It's the Pentecost weekend so plenty of time for baking, visiting a wedding party and doing my first attempt at nail art. Oh and eating the baked goods of course:) The recipe for the (banana) cupcakes is a proper American one with honey-cinnamon buttercream frosting, they did certainly remind me those we had in LA last year, yay! I prefer these over the pastel coloured stylish cupcakes you come across these days.

For this salad I grilled the fennel in our brand new griddle pan, it looked all nice and stripey, though for more tenderness I could have parboiled the slices. But I liked the light crunch too!

In line with my new blog resolution I'll give you the recipe here: 
(modified from Home Made by Yvette van Boven)

1 fennel, tops removed and finely sliced
Watercress, a handfull
Rocket, a handfull
Fresh dill, small bunch, roughly chopped
Roasted pistachios, about 30 grams
Mozzarella or goats cheese

Dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, salt&pepper 

Grill the fennel slices on both sides and arrange on a large plate. Mix the watercress, rocket and dill and put in the middle of the fennel. Sprinkle with the dressing, pistachios and torn or crumbled cheese. I mixed some of the leaves with 300 grams cooked pasta and used mozzarella, for a happier husband, but of course you could combine this with bread or a nice piece of meat (grilled pork chops?). 

I loved the past two weekends, however busy they were I managed to do fun stuff (like go to a festival nearby and finally watch Selah Sue perform, do shopping) and spend some time in the kitchen (which is fun too)! I made this wonderful foccacia and melon jam. Also labneh (a Libanese cheese), which is actually a sort of salty 'hangop', yoghurt that was drained over a sieve. And the weather is still so good!

Do I need to say more? The weather forecast was not too good today, however it remained dry and quite sunny , until the thunderstorm that started just now (10 PM). We had dinner outside with cold salmorejo and nectarine-parmaham-mozzarella-expensive leaves salad. Yum!

BTW: the sanding of the stairs turned out to take a little longer (about one week...), only today we were able to put on the first layer of paint.... Eventually I will show the result here:)