Eyeshoot

Daily Food 35/365 Feb 02 – Bruschetta.

admin — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 13:15:53 +0000

I have decided that it is totally impractical to upload a Daily Food picture every single day, it takes too long and some of the pictures are, frankly, very dull indeed with much repetition. So from now on I shall upload the pictures of which I am proud either because they’re great pictures or the food was particularly delicious and I want to write about it.

Daily Food 34/365 Feb02

Broad bean, pea and mint bruschetta and mozarella, basil and chilli bruschetta as a starter to a supper with friends. To follow this I cooked Lauren Pascalle’s baked butternut squash but changed the recipe to use cous cous rather than quinoa. To follow was Nigella Lawson’s chocolate pear pudding which was fabulous. A very good meal indeed!

Daily Food 31-33/365

admin — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 18:23:51 +0000

I find that I am somewhat behind with my Daily Food posts, so I shall make a concerted effort this week to catch up with my backlog and get into ‘real time’. Here three small meals from a couple of weeks ago.

Daily Food 31/365 (Jan 31)

If there’s a bar of Lindt Super Fine Milk chocolate around I find it very hard to resist – especially with a cup of tea!

Daily Food 32/365 (Feb 01)

I met with Adam for a cup of tea at Eastern Block cafe in the Northern Quarter for a bit of a mid week catch up. I’d had lunch at home after the gym and decided to have a bit of a treat in the shape of this rather delicious chunk of chocolate chip shortbread.

Daily Food 33/365 (Feb 02)

One of my regular and favourite breakfasts – porridge with demerara sugar and plain yoghurt.

Daily Food 27-29/365

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:00:19 +0000

Daily Food 27/365

I bought some beautiful pink grapefruits and here’s the first one from the batch, the first I’d had for ages. It was so sweet and juicy – delicious!

Daily Food 28/365

A Saturday lunch for the two of us, at home. We’d been to the lovely newish Booths supermarket at Media City in Salford to buy some nibbles and wine for the evening as we had our friends Phil and Laura coming round for a drink before popping down the road to one of favourite local restaurants, The Persia Grill for a slap up feast. While we were at Booths, Peter decided on a piece of roast, rolled belly pork, not something I would have chosen in a million years but there were some nice bits! I used up the remains in a delicious Chinese style, rice noodle dish for supper a couple of days later which was much better than the original.

Daily Food 29/365

A light lunch after a greedy meal the previous night made with larder and fridge supplies. Tinned sardines in tomato sauce, tinned tuna, a nice fresh salad, some posh olives which didn’t taste of much and a couple of ryvita.

Craft show – done!

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:34:24 +0000

Well, I survived the Chorley Contemporary Crafters Big Crafty Takeover on Sunday which was a great relief! We had an early start, getting up at 6.30, not a time of day with which I am particularly familiar, then a little light weightlifting as we loaded up the car in the slushy remains of the previous day’s snow. Thank goodness the weather wasn’t as bad as we had feared, there was no fresh snow and it didn’t seem very icy. Mum arrived and off we went. The location was very nice – not that we could see too much of it through the fog! We parked right outside the main doors and were unloaded very efficiently. My table was in the big room downstairs, opposite the cafe, and next to the side door which we had been warned would be open during the event. My table looked good when it was all set up, but I realised that I really needed some better display solutions for my cards as they weren’t shown to their best all grouped together in one box. There was a good range of items and it was certainly colourful and eye catching.

