Toast

This week has been one of those weeks.  You know the sort, life decides it might like to try moving a bit faster and then it likes the idea and then suddenly you are being dragged along at an alarming rate, unable to slow down or even hold onto your hat.

There is a fabulous solution to the problem: Toast.  Yes with a capital T, this is serious Toast, not the quick sort you stuff in when you're late for work, or the half-hearted attempt you make when there's nothing left to eat in the house, this is serious, problem solving, life-fixing Toast.

You will need:

Good quality bread (home made is best, but shop bought will do if it is the freshly baked kind, pre-bagged pre-sliced will absolutely not cut it)  (haha).  The loaf I'm using here was a little present from my Mummy, bought from her local bakery.

Salted dairy butter (sorry arteries, nothing else will do) - at room temperature so it's nice and soft

The qualifiers for the toppings are that they have to be quick, be things readily available in a crisis-struck home and require no extra washing up or preparation.  You could have normal things like jam or Marmite if your crisis isn't too bad and the magic will still work.  For high level crises see below.

Cut a good thick slice of bread and toast it to your preferred shade.

Whip it out of the toaster and butter heavily, making sure you go all the way to the edges.

Slice number one: Sprinkle with caster sugar and cinnamon.

Slice number two: Get a bowl of fresh raspberries or blackberries.  Press one onto the toast, munch, enjoy.  Press another one on....

Slice number three: Grate (just scrape with the buttering knife otherwise you'll have to wash up the grater too) some chocolate onto the hot toast and top with sliced banana.

Slice number four: Grate some chocolate onto the hot toast and top with a drizzle of the syrup from a jar of stem ginger.

If you have a bit more energy:

Slice number five: Scrape out half an avocado with a fork and squash onto buttered toast, sprinkle with chunky salt, pepper and either chilli jelly or balsamic vinegar.

Slice number six: Mash tinned sardines/mackeral (make sure they are sustainably caught) with pepper, a splash of vinegar and a blob of mayonnaise and spread on the hot toast.  This doesn't sound amazing, but it just is.  And if you don't own tinned sardines you are committing a crime and must absolutely go and purchase some at once.

Slice number seven: Cheese on toast - don't butter the toast, but spread instead with pickle or chutney, cover with slices of good strong cheese and shove under the grill until bubbling and just golden.

I used cucumber relish and goats cheese, but anything will work, try a scraping of concentrated tomato puree (the stuff that comes in a tube) or sliced pickled onions with strong Cheddar, sliced apple with Stilton or Roquefort, or chilli jelly with Brie or Camembert.

Behold.  Life rescued, problems solved.  Easy peasy and hardly any washing up.

Oh and the reason for the hecticosity?  Edward's just been posted to Plymouth and we are moving house in four weeks time.  Four weeks.  Four.

Surprise!

I have been hugging a delicious secret for several months now and trying desperately not to spill the beans.

It was Edward's birthday this week and as it happened to be a particularly exciting birthday I thought it warranted a particularly exciting present.  A trip to Paris seemed to fit the bill and having sneakily cleared it with his boss, I made all the arrangements and concentrated on not bursting with excitement.  Luckily he hadn't guessed a thing and so was completely surprised and big eyed when I handed him his golden ticket.

We were up horribly early on Wednesday to catch the train from St Pancras, arriving in Paris mid morning, just in time to look round the Sacre Coeur in Montmartre before settling down to ice cold panaches and lunch at Le Cafe des Deux Moulins (of 'Amelie' fame!).

Our hotel was one of lastminute.com's 'Top Secret' hotel deals - where you know the general area the hotel is in but not much more than that.  This meant we ended up about 15 minutes walk from the Arc de Triomphe with a room at a very affordable rate.  It was worth the mystery, the hotel was lovely and then we hardly spent any time in it anyway!

We visited all sorts of places but didn't actually go in them or up them.  The best bit was wandering around the city drinking it all in.  There is a fab bike rental system and we grabbed a couple and cycled along the river one afternoon.  It was by far the best way to travel - no sore feet, cheap and fairly fast, while still being above ground with the ability to stop and look at things.

