flachswichel

On Monday morning I woke up, and did what I do every morning, seconds after waking. I thought about breakfast. It's definitely my favourite meal of the day. I think this is because I am always hungry as soon as I open my eyes. I am most definitely not someone who can skip breakfast.

So, on this particular morning, as I lay in bed thinking about what we could eat for breakfast, I realised we had no bread left, and hadn't put a fresh batch in the breadmaker. We didn't have any cereal or nice fruit. Basically, we had nothing. So I got up and baked some flachswickel. Never heard of it? Neither had I until I opened a recipe book and found it.

Last week I received the most exciting delivery of my life in the post - a kenwood chef major. Oh my. I love it. I have dreamed about having a freestanding mixer for quite some time now, but it has taken a long while to part with my money. Amy's wedding cake was the final push I needed, and so I ordered my new baby to arrive in time for wedding cake baking. 

Back to the Flachswickel story. Monday morning seemed like the perfect time to try out the dough hook on my kenwood, and so I excitedly threw in the ingredients for flachswickel, and this is what came out:

This German bread is lightly spiced with cinnamon & cardamom, and has a wonderfully light and fluffy texture. We ate it while it was still warm, with butter & honey and a fresh cup of coffee. I love breakfast time.

Recipe :: yields 7 - 8 rolls

ingredients 

150g butter

200 ml milk

500g flour (I used strong white bread flour)

7g dried yeast (1 sachet)

2 tbsp sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ground cardamom

2 eggs

pinch of salt

icing sugar to dust

1. Put the butter & milk into a saucepan and heat gently until butter has melted

2. Place all remaining ingredients into mixing bowl & add butter + milk misture. Mix together, then knead for 10 mins by hand, or if using a free standing mixer, knead on a low speed for 3 minutes.

3. Cover and leave to rise for one hour in a warm place.

4. Preheat oven to 170C / gas mark 3. Divide the dough into 21 - 24 pieces and roll into long sausages. (original recipe states 24 - mine made 21 at a stretch.)

5. Take 3 of your dough-sausages, pinch together at the top, then plait. 

6. Dust with icing sugar then place on a baking tray and bake for 25 - 30 mins until golden brown. 

sun + strawberries

Are you wondering how to fill your home with the wonderful scent of a British Summer?

Well, wonder no more my friends, I have just the thing!

Last week, I stumbled upon this lovely little glass pot. I saw the strawberries on the front & strawberry compote is what came to mind.

Well, I couldn't resist this pot & the summery sound of strawberry compote which it seemed to be singing to me.

So home I came with the little glass pot & all week long I have dreamt of filling it with a delicious strawberry treat.

As I write this, my kitchen is filled with the mouth watering scent of strawberries simmering gently with fresh orange zest & juice, and a dash of champagne. I can hardly contain my excitement!

I love that this recipe requires a meagre 50ml of champagne. Who has champagne lying around their house? We do!! To be honest, you wanted to make this and don't have any champagne, it would probably be fine without.

Strawberry Compote
100g strawberries
1 tsp caster sugar
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
zest & juice of half an orange
50ml champagne 
 
chop up the strawberries and place in a gently heated frying pan with the orange juice & zest, vanilla & sugar. 
Warm through then add the champage & simmer until liquid has reduced & a thick sauce has formed.


{I doubled this quantity and it made about 80ml of compote.}

 
Enjoy with pancakes, or yoghurt, or ice cream, or anything else that takes your fancy! 

Chiddingstone Celebrations

Last weekend we took a trip to John's hometown, London, to celebrate the birthday of Tim, John's oldest friend.

Our celebrations took place in the lovely Tutor village of Chiddingstone in Kent, my home county. While the day was grey, our spirits were bright. Conversations ran high, with barely a pause for breath, throughout the car journey & during the whole afternoon. We heard wonderful accounts from Joel&Marysia, our friends who were fresh back from a 5 week road trip across America. They have returned with a fresh understanding as to why 50% of Americans don't have a passport, having experienced the length and breadth of the beauty of the United States.

I loved the tiny quirks of the village, like the pavement which looked like this

...and the gentle hill on which the pub stood, making it look a little wonky.

