An evening with Madam Butterfly....

I had a lovely evening at The Royal Albert Hall yesterday....a beautiful production of Madam Butterfly.....

Not a particularly good photo, but it is staged in the round and the set was lovely....it was an all round exquisite production. Which of course brought a tear to my eye at the end as it always does.

The tickets were a steal through an offer from Time Out, so my friends and I only paid £37 for £68 tickets in the stalls.  A little bit of a nailbiter as you have to wait and see where the theatre will seat you, but although we were a little bit round to one side, we were in the front row!

I work almost opposite the Royal Albert Hall, so it was a very good location for an evening out, but I didn't get home till quarter to midnight.  The cat was sitting waiting for me with her arms crossed, tapping one foot on the floor and glaring at me as if to say " where the heck have you been....I've been sitting here waiting for hours!" She couldn't wait to get in the bedroom and flop on the bed with me! Then coming to work this morning I felt like I hadn't been home at all!

Don't disturb me....I'm meditating.....

World's Biggest Coffee Morning.....

Well not so much a morning as a day!

As you may know Macmillan Cancer Support organises the World's Biggest Coffee Morning each year to raise funds for the excellent works.  So today at work we had a Charity Bake Sale to do just that. 

Making tea and coffee is a bit problematic for a large group of people here so I roped in enlisted the help of various people to make and bring cakes.  We have had a great day, there are a few leftovers, which may very well keep till Monday anyway, and we have collected £150 for the charity.

Star Baker was this donation from Thomas (age 3) assisted by his mum!

 

Don't they all look fabulous!?

 

 

In my garden this afternoon....

He knew I was there, but wasn't particularly bothered!

 

I got bored with my cat...so I decided to grow a new one....

Little things that annoy....

There is a car illegally parked in Piccadilly, London (for those of you who might not know this is a very busy road between Piccadilly Circus and Hyde Park Corner).  It's blocking the traffic and has a clamp on it, but it's been there for 3 days....why hasn't it been towed away!? 

This is annoying to me because where I live in East London, you can get towed away for parking with half a tyre outside the white line which indicates where you can park partly on the pavement....and it's not even a main road!!

Moan over....

The view from the window...

One of my favourite blogs is by Lucy at Attic 24.  She has a lovely writing style and a good eye for a photo.  I love her posts about the outings the family have in and around her home town in the Yorkshire Dales.  I would love to be able to go for walks like that at the moment.

Unfortunately I'm having some issues with sciatica and joint pain generally which prevent me from walking very much, but I love the countryside and as I live in a particularly grimy part of London I often long to get out of town.  One of the things I do occasonally is drive out to my favourite farm shop at Calcott Hall Farm.  I don't go on a regular basis as it rather far to go on a regular weekly trip, so I use it as a bit of a treat.  I go for lovely locally produced fruit and veg, plus they have a great butcher and fresh bread. Plus lots of other general groceries by smaller producers that you won't find in the high street supermarket. Anyway...I digress... there are two routes I can take to get there, the first is the A12... no way, on a Saturday!  The other is via, Epping, or Theydon Bois, through Ongar and so to the outskirts of  Brentwood.  This is still a busy route (not half as bad as the A12!) but at least I get to see some greenery! I shop for yummy goodies, and usually treat myself to coffee or lunch on the way home.

So there I was on Saturday, in a little traffic queue waiting to go over the quaint bridge into Abridge. It was a lovely day, and the windows were open, I was gazing out over the field to my right, and just grabbed my phone and took a quick photo out of the car window....



The view from the window

The flash of yellow caught my eye particularly, even though I know it's Oil Seed Rape, and smells disgusting! Not a brilliant phot, but given that it was taken in 10 seconds flat...not bad!

Sunny reflection....

As part of the decorating and renovating that I've been doing recently, I now have a new front door. Which I love! I've posted a pic further down, but I just wanted to share this one first.  I was going out to put out some rubbish this morning, and as I walked into the hallway I was greeted by this lovely reflection from a burst of winter sunshine coming through the glass in the door....

