new years day dinner!

My absolute favourite resturant in the world so far is Yukisan!
Yukisan in Plymouth was the city's first japanese restuarant and rather than be a standard run of the mill restaurant, it set the bar highly for wonderful, atmospheric scenery with out of this world food made freshly to order.
To go to Yukisan is a treat and one i reserve for special occasions with my hubby, good friends and sometimes for that special "me-time". (i'm not afraid to dine alone, i like my own space, even if this makes me a bore!)

The one dish I want in the world where ever I am, it would have me drooling as soon as you mention it...

Grilled cheese maki
Yes, i grant you it unusual but damn it comes together so beautifully and yummy!
It reminds me of, for some reason of a McDonald's big mac (in a good way), the way the wonderful flavours all melts together in an addictive rainbow of flavours. How could I be so classy to compare such a delicate dish to a brassy take-away burger?! I know!
But several people who have had grilled cheese maki as well have also remarked it made them think too, of a McDonald's Big Mac! So I know I'm not the only one!

grilled cheese maki is the one thing I order everytime I go. No one is allowed to have a piece unless I rarely offer them (after all, birdie doesn't share food!) it would indeed be one of the last things I eat for my last meal! (and a slice of my dad's homemade victoria sponge cake!)

 grilled beef Yuzu salad....this too is something I would always order, its so light but packs a punch in such wonderful flavours. the beef is wonderfully grilled and seared, with a tang of charcoal that really kicks up the flavour a notch, colliding with the sweet, tangy dressing sauce. Its a salad you can't afford to miss!

 this time I tried a new dish, udon in soup with beef steak.....mmmm.....superb! I'm usually a ramen girl but udon is also a specialty i try from time to time...i really do have an obsession about noodles!

dessert was green tea ice cream. like my hubby says, "It shouldn't work but it really does!"
Sweet with a wonderful bitter taste along side it, it goes down well and really is something else on the menu you should give a go!

 A walk home via the barbican was just as wonderful as the meal, the air was cool but not cold and the light was turning into dusk.
I love how the boats in the harbour were all bobbing quietly on the waters and one even had festive lights strung up

Its a nice start to the new year!

Birdie Love

xxx

sunday

Its nice that everyone once in a while, a lazy sunday emerges that is a little different

 I caught a star (starfish) today so make your wish! :)

Happy sunday!

Birdie Love
xxx

Tinside

  
Last week I went swimming on the Plymouth Hoe at Tinside Lido. It was built in 1935 and is an Art Deco, grade II listed building that after years of neglect was re-opened around 2005. It draws salt water from the sea itself and like all pools, has a shallow and deep ends (certainly deep enough for diving!).
As its an open air pool, it has summer opening hours from June to the end of September and on a gloriously summer day, it truely is a spectacular place to swim!

What a view no?! that little Island there is Drake's Island and privately owned after years of apparently being owned by the crown. The Lido juts out into the Sound and you can see all types of boats, ships and military water crafts trafficking in and out of this massive harboured area, protected by the break water some miles out.
 

Tinside still retains its Art deco features such as this crystal glass panel, cut with the image of a female diver...if you look, you can see her just about. As the place is listed as a protected building, many features have to remain intact and it is just lovely to be in a place where you can roam the same paths the people back in the thirties did! It still keeps its communal changing rooms and the surround areas of the hoe still have trellaces, walk ways and beach huts where the more braver bathers could swim or stroll and enjoy the view. If you do visit Plymouth and have a bit of time on your hands, it is worth a walk exploring the maze like areas along the hoe, especially on a great day like it was when I went to swim there...in the freeeeeeezing waters!

If you closed your eyes, laid back in the water and felt the sun blast on your skin, you could almost convince yourself you are in a hot, exotic location, not in wild Devon!

And Plymouth's famous landmark...Smeaton's tower! (I once climbed all the way up to the top in a giant wedding dress for a photo-shoot up there once! Quite an experience and people loved seeing a small girl in a giant dress squeezing her way up and down and posing on a windy day...!)

