Since the theme of my last post was the Lake District, I thought I would continue here as a kind of second part. As I write this short introduction to the following set of photos, I have my Lake District map open before me on my desk. Retracing my steps, both for this year’s trip and others we did in the past, feels good.
Continue reading More Photos from the Lake District: Parks in Keswick
This weekend the news was in: after four attempts or so, The Lake District has been awarded world heritage status by UNESCO. It joins a list of impressive sites from the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, to the Historic District of Old Quebec in Canada, to Ancient Thebes in Egypt, to Mont-Saint-Michel in France, to an almost never ending list of locations (rightly so), including of course our very own City of Valletta, The Megalithic Temples of Malta and Gozo and Ħal Salfieni Hypogeum.
Continue reading Photos from The Lake District: A new UNESCO world heritage site
What I said two posts ago, while reviewing Mira Manek’s first book Saffron Soul, holds true here as well. The guys at Quarto are seriously, seriously (yes, it’s a double) getting things right. I was very curious and very nervous about Sri Lanka: The Cookbook, thinking that I would not be able to give an objective review. Perhaps ‘objective’ is not the right word to use here, but let’s leave it. When I received it a few days ago, what I saw when I opened the package just made my day.
I wrote to Jessie at Quarto almost immediately with a ‘how beautiful this book is’ e-mail, which I normally don’t do, at least not that quickly. This time round though I couldn’t contain my excitement. It just looks stunning. (As I write this I might take a photo of the book myself, just to show you the texture of the cover – another good excuse to bust out my macro lens. And I did.)
I know, I know. Pause. I can just see you rolling your eyes at me right now, but I just can’t help it. Yes. This is another banana loaf/bread* recipe. Listen, it’s getting warmer now and I feel my baking days for this Spring/Summer are on their last leg. I’m not really looking forward to that, but one of the joys of this blog is for me to have a record of what I made throughout these past 6 years. Woah…6 years? Yes, and a few months. I can’t believe how much C&T helped me, changed me and taught me.
I can’t really remember the last time I wrote a recipe so quickly. The problem is not the recipe itself; it’s the intro which gives me grief many times. The thing is I just cannot bring myself to publish anything, in this case a recipe, without saying something about it. It does happen sporadically – I just start to ramble on, and after that you may get a teeny weeny paragraph at the end. That’s called writer’s block. Oh, those dreaded words…a creative slowdown, the loss of a deadline or the ability to produce new work, as Wikipedia defines it. The nerve! In my case, listening to Ed Sheeran isn’t helping. (Fans please note: this is not his fault. Of course.)
Chorizo & Thyme 