Saffron & Blueberry

Food Bloggers Connect & Walk - Final Update & New Website ... & Late DB

2009-11-26T13:01:00.003+01:00

First off, if you will be checking in with me tomorrow on the Daring Bakers' Challenge, I will be posting late, hopefully right after the weekend. We are moving from one house into another and it is complete chaos around here at the moment. I did the challenge and simply haven't photographed it yet -that will be interesting in itself- so if I succeed in what I will be attempting to do with it, I

When the Fall colors found me...

2009-11-21T03:52:00.001+01:00

Or was it that I found them... I know I've been missing in action. As I said before there's a lot going on, but see, I haven't forgotten you all. I just start drafts and then have to go do something else. Before you know it, I've got five drafts, none of them are even half done, and it's been ten days since the last time I posted. I feel like the leaf in the last picture here; I've yellowed,

Egg

2009-11-11T07:05:00.001+01:00

The store, not the oval body laid by a chicken or other fowl. It's just around the corner from where we live and it's such a beautiful store. For a long time I walked by it without realizing it was a clothing store; it looked like a mysterious room with a big window with a light gray shade behind it and the word egg stenciled onto the glass. Then, just a few days ago, on a slightly warmer day

Autumn: Thank you for the plums

2009-11-07T02:53:00.001+01:00

So it's old news autumn is here, but I never said I was going to be keeping the calendar for you so this post is not meant to announce that. No, this post is about how the colors are beautiful now and how I have a deep and abiding love for plums. The autumn colors, of course you have all your myriad shades of yellow, orange, red, brown: siennas, ochres, ambers, umbers, shades you forget exist

A Mental Escape

2009-11-02T00:20:00.000+01:00

I'm a bit scattered at the moment as there are several major things happening at the same time, and have several posts in various states of completion in my drafts box, so I thought I'd say a little hello while I sort some things out and ask you a question that is borne out of how I shut my brain off when I get stressed. I escape to a place I know in my head, and what's soothing to me right now

Playing with my Food: DBs do Macarons

2009-10-27T11:00:00.001+01:00

When our hostess this month chose macarons, I had to laugh, seeing as just a few weeks ago I was making macs for Jamie's mac-a-thon. I pretty much hadn't made macarons since I became obsessed with figuring them out a couple of years ago and now here I was making them over and over again. Back when I was trying them out, I'd made a number of traditional flavors, but hadn't gotten around to making

Food Blogger Connect Update - Speakers & Agenda

2009-10-26T12:59:00.056+01:00

FOOD BLOGGER CONNECT 2009: MAKING IT THE FOOD BLOGGING EVENT OF THE YEAR… … is up to you! You’ve heard it being twitted about and seen it posted on Facebook. Wonder what all the buzz is about? Food Blogger Connect 2009! And you can be a part of it! So far, the response has been electric and we’ve reached further than we ever dreamed; food bloggers are not only training in from all parts of

A Chocolate Creme Caramel Break

2009-10-19T20:15:00.001+02:00

From an Atlas of the Difficult World I know you are reading this poem late, before leaving your office of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven across the plains' enormous

Food Bloggers Connect - First UK Food Bloggers' Conference

2009-10-16T13:01:00.010+02:00

We’ve shared recipes, great meals eaten and glimpsed into each other’s lives through our food blogs, we’ve shared photos and revealed personalities on Facebook, we’ve given cooking tips and encouragement on Twitter. Now isn’t it about time that we met? In this day and age of the internet, we have lost our connectedness. Friendships are made and lost, love affairs carried on across oceans,

Apple and Olive Oil Cake with Maple Icing & the Winner of the Ottolenghi Cookbook

2009-10-13T02:08:00.000+02:00

My apologies for posting this a little late, it's been very exciting and tiring at the same time around here between Baby Saffron saying her first words (Dada and Yaya -the best way she can say her own name right now) and her first two teeth imminently about to burst through, resulting in rather rough patches. The days are distinctly colder now, it's time to cover up, the fall colors are out

Exciting Things and a Giveaway

2009-10-07T20:09:00.006+02:00

To be clear, I'm just going to reiterate it, I love Baby Saffron more than life itself, but, I'm currently working on setting up my first work project since she was born, which project would take place in a few months, and I'm so excited. I can't say what it is yet, but I can give you a hint: This is on Fox Glacier on the South island of New Zealand. You'd think, from how much I hate the drab

Battersea Park

2009-10-03T01:11:00.001+02:00

So what does it say about me that every time I started to write the name of this park we regularly go to here in London which is called Battersea Park, I typed Battery Park which is in New York. The mind has a weird way of nudging you even when it knows that a nudge is not required. There's not much to tell about Battersea Park, it's just one of the parks I like best of the ones available to us

