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Sunday Catch Up

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So here we are, September already. We have lots of plans for the blog over the next couple of months, so keep your eyes peeled. But in the meantime grab a coffee and let’s catch up with what has been going on this week:

From Orchard Blog

Read about our adventure down to North Devon. A beautiful part of the country that we are sure to be returning to next summer. read here
This week’s cocktail was the rather delicious Bee’s Knees. A gin based cocktail with lemon, honey syrup and pink lemonade. Give it a go. read here
We came over all patriotic and had a British-themed tea party. There was plenty of cake and bunting, what more could you want? read here

From Elsewhere

As the slow slide into autumn continues we’re really inspired by these earthy tones showcased by Igor over at the Happy Interior Blog. read here
Itchy feet? You don’t have to travel far for some dramatic landscapes. Check out these picturesque UK National Parks put together by Yala at Hand Luggage Only. read here
Our love of all thing Scandi is well documented so we are loving this round up of Scandinavian Interior Design trends from Decor8. read here

That’s it for this week. If you have any thoughts or suggestions please let us know in the comments. We will be back with our top five tomorrow but in the meantime relax and enjoy your sunday.

Rich & Calum

4th September 2016

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How to host a British Tea Party

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Orchard Blog

We make no bones about this, we are very proud to be British! This year marked The Queen’s 90th Birthday which was cause for celebration. Also, Team GB did amazingly well at the Olympics. If we gloss over the mess that is politics it is a good year to be a Brit! With a patriotic spring in our step, we decided to celebrate with British tea party!

Traditionally tea would include sandwiches and scones, but we decided to head straight for the good stuff, cake! We made a Victoria Sponge with blackberry and blueberry jam. Our second cake was a batch of lemon and poppy seed mini bundt cakes (using this awesome Nordic Ware cake tin). Finishing off our trio of cakes was the Hummingbird Bakery recipe for Strawberry Cheesecake cupcakes.

To set the table we used a mix match of red white and blue crockery. Our blue crockery is the willow pattern, we found a set at a charity shop and we love them. (The white plates are the Arv series from Ikea and the red plates are part of the Bosa range from Argos in case you were interested?). We have some lovely willow pattern cups and saucers, and we borrowed Rich mum’s teapot and cake stand in all their old-school glory.

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Cocktail of the Week | The Bee’s Knees

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Orchard Blog

On a recent trip to the Cinema, we stopped off at Bill’s beforehand to have some dinner. Whilst perusing their cocktail menu to gain a few ideas for the future cocktail of the week, we came across a cocktail called the Bee’s Knees. We were interested in this as every drink ordered; 25p is donated to the Royal Botanical Gardens campaign to highlight the importance of bees. Whilst we were not in a cocktail mood that night, we did want to try it and took a sneaky pic. To be fair to the Kew Gardens and Bill’s collaboration project, we will still be donating to the Kew Gardens Hive project.

The bees knees cocktail is a gin based cocktail that dates back to the prohibition era in the 1920’s and 30’s where a ban on alcohol was in place. The phrase ‘bee’s knees’ was a colloquial term at the time for ‘the best’. The poor quality bathtub gin was mixed with citrus, honey and other mixes to improve the taste and hide the smell of the gin. The cocktail comes in various measures and combinations depending on where you ordered the drink, for ours, we stuck with the cocktail that came from Bill’s.

For this week’s cocktail, you will need;

1 measure of gin (bath tub gin is still available if you wish to have the authentic mix!)
2 tablespoons honey syrup
Juice of one lemon
Pink lemonade
Sprig of thyme

Firstly, to make the honey syrup, use the sugar syrup I describe before on the Raspberry Collins. Replace the sugar with the same quantity of honey. In a tumbler glass, add the gin, honey syrup and lemon over ice and stir. Fill the remainder of the glass with the pink lemonade. Add the sprig of thyme and you have the bee’s knees of our cocktail of the week the Bee’s Knees!

You can have this as a virgin cocktail and tastes the same without the gin, which is useful as it was designed to hide the taste of the gin! It is a good, flavoured cocktail and definitely one to try if you don’t like gin.

1st September 2016

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Orchard Escapes | North Devon Weekend

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Orchard Blog

On Friday morning we packed up the car and headed to Georgeham for our North Devon Weekend. Our friends Ben & Lauren, along with their 18th-month-old little boy Dexter (our godson) were down there so we headed to join them and a bit of adventuring. We pitched our tent and set about exploring the area, here are some of our highlights:

Georgeham

This is where we were staying, a lovely village a little way inland. It has a fascinating church that is worth exploring, a small shop selling all the essentials and two pubs to choose from. There is The Rock Inn and The Kings Arms. We only had time to sample one of the pubs so we can confirm The Kings Arms is lovely with friendly staff, good beer and tasty food, we’ll have to return to sample The Rock Inn.

