A walk on Maidenhead Thicket – some beautiful lichen
Friday was a beautiful sunny day so we decided to go for another family walk in the afternoon. Every day I am thankful that we live where we do and that we can walk freely without worrying about meeting too many people. Fresh air and inspiring views can lift the spirits hugely. I also have to be thankful that we are all fit and healthy and can walk without aches and pains. When I was a child we always used to go on long walks in the countryside; the joke was always that my father had a knack of finding the muddiest paths imaginable. Hence I have got into the habit of wearing wellies for walking. Jess has developed the family love of walking too and is in the habit of heading off on her own for quiet rambles. I think at the moment the three of us are happy to be together and share these moments of freedom. As usual I took my trusty camera for capturing the sunlight on the trees. I was very pleased with these photos, with light and shadows making them atmospheric and magical.
Friday night was also film night! I spent quite a bit of the day preparing our special TV dinner. I can quite happily spend hours in the kitchen preparing food. Sometimes the amount of preparation I do for one simple meal, and the number of times I run the dishwasher would truly astound people! On the menu was:
Nachos with bacon and cheese
Crispy Squid in batter
Squid cooked with chilli
Spicy dip
Crispy baked salmon slices
Potato skins stuffed with spicy chicken
Chocolate Pots topped with crushed mini eggs
I have a gift for making a simple recipe more complicated. So for instance the chocolate pots were meant to be made with a carton of fresh custard. No, no, no! Much more fun to make proper custard with cream, full cream milk and eggs. They did turn out very well. Recipe was courtesy of Tom Kerridge in the April edition of the BBC Good Food Magazine. It was meant to be a recipe for Easter, but well worth trying out early!
Here are some pictures of the food that I prepared. Although I have a chef daughter, she was not in the mood for helping on Friday, so all the food was made by yours truly:
Spicy Chicken for the potato skins TV Snacks finally ready!Chocolate Pots
We had a most enjoyable evening watching our chosen film ‘Five Feet Apart.’ I mentioned this in yesterday’s diary and the significance of the title and why I chose it. The film is very close to the book, with no major changes. In fact, the film and book were released at about the same time, so the book was in fact partly based on the film. It is definitely a box of tissues film, but highly recommended! Jess and Tigger enjoyed the evening very much!
What an amenable cat! If you pick him up, he usually stays put!
On Wednesday I again spent part of my day keeping up with Twitter and other social media in an effort find the best recommended resources to share with students and staff at my school. I have been working my way through a document of online resources shared by a colleague in another school. School librarians as a profession are often quite isolated anyway in terms of much solo working being the norm. Of course you have colleagues in your school but you are often the only person doing your specific job. So sharing resources and ideas is the way we work commonly anyway, even when not in isolation. As well as the facebook groups I have already mentioned, I am also a member of the wonderful SLN group (School Librarians Network) which many of us find a lifeline for lone working. Each day I have been posting useful links for my Year 7 classes, whether that be a site to inspire story-writing or a free source of e-books. I am worried about over-whelming them with too much useful information though, as they are having remote lessons with all of their teachers.
Jess painted another door on the inside, this time the back door. The sunny yellow colour is truly cheery and complements well the deeper, sunflower yellow of the walls. Someone once said that our kitchen walls look just like the yellow of the van in the film ‘The Lady in the Van.’ Well I take that as high praise indeed! Here is our back door with a much needed facelift:
Our back door with a face-lift
We decided to take our daily exercise as a family and venture over the road to the postbox! This is a half mile walk, with the postbox being outside our local church. Although I am a lapsed church-goer, we do have an attachment and connection to the church as sadly we have four family members buried there. You have to be quite special to have permission to be buried in our local churchyard, as it is the only church in the viccinity which actually has burial space attached to a functioning church. The first family member to be buried there was my brother, just over 41 years ago. He sang in the church choir and played the organ for some services. It is really peaceful and special walking round the gravestones, with views across open countryside. I also have happy memories of when the vicarage was the large house in the grounds (now a private house) and we would be invited there for church functions and after concerts.
St James the Less Church at StubbingsThe Churchyard with a view of the Old Vicarage
We certainly appreciate having so much open space on our doorstep. On our return I decided to make a start on sowing some seeds. We are not going to be self-sufficient, but I always like to grow a few easy to manage herbs, salads and vegetables. This year I am hoping to grow cucumbers, courgettes, runner beans, rocket, basil, parsley, coriander and sunflowers. We bought a supply of seeds from our neigbouring nursery whilst it was still open. In the midst of sowing my seeds and cleaning out the cold frames, I felt obliged to give the drain a bit of a clean. It is on our neighbour’s side and it is not great for them when it gets a bit pungent! We also share the outside tap. We have to walk round to their side to use the tap; at times like these you appreciate having friendly, helpful neighbours, who don’t object when I wander round there to turn on the tap.
Today the winner of the Berkshire Book Award was announced. This is an award that my school is involved with, despite my school being in Oxfordshire. I am on the committee, so love to get my Year 7 and 8 students involved in reading and voting for the books. The winner this year is ‘Five Feet Apart.’ Yes, this title is indeed apt at the moment, but the significance of the distancing is because the two main characters are in hospital with cystic fibrosis. The film was released almost at the same time as the book, so as a family we have decided to have a film evening, as it is available on Netflix; luckily Jess has an account. We have plans for interesting TV snacks; photos to follow for Friday’s diary!
Thursday 26th March
A significant part of the day was spent helping our vulnerable friends and relatives; actually my mother and three family friends. I decided that Jess and I should brave Waitrose again. I put together our own list and gathered the other lists from the older generation. Of course on arriving at Waitrose we found that we had to queue in a spaced-out, social distancing way. Marshalls from the shop were on hand to explain the system and indicate when we could collect trolleys. I have to say that the Partners in Waitrose have been so helpful and understanding. Each time we have been shopping, I have explained that we are shopping for four households and that we need to take two trolleys; Jess and I can then do two households each. Whilst we were in the queue, probably for about 45 minutes, I tried to embarasss Jess by suggesting that we should sing to entertain the shoppers. My first two songs were ‘Always look on the Bright side of life’ and ‘It’s De-lovely’ (Cole Porter). However, she was not impressed so instead we played A-Z, with the theme of ‘activities to undertake in isolation.’ When Jess got bored with this, I played it instead online with my Chit-Chat friends on facebook. They all seemed to enjoy it!
