"Eh" is a two letter word..

I don't get it. You are walking down the road, people all around are shouting: "Watch out for the snake!" You carry on walking. More shouts: "Watch out for the snake!", you hear them but because the sun is shining and its a beautiful day, you refuse to look down. After all, you are not going to let these idiots spoil your walk on this glorious day. A few steps later, sure as Bob is your Uncle and not your first cousin, you are a pair of bite marks richer. You fall down in agony, people rush to your aid and as they put you onto the stretcher and into the ambulance, the onlookers hear you whisper: "Why did nobody warn me?". That is what I do not get.

You are probably wondering what this has got to do with Saturday evening. Well, to tell you the truth, not much. It was part of the conversation we had, but as the story that was told is as old as the hills and the person involved refuses to listen to warnings about snakes, potholes or any other obstacles, we labelled it as "boring" and continued to much on our quesidillas.

It was a bit of an impromptu Fat Saturday. We met some friends in Kingston and that lead to coffee, coffee led to a play date and a play date led to them cooking us supper in our own home. I must admit, there is NOTHING better than being entertained in your own home. For the first time ever, I could sit back and relax, have a conversation and the food was placed in front of me. I did not even have to cook it, prepare it or even cut it myself. Absolute heaven! Thanks guys, it was an absolute treat. I do not know the precise recipe they used, but found this version on the Jamie website: Quesadillas with Guacamole. What wonderful guests! They bring their own food, cook their own food, serve you a meal and feed you chocolate afterwards. Not any chocolate, no, Lind Sea Salt Chocolate. Jip, Salt and chocolate, my perfect snack. I am not a fan of too sweet things, so this chocolate is just perfect! Just as the sweet gets too much, the salt kicks in. Heaven for this salt junkie!

SO back to the snake thingie. It is weird isn't it? I once heard a lecture where the guy started off by saying: "The only thing we learn from History, is that we learn nothing from History." How true. Why can't we listen to people who have had the same experiences and have seen how badly things can turn out and save ourselves the trouble? Why do we have to look the other way and think that we are so wonderful and that we are so unique that our stories are going to turn out differently? When will we realise that we are not the exception, but the rule?

I blame the media, I blame this whole positive thinking ideology that is all around us. We are being trained NOT to ask questions, NOT to doubt anything. Just believe everything you are told, because if we don't, you are being negative or you are the prophets of doom.In the olden days these guys were stoned to death, nowadays, they fire them or shun them from the church gatherings. I saw a very interesting clip on YouTube lately by journalist, author and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich. In the clip she explores the darker side of positive thinking. It is called Smile or Die. I must say, I think it is worth the watch, although it mostly talks about the economy, I think it is a general problem in society. I probably make so many people mad by being like this and frankly I do not understand why I am like this myself. It is much easier to look the other way and to pretend that everything is just fine.

We ended the evening on Saturday with a game of scrabble. A beautiful two letter word was used by Stefan to gracefully win the game: "Eh". I looked it up in the dictionary and read the following definition:

eh  (eɪ)
— interj


an exclamation used to express questioning surprise or to seek the repetition or confirmation of a statement or question: Eh? What did you say?

I will use this word liberally in my next conversation with the party referred to in above "boring" conversation. Maybe if I express my questioning surprise or seek confirmation of the statements made by said party, I will gain a little more understanding as to why the warnings against the snake in the road are so flippantly being ignored.

Until next week...

Lets leave it to the Professionals..

What an enormous FLOP! That is the only way I dare describe my pathetic attempt at making Peking Duck. It was so bad, Stefan refused to eat it and I refuse to publish any of the horrific photos. Jip, it was so horrid, it ended up very nicely in the bin. There is no one to blame but me. I was too lazy or to tired or maybe a combination of both to carefully read through the whole recipe beforehand and ended up running out of time. I did not let it stand long enough, cook long enough or did anything else the recipe told me enough to make it vaguely taste like anything yo may find in the shop windows in China town. Nope, I have decided, this mother does not have the time to reattempt this recipe, she will leave it to the professionals.

