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Both the applications are very alike Payday loans Why is a payday loan right for you
The man & I spent a long weekend in Lisbon recently. Just the 2 of us; no kids. It has to happen occasionally.
I had been to Lisbon once before. The first time I really had no idea what to expect and was completely captivated by the place. It was January, cold and damp in the UK, and walking along the river in 15 degree sunshine was a real tonic for the soul. The city embedded itself in my head and I knew I’d be back.
This trip to Lisbon I more or less knew what to expect (which made me get all the more excited in the lead-up to the weekend), but the man didn’t and I purposely didn’t tell him much about it. I wanted him to discover it for himself.
Lisbon is not a place one necessarily passes through on the way to somewhere else. It’s not a hub like Paris or Berlin; you have to make a wee bit of an effort to get there. But the effort is oh so worth it. The city just sort of hangs there, at the mouth of a river, on the edge of the Iberian peninsula (the edge of Europe, really), peering outwards across the Atlantic. Geographically the situation is just so perfect – there are hills, hills and more hills (gym memberships are completely unnecessary in this city), and clearly marked “miradouros” (lookouts) everywhere allowing you to take in some truly spectacular views. And I must say that after the most dismal UK summer in millenia, the temperate climate which offered up 3 straight days of sunshine and 25 degree temperatures was very much appreciated.
 Not a bad view So what is it about this city that’s already got me pining for another visit? Where do I start…? There are of course the usual characteristics that appeal to me… friendly people, simple fresh tasty food, higglety-pigglety parking on some of the narrowest streets imaginable (I’d hate to have to park there myself, but loved watching others attempt it!), some truly stunning scenery. But there’s more. As you walk around, there is art everywhere you look – whether it’s in the more traditional sense in Lisbon’s multitude of galleries & museums, or all around you on the pavements, in the metro stations, or on buildings. This urban art may or may not appeal, but it’s interesting, intriguing, and tells a story about the city’s history and the current state of the nation.
 A splash of colour  Not necessarily pretty but catches one’s eye!  For some reason I just loved this building Portugal is famous for its “azuelos” (ceramic tiles) which adorn the front of many of the buildings. Some are in better shape than others. This building, in Chiado neighbourhood, was covered in gorgeous aquamarine blue tiles and was just totally eye catching.
 Newly “rehabilitated” tiles on building in Chiado neighbourhood The pavement/sidewalk paving is rustic, artistic and treacherous all rolled into one. Heels are a broken ankle waiting to happen.
 Not your ordinary paving stones  Makes walking much more interesting! There are tiny shops selling only buttons, or beads, or gloves, or tins of sardines still hand wrapped with 1950s style brown paper & string. Some of the street names remind you of what used to be sold there.
 Literal street name – street of the codfish sellers My Lisbon must dos:
- Wear flat, comfortable shoes and just walk and explore. You see more that way.
- Be prepared for very sore calves as a result of days of walking up and down all the hills!
- Visit the castle, soak in the absolutely unparalleled views & then walk around neighbouring Alfama
- Eat warm pasteis de nata (custard tarts) in Belem.
- Visit some of the tiny shops in Baixa. Buy some sardines, even if you don’t like them, just because the packaging is so retro & cool.
- Go joy riding at night on the number 28 tram. It’s ludicrously crowded in the daytime, but at night you can get a seat, open the gorgeous wooden framed windows, and enjoy a ride that reminded the man of the Knight Bus in the Harry Potter films.
- Stay at Zuzabed, the most welcoming, charming B&B I’ve ever stayed in. Uberhost Luis (who bears more than a passing resemblance to Roger Federer) and his team go out of their way to welcome you and make your stay memorable. Their love for their city is very evident, and infectious. Luis makes a great orange cake, which he delivered to us warm one morning for breakfast.
- Sit on one of the gorgeous marble benches and be at one with the world in Carmo Square (Chiado) – the most perfect little neighbourhood square.
