{Party} Tables For Eating At

It's party season in our house at the moment. Lily's birthday was last month, while Arthur's is next month. This means parties and family gatherings aplenty. I simply love these pretty party tables with their strung up lights - don't they look celebrational and special? Food for thought …

Images from top: House Doctor | Ariel Dearie Flowers | Apartment 34 | Design Sponge

Tables For Eating At

For me the act of 'sitting down to eat' with family and friends is as important as the food itself: maybe more so. There's a wonderful small Italian restaurant close to us. The proprietor recently wrote on his Facebook page that he kindly requests that customers don't bring their phones to the table as he wants his diners to be fully present to enjoy on the food he has prepared for them - he wants the focus on the food and the company. How refreshing.

The table plays an important role in the ritual of eating. Once sat at a table the mood and focus changes. Not only is it better for your digestion, but eating at a table is respectful to both the meal and the person who prepared it.

For me, three things contribute to the atmosphere of a meal: the food, the company, and the tableware.  I'm not keen on dressed up tables: you can keep your napkin rings and table centres. Likewise I can't abide the sauce bottle on the table either. I favour a relaxed table: maybe a tablecloth, a few floral sprigs, tea lights, and food presented thoughtfully and appetisingly. This applies for a supper gathering with friends to solo tea and cake perched on a stool at the kitchen table, between chores, on a weekend, while the kids are 'having a run out' in the park.

I find these images inspiring. They remind me to take time over food, to make an effort and make an occasion of it all. I shall be coming back to this subject again to share further images that I hope will inspire you as much as they inspire me. Bon Appétit.

Images: sfgirlbybay.com (top), handmadestudiotn.com (bottom).

Four

Buttercup Days is four years old today. It's changed quite a bit over those years and good things have come from it. When I typed my first blog post I had no idea what my goal with it was: I still don't really. I started it while at home pretty much full-time with my then one year old son and five year old daughter. The blog served as a creative output in those stay-at-home days. Blog posts tended to be family centred. It was about being a mother to two young children, while also looking back at my own childhood. It documented those tiny but significant milestone and occasions that make up life. Food was always part of it and recipe posts were a fairly regular thing back then.

Every now and then, I have to stop and see where I am going with this blog. With both of the children very much settled into school life, I work those school hours 5 days a week. There's my daily task list for Seen and my Shopping Editor role at The Simple Things to fill the hours. The blog gets squeezed in as and when time allows, which isn't nearly as often as I would like, which can be frustrating. If only I had thought of doing this before having kids, back in the day when I had something called 'spare time'.

With the vast majority of my posts being recipes that I make, style and shoot myself, I couldn't have chosen a more time consuming blog to write. To keep a blog going it has to be about a subject you are passionate about, that much I've learnt. My passion extends further than just the food itself and I plan to share that with you in the form of content that won't require me to cook up a storm in the kitchen in order to achieve a blog post. I still want the recipes to be very much the core of the blog; these new elements I hope will support and compliment the recipes.

Over the coming weeks I will be introducing a few new elements to the blog as it enters its fifth year.  I will be posting about inspiring cooking and eating spaces, beautiful kitchenalia and simple ideas and thoughts on the act of cooking, sharing and connecting over food.

No matter how I write up and plan my posts in orderly subjects, there will still be a few random posts (probably children related) that will pop up. I've got to keep it real, as they say.

To all my family and friends, the people I've met through Buttercup Days, and those who may have just stubbled across this post today - thank you so much for your support. It means the world.

A Gathering for Friends

I love nothing more than hosting a small informal gathering; inviting friends to my home to share a home-cooked meal together.

Invariably, I will cook a simple supper; unfussy but considered. I will allow myself time to plan and prepare. For occasions such as these I will bypass the busy supermarket and head to a local greengrocers, fishmongers and bakers to purchase what catches my eye. Having done some research browsing through my cook books, food magazine tear-outs and the internet, I'll usually head to the shops with something in mind; a stew, a robust winter salad or something as vague as some locally caught fish, herbs and good bread or maybe just a determination to track down the first of the blood oranges. I’ll probably pick up some flowers from the florist to – nothing grand, just a few pretty blooms to place in an old jam jar or a small vase #littletouches.

The weekend before last we had some friends come down to stay. These were old friends from where we use to live. With kids, work and busy lives we don't see each other as much as we'd all like, so this was an occasion we were all very much looking forward to. I believe times spent with friends sharing food and conversation is so good for you; there really is nothing quite like reconnecting around the dinner table catching up on each others lives, whilst lingering over a meal and a bottle of wine (or two). 

For me every such meal needs to end with a pudding. I often plan my menu from the pudding back. I used this occasion as an excuse to try out a recipe from a new cookbook of mine, Plenty More by Yotam Ottolenghi. The recipe was Set 'Cheesecake' with Plum Compote. It is a deconstructed cheesecake, where the compote, cake and crumble are made and kept separate. Other than the fact I can never resist a cheesecake, I was drawn to the recipe as its components (which were easy to prepare) could be done so 24 hours in advance. Having pudding ticked off the list the day before appeals to my ‘control' streak. Here are a few pictures of the said pudding. It was delicious and there was enough leftover the next day for photographing and eating (again).

Click here for a link to a greengage compote version of the same recipe.