Once we were finally allocated our time in Waitrose, the shop was lovely and peaceful, so social distancing was not too difficult. I had to grapple with using two scanners and Jess used just one. In terms of being limited by the number of items we could buy, quick check helps in the sense of separating out the shopping of different households. The shelves were so much better stocked than last time we visited, with fresh vegetables and fruit aplenty! Oh joy, we do love our vegetables! Also, meat and fish, as on our last visit, were not in short supply. The shopping did take quite a long time, with sometimes hunting for items that we do not usually buy. As it was getting to 2:30 by the time we had nearly finished and we had given our home-made loaf of bread to my mother, I decided that some bought sandwiches would be a bit of a treat for lunch in the garden later. I am not a fan of ready-meals and cannot remember the last time I bought any. However, I do have a weakness for shop sandwiches, even though they are never as good as home-made!
Paul calls me Pollyanna because I usually have a very optimistic view of life and every situation. Sometimes he finds it irritating! Why can’t you just get cross, instead of finding something positive about everything?! Well when I sent texts to Paul and to my mother saying that we would be out a long time, Paul’s reaction was very philosophical, whereas my mother thought we must have had a dreadful time! Not at all! You just have to ‘Always look on the bright side of life.’
Happily we were able to buy all the provisions we needed for our film night, so I am looking forward to that! Must remember to promote ‘Five Feet Apart’ to my Year 7 students and suggest that they too think about watching the film.
I am recording diary entries to share how we are coping and spending our time at home. I may not write every day, but hope to do this quite frequently.
First of all, in my Pollyanna way, I have to count our blessings, and we have those in plenty:
There are three of us in the household so we have human company and people to laugh and be sad with. We can play games together and share our highs and lows. Let’s not forget that Tigger is part of our family, and Tibbs, who lives next door, would like to feel he is part of the family too!
Paul and I are still in gainful employment and being paid. I am a school librarian and can work remotely as well as being required to go into school to support vulnerable students. Paul is self-employed and can organise conference calls and remote working. He is based at home anyway, so it is not a big change for him. Jess is being treated very fairly by the owners of the pub where she works.
We have a big garden for exercising and never-ending gardening projects. We are also on the edge of woods, fields and National Trust land. We can exercise and walk with no fear of meeting too many people.
We have a huge network of friends and family with whom we can keep in touch by phone, e-mail and social media. I run an amazing facebook group called Archers Chit-Chat which is just the best support network ever!
We are healthy with no underlying health issues. We have always preferred eating at home and cooking from scratch to eating out.
We live in a rather remote location with very few neighbours. It is quirky and delightful and makes self-isolation easier!
I shall actually have to maintain social interaction because of working in a school. I feel privileged to be working in such an important sector and to make a difference to the lives of young people. At the moment there are very few children attending school because they are vulnerable or have parents who are key-workers. I think that my time in school will be very special and I have so much I want to do in terms of reading, playing board games, walking round our beautiful school grounds (33 acres in total) and perhaps taking photos of the scenery in the sunshine.
So, how did we spend our first day at home in isolation? Well I spent a large part of the day in touch with school, checking the rotas for the in-school provision and planning some activities. I also have all of the Year 7s as classroom groups, as I run library lessons with them. I have been sharing with them some of the many free resources available in terms of e-books, audio books and other sites where they can find out more about books, authors and mental well-being. My lessons are not compulsory, unlike the work set by teachers. However, it is great when the students respond with their thanks or send me work that they have done. I can share pictures and happy stories on our school library Twitter account. I am also a member of some other social networks and facebook groups in which we share ideas and resources.
Jess my daughter decided that she would like to do some painting projects – house and furniture painting rather than works of art (although that may be another idea for later on). She is better than I am at preparing with masking tape and not dripping paint everywhere! I am only allowed to paint outside because of my messy habits. Paul thought it would be a great idea to brighten up the insides of our front and back doors. You can see here what a fantastic job she made of the front door. Most of the paint we had already. You will see from pictures to follow that we like definite, bold colours, although the front door is actually quite subtle!
Ta da! All finished!The decorator at work
Jess also started re-painting our garden chairs, which is something that we do every year. She also painted two smaller chairs in a lovely sunny shade of yellow. These chairs were left behind by guests some years ago and never collected.
A facelift for one of our garden chairs
Other activities included eating lunch altogether in the garden. I somehow failed to take a photo of this, or lost it, but here is the loaf of bread I made:
Ploughman’s Ale Loaf (recipe courtesy of Delicious Magazine)
We decided that as we have a big garden and Jess and I usually go to the gym, we should set up some improvised gym equipment outside. There will be photos to follow when we have completed this project, but to start with Paul and Jess repaired our home-made swing in the trees and we all had a go on it. You should soon be able to see a video on facebook of me giving it a go!
After lunch we had a message from my mother that the new SIM card had arrived. This was a purchase to set our uncle up with a mobile phone, which he has resisted for many years. He finally agreed recently that he should be in proper communication with the family, as going out to use a phone box is no longer sensible and does not allow us to contact him. Jess and I went round to the house and sat in the garden (complication is that mother is paying for the contract so the SIM arrived at her house) setting up the phone with all the contacts that Geoff could possibly need. We then drove over to Burnham to deliver the phone to Geoff and give him a quick lesson in using a smart phone. He tried out texting, phoning people and navigating the screen. Of course we also had to make sure he could find the keypad for ringing other numbers such as the emergency services. So to anyone who is saying, ‘was it a good idea to go and visit your uncle, a vulnerable, older person?’ my response is that giving him a phone lifeline was at that moment more important than social isolation!
So that was Tuesday 24th March, a day well spent. How did you spend your day?