The beautiful Castle Inn was the perfect place to spend our afternoon. We had ended up in this little village by way of recommendation of the food served at the Castle Inn. The boys seemed most excited about the prospect of eating freshly made scotch eggs with a runny yoke. Probably a little something like this. Personally, this held no appeal for me, so I opted for the Winter Brunch Menu. When my platter came out, boasting a mini casserole pot of sausage & mash, a goats cheese salad, a tiny bowl of potato gnocci & a bitesize brownie with clotted cream for dessert, I didn't know where to begin. So many delicious flavours, all in one place, just for me! I loved every bite.  

We grazed on the delicious food until our bellies were so very full and the sky was dark, and  plenty of rounds of bananagrams had been played. (I love that game!) A perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

saturday supper

I have mentioned before that John is a brilliant cook & is responsible for most of the culinary delights that we eat in our house. Saturday saw a new culinary delight created with the John twist, and definitely did not fail to disappoint.

He made burgers. From scratch.

And he made the bread, which was oh so perfectly soft on the inside, a tiny bit crunchy on the outside & still warm from the oven. Perfect.

Have I told you that I think he is brilliant? Well, let me say it again. John is brilliant.

The burgers? Scrumdidliumptious. 

Would you like the recipe? Well, just shout if you do, and I might just persuade the chef to come & guest post on this little space.

As for my kitchen endeavours of late, I had friends round on Friday and I made one of them wretch because she didn't like the mustard in her food (albeit subtle) and I made some very sad looking cakes. I blame it on the teaching sapping all of my abilities.

the John twist

One of the things I love about John is the way he cooks. There might only be a select few ingredients in the kitchen, but let John loose and he is sure to whip up a delightfully tasty meal. John loves to experiment with flavours, adding a little bit of this and a little bit of that. This is often much to my dismay, because, although there's a part of me that loves to experiment with food, there's also the part of me that is happy with the way things are and doesn't want to stray from the norm.

I am noticing more and more when we cook and bake together that there is much banter back and forth of 'let's add a bit of this' and 'no rules apply when I cook, don't worry about what the recipe says!' This presents a challenge to my stubborn character and takes me by surprise when I don't tend to think of myself as someone who likes to be in control. Apparently, when I'm in the kitchen, I do.

Anyhoo, what I wanted to tell you about was the delicious meal John cooked for us last week. In his true style, he added the john twist. This is when John takes a basic concept for a meal, and as he adds his little bit of this, little bit of that, the meal is taken to a whole new level.

Growing up, one of my favourite meals was my Mum's sausagemeat flan. it's a simple, homely, hearty meal that revels in the few ingredients required to come together to create it. I had a lot of reading to do for my course, so John was very kindly cooking for us. Having phoned my Mum for the recipe and dictated to John, he set about preparing the dinner. I was a little anxious that the pastry wouldn't work because the butter was at room temperature and not chilled, andd John had mixed the butter & flour together without adding the egg. Having given John my thoughts on the potential problems while trying to leave the kitchen but wanting to give a helping hand, he assured me that all would be fine.

Was it fine? Well, of course it was. While I was busy reading up on teaching children Science, John had created a delicious sauasagemeat flan. He built on the basics of sausagemeat, onion & a handful of oats by adding apple chutney, wholegrain mustard, and a generous shake of cayenne pepper & smoked paprika. The pastry turned out just fine, despite the warm butter and the omission of blind baking, and to top it all off, John made jam tarts out of the leftover pastry. Brilliant. I need to learn that for the most part, the john twist is a very good thing.

home made apple syrup

This little recipe was created by John, my husband, last weekend while I was cooking Sausage & Apple Casserole.

He came up with a brilliant idea which meant the apple peel would not be wasted. I have fond memories of eating apple peel on Sundays before lunch, as my Mother prepared apple crumble. While she lovingly cooked our lunch in the kitchen, the rest of the family got to munch on long strips of apple peel, filling the huge hole in our bellies ever so slightly while we waited for lunch to be ready. As we don't have a house full of children, even with a bit of apple peel munching, there really was too much for John and I to eat by ourselves.

So John made apple syrup. Brilliantly simple and Brilliantly tasty.

Apple Syrup

Simply put however much apple peel you have on hand into a sauce pan with some water, sugar and a bit of cinnamon and let it simmer until it becomes a syrup.

Pour a small amount of syrup into a glass and add water, ice & a squeeze & slice of lime.

Alternatively, make with hot water to create your very own apple tea.

