Posher than plums

I love late summer. July was a bit of a washout, but it seems summer is here now. I love how the weather is sunny and warm, enabling you to still walk around with bare legs and on flip-flops. I love how there still seem to be endless opportunities to enjoy the warm weather before the days really turn shorter and colder again. It is not too late for a BBQ yet!

But what I love most is the fantastic variety of fruit and veg at the moment. We have been gorging ourselves lately on beetroot, blueberries, corn, peas, plums and runner beans, to name just a few. I get so enthusiastic about all the different seasonal produce that when I go to my local stall, I end up buying enough to feed a whole family. Which usually means me practicing to be a domestic goddess and filling up the freezer since there is no way we can eat everything.

When shopping this morning I couldn't resist the look of the damsons on offer. Friendly, if a bit sour cousins of the common plum that benefit from cooking. That is what the owner told me. Since the damsons and I are yet to get acquainted, I am still contemplating what their best purpose would be.

I am toying with the idea of turning them into a chutney. There is something really good about home-made preserves. I love how you can just boil up some fruit with sugar and feel that all is right in the world. Perhaps I could bake a tart to congratulate myself with the purchase of the damsons. A surprise plum tart for when Jonny comes back!

Blueberry Buckwheat Pancakes

Blueberry Buckwheat Pancakes, originally uploaded by jonnycorcutt.

Breakfast was particularly tasty this weekend!

My albatross is about the be removed!

Last night in bed we were talking about my graduation this afternoon. Jonny asked me whether I was nervous already. I wasn't. I am starting to get nervous now though.... And at the same time looking forward to when my MA will be finally out of the way. As Jonny referred to it: when the albatross around your neck is gone.

Literally, an albatross is a large sea bird. The phrase alludes to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” in which a sailor who shoots a friendly albatross is forced to wear its carcass around his neck as punishment.

I wasn't familiar with the expression, but I didn't regard my course as a punishment. Most of the time I quite enjoyed it. It will be nice to have real free time though, not having to worry about an unfinished paper, a last assignment, a never-ending thesis. It will give us time for our other project: the baby-making one. More on that later.

And then tonight we are off to see my parents in law. For now, have fun with the pictures of our week away here!

Summer in Nederland 2007

This weekend, following our return from cycling in France (more on that later), Flo decided that she'd caught the cycling bug and purchased herself a new one more accustomed to long rides. We then got straight to it and, following a short 30 km warm up on Saturday late afternoon, we then went for a 50 km ride on Sunday to make the most of the terrific summer weather!

We started off in Den Haag and headed off to Wassenaar, but seemed to get detoured via Leiden. We then came back via Kijkduin and the route through the dunes back to Den Haag.


However, as you can see from the picture above, we weren't the only ones who had decided to get out and enjoy the weather... it seems that the remaining population of the country (the others being away on their holidays) had pretty much the same idea, with the rivers, lakes and canals chock-a-block with boats and the cycle and walk paths similarly congested.

But despite it being so busy, it was still good fun and great to be outdoors!

A bit of light relief...

At long last, I finally got around to ordering some lights for the back garden the other week. And not only that, since I'm currently on my holidays I had time to fit them too!

I'm really happy with them, despite initially being concerned that they were a bit too big... but they've turned out to be just right!

You can only really see two on the picture, but there's actually three... if you look hard there's one beneath the tree that shines onto the house.