A postponed gift for a friend

I have just completed these hanging hearts for a friend of mine.
Whilst promised to her weeks (months) ago, we were seeing them last night and I was unable to come up with any further excuses for not having completed said promised gift for her new orangery.

Thankfully she loved it

Last night we ate at a new Japanese teppanyaki restaurant; where the chefs theatrically cook your dishes in front of you, on a hot plate, with lots of flames thrown in for good measure.
Our friends had never been to a Japanese restaurant before so this was to be a new experience for them.

The layout of a teppanyaki restaurant is a completely different concept to the usual tables and chairs arrangement. No individual tables, just one large horseshoe shaped table with 2 large hot plates at either end around which you sit with other diners, many of whom didn’t know quite what to expect.

We plumped for a mixture of a meat based set menu and a seafood one.

And wow, the food just kept coming from melt in the mouth steak to salmon, prawns and scallops, all superbly cooked in front of your eyes in a matter of minutes, with the occasional “flambé” thrown in with the lights down to further accentuate the effect.

The egg fried rice preparation was one of the most entertaining. The chef first cooked the rice with chopped spring onions, then he cracked 2 eggs onto the hot plate and quickly whipped this into a long omelette. Next he rolled it into a long roll about 20″ long and proceeded to let his metal spatulas fly chopping the egg at amazing speed into the pile of rice. What we weren’t prepared for was the chef then aiming the chopped egg into the mouths of any one up for the challenge of catching it! Several diners were left with egg on their faces, literally!

It was a hugely entertaining evening.

Finishing an order for more stockings today. The sun is coming up and it promises to be one of those lovely crisp clear autumn days.

Love Lucie xx