I should have known I was in trouble when I looked up how to de-feather a duck on Google. It involved paraffin and wax and something else. Not any substances this city girl just has lying around in her cupboard. This meant that I spent hours trying to get rid of the feathers on the bird..with tweezers! I think that already put me off. I am all for this farmers market thing, but next time I am going to plead with the dear man to please clean his duck properly, as I do not feel like spending another second of my life with a dead bird and a pair of tweezers.

I had to somehow salvage the evening, I mean, it was ruined. No food, unhappy husband and unhappy mommy. So all I could think of was to make something with noodles as that was kind of on the menu before and I had bought some stuff in case the duck did not work. I guess I had a feeling. Anyway, I Pad Thai-ed it. It was OK, but not at all what I felt like eating. What a miserable end to a very tiring week. This week I will NOT make the mistake again. I feel that I should take on something simpler. Something that requires WAY less time and WAY less effort. I've forgotten what sleep deprivation feels like. Ella has two teeth to show for it and us, a miserable dinner. I am trying desperately not to think of the fact that she still has a whole mouth full of teeth to go. I will make up for it this week, I promise Stefan, I promise! Otherwise, we will have to call in the professionals... of the Chinese Take Away kind!

Acceptance

I have had a hard time trying to write today's blog. There are so many things happening. There are so many thoughts racing through my head that I am struggling to quiet them all down enough to write something that is not nonsensical gibberish.

I have had to make a big decision today. I don't want to get into too much detail, but it involves acceptance. When I was 12 years old, my dad took me to school in his white Builders "bakkie" (truck) wearing the little hat he always wears. As it was raining, he lovingly drove into the school yard instead of dropping me off outside as usual. I was so embarrassed! Here I was, Term Leader of the School, getting out of a dirty "bakkie". I spent the rest of the day trying to rid myself of this social catastrophe. Later that night as I lay in bed I replayed the moment over and over in my head and I got all stressed out. It was then when I decided that this was ridiculous. I lay there and made a decision about my dad: I was not going to be embarrassed about him, his bakkie or his hat ever again. He was my dad and I loved him and as far as I could see I did not do too badly in the father-lottery, so I might as well get used to him. He wasn't going to change and thinking back now, I am glad he didn't. I made the same decision about my mother a few days later. I was finally free! Free from any embarrassment.  Free to accept them exactly as they were (and are).I did not have to spend any more energy worrying about what my father was going to wear when picking me up at the next party or what my mother was going to say in front of my friends. It was just them and I could accept them for who they were. I was truly and utterly anxiety free.

What I realised today is that I made that decision years ago about only two members of my family. For the life of me cannot explain why I did not make it for all of them. I could have spared myself a lot of pain, tears and fights if I applied this to all the relationships I have with all the members of my family. So today, I decided to accept. I will accept them for who they are, for what they are, with all their flaws, all their quirks, all their dramas. I cannot change them and I am going to stop trying. It is time to set them free.

We changed our Fat Saturday to Fat Sunday again this week. Partly because we had guests for lunch and partly because our little baby girl has been really sick. She kept us up all night Friday and by Saturday evening I was too exhausted to cook. This will also explain, but not excuse my next confession: we made the same recipe AGAIN! I did not have time to search for anything new. We were going to Weber some ducks, but the weather did not permit us, so we decided to go for a tried and tested favourite. After all, that is why we are doing this; to learn to impress guests! You can never go wrong with Jamie's paella, so I took the easy way out and prepared it again. It was, a winner, yet again.

Beautiful Paella

I did manage to make something new for dessert though. Porfiteroles with Chantilly Cream and Dark Chocolate sauce. My sister is getting married soon. When we were children this was her favourite dessert I thought of her with every bite. I hope her day is going to be as sweet as these Porfiteroles were and totally, and utterly, anxiety free.