I hope you enjoy this post as much as I enjoyed myself that day and I'm sure some of my American readers would love seeing Plymouth, the original place where the Pilgrim fathers came from and american history in ways, began! Without them, you would have no thanksgiving I guess! It's great to share something like this to readers across the globe so enjoy!

Birdie love! xxx

In these past few hours...

It rained and rained heavily. And in the rain I picked wild flowers near my house as I wanted something to brighten up the house and cheer me up a little. 

I took a little and left plants unharmed apart from one stem here and there. The rain made everything clean and fresh and I got home twenty minutes later, I was soaked and the flowers were laid out to dry a little...

Including these daisies. It really was a cool, wet day and dark and miserable and no one would have thought it was summer...!

I now have two small vases filled with local flowers and grasses...so pretty and dainty and given the room a little life and pop of colour. Its the small things that I appreciate like this!

What with the weather being so cold and wintery, I turned to making a summer fruit crumble and such colours bought a little sunshine to the house (and my stomach!) and the air smelt tropical and sticky, it was so very yummy, the fruits caramalised the crumble topping to give that chewiness and the butter and honey  drizzled on top made it even more scrummy! Simple clean tastes worked so well and anticipating dessert was going to heavy and tastey, I kept tea itself small and enjoyed bowls of crumble with cream in the warm dry house with the cold , dark weather outside.

And not forgetting, Indy had his first bath to wash away the sicky smell he had on him. He was so calm and placid about the whole thing,  apart from moments where he shook himself like a tiny little wet dog!  He was given a good towelling, a gentle blast from the hairdryer and  mucho love afterwards! such a sweet little cutie he is!

Today I went for a swim with some deaf friends. I was glad I went in the end otherwise I would have spent the day in the house, stewing in the whole depression mood and upset, that came out of nowhere and aggreviated by small silly things. I ended up swimming in the pool for hours, throwing myself down flumes, diving and playing on inflatables and wallowing in the jacuzzi like some big kid, sniggering at my friends and actually still able to "talk" via sign language and laugh. It was a great experience, the group of us yapping away and making plans to make it a regular thing, forming what was a "micro deaf community" away from others where the past and all that unpleasentness lingered for what ever reasons that haunted us. We ll had our reasons for staying away from the deaf community in the city. Common themes was that we just didnt fit in, we viewed ourselves as "deaf but so what, we're going to get out there and live it as "normally" as we can!"
I'm looking forward to getting out there more and re-exploring my deaf side in the company of those I feel safe with. They don't laugh when my voice slip into my "deaf voice" or my facial expressions being too comical, its apart of the story telling! 
I feel safe in a way, I very rarely let my guard down and go at my own pace. 
It was nice, something I havent felt in a long time.

Hope you are well and having a nice day, where ever you are!
 Birdie love. xxx

Birdtopia

Last week via a stroke of luck and family connections, I am now a proud owner of a bit of land in central Plymouth! I have an allotment which I have lovingly named "Birdtopia" because for me, it's my bit of paradise on this earth. And land and allotment space is so scarce these days, this is a nice suprise for me.
But I was however warned..."It is a huge piece of land! Not your usual allotment size Hannah, it's going to be a lot of hard work..."
...hard work never scares me! I thrive off it, me and hard work are old friends and even older enemies!


I was shown around the huge area and finally shown plot 147 which was to be my plot...oh yeah!

And this was what greeted me....a jungle and groundsheet jungle...! I might have underestimated the amount of hard work involved a little....
...yeah...
But a nice suprise was discovering I already had a crop of rhubarb growing at the end of the field and between me and three other people, we all walked away with huge armfuls of massssshhoooooosive stalks of bright red rhubarb stalks...yummy!

