À Bientôt, Poitiers

Poitiers' impressive town hall

I’m sitting in La Rochelle airport as I write this, waiting for my flight home to Southampton, still in shock that my ERASMUS year is now officially over. While it doesn’t quite feel like it was only yesterday that I pitched up in Poitiers and dealt with a flooded flat within the first week, it certainly doesn’t feel like it was nine months ago!

The river that meanders alongside Poitiers

In between packing and avoiding the May showers, I took some photos so that you could all see where I’ve been living. I’m going to miss the fantastic markets when it comes to finding good, and cheap, produce but I won’t miss the cobble stones around town when they're slick with rain. 

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. 

School's Out For The Summer!

I'm a cook!!

I have a job! And a flat in France! And it's summer! And Very Hot! As you can probably tell, I'm excited and busy. First things first, I am moving to Poitiers in September for a year, as you may already know, and I went there with mum a couple of weeks ago to find somewhere to live. Well, we expected it to be really difficult but by some miracle we loved the first flat we saw and got that one. It's lovely and spacious and right in the centre of town. The weather on the weekend we were there was gorgeous, and there were some amazing markets that are on every day/week so I won't be short of ingredients for new recipes to share with you. You can see in the photo below what it was like.

Poitiers

A Long Awaited Recipe!

* Argh! This was supposed to go up at the start of this week! I'm so sorry it's late. I've just finished my last exam and I'm packing for a trip to London and then home for mum's birthday. I hope you enjoy this recipe and forgive me for the delay.

I only have one exam left! Whooooo! Unfortunately it's also the longest/hardest but we'll skip that for now.* Today I am going to share with you a recipe for Thai Green Curry so that you can finally put that curry paste recipe from last month to good use. I don't know why it's taken me so long to post this - I think I just always thought I already had, as it's one of my favourite meals. It's really easy to make and if you don't want to make your own paste then I'd probably recommend Mae Ploy as the paste to use - you can buy it from Tesco and Asian supermarkets as well as probably others. It's a large pot and will last for ages but once you've made your own curry pastes then I can promise that you won't go back.