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Once upon a time I would never have thought you could cook with lavender. Then over the last few years I came across lavender as a seasoning:

1. Lavender bread sold in Picnic Fayre delicatessen in Cley Next The Sea, Norfolk.
2. Mixed in with rosemary and sea salt in a salt grinder.
3. In a marinade for chicken used by Nigella Lawson in her San Tropez Chicken (you can read this recipe online at recipesfrom4everykitchen.blogspot.com)

I always enjoyed my encounters with lavender as a food ingredients, but had, of late, rather forgotten about it. Then on holiday Holkham Hall were serving lavender ice cream as their speciality of the day so I had to have some (see my last blog about Holkham ice cream). It was delicious ice cream with a really unique flavour and beautiful pale purple colour. Sadly, as usual, I had to share my ice cream with Baby G and the photograph shows us fighting over who get to eat the most!

Now I’m on the hunt for more recipes using lavender. I’ll keep you updated.

Rewind a week and we were celebrating my birthday. As well as the gorgeous cake I talked about yesterday we ate a smoked fish dinner from Cookies Crab Shop in Salthouse, North Norfolk – a favourite of Stephen Fry’s, read what he says about it here.

This is the healthiest fast food I’ve ever eaten. For the past four years we’ve been visiting this little shop come bistro and ordering a takeaway plate of food. As the picture shows you can order a selection of their own smoked fish with a yummy salad. Order, wait in the shop for roughly three minutes and then drive away with an omega 3 packed meal; you can also eat in the shop or the garden next door as the photo below shows. Bring your own alcohol if you like to have a drink.

We drove away with the (paper) plate of food on top of our car. I thought hubby had put it in the car, he though I had and 200 yards down the road it landed in the middle of the road. We had to stop and run back to get it. By a miracle and the amount of clingfilm wrapped around it nothing escaped the plate and just the beetroot juice was leaking out! So not only is a Cookie’s Crab Shop dinner delicious, quick and healthy it also seems to be indestructible!

Anybody visiting the area should make a trip to Cookies, with beautiful scenery all around and a view of the sea beyond it is a destination in itself.

This photograph shows Daddy and G with our takeaway smoked fish dinner before it landed in the road!

Following on from my Norfolk theme in last night’s post I thought I’d share another favourite of ours. We love to visit Holkham Hall and see the deer roaming around the beautiful estate.

This year was the first time I’ve visited Holkham when the weather was really hot, so of course we had to indulge in some of Holkham Hall’s own ice cream; it was really tasty, to quote my husband “it was the best ice cream I’ve ever had.” We tried both the vanilla and the flavour of the day which was mango. Both were delicious, the mango was subtle and delicate with none of the sharpness that a mango sorbet would give.

My son adores ice cream or “icey cream” as he calls it and he is just about able to eat it by himself from the cone. He has been so desperate to be able to eat ice cream from a cone all by himself that I’ve had to teach him how to do it. I have to keep him well covered up, hence the tea towel, and have a pack of wet wipes to hand.

If you would like to find out more information about Holkham Hall visit their website: www.holkham.co.uk

Thanks to my contributing photographers: Peter Drummond and my husband James.