This is a really well designed, hands-on book. It is geared towards 7-11 year olds, but I think that it could be used with Years 7 and 8 in a secondary school for creative writing lessons. The structure of the book is such that it is intended as a workbook, with spaces to fill in, thus building up confidence in writing and structure. However I think that a teacher could use it as a text book, writing the exercises on a display board for pupils to copy out and complete.
The book starts with a diagram proving that everyone is or has the capability of becoming an amazing author. Some myths are dispelled about the importance of spelling and grammar (let’s eat grandma) and then the rest of the book is a series of exercises and story-writing techniques to try out straight away. There are a number of worksheets helping to develop characters, including deciding on names and ways of describing and developing them as credible people. The other worksheets cover descriptions, avoiding dull words such as ‘nice’ and ‘pretty’, settings, plans and themes. The final chapter pulls all of the ideas together for creating an amazing story. It is possible that the reader might like to work through the whole book, or choose a theme or an exercise such as writing an acrostic poem based on their name, or writing a story about bad day at school in 50 words.
A really imaginative book which would make a great gift for a keen reader/writer. Many teachers and librarians would enjoy trying out some of these ideas in the classroom.
A room without a viewLovely bedding but the rugs are the wrong colour!
We are staying in a beautiful airbnb gite in France, south of Poitiers. We always manage to find interesting places to stay and many of them offer us a little ‘home from home’ in the sense that they are in very quiet locations with plenty of garden and inspiring views. We arrrived at Sommieres-du-Clain later than originally planned, as the over-night crossing did not work out. There were no cabins available, and we cannot cope without a good night’s sleep. Hence we had to leave the UK at the crack of dawn on Friday morning instead. We arrived at our gite just after 8:00pm and found a most delightful home waiting for us. My task was meant to be preparing the dinner; I brought with us non-perishable food to cook, which meant pasta with a can of tomatoes and a can of tuna, enhanced by onion and some mild spices. Paul was bringing the luggage in whilst I made a start on the preparations. However, I went upstairs to choose a bedroom – there were three to choose from. I told Paul that although there was a lovely bedroom with a big window and a view to look forward to, I’d rather go for the other double room, as it had the advantage of an en-suite. It had a velux window though, so no view.
We slept well, but the next morning Paul went and looked more closely at the other two bedrooms. The middle one has bunk-beds. He informed me that there was an en-suite shared between these two rooms! How on earth had I missed it?! He was also lamenting the fact that we were not benefitting from the glorious view from the window. I must have been tired and muzzy-headed, as if I had thought more clearly I might have wondered why on earth a house would only have one en-suite and no communal bathroom or second en-suite. We decided that it would be much better to move into the nicer bedroom; this meant that Paul had to swap the bedding, as it seemed unfair on our host to have two sets of bedding to wash. Although the colours and design of the bedrooms is fairly simple and minimal, we noticed that in fact the rugs in each room match the colours of the bedding. Oh well, another task for Paul will be to swap the bedding back before we leave…. Our domestic division of duties means that Paul changes beds and I do the clothes washing and of course all the cooking!
The first two photos are of the bedroom we slept in first (but after Paul had changed the bedding round!) The next photos are of the room with a view that we moved to!
A Room with a view, with bedding which does not match the rugs A closer look at our view!
To return to our first evening and my attempts to make a quick, simple dinner. I was relying on using canned products and we usually buy cheap cans in the cash and carry with no ring pulls. However, every kitchen has a can opener doesn’t it? Well there was certainly a can opener in the cupboard, but it was well past its life of usefulness and did not work! Paul having already been to visit our host next door to find out where we might find matches or a lighter for the fire, he sent me on the next errand. Just like home, our gite was dark outside, not being on a street, and I was also greeted by very friendly black labradors. Unfortunately our host did not have a can opener as she, like most people, buys cans with ring pulls. However she was able to give me a can of tomatoes with a ring pull. She did not have any tuna, but gave me half a dozen eggs instead, from the resident chickens. So disaster averted and we had a lovely supper of spaghetti with tomatoes, topped with a poached egg.
Pasta salad for lunch made with left-over spaghetti dinner
I failed to take a photo of the first night’s supper, but here you have the next best thing.
Well it is now Monday morning and we have really enjoyed our stay at Belle Vue Gite. It did just occur to me that it was not actually necessary to make up the bed in the first bedroom with the wrong colour bedding, as tomorrow morning Paul will have to put it back on the other bed! Still, it was quite nice for my photo shoot session.
We had a lovely walk by the river and really appreciated the tranquil setting. The village is also absolutely delightful and has a very good alimentation shop with a good range of produce including fresh fruit and vegetables and a deli counter.
Belle Vue Gite The kitchen area at Belle Vue Gite; the downstairs is open-plan
Walking down to the river
The delightful stone shops and houses in Sommieres-du-Clain
You know how they say you grow to look like your spouse? Well, I do not look much like Paul, apart from the fact that we are both very fair-skinned. He is slim and does not have much hair; I am not slim and have lots of hair! However, in terms of our taste in food we embrace many of the same likes and dislikes. Even when I met him, we both expressed a preference for fresh, black coffee; we both like breakfast tea in the morning and earl grey in the afternoon (the only difference being that I like my tea with a ridiculously small amount of milk in). He had to come to like my way of eating, as otherwise he’d have to offer to help in the kitchen. It is good that he is happy to let me get on with it, as I am very particular about how I cook food, and also love to have Radio 4 on most of the time whilst preparing meals. Naturally there are a few types of food that I do not like – mainly dried vine fruit,glace cherries, candied peel, pickled onions and green peppers. Paul is not keen on squashes, although I can get away with them in soup.
One issue that we agree on is that raw onion is vile, an abomination! Onions have to be cooked until they are sweet and melting. I never put raw onion in a salad (not even a little bit finely chopped my mother would ask?!) and am amazed at how popular it is both in recipes and in restaurants. Luckily Paul dislikes them as much as I do, and it is the only time that I come across as Mrs Picky; I will happily sit in a restaurant fishing pieces of the devillish food out of my salad. The pile that you see in the photograph above grew to about 6 times that size by the end of our activity! It is one reason why I really prefer to make my own salad. Having said that, the salads in Croatia have been really good and imaginative; there are options for just having salad for lunch, whereas in some restaurants in Spain and Italy I have come across, you would feel rather hungry just eating salad.