It was pretty quite up until nearly lunchtime, I suspect due to the not wonderful weather, but I was selling a few cards and chatting to lots of people who seemed interested but unfortunately, not interested in buying! It was pretty freezing by the open door and I swiftly lost the feeling in my icy feet! After lunch it did get much busier and I carried on selling a few cards, one zine and one small unmatted prints – no blocks and no mounted prints. By about 2.00 I’d had enough of that and reduced the blocks in price drastically and then they started to fly off the table – hurrah! The biggest sale was eight to one lady, and then six to a family and the husband didn’t have enough cash so we managed to do a PayPal transaction which was fun and eventually worked. My table was really busy for the last few hours with a lot of the other sellers coming to buy some blocks, it felt great to be getting rid of them! I sold 33 in the end, which made me very happy! I did enjoy myself very much, the organisers were very friendly and helpful as were the other stallholders and I really enjoyed chatting to ‘the public’, I handed out loads of cards so hopefully I’ll get some visitors to my website and Etsy shop over the next few days. I was surprised not to sell any prints, I think the prices are just right – they do well in my Etsy shop after all, so maybe people just didn’t like them or thought they were expensive, or were confused by the sizes of the mats and didn’t want to have to find frames for them – I don’t suppose I’ll ever find out. I’d certainly be interested in taking part in another show, perhaps at a bigger event in a more affluent area – the Chorlton or Didsbury Arts Festivals or similar?

Daily Food 26/365: At The Buddhist Centre in Manchester

admin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:40:08 +0000

My car was due for a service so when I had dropped it off I spent the rest of the morning in town having a nice mooch around, a little light shopping and a visit to the art gallery. All very nice and something I hadn’t done for a while. Part of the plan was to have a nice lunch somewhere and the venue I settled on was the Earth Cafe in the basement of the Buddhist Center in the Northern Quarter. It’s a great little cafe serving super healthy vegan food in massive portions. I don’t eat there very often for the simple reason that it’s not open at the weekends and that’s when I’m usually in the area. I had a Spanish chickpea and spinach stew with brown rice (which they cook wonderfully, I wish mine turned out like that!), carrot salad and broccoli and beetroot salad, all for £6. Delicious!

Daily Food 26/365

On the Etsy UK Front Page

admin — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:40:13 +0000

It’s always great to have your work featured on the Front Page of Etsy, whether it’s the ‘main’ front page or the UK one. I think the UK Front Pages look different from the main ones, the images stay there for longer and they seem to be more hand picked somehow. Here’s my first FP feature for some time. The collection is called Valentine’s for Boys and was curated by Laura Vernon (click the picture to go to the Treasury and from there you can see all the items in more detail)

My item is the Double Yellow Lines print set.

Daily Food 25/365: Turkey Meatballs

admin — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:18:24 +0000

Daily Food 25/365

Turkey Meatballs in Tomato Sauce with Pasta

These really did taste much nicer than they sound. I was in my (ongoing) trying to eat less after holiday phase and decided to buy some rather unatractive turkey mince instead of the more tasty and calorie laden lamb mince which is my favourite. I have cooked a fabulous turkey patty recipe by Yotam Otolehghi on a few occasions but I didn’t think about it while I was shopping and when I did think about it later, I found that my post holiday fridge didn’t have all of it’s normal supplies and the recipe just wouldn’t have worked. Instead I turned to my computer and after wadidng through numerous horrible sounding turkey dishes for ‘slimmers’ I came across this from Nigella Lawson. I usually like her recipes so I gave it a go. It was certainly simple enough, actually, it sounded so simple that I had to make it a bit more complicated and the result was very nice indeed. I had the leftovers last night with some pasta and vegetables when I arrived home, ravenous after my late yoga class.

Turkey Meatballs in Tomato Sauce – with thanks to Nigella Lawson

For the sauce

1 onion, peeled
1 stick celery
2 tbsp garlic oil
1 tsp dried thyme
2 x 400g/14oz cans chopped plum tomatoes, plus approximately 2 full cans of water
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp sea salt flakes or ½ tsp pouring salt
black pepper, to taste

For the meatballs

500g/1lb 2oz turkey mince
1 free-range egg
3 tbsp breadcrumbs
3 tbsp grated parmesan
2 tbsp finely chopped onion and celery (see above)
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp dried thyme

