Nice Tits!

Did I have you "twitching" at the title for the month?! What are you like?!  I can assure you that you will have twitched at the tits in this entry as most of my month has been spent twitching the tits in the garden. And how dare you to think that I would write a blog full of smut. 

April truly has been full of showers and hopefully will bring May flowers: so what better to do on a rainy day than perfect my golden-aged hobbies. The birds are ever increasingly becoming twitterpated and I have filled many dull afternoons attempting to capture pictures to share. We have so many birds in our garden! Mainly Blue Tits who are the most abundant and friendly of the birds. There is a pair of them who are nesting in the box on the fence and I am waiting to see the family grow. The second most frequent visitors are the Great Tits and Wood Pigeons- we have a family of four. There are a handful of Blackbirds, Sparrows, and a resident Robin. You will have to let me know if I am wrong, but most places I have lived seem to have a resident Robin- who sits on your fence during dinner, and I think I would now be disappointed if I moved somewhere and this wasn't the case. Our most favourite resident bird is Billy Bullfinch: I had no idea such a colourful bird lived within the city. There is a Mrs. Billy Bullfinch that comes to dine at the seed-stop with Billy and just this week Billy seems to have invited his brother Barry Bullfinch. We have two brightly coloured Finches that we see daily.

Mrs. Blue Tit nesting in the box.

Mr. Blue Tit watching out- this one is a punk rocker with a mohawk... he causes trouble as you see below.

Billy Bullfinch

One of our many squirrels trying to get the birdseed.

Are you my mother? Snark!!

Some of the month has been spent bettering the garden where Craig's really gone to town making plant beds and filling them with herbs. Olive, curry, oregano, coriander, parsley, thyme, rosemary, lemon balm, mint, chives, garlic chives, leeks, and we have Venus fly traps, carrots and pumpkins on the grow in the house. I really want to grow a great pumpkin this year and it looks like we are off to a great start! I have been away on a course all week and the pumpkin plant went from 2 cm to 15 cm in 5 days! Watch this space and all tips welcome.

Olive and Curry

Pumpkin just as it popped from the seed casing.

One week later-10cm (below).

Of course what better to do on a rainy day than get the oven going and try out some new recipes. About half a year ago there was a TV show called Great British Bake Off which inspired me to try some new recipes. Being a pretentious foodie is still increasing in popularity (not that I want to be or am pretentious, but I am eager to get my hands dirty and am somewhat good at it- Faye can confirm!) and how better to showcase your talents in the kitchen then by whipping up (quite literally) fancy desserts. I decided to go further than just macarons and cookies and see what else I could make: Sachertorte and Chocolate Pavlovas were on the menu this month, and I can honestly say, that although they tend towards looking "rustic"- a foo-foo way of saying messy ;) they taste divine. Hopefully I can tempt you... to join me for some cake?

 Sachertorte: a chocolate torte from Austria with a ground almond/ meringue base, layer of apricot jam, and ganache topping.

My chocolate pavlovas. I really wanted to just make pavlovas, but on the next page in the recipe book there was a recipe for chocolate mousse- so I thought, why not add it together. The meringue is lightly flavoured with cocoa and the wells are filled with fudgey ganache. I have stewed the strawberries with basil and black pepper, vanilla whipped the cream, and dusted cocoa + icing sugar.