 The smoothest park bench my bottom has ever met
Some other random photos I feel the need to share:
 For some reason I find other people’s laundry utterly charming!  I have a thing for doors  The nicest men’s loo entrance ever I mentioned I wanted the man to discover Lisbon for himself, and I really wanted him to like it; to see what I saw in the place. So did he? Well, you must understand that he is practically the most laid back person to ever walk this earth and it’s sometimes difficult to gauge his enthusiasm for things (unlike the kids and I who have been known to get rather OVERenthusiastic). But he liked it – I could tell from little things he said and did, from the way he told the parents about the weekend. In his mind it’s hard to dislike a city that has 2 very nice guitar shops within a block of each other!
Lisbon is just a cool place. It’s charming. Parts of it are slightly shabby, but that just adds to the charm. It has no pretensions; it just is what it is. I like that. It reminds me of someone.
So I wanted to make a cake, to capture the flavours and reflect the essence of this city that I’ve fallen for. The inside wasn’t difficult to envision – almond & citrus. It was the outside that left me a bit stumped. It would be cream with a bit of orange, but how to decorate it? Elaborate it? Jazz it up? I made the cake & filled it, leaving myself to mull overnight about how to finish it off. And in the end I didn’t really finish it off. It actually didn’t need decoration or elaboration. A slightly orangey, slightly sweet cream was enough and actually perfectly reflected Lisbon and the type of dessert or cake you’d find there. Simple, tasty, not overly fancy or sweet. Like Lisbon, it doesn’t need to be jazzed up – it just is what it is. And we liked it.
This cake is dedicated to the parents, as a thank-you for babysitting and allowing us to get away. I’ll make it for you the next time I see you.
Flourless Citrus Cake
A creamy, nutty, gluten free cake with hints of citrus. It can be dressed up to be a special occasion cake, or kept simple and enjoyed after a meal or as an afternoon treat.
Ingredients
Cake
- 340g Ground almonds
- 2 teaspoons Baking powder
- 6 Eggs (separated)
- 125g Caster sugar
- 1 Orange (zest only)
Filling
- 200g Lemon curd (homemade is best, but a good quality bought curd will do!)
- 250g Mascarpone
- 250g Thick Greek yogurt
Topping
- 300ml Double cream
- 1/4 teaspoon Orange extract
- 30g Powdered sugar
Note This cake is gluten free, but does contain nuts. For the recipe you will need the following:
- An 8-inch/20cm springform pan or cake tin
- An electric mixer or whisk for the cream
- Plenty of elbow grease for folding the egg whites into the cake
The cake should be baked and filled the day before you plan to eat it. This allows the filling to moisten and meld with the cake. The top and sides can be iced just before serving.
Candied lemon peel, candied orange peel, toasted slivered almonds would be the perfect complementary adornments to this cake.
Directions
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Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius/325 degrees Farenheit. Grease an 8 inch/20cm springform pan or cake tin and line with greaseproof paper. |
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Mix ground almonds with 25g of the caster sugar and the baking powder. Set aside. |
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In a clean bowl with a clean whisk, whip the egg whites until stiff. Set aside. |
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Whip the egg yolks and remaining 100g of caster sugar until thick and very pale in colour. Mix in the orange zest. |
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Mix the ground almond mixture in with the egg yolk mixture, and then very quickly start folding in the egg whites - take 1/4 of the egg whites to start and as gently as possible fold them in until no visible streaks remain. Continue folding in the remaining egg whites, 1/4 at a time.
The almond/yolk mixture will be very thick and sticky and it will take some effort to get the whites folded in. Just work them in slowly but surely! |
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Put the mixture into the prepared pan and smooth over the top. Bake for about 60 minutes, or until top of cake springs back when lightly tapped. Cool on wire rack. |
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When the cake has completely cooled, trim off the top crust of the cake. Then, using a large serrated knife or dental floss, cut the cake into 4 evenly sized layers. If using dental floss to cut the cake, make 4 evenly spaced cuts around the cake, where you want each layer to be, as a way of guiding the floss. |
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Mix together the lemon curd, mascarpone, and Greek yogurt until thoroughly combined. |
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Place the bottom layer of cake on a cake plate or cardboard round, and spread 1/3 of the filling over it. Place the second layer of cake on top, pressing down fairly firmly to distribute the filling evenly. Spread the next 1/3 of the filling over this layer.
