Monday, October 24, 2011

Sunrise in Wiltshire

Hello all! I hope that everyone had a good weekend. Mine was good. Brit Boy and I mostly stayed around home, but we did venture out to do a bit of grocery shopping. We also caught up on some tv recordings that we had stored up during the week. I didn't have a baking weekend like last weekend, but I'll be back at it soon enough :) My cold has gotten a lot better, and I'm hoping that I'll see the back of it by the end of the week. Yay!

No photos today of my quirky bread attempts, but I did take some quick photos of the beautiful colors in the sky this morning. It was extraordinary. There is just something magical about sunrises and sunsets! These photos were taken from inside, through the windows since I wasn't dressed to go outside when I took them. But I hope that they convey what I saw when I looked outside. Enjoy...and have a good day!





Monday, October 17, 2011

Messed Up Bread

I had a pretty good weekend. I’ve been wrestling with a cold, but today I feel somewhat better. And I’m relieved. I hope that things continue to improve...
Anyway, I decided to forget about my cold and make some chaos in the kitchen this weekend. And that’s what I’d call it, especially when I saw the finished product. LOL. Brace yourselves for this....here it is!



I know you may be wondering...what the heck is that!!?? Well it is supposed to be bread. It’s called 21st Century bread and it’s supposed to be sort of unformed and rustic looking. But it turned out looking really tore up! LOL. However, I tasted a chunk today and it doesn’t taste that bad after sitting overnight. I’m gonna have to tweak my technique though, so that next time my bread is more edible like the one on the cooking show ;-) I saw the recipe on a television show here, but when I went to the website to get the recipe, they didn’t have it listed. So I googled it and found it listed on a blog. I’m going to have to check the measurements again because something went wrong.

It’s bread that has cheese and chives in it. In the original recipe, the cook had ham in it too, but I didn’t have any ham. I think that if I get the recipe to work out right, it will be very tasty. It looked delicious when it was presented on the show.

The reason that I’m posting my not so successful attempt is to be truthful and to out my own cooking... the mess ups make me laugh! As I’ve mentioned here before, I want to share the good, the bad, and the ugly of my cooking on this blog. So here it is...ain’t it pretty?!! LOL. Better luck next time.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Foods That I Eat Here #2

I’m finally here to blog. It’s been a busy week and I didn’t get back here as quickly as I wanted, but the good thing is that I’m here now :) And I’m glad.

So last time I said that I was going to pick up my prematurely abandoned series called Foods That I Eat Here’. It was a series that previously only amounted to one post. LOL. But now with some change in perspective I’m ready to revisit it. When I say that I’ve had a change in perspective it is because of a realization that I’ve had lately. See, I’ve been here five and a half years now and I’ve been visiting over here for about eight years. And I forget sometimes just how familiar things have become to me. However, if people don’t live here or have never visited, some things no matter how regular they are to me may seem mysterious to others. So I’ve started to look at things with fresh eyes so that I can share them here with you, my readers. One of my original intentions for writing this blog was to share my experiences of cultural differences with everyone out there in blog land.

Over the years I’ve experienced new customs, foods, places, and a whole lot of other things here in England. A while back I felt as if I had run out of things to talk about on this blog, but then I realized that just sharing what I’ve learned in this new place could be of value in a small way. Truthfully, it is a great experience, but some days I realize just how similar life is in different places when you get down to the simple everyday stuff. But hey this is just my take...maybe I’m missing some action somewhere ;-) So I am going to revive my series on ‘Foods That I Eat Here’ and try to share from time to time what a regular chica like myself munches on. And I’m also going to share more about other things that I do here or see here so that you all can see the fantastic stuff and the regular stuff side by side...and enjoy a peek at a life in another country. Thinking of my blog this way has invigorated my interest again. So I hope that you’ll keep visiting as I become a better tour guide :)

Now that I’ve rebooted a bit, here’s my long time coming second entry in my series of ‘Foods That I Eat Here’. So, I decided to start off with a snack that I like...nothing gourmet or anything that I made. And hey, who doesn't like a snack????



In the photo above, these are Walkers crisps, or as I say, potato chips. Hee hee. And no, I’m not getting any money to talk about these. I wish :) This is a totally organic situation of me telling you about something that I like. Now, I don’t eat these everyday because if I did I would never stop! But when I do eat them I enjoy them a lot. To me they taste very much like potato chips back home and the packaging is similar.

A few days ago, Brit Boy and I were at the grocery store and we saw this big multipack (in the above photo) and we got a really good deal because they were on sale. What I like about this big multipack is that you get a variety of flavours in it. And there’s a chance to try some of the flavors that I haven’t tried before.

Here are all of the flavors ( I forgot to get the roast chicken in the shot, but you get the idea):




I do have my favorites out of this bunch. I like the smoky bacon and the cheese and onion. I also like the sour cream and chives flavor, but there were none in this particular pack. Brit Boy likes the ones that I like and he is also a big fan of the salt and vinegar flavor. We ate the other flavors for the experience and they weren’t bad, although I couldn’t bring myself to eat the prawn cocktail crisps. I will say, the Worcester sauce flavor was the most unique tasting of them all and I grew to like them well enough...at least to finish the multipack ;-) And here’s a quirk that I have...and I have my share of them. I do like to have the smoky bacon flavor if we are watching the soap opera EastEnders on occasion. My logic is weird, but they often have scenes in that show when they are eating bacon or having their 'fry-ups' and I get the taste for bacon immediately. LOL.

So I hope you’ve enjoyed my second entry in my series and now you know something about some of the potato chips or crisps here in England. And I promise this series is here to stay because I love writing about food.....Until next time!

Thursday, October 06, 2011

Othello and Different Foods

Hi there :) I just wanted to drop in with a very short post and to let you know that I'm still here. I will be doing a proper post in a couple of days. This week I started my new year of courses, so I'm knee deep in Othello right now. I will definitely be needing the release of blogging by the weekend, so I'm looking forward to posting. I'm going to be doing a food post next time, as I love to write about eating ;-) This will not be about something I've cooked, but about something I eat here. It will pick up on my series that never really got going a long while back now. It was called 'Foods that I Eat Here'. Check out my one and only post here . Never really got off the ground...LOL. So I thought that I'd resurrect it since I like the idea of sharing food differences.

So watch this space...I'll be back with a food to share next time :)