​Wind, rain, snow, sunshine, roadtrip, beautiful landscapes and vegan food. This is how I can sum up this mini trip to the West of Ireland a month ago.
For the vegan food part, no, I have not changed my diet but traveling with guests who are vegan meant trying to find delicious things that would suit them. 
As for the beautiful scenery, driving along the Wild Atlantic Way in Ireland will provide all this and more.

​In everyday cooking, I use a lot of my own recipes or ones that I know by heart and can make without opening a book or checking out the steps on the internet. And when making recipes I have shared here over the years, my favourite thing is to see if I can improve them a bit.
For example, I have tweaked the recipe for chocolate and hazelnut brownies many times until it reached the perfect texture and taste I wanted. This was actually one of the first recipes I shared on the blog nearly seven years ago.

​Days are getting longer, blooms are starting to appear more and more on trees and I can hear a lot of birds singing from early in the morning to late at night. Spring time is finally here and it feels nice not having to put on so many layers every time I want to go outside. 
The other nice thing about the weather changing is that more and more fruit and vegetables are becoming available. The Winter options can be a bit limited but there is still some fruit I want to enjoy until it is out of season: pears. 

Bonjour and happy Saturday!
This week was a little shorter than usual but it was not any less busy. However, I was fully rested from the long weekend where I had given myself permission to relax for the whole three days (I usually fit in a bit of photography and writing work at weekends). 
As usual, here are a few things I collected recently to share with you this Saturday:

If you have been reading Crème de Citron for a while now, you probably already know that Nantes is one of my favourite cities to visit and has been mentioned a few times in various travel blog posts. And if you happen to follow me on Instagram, you also already know I spent two weeks in France last month, most of it in this beautiful city.

Because I lived in Nantes for 5 years as a student but also because I spent a lot of my school holidays with my cousins there as a young girl, I am very familiar with my surroundings, the streets and the various landmarks there. 
However, now that I live abroad and do not get to see it evolving on a daily basis, I am constantly amazed by all the changes the city encounters.

​Breakfast is and has always been part of my everyday routine. I might swap it for brunch occasionally at the weekend but other than that, I just cannot skip it.
The thing with breakfast and me is that I cannot stick to the same things to eat day after day. For example: two pieces of toast with butter and jam, a fruit and a mug of green tea. That sounds great and perfect to start the day, and honestly it would be so easy to have this everyday. I like eating this type of breakfast, I really do. But after a couple of weeks, breakfast food boredom starts to set and I need to find something else to eat. 
I usually swap the pieces of toast for slices of brioche or toasted challah bread, and green tea for a mint infusion. Another time, I like to move on to porridge and a mug of lemon and ginger infusion. And on occasions, I make myself a bowl of Greek yogurt topped with granola and drizzled with Irish honey (we get ours directly from E.’s family, it is so delicious!). Since I am in a granola phase at the moment, I thought I would try and make my own so I get to choose what flavours go in it.