The Last Month (Time Has Flown)

Last Sunday it was the first anniversary of this blog and I realised I hadn’t posted for a while due to a busy summer. Well, I’m going to rectify this today with  a catch up of my holidays. This might not be posted for a few days as I currently don’t have reliable internet but as soon as I can I promise to upload this! 

I last posted when I was in Sweden. We had a fantastic two weeks there and the food, well, it was brilliant. If you ever go to Stockholm then I recommend you eat at Oaxen Slip, which is on the same island as the ABBA museum (also worth a visit for the hilarity of it all. And the chance to pretend you’re part of the band). The menu is intended to be shared but you could quite easily have a plate each and just share the sides. We each chose a dish and then tried each others’. I had pork with spring onion butter and a charred lemon, so simple yet full of flavour. My family chose cod with hazelnuts, Swedish beef sausage, and a steak. All tasted fantastic. For me, the anticipated dessert, and the reason I chose the restaurant, having spotted it on Rocket and Squash’s instagram, was a salted caramel brownie with ice cream and sour cream. Boy, did it live up to expectations! The warm brownie was light and gooey with the sour cream being a perfect, if unusual, foil to the chocolate sweetness. 

After Sweden I had two weeks of work experience at Olive magazine in London (a friend kindly lent me her flat so I didn’t have to commute each day). It was great to see what went on at a food magazine and what it took to produce the magazine that I eagerly read each month. I’ll be keeping an eye out to see if I can spot what went on when I was there in the upcoming issues! I spent a few days helping out in the test kitchens, making some Irish recipes and some Christmas ones too, including a lovely champagne cocktail. In the second week, I was lucky enough to go on a shoot and see how a small change to a set can make the end image completely different. Even the mundane things like stuffing envelopes was interesting when I could add to my list of restaurants to visit. All in all it was a brilliant experience and one that I hope to repeat with another food magazine next summer.

Returning to the subject of unreliable internet - I have just moved to Poitiers, France for my ERASMUS year and whilst the town is lovely and the people on the intensive course I’m doing this week are also lovely, I’ve had a few hiccups with my flat. The latest being that it rained so hard last night that my flat sprung a leak! I’m hoping that everything will get sorted asap but in the meantime I’m just grateful none of my things were damaged and that the weather forecast is sun for the foreseeable future. I’ll keep you updated with my life here and will post a recipe as soon as my internet is installed so check back soon. Now, I’m off to the market to buy something for lunch, have a good day!