exploring eating capturing
Just over a week ago I was in Bournemouth catching up with lots of different friends but managed one day entirely to myself which turned out to be a proper treat. I spent a good chunk of it on the beach swimming and soaking up …
So… healthy coleslaw? Can it be healthy? Of course with a little imagination and no mayonnaise. I make coleslaw a lot as its easy cheap lasts for two or three days in the fridge and, in my opinion, is much tastier than the generic shop …
Earlier this year I had the utterly delightful opportunity to see the ‘Hokusai – Beyond the Great Wave’ exhibition at the British Museum. It left me a bit speechless. I have been to hundreds of exhibitions over the years of all sorts of art but I can honestly say these where some of the most beautiful prints I have ever seen, coupled with the awe that they have survived 200 years in such mint condition. There is something very timeless about them.
Hokusai is best known for his print of a single big wave which these days can be purchased as a reproduction on every surface imaginable from mugs and shoes to tote bags and beyond! He is an inspiration in as much as he continually experimented and pushed boundaries until his death at eighty eight. He didn’t rate his own work until he was seventy dismissing everything that had gone before, always sure there was more to learn. We can all learn something from him in relation to whatever we do, always seek to learn continually push boundaries and never settle keep moving forward.
I loved all of his work but my ultimate favourite collection are a set of prints that are solely made with Prussian blue ink. They depict general life in Japan at sea and on the land. There is something very beautiful and subtle about the many tones of blue maybe its just that blue is calming and soothing, I don’t know there is just something very special about them. My pictures here don’t really do them justice it is one of those occasions where if you can you need to see them in real life nothing else will compare!
Theres is a fantastic fat catalogue that comes with this show and goes by the same title. I think its available from the British Museum shop. Really worth buying if you are interested in this kind of work.
One final thing I learnt from this exhibition was the origins of Manga drawing. Having taught art at art college for twelve years one constant cause of frustration was many students obsession with Manga. Now there’s nothing wrong per se with manga but when you are trying to teach students how to look and observe the world properly and they constantly draw made up stuff they don’t learn. They look at their favourite animations and think they will make their millions copying not understanding that those artists have spent many years drawing from the real world to enable that skill to translate into animation. Hokusai has many many sketchbooks of drawings from the real world observations of every detail of the world around him and these are original ‘manga’ drawings. If I’m ever faced again with students drawing manga instead of observing properly I can feel a lecture about Hokusai coming on, be warned!
Second up are blackberry muffins. These are a bit more dense than non gluten free muffins and don’t rise much but are very tasty. You could also use other fruit that is in season or rhubarb which has been lightly cooked so it hasn’t fallen …
Having been away for a while I knew I’d be coming home to a garden full of fruit. The blackberry’s had produced another round, the apples were falling off the trees and there was a crop of rhubarb. A perfect reason to get baking! I …
After a week of sunshine and sea swimming I am back in the north and the temperature has definitely dropped. It’s that time of year when it is cold in the morning so you put lots of clothes on but by lunchtime you are too hot! As dusk sets in the temperature plummets again and I feel the need for food that warms my bones! This recipe is another quick one it takes me half an hour from start to finish.
Slice some onions and fry in a little oil until they begin to go brown. Add two or three chopped cloves of garlic and a heaped teaspoon of crushed ginger cook with the onion for a couple of minutes more. I try to winkle some fresh ginger into lots of my food as it is packed with amazing healing properties. For example did you know it can work as an anti-inflammatory, it can lower blood sugars and help reduce the risk of heart disease and cholesterol, it is good for your brain and can help boost your immune system as well as fight infection. You see what I mean well worth using as much as possible.
Rinse 8oz of red lentils in a sieve (you could use yellow, brown or green ones but they would take much longer to cook) and add to the onions stirring well after a couple of minutes add a tin of chopped tomatoes and bring back to a simmer. Fill your empty tomatoes tin with water twice and add to the pan. As the cooking continues keep an eye on the water level as the lentils will soak it up quickly. Add more water as required.
