A recent bank holiday weekend managed to focus itself primarily around food. Which is no bad thing of course. We had a friend's birthday drinks in Leicester Square on the Friday evening. This location lent itself nicely to a late dinner in my favourite Japanese restaurant in London, the Tokyo Diner. I was introduced to this restaurant on my first date with my now husband and it has become one of our regular haunts. I can never seem to go past the salmon dishes on the menu but the bento boxes are also extremely popular. Maybe one day I'll take the plunge.
On Saturday night we had been invited for dinner at a friend's house. As an antipodean living in a small flat in suburban London, the concept of a large usable garden is one I have long given up on. However, Shim is one of the few people I know who was born and bred in London and stiill lives with her father in a large family home with a large family garden. Luckily the weather was conducive to sitting outside until nearly midnight. Shim is very honest about the fact that despite her love of good food she does not cook. Therefore, it was not surprising to find that we were enjoying a delicious (if almost unbearably hot) chilli prepared by her dad. Yum. Shim had also decided to mark summer by serving Pimms. Pimms is not very well known where I am from and coincedentally, I had decided to learn about Pimms this weekend (prompted by this article in the Guardian). Shim served her Pimms with lemonade, a lot of fruit and some cucumber. I enjoyed this concoction but found it went down a little too easily, I forgot it was alcoholic several times.
Sunday saw a continuation of the Pimms discovery weekend with a picnic in the local park. I made mini foccacia breads topped with blue cheese, garlic and rosemary and black olive, red onion and thyme. I was surprised at just how successful these were and intend to make them again for a team picnic next week. Maybe this time I'll remember to take photos. The Pimms experiment started with the traditional Pimms, lemonade and fruit, as detailed above. This was of course popular but we did think it was almost too sticky and sweet for a hot afternoon. We moved quickly on to mixing with ginger ale and slightly less fruit. This was the most popular option by far. Our final concoction was with tonic, lemon and cucumber. This apparently just tasted like gin and tonic, which was no bad thing. It did teach me however that I might like gin and tonic which was something of a revelation as I don't normally drink spirits.
The bank holiday itself was taken up mostly with a very large breakfast and a very long walk from Ealing to Paddington.
One of the (few) perks of being a civil servant is the occassional privilege days which are tacked onto bank holidays - the Tuesday after this bank holiday was one such day. As everyone else was at work I used the day for cooking, baking and gardening. Well, ok, the extent of my gardening was staking up my tomato plants. I made tomato pasta sauce for the freezer. When I have the time I like to make my own pasta sauce - it's surpisingly easy and seems healthier than store bought sauce. At least I know what's in it I suppose. Lastly, I baked a lemon sour cream cake for my colleagues. A very simple and light cake, described by one workmate as 'heaven in a cake tin'.
Next time I focus a weekend on food I will try to remember to take photos.
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