Yum yum yum yum yum

Maybe what happens when you turn 30 is that you turn into a food-blogger.
Anyway, I made the most amazing dinner tonight and I’m so excited I just have to tell you about it. We had baked sweet potatoes (M’s idea) with lentil salad. The salad consisted of green lentils boiled for about twenty minutes, finely [...]

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Vertigo and veggie burgers

We went to Sweden yesterday, home of all good things. Or, at least, affordable groceries. We bought six kilos of couscous, at half the price we would have paid in Norway. A huge bag of red peppers. An equally huge bag of fat sweet potatoes. (A craving for sweet potatoes on Friday led to us [...]

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Snapshot

I walk the long way back to the train station. The street is wide and the Victorian shopfronts glow faintly bronze in the fading light. The sky is opaline, scalloped, pink and blue. Two aeroplanes pencil bright orange trails beside the crisp white rind of the moon. My belly is just slightly too full of [...]

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How to fit twelve months of socialising into three weeks

Monday: 12pm, lunch with grandparents, great aunt and cousin. 1.30 pm, outing with Grandma. Cherry cake in the French cafe. Order new glasses. 7pm, dinner out with Mum, Dad and brother.
Tuesday: 11am, make strawberry pancakes for brunch with Mum. 12pm, phone calls to friends. 1pm, walk in the park and coffee at the corner cafe [...]

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Small things

This week I ate porridge for breakfast every day
There is thick snow outside and it’s still snowing
My three day plan became a five day plan
I went for a swim for the first time in years (not counting splashing around in lakes and beaches)
We found and lost the house of our dreams
I decided two warm jumpers [...]

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Chocolate and other distractions

A week or so ago Michael loaded some games onto his iphone. This is the best one. Last weekend I got seriously addicted. The little people come in and order their chocolate, and you have to run around making square or round or triangle boxes, wrapping them in blue or red or green as appropriate. [...]

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Heiligabend

On Christmas eve, there was a Christmas fairy.

And cakes at four.

Stollen and Lebkuchen. M’s brother decorated the table and I was mighty impressed.

M’s brother and his girlfriend gave me a silly hat and angel wings to keep up tradition. And an episode of ausburger puppenkiste, to help my German and to make me laugh. (These [...]

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Ladies’ Christmas Party

Last night I was inaugurated into the Halden Ladies’ Club. (It’s associated with M’s work, but not exclusively.) They are an international bunch – Belgian, Japanese, Thai, Danish, Greek, Russian, English, Norwegian, Italian, and I’ve probably missed a couple. They are doctors, nurses, researchers, IT specialists, mothers (usually combined with one of the above). They [...]

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Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

Well, leapards and elephants and buffalo… Vic came back from Namibia with these amazing South African chocolates. According to the box, they are white chocolate cape rose geranium caramels. And they are! They taste just like roses and geraniums in the nicest way imaginable. Like eating a flower garden.

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Christmas lights

They lit the Christmas lights in Leeds last week. There was a party on the street. On every corner you could buy plastic lazer lights or sparkly butterflies. The lights are great. There are giant champaign bottles, and glasses filled with fizzy gold. I overheard some people complaining that this was too early for Christmas. [...]

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