Hilary’s Blog

Well, we were always 2; but now we’re 2 with not alot of stuff. The movers came at the weekend.

You see we’ve been keeping a little secret from some of you; we are moving back to Ireland in the New Year. So from January we will be residents of the Emerald Isle once more!

We booked the movers some time ago and they were quite vague about exactly which day they would come to get our stuff – we don’t have furtniture so it is just stuff. Anyway we figured we would at least get a couple of days notice. They rang Jamie on Friday afternoon at 2pm to tell him they would be collecting our stuff on Saturday at 3pm!!! Oh my God, there was total panic but by 2am Saturday morning we had just about everything packed.

And now it’s all gone. The place is so bare, there isn’t even a radio. We are eating our meals off picnic plates and drinking from beakers. It’s so pathetic! But at least it is only for a short time.

Back to motherland

I spent the end of last week in Greece, where I ate lots of lovely Greek food However, that did not stop me from spending the weekend cooking up a storm.

On Saturday evening we had friends over for dinner (this is a rarity and creates much excitement in our home). I cooked gnocchi bolognese – I love this recipe but Jamie apparently doesn’t like the texture of the gnocchi. I think it is the perfect dish for the cold weather, and it was decidedly cold at the end of last week. It was served with garlic bread, some salad and plenty of vino! The surprise for me was that Jamie said he really liked it. It seems that the texture if fresh gnocchi is better than that of the long life stuff I have used in the past. So there’s the tip, use fresh gnocchi if you can.

On Sunday it was just me and Jamie, but as I was leaving on Monday evening for most of this week I wanted to leave my guy with a stock of food. So I made a (quite large) Moroccon Chicken Pie. I imagined that this might have a bit of a weird taste but it was really good – if I do say so myself. It was served with a nice white wine from Yalumba.

You will notice that all these recipes are from Waitrose. I have built up quite a recipe collection by picking up the cards in store – they change the recipes each month. But as you can see these recipes can also be accessed online. Generally, they are quite simple and quick to prepare but are very tasty.

I’m currently in Poland, a place it has taken me a long time to get to (more on that later, maybe). I believe I am on a promise from Jamie – not that kind you saucy minx! He has indicated that he will cook on Thrusday and I think I might be getting his Sweet & Sour Chicken with Special Egg Fried Rice. I love when he makes this so I am really looking forward to getting home on Thursday evening.

I had considered buying this book when it first came out and decided that it would be too “sciency” for me. But a few weeks ago Jamie bought it in a second hand bookshop. As I have temporarily run out of Terry Pratchet books to read, I began reading this. At first I thought it was ok but last night I found myself getting slightly frustrated with it.

You see, the author promised, in his prologue, to answer all those questions that were never answered for you as a youngster in Science class; such as ‘how do they know that?’. Well, while he provides an interesting insight into the, often weird, lives of the scientists who brought us the knowledge of our world, he also often creates more questions than he answers in explaining their life’s works. For example, the angstrom is the smallest unit of measurement, and apparently is the distance you are separated from your chair when you sit on it! Now I don’t doubt this but what my question is, is how do know? How did they absolutely, irrefutably prove that you do not physically touch the thing you are sitting on? In short, how is the angstrom measured?

This wasn’t the first time in the book that he explained something that left me with more questions than it answered. So I feel slightly cheated by Mr Bryson. Before starting this book I was blissfully unaware of angstroms and the like, and now I feel lacking that I do not know how scientists discovered the gap or measured it’s distance.

Disappointed and Confused, England

Jamie says that not everyone puts the same effort into cooking that I do. He said this on Saturday night after a wonderful meal, cooked by me. He says alot of people just wouldn’t bother doing the recipes that are too fiddly; I think that’s rubbish.

Anyway, since I never seem to have anything to write on my blog I decided that I could tell you all about my cooking. I tend to do the more adventurous recipes at the weekend – I just don’t have the time or energy during the week. So this blog is going to (hopefully) get a bit more foodie in the future; that or I’ll go back to ‘no posting’ like some people.

Now when I say adventurous, I don’t think I am; I find recipes online or in Waitrose or in some of the books I have and just do them. I have a tendancy to make most things only once and then get bored with it.

So this weekend…
Saturday:
Surfing the net on Friday afternoon at work (I know, tsk, tsk and all that) I found a recipe website. I was curious to see what I’d find under ‘Irish’ in the Cuisine section. Well I found this and I can tell you I never had this as a child – but it did turn out very nice. I was most impressed with the mash, which was creamy, obviously, and will probably cause a heart-attack in one or both of us (me and Jamie, that is) if I were to ever make it again.
I was very proud of dessert, which was this – foil baked strawberries with Pimms and clotted cream. As I only required a couple of cups of Pimms for the recipe and the smallest bottle I could find was 75cl, we ended up spending the rest of Saturday evening working our way through the bottle. Pimms and lemonade makes me very giggly
We watched Serenity on DVD and then tottered off to bed.

Sunday:
Nothing too crazy here; I made Red Pepper risotto, which I got from a vegetarian cookbook I have. I underestimated how long it would take to grill the peppers and how fiddly it would be to peel them once cooled. Well we eventually got dinner at 9pm. I thought it was delicious but Jamie, it turns out, hates risotto. Apparently, he let me cook it because he knew I really wanted to. He’s so sweet, he even emptied his plate.
Due to the lateness of dinner there was no dessert on Sunday.

You know, we haven’t had many official dates. The sort where the boy comes up to you and sheepishly asks if you’re free tonight and you make him sweat cos you know you won’t have many opportunities in the rest of your life to have that kind of power over the man….
Anyway, my husband wandered into the kitchen the other night as I prepared curry (a lovely veggie korma) and asked if I would like to go to the cinema with him – he’s so cute sometimes!! Well I said yes, cos I like spending quality time with my man – have I mentioned how cute he is?
[If this was anyone else I'd cynical and say honeymoon period.]

