Archive for 2014

Iced Coffee


So I decided to try "Vietnamese Iced Coffee" this afternoon. Basically:



boil through a regular amount of coffee granules and water 

(in a percolator if you have one, otherwise a cafetiere will be fine)

(enough to fill two glasses)



place three or four ice cubes in the bottom of each glass



pour the coffee onto the ice (slowly and cautiously)



the ice will melt and the coffee will cool slightly



add another three ice cubes per glass



drizzle with condensed milk or double cream  (as is desirable) 



You may not get the right quantities for your personal taste first time, but when it's right it's really right!

This is my own "recipe", so you could probably find a genuine Vietnamese coffee instruction manual online if you fancy.








Camber Sands

After working all day on Saturday, my family took me to Camber beach. We watched the sun set, I gathered the photos I needed for my next project, my sister found a dead mollusc and we then drove a little further and ate a dinner of fish and chips.




Two and a Half Hours a Day

After about a year of taking the same journey every morning, and afternoon, I have come to a rather unsettling realisation: I spend roughly two and a half hours a day on a bus. That's seventeen and a half hours a week. Seventy hours a month, and nine hundred and thirteen point seven three hours a year. No wonder my Instagram feed is becoming a bit samey!


Air

I have moved on to 'Air', the second of the four elements, still exploring with Clem and her dust sheet. Today we stood on a gusty hilltop in a foot of mud, capturing wind by the light of the setting sun.



Setting Sun


The rooks fly from the woodland to the hilltop every evening to sing by the setting sun. Once the light fades into a distant yellowy blue, back they go, dancing and interlocking, creating an ever-changing ceiling of bird. The skies become a blanket of swooping feathers, darting and gliding, cackling, framing the progression from day to night.


Earth

Currently, I'm working under the title ''Earth, Air, Fire and Water'' in photography. On Sunday I managed to transform my sister into 'the Lady of the Woodland' (wrapping her up in a dust sheet, standing her in a bramble patch holding my rabbit...) and therefore ''Earth''.



Islington Adventures Part 2

So I spent my Sunday wandering around London, my camera in one hand, a vegetable pasty in the other, stepping in and out of underground stations. This time I was 'gathering city-life environment shots for my contrast project' which was really just an unquestionable excuse to have brunch (cake+coffee) with my godmother.

Celtic Eggs

The other day was completely cloud free (oh my goodness what is this witchcraft) so I decided to get on with some 'CELTIC magazine' work. This time I was shooting eggs and coffee, but I put a fabric pic from my other shoot at the bottom for good measure.

All processed in Lightroom with VSCO films.

Hazelnut Milk

At the moment I'm working on a lifestyle volume entitled "CELTIC" which, as the title would suggest, is a food and lifestyle journal about the ancient Celtic ways of life. Today I was at home with a migraine, and decided to make progress on the recipe section of the journal.

I brewed up some homemade "hazelnut milk" following an old recipe I found on line, tweaking it slightly to suit my purpose.

"Nut milks, made from boiling together ground almonds or walnuts with boiling water were a common ingredient in Medieval cookery. We know that our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors collected lots of hazelnuts during late summer. Making a milk from dried nuts is very easy and it's inconceivable that Stone Age and Iron Age peoples did not make hazelnut milk both as a drink and as a base for stews.

Ingredients: 200g ground hazel nuts, 500ml boiling water

Method: Combine the ground hazelnuts and boiling water and allow to steep for five minutes, stirring occasionally. You can then either sieve the mixture to remove any coarse grains or you can blend the mixture until smooth in a blender (this is the preferred option). There are many variations to the basic hazelnut milk recipe. Some require the use of stocks or broths to make the hazelnut milk. For desserts you can also make a sweetened hazelnut milk, with the addition of about 50ml of honey to the quantities above."

It is scrummy on its own, but also a wonderful alternative to regular milk in coffee or hot chocolate.


Happy New Year!

So it's been a VERY long time since I've posted anything on here, but, and this time I mean but, my new years resolution (one of them) is to blog more regularly. Fingers crossed. Hope everybody had a fab 2013, and is looking forward to what is yet to come.