Golden Lovelies

Filled with Cream

Drizzled in Chocolate

Yummy!

Until next week...

Boiling Bunnies and other favourites

What makes a movie great? Is it the script? The actors? The editing or is it the special effects? For me it greatly depends on the mood I am in when I am watching it or on what is going on in my life at the time. I guess the more you can relate to the characters or to the storyline, the more meaningful it is to you. In the past I have recommended movies to friends only to be laughed at for my appalling taste. Likewise, I have heard that a movie is the greatest thing since the iPad only to be so disappointed and appalled that I have had to leave the cinema. The best kind of movies are the kind that you have heard nothing about and see by chance and end up being one of your favourites*. Then there are those that you love because you were at a certain age when you saw the movie and it was in fashion to say that you saw and loved them. Movies like Reality Bites, Pump up the Volume and the famous Three Colours Trilogy. Sometimes it is better not to watch these again, as Stefan and I discovered on Friday night. It is better to hold onto the fond memories of these classics than having to strike them off your "favourite-movie-of-all-time-list". (Three Colours Blue is definitely not on my list anymore.) I have also learned to never ever take some ones recommendation for a movie they saw just after they wrote a major exam. Likewise I will also never recommend a movie again after having to work out the bending moments of a tensile structure. After an exam your brain has turned to mush and you may find yourself recommending Jim Careys' Cable Guy or comparing his Ace Ventura:Pet Detective to a masterpiece by the likes of David Lynch or Baz Lurman.

I sometimes get so sucked into movies, especially, like I said before, if I relate to the characters. I remember falling head over heals for Hugh Jackman in Paperback Hero when I had a major crush on a guy in my class. I cried so hard in Immortal Beloved after a very bad break up that I struggled to leave the cinema. I found Hurt Locker boring, just because I find the whole Iraq issue a bit dull. I loved True Romance because of Patricia Arquette sticking a bottle opener into her kidnappers foot. I saw Lady Hawk 42 times,High Lander 46 times and Pulp Fiction 26 times for various other reasons. Brave Heart wasn't for me, I just did not relate to a Scottish man in a kilt running around killing people and I have never been able to watch any Tom Cruise movie after his appalling sofa scene on the Oprah Winfrey show. Does not matter how mean he tries to be, I still see him jumping up and down on that couch, looking like a complete fool.However, never  in my wildest dreams did I think I would relate to any of the characters in Fatal Attraction! Fatal Attraction, who can forget that movie. Glen Close at her freakiest and best. Not someone I care to relate to, but when I boiled Mr. Fluffy on Saturday evening, I felt very Glen Closey. Not a good thing. It was far too  freaky and not something I would recommend for the faint hearted. Seeing the carcass of a Bunny Rabbit lying on your chopping board is just something you do not want to remember, let alone eat. I still shiver at the thought.

Bugs on the Chopping Block

Poor Bunny!

Frying Rabbit...Looks like chicken too!

And here it is...Boiling Bunnies!

Now the Spanish Rabbit Stew was not bad, it was just freaky. Tastes a bit like chicken, but then again, doesn't everything. I have heard people's telling stories from their travels all around the world, eating the most exotic things and they all describe it the same way: "Tastes a bit like chicken". The only thing that is definitely NOT anything like a chicken, was the bones. You cannot chew them like a chicken bone. They are sharp little buggers and you can do your gums some serious damage on poor Bugs' rib cage. Don't get me wrong, it was lovely tasting, wonderful sauce, awesome "wild" taste, totally organic and cholesterol free. Just a little bit too freaky for me, so I am not sure if I will be doing that again in a hurry.

Nice, but I don't know about eating it again.

I made Stefan and I a good old familiar favourite for dessert, Chocolate Mousse. At least something had to make up for the guilt I felt over the bunny slaying. Now all I have left is the guilt of eating too much mousse.

Good old Chocolate Mousse

Until next week...