The plan in the became to scoff the curry at high speed (easier said than done) and then head down the road to the cinema (the one we have to pay for you know! Tsk!). The movie of choice was Marie Antoinette and for the first time in a long time we had to queue to get tickets. However, the nice thing about LeisureWorld in Southampton is that they have a Ben & Jerry’s cafe All I can say is ‘Core Sundae’ – well actually I’m going to say more than that. We had a large sundae to share. We got 3 scoops of ice-crean (we went for Chocolate Fudge Brownie, Phish Food and Fossil Fuel) filled will with hot chocolate sauce, covered in mini-maltesers and then topped with whipped cream. Yyyuuuummmmmmmmm!!!

At this point I have to say that for me the sundae was the high point of the evening. I was not that impressed by the movie, I found it slow and I’m not sure what the point was. Were they trying to show Marie Antoinette as completely vacuous or did I miss some underlying message? Anyway, I wouldn’t be recommending it to anyone but the sundae was super!

As of Monday my little car (Betty) is all mine! After 11 months of financial hardship all the repayments are done and I can claim her as my own – it is so cool! I don’t think I;ve ever owned something so expensive. And we have had such good times together.

Betty has taken us on numerous treks into the New Forest, we’ve been shopping in Portsmouth, she took me to London in July for a trade show, she took us (and all our luggage) to Ireland to get married and then came on honeymoon with us and last weekend she took us to Bedfordshire for an airshow. She’s like our little baby… OK that might be getting a bit weird, but you know, she’s special and now she’s mine!

Well the big day has been and passed. I am the new Mrs. Lawrence and have learned to respond to this title. I have even begun changing my name in places, such as in email address. Still waiting for the marriage certificate before I can change it on all official documents. Although it is still weird to see the name.

The day itself was fantastic. In the morning it was absolutely pouring out of the heavens and in a typical wedding day miracle all was clear and sunny by early afternoon. So sunny in fact the photographer was heard to complain that it was too sunny for the photos

The hairdresser that morning was very exciting with many giggly women driking champagne! Otherwise it was just alot of hanging around waiting until I could get into the dress – can’t do these things too early, in case one needs a pee. We won’t tell the story about the bride, onece in the dress, decided she did actually need to pee….

Everyone was on their best behaviour, there are hundreds of photos, the food was fantastic, I got a little drunk and went to sleep that night deliriously happy! Unfortunately, during my second week of marriage my new husband is in Finland at a conference. Not his fault, but I do miss him. On his return I’m sure there will be photos online!

Photo credit to Greg Lawrence, my brother-in-law!

Wedding favours are a big thing over here, although they don’t seem to be in Ireland.

I instantly liked the idea of little gifts for everyone, with pretty bows and stuff. But looking at it, it can work out quite expensive to do this – even for small weddings. We’ve spoken to people who’ve done clever things, like cookery book of the couples favourite recipes, or CDs of the couples favourite songs – these are a bit different and have the added extra of the personal touch, but still tot up on old financial side.

I decided then, what with me being a little crafty, that it would be nice if I could make something small that could be given to each guest. Well I found a pattern online for a very nice little basket and decided this was it. So I crocheted these baskets, then starched them (on top of wine bottles!), then added ribbon. They are now packed in shoes boxes awaiting trasnportation to Ireland this weekend.

We are putting some silver covered chocolate balls in the baskets. I am very proud of these and hope everyone at the wedding likes them.

There are 9 days left to the wedding!!!

Yahoo’s long-distance weather forecast predicts scattered showers on the day. All I can do is hope they are appropriately scattered around my exits/entrances to/from cars/buildings. Otherwise I don’t really mind.

I don’t want to put the mockers on myself by saying this, but I think I have been very calm in the lead up to this wedding. Besides the hair-dresser fiasco at the weekend, everything has gone smoothly (fingers crossed to continue this way). The fiasco was that the hairdresser, which I had booked for hair trial and wedding day ages ago, had no recollection of my appointment when I rang to confirm last Saturday. 2 weeks before the big day! Fools! To be fair to them, they did have the appointments written down, but had ommitted to put my name next to them, the appointments being booked for “a lady” (I am not joking); and then refused to accept that these could be appointments for me so wanted to book new appointments on the same days. What made it worse was that although they realised that this was for my wedding, they were not one bit sympathetic that they were impacting on the wonderfullness of my day with this screw-up.

I have since found a replacement hairdresser who seems much nicer and I feel better about the whole thing. There will be pictorial evidence if she turns out to be a good haridresser. If she’s terrible ALL photos will be destroyed.

Surprise stress came in the form of a phone call from my mother-in-law to be. Now I get on great with this woman, she is really lovely and has been a great help so far. But last night she asked if I was having the dress steamed/ironed before the wedding. I am not planning on it. But then I wondered; is she asking because she thinks the dress is too crinkled to be worn and needs to be steamed, or was she asking out of a geniune curiosity. My own panic means I keep having the internal debate as to whether I should have the dress steamed and if so, where, when? I imagine the internal debate will rage til the day of the wedding and then I won’t care anymore.

The only other bit of stress I am expecting will come from packing the car for the drive home. (On Sunday morning we drive to Wales to get the ferry.) I am extremely anal about packing and have already started a list and planned the order it will go into the car and where it will be placed. Jamie does not take the same pride in packing that I do and this often leads to disagreements! We will share the driving to Wales but I want to drive on the other side of the ferry journey, as next week sees my first experience of driving in Ireland.

It’s all very exciting really.