Repeat with the remaining cake layers and filling - you should end up with a filled cake (4 layers of cake & 3 layers of filling) that's still naked on top.
Wrap well with clingfilm and refrigerate overnight. |
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Whip the cream, powdered sugar & orange extract on high speed in a cold bowl, with cold beaters, until you can see beater marks in the cream. Reduce speed and continue whipping until soft peaks form.
Spread the cream over the top and sides of the cake. Embellish it to your heart's content. |
Dearest blog,
You are officially 2 years old today. That’s 731 days (as we are in the midst of a leap year). That’s quite a milestone and we must celebrate, since I must rather shamefully admit that I don’t think we celebrated or even acknowledged your first birthday. So first of all…
HAPPY 2nd BIRTHDAY!
 Many happy returns!
When I first hit the “publish” button all of those 731 days ago I had no clue what this whole blog thing was about. In a way it was sort of like parenthood – when the boy made his entrance into the world almost 10 (gulp) years ago, I really had no idea what this whole parenthood lark was about. When you came into being I discovered that I quite like writing about food, sharing stories & recipes, and was pleasantly surprised when people not related to me started to discover you (and even visit over and over again). I discovered a whole world of food blogging and even made new friends out there in the blogosphere. You were like a firstborn child, and like any first time parent I lavished you with attention and became slightly obsessive about you. Stress levels would rise if I didn’t post twice, and then once a week. You were a bit of an addiction. That was most of year 1.
Continue reading On a Blog’s Birthday
Fruit salad. So easy to make, anyone can make it. Right?
Well yes, I suppose so. You can just cut up a bunch of fruit and mix it together in a bowl.
And maybe add a bit of sugar to help bring out some of the fruit juices.
And you end up with … a bunch of cut up fruit in a bowl. And before I go on, let me just say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with a bunch of cut up fruit in a bowl, especially if it’s seasonal fruit at its peak of ripeness. A bowl of strawberries in June, with just the tiniest bit of sugar can be perfection. Or sticky alphonso or honey mangos that need nothing more than a fork to spear the luscious chunks with. I’m almost salivating just thinking about it.
 Raw perfection Continue reading On the (not so) Humble Fruit Salad
“Do you do Banoffee Pie?” That simple question from a client set the whole thing off.
Of COURSE we do Banoffee Pie – we’re caterers and (more importantly) food lovers. That’s our job. What I had never done however was make my own toffee. Gooey, rich, creamy, completely decandent toffee – also known in some circles as dulce de leche. I had read somewhere about boiling condensed milk to make it, so did a little more research…
Time for a small aside here: evaporated versus condensed milk. Both come in tins. What’s the difference? I had never really considered the question. I had vague memories of my dad putting one of the two in his coffee when I was a child (evaporated, I think), and me thinking the milk tasted vile. And my mum buying Eagle Brand something or other for baking, and it being sickly sweet.
So here’s the difference:
- Evaporated milk is milk which has had about 60% of the water removed via evaporation. It is then homogenized, rapidly chilled, fortified with vitamins and stabilizers, packaged, and finally sterilized. The high heat process gives it a bit of a caramelized flavor, and it is slightly darker in color than fresh milk. The evaporation process naturally concentrates the nutrients and the calories, so evaporated versions are more calorie-laden and nutritious than their fresh counterparts.
- Sweetened condensed milk goes through less processing than evaporated milk. 60% of the water has also been removed from condensed milk, but it differs in that sugar has been added. Condensed milk contains 40 to 45 percent sugar and is very high in calories.
Continue reading On the Decadence of Toffee
When I was thinking about how to present this post I realised that I was likely to come across as rather fickle. Or as I prefer to think about it, “taking a balanced view”. Seeing both sides of the issue. Yes, both of those sound much better than “fickle”. More mature & grown up (although I still sometimes laugh when I think of myself as a grownup).