Anyway, enough of this negativity! Our holiday apartment is really beautiful and well-equipped, but I had not taken in that the cooking facilities would be quite basic; my own fault really for not checking more thoroughly beforehand. We have two electric rings, a kettle and a microwave. There is also a barbecue outside, which anyone in the 3 letting apartments is free to use. Our host family also uses it I believe. It seeems to work out fine. We have in fact only used it once so far, as the weather has been too hot for cooking outside even in the evening. Happily the temperature dropped from the mid 90s to the mid 80s a few days ago! The barbecue is built in with a chimney, and the fuel provided is paper and olive wood – both kindling and logs. I managed to get a roaring fire going and cook some chicken thighs (marinated in honey, mustard, olive oil and rosemary) and squid – marinated in chilli, rosemary and olive oil. I did cheat with the squid and just plonk a frying pan on the barbecue. See the pictures below of our small scale barbecue:
Cooking chicken, squid and a whole red peppper on the barbecue
Roaring barbecue burning local olive wood
To go back to the subject of salads, I love them in all shapes and forms, whether they be for a side dish or a light lunch. I am rather sceptical of people who say that they do not like salad. There are so many thousands of variations and recipes that I really doubt that anyone could dislike every single one. My own daughter is not a salad lover, but I can devise a salad that she will eat – it is just a question of picking ingredients that she likes, and steering clear of raw salad leaves, tomatoes and cucumber! I have made various salads in our apartment including the Italian bread salad in the picture above. I have actually made it slightly Greek too, by adding some chunks of feta. The salad is otherwise a simple mixture of stale bread broken into chunks and sauteed in olive oil (you could bake it if you have an oven!), fresh tomatoes in big pieces, rocket and fennel dressed with good olive oil and balsamic vinegar. If you have time to leave it to soak for a bit and for the bread to take up the tomato juices and the dressing, it will taste even better. Whatever you do, don’t put it in the fridge as it will not taste good when chilled! For this reason I always advise making this salad and indeed any salad containing tomatoes, soon before you are going to eat it; you don’t want to risk your salad festering in the warm weather! It is also therefore logical not to make a mountain of salad that you are not going to eat all in one go. Of course you may have to refrigerate the left-overs, or you can do as I sometimes do, and turn left-over salad into summer soup!
Sort of Salad Nicoise
I am quite flexible when it comes to adapting and changing recipes and embrace new flavours. There are lots of different toppings you can add to a pizza, some of them more successful and tasty than others of course. However, a dish that has a name that means something should, I feel, stick more ridgidly to the original recipe. For instance, I have a huge problem with the way that Caesar salad is presented in restaurants, but I’ll leave that for another time… (mainly because I don’t have the equipment for making the dressing in Croatia).
Another salad that I like to keep traditional is a nicoise. I think that the basic recipe should be along the lines of: new potatoes, green beans, lettuce. boiled eggs, tomatoes, olives, canned tuna and anchovies. I am not doing a huge amount of research into this, and there may well be slight variations, but for me the above ingredients work well. The above dish of salad is lacking in green beans. Should it traditionally have onions in it?! I have no idea, but it goes without saying that I’d leave them out anyway!
Other dishes that I have made in our apartment have been blackberry spoom (a great recipe I found in the Waitrose magazine for the month of August). It is a sorbet with added beaten egg whites. I used that for making some ice-cream sundaes, by layering the sorbet with bought vanilla ice-cream (too difficult to get the ingredients for that and I could also have done with a whisk!), fresh strawberries and blackberry liquer. See the picture below:
Ice-cream sundaes, but not in sundae bowls!
For lunch today I made a Spanish omelette and some Italian bread soup – another great way of using stale bread. I cooked fresh tomatoes, red onion, fennel, canned tomatoes, dijon mustard, fresh basil and rosemary and some chunks of stale bread. I added some water by filling up the tomato can a few times. When cooked I bashed it about in the pan with whatever implement I could find in the drawer. I served it warm, as there was no room in the fridge to chill soup. I think that warm soup is really pleasant on a summer’s day. The trick with limited cooking facilities is not to get carried away, and only aim to cook two different dishes for a meal. I am not used to using a microwave, but I have used it for cooking apricots and plums quite successfully. I have also heated up Paul’s morning pastries in it, although not entirely successfully. I did try heating them in a frying pan, but that seemed to be a rather slow process!
Hunting for my make-up and jewellery bags Why does my dressing gown have the wrong cord on it? All these cables, yet not the one I am looking for!
I love our long jaunts through Europe. Once you have crossed the English Channel, the world is your oyster, or your lobster as Paul always says. I am very lucky to be married to a man who does not mind driving me everywhere, frequently round the bend! There are very bendy, mountain roads on many of our routes! He even puts up with my rubbish navigating and we always end up in our hotel or apartment in time for dinner!
One disadvantage for me of living out of a suitcase for a few days, is the possibility of losing essential items, and muddling up my clean and dirty clothes! Paul never muddles his up – he has a system! It is often not until we get to our longer self-catering stop (anything from a week up to 3 weeks) that I finally establish whether or not items are lost, left in hotel rooms, dropped out of the car in a manic attempt to find something or were left behind in the UK!
So far this holiday I have managed to lose:
My laptop charger
Half a night’s sleep worrying about the laptop charger and wondering if I can get a new one delivered to our apartment in Croatia
My phone charger
My dressing gown cord
My beach wrap
My make-up bag
My jewellery bag
Filters for the aeropress
My credit card
About 30 euros
My glasses (actually not true – I just forgot to pack them!)
Portable chargers for the mobile phones as we have no USB connection in the car
A quick update:
Everything turned up apart from the beach wrap (left at home), filters (no idea! I do remember packing them so maybe they will turn up in the car in six month’s time!), the dressing gown cord (just spotted by Paul’s mother in her washing machine!), the credit card and the euros – my purse was either lost or stolen in Strasbourg, but thankfully it is less hassle losing a credit card than a ‘phone!
