Recipes, DIY, travel, health, random lifestyle thoughts & more.
Author: Alphe
One of my favourite things about London are the parks. When you look at Google Maps, they may seem like small patches of grass, compared to the size of the city. In reality though, London is so big that what looks like a small green dot on the map can in fact be a pretty big park. I’ve been to many of them and I definitely plan to continue exploring London parks, so I thought I’d share those adventures here. Today I’m taking you to a not so popular West Ham Park.
It’s been a while since I posted a layered cake recipe. This one is a great idea for when you need an impressive looking cake that’s simple and fairly quick to make. I generally love carrot cakes, but carrot cakes alone are often pretty dry, and get even drier the next day. This cake is fairly moist, and the white chocolate cream adds to it. It stays moist and tasty even one or two days later.
The pandemic forced the majority of the world to stay at home at some point. The longer the lockdown was, the more boring it felt. Even the nearby park with cute, friendly squirrels wasn’t enough to fill all of my spare time. It felt a bit like long, dark winter evenings, just with considerably more sunshine. One of my favourite time killers in winter are jigsaw puzzles, and it was one of the things I did a lot during lockdown.
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you will know that I love porridge. It’s quick, it’s healthy, it’s nutritious, and you can experiment with the flavours and toppings, so it’s never boring. Just like I love my porridge, I love my sweets. I used to hate coconut as a child, but as I grew older, I began to love it. Now, I love coconut in both savoury dishes (hello, delicious curry) and sweets, and Bounty chocolates are high on my personal top tier sweets list.
Lockdown has definitely made me look for entertainment primarily in my local area and it helped me realise yet again that happiness can come from small, simple things. One of the parks I visited most often at the beginning of the quarantine was Ruskin Park. A small park in southern London, not much different from your regular city park. A big, grassy open space for picnics, a cute little pond, trees, flowers and sport facilities. But the natural inhabitants of the park are one of a kind.
Today’s craft is the last but one card of the season. The only one left to make is a card for my Mum’s birthday. Today however, I’m sharing the card I made for my Dad for Father’s Day, which in Poland is every year on June 23rd. And since my dad loves photography, I thought I’d make a camera-themed watercolour card. With flowers, of course – every card needs some flowers!
Being in lockdown, I had plenty of time to experiment in the kitchen. One of my favourite recent inventions is this chicken and leek pie. It was something I had on my mind for a long time, but also something I’ve never attempted before – nor anything remotely similar. I had a look online and found a few recipes for a pie of this kind, combined them all, added my personal touch… the results definitely exceeded my expectations.
One of the reasons why I love London is that despite being a huge city, it has a small town vibe as soon as you leave the tourist and business oriented central zone. My commute to the City (the part of central London with all the glass skyscrapers) takes only 10 minutes, and where I live feels much like a small town area. Short, brick buildings, local shops, green parks and interesting markets. One of such markets is the Columbia Road Flower Market.
Continuing with the watercolour cards (I’ve not forgotten about quilling, just using this year’s birthday and other occasion season to try something new), I recently made a floral card for my grandma’s birthday.
One of my very last trips before coronavirus lockdown was a visit at Kew Gardens, on the 5th of March. There’s a similar place near my home town, and expecting tropical, indoor gardens, I decided to visit Kew Gardens on a gloomy, winter day. Something I was not aware of is that Kew Gardens, as opposed to the similar place in Gliwice, consist of multiple buildings and outdoor spaces. Ouch. Yep, I got completely soaked. Totally worth it! However, I do need to repeat this trip in summer, perhaps after lockdown.
Alphe's Corner 