Chorizo and Parmesan Puffs

Every year we have a Christmas drinks party and every year I try to make enough canapes to sink a ship. This year I had my hands fuller than usual so I wanted to do as many things as possible ahead of time and these are incredibly easy to assemble and can sit in a disposable foil tray in the fridge until you are ready to cook them - I also do an anchovy and goats cheese version.

Chorizo and Parmesan Puffs

Makes 16-20 squares

350g pre-rolled puff pastry sheets
6 tbsp grated Parmesan
20 slices chorizo
1 egg, beaten
garlic oil

Pre-heat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4. I use disposable foil trays for this so I can throw them out when they are cooked and because they are easy to stack in the fridge.

1. Lay the pastry out in a rectangle (or roll it out into a rectangle if you haven't got the pre-rolled stuff). Brush with beaten egg all around the outside edges.

2. Brush the middle of the pastry rectangle with garlic oil and gently draw a line down the centre of the pastry top to bottom so it looks like an open book.

3. Layer half of the chorizo along one half of the pasty and sprinkle with half the Parmesan. Then do a second layer with the remaining chorizo and sprinkle with the rest of the Parmesan.

4. Fold the empty half of the pasty over the top of the chorizo and Parmesan layers (like you are closing a book) and press down the edges.

5. Brush the top with beaten egg - you can either chill or freeze it now - or cook in the oven for 15-20 minutes.

6. Slice into small bite-sized squares and serve.

The Cottage - November 2013

One room that has been causing us head and heartache is the downstairs loo. Although I hate the expression, The Cottage was my late mother-in-laws 'baby' and the downstairs loo is completely wallpapered by her in pictures and postcards. Like this...

The first thing all friends and relatives have said to us is 'you're not going to change the downstairs loo are you?' To which we immediately responded 'No'. But the further we got with the building work the more we realised that not only would it look very outdated when the rest of the house was finished but there was a damp problem.

I jokingly suggested I take all the (super-glued) pictures down and put them back... and was taken up on that offer. Yikes. Thankfully my mother-in-laws goddaughter works in film continuity and offered to help. So we spent a very cold but therapeutic Sunday in November doing what we could to preserve as many pictures as possible. We've mapped out where everything was and removed what we could and I'm actually quite looking forward to patching the holes with pictures and postcards myself. This is how we left it...

The rest of the cottage is looking fantastic - the floorboards are beautiful and we're almost ready to start doing the stuff that involves me making a decision - like the kitchen and the bathroom but here's where we are in photos...

The dining room and kitchen

Sitting room through to extension/study

The sitting room from the extension

The new bathroom

As you can see from the last photo we decided to make the bathroom bigger (you can see the previous posts about the bathroom here).

And just in case you wonder why we are doing this Joe climbed up on the scaffolding and took some pictures of our view from the house and then from the seawall back to the cottage (which you can see as its the one with the scaffolding).

At the end of the garden is the seawall... then technically the sea. But this is Norfolk so it's a marsh

Give a Christmas Gift from John Lewis

I'm an old softy about Christmas, even more so since I've had my son, and I'm hugely aware that while I'm sitting fatly on my sofa with my family in the warm on Christmas Day there will be a lot of people not having such a nice time.

So I was really pleased to see that you can buy presents for children in refuges via John Lewis - I know things are pretty tight money-wise for a lot of people at the moment but I figured that my son wouldn't miss one or two presents that would make another less fortunate child happy. DO IT - it's simple.

• Go to johnlewis.com/giftlist.com
• Click on 'Buy a Gift'
• Type in list number 564013
• Buy a gift - they start at £5 so it's really not going to break the bank and will make a big different to someones Christmas.  

The Cottage - October 2013

As soon as I stepped out of the car I realised that from now on I'm going to have to label these posts with their date. It's all moving so fast and so dramatically that you need a timescale to be keeping up with everything.

We'd been on holiday, we'd had work, we have a baby so it took a while but I eventually managed to get up to Norfolk to meet with the builders and to see the progress. And my god what progress - I stepped out of the car and saw this...

Please note lack of roof! I'm now reliably informed (by the builders) that the roof was off for only a couple of days but it was pretty shocking to arrive and see (even though I knew it would be happening at some point).

The builders have not only been moving at a fast pace but their work is AMAZING (they are not reading this) and they pretend not to mind that I can't make a decision about anything.

So... they've gutted the place (as instructed). There is no roof, no plaster in the whole of the upstairs, all the lintels have had to be replaced and we've discovered that the extension is basically not attached to the rest of the house (thanks previous-builders-that-husband-won't-let-me-name). Decision on bathroom layout still to be made but had a great meeting about the kitchen and think we have something decided that will make it a lot more usable but I need to go away and think about it all (obviously).

The back...

The dining room into the hall

The main bedroom with new lintel

View from the third bedroom

Middle bedroom

The kitchen...

To see a layout to help get an idea of where these pictures are then see here for the floorplans.