Coconut and a Guest Post

2009-09-29T18:32:00.000+02:00

While she's away across the pond, my lovely friend Jamie, of Life's a Feast, needed a bit of help with blog maintenance. Being without a computer can be tough going when you're trying to post regularly. So I volunteered to help with "upkeep" by posting a cake (or two) over there. If you don't read Jamie's blog, I suggest you start doing so because she is truly a word-genie. I hope I didn't

It's Huff & Puff Time aka Makin' Vol-au-Vent

2009-09-27T05:38:00.007+02:00

This post is brought to you in part by the letter Y. OK so, here's the thing I think I should come clean about: I didn't use the same recipe as everyone else for the DB challenge this time *ducks from the rotten eggs and tomatoes flying her way*. My sincerest apologies to Steph of a whisk and a spoon who is our hostess this month, I am sincerely grateful to you for getting me to finally make

The Autumn Solstice, A visit to the Zoo and some Verrines

2009-09-21T01:32:00.004+02:00

Today is the autumn solstice, which means a couple of things for me: 1) Since my precious little Baby Saffron was born on the 21st of March and thus the spring solstice, she turned 6 months old today. Where does the time go? 2) I really have to put up some of the "summer" posts I still have in my drafts since they're not really relevant anymore. It's time to start making heavier fare to pat the

Thinking about New Zealand

2009-09-19T12:59:00.000+02:00

One of the places I've been that I love best on earth is New Zealand. I was just looking at pictures I took there and this is one of my favorite ones. What I like most about this picture is that I took it with a Canon Elph circa 2003 -the Powershot S400 to be precise- which I briefly mentioned here. It was a very cold and brisk day on the southermost tip of the South island and the boat in the

Waiting for my macro lens...

2009-09-17T14:25:00.000+02:00

Oh the things I could do when it gets here...

It's done so have some Chocolate Fleur de Sel Macs

2009-09-15T18:20:00.081+02:00

If you've been here before this is a totally new look since the very beginning of this blog. I mean I know at the beginning of the year I said I was going to do all this stuff and then life got in the way, so I changed the header a little bit and changed the widths and everything and that was that for a little while. But since I decided a few weeks ago that I was going to change the blog

Just in case you're visiting...

2009-09-14T17:01:00.002+02:00

Mango-Passion Fruit Macarons for Rachel and the Livestrong Taste of Yellow Event

2009-09-09T03:28:00.254+02:00

I don't think I know anyone that hasn't been touched by the C word in some way, whether it be through a family member, a friend, a lover, an acquaintance even. In my family, my maternal grandmother passed away of breast cancer when I was 6 and my paternal grandfather, one of my most favorite people in the world ever, lived with colon and prostate cancer for 17 years before his body finally gave

A Visit to the Borough Market

2009-09-03T00:58:00.000+02:00

So the obvious question might be: Why would I include a picture of sweet limes below, as the first picture in this post, if I didn't get sweet limes at the Borough Market? Well, there's no real logic to it, these limes are yellow, which is unusual as you know because it means they were allowed to ripen, and they came straight from Pakistan to London in someone's suitcase as a token of affection

An Untraditional D(o)B(os) Torte

2009-08-27T01:00:00.002+02:00

Before I say anything else, I have to give a shout out to two ladies. One is my good friend and partner in crime, as you'll see, Meeta K. of What's For Lunch Honey? and the other is the woman who regularly saves the day, the sweetest Frenchie (both literally and figuratively) on the Eastern seaboard, Helene of Tartelette. This challenge would not have seen completion without either one of these

Old Hobbies and Upside Down Banana Cake

2009-08-22T00:52:00.006+02:00

La Seine at the Pont-Neuf, ParisSometimes, when you've stopped an activity for a while, it's easy to forget that a long time ago you may have been good at it.Back right after college, I was a mad photographer, taking pictures of everything all the time. Digital SLRs weren't around back then, at least not in any sense I could afford, and I so enjoyed shooting film, feeling that I was learning

I'm ONLY 10 Days Late = DB Mallomars = Alert the Media!

2009-08-05T18:02:00.010+02:00

Post in Progress... Betcha ya didn't think I was tellin' the truth about makin' the DB Challenge in my last post didja?....These are some of the four dozen roses and other flowers that A. got me for my birthday on Saturday. Purty huh... I'm not really a flowers kinda gal (don't get me wrong, I love flowers, but receiving flowers is not something I long for, I'm more of an "equipment" type of gal

J'ai Fatigué = I Have Tired

2009-07-27T02:45:00.006+02:00

When my youngest niece was 4 (only 2 years ago), being Franco-American, she would have difficulty with the use of the verbs to be and to have, which are auxiliary in French and thus have to be learned individually, and would say j'ai fatigué (I have tired) instead of je suis fatiguee (I am tired). This became her go-to-phrase whenever she didn't want to do something or felt needlessly and cruelly