Enjoy. 

sausage & spice & all things nice

Last week I bought some apples from the greengrocers. They were red, shiny & a type I had not tried before. Sadly, they were the kind that are just so sour that your face cannot help but grimace when you take a bite. They were floury too. Do you know what I mean by 'floury'? It's kind of a funny word to describe apples but sometimes it fits.

Not wanting to waste the rest of the beautiful floury apples, I decided to cook with them. This afforded the perfect opportunity to make sausage & apple casserole. Oh yum. This is seriously good my friends. However, I must warn you, if you are offended by the use of lots of butter in cooking, look away now. I only ever use this much butter when I bake, so as we don't eat this particularly regularly, I am able to overlook the buttery content because it is just so tasty. 

Seriously, try this:

Sausage & Apple Casserole serves 4 


600 ml dry white wine
500g sausages
2 shallots or 1 large onion
4 dessert apples
140g butter 
400ml chicken or veg stock
4 tbsp light brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

1) Bring wine to the boil in a large frying pan & poach sausages for 10 minutes
2) Peel & slice the apples
3) Slice the onions
4) Melt a knob of butter in a second frying pan. Remove the sausages from the wine, 
   reserving the wine.
5) Fry sausages in second pan until browned.
6) Meanwhile, in the pan with the wine, add the onion, apples, stock, sugar, cinammon 
   & butter.
7) Bring to the boil then simmer until the apples are tender and liquid is a thin syrup.
8) Add the sausages to the apple mixture and stir to combine.
9) Serve with creamy mashed potato and a good helping of whatever vegetables take 
    your fancy, preferably in-season produce.

plumson chutney

Plumson Chutney. Never heard of it? That's because I just made it up! I'll explain why as the story of chutney making unfolds.

You might remember that I mentioned that John & I don't have space for fruit trees or to grow our own fruit & vegetables at our current home. Now, this might not be reason alone for what I am about to confess, but I'd like to say in our favour, that if we had a garden with fruit trees in it, we might just know a little bit more about them...

Having gathered up our fruits & brought them safely home, we set about making the chutney. I had found a delicious looking recipe online here, courtesy of our very own Delia Smith. She is a brilliant lady, I must say.

I like to think that cooking & baking are arts that allow for every individual's creative license. I also happily acknowledge that creative license in these areas has its limitations in that there is a science involved in cooking that sometimes gets disrupted if you stray too far from a given recipe. On this occasion, however, mixing things up was an essential ingredient.

Our trip to Long Ashton had been necessary - we already had some damsons but not enough to make a batch of chutney. When the moment came for us to unite the baby batch of damsons waiting expectantly in our fridge with the fresh-from-the tree damsons, we came across a slight problem. Let me show you...

Do you see the problem?

Let me give you a little clue. Bearing in mind that we did not use an ultra huge super duper zoom to take this picture, do the fruits that I am holding look the right size for damsons?

I can assure you, damsons, they are not. 

As I mentioned earlier, John & I are not fruit growing experts, so when presented with a whole load of fruit trees (some of which were clearly apple trees) we went for the one that had purple fruit. I think I was so excited about the fact that we were picking fruit for free that I didn't even stop to think about whether or not we were getting the right fruit. Plums. We collected 800 grams of plums.

So, having made a fruit  faux pas, we simply allowed creative license to take over in the chutney making challenge. Our chutney was to be a hybrid plum & damson chutney. It totally works.

We used 550g of damsons (the real deal, I assure you) and 800g of plums. 

 

To add to chutney-deliciousness the recipe required that we add a collection of spices to our pan & let them infuse while the chutney cooks. In order to do this, you wrap cinnamon sticks, cloves & all-spice berries in muslin, tie with string, and pop it in the pan.

We don't happen to have any babies around yet. No babies = no muslins. So, here's what we did:

We cut up a piece of lace not too dissimilar from a net curtain, and after a little thinking outloud as to whether there might be any plastic content in the fabric which might melt under the heat, we dropped our little sacks of spicy goodness into our two pans.  
(Chutney recipes are designed to make a large batch which means you need a large preserving pan. We made do with two large - 10 litreish flameproof casserole dishes which worked just fine.)

After adding a little dash of ginger to the fruity fray, we sat happy for the next 3.5 hours while the vast amounts of vinegar worked their magic. The result was 12 jars of chutney goodness. Oh yum.