I mean, look at my hands (and before anyone says it, I know I got tiny, midget hands...i'm forever teased about it by a certain dude...and I say it aint the size that counts, its what you do with them! :P) 
So a few days later, after being handed the key (and one I mustn't lose else its £50 to replace...£50?! I'm gunna be getting quite a few spares cut here...!) I headed down to the allotments with a bucket, a trowel, packed lunch and some baby cabbages to plant.
And it clicked....Birdie here, was being a little well...bird-brained wasnt she?
She didnt click that she was going to need a little more than a trowel to turn over all that earth did she?!
Not to worry! Help came and delievered some tools and a much needed strimmer and the jungle/groundsheet cemetry was blitzed to look like this...

You almost didnt recognise it did you? And under all that grass and ground sheeting, I discovered that the plot was indeed if not double, certainly tripled it sized than originally thought!...ever get that feeling you bitten off more than you thought you can chew?!
 This was the result of around 4 hours work and resulted in me painfully gaining two huuuge blisters, one on my thumb...as I was painfully reminded this evening as I wrote this blog (lemon juice + cuts....OUCH!) and one smack bang in the middle of the palm of my hand!

 Look at the variety of wildlife I discovered in the short time I was there! It took me right back to my childhood where I use to spend hours outside, roaming where ever I was to look for critters and animals (and pretending I was a hunter/warrior/explorer/David Attenborough...but you didnt need to know that...). Under all that tarp, I found two slow worms...TWO! I havent seen them for years! And before anyone yells "snake"...slow worms are not snakes, they are actually legless lizards, if you see the face of one close up, you can see this...not a single snake like feature on their pretty little heads...oh, and they aren't slow in the slightest!

And that robin!...I loved that robin to the point he was nick-named Boy Wonder by me (yeah, the geek in me was aggressively active that day...!) reason being that he came right up to you to the point he was taking food from your hand and flitting off before darting back and hopping behind after you as you tilled the soil, pecking at the earth for any worms. I suspect he's got a nest nearby...or Batman... :)

Plus I had to take a picture of that ladybird! Such an unusual colour co-ordination! she's rocking the polka dot look that day!

To end a busy allotment day, I planted my cabbages as you can see in the thick earth that was almost like peat due to it saturating under all that tarp and ground sheet. I'm looking forward to seeing how these little babies do and how big they will become in a few weeks time!

 Look at that view! Dont you love Plymouth?! Taken on top of the mound on Mount Batten spit on a break after a few hours around the watersports centre. And if you look closely...you can just spot a little pirate boat coming into harbour. I am sure it's a replica built of the Golden Hind as sailed in by Sir Francis Drake...I'm pretty sure....

Pirates!!!! In Plymouth!!! Hold on to yer hats matey!
But seriously, that aint something you see every day is it?!

And a little taste of the Olympics for you, the Olympic torch running past my road at 8.30am on a sunday...I was expecting no one to be out watching this but how wrong was I?! The street and Lara bridge was full of hundreds of people, half I swear were in their nightwear stilI...and what ws great was the celebratory atmosphere in the air so early on a bright, sunny morning. Flags were thrown out the windows, people clapping and cheering...I think we Brits could do with celebrating a little more. We dont make time or effort to appreciate the silly, fun things in our culture and lives and I think its these things that gives us a boost and a smile.

 Plymouth, even though it isn't my place of birth, is however a place where I spent many of my childhood years growing up and spending holidays with my grandparents here. Alot of my family have been born and raised here and I say this marvellous city is in my blood to some extent. Its a mash-up of so many things that I havent encountered before in other cities. It brings the old and new, vintage with modern all together in one huge cooking pot. Plymouth has so many varied landscapes. I grew up in Plymstock mostly, where farmlands, moorlands and coastlands collide with each other. My family background originated from the old harbour and working dockyards, some of them long gone today. There isn't truely a city like Plymouth, It's so unique in such a way that I find it hard to explain.

I'm looking forward to swimming this year in the Tinside Lido, an art deco outdoor swimming pool right by the sea. I might even go down to Devil's point, a place that is wildly occupied by rip-tides and whirl pools but to the knowledgeable swimmer, is a pretty damn great place for a swim. I played here as a girl, shoving my brother off the walk way into the sea and freaking people out by running from the giant man-built rock pool where infants could swim, screaming "shark!" (its amazing how many people believed us and we nearly always had the whole pool to ourselves every time we went, watched by a group of scowling parents and pale-faced, scared children...we were lovely children really...!)

