June Bucket List

Image Credits - Lunch Box Bunch, My Instagram, Lab@56, my instagram again...

June was a crazy month weather wise here in London. This weekend was the warmest we've had all year which we celebrated with lots of BBQ's and outdoor eating, but the rest of the month has been so dreadful my wellies even made an outing! Despite this jumble of season's all in one month I've been trying to coax the sun out and at least pretend it is summer with the food we've eaten... In no particular order in the Hackney Pantry this month I have been - 

• Making loads of this shredded carrot salad, it goes with everything! The dressing is an unusual combination of maple syrup, lemon juice and tahini with a few other goodies thrown in and it is absolutely delicious

• To stave off the winter blues I've made this Nigella Chocolate Guinness Cake no less than three times! It seems I was pretty late to the game with this one - apparently everyone else has been making it for years.

• These cauliflower falafel are the newest edition to our favourite weekday weekday meals. This and "cauliflower rice" has to be the best discovery for using cauliflower since the advent of cauliflower cheese!

• Experiment no. 1 into making elderflower champagne seems to be going pretty well, although I did have to do some pretty serious sieving as there seemed to be a rather large colony of creepy crawlies in the elderflowers, but it will still taste great, right?!

Image credits - Bon Appetit, 101 Cookbooks, Messy Witchen, Ruby Violet

• T made these Sambal Chicken Skewers for one of our BBQ's this weekend and quickly proclaimed that they are the best chicken kebabs ever!

• This Kale Salad has been popping up on our table on a weekly basis, with the loads of toasted croutons and parmesan it is totally addictive

• Last week at Made in Hackney we experimented with making Kimchi, a spicy Korean pickled cabbage/veg mix. It is so delicious it doesn't stick around for long so I've already made several more batches at home, I'll share the recipe soon so you can try it at home too

• We have just discovered the delights on Ruby Violets ice cream parlour in Tufnel Park, their ice cream might be the most delicious I have ever tasted. The salted caramel is totally dreamy, with pieces of honeycomb and loads of caramel sauce, one big cone of this and I am a very happy girl! Now I just need the sun to come out in July so we have plenty more excuses to visit!