The things we do for love

Andre's mom occasionally makes stuffed chicken for a Sunday lunch. Andre said I would need to learnt how to do that, but I always said I would never make stuffed chicken. It looked like so much work, took all morning and then you had a whole kitchen full of dirty dishes. And I don't like the idea of touching a whole, raw, dead chicken.

Well I still don't like touching a dead chicken but I did! With the help of my mom!

I decided when Andre returned from Switzerland the last time that I will cook a big lunch for him and I wanted to impress him by making my first stuffed chicken. I don't really like the normal bread crumb stuffing and I like to try new things (not always a good idea but anyway). So I decided to stuff the chicken with dried fruit. I knew Andre's not so keen on dried fruit, but I like it and a stuffed chicken is a stuffed chicken. 

It was delicious!! I'll tell you what we did (my mom and I). You rub the chicken with some salt, pepper and oil. Oh and trim off some of the excess fat. Then you soak some raisins and dried apricots and prunes in Rooibos tea or hot water for about 40 min. You can chop the dried fruit before you soak them. Drain the fruit and stuff it into the chicken. Not too much though. You can leave some of the fruit around the chicken too. Also chop and fry an onion to add to stuffing. Oh and you can add a finely chopped apple and saute with the onion. We forgot about that but it should be nice. We then placed the fruity chicken in a roasting bag. Roasting bag in a dish. And dish in the oven at about 180 C or 200 C I think for about an hour or until cooked.

Everyone enjoyed it! :-) 

Next time I want to try stuffed chicken with spinach and feta.

Finally off to Switzerland soon!

On Wednesday we decided we're now giving up on the Swiss permit. We had all the documents ready to apply for the EEA Family permit to go to the UK. I even had an hour long telephone interview with a teaching agency to be able to teach there. We had all our supporting letters etc. and was just about to pay the deposit when we got an email from Switzerland! 

They said that the AWA and BFM (?) approved Andre's permit and that we now only have to wait for the final OK from the Migration office. Not sure exactly what these abbreviations are for... I found American Watchmakers Association for AWA, maybe cos Andre likes the watches over there! No, it must have something to do with immigration and work permits. So still we didn't get excited because we have now learnt not to get excited in advance about anything to do with the Swiss work permit!

This morning we received an email to say we have to go to the Swiss embassy in Cape Town to fill in some Entry Form. We got there just in time this morning and luckily the same friendly lady we had last time helped us again! Filled out the form, Andre went to get ID photos taken and then when she checked on her PC she said that Andre already has the permit! According to the system he has been approved and only needs to bring his passport 24 hours before we want to leave.

YippeeYipeeYipee!! Still feels a bit unreal. Shame and Andre had his wisdom teeth removed yesterday so he wasn't feeling to great. Maybe I can give him some champagne through a straw later to celebrate...

Next week I'll start finalizing the shipping. We're thinking of leaving here middle next month.

Posting a video from vimeo to blogger.com

This is not a kind of topic I would normally write about, but Andre felt that since we couldn't really find any help on how to post my video from vimeo to my blog without using the blog "Add Video" button, I might help someone else by explaining how we did it.

In the end it was quite simple really. It just took us a while to figure out what to do since Andre did it differently posting to his wordpress blog.

Ok, so open your video in Vimeo (where we store our videos, like YouTube, but I like Vimeo  better). Then in the top right hand corner of your video it says Share and then below that Embed. Click on Embed, highlight the whole code and paste that into your blog.

There you go! Easy as pie! :-)

My new present!

My wonderful husband bought me such a great new toy in Switzerland! He got me the Flip Mino HD video camera! He really spoilt me this time!!

It's great to play around with. Smaller than my cell phone so it's always in my handbag and so easy to use. I've also edited my first video in iMovie today and had fun playing around with all the tools there. I'll add the video too. It was a practice run and I tried to use all the functions in iMovie.

The video was taken on my uncle's farm in Franschhoek. They got two little potbelly pigs and have lots of other farm animals there too.


La Bri farm animals from Anneliese Mostert on Vimeo.

Swiss update

And we are STILL waiting patiently. Ok not always that patiently, but we are still waiting for Andre's work permit for Switzerland. While I'm writing this he has probably (hopefully!) already boarded the plane in Zurich to come home to his wife (me:-) He's been there, working very hard, for the past two weeks in beautifully white snowy weather...

Anyway, what I wanted to say was, we still don't know when (or where) we're going. I'm really starting to think that we should just go to England instead, but oh those many grey clouds!! It would probably be another 20 YEARS before it would ever snow there again. White is just so much prettier than grey.....

Andre said they (the Swiss people over there at the company) are still positive that he will be getting the work permit. So I guess we'll be waiting for a little bit longer to see what happens. Positive thinking - that's The Secret!

Ok. I'm off to bed now so I can be up early tomorrow morning. I still have to vacuum the car and paint my nails before picking up my husband from the airport.

** night night **

What I've learnt from my sister

1. Put pink fizzers in the freezer before eating them.
   
2. Do lots of exercise every day.

Number one is the easy one. Have you ever tried it? I never did until she left half a pack of pink fizzers here in the kitchen drawer, and one fizzer in the freezer. So I was curious and decided to try the frozen one. Mmmm! I put the rest in the freezer too!

But after having one too many of these: 

...you really need to burn those calories. So mom and I now each own a Thera-band. That's a stretchy elastic band. You pull on it and stretch it and then you should get nicely toned muscles. I guess doing it once a week won't really give us the best results. I did some this evening while watching a movie. It's fun. I think we need to get into more of a thera-band routine though. So we can do it more regularly. 

Anyway, here's my new home muscle toning device: (I now only buy things that won't take up much space in my luggage and doesn't weigh much)

It says Body Sculpture since 1965. And I'm only starting to use it now...

Into the Wilderness

Before I can write about something else I better finish the honeymoon story now. We went to Wilderness after our January wedding for a few really relaxing days. It's so beautiful there. So green. We stayed at a lovely guest house called Slanting Acres. I can recommend the honeymoon suite with a jacuzzi in the bedroom. The guest house is up on a hill with a view over the ocean.

The highlight of our stay at Wilderness was canoeing on the Touw

River. We rented a canoe for 5 hours.

After about 30 min rowing

we left the canoe on a little beach and walked 40 min along a

stunning walkway through the trees to a waterfall. Then also

went down the Serpentine River where we saw 13 Malachite

Kingfishers. Andre got some great photo's there, I'll get one

from him later to add. We enjoyed it so much that on the day

we had to leave we went for another trip down the Serpentine

for some more photo's.

On our way home from Wilderness we stopped at Andre's dad's farm

near Abertinia for a few days. Always great to be on the farm.

.