恭禧发财 (Happy New Year!)

The beautiful table

This weekend I celebrated the coming of the Year of the Horse with my girl the talented events planner and designer, Alexia Lenoir and friends with a Chinese themed lunch at my place. It was another excuse to work with Alexia, to celebrate the new year in style but most of all to treat our friends to a tasty feast and some quality time.

Handwritten invites

We decided to send handwritten invites via post; in today’s world of Facebook invites and text messages, it’s nice to actually get something in your hands.

Homemade fortune cookies

Menu

Starters

Steamed prawn dumplings

Vegetable Spring Rolls

Homemade Fortune Cookies

Prawn Toast

Prawn Crackers

Mains

Chilli prawns on skewers

Sticky Jasmine Rice

Steamed Pak Choi

Vegetable Stir-Fry

Steamed Sea Bass

Desserts

Mango, passion fruit and banana dessert

Coconut & lime ice-cream

Prosecco, mango, apple and pomegranate jelly shots

To top it all off, we had delicious Jasmine Tea and Green Tea cocktails.

The theme of the day was ‘doing you’. Someone asked me what I meant by that the other day so here is my attempt to explain it.

For me, it means expressing myself freely and living my life authentically without fear of judgement from other people. More often than not, other people aren’t the problem. We are our own worst enemies and we enslave ourselves with fears and worries and judgements. I have found that when I allow myself to be authentic, people are much more inclined not only to accept me (even if they don’t necessarily agree or support what I am doing), but also it gives them the freedom to do the same in a way that feels right to them. As the African proverb says ‘When there are no enemies within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you’.

‘In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds it’s morning and is refreshed’ Khalil Gibran

Wishing you prosperity and happiness!

Peace & Love

xxx

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Snow & Chocolate Teaspoon Biscuits

Kindness is like snow, it beautifies everything it covers. 

Let it snow! 

After a mild spell of weather, winter made her presence felt with a week of snow fall.  I must say that we don't do 'snow' very well here: from the time we know that it's coming, we start  planning to stop work and play in the snow!

The snow had barely settled & I was already trying to make snow angels!

There's something magical about snow. You go to bed with the world looking one way & wake up to find it transformed and full of possibilities. As a general rule, people are friendlier, children come out on the street to play and sometimes if you're lucky, you don't have to go to work!

Me hard at work!

This week was cool because I had my very first set of visitors in my new home (well ones that stayed over anyway!) Maarten and Liz from Belgium came to re-live our festival days at the Worldwide Festival Awards show at Koko in Camden. We had a lovely weekend but to be honest it was too cold to do any sightseeing with them. As wonderful as snow is, after a few minutes you just want to get inside and get warm already!

My Belgian Homies :)

I did manage to squeeze some baking into my chilled (get it!) weekend and made chocolate biscuits while the guys were finishing up their Sunday lunch. We nibbled on them while we listened to good music and watched classic movies. Yay for lazy weekends and good company!

The recipe for the chocolate biscuits, comes from one of my most recent books, Boutique Baking by Peggy Porschen. You can also click here for the recipe. They are really easy to make and you can make them in any shape you like...

I'll leave you with this cool snow quote;

"Advice is like the snow; the softer it falls, the longer it stays and the deeper it sinks into the mind" Samuel Coleridge

Have a great week!

Peace & Love

xx

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