A Disappointing Loaf...

I made soup tonight. Not something that gets a "YES!!!" from my husband when he hears what's for dinner, but he does enjoy it once he realises there won't be anything else. I made creamy black bean soup tonight from my Indian cookbook. It was ok. I realised I would need to have something extra to fill up my husbands stomach with! Too late to bake a bread, I drove to the store, the nicer, posher one, to go buy a bread to have with our soup. I was hoping for a nicer posher bread from this store.

I got this round one which looked kind of home made if you know what I mean. As home made as it can get in a shop. It looked good. But we were rather disappointed. It was really just a plain wholemeal bread in a different (deceiving) shape...

I recommended we freeze the left over half to have another time. Andre recommended we feed it to the birds.

We already have a bread in the making in the bread machine which will be ready at 5.45am tomorrow morning.

And we know it will be good.

More shopping at CSN Stores

The friendly people from CSN stores here in the UK have contacted me again and I am excited to do another review on one of their products. I have shopped with them before. They sell everything from wine racks to bedroom furniture and more. I love the cookware section and that will probably be where I'll be shopping again! 

Perhaps some colourful mixing bowls.

I really need a brush and tongs for the kitchen. I've been meaning to buy this for so long. Trying to egg brush pies with a teaspoon and your finger does not work too well!

Do you think my husband would mind the pink?

I've had my eye on these silicone cooking spoons for a while now...

And this is just gorgeous.

Excuse me while I continue browsing! I'll be back soon to show you my shopping...


Sorry... seems like the photos aren't showing anymore..

Homemade yoghurt

I'm still making my own yoghurt at home. I actually prefer my own yoghurt now to store bought plain yoghurt. I add some vanilla essence to it which makes it taste really good. 

Anyway, as I said before in this yoghurt recipe, you need to keep it warm for 10-12 hours. Up to now it has been quite cold so I just made sure I'd be home on yoghurt making day when I would have the heating on most of the time. The yoghurt then sits on the windowsill above the radiator and stays nice and warm. But now that it's getting summer I really don't need the heating on in the house during the day anymore. So I had to make a plan to keep my yoghurt nice and cosy...

I have one of those heat packs which you heat in the microwave, meant for sore muscles. So my yoghurt container is covered with the heat pack and then wrapped snugly in the blanket. I've been carrying it around the house all morning following the sunny spots. Then when I went out to do some gardening, the yoghurt came out with me and is still sitting out in the warm sun on the bench outside! 

I'll test it tomorrow morning, but my plan should work!

A meaty weekend

We're not used to eating much meat anymore. We've gone through weeks where we realised we've only had meat once that week and it was chicken. We do still love a good steak. Which is what we had this weekend.

Steak & Pepper Sauce

Andre finished his, but felt a bit ill the next day. I only managed about a third of my piece pictures here. We used to be bigger meat eaters than this!

Andre always cooks the steak. But I am very particular about how I like my steak. I want it med-rare. I know how long it needs to go each side and how long I want it to rest so I have Andre running around the kitchen trying to get everything done before the timer I've set goes off! He also made the most delicious pepper sauce with it. I don't usually like pepper sauce and would never ever order it in a restaurant. But this one was fantastic. It didn't have any peppercorns in it, only ground black pepper. It's the peppercorns I don't like.

Then after steak night we had burger night. We made the patties ourselves and topped it with the left over pepper sauce. I'm also not one who would ever really crave a burger, but this was the best burger I've ever had! I suppose also because I could decide on the size of patty I wanted so I wasn't overly stuffed like I would usually feel after having a burger.

Burger & Pepper Sauce

We're having a few vegetarian dinners this week to recover and give our bodies a rest after all that meat!


The recipe for the burger and the pepper sauce is over here on my other blog.

And the gardening starts again!

While Andre mowed the lawn this afternoon I managed to get rid of some weeds. I have now determined that what I was pulling out must be weeds and not flowers-to-be. They were terribly hard to get out and were everywhere. Must be weeds then! I did take out a few things that came out very easily and then decided it must be something good so replanted it again. Let's just hope I wasn't replanting weeds. 