I'm already trying to look ahead to the summer days, working with how I feel day to day. What are your plans this summer?


Hope it brings you good times!


Birdie love to you all. xxx

The way to one's heart is via crafts and food

Hello chickies!
If you'res till reading this then good for you and thank you for sticking with it! 
If you recall from the last update, I showed a small preview of a gift I was currently making fo a friend who's birthday it was. My dear friend A was one of the first few people I made friends with when I moved to Plymouth here in the UK. She like myself, is deaf except she underwent a different life journey and experiences than myself and for the ride she had and all the things she endured that life had thrown at her, I truely admire her strength. She's one of a small handful of people who are strong and possess such a character and personality that is well loved and recieved by all. Even though I'm a little older than her, she truly suppasses me in the knowledge and wisdom she processes that she herself gained from life. She truely been through so much and deserves every inch of happiness that comes her way. I thought she would appreciate the below handmade gift, a large mama owl made up of original 70's fabric holding her little baby.
The mama owl is about the size of a large cushion and is hand stuffed by myself as well as both machine and hand stitched. all the fabrics used to make her is all salvaged and second hand which demonstrates an excellent example of up-cycling. Mama owl's wings are made to be able to hold her baby tight to her and the fabrics was taken from an old sample book that use to come in to the scrap store where I did voluntary work teaching adults and children various crafts. I loved that job and how I was left to be in charge of teaching to others the skills I have gained in life. Many disabled adults and children passed through my lessons loving every minute of it and I'm glad I got to make them smile!

The Teenie baby owl is made up from a small part of a fat quater. I deliberately chosen more muted, "nursery" colours to reflect the delicate, cuteness of the baby. I even hand-stitched the baby's tummy on and then with a needle, frayed the edges of the material for a little "fluffiness". I love, love, love how the eyes turned out so well, made up of two buttons sitting inside of one another.

 My friend loved it. Her birthday meal was a real nice, imtimate affair and we all had a brilliant time. She recieved beautiful gifts and I was thrilled to watch her open mine! It took her some attempts to believe I made her gift but she finally believed me! I recieve the above picture from her showing Mama and Baby at home on her sofa with another new family friend. What is so brilliant is the owl cushion on the right was the inspiration I've seen out and about in shops, going at prices around £25 which I love but wanted to make my own and a little better. The end result? Mama and Baby on the left, a hand made gift for a precious friend. 

I'm liking this end result and the great thing is I've now got a pattern on hand used for this project. I think I might vary the wings a bit for next time for an easier sewing result. I'm also thinking of making Mama's eyes different with a large fabric circle for the eye and then having the button for the pupil. Baby is pretty much bang on and wouldnt change a lot apart from adding a little applique heart on his chest in future for added love!


For those who know me and know me well, would know I'm a massive food lover. I love food...something my body and weight can attest for but in my opinion, a true food lover is one who not only eats good food out and about but also strives to take elements of dishes and produce and recreates it at home. You need to cook food as well as to eat it to understand how a dish works and why it works on each and every level it is created. I love complex dishes and often I will try to order things of this nature when I'm out, but it's the simplier element that is the hardest to achieve. 
Food with many ingredients can hide many sins and errors and sometimes you're not sure if you're actually tasting the dish you're suppose to be tasting. Strip a dish back to its basics, you have nowhere to hide and you have a smaller margin for error. I think this is why many chefs shudder at simple dishes....any mistakes will be spotted!

There has always been one produce I've always wanted to get my hands on to try.
Samphire.
Samphire is a coastal plant with a long history. Samphire is also known as sea asparagus or sea pickle and has been used in history as part of making soap and even glass hence its olde name of glasswort. 
It is also long been eaten in England and research shows there's even reference to it been mentioned in King Lear.