If you are following the recipe I have linked to, it says that it makes 6 jars - we simply bought smaller jars to make it go further and because I think that hexagonal jars are cute.

the weekend round up

I truly marvel at people who grown their own produce. There is something brilliant about being able to cook with the fruits of your labour.

Sadly, I do not at this point in time have the space to grow any produce outside of what you can grow on your windowsill, and so I greatly appreciate it when others share the fruits that they have lovingly tended to for months until the tree boughs have given way to the weight of the ripe fruit hanging from their branches.

Having been given a bagful of damsons, I felt inspired to make something more than just a pudding. Chutney was the order of the day, but we didn't have quite enough to make a full batch. So, on sunny Saturday, John and I went on a bike ride to Long Ashon - the village where we had our wedding - to collect some more from the tree belonging to our kind friend who had given us permission to gather her damsons.

On arrival, we located the tree, found a ladder to reach the fruit which was tantalizingly hard to get and gave the tree some good shakes until the fruit could no longer hold onto its branches. There was something quite exciting about standing under a tree, hearing the leaves rustle & the sound of fruit falling to the ground, not quite knowing whether you might just end up with some fruit on your head. Thankfully, we survived the experience without getting our heads bumped. Although if Isaac Newton hadn't risked a bump on the head from an apple, he wouldn't have been the one to discover gravity, so it's not always a bad thing to be bumped by fruit...

Having filled up our container to the brim and met the friendly tail-less cat, we headed on our merry way home. If I'm honest, I should probably rephrase that. I was not so merry as I knew it would take us a good hour to cycle the 7 mile journey home & I am shockingly unfit, having had a couple of months of very little exercise. It was another of those moments of thinking this is character building & it's doing me good. 

next up: how to make chutney...

Let’s talk about food

John & I have an understanding about food. Well, it’s probably more accurate to say a growing understanding about food. If you asked John, he’d say I don’t yet fully understand.

The way it works when John & I eat together is that if something falls off my plate, it becomes up for grabs & because I don’t necessarily grab it fast enough, John takes it. I would like to say that I don’t make a habit of letting my food fall off my plate, but in all honesty, it happens. A lot.

I only have a couple of plates to eat from at the moment, as I have never needed many more up until now. I bought them in my first year of university, and they are really quite small, as far as dinner plates go. Needless to say, my food falls off my plate all the more regularly. The falling food problem is also not helped by the fact that our dining table is currently the residency for my sewing machine & the orders of service for our wedding, patiently waiting to be stitched together.

Eating from small plates on our laps = food everywhere.

So, we’ve started using the humungous plates that I bought John for an anniversary present in recognition that he really does need a lot more food than I do. These plates are about 33cm wide, which you’d think is ample space for my food not to fall off my plate, but apparently not. I’d like to think that this problem is because my Mama raised me well and we always ate at the dinner table, never on our laps. I love that.

Besides John thinking that anything which falls off my plate becomes up for the taking, he also likes to think he has ownership over the food on my plate. I will never forget the look of disappointment on John’s face when I manage to finish my whole meal without offering him any.

 

I thought I had found a way around his need to eat my food - simply give him bigger portions so he’ll be full and won’t want any of my food. Well, this is definitely not a satisfactory way around things for John. He enlightened me the other evening as we were eating some seriously delicious burritos that he had cooked up, that I just hadn’t understood. It’s not that he wants seconds from the pot, it’s that he wants to eat my food, and if I just give him more food on his plate, he still needs to eat mine too. This is going to end up in a whole lot of ballooning.

I’m not sure I will ever understand men & their eating habits, but I do know for sure that there will never be any food wasted in our house. John simply wouldn’t let that happen & that is fine by me. Plus, he is a brilliant cook, so I think I can cope with him eating from my plate if it means that I get to eat his culinary delights.

should this be allowed?

On Sunday afternoon when all I could think about for half an hour was chocolate, I whipped up some Chocolate Pots. They're quick, they're easy, they're delicious and perfectly chocolatey.

This little one was leftover. So I had it for breakfast this morning. A little shocking? Maybe. I'm sorry if this offends your sensibilities, but sometimes it's fun to do things a little out of the ordinary. Even if it's just eating a bit of chocolate for breakfast.

But I don't make a habit of this, and it's the holidays, which means that you don't have to do things in your normal routine, and so it's totally fine to do this kind of thing. For me, as it's the holidays, it also means that I don't have to eat such huge portions of granola because I'm not spending my days running around after children, so my appetite is closer to a normal being, rather than being that of a giant.

