Verde's

Today I finally got around to really visiting Jeanette Winterson's shop Verde's. Last week we passed it on the Jack the Ripper walk, and Lauren and I stopped by briefly before having dinner on Brick Lane.


It's a wonderful little haven and I plan to return as much as I can. (It's rather out of the way for me though.) Before going to Verde's we had tacos at a little Mexican festival within a farmer's market near Russell Square.


Yum. The Mariachi band was great -- they'd sing two or three songs and then go eat some tacos, and then sing two or three songs and then go eat some tacos, and so on.

After Verde's we did some window shopping around Spitalfields, and had a glass of wine along the way. It was a lovely afternoon overall, especially because we had a rare sunny day.

Ren!

Lauren came to visit me last weekend. We were busy:
Belgian beers at Lowlander
National Gallery
Chinatown
Tate Modern
more pubs
mass at St. Paul's
British Museum
fish & chips
National Portrait Gallery
Jack the Ripper walk
lunchtime recital at the Royal Opera House
curry on Brick Lane
"The Sound of Music" at the Palladium

She also went to the British Library without me, and we did a bunch of walking around besides. On the Jack the Ripper walk, we got to see a big chunk of the old Roman wall around the original city of London:

ping-pong

乒乓
pīng pāng

Warm spiced apples with vanilla ice cream

Toss 3 cups sliced peeled apple with 2 teaspoons lemon juice. Melt 2 teaspoons butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add apple; saute until tender. Stir in 1 tablespoon maple syrup, 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon and 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg; cook 1 minute. Serve over vanilla ice cream.

This is from Cooking Light. They say to use frozen yogurt. Also, I don't measure any of it, but I'm sure that I'm more generous than they are with the butter and the maple syrup. I make it for myself with one apple.