Andre wasn't much in the mood for mowing the lawn. he said it was still a little wet and therefore too dangerous to cut with the electric lawn mower. I thought that this is the driest the lawn will get in a long time and it did need cutting. A quick search on the internet told me that it's actually not dangerous cutting a slightly damp lawn with an electric mower and it proved to be right as Andre survived it. Also, I doubt they would sell many electric mowers in this country if it can only be used on a completely dry lawn.

So here are some befores, from June last year when we moved in and before we did anything to the garden, and some afters after today's first spring gardening. (Click photos to enlarge.)

June 2010

March 2011

June 2010

March 2011

June 2010

March 2011

One Year in England!

I can't believe that today one year ago we arrived here in England. The year has gone by amazingly fast!

A year ago we left this country:

Switzerland

For this one:

England

Interesting, the flags,  isn't it!

It was a sunny 17C day a year ago and we thought it was so cold and were wearing our winter snow jackets! It took us months to get used to the different cold here in England and we now laugh at how we have changed and adapted to the weather here. We now think 10C is nice and warm!

I always thought the weather here would be a problem for me. I never used to like winter and so many South Africans don't enjoy England. But we don't actually have a problem with it at all. It's a little colder in winter, but when it snows it makes winter so much more fun which we didn't have in SA. It rains more, but with a house that stays comfortably warm throughout the day and night it makes it all bearable. That was the worst for me in SA, the cold inside the house. Always being cold and having to wear so many layers inside because of no central heating and windows not being double glazed. 

We also appreciate sunshine a thousand times more now!!

It does get hot here in summer too. Too hot some days even! But I won't complain because at the moment I am so ready to soak up some really hot sunshine! No south easter blowing sand everywhere in summer. The only thing I miss is water. Either the ocean in South African or the rivers and lakes in Switzerland.

I love being able to speak the national language of the country I'm in and appreciate being able to understand and make myself understood. I don't miss the Swiss German we struggled with every day in Switzerland.

I do miss being close to the city. Being able to take a 15 min train ride into Zürich, walking around the lake, the beautiful old parts of the city, the little shops (the English bookstore!) and going for the best cocktails and dinners I have ever had!

I do not enjoy the UK trains, especially the tubes in London. I would much rather walk all over London than take the tube. I do not enjoy London much and am more than happy avoiding it and staying out in the countryside. London is fun when taking visitors for a day out to see the sights and being a tourist, but otherwise it's only used for renewing passports and thankfully that now won't have to be done for another 10 years!

Things I miss about South Africa:

Andre's Family

My aunts, uncles and cousins still in SA

Summer when there's no wind

Cool sea breezes on hot days

Walks along the beach when there's no wind

Seafood

Friends

Speaking Afrikaans to the ladies behind the tills at P'nP in Melkbos!

Things I don't miss: 

The wind

A cold house in winter

Burglar bars and alarm systems

Always being scared and wondering when it's going to be our turn to be attacked, burgled or worse.

Things I miss about Switzerland:

The friends we left behind

My job at the play school

Swiss CHOCOLATE!!!

The public transport - easy to use and punctual trains, busses and trams, always everywhere.

Cycling along the Limmat River

The mountains and clear lakes

Being able to drive to Germany over weekends to visit Mom and Jürgen.

Things I don't miss:

Not understanding Swiss German.

Thats' all.

Things I am thankful for in England:

Having a house with a garden

Lots of trees where we live

Seeing the horses walk past our house every day

Having a country park right up our road for when we feel like going for a walk

Grocery deliveries. (I know you can have that in SA and CH, but I didn't use it there.)

Friends

Here's a little video I made. I review of our first year here in England.

Our first year in the UK from Anneliese Mostert on Vimeo.

Top down, flowers everywhere and a new table!