If you fancy eating a chocolate pot for breakfast (or dessert if you want to be normal), the recipe I use is from here.

p.s that little white blob? It's clotted cream, just in case you're wondering...

p.p.s Mum, I'm really sorry. I know that you would never eat chocolate for breakfast, and you did not teach me to do this.

granola

Ever since I can remember, my Mum baked granola for our breakfast as we were growing up. I remember thinking that there really wasn't anything else I would rather have for breakfast than a bowl of my Mum's granola. 

When I moved away from home six years ago, I knew that I couldn't leave without taking this recipe with me. My friends at university thought I was a bit crazy to be baking my own breakfast but I didn't mind, I needed this incredibly sustaining breakfast & memory from home. There were even times in my first year when I ate granola for breakfast and lunch. 


The last couple of years I have taken to eating weetabix with banana & sultanas when baking granola on a regular basis has not been part of my routine, and for quite a while I thought this was brilliant because it was healthy and felt like it filled me up sufficiently. But oh no, I was forgetting just how brilliant granola is.

Recently, I have craved the oaty goodness that granola provides. So, I've made time to bake a few batches over the last few weeks & I am still relishing the feeling that comes with eating a bowl for breakfast at 7.30am and still feeling content at 12.30pm after a morning of running around with the Nursery children. (I assure you, this is serious hunger-inducing work.) 


I have no idea where this recipe originates, other than my Mother's kitchen. 

Here's how my Mama makes it...

ingredients

1.5 mugs (as in the regular tea or coffee sized mug that you use multiple times a day) of oats
1.5 mugs plain flour (you could use wholemeal to be even more healthy)
1/6 mug sunflower oil (about 50ml)
1/6 mug honey & hot water

for the topping

After baking a batch of granola, I sprinkle a generous amount of wheat germ & sunflower seeds on top. The batch pictured above also has pumpkin seeds & pine nuts in as this is what I had to hand.

method

1) Measure out the flour & oats into a large mixing bowl

2) Pour in the oil & stir with a wooden spoon

3) Meanwhile, place the jar of honey with the lid removed into a pan of simmering water. This will heat the honey to make it runny so you don't have to wrestle with lots of stickyness when trying to get it out of the pan. Leave to simmer for about 5 minutes or until you're ready to use it.

4) Remove the honey from the pan, with a tea towel to hand to wipe off any drips of hot water from the jar, and pour about 0.5cm of honey into the trusty-oh-so-accurate measuring mug.

5) Add a little of the hot water to the honey to make it up to about 50ml (looks like 1.5cm in height in a mug) and stir to combine.

6) Pour the honey mixture into the oat mixture and stir. The mixture will look rather clumpy and like there's not enough liquid - this is all good. Keep stirring until all of the liquid is combined then use your own fair hands to rub together the lumps with the oaty bits until the mixture resembles a slightly lumpy crumble mix.

7) Pour into a roasting tin (no need to grease) and bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes at 160C / Gas Mark 3, stirring every 10 minutes or so, so that it bakes evenly.

8) When you remove the granola from the oven it will be pale in colour - if you let it brown too much it won't taste great.

9) Sprinkle with your desired selection of nuts, wheatgerm, etc and leave to cool.

10) Enjoy topped with yoghurt & milk, or whatever liquid base you fancy!


Granola freezes brilliantly, so feel free to increase quantities and freeze a batch. This size batch usually lasts me between 5 - 7 days, depending on my hunger levels!


I grew up on a diet with very little sugar, so you might find that this is not sweet enough for you. Feel free to alter it to suit your taste - that's the joy of granola - the recipe is very adaptable.

strawberry gravy

With all of this glorious weather, it seems that the most fitting thing to drink is smoothies.

Last week, Grace & I had great fun whipping up a strawberry smoothie from a smoothie&juices recipe book that I had picked up earlier that day for 50p from a charity shop.

Grace decided that the only name fitting for our smoothie was Strawberry Gravy.

And here it is...

Strawberry Gravy 

makes 4 tall glasses

300ml strawberry & natural yoghurt - feel free to mix & match as you so wish

200ml orange juice

300g strawberries - fresh or frozen

2 bananas

How to...

