London : oh how I heart thee..

DAY 1

The Eurostar is one of my favourite ways to travel : a mere two hours and you are in the middle of London. I really wanted to go to this Art&Music festival in East End London. But a certain friend of a certain Italian told us that that neighbourhood was comparible with the Bronx in New York. Now, I have not been in New York (it's on my list!), but when I heard 'like the Bronx' I was a tiny bit worried. So we booked two nights in 'The Bronx' to avoid having to take the tube late at night and then moved to another hotel to see the more touristy sites of London.

But East End London/Shoreditch is fine, I didn't get what the fuss was about. As a matter of fact I really loved the neighbourhood. Great art shops, nice pubs, great atmosphere... Anyway, the hotel was great! - and I am one picky chick when it comes to hotels. They don't have to be all that fancy, but they have to be clean! We went to pick up our wristbands for the festival and had lunch /dinner at Cafe 1001. Best vegi burger and pasta salad I probably ever had in London and a great place to hang out! After having freshened up at the hotel, we went to check out the festival. There were so many bands playing and art shows in different venues all over Shoreditch.
We saw an amazing photography show in Shoreditch Town Hall. The photographer was inspired by a poem by C.P. Cavafy and that message came across very strongly in the beautiful pictures she took in the Olympic Rain forest. Very strong images and huge prints.

Ow and another great thing about art shows : free drinks.. and there were plenty...

DAY 2 .. to be continued...

The last couple of weeks...

A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks. Some nice things and some horrible things.
I decided to only write about the good stuff...

The Italian and I went to London two weeks ago, which was great. London still rocks -incase you were wondering... will be writing about that in another post.
I tried out some new recipes. I usually stick to pasta with tomato sauce alla me, but suddenly I wanted to try out something new. Does this mean I am slowly turning into the perfect housewife?

Because the Italian loves his peperoni on bruschetta I decided to do a test run before I poison him with my creation. I actually found this perfect recipe on the frutto della passione blog.
The problem was that I didn't have all the ingredients. So I decided to swing it. I grilled the peperoni and garlic, peeled them and added cream cheese. ( I only had cream cheese which was already flavored with herbs). Added salt and pepper and voilà : a tasty spread for my sandwich.
It tasted quite good actually. But that was not all...
Since going on vacation in the US last year, I couldn't stop thinking about those oatmeal raisin cookies. For some reason I can't find them anywhere here. So - yes you guessed it- I made them myself . Pictures to follow later.

I also gave Jamie Oliver's recipe for pasta with little round tomatoes a try.
You just take yellow and red little round tomatoes, garlic, fresh basil, some aceto balsamico, some olive oil, salt and pepper. Cut the tomatoes in half, put in a big bowl. Add all the other ingredients and mix while bruising the tomatoes a little. Boil some pasta and add all together... It was delicious and very easy.

On top of that I packed a whole bunch of stuff for The Big Move, cleaned, did laundry and washed my car.
A productive weekend it was indeed...