The chargers turned up but were worse than useless! Paul gets a selection of them free from conferences, so maybe we need to buy some better ones! The problem with not being able to charge the phones in the car is that we have long days of driving and inevitably the ‘phones don’t keep their charge that well. So it is touch and go whether or not we’ll manage to find our hotel/apartment at the end of the day!
Once we arrived in Kastel Novi (or Newcastle as we call it) I found another way of losing things, underwear and other items of clothing. We had a lot of washing to do when we arrived, and there is a washing line on the side of our first floor apartment, which you access from the balcony in the second bedroom. It is quite easy to lose knickers and other essential items with a little casual flick of the wrist in the wrong direction! Fortunately my knickers launched themselves into our hosts’ garden rather than onto the awning. However, Kathrin assures me that they have a broom reserved for exactly these situations! See the pictures below of the scene of devastion on our first morning:
Washing line with missing knickers….Phew! The knickers landed safely!
What is the most interesting item you have ever lost on holiday?
After last year’s very enjoyable tour of the Scottish outer Hebrides and my failure to enjoy a swim in the sea, we decided to head to sunnier climes this year. However, before heading to France for the start of our main holiday, we spent a few days in Brighton and Hove, keeping Paul’s mother company whilst his sister and brother-in-law took a well-earned break. I shall write this blog piece as a diary with entries every few days and post updates and photos regularly.
29th July – 1st August
Sadly for my readers, you don’t get to see a photo of me going for a swim in the sea at Hove on a sunnier day. I did go swimming in the sea twice, as Monday and Thursday were really beautifully sunny days. As I went swimming on my own, I took no valuables with me; Paul’s mother lives 10 minutes walk from the beach, so this is not an issue. Also, I don’t take selfies as they are so unflattering! So photos of me are always taken by other people. Paul was born in Brighton, but I am the fish in the family and really should have been the sea-born one in our relationship. He will not swim in the sea until the air temperature reaches at least 90 degrees.
The photo above is therefore from the Tuesday when I went into Brighton on the bus to do some shopping. I also wanted to have lunch looking at the sea; it was quite a blustery day, so sitting in the Palm Court restaurant watching the lashing waves was a sheer delight. I am so pleased that the powers that be acknowledged that local people refer to the Pier as the Palace Pier, not Brighton Pier. I suppose that Brighton Palace Pier is a bit of a compromise. The West Pier which is now no longer, has a beauty of its own. See the picture below:
Is that a boy or a buoy floating out there?
I just love Brighton, which is so vibrant and much more exciting than my own home town, Maidenhead, but being surrounded by family and friends as we are in Maidenhead counts for a lot. Whenever I go there, or indeed to any seaside town, I wonder why I don’t just make the decision to live by the sea! It is ever changing and is as appealing in stormy weather as in bright, sunny weather. For me though the best bit is immersing my body in the briny stuff. Brighton also has the best shops and restaurants too, so really it has it all!
Other activities undertaken whilst we were in Hove and Brighton included rescuing Jean’s milk from her failing fridge. Paul had already discovered on his visit the previous week that the fridge was not functioning properly, and had had to throw away some milk. Because of health issues, Jean eats very little, so there was not much food in the fridge, but of course we needed to have meals whilst we were there. I suggested that we should buy a mini fridge as a temporary solution until she could sort out a more permanent resolution to the problem of a fridge that was not cold enough. When I chose the fridge in Argos, I had not appreciated quite how small it would be! It will come in handy for future holidays, as it can also operate from the car battery. Anyway, I managed to cram some bacon and a pack of sausages in there, as well as some yoghurt and the essential milk. I am beginning to think I have bad vibes which cause electrical appliances to fail. Only a few weeks ago we had to replace our own, large fridge, as I managed to pull the door off one day and we decided it was not worth trying to get it repaired. Usually our dishwasher and washing machine need replacing with quite short intervals between the two.
We played a few rounds of Rummikub at the table one evening. Jean really enjoys board games. I love games, and luckily I am not of a competitive nature, as I usually lose the game.
On Wednesday Paul’s sister and brother-in-law returned from their holiday in Spain, so we met up for a coffee on Thursday morning and we went round to their house for an early dinner before heading for Newhaven for our late night crossing to Dieppe.
Friday 2nd – Sunday 4th August: Dieppe, Nancy and Strasbourg
Grand Hotel de la Reine, Nancy
We took the over-night ferry to Dieppe. We have used this ferry once before; it leaves Newhaven at 11:00pm and arrives at Newhaven at about 5:00am! We always take cabins on over-night ferries, but you do have to be a bit organised with this one. We like to have breakfast when we arrive in France, and it is just not possible to find anything at that time in the morning. Apart from anything, Paul has to get behind the wheel right away and drive, so some caffeine is really needed. This time we were prepared, and I packed up some croissants, a wrap and some fruit. Then I got up in time to dispense hot coffee into our insulated mugs. All in all the experience was a lot better than last time with a bit of pre-planning.
Paul had decided that after a short night’s sleep, we deserved a night of luxury, so he booked us into the Grand Hotel de la Reine in Nancy. That was quite a drive, and as usual my navigating skills were tested to the limit. We have settled on a routine with the navigating, which is to use road atlases most of the time, and resort to google maps on the phone when trying to find streets in a city, or trying to find the right road to get out of a city! This year I bought some new road atlases. We have one for France already, but I added to our collection: Germany (including Benelux, Austria, Switzerland and Czechia), Italy and Croatia (including Slovenia, Bosnia and Hercegovina). Bad as I am at navigating at times, I do love following the route on the atlas and occasionally making the right decisions about which road to take. I write down Paul’s suggested route in a notebook.
Anyway, I diverge. Back to the Nancy experience! The hotel is in the very grand Place Stanislas, with so many grand buildings (all from the 18th century) and with many golden gates. Our room was very luxurious and pleasant, although we did not have a view over the Place. We ate in the hotel restaurant, which was superb, although I could have done with some potatoes to go with my excellent beef fillet. Plenty of vegetables though, so full marks there!