Doing New York

When you tell people you are going to New York you get so inundated with suggestions that it's hard to know what you can actually achieve in the time that you've got, especially when there are three of you to make decisions and a 1 year old to consider. I think we did pretty well at deciding what to see and we all loved the city to much I hope we'll return so I wasn't too anxious about missing those bits we didn't make it to.

I would like to say that we found New York to be really baby friendly. Even the places we were told were not baby friendly that we accidentally poled up at, were really lovely and accommodating and mostly had high chairs. I've done a whole separate post on where and what we ate while we were there - I'm still struggling to shift the New York weight.

Manhattan Sky Line from the Circle Line Boat

One thing that was consistently recommended to us and was I think, all of our favourite part of the holiday was the Circle Line Tour which is a trip around the island on Manhattan. Due to the tides we weren't able to go the whole way around Manhattan but the tour guide (David) was so fantastic it really didn't matter at all - we more than got our monies worth. Informative, funny and absolutely stunning this tour not only gets you really involved with the history of New York but helps you get a real grip of the geography. I may live in London but I was really intimidated by the idea of New York and yet it is so manageable and easy to understand once you get to know the layout and this tour really makes you feel like you've seen most parts of a city that would take a long time to see every part of - you could spend a good three months in the Metropolitan Museum of Art alone. If you do one touristy thing while you are in New York let it be the Circle
Line Tour. I hope you get David as your guide.

My lovely friend from school, Vanessa who has lived in New York for the past five years, took us on a walking tour of Midtown, Times Square, Greenwich Village and China Town. We were exhausted and our feet hurt and thought she was a turbo New Yorker - til we saw her two days later when she said every time we weren't looking she wept for her feet (a slight exaggeration I'm sure) and had to wear flip flops into work the next day her blisters were so bad. If you don't have someone to do it for you I really think a walking tour of the city is a great idea - I think you'd be hard pressed to see a lot of areas without a constructed tour by someone who knows what they're doing. What we didn't cover with the walking tour was Central Park which we did a couple of days later although we could only manage a couple of hours (due to our sore feet... thanks Vanessa). Central Park is just beautiful - and without sounding cliched and cheesy it was everything I wanted it to be. Huge swathes of green with skyscrapers in the background. I could spend a lot of time there.

Central Park from the top of the Rockefeller Centre

Probably the most 'touristy' thing we did was go to the top of the Rockefeller Centre - Top of the Rock. Apparently better than the Empire State building the view is phenomenal but there is a big queue to get up to the top and a HUGE queue to get down to the bottom again so be prepared. Central Park, so huge when you are in it, looks like a piece of patchwork. Had I not had a 1 year old I would have spent hours up there (not queueing to get down).

We had a couple of false starts with the shopping. I had a few specific things that I wanted, and failed, to get which I think really set us on the wrong path. Once we got advice (again from the wonderful Vanessa)  we were on a roll - I really recommend Ann Taylor, Loft and White House, Black Market. Joe got some lovely shirts from Loehmann's and if you are in the area it's definitely worth checking it out for discount designer clothes.

We, of course, went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (huge and a lovely cafe for lunch) and my Mumma (and Ned) went to the Museum of Modern Art (she said better to spend more time in the Met) and we all went to the Frick Collection which is just down the road from the Met and definitely worth a visit. There are so many famous pictures and artists in there it's pretty incredible and surprisingly few people have heard of it.

I fell in love with this city. It's intense and expensive but mesmerising and addictive. There is so much to do and see and yet I feel that, for a huge city it is quite an easy place to be. We stayed at the Marriott East and could not have been better placed or looked after - I'd really recommend staying in Midtown if you can as you really are able to get everywhere relatively easily and check out where I recommend eating here.

The Cottage - Everything Out

My god having said I would be updating you on how our cottage in Norfolk is going I haven't... But I am now and I'm splitting it into two posts rather than one HUGE one.

The whole idea of doing the cottage up was quite difficult to manage. It was Joe's dad's cottage and he was very unwell and not keen on changing anything... at all. Still we made plans and agreed that work could go ahead from the beginning of September 2013. Then sadly on 4th August 2013 Joe's father died which not only stopped us in our tracks but made money issues very murky in terms of probate and our plans for the cottage get a whole lot bigger. When we initially made plans it was to do what was necessary, freshen everything up and yet keep it as close as possible to what it had been so it wasn't too strange for my father-in-law. Now that he has gone we are able to completely re-do everything and ensure that we can bring the cottage up to rental standard.

We were so shell shocked that we only managed to pack half the cottage up before we had to leave it all to movers to do the rest for us. It was very strange - we were there for the funeral, then went away for two weeks and the next time we saw it, it was... well you'll see in the next post what it was like but when we left we hadn't made any decisions. Now, we are decisions a-go-go...

Dining room and kitchen in the process of being emptied

Sitting room

Sitting room into the office extension