A few days in England

The middle of September found us in England for a few days. We visited Christian and J and explored their new house which is lovely. Christian looks as if he’s heading for a career in interior design. He took us to an old school which is now a huge antiques shop where he finds old furniture which he turns into other things. He has the gift of seeing what could be, rather than what is. I wish I could do it.

We had lunch at a lovely place called “The Cake Hole”*, everything is fresh and local. I chose the cheese platter. We resisted finishing off with cake as we were going out for a meal in the evening.

Spot the deer

We walked off our lunch in the grounds of a local stately home. As always plenty of pictures of trees. I love trees. Trees don't grow as big as this where we live.

Christian and J took us to Ikea. Our first visit; a bit over whelming, but it was fascinating. Fortunately, we had to think of getting things home on the plane, so we didn’t buy anything.

We then went and stayed with Rob’s mother for a couple of days. She was happy to be driven around or taken out in her wheelchair. Christian joined us for a day too. We also saw my mum but didn’t really have time for much else.

 We popped in to the Colwall Coffee Lounge and had an English breakfast on the last day. I chose the vegetarian version.

I only put on 300g after all of the food we ate!

 *Christian took a lovely picture of Rob and I at The Cake Hole which I’ve used part of for my new profile picture.

Happy Birthday Dom!

Dom was seven and a half years old when this photo was taken. Today she’s 21. I just can’t believe how the time has passed. Happy Birthday Dom! Hopefully she’s been able to take some time off from studying to celebrate in style. I wonder what time I should phone her up?

This is the second weekend that Olivier hasn’t been home. I’m really pleased that he’s bonding with his fellow students, as it were, but it’s very strange, especially today as Rob is working and I’m all on my own. Oh well, I can dream about all of the washing that’s sure to come my way…

Last night was a first for us. We’d decided to fetch a pizza from the pizza place in the village. It’s only open on Friday and Saturday nights. We discovered it’s not open at all in the winter months. So we decided to phone and have one delivered. Olivier and his friends have done it lots of times so we chose one of the companies he uses. The service was excellent, they delivered before the time they told us and the young girl (was she really old enough to drive?) that came to the door was really polite and chatty. Our call went though the Yellow Pages so she was in a bit of a panic when she saw the Parisian number (five hours drive!), she told me. Oh yes, the pizza was very good too.

Twenty-five years ago

Something I haven’t done in a long, long time is delve into my old diaries. So today I’ve gone back in my time machine 25 years and arrived at Tuesday 14th August. I was still living in England then. Nothing much really happened, work and Indian meal with friend. I had chicken korma. At the bottom of the page it says “Started to eat meat again”. That was the end of my year long vegetarian experiment. Funnily enough, Dom did something similar a couple of years ago.

Not liver again!

Me : I’m looking for my liver with sage recipe.
Olivier: But we’ve only just had liver!
Me: It was a month ago.
Olivier: Why couldn’t you leave a ten year gap like last time?

Pictures of eggs

Rob came home with half a dozen eggs the day before yesterday. Home grown ones from one of his colleagues. They were beautiful, dark brown and speckled. I wish he’d let me use his camera so that I could take a photo*. Just recently I’ve seen a lot of things I’d like to photograph – not just pictures but textures. I’ve been inspired by Caroline’s blog (Scroll down to see her top 10).

I suppose I could get my paints out, but the eggs would be rotten by the time I’d finished. By the way, I had a lovely omelette for lunch

*It’s not as if I’d have to have photos developed nowadays, is it? If they weren’t any good I could delete them all.

I think I have proof that it works

On Saturday we went out to tea at an old friend’s who I’ll write about in another post. She’d made a chocolate cake so I had some of that, after a walk round by the beach we had an aperitif. In France you can drink port before a meal and very nice it is too. She’d also made my favourite, a savoury olive cake* and there were other nibbles. Rob and I returned home late and so I made pizza (as in out of the freezer into the oven) as I didn’t feel like cooking much and had the last of the lemon meringue pie from my birthday meal on Friday. Needless to say I didn’t take a reading of my blood sugar before I went to bed. On Sunday I felt rotten all day – almost hung over. It is a long time since I went off the rails to that extent and proof that I do need to stay sensible if I want to feel and stay well. We won’t mention weight.