Preparation method

For the sauce, put the onion and celery into a food processor and blitz to a mush. (Or you can chop as finely as humanly possible by hand.) Reserve 2 tablespoons of the mixture for the meatballs.
Warm the garlic oil in a large, heavy-based saucepan or casserole, add the onion and celery mixture, along with the thyme, and cook at a moderate to low heat, stirring every now and again, for about 10 minutes.
Add the cans of plum tomatoes, filling up each empty can with water to add to the pan. Season with the sugar, salt and pepper, stir well and let the mixture come to a bubble, then turn the heat down and simmer the sauce gently while you get on with the meatballs.
For the meatballs, put all the ingredients for the meatballs, including the reserved chopped onion and celery, and salt according to preference, into a large bowl and gently mix together with your hands. Don’t overmix, as that will make the meatballs dense-textured and heavy.
When all the meatball ingredients are not too officiously amalgamated, start rolling them into balls. The easiest way is to pinch out an amount about the size of a generously heaped teaspoon and roll it into a ball between the palms of your hands. Put each meatball onto a baking tray lined with baking parchment or greaseproof paper. You should get about 50 little meatballs.
Drop the meatballs gently into the simmering sauce; I try to let these fall in concentric circles working round the pan from the outside edge inwards, in the vaguest of fashions.
Let the meatballs simmer in the sauce for 30 minutes, or until cooked through. Serve with rice, pasta, couscous or however you so please.

Patiently Waiting

admin — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:45:44 +0000

I’ve been working on the stock for the Chorley Contemporary Crafters event on Sunday. My printer’s still not working, so I’ve sent all of my artwork to my lab of choice for prints in three sizes, so I should have those very soon. I now have four bags full of Mini Picture photo blocks which is an awful lot of photo blocks for the good people of Chorley to choose from, I’ve worked out the pricing for my cards and have started to write lists – which I’m sure is a good thing.

While doing all of this, I’ve made some good progress with my pictures from Cuba and here’s one for your viewing pleasure – shot in the pretty town of Trinidad on the south coast.

Patience

Daily Food 24/365: Carluccio’s

admin — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:14:50 +0000

DailyFood 24/365

I had survived my first day back from Cuba without falling asleep or feeling jetlagged so when it was suggested that we meet a friend for a film and food it sounded like the ideal way to stop me from flaking out before bed time. The food venue was one of our favourites, Carluccio’s mainly because as we were on the phone to our friend to decide where to go I received an emial from them telling me that there was a ’2 for 1 deal’ on main courses – easy decision. This is a picture of my starter which was a special for the day, it’s a mushroom bruschetta and after the previous ten days of tasteless and non-seasoned food it was a joy to eat something so garlicy and chilli flavoured which I enjoyed very much.

Getting ready for the Craft Fair on Sunday.

admin — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:45:11 +0000

When I signed up for the Chorley Contemporary Crafter’s ‘Big Crafty Takeover’ event just before I went away to Cuba I was super confident that I’d be ready in time, all I had to do was make and mount some prints, stitch some zines and I’d be ready. What I didn’t take into account was that my trusty printer would decide to totally disregard all of my colour management settings and churn out some really rubbish prints. I have spent literally hours trying to work out what the problem is and almost thrown it out of the window on several occasions over the weekend. I’ve put in three new ink cartridges and wasted many sheets of my precious paper and the prints are still rubbish. I’ve contacted our Mac wizard and hopefully he’ll be able to pop by either tonight or tomorrow to make it all better so I can get on with my prints. The good news is that I have plenty of 5×5″ prints which I am mounting at the moment in their sweet 8×8″ frames and they are looking good. It’s a slow process but I’m enjoying it now that I’m not getting into a tangle with the super sticky double sided tape I’m using!

As well as the little mounts, I have some for 10×8″ prints and a few big ones for 16×20″ frames and I have taken delivery of the greetings cards I’ve had printed by the brilliant Moo.com and they look fantastic, I have some foodie TTV canvas prints upstairs which I shall take with me as well. Also to do is to get hold of a stock of Mini Picture photo blocks as they’ll look great on my table, print price lists, graphics for my table, work out how to display my wares, get change, buy bags, buy price lables and so on and so on. Then I’ll be ready….

Work in progress.