You see, a while ago I wrote about the joys of experimenting with food and cooking – largely because I was sharing with you a dish that I’d developed on the fly. In contrast, this new post was to be all about a recipe that just works so why mess with it… A recipe that’s all over the blogosphere and I totally understand why. About NOT reinventing the wheel, so to speak (sorry, management consultant speak from my past life coming through).
How do I rectify these two competing philosophies?
Well, in thinking about it further and having a bit of a discussion with myself at about 5:30 this morning (yes, with advancing age I find I do talk to myself more and more, plus there was nobody to talk to at that time of morning) (I also find I digress a lot more, hence all these damn parentheses), I came to the conclusion that I can live with these competing philosophies without fear of self combusting. Different situations call for different approaches, that’s all. Where would we be without experimenting, lucky accidents, or things not going quite as planned? Still stuck mid stone-age I think. And bored silly. But on the other hand when you have a recipe (for example) that you like, that others like, and that just WORKS, then why mess with it?
So what is this recipe I’m alluding to?
Continue reading On Not Reinventing the Wheel
I will say up front that I hate being cold. I also hate being too hot. I’m a Libra – I don’t go for extremes. But being cold, really, I cannot stand it and it makes me quite grumpy. People always say to me “but you’re Canadian, you must be used to the cold.” I generally have two responses to this point:
- I’m from the wet part of Canada, not the cold part. Where I’m from 2 inches of snow causes the whole city to come to a complete standstill and become the laughingstock of the rest of the country!
- Houses in Canada are generally centrally heated & well insulated.
On that second point, I never even considered the whole insulation thing until the man and I spent 2 years in Japan. Neither central heating nor insulation feature in the majority of Japanese homes or apartments (or at least they didn’t 20 years ago). During our 2 winters there I discovered that:
- There was no need to keep food in the fridge as our kitchen (which we affectionately called “the meat locker”) was plenty cold enough
- Furry toilet seat covers helped to combat that uncomfortable yet little known syndrome called “popsicle butt” (we didn’t have one of those posh toilets with heated seats)
- A fun pastime was to make lovely finger drawings on the thin layer of ice that formed inside the windows
- Frostbitten toes hurt like hell
You get the picture – it was cold. I also discovered how completely amazing Japanese bathtubs are and how a proper bath can keep you warm for hours.
And so now I find myself in the UK living in a slowly crumbling Victorian terraced house with single glazed windows and not the best insulation. Layers and a space heater are necessary when it gets cold, but it’s bearable and only a little bit like camping. That’s until the heating goes on the blink, which happens about once every 2 years. The most recent occurrence being this past weekend.
Continue reading On Finding that Silver Lining
Aaahhhh memories of summer birthday parties. Long warm sunny days, water fights, sun kissed skin, ice-cream cakes, jumping on the trampoline, and sunshine. It’s the sunshine that really sticks in my mind – that and the ice cream cakes my mum would make. But unfortunately these memories aren’t of my own birthday parties; instead they’re my brother’s, my cousins’, and more recently my boy’s. He and I both think he has the best deal in our family when it comes to his birthday month.
I am an autumn baby. Not too far in to the autumn mind you, but autumn nonetheless.
Memories of my own birthday parties tend to involve rain, or if not rain then at least clouds and generally gloomy weather. Growing up on the Canadian west coast, I could predict the arrival of the autumn rains like clockwork: generally they arrived about a week before my birthday. Ho hum. Cue indoor birthday parties; definitely no water fights or ice cream cakes. I’m not blaming my parents or anything – I count backwards 9 months from my birthday and I totally get it. I just never liked being an October baby.
However, all is not dark and depressing. No, not at all. I think I am slowly coming to terms and even embracing where my birthday falls in the calendar. Perhaps it’s living in the UK where autumns can be quite pleasant (this year we had record high temperatures in October). Perhaps my long weekend in the Piedmont last October (a mere 4 days after my birthday) made me realise that early autumn’s harvest really does rock. Perhaps my ever advancing age brings wisdom and tolerance (I realised this morning that I am by all definitions – gulp – officially middle aged). Or perhaps it was the absolutely fabulous meal the man made for my birthday this year.
