, leave mixture to cool whilst you prepare the pastry.
Layer 3 sheets of filo, brushing with butter between layers, laying them directly on top of one another. Spoon half the meat mixture in the middle, approx 2in from one end. Top with half the cheese and half the coriander leaves. Brush the exposed pastry with butter, fold the sides into the middle and brush them with butter. Roll up the pastry into a parcel and place on a greased baking tray. Repeat to make the other bourek. You can scatter them with caraway/cumin to decorate if you like.
Bake for 25 min and serve with salad and a dollop of houmous. Enjoy!

All the time I am typing these blog posts, I am doing so with a kitten on my lap. The lovely Tilly was new to us at new year with her friend Pootle2 (M named her after our first, sadly departed cat as an homage to the Simpsons). They are pictured below on my Marmite quilt, crafted for me by my Mum when I was away at uni. Tilly in particular seems to have become rather attached to me over the past few months, and it is no exaggeration to say that she either sits on or watches me for the most of my time at home. Slightly oddly, she has adopted the printer as a bed, and seems to sleep quite deeply even when falling off...


Friends of mine will no doubt be surprised that it has taken me this long to blog about the kittens, and I haven't even mentioned my car yet (Fiat 500, i love love love it). Maybe another day.


I said I'd show you how the christening card went, so here it is. I mounted the fabric using spray adhesive 3M Display Mount. At more than £13 a pop it isn't cheap, but really can't be beaten for things like this. It's particularly good to mount fabrics or skeleton leaves on paper and card, avoiding ugly blobs of glue. Also stabilises the fabric at the same time as mounting it. I sprayed a piece of card and applied it to the back of the work whilst still taut in the frame, and cut to size once dry. I then sprayed the back of the cut card and applied to the main card.


I'm really pleased, and hopefully it will make a nice keepsake.