*Some of my Favourites: Once, Sunshine Cleaning, The Station Agent and Napoleon Dynamite to name a few.

Friends are family

When you live abroad, life works a little bit differently. Your friends become your family. Even those obscure acquaintances you once met at a family BBQ when you were four, are now the closest things you have to remind you of home. They are the ones you phone in the middle of the night when your wife goes into labour, they are the ones that hold your hand when your children are sick in hospital and they are the ones who dry your tears when you drop your mother off at the airport after a  visit. You spend Christmas with them, you go to all their children's birthday parties, you help organise weddings and choose wedding dresses, approve or disapprove of prospective spouses and you  cry your eyes out when one of them leaves to go back home or move onto another country. The only bonus of is that Christmas is usually rather uneventful and does not include a family fight. When you live over here, these are the people you lean on for everything. Even your relationship with your husband and wife is a bit different. We tend to do everything together here. When you do not know any one, your wife becomes your golf buddy and your husband knows far more than he should about your latest hairdresser. It is a strange situation, nice, but rather strange.

So with that in mind, you can say that we spent the whole weekend with family. Our Fat Saturday was spent dining on Moules and Frites at the Bakers. I have never in my life seen so many mussels in one place at one time. The only boys were a little outnumbered ( 2 boys between 6 woman) so it was obvious that they had the job of de-bearding and washing 5 kg of these little suckers. Not that they complained, it was either that or playing dressing-up with the girls.

De-bearding Mussels

Sometimes simple meals are the best. You just cannot go wrong with eating seafood and chips off newspaper. There is something about the newspaper that makes the seafood taste instantly more seafoodie. Fish and chips wrapped in newspaper just tastes more fish and chippie, mussels and frites eaten off a newspaper covered table, just tastes more delicious than dishing them up on a plate. You may think that 5 kg of mussels is a bit of an overkill, but there was not a single one left. I am not sure which recipe the Bakers used although I know it included banana shallots and garlic. I include two links to similar recipes that I am sure will work out just as nice. I must however stress that the recipe does not call for any "finger tips". Mark did not seem to read that part of the recipe as he almost lost his in the process of cutting up the shallots. His mussels did turn out delicious, although it meant almost loosing a finger. Thanks Mark for putting yourself through so much pain for our pleasure.

Mussels, mussles everywhere...

This is what 5kg of Mussles look like before you eat them...

This is what they look like after...

I was in charge of dessert and as I am still upset with Mr. Oliver for calling his son Buddy Bear, I refused to make one of his recipes. Like I have said before, when wanting something chocolaty or fattening, who better to consult than the queen of calories? Nobody can make a chocolate cheesecake quite like Nigella can. I tried her chocolate one this time, which was much less time consuming than her New York version. I am so glad that the dinner was not too heavy, because the dessert surely was. Mine was just not as pretty as hers, but it still tasted good. Mind you, it is hard to make chocolate, cream cheese and Castor sugar taste bad!

The great Nigella Cheesecake
(with a few chocolate splatters for effect)

Mmmm...chocolate!

 On Sunday we had another wonderful family lunch, with the Louws and ended up getting home late last night. Thanks to everyone involved for making our Fat Saturday so Fat and our Sunday so lazy. It was good to spend a weekend with people we love and although we miss our families greatly, it is good to have friends like you around to make the pain a little more bearable.

Would a Buddy Bear by Any Other Name Smell as Sweet?

I am definitely not the worlds greatest parent. I am impatient, I am often irritable and I prefer sitting behind my computer with my own thoughts than trying to recreate my daughters new version of her favourite fairy tale: Rapunzel and the seven dwarfs*. I am also not the kind of parent that enjoys standing in the park watching the children go up and down slides. I get bored of telling the same stories over and over and I prefer grown up conversations in a grown up coffee shop to trying to gulp down a bad, cold, overpriced cappuccino while trying to sing a nursery rhyme while avoiding being kicked in the shin by toddlers at the local play group.  No, I am not the worlds greatest parent, but one thing I am not, is cruel. Something I cannot say about my food hero, Mr. Oliver.