I've been meaning to write all week. I know I always say that but I really have been wanting to. I've even had the pictures ready to post here. I've just had an incredibly busy week this week and I fear tomorrow might be the same so I'm writing now before bed time. It's been a very good and very very productive week though and it feels like it's just flown by so quickly. That happens when you're busy, doesn't it.

I have some things to do tomorrow already. I'm going to the library first thing in the morning. New craft class theme starting next week which will be farm animals so I want to get some books for the kids. We've just completed three weeks of dinosaur fun. I think I did tell you about the dinosaurs? And then I have some shopping I want to do tomorrow too and there are always more on my to do list than I have time for!

This week I had my first ride of the season with the top of my car down! I didn't plan it. I went to drop something off in the next door town and passed some other convertibles with their tops down. So on my way home I did the same. But having not planned it I wasn't wearing a jacket, I didn't have a hair band to tie my hair up, AND I was wearing lipgloss. For those who don't know what a problem that can be, lipgloss is kind of sticky. Top down = wind blowing in your hair = hair sticking to the lipglossed lips!! Was still good getting some fresh air and that early summer feeling.

I did not pose on the beach this week.
This was the end of last summer after we got the car.

The garden is also starting to show signs of spring. I showed you the first signs of it the other day. There are many more daffodils in the garden now. So many that Andre ordered me to pick some for the house. I was sad to pick them as they looked so pretty in the garden. But he did order me to so I listened. This first one (taken with my mobile so excuse the quality..) looked so pretty in the house that I went back out the next day to fill my other two vases too!

We now have flowers in the sitting room, dining room and...

even in the bedroom! I like walking into a bedroom with flowers. It's nice.

Oh and we do still have flowers left in the garden too!

The tulips are getting ready to flower. I'm hoping for red ones. It will be a surprise. Everything about this garden is a surprise at the moment as it's our first spring here.

We also have some things which I don't know what it is. Not sure if it will become flowers or weeds... I asked my mom and according to what she thought about the pictures I sent her I would have ripped out all the flowers and left the weeds to take over the garden!! I have lots to learn...

And to end with, meet our new dining table. It arrived yesterday after a two month wait. It was worth the wait though. I was a bit worried as we ordered it from the internet and so only saw a picture of it. And after two months I couldn't even really remember what it was going to look like. I was getting a little worried, but we are very happy with it. Chairs are not new.

A funny story- Our previous table was from Ikea and so were the chairs. When shopping around for tables we realised that Ikea tables seem to be a few cm lower than other tables here in the UK. Only about 4 cm. But of course the Ikea chairs are made to go with the height of their Ikea tables so we now have chairs that are just a tiny bit too low for our table! Luckily we have some cushions to sit on! Additional ones to those already on the chairs pictured. We'll eventually get new chairs too. I'm thinking I want a bench on one side of the table. So if we invite you for dinner, make sure you arrive early if you want to get a chair!

Dinner tonight: Rogan Josh

Tonight we're having this Rogan Josh Lamb Curry. It's delicious and you should try it. Here's the recipe on my other blog: Rogan Josh

Winter or Spring?

It's been back to cold temperatures this week. At 9.30 this morning it is now still only 3C outside. And we can feel the difference in the house too. We noticed yesterday morning that the house was colder and realised it must be because of the colder temperatures outside. And this just after we started getting excited about the few warmer days.

The daffodils started flowering this weekend which gives me hope that spring is on the way. Now if it will only get warm and dry enough outside to start work in the garden.

I really don't have much interesting news. When I uploaded these pictures to aperture now (the program where I store my photos) I realised I only have 4 albums for 2011 so far. Usually I'd have lots more. I guess we need to do something about that and go see some places! Maybe we're just hibernating and waiting for the sun to come out.

I can't believe in two weeks time we would have been here in the UK a year already! It went much quicker than our year in Switzerland. We just had so much more to do here, more people to see!

Our first arts & craft class at our new venue went very well and we had lots of dinosaur fun. Let's hope this class will grow even bigger soon. Five more weeks and then it's holiday and time for another holiday club again too.