This week’s small pleasures #263

Only a few days left to Christmas! We are almost ready for our Christmas Eve feast, with just some cleaning to do and some final bits of shopping. To get us into the seasonal mood, this week we enjoyed the Swedish Lucia morning from Tällberg in Dalarna on Monday (you can watch it here).

I’m going to start with food this week, and a lovely meal out at one of our favourite places in Wellington, Field & Green. I started with the twice-baked smoked trevally soufflé with a leek and chive sauce, which I have had before and am always pleased when it returns to the menu. Karl had the veal tonnato. We opted for the Beef Wellington for two with baby carrots and red wine sauce, with a really light pastry and perfectly cooked beef. For dessert, we enjoyed some of Field & Green’s famous ice cream, with me having the cranachan (based on the Scottish dessert with raspberries and toasted oatmeal) and Karl, the Rocky Road.

I ate out twice this week in fact, with a nice evening of drinks and dinner at Olive with work colleagues on Wednesday, where I enjoyed a spiced red lentil fritter with char grilled courgettes and a cashew cream based sauce. In the shopping basket this week there were more scallopini (I confess because they look so pretty), courgettes (wish I had space to grow my own), sweet corn, capsicum, lemons and limes, tomatoes, plums and asparagus which isn’t in the picture. I also picked up this pohutukawa smoked salmon for the Christmas Eve table, which should at least be a bit different one would hope! There were raspberries for dessert on Saturday, and a fresh caprese salad as a side dish.

There was sushi in the park at Friday lunchtime, listening to some live music and sitting in the sun, and on Sunday we went to the cinema to see The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson’s latest film. Full of great moments of humour (a chef called Nescaffier, the town the film is set in is called Ennui-sur-Blasé) and the quirks of his films that fans expect to see.

It is also hydrangea season. Below are some from the Botanic Gardens and by a neighbour’s house. The one in the featured image can be found by one of the bus stops near our house. I am sure there will be more hydrangeas in the weeks to come!

What were your small pleasures this week? Here are some other blog posts from a few fellow bloggers looking at the good things in life. 

• Carol Ann of Fashioned for Joy shares her delights of the week including a visit to Hillwood Museum
• Ju Lyn at Touring my Backyard says a Christmas hello.
• Natalie the Explorer shows us the Christmas lights in Toronto.
• Anne over at  Something Over Tea gives us an update on the Urban Herd – so fascinating.
• Jo at And Anyways shares 12 Bakes of Christmas.
• Deb’s World show us how her town lights up the night at Christmas.
• Laurie at Notes from the Hinterland shares a link to one of her seasonal stories.
• Have a coffee with Trent over at Trent’s World.
• Scribble and Scran puts up his tree and shows us a beautiful wooden bowl made by his son.
• Sanch Writes shares her weekly gratitude.

You can find Thistles and Kiwis on Facebook, and also on Instagram @thistlesandkiwis.  As for Twitter….am totally inactive these days.  If you want to get in touch, email me on thistlesandkiwis@gmail.com