As I was casually strolling through the aisles of Waitrose today, thinking of what I should make for tonight, my eye caught his picture on the Daily Telegraph. He was beaming and proud holding a little baby. "Another one!" I thought " is that no.4?" I was overjoyed, just as much as Mr.Oliver, I am sure, to read that his wife Jules, gave birth to a baby boy. Three girls are plenty, he must be over the moon. Then why, I ask you dear reader, why, did he bestow such unbearable cruelty upon such a tiny little baby? I think there should be some kind of law against this, for surely you cannot let a child go through life with a name like Buddy Bear! Yes, Buddy Bear Oliver. I kid you not. How on earth is that poor child going to go through life bearing the name Buddy Bear? His parents have dug his social grave and he is not even two days old. Poor, poor kid. Even if he changes his name in future, 13 years from now some kid somewhere will find today's newspaper and it will be tickets for poor little Buddy. Buddy Bear, my poor little Buddy Bear, may your dad stay rich and your mom beautiful and may you grow up to be bigger and stronger than the other kids, so at least you can punch those who point at you and laugh.

Jamie and Buddy Bear: Photo by Mirror.co.uk

*Rapunzel being a rather nasty imitation of a Barbie, we bought for a few bob at a local toy store and the 7 dwarfs being her soft toys; a Lion, a Zebra, a Cheetah, an overdressed bear, an Easter bunny, Upsie daisy doll and frog finger puppet.

Fat Sunday

When Blogging, one must remember to keep an open mind. To stay flexible and not to let life's little surprises ruin your blogging style. This weeks blog is late due to circumstances beyond our control. We blame the Canadians. Not the whole country as such, just a few who made an unexpected visit to our neck of the woods. Not that we regret seeing them at all, it was wonderful. It just meant that our dinner plans had to be moved to the next evening. This, however, will not become a regular occurrence, as Sunday night is a school night and Stefan and I cursed the alarm this morning. (Plus, my arm is still a little bit sore from all the late night stirring. I wonder if there is something called "Risotto Elbow"? )

As I said before, it was Sunday night and I was making Risotto at 9:30, therefor there was no time for dessert. It was also probably better for the scales because I don't think my body needed any extra calories after polishing off a plate of cheesy rice. There were several other problems with having your Fat Day on a Sunday. It is the end of the weekend and by this time you are so fed up of dieting that you probably would have started snacking the day before . As you are not really counting this day as your Fat Day, you tend to forget that these little snacky thingies also carry a hefty calorie load. So, you may just end up having a Fat Weekend, making those poor Weight Watchers scales sigh on Monday morning. Not that I did anything like that, no, not me, not ever.

Stirring...

..and stirring...

...and more stirring...

We did however, manage to make some spring rolls again, as we had some of the pastry and other ingredients left, but I will not bore you with the photos of those again. The Risotto was Yummy! You can't really go wrong with Risotto. Rice: Good, Cheese:Good. Anything you add to this is just a bonus. We stuck added seafood and a pinch of Saffron. This led to a hearty debate about "Values" and "Saffron". I never thought about it, what is Saffron? Amazing how Google has taken all the fun out of guessing games. Now we do not wonder and talk, going around in circles about what we think it may be, no, we just Google it. I was told in a few split seconds that it was a flower, the Saffron Crocus. That was a quick debate. Probably a good thing, it was rather late.

Saffron Crocus

...still stirring..

..stirring with seafood..

The Result of "Risotto Elbow"

Next week, we are not changing the date or the time or the place. We are sticking to the schedule, Canadians or no Canadians! Actually we have been invited for a Fat Saturday at friends house and I have to make dessert. Pressure! It is going to be fun to do a cooking party again. Plus, next Saturday is the monthly Cobham Farmers Market. Time to buy all our meat for the month. I must just find a recipe for rabbit before we head off.

Until next week...