Add a heaped teaspoon of smoked paprika, some child flakes, celery seeds (you can miss out the celery seeds if you don’t have them…fennel or cumin seeds would also work well) salt and pepper. Add a stock cube of your choice stir well and leave to simmer until the lentils begin to soften. Add any spare veg you have around and want to use up, I used some mushrooms but peppers or spinach would work along with many other things.While the lentils are cooking grill six to eight gluten free sausages to give them some colour, they don’t need to be cooked right through as they will continue cooking in the lentils.
Cut the browned sausages into bite size chunks and add to the pan stirring well. Continue to cook through until the lentils are very soft and the sausages are properly cooked. For a vegetarian option you could roast cubes of butternut squash and add them instead of sausages.
This casserole works well with rice, couscous, a jacket potato or even on its own. This should be enough for four people any left overs would be great cold for lunch with a piece of toast the next day.
I’m on my way back up north and have stopped off in Leicester for a night to catch up with a couple of friends. We decided to go out for a Dosa on the Golden Mile which, if you have never been to Leicester, is …
I’m still on my travels and am in Bournemouth. I love to cook for my friends it’s a great way to say ‘thank you for having me’. So my last night with friends who have put me up for several nights over the last couple …
I love tea.
I love the taste the process and the ritual of it all. I use it in my artwork all the time so it really is a big part of my life.
My friends in Blandford had told me about a specialist tea shop in Sturminster Newton which just happened to be where we had to go for the extra bit we needed for our sewing project. So we popped into Comins Tea House and stayed for some time. What a fabulous little place. A warm welcoming small and perfectly formed space inside and out. It was a scorching day so we moved a table and sat in the shade of a fig tree, it felt like we were on holiday.
The menu is very comprehensive with hand chosen single estate green, white, oolong and black teas. The biggest problem was choosing one! Michelle one half of the Comins team came to help us out and recommended a green tea (I wish I had written down which one it was!) and Anne had a hand pressed green leaf tea. My tea was sublime. Pale soft and gentle with a slightly fragrant and milky taste and look. Delightful on a sunny afternoon sitting under a fig tree.
Michelle says ‘We respect the origins of the tea, preparing our single estate teas in a way that makes the most of their fantastic natural flavours; aiming to keep it simple and not make it stuffy.’ I would say job well done on that front!
Anne and I were a little peckish so wondered about a spot of lunch. As I have to be gluten free I wasn’t sure what would be available for me to have, I really needn’t have worried. Michelle very kindly offered to hand make me some gluten free stuffed dumplings specially, adding that if they were not nice she’d sort me something else out instead. Well what can I say the dumplings were delicious! The dough was a little crumbly as gluten free flour tends to be but the taste was amazing. As often happens when I go out for lunch, it was agreed that we were full after the dumplings and really weren’t going to have any cake until Michelle came over to tell me there was a special gluten free lemon, coconut and polenta cake and I immediately found room for some of that. I am very glad I did. Gluten free cake can often be very sweet and very dry this was neither of those things. It was beautifully moist and full of flavour melting in the mouth scrumptious.
An all round delightful experience and I applaud Michelle and Rob for creating a sensitive and aesthetically wonderful project. They state that their business aim and direction ‘was to make it simple for customers to find and enjoy good value, quality, single estate loose leaf teas. We believed then, as we do now, that the preparation and enjoyment of loose leaf tea can be an every day activity which can fit in with and indeed enhance our increasingly busy lives.’
I wholeheartedly agree!
I bought some Genmaicha tea to take home with me (a particular favourite of mine) and the following day I enjoyed it immensely whilst sitting on the beach. The only thing that would have made it even better would have been to drink it out of the travel tea set that I saw in the shop the day before but I need to save my pennies for that!
My friend Anne in Blandford is a very productive sewer. She makes beautiful clothes. Her website is sewmadeup.co.uk if you would like to see her work, she is also a photographer so the images are also stunning! So she showed me a fab book she …