Sunny Days, where art thou?

Ok, so it is official. I ABSOLUTELY and utterly miss summer and everything about it. The smell of it, the SUN, the blue skies and blue water. The late lazy mornings, the crazy days and margarita-washed away nights...  Oh, and wellies and festivals as well.

What I find helps in this situation ( to help ease the withdrawal symptoms of holiday season), is reminiscing of your last year’s holidays and planning new ones. Simples! 

Go through all the pictures of last year’s holiday season, pick the ones that give you the most warm and lovely feeling…  makes you remember even the smell of places and air. It will take you back for a little while, in preperation to new sunny days and the joy of it.

Holidays are obviously included in the ‘oh so missed’ selection.

Tell me, do you also terribly miss the sun?

Cold Easter

Outside freezing. But inside, champagne in front of candlelights and fire. And.... Eggs!

 We dyed our eggs naturally, with plants and onion peels. Don't you just love the 'au naturel'?

The patterns come out  very different, depending on what little plants you've used.

Mayonnaise and dill - and voila! Tasty Easter breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Even Sushi played with eggs. See how she is staring at you? - 'You better leave this one to me'. Feisty little thing.

Two green-eyed cats.

Being a wild child, I had to go out into fields in the middle of nowhere and pick some bents and bring them home.

Beautifully mossy bench lonely in the Oak Park.

Walks in the park, watching the beauty of nature.

All in all, the week end was spent eating (eggs), sleeping excessively, walking and watching movies. Utter bliss.

The Fish House for Oysters

I have been craving seafood like crazy lately. My man does not like shellfish (yeah, I know!) or "fish with a face", as he calls it,  so we had to find a place that will suit us both.

Amazingly, we stumbled across this wonderful little restaurant called Fish House by Victoria Park. I cannot believe I didn't know about it! This will definitely be my regular from now on.  (Therefore I can promise to update the pictures regularly with the new things I try!)

I thought there could be a few of you that also didn't know about this wonderful little place, and I like to share the love.

It is a retro-style takeaway chippie, that has an Oyster bar at the back of it. The 'restaurant' is divided in two parts; the takeaway lovers have to queue-up and share bench-style tables, on the left hand side of the House, while more intense sea taste lovers have the right hand side all to themselves. With green glass tables that felt, very appropriately, reminiscent of deep green sea and loads of menus hanging around to arouse your hungry imagination, we sat down excited to indulge.

We arrived quite early on a Monday night when it was empty, but by the time we were leaving, it was full and buzzing.

Fish House offer their battered cod, haddock, plaice, rock or scampi with chips to either take-away or eat in. And believe me when I say this - it is utterly divine. (I never thought I would say this about 'fish and chips'.) It comes with luminous green mushy peas and tartar sauce. You will be right in guessing this was the choice of my man, and he was oh so happy!!

My choices were more 'grown up' sea tasting like - oysters, my favorite scallops with hollandaise sauce and asparagus and grilled king prawns.

The menu varies from Saffron seafood risotto to barracuda with sun dried tomato pesto...

A lovely choice of dessert or Italian ice-cream served by the scoop to finish off a wonderful meal. It is also so cheap that I can't help but want to go there everyday. A couple of courses each with drinks and dessert we hardly paid £50 in total.... can you believe it? You just can't go wrong with that. 

Find them here.

As promised, this will be updated with new dishes on a regular basis. In fact, I am going there next week. Will I bump into you?