Long Weekend Love

Just living is not enough.  One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.  

~Hans Christian Anderson

This weekend I felt like I was able to stop and smell the roses.
Making the most of the hours of sunshine given, making the most of family time.

This weekend we had an extra day added to our weekend. The 'Summer Bank Holiday' for all of the UK. Nice.
So we as a family set about soaking up every hour of every day the best we could. And what better way to start out the loooooooooong weekend than with cupcakes?

Then onto blackberry picking again, gleaning the last of nature's goodness from the blackberry bushes before the winter chill sets in.

My Hunter-Gatherer husband. Tasty.

He takes his work seriously...

Spying the Goods.

Tasting the Goods.

Deciding whether the Goods are good...

Oh yeeeeeeaaaaah they're GOOD!

With purple-stained fingers and lips and with legs smarting from stinging nettle attacks, we meandered along, around the corner, over the stream, across the field and into the playground with the intention of wearing out a certain 3 year old boy.

When he fell asleep in the buggy on the walk home we knew our mission was accomplished, just in time for wine o'clock.

I have a sister also living in London who, among other things, is pretty flippin awesome.
She managed to stumble across a fruit and veggie stall at Borough Markets which sells... wait for it...
FEIJOA'S AND TAMARILLO'S!!

Oh. My. Gosh.
So excited. So very excited!
I spent a lot of my time just smelling them, closing my eyes and letting their strong, flavoursome fragrance take me back in time. Back to the feijoa tree at the back of Grandma and Grandad's place where I would spend a lot of my time sitting in it's branches armed with only a teaspoon, having my fill of the seemingly endless supply of feijoa's.
Heaven it was.
I was remembering Feijoa crumble; preserved feijoa's on weetbix for breakfast; feijoa's baked with sausages...... yes that's right. My dad 'experimented' with this for our dinner one time. Needless to say it was just that one time.

And tamarillo's? Well, they are something else. Never really liked them as a child but I grew to L.O.V.E. them! I have fond memories of an early 80's record we used to listen to where there was a song: "I'm a Tremulous Tamarillo, and I'm sleeping on my pillow, and I'm weeping like a willow, I'm a Tremulous Tamarillo!"
Great song. But it will get stuck in your head for, like, the rest of your life...

The next morning we were up early and heading to our favourite cafe in London for a quick, but necessary, coffee before church. Necessary not because church is boring (let me just clarify that!) but because coffee is necessary every day. That's just a fact of life as I know it.

The evening meal was made by Papa and Luca. Fresh pasta and leftover blackberry and apple pie.

There is nothing quite like the taste of fresh pasta. It's totally worth the time and effort (and mess) put in! AND you just have to put the simplest of ingredients with it to create a party in your mouth! We had it with pancetta, garlic and cherry tomatos. So yummy, especially because my son helped to make it.

Today was another excellent adventure in the English Countryside that I will have to tell you about in a separate post as there are so many cool photos and stories to tell, it really deserves a post all to itself.

I hope you all have had a super weekend and have been able to take some time in each day to stop and smell those beautiful roses that are created for your pleasure.