River Cottage

Every time before I start writing a new post, I click "View Blog" to well, view my blog. And each time I see the date and think, "Was it that long ago I was on here last?!" Then I look at the calendar to check exactly how long ago that was. This time it's been over two weeks. I am ashamed of myself. Where are the days when I sat thinking up random things to write about here? Oh right, I left those days behind in Switzerland. We have a very busy social life here, not to mention business life now too! Oh and how can I forget the couch-and-TV life. It takes up so much time!

I'm not complaining. Not at all.

Just trying to make excuses for my lack of regular blogging. Sorry.

But I'm here now and will hopefully finish this post in one go.

Andre and I have been following Hugh Fernley Whittingstall's River Cottage cooking shows for a long time now. Andre has some of the DVD's so I've been watching it in SA already. Last week we were watching one of the shows again and saw them at the River Cottage Deli & Canteen. Well we saw it written on the building Hugh was sitting outside of. We were able to rewind the program to find out where this is. With a little extra help from google we found that it's 2 1/2 hours drive from us in a town called Axminster.

So on Sunday Andre and I drove there to go try Hugh Fernley Whittingstalls food. I suppose not really his food, but his restaurant. It's a very casual, homely restaurant with plain tables and chairs and not much decor besides all his books displayed on shelves along the wall.

The deli counter had so many delicious things. Lots of organic and local produce. Cheese, oils, truffles, milk, yoghurt, flour and many many more as you can see from the picture.

The menu changes daily depending on what comes in fresh from the farmers and fishermen. I had fish and mussels. I can't remember when last I had seafood. Andre had roast pork.

On the way to Axminster town centre, we took a wrong turn and (accidentally!) found River Cottage HQ and took some pictures at the entrance to the farm. Maybe one day we'll go to an event there too. You can have dinner there when they have certain events in the evenings but which will be quite a bit more expensive than eating at the canteen we went to on Sunday.

Spa day

Last weekend Andre and I spent a relaxing day at a spa.

After checking in, we changed into our swimming costumes and was each given a big fluffy robe and slippers to wear for the day. We went from one hot pool and jacuzzi to the next, sat in steam rooms (where I didn't last very long) and some other less hot rooms, lay on hot benches and had a nap next to the large indoor pool. There was even an ice cave which was as you might guess icy cold. The walls of the room were made of ice and there was fresh crushed ice to rub onto your body! Very refreshing, but I preferred the warmer, more relaxing activitites.

It was the perfect day for a spa day - gray and miserable outside. When we drove up to the spa we saw some people in an outdoor pool and jacuzzis and thought they were crazy! It was quite cold outside. But it was not long and we out there too! The water was so nice and warm... And you could swim from the indoor pool straight through to the outdoor pool without having to get out the water or walk outside.

We had lunch in the restaurant at the spa. In our bathrobes and slippers. Imagine going to a restaurant in a bathrobe and slippers! By that time we were already so relaxed and struggled to keep our bodies upright in a chair. We ate and then went back to lying down, floating in water and sleeping. By 6pm we felt ready to slowly go back to reality.

You can check out Pennyhill Park Spa here.

Our garden

It's been three and a half months since we moved in here and started working on this garden. It went from this:

to now this:

Click on the picture to enlarge and see the changes we've made.

A lot of hard work and many hours and it's looking a lot neater. We have moved some roses which were being over grown by other plants and trimmed everything back for the winter. Hopefully the roses will survive their move. The grass has also improved so much since we moved in when it was all dry and brown and patchy. We have given it some love and attention and it made a difference. Without buying any new plants we have had some colour in our garden too. The very dark red rose you see below was just a dry piece of wood which we thought was dead. I moved its pot right next to the front door where I could watch it and gave it lots of water. And it came back to life! It's still flowering. Most of our roses still have buds wanting to open up, but we'll have to see how long they will last now with the sudden cold.

We had some ice yesterday morning. It was very very cold! The grass was crunchy!

Ice crystals on the flowers.

Now the garden (and us!) can rest for the winter and we will start working hard again in spring. Which sounds very far away!

Lacock & Castle Combe

My mom and Jürgen came to visit us at the beginning of October for the weekend. Having done a long full day in London over a previous weekend vsisit to show them the sights there we decided to have a slightly more relaxing weekend this time.

Andre and I have been to Castle Combe with friends before who also told us about Lacock which is nearby. We decided to start with Lacock since we haven't been there yet.

It's a beautiful old village and we were lucky to see Morris dancing there.

This is a form of English folk dance. Men and woman performing choreographed dances sometimes with sticks, handkerchiefs and bells and lively music. It was quite entertaining and gave the village a great atmosphere while we were there.

We had lunch at a pub in Lacock and had the Morris dancers outside the pub for live entertainment!

By the way, parts of harry Potter was filmed in this village.

