mirrormirror - Part 52

An Extremely Cool Mother’s Day Idea

May 10, 2010 By Paola 11 Comments

Yesterday morning I was woken at 6.20 AM by a very excited little girl, eager to present me with her Mother’s Day gift.

Because I’m an extremely bad mother, I must confess I was not exactly thrilled to see her at that time of the morning. However when I saw what she’d made, it was so spectacular even I couldn’t find it in my heart to be grumpy.

Funnily enough the Minx had no idea that I had recommended Edible Arrangements in my Mother’s Day Gift Guide on Shelterrific. Instead she had referred to instructions given in a recent issue of Sparkle World magazine.

The Husband reports that it’s a really great project to do with a young child – he got to cut the watermelon ‘vase’ and wield the melon baller, while the Minx was in charge of design, cutting out daisy and star shapes and threading fruit on to skewers.

And it was a superbly pleasurable way to have a light and totally guilt-free fruity breakfast before going out for Mother’s Day brunch.

Someone was rightly extremely proud of her little self. And I am very, VERY proud of her.

Hope all you other mommas had a great day too.

We went out for the brunch buffet at Urbane, the restaurant in the newly-opened Olive8 building. Loved the restaurant, loved the decor (would have taken pictures had the battery in my camera not died at the wrong moment), and the brunch was excellent. Highly recommended to all Seattleites, especially the Nutella brioche which was one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten in my life.

Vote Early, Vote Often

May 6, 2010 By Paola 6 Comments

Portrait Badge of Emmeline Pankhurst c. 1909 From the Museum of London.

Feeling bad today as for the first time in my adult life I’m not going to be voting in a UK Election – for some unfathomable reason we just forgot to register. I hope that Mrs Pankhurst, wherever she is, can find it in her heart to forgive me.

It’s made even worse because today is the first election I can remember where it really isn’t clear what the outcome is going to be, and so it is all rather exciting, though in a somewhat depressing way, as none of the candidates are particularly inspiring. Where is a Barack Obama when you need him?

Still we have the Prosecco on ice in the hopes that by tomorrow the rather unpleasant Gordon Brown will no longer be Prime Minister. (Champagne doesn’t seem appropriate given the parlous state of the British economy whoever gets in).

I’m going to be watching the all-night coverage via The Telly, worth hooking up to for any other British expats out there.

Last Night’s Supper – Irish Soda Bread

May 5, 2010 By Paola 2 Comments

Tremendously appropriate for Cinco de Mayo don’t you think?

Oh well, the vagaries of my appetite don’t follow the calendar. I ended up making soda bread last night as curried butternut squash soup was on the menu and we didn’t have any good bread in the house. I’d also fortunately just bought a giant bag of wholewheat flour by mistake.

I’d never made soda bread before so I looked up a number of different recipes online and came up with this hybrid version.

Ingredients

4 cups wholewheat flour

1 cup bread flour (we only had white bread flour in the house)

1/3 cup rolled oats

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 cups buttermilk

1/2 cup normal milk (I added this because I didn’t have enough buttermilk, I’m sure all buttermilk would work)

1 tablespoon runny honey

Neither the honey nor the oats are particularly usual additions. I did find one or the other in some recipes though and included them to save the bread from that saliva-sucking dryness you get from some soda breads. They worked a treat and gave the bread a delicious hint of nutty sweetness.

The above ingredients make 4 small loaves. We shared one loaf between two of us with our soup.

Method

Preheat the oven to 425 F/220 C. Lightly butter two baking sheets.

In a large bowl stir together all the ingredients, until a soft, slightly sticky dough is formed (according to many recipes I read, stickiness now avoids dryness later). Form the dough into four balls with a light hand – no kneading and certainly no bread machines required. Mark each loaf with a X and place on the prepared baking sheets.

Bake for 30 minutes until the crust is golden and the bread sounds hollow when you knock it on its bottom. The beauty of this bread is that from looking in the bread bin to discover there’s no bread in the house to eating a delicious loaf takes about 50 minutes tops.