Our hotel room
Should I offer to provide some translation services to the hotel? Place Stanislas in Nancy by nightSarah enjoying her beef fillet
It is wonderful having the opportunity to explore so many beautiful cities whilst we are on holiday. I often think that I have visited more noticeable cities in southern Europe than I have in the UK. We enjoyed looking round Nancy the following morning and paid a visit to the Musee des Beax Arts, which is one of the other grand buildings in the Place Stanislas. After lunch we continued on our road journey, heading for Strasbourg. This is of course on the border with Germany and is very Swiss and German in character. There are many wooden houses and buildings reminiscent of the Swiss alps. It was nice to have a little more time to be able to speak the native language; French is the only language I have ever manged to learn competently and retain. We stayed in a completely different style of accommodation in Strasbourg, and not as close to the city centre. However I would highly recommend the City Residence Strasbourg Centre if ever you visit the city. It was more of a hostel for backpackers, but so clean, spacious and well-equipped. In fact the shower was more modern and worked better than the one in the grand hotel in Nancy! Breakfast was included and was more than adequate. We only had a fifteen minute walk into the city.
Strasbourg CentreA walk along by the river
We had dinner in Strasbourg, then a good long time to look round the following day with stops for coffee, lunch and ice-cream. One minor incident in Strasbourg, which was silly and possibly unavoidable, was losing or having my purse stolen. I realised over lunch – of very delicious Tarte Flambe ( a local speciality) that it was missing. After lunch we rushed back to the cafe where we had drunk our morning coffee, but all to no avail. Luckily I had made the sensible decsion of carrying a minimal holiday purse containing just euros and one credit card. We actually had a reasonable number of euros, as we travel a lot so just save them from the previous holiday. So although it was frustrating losing about 30 euros, it was not a disaster. Paul dealt with the online cancelling of my credit card whilst standing by a fountain on the way back to the car. Oh the wonders of modern technology! You may be surprised to learn that since then he has entrusted me with his credit card, the other one linked to the same account….
Next stop, Friedrichshafen!
Sunday 4th to Tuesday 6th August: Friedrichshafen
The lake at Friedrichshafen with Switzerland in view
I am a water lover and love the sea best of all. I cannot imagine what it would be like to live in a land-locked country; there are of course many in Europe, including Slovakia, Hungary, Luxembourg. Andorra, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the Vatican City. I have been to Luxembourg, Andorra, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It is highly possible that I have been to the Vatican City, having visited Rome as a very young child, but I’d have to check that with my mother!
Germany of course is not land-locked but it does not have much coastline. The beauty of Switzerland and of parts of Germany is the staggeringly beautiful lakes and mountains. Swiss people must treat their lakes as their places for watery leisure. Paul booked us into a guest house in Friedrichshafen in Germany for two nights. This is a beautiful town with the lake as the focal point; you can look at the other side of the lake and see Switzerland. Although we do take long holidays, we make a point of not staying long in expensive countries, so we enjoy the scenery of Switzerland without stopping there. For this same reason, we have not yet explored Northern Europe. In the future we hope to explore Norway, Finland and Sweden, but this can wait!
Our Guest House in Friendrichshafen
We had a very pleasant two day stay in this German lake-side village. I spent an afternoon swimming in the lake and walking along the beach. It really was like a beach, with lots of water sports and opportunities to hire boats and other equipment. Our guest house was very pleasant, but quite basic. Although the room was spacious, I felt that the owner was somehow missing a trick. We had a lovely balcony, but there were absolutely no facilities, such as kettle or a fridge. We really wanted to have breakfast on the balcony, but of course this involved going to the shop, having coffee dispensed into our insulated cups, and purchasing fruit and pastries to take back. Luckily there were a few good, small shops nearby, so this was feasible.
Dinner at Buchhorner Stuben by the lake in Friedrichshafen
We had two excellent meals in Germany. The first one was at a simple Italian restaurant close to our guest house. This might sound unadventurous, but it was getting late by the time we arrived and we needed a quick fix and for Paul not to have to drive much further. The second night I researched lake-side restaurants and made a booking online. Usually we don’t book restaurants on holiday, but the town is quite stretched out and I was really keen to find a location with good views of the lake.
As my daughter Jess has not joined us on our jolly jaunts this summer, choosing instead a jaunt with her cousins to Scotland, I have been having a little joke with her, seeing how many flamingos and cats I can spot and photograph for her. Flamingos we love, and we held a flamingo-themed 80th birthday party for my mother last year. Cats are just because we are a cat-loving family, and love seeing all the semi-wild cats in europe. Here are some flamingos I spotted in Friedrichshafen:
Next stop: Merano!
Tuesday 6th to Saturday 10th August: Italy (Merano, Udine and Trieste) with brief stops in Switzerland and Liechtenstein
Udine centre The view from our apartment in Trieste showing the fabulous ‘Eataly’ shop Driving through the mountains in Switzerland
Our lovely hotel pool in Merano
Before leaving Friedrichshafen, we purchased some excellent sandwiches, fruit and drinks from the excellent shop there. Paul had planned that we would be in Switzerland for lunch but did not want to pay for lunch out! This might sound crazy and stingy, considering how far we have travelled and how many meals out we’ll be purchasing. However, Switzerland is notoriously expensive, and it is on the list to visit when we are even richer! It also seemed like a novel, fun idea to take sandwiches to Switzerland. In addition, the mountains are fabulously breathtaking. However, I am ahead of myself here. Paul is trying to help me to visit a few more countries, as I am not very well travelled. We both filled in one of those ‘how many cities and countries have you visited on this list?’ games on facebook recently. Of course he scored about 60 and I scored about 30; I cannot remember how many destinations there were altogether. We worked out that the only way I can catch up with him is if from now on we only go to places he has already been to before! Anyway, we can both now add Liechtenstein to the list (not sure it was even one of the options on the facebook game!) Before you exclaim that this was a rather expensive stop, I hasten to add that we only paid for parking and two cups of excellent coffee.
