Pro Picnic-ing

It's rare that my friend Craig and I are in the same place at the same time, and so we see each other maybe once a year at most. We both happened to be in Salisbury however, and so we decided to celebrate with a picnic by the Cathedral, which is one of my favourite places in the world. Now you can't half-arse a picnic by Salisbury Cathedral - it deserves so much more - so I spent the afternoon rustling up some fancy treats for us.

1. The Londoner's Kali Spera Feta Dip

 I love The Londoner. It's my favourite blog - her recipes are brilliant and I'm completely addicted. I decided to give her feta dip a go, and once again I was not disappointed. It's so simple, just whiz up some feta cheese, olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, thyme and a pinch of salt and dig in! You can find the exact recipe on her blog by the link above.

I served it with some celery and cucumber sticks and some hunks of sourdough bread.

2. Sea Bass Ceviche

The wonderful Londoner also has a recipe for this, but it's the simplest thing in the world and I tend to just wing it.

I juiced 2 lemons and a lime, grated a chilli and chopped a handful of coriander and threw it together with a good pinch of sea salt. For the fish I used 2 sea bass fillets, but tuna is also really good, as long as it's super fresh. Just remove the skin, slice into thin strips and mix into the juice/sauce. Then cover and leave in the fridge for a few hours. The citrus juice 'cooks' the fish and you're left with tangy, spicy, deliciousness. Throw in some avocado just before you serve it and bobs your uncle, Ceviche! I love ceviche, I discovered it in Peru where it's kind of a national dish and became a bit obsessed. It's perfect for picnics and barbeques too.

3. Blindin' Bellinis!

This was by far my favourite part (obviously). I did the peaches beforehand as it's pretty messy. You need 3 or 4 really ripe ones, so you can smush them (technical term) through a sieve and collect the juice. I didn't take pictures. Just picture some smushed up peaches. Go on...

You're not actually allowed to drink alcohol on the cathedral grounds so after we did NOT see how high we could pop the cork we did NOT put a bit of puree in the bottom of a glass and then top with prosecco. We certainly did NOT repeat this process throughout the evening, especially NOT with a second bottle.
Wink.

We also had the usual spread of olives, prosciutto, cherries, strawberries...

At night the Cathedral is lit up from underneath, and looks a bit haunted, but still very beautiful.

You can see why I like it so much. When I was a Salisbury shop-girl (incidentally how Craig and I met) I used to come and sit here on my lunch breaks and people watch all the tourists. It's so peaceful, even when it's heaving. Perfect for giggling your way through a catch-up with an old friend. 

Oh hey there James Bond...

Boats. Golf. Picnics.

I've been spending the last couple of weeks travelling around the country and visiting various people, and because of this I've fallen a bit behind on the old bloggin'...but I'm back!

Now a lot of these trips have involved sitting around drinking wine and catching up, but occasionally we decided to actually do something with our day. Monday was one of these days, with a get-together in Warwick, with Callum, Julia and Lauren, some of my fave uni people. We were going to go to the castle, but on the way passed the park and swiftly changed our minds in favour of boats and mini golf...

We tried our hand at a spot of rowing first (I was definitely the best...), and recited poetry as we glided softly down the river, stopping for a picnic in view of the castle. (This is all a massive exaggeration, we were truly awful, at both the poetry and the rowing...). 

We quickly traded it in for mini golf, which I was equally awful at...

See that paving in the corner? That's the edge of the course. I went slightly off track...

I had no right to look this smug...

Callum of course won, followed by Lauren, both showing a surprising mini-golf talent. Shockingly, I didn't come last! The beautiful Julia did - but it was pretty close...

We decided to go back to the boats, this time to try our hand at canoeing. Me and Callum were pretty good. Lauren and Julia not so much. None of us wanted to risk our cameras/phones in something so easily cap-sizable, but we did manage to get this rather fetching photo in the totally unnecessary life-jackets...

Beautiful right?