It wasn’t a frou-frou or haute cuisine type of meal. That’s just not us. Instead it was rustic, colourful, fresh, and full of flavour. That’s definitely more our style. The meal was simply:
A huge bowl of grilled vegetables, all from our allotment, with good olive oil & balsamic.
Continue reading On Being Happy With an Autumn Birthday
Another year has passed and the girl has just had another birthday. Where exactly does the time go? I know people say that all the time but I’m really feeling it at the moment. Seriously. I distinctly remember writing this post about her pink & sparkly birthday cake, and here I am again with another birthday (and cake) to write about, looking for fresh material!
 A princess cake for my princess The girl is 5 now, which seems very grown up. Cue mummy moment…
She seems to be getting taller by the minute and is in big school now. She’s learning letters and sounds, and is building models of the Eiffel Tower at school. And she is as fashion conscious as ever. She has eschewed the normal school uniform sweatshirt in favour of a plain red cardigan because she doesn’t feel the sweatshirts look as nice as a smart button-down cardigan. And of course choosing the right hairstyle/accessories on any given day takes consideration. On Halloween night it took an absolute age to get her costumed up, as she just couldn’t decide what to wear under the costume. Yes, under the costume. Apparently it mattered! I see the humour in it now; I didn’t see it quite so much then. Continue reading On a Princess Cake for a Princess
This is the tale of a boy and his quest to catch a really big fish.
It was an idyllic summer holiday for this particular boy and his sister. A long airplane journey, time in Vancouver catching up with grandparents, aunties, uncles & two particularly adorable cousins, then two weeks at the other grandma and grandpa’s house in a little town by the seaside (including a whole week without parents). The boy couldn’t wait to get there. Beaches, lakes, boats, a huge back garden, loads of attention, and fishing. Kid heaven. Did I mention the fishing? Fishing was way up on the priority list. The boy was determined to catch some fish, and big fish at that.
And so the quest began. I’m not sure grandpa had quite anticipated the boy’s serious enthusiasm for fishing.
First he caught some trout during a day out on the rowboat with dad and grandpa. Grandpa rowed. The boy caught 2 fish. The dad caught but quickly lost 5 fish (one of which was apparently gargantuan).
Then came the cod. After a few days of trying, jackpot. 5 cod of various types were hauled in. That evening his parents were given a rather long treatise on different types of cod and their characteristics.
And then, the salmon. The boy’s parents had been cast adrift without their children for a week. It was tough, but they managed. After yet another dinner out (consoling themselves of course), they arrived back to a missed phone call from the boy with the message, “you’d better phone him”. With visions of blood, gore & tragedy in their heads they quickly rang him, and were told about THE FISH. In great detail, with all the excitement and enthusiasm possessed by a 9 year old boy whose summer dreams had just come true. This was not just any fish, but a 25 lb. spring salmon. To say the boy was excited would be a serious understatement. The photos (proudly snapped by grandma) quickly arrived over email so the parents could see just how big this beast was. And it was big. An hour later the boy caught them on Skype and they could see the excitement in his face, in his movements, in the way he could not stop talking. His parents developed rather large smiles on their faces too.
 Can that smile get any bigger? Continue reading On the Fish That Didn’t Get Away
Hello world, it’s been a while.
What can I say? Life has been busy to the power of 10. I have been cooking – a LOT – but having the time to set up & take photos and even begin to think about writing has been a non-existent luxury. So I’ve had to attempt to let go of the guilt that hangs over me when I can’t do everything I want/feel I need to do, and just put the blog aside for a while.
But I’m back. Or at least I’m trying to be! I spent days racking my brain to decide on the best topic for this post. Something sweet? Savoury? Yeasty? Barbecued? Summery? Cheesy? Creamy? Salty? Citrusy? Chocolatey? I had endless options, really. However, I finally decided on something simple and… well, tarty. Or tartful. Or whatever word is roughly defined as: on the topic of tarts.
 Light chocolate cream & summer berries in a buttery shortbread crust Continue reading On a Tale of Two Tarts
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