Avenue Lifestyle

I’ve been wanting to share this recipe with you guys for so long. I made over the Christmas and New Year’s break for the first time and have had friends literally beg me for the recipe. So when Ingrid, my sweet friend and the talented soul behind Let’s Talk Evergreen, came to hang out with me in my kitchen last week to cook and photograph together – each making our own recipe and shooting as we went along – I gathered the ingredients I needed to make my very own lime infused lentil and roast veg salad and got to work. It was such a heavenly day. We chatted, nibbled on scraps, swapped photography secrets and laughed. We made a mess and worked in the chaos and it was the very best.

This recipe is an adaption of one that I spotted in the cookbook Nopi, which my husband gave me as a Christmas present. I wanted to make something special to take with me to our New Year’s eve party – which was at the home of my food stylist friend Ajda Mehmet in Amsterdam so it basically had to be VERY good. I wanted to make a roast pumpkin dish with lime yoghurt dressing but I thought it would be a bit challenging for people to eat while mingling, so decided to adapt the flavours to a lentil salad to serve in small bowls and be eaten in a more civilised fashion. The results were so good I have made it several times since, and every time I do I get begged for the recipe. So here we go. Get the full scoop

Friesche Vlag is an extension of the Dutch dairy giant Friesland Campina and is the world’s largest dairy co-operative, responsible for the production of various milk products including coffee creamer, long-life milk and milk froth which are sold in more than 100 countries world wide. So you can imagine my excitement when I was asked to create the brand images for their new website, designed to coincide with the launch of their latest Latte product. Wanting to branch out in new directions and target a younger audience with their attractive new packaging, Friesche Vlag needed some fresh imagery for their site, enlisting founder of Blogstreet Esther Buitendijk to pull together the right team for this exciting project. And what an honour it was that she deemed me the perfect person to work with web and graphic designer Merel de Neve on what is now the new Friesche Vlag website, and I couldn’t be more proud or grateful for this creative collaboration.

I thought I’d show you a bit of the process behind this shoot, as it’s always fun to peek behind the scenes a bit on a project like this. It’s a different experience entirely working a commercial project because the stakes are high and in this case there was a marketing team to insure the right message was sent though the images, so it was not just me and my camera this time, but a challenge (which I love) and I am pleased with the results.

Get the full scoop

Just before the holiday break I was asked to shoot a centuries old bakery in the centre of Delft that has recently changed hands to a charming couple, Thomas van Bavel and Patrick van Holsteijn, who are energetic and passionate about their line of work and the craft behind baking. The bakery has been around since the sixteenth century and it’s new owners are keen to breath fresh life into it while maintaining it’s nostalgic and historical charm.

I created a series of images for the new website – created by the lovely Merel de Neve, who I hired to rebrand my blog recently – both of the bakery itself and their staff, as well as the products. And yes, I ate a LOT of carbs that week. And yes, it was worth it. Get the full scoop

Whenever I vist my friend (and amazing food stylist) Ajda Mehmet at her place in Amsterdam, she’s got something amazing going on in the kitchen. Whether it’s an incredible three-tiered cake she’s baking for an event or a delicious dinner she’s preparing for friends, it always smells amazing in her apartment and there’s always something yummy to taste. I actually think about her scrambled eggs every single morning when I wake up after she made me some for breakfast when I stayed at her house a year ago. While I was visiting her this week for a project we’re working on, she showed me the sweetest little edible Christmas gifts she’d been making – tiny tahini, cacao and chestnut fudge stars dabbed with delicate gold glitter. I had my camera in my hand, so without any further persuasion I shot these few images, tasting the fudge between shots and decided that I HAD to share the recipe with you guys because they are sooooo good and surprisngly healthy too!

Ajda adapted the recipe from one she’d tried by Susan Jane White and loved, so when it came to making Christmas gifts (being a food stylist an edible gift seems only fitting) she thought she’d use ingredients she had on hand to make her own adaption of the recipe, resulting in these beautiful little fudgey stars for her lucky Christmas recipients. Not only are they simple to make but they make a beautiful gift, such a sweet idea! Get the full scoop

Breakfast in our home is a bit of a ritual. We are a porridge family, particularly during the winter. My more spontaneous self likes to mix it up a bit in the warmer months with eggs, fruit and cereals but I can’t deny it, a bowl of warm oats is worth waking up for. Which is just as well for my routine-loving husband who is usually on breakfast duty while I make the beds and get Lola ready for school, because it means he doesn’t have to think too hard about what to make each morning. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get bored with the banana or pear porridge varieties we usually eat, so this creamy coconut and cardamom oats recipe created by Ajda Mehmet is a welcome diversion to our standard morning ritual while easy enough to slap up sleepy-eyed first thing in the morning, and is just so delicious!

If you asked me my favourite flavour I would say it is coconut. No matter how exciting and pretty all the flavours in the ice-cream window look, I always order coconut without fail. Usually combined with something else (I’m a two-scoops girl) but always coconut first. So when Ajda and I were playing around with ways to flavour these oats and she casually dropped coconut into the conversation, I got so excited because I knew this was a porridge I could get behind, and on a daily basis too! Enter sweet stewed apples, roasted sesame seeds and aromatic cardamom and these creamy oats will having you returning to the pan for seconds! Get the full scoop