*Dom made a few cakes in the summer too, they must be in a cake conspiracy together.

The year moves on

I think it’s time for a little update. We went to the ‘seaside’ at the weekend. We don’t count here as the seaside as the beach is stony and the island is not far across the way. Last time Rob and I went we decided that we wouldn’t go again. Not much fun without bucket and spades and children. Dom asked if we would go just for old times sake so we went and it was one of the three hottest days of the year – the end of last week. So we swam and it was lovely, very crowded though and lots of Brits. In the evening we ate at The Goldwing which is decorated Mexican style. I love the colours warm and faded. We were really surprised at how good it was and not too expensive. American style burgers, though I suspect any passing Americans will wonder where that idea came from.



Olivier has finished at the restaurant and they were very pleased with his work. He earned more than we all thought he would. I told him that I hope he doesn’t spend it all on sex and drugs and rock and roll. I’ve got a feeling that as he worked so hard to get it he’ll hang on to it, for a while. We shall see. He’s started school again – last year, hopefully. They broke his class up as there were a lot of trouble makers but he doesn’t mind too much as he knows most of the others in his new class. So far he’s been pretty cheerful

Dom is busy packing. I’ve been given some makeup she doesn’t want/need any more, so I will experiment with that when everyone is out of the way. She’s just put in a request for new socks before she goes. All the socks in the house seem to have disappeared this summer. Perhaps there is a sock fetishist in the neighbourhood?

Me? I’ve been postcarding most of the time though I did prune the roses and clean out a gutter last week. When we go for our walk in the evenings there are lots of frogs around and they seem to be all sizes. I don’t know if they are different species or all the same but at different stages of development.

The spiders have started to come in. So far just medium sized ones. Winter is on its way.

Say "cheese"

I really shouldn’t be nibbling while I’m on the computer, but we can get a most amazing cheese at the moment. It’s called Mediterranean Gouda. It’s got all sort of teeny bits in it. I don’t understand how something that is supposed to come from Holland can be called Mediterranean. There you go…

Sushi time!

Dom is a great fan of Sushi and every time she eats out it seems to be what she chooses. Since the beginning of the summer she’s been offering to take me out for a Sushi. Yesterday we finally went out together. First of all we spend an agreeable hour looking for shoes for her. There really are some lovely boots around at the moment, all I have to do is loose some weight to get my calves into them.

We went to a restaurant by the port that Dom knows and trusts, so I asked her what the name if the restaurant means. (She knows a little Japanese and Chinese). She couldn’t tell me because the restaurant was Vietnamese. I had the menu so that I could try everything sushi and have some meat too. Dom chose Chinese food for a change.

As Dom says, it’s a bit strange at first, so I’ll have to try it again. I do know that I really liked the cabbage salad I was given with the soup. I found the sticky rice a bit strange but the fish was nice. I ate 95% of my food with chop sticks!

We didn’t wait for the bus but walked back out of town to where I had parked the car. For a change it was sunny and the buddleias were full of peacock butterflies.

Spanish cakes

This is fast becoming a foody blog. One of my pupils, who is ten years old, is half Spanish so he’s already bilingual and he’s making great progress in English. Last Tuesday was our last lesson of the school year so he presented me with some lovely little Spanish cakes. They have cinnamon in and are delicious. I don’t often bake cakes myself, but they reminded me of a recipe for Pastelitos de Boda in my Mexican cookery book that I used to make, they are very crumbly, great with a cup of coffee.

It was Rob’s birthday yesterday so the four of us managed to eat together for once

Russian Soup

This is what I tried for lunch today – Russian soup. I managed to translate how long to cook it for, but Dom helped me with the rest. Like most dehydrated soups it was very salty. I wouldn’t buy it again, even if I could.