Croyde

A couple of miles from Georgeham is the pretty coastal village of Croyde. The Village has a charming centre full of historic buildings and is perfect for wandering. Croyde has a wide and sandy beach, nestled between two headlands. The beach is very popular and one of the best for surfing. We had lunch at the Blue Groove, a family friendly restaurant and bar in the centre of the village. Be sure to pop into The Stores, a pretty cool coffee shop and deli. And get Ice-cream from one of the ice cream parlours in the village.

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Top Five | End of Summer Blues

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Orchard Blog

August Bank Holiday is the traditional end of the summer holidays. Even years after leaving school we still get that sort of end of holidays melancholy, but we plenty to look forward to the autumn so it won’t last long! Plenty of things are still cheering us up, let’s lake a look:

One

We spent our bank holiday down in north Devon (more of that later this week) but we managed to pick up some local beer from Braunton Brewery, we are loving it. I am sure we could probably buy it from somewhere closer, but the beer is as good a reason as any to head back down that way! Find out more.

Two

Another west country staple is a cream tea. A scone with jam and clotted cream is one one of our favourite treats. Although there is much discussion about what goes on first, Jam (the Cornish way) or Cream (the Devonian way). Calum has his own approach making a scone sandwich with jam one side and cream on the other. Whichever way you eat one they are absolutely delicious!

Three

Last Thursday was National Burger Day. We kid you not, this is an official thing and quite frankly this is a national day we can firmly get behind. We love a cheese and bacon burger in a lightly toasted brioche bun with some relish and some crispy lettuce. Gherkins are a tasty addition too.

Four

So it seems we now have a glut of home grown tomatoes! Calum will soon be cooking up batches and batches of tomato chutney and other recipes. Not that we mind, who doesn’t like a good chutney?

Five

Lots of the garden flowers have gone over now, but some are just coming into there own such as this Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii ‘Goldsturm’ we spotted when out and about. It has to be a perfect late summer plant, masses of bright yellow flowers to keep us cheery!

30th August 2016

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Sunday Catch Up

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Orchard Blog

We hope that everybody is enjoying the last of summer? Thoughts will soon be turning to Autumn and all the fun of the season but in the meantime, let’s have a look back over the week.

From Orchard Blog

In honour of the Olympic Games in Rio, we had a Brazillian Barbeque. We found some great recipes to share. read here
Carrying on this week’s Brazilian theme there really was only one option for our cocktail of the week, the Caipirinha. read here
We have the Summer Blues. No, we’re not sad, we came up with a blue table theme for a recent party we held. read here

From Elsewhere

Whilst we’re still hanging onto the last of summer there is no denying autumn is just around the corner. Check out these tips for autumn entertaining from Jessica of Hej Doll. read here
We’re currently living in a 17th Century cottage, it’s great but sometimes we yearn for something completely different. Check out this industrial loft on Daily Dream Decor. read here
Seeing as how close it is it is criminal that we’ve never been to The Netherlands. This article from Yvonne at The Tourist of Life just confirms that we need to visit soon! read here

We hope you enjoy? And if you have any thoughts please let us know in the comments, we’d love to hear from you. Have a great Sunday and we’ll be back again soon.

Rich & Calum

28th August 2016

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Creating a Summer Blue Table Theme

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Orchard Blog

We’ve got the summertime blues! Well we’ve got a gorgeous summer blue table theme, which is actually much better!

We recently celebrated Calum’s Birthday with a french themed dinner party for a dozen of our friends. I know it seems like we were celebrating his birthday for the whole of August, but we don’t see a problem with that, do you? Calum did a great job of being the chef for the evening, and Rich got on with laying the table and creating the vibe! We’ve got a good division of labour going on.

For our french inspired dinner, we decided to go with a Summer Blue Table Theme. We have a lot of blue and white bits and pieces about the place so it works well.

With 12 people for dinner, we had to borrow a couple of trestle tables to fit everyone in. These ugly tables are hidden under crisp white linens. To add interest we laid a beautiful blue ikat table runner down the centre, we picked this up from Sainsbury’s during our weekly shop, you wouldn’t believe it, would you? The table was set with mismatch crockery, mixing up blue willow pattern plates and a basic white plate. The napkins were a mixture of a white linen set and some repurposed tea towels from Ikea. The glassware is all a bit of a mix, we only have sets for up to eight people so we had to improvise with whatever odd glasses we can find about the house. Add in a couple of blue water bottles and we are halfway there.

For the flowers Rich ask his mum, a retired florist, to make up half a dozen small posies to run down the centre of the table, we mixed this in with some of our collection of blue and white ceramics. We found some vintage candle stick holders to give the scene a bit of elegance. A word of warning about using candles outdoors, dinner candles like this can only be used on the stillest of days, as soon a the wind gets up you will end up with the candles being blow out, and getting wax everywhere!

Lastly, Rich likes to print out a nice menu and do place settings. He is a Graphic designer by vocations so enjoys doing things like this. We strung up some fairy lights and had a soundtrack of Edith Piaf and some gypsy swing. This all adds to the atmosphere for a lovely evening with friends, we had a great time.

So there we have our Summer blue table theme, It was mainly improvised using things we had around the house, but we think it worked out really well. What do you think?

