Christmas Madness!

It's that time of year again when you are invited to so many parties, that a night in seems like a treat instead of the other way around.  And the choice of venue is not always one you may have chosen for yourself!
This was the case when I ate at Kitchen Italia in Covent Garden on Friday night.  I have always said that it's pretty impossible to spoil Italian food - they just use the best simple ingredients and cook them as simply as possible, right?  How wrong could I be.  Out of about twenty of us I would bet there were possibly only two or three plates that went back to the kitchen cleared of food (and these would have been the plates belonging to young strapping male rowers who, to be perfectly honest, will eat pretty much whatever you put in front of them!).  And on top of that the service was pretty appalling too.  Why do people eat in such places, especially in London where you have the choice of thousands of restaurants?
But then on to Monday night, when a friend and I choose to eat at The Glasshouse in Kew.  Wow, what a difference - neither of us can understand why this restaurant does not have a michelin star - the food was out of this world (but I do think the decor lets the place down).  My starter of smoked eel with beetroot and blinis, and desert of bread and ricotta pudding could not be faulted.  And best of all, it's local!

So now we have to start thinking about Christmas gifts, and with my allergy to shops, and really shopping in general,  the best option always is to make food gifts.  Up to date I've not had any complaints!
So, having just finished a photography shoot where we needed lots of limes, I thought I would test my lime curd recipe - it obviously won't last until it's time to give as a gift, but that means I get to eat this batch then make more again later!

Lime Curd 


Makes 2-3 jars (depending on size)


4 med eggs
zest and juice of 4 limes
350 g caster sugar
225 g unsalted butter, diced

• Place the eggs in a pan and whisk together.
• Add the remaining ingredients and place over a very low heat.  
• Whisk continuously until the curd starts to thicken - don't try to rush this over too much heat or you will have lime scrambled eggs on your hands.
• Pour into sterilised jars and leave to cool before covering.
• Keep chilled.

If you want to make lemon or orange curd, stick to the same principle, just be aware that oranges give more juice, so maybe use less of them.

FISA World Masters, St Catharines Ontario, Canada

Every fourth year FISA holds the World Masters outside Europe, so this year we travelled across the pond to Canada, to meet up with approximately 2,600 other rowers and scullers, a huge number of whom are ex-olympians or ex-world champions, so the standard is pretty high.

One of the difficulties with travelling so far is that you can't take your own boat, so organising boat hire as well as hotels, car hire, and obviously what we were going to wear, was all pretty stressful leading up to the event.

For me the other thing that becomes an issue is food.  What to eat before and after races is always easy to plan at home but being in another country means there is less control, and this was certainly an issue in Canada, where the portion sizes are enormous, everything has a huge amount of salt and sugar, and most things come with chips (apart from these delightful chocolate apple things on sticks, which were just obscene!).  Breakfast in the hotel consisted of 'brown food' - bread, waffles, coffee, peanut butter and cornflakes - nothing that had been alive for a long, long time.  So trips to the supermarket to buy fresh fruit, muesli, snack bars and dried fruit and nuts was high on the agenda on day two!

After racing all day going out for dinner is not so much about a great experience but more about getting food in quickly, in large amounts, so most nights we were fine.  When racing was finally over (and this happened sooner than it should have done due to Hurricane Earl!) it was time for me to take control of dinner plans, to make sure we got some great food.  How lucky were we that one of the best restaurants in the area was only a short drive from our hotel - Treadwell, a restaurant that specialises in 'farm to table' food, with all the ingredients being grown or bred locally, or in the case of the perch and pickerel, coming straight out of the Lake Erie!  The food was amazing and the service just perfect.

One thing Ontario is famed for (apart from a little waterfall that everyone raves about!), is the vineyards.  Although we don't seem to get much of the wine in the UK (something to do with the export laws in Canada apparently), they do make a few good wines, one of which is Icewine - a honeyed, desert wine that is produced from grapes that are frozen on the vine (the temperature has to drop to below 10-13 degrees Celcius), and then picked by hand, sometimes at night.

Hillebrand Winery make one of the best I have tasted (it is not cheap!), and we found the best way to sample it was over lunch in their fantastic restaurant.  If you want to learn about wine making however, do not take their tour - we taught the guide more than he taught us!

Another week, another country.......

Back to my beloved Foca, to the house where my mother lived and has now become a retreat for my sister and I when we need to escape the real world.

We've only been here two days and already I walk slower, sleep more and eat more healthily than ever...........I think I am finally winding down. It's pretty hard not to.

Foca is a beautiful tiny fishing village on the west coast of Turkey, 70km north of Izmir. Totally unspoilt, there are no English people, no buildings above three storeys allowed to be built and best of all, great food to be had.

Our first night was a treat....we wandered along the seafront to one of the restaurants (although very small, Foca has an abundance of great restaurants to choose from). We ate freshly made houmous with dill (I would never have thought this combination would work, but it did), a salad full of local leaves (nettles, thick, strong rocket and lots of leaves I didn't recognise), plus a shrimp casserole - freshly caught prawns cooked with garlic, tomatoes, mushrooms and olive oil and topped with local cheese. It was delicious. We were both too full for dessert but then were told there was a surprise to come! A terracotta dish of halva.......not the way we would normally eat it though.........it was halva, cooked with milk and olive oil, served hot sprinkled with chopped hazelnuts, and was amazing (you do need to have a sweet tooth for this, as with all Turkish dessert and cakes).

After that there was more free wine and finally to top it all, a nearby table of men presented us with some of their red snapper that had been cooked in salt and then set alight as a birthday celebration dish - what an evening!

Tuesday morning is market day - another chance to eat great food as all the traders insist on you trying everything. And of course, we are a complete novelty, not being locals, so they have great fun making us eat things they suspect we won't like. But we return to the house laden with fresh cheese, local honey, herbs, local olives and olive oil and the best bit, thick creamy local yoghurt - I am in heaven.

semi-marathon de Paris - success!

Wow, what an achievement - I have run and survived the semi-marathon de Paris (the Paris half- marathon to you non-French speakers!), and not only that, but in under 2 hours and still managed to walk up and down the steps of the Sacre Coeur the next day - neither of which I thought would be possible!

The organisers admitted it was possibly one of the coldest years this event has taken place and with 27,000 people registered it was bound to be a busy event.

From start to finish I was surrounded by others pounding the pavements of Paris, and this was

exactly what I had been dreading - bumping into each other, tripping over when trying to get past and just generally not being able to run in a straight line - and this without a drink! And to top it all off, at the end of the 21km, when the finish line was insight there was a bottleneck - we all had to stop 20 metres from the finish line and it took 15 minutes to get over it - lots of 'boo..ing' was to be heard. I even thought of forgoing my medal rather than waiting in the cold.

Obviously a celebratory lunch was had - in a great restaurant not far from the 2km marker - L'Apprenti. What I love about this place is that from the outside it looked nothing at all, but when you stepped inside, it enveloped you with warmth and comfort. The food was typically French with amazing sauces and flavours and the atmosphere absolutely perfect for a relaxing afternoon of eating!

Unfortunately as often happens after doing lots of exercise, my body didn't want too much food (at this point it was too busy trying to recover!), so I had to top it up again later with a plate of French cheese and salad at La Fontaine de Mars - another great French restaurant not far from the Tour Eiffel. Cheese and salad was not on their menu but as with all French restaurants, and very unlike English ones, they are happy to serve you what you want, and normally do it very well!