A tasty memory...

People that know me will know that I love to cook! And well there are those recipes that you use and use and then somewhere along the line they get forgotten.

Tonight I made one of these recipes, for the first time in 3 years! The last time I made this recipe was, in fact, on my honeymoon. (I can't quite get over the fact I've been married for three years already!)

View from our window on honeymoon

There was actually some logic behind not making this recipe anymore, because frankly I don't think you can do this recipe justice using ingredients from this country, but it still tastes pretty amazing! It does take a bit of time to prep though, but I think it's worth it, it's such a lovely summery dish. Much, much better than bought sauces (or tinned tomatoes, honest!)

Eating this recipe on Honeymoon

Ingredients 
Serves 2 


400-500g Cherry Tomatoes (works best with a variety of different ripeness and colours)
1 packet of pancetta diced (or 6 rashers of normal or smoked bacon, I have tried all and they are all good!)
1 Knob of butter
1 Onion
2 Garlic Cloves
200g Pasta (Orecchiette works well but is hard to find, so any of your favourite pasta will work)
Fresh Oregano (again often hard to find in supermarkets, parsley is nice too)
Fresh Parmesan (I left this out today, as I am on a diet!)
Salt and Pepper for seasoning.


Put all the tomatoes in a bowl and blanch them in boiling water, this is to make it easier to get the skin off the tomato (often the skin won't spilt so while they are in the boiling water I prick them with a sharp knife which makes them split)


Drain the tomatoes, then skin them and cut each tomato in half and take out the seeds, then roughly chop the flesh.


Melt butter in a frying pan and fry the pancetta (or bacon) until golden. Add the onion and garlic and fry for roughly 5 mins (or until the onion is transparent)


Check the cooking time for the chosen pasta and bring a saucepan of water to the boil. 


Add the tomato flesh to the pan of pancetta and onion (not the boiling water - it won't taste good!), season with salt and pepper, lower the heat and simmer for about 10 mins. 


Add your pasta to your now boiling saucepan and cook til ready 


When the pasta is ready drain and serve, spoon over tomato sauce and garnish with oregano (or parsley) and parmesan (if using). 



While making this tonight all could think about was Italy :) oh how I wish I was back in Umbria! We stayed at Casa San Gabriel  which I would highly recommend. As soon as I am no longer a poor student I will be saving up to go back.

As I'm sharing this recipe (the first of many probably!) I thought I would share some photo's too!

The Beauty and the Beast style wardrobe that is actually the cutest little kitchen.

Gorgeous view of Chrissie and David's house and one of the villa's.

Bad Blogger and The Crafty Fox.

Been so busy with uni work this month that I have neglected my blog a little... sorry about that the next month or so I will be writing a lot more as I've got lots of things to share :)

Anyway in my absence as well as trying to write my dissertation synopsis and designing a series of jewellery for my assessment me and the hubby went along the the Crafty Fox Market in Brixton last Saturday.

There were so many lovely items to browse through and even though I have considerably stretched my student loan to breaking point I couldn't resist buying a couple of things!

I got this amazing Deer head from Wooden Tree he has been lovingly nicknamed 'Ed the Head'. I will have to find somewhere for him to live soon.

I also bought a similar T-shirt to this (below), from Little Mashers for my nephew (shhh don't tell him!).

We also went and had lunch at Franco Manca, let's just say I will have to be going back and having more of that amazing pizza! (by far the best I've had in this country)

23 Rings...The result.

The photo above shows a few of the Items swapped in my 23 Rings Installation (I will upload more next time), from a ring given from a girls first love, to a toy car passed down through a family, to a damaged rose joint from the kart of a young man’s last race.

Overall I had a great response and was overwhelmed by what people were willing to part with! There was a great mixture of people who came to swap from different ages and backgrounds, and this resulted in a great mix of objects that were swapped. Some of those who came to see the installation couldn’t bear to part with anything, and then there were others who came in, not knowing it was going on and gave up very sentimental items. 

I can’t wait to start making the next series of jewellery pieces, I will hopefully be combining both the memory and the object into (possibly) necklaces. I have some idea’s already of what I will do with some of them, but you will have to wait and see! 

I will be exhibiting the resulting series in an exhibition in Rochester from the 13th-19th June (more details to come soon!)

Getting Ready :)

I am excitedly (and a little bit nervously) getting ready for tomorrow's installation. Stupidly I decided to redo all my tags last night so I have been painstakingly hand stamping my tags since, lets hope it is worth the effort!

If you are thinking of coming along or are just nosey follow me @23Rings over on twitter for live updates or find out more on my website: http://www.laura-bell.co.uk

23 Rings...The Installation

Would love to see you there if you can make it! 

I will also be selling my other jewellery at the event.

23 Rings...Made.

It feels as though I have been working on this project for ages, I can't believe it has only been 5 weeks!

I finally handed them in for assessment today, feels so good not to have the stress for a little while.

I will be organising time/place/date for the installation event this week so watch this space!

Here it is set out on my desk at uni, this is not how they would actually be displayed! :)

23 RINGS...An Ambitious Project.

I need to learn to be less ambitious with my projects! 

For my current five week project I decided to make a series of rings. I wanted to do 100 but thankfully my tutor talked me down to 23 (my age). Each of these rings have a element of something I have collected over the years that is special or significant to me, something that I would find it hard to part with.

The aim eventually, I say eventually but it needs to be in the next few weeks, to have a installation/event where I people can come and take a ring but they have to leave an object in it's place, something of their own, something that is special to them (there will be some restrictions to this!) along with why the object is significant to them.

The items that are left will then become the basis for my next series of work (but will not be destroyed in any way!)

As promised here are a few pictures of some of the rings I have made so far (pre silver-plating!)

Sorry for the photos, I didn't have much time to take them!

These last few you need to imagine that the 'claws' are folded around the object holding it in (this will be done at a later stage!) It won't be held on with blu tack like it is here!