Here's an outside view of the door so far, it needs another coat of paint, but the weather had been so so bad that it wasn't drying well and couldn't be rubbed down to put on another coat. I love it's bright redness, and it's really shiny too which is just what I wanted!  Shows up the rest of the house though,so that will need a new coat of paint too when the weather's a bit better.

Mmmm....tasty.....

I've had a squirrel rootling about in my garden lately.  He seems to be there most days for the about the last couple of weeks. Not too unusual for most of you I suspect, but we don't see them in Walthamstow very often...I think the herds of cats that hang around and the foxes probably keep them away most of the time. Anyway this little fella has been having a right old time grubbing about in the flower tubs and borders, but I haven't been able to get a photo of him.  You know the scenario, by the time you walk away to the other room to get the camera or your phone to take a picture, when you back, he's disappeared! Anyway, I managed to snap him yesterday, it's not a very good picture, probably because I took it through the glass window in my back door, so it's a bit fuzzy.  He appears to have a very tasty tulip bulb in his little paws!

Double 0 Heaven...

Well, despite a rotten cold, I managed to sniff and snuffle my way through Skyfall, the latest Bond epic(apologies to anyone in the cinema who may suffer later from my selfishness!)

I'm sure we all remember the delicious Daniel Craig in Casino Royale...reproduced here just for the sake of gratuitous eye candy...

Source: homemadecosmetics.blogspot.ca via Sandie on Pinterest

Then there was the grand Royal Premiere of the new film at the Royal Albert Hall, just along the road from where I work....just to give you an idea of the scale of the Hoo Ha, here's a very bad picture taken from the roof of our building, by a very kind (and tall ) young man who leaned precariously over the parapet to get it. The whole road was closed off for the whole day.....

So we come to Skyfall....on general release now (as they say)

Source: whereisthecool.com via Katie on Pinterest

I thought it was great. Back to the quality of Casino Royale, although I would say that Casino Royale might still be marginally better.  I recommend a viewing, there's a twist at the end, that I'm not going to tell you as I would have to kill you if I did.  But my friend and I turned to each other and said "Well...they kept that under wraps, didn't they!"

Enjoy!

Elvis has left the building!

Elvis is the plasterer, who has left me with wonderfully smooth walls in my bedroom which, when dry, will be gasping for a coat of paint!

End of an Era....

Sadly, I had to go to a funeral at the weekend.  RIP Auntie Irene....

This was taken this time last year when she was the grand old age 91and 1/2 with the youngest member of the family! I find it very sweet that the cardigan she is wearing is one my mum knitted for her....and sadly, mum's been gone for 12 years! She was doing very well for her age, still in her own flat with a little help, but contracted an infection that she couldn't fight, so for the last couple of months had been deteriorating, but not in any pain (something to be thankful for) anyway, she's now reunited with her brothers and sisters.  The oldest of them, and the last to join them.

It's Nice To Be Appreciated....

A little pressie arrived on my desk this morning as a thank you from a member of staff that I had helped out...very sweet! (no pun intended)

Wot I did at the weekend...

I did a couple of nice little things at the weekend with a couple of friends. Nothing very adventurous, but just a couple of local things (I live in Walthamstow)

First we visited the newly refurbished William Morris Gallery (known locally as The Water House)  in Lloyd Park. I met my friends there, so when I eventually found somewhere to park I had to walk through the park to the house. If you come on public transport you would normally approach from the main road and then you are directly in front of the house.

Anyway a nice little stroll and I made a friend on the way...

It's a pretty little park, although they are doing some works at the moment, so it's not as picturesque as it is usually. 

And eventually....to the front of the house....

