Wednesday, September 15, 2010

On the subject of food....


Humnomnom - my new over-used word.

Most memorable 5 foods/meals consumed in the last 5 months:

- In Portugal: bread made by housekeeper of the cottage we stayed in, and salad with avocado - mmmm with wine from the neighbouring vineyard - yummmm

- Tip top 4 course dinner with fantastic company: smmmashing crazy kebab with bread, rosemary, apricot jam, bacon, goats cheese starter, followed by full-on roast, followed by three desserts (trust Jamie to make 3 desserts including the infamous "gulrotkake" - look it up in a norwegian dictionary)

- Montellimar nougat - a gift from two lovely french lasses I met last week = impossible to stop munching.

- Flipping amazing "spicy canteloupe salad" - straight out of the recipe book made by these people which was a birthday gift from a lovely friend :)

- Hog roast at a yorkshire wedding, accompanied by the scrummiest salads, followed by a varied selection of yuuummm mini desserts, in a huge tent, on a beautiful summer's day, and there were open fires... need I say more.

Why do I feel so inspired to talk about food? Because I just took out a tray of brownies out of the oven and am trying very hard not to eat any :)

Saturday, September 11, 2010

a few small discoveries

This week I learnt/re-learnt that

- With 4 weeks of training it seems my husband is able to jump from barely scraping half an hour runs without near exhaustion-induced collapse to being able to run a half marathon in an hour and 58 minutes (proud wife moment).
- Meeting and making new friends is amazingly fun!
- But really really good friends are hard to part with.
- Nougat from Montelimar is far too good to just eat a small chunk of, humnumnum
- To my surprise (though it shouldn't have been that much of a surprise) my old flatmate with almost non-existent French and new French friends with very little English have proven that with a little bit of effort and one or two common interests, language barriers don't stand up for long.
- And even more mysteriously, mediocre Scottish fiddle music can sooth the souls of pensioners inclined to bouts of grumpiness.