One of the best meals we had was takeaway falafel from Chez H'anna in Le Marais - an enormous needs-two-hands-and-full-concentration warm pitta stuffed with sauces, cruditees and delicious falafel.  It cost only 5.50euros each and was ridiculously good.

The top of our food list however, has to be supper we had at Bistrot Victoires on Thursday evening.  We had spent the afternoon wandering around the art galleries and tiny independent shops in St Germain des Pres and wandering back across the river, found this gem just a few streets back from the Jardin des Tuileries.  We both had steak (full of flavour and cooked to perfection) and chips (slim, crisp and fluffy) washed down with a kir au cassis, all extremely good and very reasonably priced at 11euros for entrecote and frites.

We cycled along the river in growing darkness to look at Notre Dame and sat and watched some street performers before dragging ourselves back to the hotel and falling into bed.  There is something so nice about wandering the streets of Paris at night.  Perfect temperature and great atmosphere.  There were loads of people out even at midnight!

We trundled home late Friday evening, tired but happy, feeling a bit smug, truly celebrate-y-birthday-y and very we've-been-on-an-adventure-y.

'Airbourne'

This weekend we went down to Eastbourne to visit my family and had a lovely couple of days ambling about on the sea front.  Every year Eastbourne holds a fantastic 4 day air show featuring a huge range of aircraft from military jets to Victorian style bi-planes and Spitfires to Chinooks and this seemed like too good an opportunity to miss for a picnic and a jolly.

As the show didn't start until lunchtime on Sunday, we spent the morning wandering round The Redoubt, a Napoleonic fortress on the sea front which has been turned into a fab museum stuffed with military history.

There are just enough things to keep you fascinated but not so many that you feel completely overwhelmed.

There is also a rather nice little cafe...

We did get rather sucked in and suddenly realising the time, had to rush off to try and find a good spot on the packed beach.

Just in time, we found a perfect place opposite centre stage and got stuck into ice cold Lambrusco and a teetering pile of sandwiches just as the first planes arrived.

We then spent the afternoon watching the spectacle bathed in sunshine, munching on cake (as it is very almost Edward's birthday and we were sort of early-celebrating) and taking lots of bad photographs of aeroplanes.

(flourless almond and chocolate cake...yum)

It's amazing how riveting the aircraft are, a bit like watching fireworks - even after a whole afternoon of them we could hardly tear our eyes away to cut another piece of cake.

There was a lot of stomach turning loop-the-looping, a couple of wartime relics, even ladies on top of bi-planes and of course the Red Arrows made their usual spectacular appearance.

We went home slightly sunburnt and full of delicious picnic, to dreams of airborne daredevil stunts and the thrills of flight.

Fashion Rules

Kensington Palace have recently opened a new exhibition showing a selection of dresses worn by the Queen, Princess Maragret and Princess Diana.  This sounded like the perfect combination of beautiful dresses and Royalty so I decided I should definitely investigate.

The Queen's dresses were my favourite, dating from the 50s and 60s and timelessly classic in their style.

This is one of Princess Margaret's favourite dresses...I think it would probably feature at the top of my wardrobe too!

Bit of winter coat inspiration!

This is my favourite.  I want it.  It isn't a style much in fashion any more, but somehow it doesn't look too dated.  The Queen looks absolutely beautiful in the footage of her wearing it, and she had such a tiny waist!

I wore my grandmother's wedding dress (made in 1958) for our wedding which had a similar shape - a bodice that came in to the waist and a long full skirt.  Although when I first saw it I wasn't sure if it might look a bit 'vintage' as soon as I put it on I fell in love with it.  Obviously a wedding dress is something to fall in love with anyway, but I love the princess-y feeling to the dress and the very feminine shape - accentuating the waist and lengthening the legs.

Maybe I'll try something similar for my next ball gown!