We had a beautiful drive through the Swiss mountains, and enjoyed the German sandwiches immensely. We also managed to find some statues and landmarks commemorating ‘Heidi’ from the book by Joanna Spyri and the sequels by Charles Tritten. They were books I really enjoyed reading as a child.
Paul enjoying his German sandwich in Switzerland Sarah sitting by the Heidi statue Paul about to fall off the mountain
Being musical theatre enthusiasts, we planned to drive into Merano playing the relevant soundtrack from the musical ‘Chess’ so I made sure that we had the CD in place ready to play and sing along to. Our hotel in Merano was beautiful, a boutique-style hotel with excellent customer service and a very friendly German host. She welcomed us most warmly, advised on places to eat and assured me that I’d be able to use the outdoor pool before we set off on our travels the next day.
We drove into Merano and had a very simple dinner of pasta. It was actually pouring with rain, so we did not get much of a chance to explore the city centre. We did peer into the Therme hotel, which is modern and quite splendid. Through the windows you could see the amazing set up of the various pools and thermal treatment rooms.
This is all I have time to write at the moment, but watch soon for the update to include the rest of this section of our journey….
We spent 2 nights at a fabulous apartment in Trieste. The view from our window is in one of the pictures above. See below for a couple of pictures of the interior of our apartment:
This was one of those situations where we nearly came to grief trying to find our apartment. This time it was not just because of my inadequate map reading. We stayed in a number of hotels/apartments this holiday which were not obvious from the outside in terms of similarity to the picture included with the property details; this letter had included a photo of the seafront. There was no number or name on the building. In the end we had to find a space in the car park and then do some further investigating. Anyway, it was worth it in the end!
Once more I shall say, and I could bore for England on this subject, that not all people in the holiday letting business want to rip off August holiday-makers. We stayed in some fabulous places, some quite quirky. probably at an average of £100 a night, but some costing only £40 or £50 a night. Of course, with an apartment, you have the option of self-catering, so you can save on restuarant bills too. I decided to cook in the Trieste apartment, because we had eaten out for many nights, and it is relaxing just having a meal ‘at home.’ In addition, we had this wonderful shop just across the road called ‘Eataly.’ Having a wander round, your immediate impression would be that the prices would be high, but it really was very reasonable. Here is one of the meals that I cooked in the apartment, a simple dish of pasta with seafood:
We also bought delicious ciabatta sandwiches from Eataly, for a picnic by the sea, and for our onward journey when we left the apartment.
The only feature of the apartment I would fault was the design of the bedroom. For a start it had beautiful beams; yes very attractive, but hazardous for bumping your head on, which Paul did a couple of times! However, he might not have bumped his head quite as much had we not switched to sleeping at the ‘wrong’ end of the bed. I have a habit of getting up in the middle of the night at least four times to go to the loo. I also have to sleep on the right hand side of the bed, as I like to lie on my side but I cannot lie on my right side! Why not? I don’t know; maybe it is something weird in my genetic make-up but it is so uncomfortable that I just cannot do it. The other feature of the bedroom, as you can see from the picture, is that you can only get out of the bed from one side, without climbing over your partner. Hence we had to switch the pillows to the other end, and hence the low beam being particularly hazardous – I actually took the photo before we changed the bed round!
Whilst staying in Trieste we visited a castle by the sea and had the most beautiful walk. Because of the difficulty of parking the car in the high season, we had to park closer to the castle and pay for the parking; at this end of the beach swimming was not allowed, as it was a protected area. I had to ressit immersing myself in the water, and just gaze at its beauty. See the pictures below from our walk.
After our short stay in Trieste, we headed off on our exciting journey to Croatia. This was quite a challenging day, and we kept crossing borders and wondering what documents we might be asked for! Having been stopped in Switzerland a few days before and asked to show passports, driving licence and log book for the car, we were somewhat apprehensive. Paul had forgotten to pack the log book. ‘Well, how do we know you haven’t stolen this car?” demanded the Swiss police! What I was thinking, but did not actually voice out loud, was that car thieves very rarely bother to steal or pack a collection of dirty clothes, board games and a large collection of chocolate bars – the chocolate was even Lindt bars! Anyway, they let us go, but told us that in Switzerland it is the law to have the car lights on all the time.
To get to Croatia, we had to cross into Slovenia first, which meant going through border control twice. We had to wait an hour in the queue at border control, and were wondering if they would let us in without the car log book – would they also accuse us of stealing the car? Not that they would see many GB cars on the road, and most officials are initally confused by the right hand drive. I did actually spot one other GB car, which was quite exciting! Anyway, after establishing online with the DVLA that we could not prove Paul’s ownership of the car without writing in (the queue was not that long that this was a feasible option), we did manage to retrieve the insurance documents; the wonders of technology! In the event it was a bit of a let-down. Border control did not even open our passports; luckily they did not ask for any other proof of identity either!
I am going to start a new blog to relate the exploits of the Croatian leg of our holiday…..
My daughter Jess demonstrating the size difference between a chicken’s egg and an ostrich egg!
This is something that a friend told me many years ago, and was meant to be a conversation starter. At the time, we had no idea that it was actually possible to buy an ostrich egg or try the experiment!
About 15 years ago I bought my first ever ostrich egg, at the local farmers’ market. I was so fascinated and pleased to finally have one in my possession. In fact it seems easier to get hold of ostrich meat than ostrich eggs, and I’d highly recommend the meat too! Of course we had to keep the egg intact, so enlisted the help of my father and his hand-drill to put holes into the egg and blow it. Jess painted the egg as an activity with her grand-dad and we have had it on display in the house ever since. You can see her first painted ostrich egg in the picture.
I learnt some useful information from this first ostrich egg experience. Firstly, it would be a waste to boil it I think, as then you would have to destroy the shell. Also the shell is itself incredibly tough and could be difficult to crack away from your boiled egg. Having said that, I did read an interesting blog piece recently from someone who had cooked various scotch eggs for a party, including a scotch ostrich egg! I am sort of tempted to give it a go sometime… The blog writer recommended boiling the egg for about 2 hours rather than the 4 that my friend had suggested all those years ago! Secondly, an ostrich egg is the equivalent of about 20 chicken’s eggs. So if you are going to blow one of these huge eggs, do have a plan as to what you are going to do with all that egg! I think that the egg in the picture above we ate as scrambled egg and smoked salmon as a first course with friends we were entertaining, and I also made a cake.
