Sauce on the South Bank...

I went to the Tracey Emin exhibition at the Hayward Gallery (I love having friends who manage to get free tickets for these things!) and really liked it - I'd never seen any of Emin's work in 'real life' before but there were some really fascinating, powerful and intriguing things. I particularly liked her neon signs - they're fabulous.

There's also a collection of beach huts on the South Bank at the moment. I took a photo of this one because I liked the stripes...



...and here's what's inside!

Gardens and Royals...

This weekend is London's Open Garden Squares weekend, where private and public gardens and garden squares are open for people to look around. You can see some amazing things!

It also happens to be the Queen's Official Birthday today, so Trooping the Colour was going on at Horseguards Parade this morning. We were lucky enough to arrive at Buckingham Palace just in time for the Red Arrows' fly-past - and I managed to snap a few Royal pics!







Then we went on a bit of a wander around Knightsbridge, Sloane Square and South Kensington, starting off at Rococo Chocolates...



...and taking in a couple of gardens in Cadogan Square and Cadogan Place, Lexham Gardens...





...and the garden at the K+K Hotel in Earl's Court.



(I couldn't resist picking up a few gorgeously packaged mini chocolate bars from Rococo!)

Soda bread with a difference...

Yep, it's another 'see a recipe, make it as soon as possible' one! My sister's coming to stay again in a few weeks' time, so when I spotted a recipe for gluten-free soda bread on one of my favourite blogs, Apple and Spice, I knew I had to give it a trial run. The photos looked incredible!

I decided to halve the quantities and make a little test loaf - and I didn't have a small enough tin, so I just plopped the dough onto a baking tray. Very rustic! I also couldn't find teff flour, so I just used buckwheat flour, brown rice flour and chickpea flour (again!). My halved quantities ended up being 75g of buckwheat, 75g of brown rice, and 50g of chickpea flour. I also used Kara coconut milk, because that's the only milk I have these days, so it's dairy-free as well! My loaf didn't rise as much as the one on Apple and Spice, and the texture seems to be a bit more dense, but it's really nice. Often, gluten-free breads can end up being chalky, with a funny aftertaste, but this one isn't like that at all. It has the faintest hint of the gluten-free about it, thanks to the slightly beany taste of the buckwheat and chickpea flours, but it's seriously yummy nonetheless.



It went perfectly with a (steaming) bowl of spicy tomatoey chickpea and vegetable stew!



I have a feeling this bread tastes best just after it's made (I had a little taster straight from the oven with butter and it was gorgeous) but I've got half of my little loaf left and tomorrow I'm going to see how it toasts so I can have it with scrambled eggs as a post-run treat.

Shellac

On Monday night, I went over to my friend Lan's house for a fabulously girly evening of healthy nibbles and toenail painting. Lan had told me about this incredible stuff called Shellac, which is a special nail varnish that won't chip. It's guaranteed to last two weeks on fingernails, but on toenails it can last much longer than that. It sounded perfect - I hate my toenails and always feel ridiculously self-conscious about wearing sandals. Usually I just slap on a few layers of badly-applied nail varnish and avoid showing my toes unless it's absolutely necessary, so the idea of a nail varnish that would a) last a decent amount of time and b) possibly make my feet look halfway normal was very appealing!

The lovely Rowena spent three hours painting our nails, and this is what we ended up with!



I love it! I went for hot pink, and it's really summery and incredibly shiny. And that's how it's going to stay for the next however many weeks! My feet look normal in sandals!



And there was an added bonus, too - going to see Lan means going to see Mabel, dog extraordinaire!

More weekend cooking!

And another recipe involving chickpea flour! I'd been meaning to make these baked sweet potato falafel for ages, but hadn't got round to it. They're from the Leon cookbook - I really like Leon, especially their sweet potato falafel wraps! Making yesterday's socca reminded me that I wanted to try them, so today I got the chickpea flour out again and made a batch. You can find the recipe here, on the amazing 101 Cookbooks blog.

As you can see, my food photography isn't quite as good!



I halved the recipe and got a baker's dozen - 13 two-bite-sized falafel! I also made a lovely batch of coleslaw (it's impossible to make a small amount of coleslaw - I used a quarter of a smallish white cabbage, a really small red onion and one carrot, and I've got enough to last a week!) and the whole thing was truly delicious. Very like the actual Leon ones, even though I used fresh mint (which I have in my windowbox) instead of fresh coriander (which I didn't have).

Socca!

Nope, I'm not talking about the American word for football - socca is a type of pancake from the South of France, made from chickpea flour. Chickpea flour is also known as gram flour, and if you fancy getting some, you can find great big bags in Asian supermarkets or in the world foods aisle of most supermarkets, or Tesco actually sell smaller bags in their wholefoods section. I first read about socca on Keeping Healthy Getting Stylish and was intrigued, so I bought some flour and gave it a go. You can use socca for all sorts of things - so far I've made thinnish ones and used them as wraps, filled with salady bits, and then tonight I made this amazing socca 'pizza'!



For this one I used 50g of chickpea flour and enough water to make it the consistency of double cream. The chickpea flour has quite a distinctive beany sort of taste, which I like, but it's even better if you add herbs and/or spices to the batter. As I was making a pizza-type affair, I went with a sprinkle of oregano, but I've used garam masala before too and that was delicious. I made quite a thick pancake, flipping it once, and then I piled on tomato sauce (just made from a little tin of chopped tomatoes and some onion) and topped it with roasted courgette, red pepper, broccoli, artichoke hearts and a little bit of mozzarella, and popped it under the grill until the edges of the socca were slightly toasty and the cheese was melted and bubbling.

It was absolutely gorgeous and really filling, and of course it was packed full of protein and veg and approximately ten million times healthier than real pizza! It's gluten-free, too, in case that's important to you!

Bits and pieces...

Just a couple of miscellaneous things from the last few days! Firstly the most amazing cup of apple, cinnamon and honey tea from my local organic café. I was expecting an ordinary fruit teabag affair, but no - it was fresh (i.e. made that very minute in a juicer) apple juice heated up with a stick of cinnamon and a dollop of honey. Absolutely divine!



And then something I spotted that restored my faith in humanity - I like to think this bag still has its original contents and is just waiting for its owner to come and claim it...