Spring Entertaining Cookery

A delicious day today with Vanessa!

We started the day learning how to make bread the Bertinet method way, very sticky, but lots of swinging it around, and bashing it on the granite, very therapeutic! The results were well worth it, everyone was able to take some home, and we enjoyed some with lunch.

We made a lovely asparagus, watercress and potato salad with seared salmon and olive salsa. This was followed by stir fried chicken with a cream pesto, the smell of the fresh basil filled the house.

But the star of today was the most AMAZING orange cake pudding served with a rhubarb, orange and ginger compote, we ate it so quickly I didn't even get time to take a photo! The cake had no butter in it, and was so light and zingy, the rhubarb and orange compote was so fresh with some chopped stem ginger in it and some vanilla pod seeds.

We could have spent the afternoon just sitting at the table bathed in sunshine, drinking coffee, chatting and just complementing Vanessa on a great day! I am definitely making the pudding this weekend.

Simply Venice Watercolour Class

We had a lovely day yesterday painting our Venice scene. It wasn't as simple as the title suggested! There was quite alot of drawing to start with, to get the important skyline of buildings just right, they create a silhouette that can only be Venice.


Keeping in the watery Venice style, it was a painting that had several washes and we needed a good strong paper to take all the water we were brushing on. Claire had brought some Saunders Waterford paper, which is a very good quality 300lb heavyweight paper and perfect for the technique we were using of very loose washes, very typical of Claire's painting style (and also perfect for when she splashed her painting with the wrong paint, and was able to get it out, a thinner paper would have worn out, we all learnt a very useful technique there!)


We also had two new colours today, which were gorgeous, a green called Viridian, and a purple called Manganese Violet, both of which we used for the Gondolas, they were so vibrant, we had to be quite careful when mixing them up not to make them too strong.

It was a very chilled day, the sun shone, and we heard about two proposal stories from Venice!

We are now breaking for the Easter with Watercolour and will be back on Wednesday 28 April for Sunflowers in Provence, a lovely, big sunny painting.

Coffee and Cakes

We had a very successful morning at Treetops, on behalf of Asthma UK. My younger sister is running the marathon for them next month, I can't support her in the running stakes, but I can bake. So bake I did ... til late at night and first thing this morning! There were delicious Chocolate Cakes (Grandma's recipe), my boys' favourite Banana and Choc Chip loaves and lots and lots of Colourful Cupcakes!

The sun was shining (hard to believe at this wet heavy rain moment) and friends and neighbours arrived to drink, eat, chat and enter the raffle for a £50 Gift Voucher towards a class at Treetops.

The grand sum of £200 was raised, thank you everyone. It will definitely give Katy a boost in her final few weeks of preparation.

Artex 10 - Art Exhibtion

A sale of paintings, drawings and prints takes place this weekend at East Woodhay Village Hall, Heath End, Newbury, RG20 0AP. (Southwest of Newbury, A34 Wash Common Junction and A343 via Ball Hill. Further info 01635 253489)

Saturday 13 March 10am to 6pm
Sunday 14 March 11am to 3pm

Entrance £2 to include Exhibition Catalogue, refreshments are available.
All profits go to St Martin's School and St Martin's Church.

Two Treetops Tutors are exhibiting, Claire Warner our watercolour tutor and Jo Andreae, our photogaphy tutor.

Watercolour - Spring Flowers

We had a lovely class today, beautiful sunshine and a table full of pretty Spring Flowers.

After a quick initial sketch Claire showed us how to create a loose and free painting, trying not to get too "botanical" about it. We masked the outline of the white flowers and after our first wash we stopped for some lunch.

The afternoon was spent mixing some darker colours followed by some negative painting, dropping in some dark colours to lift the flowers and to create some shapes.

As you can see, they were all brilliant!


At the end of the afternoon whilst tidying up, I spotted Bambi helping himself to my Spring Flowers!

Spring Cookery - Places available!

There are spaces available on Vanessa's next class, which is Spring Entertaining on Thursday 18 March. The class starts at 9.30am and finishes at approximately 3pm, the cost is £75 and this includes all ingredients, recipes to take home, a 3 course delicious lunch (that you have helped cook!) and also something that you have made to take home with you.

The classes are great fun, full of top tips, ideas of food that can be prepared ahead or frozen, and also amazing presentation ideas.

Book now, as Vanessa won't be teaching during the Summer Term, so this is her last class for a while!

Tasty Thai Class

Treetops smells amazing this evening!

It was a very busy class today, millions of ingredients and plenty of chopping. We were roasting cumin and coriander seeds, chopping chillies and lemongrass, being introduced to galangal and turning our noses up at the smell of shrimp paste!

Everyone made their own green curry paste in the morning to take home with them, it smelt so fresh and delicious.

We had a feast of a lunch with thai fish cakes, green mango salad with prawns, a green chicken curry with thai rice, chicken satay with a delicious delicious sauce, thai beef salad with cucumber, and a beautiful fruit platter of pineapple, papaya, mango, dragon and passion fruit, served in a lovely syrup with coconut ice cream, with a huge sparkler on the top because we were celebrating 3 birthdays today - Judith, Steve and Jon. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!