::  Pop the yoghurt & oj into a blender and give it a little whirl to combine

:: Chop up the bananas and strawberries into small chunks & blitz them up in a blender with a little slosh of oj

:: Mix them all together & let them have a blitzing party. When you feel they've mixed&mingled with one another enough, pour into glasses & chill, or drink immediately if you so wish.

And there you have it. A perfect little thirst quenching tummy filler.
 

sticky fruity fingers

There are some brilliant things about my job. Like teaching children how to make fruit kebabs then seeing the delight and enjoyment on their faces as they get to consume the delicious fruit and say things like, 'Wow, this is delicious' and 'This is so fun, I've never done this before.' That's what it's all about, giving them new experiences and teaching them that they are so very capable of so many things.

Lunch

Thanks to a certain young man (who goes by the name of John), I was able to enjoy a most delicious sandwich for my lunch last week that contained this beautiful edible flower which he bought me. Hello pretty nastertium. Thanks for being yummy in my tummy.

menu for the day

Having had a busy old week and next to no time to plan what I was going to cook for the family I work for, I pulled down off the shelf a stack of Waitrose Recipe Cards and started trying to locate recipes containing chicken & bacon to use the meat that was in the fridge. Amazingly, I only needed to pick up two cards before finding the perfect recipes, sat one on top of the other. I love it when that happens.

Thursday & Friday's Menu:

Tartiflette with brie & bacon
Spicy chicken with chickpea couscous
And last but not least, the oh so simple but wonderfully delicious combination of strawberries & cream for dessert

As I whipped up the cream for dessert, I instructed Katie, the oldest of the children I childmind for, how to make meringues. It presented a little challenge, trying to describe the process of separating an egg to a first-timer, but she totally got it.

Katie's face was a picture of delight when I offered strawberries & cream for dessert, and I'm pretty sure my face had a similar expression on it when she announced, 'You really are a very good chef Hannah.'

I like the fact that she actually calls me a 'chef' - a slightly glorified title for what I actually do, but a massive compliment all the same.

one a penny, two a penny...

...hot cross buns. Yesterday I felt the need to bake something of a dough-y nature, and hot cross buns felt like a good idea. Maybe a little late as Easter has now passed, but that's never a reason not to eat the deliciously cinammony-nutmeg-y rolls that we like to call hot cross buns.

The only thing is, as my buns were lacking a cross, I don't think I'm entirely justified in calling them that, but that's what the recipe said they were, and that is what they shall be. These were not your regular size hot cross buns. The buns that came out of my oven were large enough to feed a small family. Eight small families, in fact. Seriously they were huge.

cranachan revisited

A little while ago I mentioned that I had made a scrumdidliumptious dessert whose name I couldn't quite remember. So I called it 'Canacharan Sundae'
Its real name is Cranachan Sundae - a Jamie Oliver special. Not a big difference in the name, but totally different meanings, and now that I know it's proper name, I figured I might as well use it!

Tonight, I made it for my sister & I.

Yum yum in my tum.

toffee crunch

The start of the school holidays sees the start of me playing mum. Just for 6 days. A good friend of mine has gone to Argentina with her husband and has left her two sons in my charge. Brave lady. So tonight, to celebrate the start of the holidays, it's movie night and they're watching Star Wars. I'm afraid I am not. I don't have anything against it, but I just have no idea of the story line, so the film wouldn't make sense to me. Instead, I've provided the popcorn. Disappointingly, the popping corn did not actually 'pop' in the pan. Weird. I whipped up some toffee sauce to adorn the little husks in, and I have to say, it was pretty tasty, and I don't even like popcorn.


For the sauce:

50g unsalted butter
4 tbsp soft brown sugar
2-3 tbsp golden syrup

Place all of the above into a pan and heat gently until the sugar crystals dissolved. You'll be left with a beautifully runny, buttery sauce. Yum.

Introducing...

The Hamptons Deli. This is where I went for lunch today, in the quaint little town with a not-so-quaint name, Chipping Sodbury. It is half term - oh what a delightful treat of working in a school. It feels like the rest of the world should be on holiday too, but it is not. This is a new little deli, with a lovely light, airy atmosphere, and delicious food produce that makes me want to buy a big old wicker basket and make up a yummy hamper of food for a friend. It also made me want to open up my own little coffee & cake shop, where people come to enjoy one another's company, with some home baked cake making a guest appearance at their catch up / meeting / whatever reason they are there for. Maybe one day.