26th August 2016

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Cocktail of the Week | Caipirinha

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Orchard Blog

With the Olympics ending, we thought there would be no better way to celebrate the Olympics, and the rather splendid efforts by Team GB than to enjoy a Brazilian themed BBQ on Saturday night. You can read about the food we cooked here. The only cocktail to accompany anything Brazil-based has to be the Caipirinha, Brazil’s national drink. As such it became our cocktail of the week.

The origin of the Caipirinha is unknown and did not appear in São Paulo until 1918 as a remedy for the Spanish Flu. It was originally made with only lime, garlic and honey with a spirit added to the home concoctions. It is still commonly used in this format as a cure for common colds. As with all cocktails, someone decided to experiment! Removing the garlic and honey and adding sugar helped make it a ubiquitous drink across Brazil. The word Caipirinha comes from the word caipria, which in Portuguese refers to someone from the Countryside. A similar word in English would be a ‘hillbilly’.

For this week’s cocktail, you will need;

Crushed Ice
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 lime cut into 8 parts & a slice for garnish
1 large measure of Cachaça

To make this week’s cocktail add the chopped lime and the sugar to a sturdy glass. Use a muddler and crush the fruit and mix the sugar together. Add the cachaça and give the mix a stir. Top the glass with ice and stir again. To finish place the garnish on the glass and lá vai vocé de uma caipirinha (there you go, a caipirinha).

The caipirinha is a great drink if you like lime and sweetness. We would be happy to continue drinking these in the sun watching the Olympics; sadly, all good things must come to an end!

25th August 2016

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How to host a Brazilian Barbeque Party

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Orchard Blog

Over the two weeks in August 2016, the Olympics were hosted in Rio de Janeiro. The city hosted 207 nations with 11,500 athletes competing for just over 800 medals. We both love the Olympics, the sport and the Olympic spirit that brings a positive force of friendship. The great herculean efforts by the athletes competing reminded us of the 2012 Olympics in London. With this Olympics coming to an end, we decided what better way to celebrate than to have a Brazilian Barbeque! Surely nothing says Olympics better than eating?

To start, we poured ourselves the first (of a few) caipirinha. It is always best to start with the cocktail! For the BBQ, we prepared some chicken a few days before to mature in a marinade. To do this, we added a cup of rum, two crushed limes (including the rind), 4 cloves of crushed garlic, salt, pepper and a pinch or two of chilli flakes to a bag and added 6 chicken thighs. We then froze it before allowing it to thaw on the day we had the BBQ.

We added some sides to the meal including prawn skewers, using an easy recipe from Morrison’s that can be found here. A Brazilian rice dish that we found on Life in the Lofthouse blog found here. This rice will become a staple for any tropical themed meal we have in future. Lastly, a great zingy Salsa Verde we found here on Olivia’s Cuisine.

To finish, we put some pineapple on the BBQ, yes, you did read that correctly! It is really easy to do by chopping the pineapple into large chunks, sprinkling a good dose of cinnamon on them as they cook. You need to BBQ both sides for about four minutes or until they start to char before pouring on about a tablespoon of toffee sauce.

After setting the table, and with a few more caipirinha flowing we tucked into the food. The food combination tasted wonderfully of lime and the flavours in the prawns and salsa enhanced the flavours. Our Brazilian Barbeque made a great accompaniment to watching the last of the Olympics and the fantastic performance from all the athletes.

Top Five | Late Summer

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Orchard Blog

The Olympics are over and we are trying to ignore the impending onset of autumn. We have a bank holiday weekend away to look forward to next week so all it not lost. In the meantime lets look at this week’s top five:

One

Look, we know we’re late to the podcast party. We’re trying to make an amends now, This week we discovered the Olive Magazine Podcast. Hosted by the editor Laura Rowe, the podcast is a discussion about the best in food and travel. we’re loving the informal style, it is like a nice chat over a cup of tea or cocktails. Listen here.

Two

Last week we got a new Crosley Cruiser Record Player. This week we have mainly been searching out records to play. The aim is to get some of the classic albums to make the base of our collection. High on our list of classics was Rumours by Fleetwood Mac, and by chance it turns out Rich’s folks have two copies in their collection! They now only have one, and so do we!

Three

Who knew the House of Commons had their own beer? Certainly neither of us! So when we went on a recent tour we had to buy a couple of bottles, for novelty sake if nothing else. The beer is brewed by the Windsor & Eton Brewery and is only sold in the House of Commons. We can report it is a very nice beer!

Four

We love a cocktail, just take a look at our Cocktails of the Week. But we have a new book giving us a daily cocktail. That might be a bit too much even for us. We love Diffords Guides, definitely the best resource for cocktail inspiration our there, just look at all the cocktails on their website.

Five

Meet Reggie, a one year old Brussels Griffon. Reggie (and his owner Holly) came round for tea on Sunday. It was the first time we met the little guy, he is very cute! We think he looks a bit like an Ewok, what do you think? Learn more about Brussels Griffons here.

22nd August 2016

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