Spring Things

A few pretty pictures for you, taken whilst dodging the showers. Lovely Bath, such a terrible commute I have ;)

May Day Riot

I hope you got out there and enjoyed the sun this weekend. I completely failed to realise that it was a bank holiday until Friday lunchtime, what a brilliant surprise that was! Also, I don't really want to go back to work, you can't make me! Maybe I'll just stay here forever. Anyway, on to depictions of the pastoral idyl that is the Dorset countryside in the sunshine. Sometimes I actually like this place...

Cheers then!

Failure to Communicate

A lack of picture-taking recently, leading to a lack of anything interest for posting here, but hopefully I'll be back on it soon. In the meantime, here is a pretty picture:

And the advice that I thoroughly recommend you watch the Bill Bailey programmes about Alfred Russell Wallace, they should be on BBC iPlayer now. Bill Bailey and Wallace are both geniuses! Here is the portrait of Wallace that is in the Linnean Society in London, along side one of Darwin. The Theory of The Origin of Species by Natural Selection was originally presented at the Linnean Society, it was pretty cool to be able to present my own work there too, science geek-out :)

A Million Points of Light

Hello Mr. Sunshine, so nice to see you after all this time :)

Has Spring sprung?
Name that film?
Can you spot the obvious post theme?

Answers on a postcard...

All The Food

I had some sort of horrible stomach bug all of last week, which actually made me lose my appetite, a very rare occurrence and a sure sign that I was actually pretty ill! Thankfully i'm feeling better now, and I certainly made up for the lack of food over this weekend! I very rarely buy meat, but a trip to the brilliant farmers' market here in Bath got me parting with my cash. Here is a selection of the gluttony that ensued.

Beautiful Bath Blue

Some sexy caramelised onions

Those onions and cheese with some delicious venison steak

1kg of free range bacon offcuts for £3! damn tasty stuff too

More venison steak, this time with purple sprouting broccoli and some new potato chips, and blue cheese sauce too

What a delicious weekend :)

Emerald Fields

Are we there finally? Has spring sprung? Possibly not, as it snowed the day after I took these pictures...Oh well, I'll enjoy the sunshine when it does occasionally show it's face.

Market Fresh

I took the usual visit to the big farmer's market in Bath this Saturday, which of course resulted in lots of delicious things to eat. As I'm a total glutton I thought the best approach would be to put most of it in to a dish together...The result: Cauliflowerbroccolicheesebacon bake, it's a winner.

Simple too!

Ingredients:
Purple sprouting broccoli (couple of handfuls)
Small cauliflower
Excellent smoked streaky bacon (I only needed 3 rashers of the super strong stuff I got!)
Red onion
Stale bread crust
2/3 pint milk
Blue cheese (I used Bath Blue, very similar to Stilton)
Cream cheese (I used sheep cheese)
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon plain flour

Chop up the broccoli and cauli into florets, boil until just soft. Meanwhile, fry off the red onion and bacon until crispy. Chop up the bread into small chunks. Crisp up the bread a little in the bacon pan.

Make a cheese sauce, bechamel style. Melt the butter in a smallish pan, when bubbling add the flour, whisk in. Add the milk very gradually to avoid lumps. season and add a sprinkling of mixed herbs and nutmeg. Bring just to the boil, gently, stirring continuously. Turn off the heat then add the desired amount of cheese (lots). stir until the cheese is melted.

Combine everything in an oven dish, whack in the oven at about 160C for about 20 mins or so, until it is looking crispy on top. Enjoy!