After lunch we drove to Castle Combe where we had another walk around this village.

Castle Combe is an even smaller village than Lacock so the walk didn't take too long! Then we went for afternoon tea and scones before taking the country roads back home.

A Give-away!

The friendly people from CSN stores here in the UK have contacted me to offer a give-away for one of my readers. I have shopped with them before and love the cookware section. They sell everything from beautiful wooden toys to wardrobes and other furiture.


To stand a chance of winning a £25 gift voucher to spend at CSN stores in the UK just leave me a comment in the comments section below telling me where you're going on your next holiday (or would like to go).

The winner will be picked randomly and announced on Sunday.

Be sure that I'll be able to contact you to let you know of your prize. If you're leaving an anonymous comment, then send me an email too to let me know how to contact you. (You'll find my email address on my profile.)

The Story of All Things Petite

I won't keep referring to our other blog and website here, but some family/ friends have asked about how we started our business and how we came up with the name. The name I'll still explain on the All Things Petite blog another time, but here's the story of how we started: The Story of All Things Petite.  The story is also available on the home page of the website. I'll be posting more about the business side of starting up on the blog later too.

Oooh and have a look later in the week to see what cake we baked yesterday! Something different to our usual Petite Sweets- larger and fun!

An attempt at shopping at Lidl, UK

Let me start by introducing Lidl and Aldi to those who might not know it. I know we don't have them in SA.

They are grocery stores which are supposedly cheaper than the other grocery stores like Tesco, Saisnbury's, etc that we have here in the UK.

They both have yellow-blue-red/orange logos and I have always wondered if they are actually owned by the same company. Well, if you were wondering the same thing, they're not. I just went and read a bit about Aldi and Lidl on wikipedia and they are actually each others biggest competition, owned by different people.

In Switzerland we had an Aldi in Dietikon where we lived and there I did find buying some groceries from them made quite a difference on what we spent on groceries by the end of the month. I bought tinned food, some meat, pizza dough, we liked their yoghurt, and some other things there. Then I would drive to the Coop afterwards to get the rest of the groceries, especially fruit and veg.

So yesterday I decided since I now have a car I should go try out either Lidl or Aldi here in the next town. They were right opposite each other. I mean right right opposite the road from each other. I chose to go to Lidl since I know Aldi from Switzerland. (We had Lidl in CH too, but not in our town.)

Well first of all as I was used to doing in Switzerland, you have to insert a coin in order to get a trolley. (See the picture above.) If you do not have the correct coin to release a trolley you will be carrying your groceries in your arms since they don't have baskets. Their thing is that when you get to check out you will put your groceries directly into your trolley and then after paying you can go pack your things in bags out of the way of the other customers. I found this out after trying to pack my groceries into my bags as it was being scanned and was told in German to just put it in the trolley as I'm too slow at packing bags.

Now I got this plastic token from my mom which you can insert into the trolley instead of a coin. Do you know how many times in CH I did not have the correct coin because I just tried to use up all my change? So the plastic token works great. You cannot use it to pay for something else so it always stays in your wallet!

So I insert my token, get a trolley and off I go. I am only a few feet down the first aisle when I start thinking, "Where's my laptop, I want to do this online!"

There were people behind me trying to get past and I need to take my time to choose and compare you know.

I had brought with a previous online grocery shop receipt to compare prices. I was surprised to notice that many products were actually a little more expensive or priced the same.

So I started unloading my trolley, but then noticed there's no getting out of this store without going past the till. And I don't want to abandon my trolley. I want to get my token back. So I decide to just buy what's already in my trolley and go finish the rest of the month's shopping at home on my laptop.

Outside I push my trolley back into the queue of trolleys to get my token out. But it's stuck. There is already a lady struggling to get her coin out too, which she manages to do eventually and then try to help me. Another guy comes along and has the same trouble. His wife eventually tells him to just leave the trolley there with their token in it. I didn't want to give up. My mom gave me this token. And even though I don't need to use it much here in the UK, once in a while we come across this kind of system and then I'm always happy to be able to take out my token.

Wel, sadly in the end I also had to just let go of my token. I drove home with my one bag of groceries. Cereal and a chocolate as this is what was in the first aisle at Lidl. And ordered the rest online.

It will be delivered within the next hour. A friendly man will ring my doorbell and carry all my groceries for the month into my kitchen. I will sign for it and unpack and not waste any plastic carrier bags. Then I will go back to the couch to finish watching some recordings on tv while eating my jelly beans that are on their way here now.

The jelly beans!

Want to have a look inside my shopping trolley? No token required for this one!

Mrs Balls Chutney! I bought three bottles just in case it's sold out next time!

Update: Here is a picture of what online grocery shopping looks like when it arrives in your kitchen. No trolleys, no heavy bags, no kids crying for candy.