Lilou's Endeavours

What now feels like a lifetime ago, I spent 15 months studying in Milan. While my course was in English, I did have some Italian lessons; but I mainly learned from daily interactions in shops, restaurants etc... And by the end of the year I could get by. However, apart from a couple holidays; I've not been able to practice, and can no longer string a proper sentence together. So I decided to pick this up again. First step was to dust off the DuoLingo app - which I have used for Spanish, Italian (pre - above mentioned holiday) and Danish (suddenly found my self supporting a Danish account at work and while their English was more than prefect, decided I needed to learn some basic Danish).  I first used Duolingo in 2015, and it has come a long way since. First of all, while some still seem random, the sentences used in the exercises are now ones that you could actually use - unlike my favourite - "The monkey sleeps on the elephant" -  from my first lessons. And the latest fe...

    A few weeks back a mate gave me a ton of apples, I mean one of those Sainsbury's bag full of apples.  So, for about three weeks I delighted my insta followers (all ten of them) with endless stories of the various apple recipes I tried out.     We had compote, delicious with yoghurt; we had crumble, twice; we had tarte Tatin, small issue of the landslide aside it was good!       I also tried making a Dorset apple cake. Let's just say Paul and Prue wouldn't have been impressed. The edges were very tasty but we couldn't eat the whole thing (not fully baked through in the middle).     Because I don't have a massive sweet tooth, I even experimented with savoury recipes. I made some apple chutney. Still haven't tasted it as you are meant to wait 2 or 3 months, but will most likely try it sooner and pull a face because it will still be too sharp. I just don't have the patience to wait that long!   We had an apple an...

 Hi There!  I'm new to blogging, so please excuse the mess while I figure out how this platform works and what size and resolution my images need to be to load properly. In the meantime you'll see a bit of stock imagery instead. But I think its a fitting start to what I want to blog about. In short it's all about having a go at things and not worrying too much how perfect and polished they are.  Have you ever noticed how everyone on Instagram seems to be super talented and passionate? And even the "bad takes" look a lot better than what you would manage... I know it often puts me off trying things, which is silly. So I've decided to have a go at new things (including writing a blog!) and I want to share my trials with you. Non of it is perfect, non of it will make me an influencer, but its all been fun to do and a great distraction. So have a read and maybe this will be the nudge to just try what you've been secretly wanting to do. Just have some fun!