Serve warm with lashings of unsalted butter.

Regret unsalted butter, but then think ‘what the heck’, and reach for more. It also makes SUPERB toast the following day. (Ours kept well in a ziploc bag overnight).

Mother’s Day Gift Guide

May 5, 2010 By Paola 1 Comment

If you’re still looking for Mother’s Day gifts, rush over to Shelterrific where I’ve put together a gift guide. Don’t forget to rush back though.

Jonathan Adler at Le Parker Meridien – Palm Springs

May 5, 2010 By Paola 3 Comments

The last day of our trip to Palm Springs was also the only day we had grotty weather. It was sunny enough for swimming in the hotel pool until lunchtime, but then we checked out and went for lunch at the Parker, with interior design by Jonathan Adler.

From the moment we walked through the enormous orange front doors it was obvious we were in the presence of decorating GENIUS.

Even the Minx thought so.

To be fair Adler is definitely a decorator, not a designer and he does make it easy for himself. The building is not especially exciting and he hasn’t done anything particularly original with the space. Pretty much everything is painted white with dark wood floors, and the whole would be incredibly boring if it were empty.

But he has created the perfect backdrop for his superb vignettes of furniture and quirky accessories all topped off with his incredible sense of colour.

Everywhere you turned there were little Adler-esque touches.

The restaurant – Norma’s – was quite blandly decorated but the food was good and it’s obviously worth it to come here and have a bit of nose around the hotel.

The outside spaces looked like they might be interesting, but by this time the weather was really closing in and it was time to get the hell out of Palm Springs.

Just a quick word here in praise of Virgin America. We flew down the West Coast with them and it was such a pleasure to travel with an airline that was on time, had superbly pleasant customer service, fabulous seatback entertainment for everyone, and, to the Minx’s utter delight PINK and PURPLE interior lighting. Truly the key to a little girl’s heart.

In other tales from our trip to Palm Springs, check out

The Ace Hotel and Swim Club here.

The Colony Palms Hotel here.

Out and About in Palm Springs here

The Aerial Tramway here.

Joshua Tree National Park here

Palm Springs Afternoon Out – Joshua Tree National Park

May 1, 2010 By Paola 4 Comments

We were told by many people that we couldn’t go to Palm Springs and not go to Joshua Tree, so on the Saturday, after checking out of the Ace, and before checking into the Colony Palms, we drove out of Palm Spings, turned right at the wind farm (who would have guessed that so many wind farm fans read this blog?) and continued on the road through the desert and a slice of small-town America.

I only wish I’d been quick enough to photograph the teabaggers with the sign for ‘Less Gov, More God’. My first ever teabaggers! We don’t have teabaggers in Seattle.

It takes about an hour and a half to get to Joshua Tree and we were surprised to find that it was in fact cooler than Palm Springs, being higher up and much more windy. I’m not sure if this is always the case, but it might be worth bearing in mind if you’re sweltering down in the valley.

The park is named after the small stunted tree which dots the landscape as far as the eye can see. Vistas like this are so awesome and alien and strange to British eyes and so different from the cosy, cuddliness of Seattle. This is the America that I don’t even begin to understand, but which, I suspect, is an essential component of the American character.

According to the small book of walks we bought at the Visitor Center, we could quite easily have spent several days exploring the park. However, on the recommendation of a family at the hotel we decided to walk through Hidden Valley. This was a well-signposted, 1 mile loop through a rock-enclosed valley which was once apparently and excitingly the lair of cattle-rustlers.

This was the perfect length of hike for the Minx and I can’t recommend it highly enough for small kids. Lots of tiny lizards and cute chipmunks to observe and loads of ROCKS. TO. CLIMB.

