#SoCS / #Jusjojan - 12/1/19 - Art

Your prompt for #JusJoJan and Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “art.” Talk about something that’s hanging on your wall. Add a picture, if you’d like. If you have no art on your walls, talk about something in a museum. Have fun!

Both challenges are hosted by Linda H Gill - here's the link to her site where you can find out more.  It's the place to leave your link to your own post if you decide to join in plus links to all the other participants.















Well I don't really have works of art on our walls.  We have a few prints here and there but nothing worthy of discussion.  But hey photography is art so I'm going to discuss this - a framed collage of photos that hangs in our kitchen and is often a conversation starter.

The photos are of my hubbies family - hubby is top left, his father is top right and his grandfather is the central photo.  The kids on the strange looking donkey are hubby and a few of his siblings plus his parents and there are various family photos of different generations.  

His family came over from Germany and the shop (below hubby) is near Victoria Park in London's East End.  It was run at the time by his Great Grandfather as a bakery.  It's still there and last time hubby went past it was back to being a cafe / cake shop.  It has also been an interiors shop at one time and Hubby's Grandfather ran it as a butchers.

Family members have traced the family tree back to relations in Germany and we have visited them and a few have been here.  It's good to know your roots.

Sadly this collage reminds me of how much I need to work on our photos.  I have lots of old black and white photos from my Mum and my Grandmother that need sorting and putting into albums.  The kids do love to look at them.  And now I have grandchildren I'm conscious of how many of our photos are just digital and although they could look at them on the computer when they are older, it would be so much nicer to have the real thing to look at.  It's a project on my objectives list (19 in 19) but on the back burner at the moment.  

Hubby used to take a more active interest in photography, belonging to a club at one point and in our first home having a dark room in the cellar.  Now it's too easy just to snap pictures on our phones.  Great to be able to create so many memories but I still prefer to see photos even if hubby's could be a little bit strange.  Of course he'd call them art!

#Jusjojan 5th January 2018 - Memories

Today's prompt is Memories.

Just Jot It January is hosted by Linda H Gill - here's the link to her site where you will find all the rules and the place to leave your link to your own post if you decide to join in, plus links to all the other participants.

Memories are so important but unfortunately, as I've witnessed, can become elusive.  I think one of my reasons for blogging is to create a written memory of life.  Something that can be revisited without the struggle of delving into my head for a temporarily (hopefully) forgotten moment.  It's also why I'm determined to sort out my photos and get prints of some of my digital ones.  A work in progress.

I was fortunate to gain lots of my Mum's photos when she died but also lots of my Grandmother's photos and I love looking back at them.  Last weekend Hubby's family gathered together and his sister passed on lots of photos from his Mum.  We had a good laugh looking back at those, especially some of the hairstyles.  The kids especially loved looking back and having a laugh at our expense over our antics and dress sense.

Of course there were quite a few baby photos of the youngsters too so we also got to tease them about how skinny/chubby/bald/hairy etc they were.  Happy memories. 

Foodie photos

I always feel my posts lack colour, mainly because I'm hopeless at taking photos or rushing so I don't have time to find appropriate captions to add to them.

This was commented on when I mentioned making a lovely meatball dish on Friday - there was no evidence.  (Although judging by 4 empty plates I think it was a hit.)

Well there's no real evidence of the lovely meal hubby cooked tonight but here is the recipe pic:

Parmesan crusted pork chops.  We had green beans and carrots plus pak choi with ours and they were delicious.  We also had a glass of the red stuff to wash it down.

Tomorrow I'm aiming for this:

Chicken shawarma salad.

This was interesting when doing the shopping - it requires sumac and ras el hanout for the marinade plus tahini for the salad dressing.  I'd never heard of sumac or ras el hanout before.  I also assumed that tahini would be with the dressings in the supermarket.

Ras el hanout is a North African spice mix and sumac is another spice used in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cooking.  

I did a lot of wandering around the supermarket looking for these.  (Never any staff to ask when you need them.)  Thank goodness for Google.  Not only did it help identify what I was looking for, when I added in Tesco (the supermarket) it also brought up pictures of the actual items.  Made the searching a lot easier! 

The chicken is now marinading overnight as recommended.  Hopefully I might remember to take a pic of the finished dish tomorrow but don't hold your breath.