A few weeks ago my daughter Jess, who is a chef, so followed in my footsteps with her love of food and also a love of crafts and painting, spotted an ostrich egg in Waitrose and decided to buy it! She wanted to paint another egg for our collection. In case you are wondering, the egg cost £20 and is actually marginally bigger than the first one we bought. The first task of course was to drill holes in the egg. Sadly my father died last year, but the hand drill is still in the house, so Jess managed to do the drilling herself and I helped her to blow the egg. It was a very satisfying experience as you can see from the pictures!
We are all very fond of scrambled egg, so we had a family lunch of scrambled eggs with smoked salmon. By the way, in case you are wondering, ostrich egg does not taste any different from chicken’s eggs or indeed duck or quails’ eggs. I think the novelty is just in having a different sized egg. I put a batch of the beaten egg into the freezer and kept it for making a birthday cake for for Paul’s mother to celebrate her 90th year! Jess of course has painted the new egg and it has pride of place on top of the cookery books bookcase, along with its partner. You can see the painted egg and the cake in the pictures below.
Have you ever cooked an ostrich egg or blown one to use the shell for decorative purposes? It would be lovely to see other images of painted ostrich eggs!
I am as keen as everyone else to eliminate waste, and not throw away food. Yes, I sometimes cook too much at this time of year. It is very difficult to gauge appetites, and I’d rather have something left than nothing at all. How do you know if everyone has actually had enough to eat? We have a big family Christmas (on average there are about 17 of us), with two days of eating, drinking, jollity, playing games, singing carols and acting out a panto! Christmas day is spent in Feltham, at one of my cousin’s houses, and Boxing day is at our place near Maidenhead. We have traditional turkey on Christmas day, with lots of trimmings, and a fish or vegetarian alternative for one family member who does not eat meat. On Boxing day I make a casserole or something else hot with potatoes and vegetables or salad. We have this usually at about 3:30 after some of us have been for a walk, and others may just have had a few drinks in the pub.
One of the Christmas tasks is to make sure to use up all the left-overs. There was far too much cassoulet, so I gave some to my mother and we ate up the rest a few days later. I had also made Boston baked beans, so the remains of that became soup on Saturday.
What really makes me laugh is magazines and cookery programmes suggesting ways of using up left-over cheese and cake! Cheese is not left-over! I don’t buy a chunk of stilton and expect it to be all eaten up at once! The idea of left-over cake is even more bizarre! Even on my beloved Radio 4 there was a cookery programme discussing this topic. I had better not mention the name of the programme… Anyway it did not spoil my enjoyment of the episode. On Boxing Day I delegated one of my cousins (cousin once-removed to be precise) to create a Christmas tree cheeseboard. It was spectacular. You can see the picture of this below:
Christmas Tree Cheeseboard, made by Mathilda Featherston, inspired by Ciara Mangan, who was inspired by Pinterest. Ciara is a member of the Facebook group Archers Chit-Chat, which I set up almost a year ago
Mathilda did not use the stilton, so does that now count as left-overs? Thanks so much for the idea Ciara! I am thinking it would be possible to do different shapes, such as stars, maybe an Easter egg!
In my world it does not! I am going to try the cheeseboard again on New Year’s Eve, but I’ll have to do it myself this time.
Even more bizarre is the idea of left-over cake. Does anyone make cake with the idea of eating it up all at once? However, we had a funny Christmas cake incident this year, with a complete cake being left at our house. Paul loves fruit cake but I do not, so I rarely remember to make it. My aunt had already left him a huge chunk of home-made fruit cake, and then we found this complete cake in a box! It turns out that it was meant to go back to Germany with one of my other cousins, so that is going to be collected today. Here is the cake in question:
Christmas cake left at Vine Cottage
When I want ideas for left-overs, it is for those jugs of gravy, various vegetables from the Sunday roast, or bits of dinner left on the plate by my daughter. I always leave a meal for her to eat after her evening shift in the pub, and invariably she leaves half of it. Some might throw it away, but in our household that will probably become the basis of a lovely soup! Yesterday we had soup made from Boston baked beans and Jess’ left-over fish supper. Then in the evening we had cassoulet, not disguised as anything else. plus potato gratin made from left-over jacket potatoes and a selection of rosti cakes. We were certainly full of beans that day!
I regularly make a dish called ‘Shepherd’s Left-overs’ which is truly delicious! In my childhood we always called any mince-based dish with mash on the top, shepherd’s pie; we discovered years later that it should in fact be called cottage pie if made with beef rather than lamb, but old habits die hard. To make shepherd’s left-overs, you just put all your various meat and vegetables in the dish with anything else that is hanging around. Needless to say, I have a level 2 certificate in food hygiene, and am well aware of the critiera and risks involved in using food that is past its best! I just don’t do it! You could add some chunky soup, gravy and maybe even some curried vegetables. Then top it all with some mash or sliced potatoes. These could be second-hand or freshly cooked. If the three of us don’t manage to consume the whole lot in one go, I do then bin the remains (in the food bin handily provided by our local authority).
I am always amazed when I come across people who say that they never make soup. What else do they do with their left-overs, apart from make ‘Contents of the Fridge Soup’ ? I do of course make fresh soup on a regular basis, and I would never serve the second-hand version to visiting dinner guests!
The other left-overs which I never have, which are mentioned in magazines and by cookery writers, are jars of curry pastes, miso paste, mustard and so on. Why do these also count as left-overs? Am I alone in thinking the idea of left-over curry paste to be somewhat of an odd concept?
What do you do with your left-overs? Do you have left-over cheese, cake and jars of mustard and spice pastes?
Look out for the thrilling sequel to this article, on the theme of clothes and other stuff that relatives and friends leave in your house! What do you do with random jackets and shirts that no-one claims?!