I liked it too, as the incredible rock formation brought out my inner Ansel Adams

{To me, and to most other Brits I suspect, the Joshua Tree means U2. Here is my own small tribute to those irritating Irish rocksters. Why an album full of Irish angst is named after this park, goodness only knows, but that didn’t stop me having ‘With or Without You’ going round in my head for most of the day}.

And here’s another fix for all you wind farm junkies.

In other tales from our trip to Palm Springs, check out

The Ace Hotel and Swim Club here.

The Colony Palms Hotel here.

Out and About in Palm Springs here

The Aerial Tramway here.

Next week we will be concluding this series with lunch at the Parker, designed by Jonathan Adler.

Today I Am Mostly …

April 30, 2010 By Paola Leave a Comment

…liking this colour combination

Actually I think I like this better as my ‘April’ picture.

Apropos doesn’t anyone else want to link a photo to the April photo carnival below? Firstly the lack of entries is getting highly embarrassing. And secondly, don’t you all want server-crushing blog traffic as we all come flocking over to see what you’ve done?

Last Night’s Supper – Roasted Asparagus and Halibut with Tomato-Lime Butter

April 28, 2010 By Paola 3 Comments

This supper couldn’t be more seasonal, delicious, easy or quick, making it perfect for a midweek supper.

The halibut round these parts is rightly famous, but you could make this with any firm white fish, and Washington asparagus is finger-licking good.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 pound pencil-thick asparagus

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

4 1-inch thick halibut fillets, about 1 1/2 to 2 pounds

3 tablespoons butter, melted

1/4 cup roasted tomatoes, finely chopped

1/4 teaspoon each dried thyme and oregano

1/4 teaspoon lime zest

Juice of 1/2 lime

I got this recipe from the website of PCC our local, and favourite, supermarket. Click on the link to get the recipe but essentially all you do is dress the asparagus with the oil, salt and pepper and place it in a roasting pan next to the halibut fillets topped with a flavoured butter made by combining the rest of the ingredients. If you can’t find roasted tomatoes in oil at your local supermarket, sundried tomatoes would work, or you could make your own by grilling/broiling or baking some cherry tomatoes sprayed with olive oil beforehand.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F/230degrees C/Gas Mark 8 and then put the whole dish in the oven for 10-12 minutes until the fish is opaque. See what I mean about easy? We served ours with some tiny potatoes but I was too busy eating to take a picture. This would be stunning with Jersey Royals (how I MISS Jersey Royals).

April Photo Gallery

April 28, 2010 By Paola 2 Comments

{Fading Lilacs}

Did anyone take on my April photo challenge? The idea is to post a photo up on your blog which sums up ‘April’ to you, post a link to the blog post below and then we all go and have a look at it.

Here’s mine, though it’s a little bit of a cheat as lilacs to me are more usually ‘May’. But they’re fading so fast this year that I had to get in quick. And I like this pic in B&W so have added that too.

I’ve linked to my blog below so you can see how this works. You’ve got a week to link to your own post.

Palm Springs Afternoon Trip – Aerial Tramway

April 26, 2010 By Paola 6 Comments

We were very pleasantly surprised by the beauty of the landscape around Palm Springs. We most certainly weren’t expecting snow-capped mountains (nor the hugely impressive wind farm just outside the town, I love wind farms ).

We drove about ten minutes out of Palm Springs to a fold in the San Jacinto mountains and then headed UP.

I’ve been in a fair few cable cars in my life, but this was definitely among the most scary as the cliff face is pretty much perpendicular at some points and it was VERY easy to imagine crashing to a spectacular death. Matters were not helped by the base of the car turning slowly round to give everyone a 360 degree view and make it impossible to avoid looking at the terrifying bits.

And look what we did when we got to the top! So NOT what we expected to be doing in Palm Springs.

Here’s the view of the windfarm down below. You get a much better idea of just how arid it is.

And there’s Palm Springs itself, looking noticeably greener.

All in all it was good to spend an afternoon among the pine trees in PS. I would think it would be really fabulous when the temperatures down below get really excruciating.