 Half-way down Hangs one that gathers samphire; dreadful trade! (Act IV, Scene VI)

Samphire is found on cliffs and coastal regions near seas, esturies and rivers and is often eaten in salads or pickled. But where the magic happens is when it is simply sauteed or steamed and paired with fish. 

Samphire and I have a long history. As a child I dreamt of being cast away on distant islands and living off the land, foraging for food with a knowledge gained from books and national geographic magazines given to me from mainly my grandad. 

We humans have lost the skills and knowledge to live off the land and remain in time with the seasons. Should we even need to live hand to mouth like our forfathers had done in the past, I dont think we would fare well. Samphire was something chefs on television would talk with great enthusiasm, both they and survival experts would trek to world's end where cliffs met the white, wild foamy seas and glorify the plant that gave a unique taste of the sea to any dish.

I even had a fail quest in search for Samphire myself. One training exercise with the army in Cornwall, we were being taught basic survival skills by a harden bunch of royal marines on the cornish coast. We spent hours searching through all the plants growing around us, pulling them up and cooking them in various means and we thought we had Samphire until the Marines admitted they pulled up the wrong plant and they havent themselves come across Samphire in a long time!
...and we were about to consume a weed....yeah...some survival experts they were...!
 So Samphire remained ever elsuive until this week. My local Morrisons underwent a new facelift and I'm loving the new store layout and the fresh produce counter is out of this world! Fresh fruits and veg from the world over is laid out on ice beds, labelled with their names and how to cook them. You can see all these people picking up all these beauties, no longer scared now that they know what the produce is called and how it is eaten and I am now getting my hands on some great things I've always wanted to cook. I got an artichoke in the fridge I'm going to cook up soon with fresh hollandaise sauce which i dreamt of one day trying.

And i finally got my hand on Samphire! There it was, siting in its own little tray on an ice bed in the fresh herb section!

I simply sauteed it in butter and a little lemon juice and poured it over a freshly cooked piece of salmon. The end result?

Samphire tasted beautiful with the clean taste of salmon. It popped in your mouth with every bite, unleashing a deep tang of the sea, a saltiness that is intense yet developed with a nutty musky tang and had an almost roast chicken aftertaste. It really does lift the taste of the fish to another level and I recommend you give it a try!

Don't be scared of trying something that looks strange and wonderful on shop counters, buy something that scares you, take it home and experiment. Keep the flavours simple and see how you can adapt it to suit your tastes.  I'm finally glad I tracked down and tasted Samphire, the long fabled and elusive plant is now something I've ticked off my list and is something I would put onto my table and share with friends the next time they come over.

Its these small challenges and goals one needs in life that makes living with depression that much easier. Its that small sense of accomplishment that keeps me going to the next one and it's something I hope to share on this blog so I can see my progress.

One must try to live through life with their eyes open, taking in each moment and recognising a moment for what it is. I went for a walk one evening this weel, so angry and upset after a session at Karate. Although the session was a great one, I laughed and got a good lesson from it, I was so upset and so distraught for personal reasons that I just walked blindly until I stopped at a near-by spot and stared out across the water.  I had a long weekend go by, where I truely felt my world was ending. My parents looked after me, trying to make sure I ate and slept and watched their daughter shuffle around the house in a zombiefied state. My dad said I looked like how a war driven soldier would look after many nights on sentry watch like when he was a young marine, deep bruised, raw circles under my eyes from nights of no sleep and the eternal rollings of my mind. I explained to him how I hated sleeping and eventually it developed into a phobia, where I absolutely freak out at the idea of going to bed, striving to stay awake until my body just shut itself down out of complete exhaustion. This happened night after night for months until it was too much. The weekend was a dark one, really dark. I wont go into it too much, it's too personal and raw to share here. 

But here i was, standing at the water edge, mind and soul screaming internally in pain, I felt like my heart was ripped out for a long time and lost, emotions doing their own thing with no control and I just looked at the view for what it was. 

Sunset. The ending of one day and the begining of another. There is always another day to come, another day where things might just get better and damn, wasnt the view just beautiful?

 

Birdie love to you. xxx