It's been spruced up no end, compared to a year or so ago when the work started.  I believe they have had Lottery money to do it. Unfortunately no pics of the inside, although I did take some without a flash, but they were just of fabrics and wallpapers for my own inspiration. I hadn't visited for many a year, and I remember it being very dark and fusty, but it's now bright and modern, and very well laid out, with the compulsory interactive areas for the young'uns.  I recommend a visit if you are ever over this side of London, and they now have a nice little cafe with sandwiches and cakes and so on. (That bit of Walthamstow has a severe shortage of coffee shops)

The other thing we did was to visit the "village" show in Wanstead (I use inverted commas because strictly Wanstead is part of London, but it prides itself on having a village atmosphere, and it does, too!) There were various displays in the church hall, along the lines of a WI type show. You know the sort of thing...who had the best tomatoes or victoria sponge. It was the first time they had done this, and sadly there were not too many entries in some of the categories, but it was good fun.  Then there was a flower display in the church itself, and this entry caught our eye....

I thought that deserved a special mention.

We went on from there to follow part of the Art Trail, and ended up at a little craft fair in the Library. Which had some great stuff and we all treated ourselves to a little gift!

Been waiting long?.....

Just had to share this picture of a very patient lady in Walthamstow Central Bus Station....she's been there a week or so at least!

She is actually part of the E17 Art Trail

Recipe organisation.....

I was just reading Heather's post on Lavender Blue about how she organises and culls her cook book collection.  I'm always interested in how other people organise things....probably because I'm not very organised myself!  Anyway, I thought I would just jot down a few notes about how I cope with my ever expanding recipe collection....hope Heather doesn't mind me stealing her idea! 

My cookbook collection is not very huge, but I do have quite a few, however, at the moment most of them are in a box in a storage unit, while I try and decorate and renovate my house, so I seem to be collecting new ones, and a huuuuge pile of recipes printed from the recipe sites that I visit.  Mostly the BBC Good Food and Food.com sites but also from the various inspirational blog writers that I frequent.  Oh, and magazines too!  I quite like Easy Cook for simple quick ideas.

So what I do is this....

I have an ancient laptop that someone was going to throw away, and I use it for my recipes. I only have a desktop pc, so the laptop is easy to take out into the kitchen.  I don't have a special programme, I just use Word.

If the recipe is printed off the internet, and doesn't have a particularly helpful picture I type them into a word document, and save them, organised into folders for different course, and sometimes even within that folder into other headings, like low carb, or vegetarian.  If it's a recipe from a magazine, then I will scan it and save the scan.

I'm slowly reducing the pile of "tried and liked" recipes that I had accumulated, and keeping up with the new ones. I still have a pile of magazines, but they should gradually dwindle as I go through them and decide there's nothing else in there I want to try...although I guess I could scan the ones I might like to do and save them too! The only drawback with scanning them is that I can do a find in Word for a particular ingredient that I might have and want to use, but obviously that doesn't work with scanned items, as they are basically a photo.

Olympic Sleeping Event....

AND THE WINNER IS.......

And she got Silver in the hairy paws event!

Arancini

Just wanted to post a quick picture of some Arancini that I made yesterday.  We are having a "do" at work and everyone is bringing something from their country....we're very international!  I was born in the UK to British parents, but before them I'm a mixture of Russina, Polish and Italian, so I chose to go with the Italian bit!  I've made these before from a recipe here on Food.com and I love them.  I didn't have enough ingredients at home to make a tomato dipping sauce, so I have a jar of Roasted Pepper Pesto to go with them....
Excuse the bad photo, it was taken very quickly on my phone...

One of my favourite blogs....

I got a new computer a while ago, and had to try and reinstate all my bookmarks. For some reason I forgot about this blog, which I absolutely love. I came across it the other day and remembered to bookmark it. It's always good for a laugh, but also check out the weekly post with the absolute best cakes you could hope to see!

Today's lunch...

Apropos of nothing in particular, here's a shot of my lunch today....

It was just a throwing together of bits and pieces from the fridge...a few cooked new potatoes, a chopped hard boiled egg, a couple of slices of ham, a little bit of red pepper, and a chopped pickled gherkin.  Stir in some mayo, right there in the box, and hey presto....lunch is ready to go!