Barry

On Saturday I had dinner with some friends in Barry at the Tureen, my favorite restaurant in Brighton.

We had the upstairs room all to ourselves and it felt like eating in someone's living room. The food was lovely and the company too. The wine very reasonable (bottle of Sancerre for £16) and goooood. I had cheese for dessert and the brie was perfect, the slice oozing all over the plate.

The dinner at Barry's was the first of my 4 birthday celebrations, the next one is Wednesday with JD, then Saturday day with the family and then Saturday evening with friends. Any excuse for indulging in food and drink.

Hawaii here I come!

I am going to Hawaii! I won an award from work - I and a guest (JD) get to go to Hawaii for a 4 days, all expenses paid. So now I need to do something about the less than bikini ready body. So I am starting my new life today by going for a jog, follwing the instructions on this site:

http://running.about.com/od/getstartedwithrunning/ht/getstarted.htm

Now I felt that week one was a bit wuzzy, as was week two but and week three a bit of an overkill. So I decided to do it the Abba way

The Visitors - 5min46 - Warm up
Under attack - 3min47 - Jog
People Need Love - 2min44 - Walking
He is your brother - 3min19 - Jog
Eagle - 4min28 - Walking
Summer night city - 3min36 - Jog
Lay all your love on me - 4min34 - Cool down

Now all I need is some will power to keep doing this and some time to make playlists to match my fitness level... Or find out that they are flying us economy and can the whole project.

Pot

I have inherited this great pot from my grandmother, its oven proof and has a lid. So I decided to cook haddock with cream and white wine on a bed of spinach, mushrooms and shallotts in it. V nice.

I have also finally finished the Hungarian goo. It is also nice on waffles, toast, kavring and with steamed veggies.

Chores

We have been very good this weekend. We have finally sorted out the 'shade' thingy in the glass house (see picture evidence) and also swept the patio and planted some lupins as well as seeds for summer - tomatoes, peppers, courgettes, carrotts, parsnips, corn and beetroots. We also put more stuff in the loft. Where does all the stuff come from?

Richard Chamberlaine

Pants. B&Q closed as apparently this is the holiest day after Christmas day in this country. Why not Good Friday? That is when Jesus dies, shouldnt we be remembering that with closed shops etc? AND I was at the beer festival that day and hadnt planned DIY so wouldnt have minded at all. Hmpf. My plan for getting the glass house sorted is now postponed til tomorrow. AND I forgot to start the meat thermometer so it didnt beep and I only realised at 67 degrees. Its bound to be all grey now. Shall try it shortly. Pants pants pants.
I forgot to keep an eye on it cause I was watching a really bad musical version of Cinderella with Richard Chamberlaine.

Easter sunday

I got two eggs from Choccywoccydoodah. JD couldnt decide so got me two. Bless...
We spent Friday being blown away not by the ale which was ok, I am not a great ale fan, but by the wind. Lordy lord it was windy. We gave up when it started raining. But have the memorabilia glasses so that is what counts.

Saturday we went into town shopping, doesnt happen often and as soon as we got in we remembered why. Half of England had decided to go shopping. Am so glad we have moved into suburbia. Any way, after lunch at Pinxtos with some great white wine (but no fois gras!! new menu, not happy...)I didnt mind the masses so much.

I have cooked the salmon cheese cake (nice, but sage is so not a nice herb, will exclude it next time and use chives instead) and chocolate mousse pots (v nice) and just put the cured lamb roast in the oven at 100 degrees. Is supposed to take three hours so just in time for a late lunch. Its been curing in salt water in the glass house for two days, fingers crossed its edible when its done...

Chores done: spare shelves added to kitchen, remaning stuff unpacked onto shelves. We are off to buy two poles for the material I am hanging in the ceiling of the glass house. Not bad!

Swedish item

Love Hungary

Barb has made a cream cheese with some hungarian paste in it. It is delicious. When I went over for dinner the other night she gave me a bowl of the cream cheese to take home and since then I have cooked with it every night. Its great with poached salmon like a sauce, I like it with bacon and egg salad as a dressing and I like it on top of a salmon fillet as a crust. It is also lovely mixed with steamed vegetables. I might be overdoing it, but reccon I cant get scurvy from too much hungarian cream cheese.

Easter food

I am planning the food for Easter. As its just me and JD I should not overdo it, but of course I will!

The plan so far is:

Friday - beer festival, so am thinking a burger / indian / chinese for dinner

Saturday - Salmon cheesecake with asparagus salad, Earl Grey Creme Brule

Sunday - Lamb with feta salad, Easter Eggs

Monday - Waffles!

Shopping scheduled for Thursday lunch time. On shopping list spungy white bread that JD cant get in Sweden, its all nice and interesting breads. JD is bringing interesting bread back to me as I cant find proper dark bread here.

Back again

Ah, its nice to be home. The bed is nice and hard. The house is clean and tidy. My wardrobe is full of ironed clothes thanks to some spurt of energy before I went to Sweden. I am looking forward to Easter, JD is back on Thursday and we (ie I) have lots of plans of things we need to do. I reccon by Monday we will have done maybe 1 or 2 items on the list, but that is ok too.

Last weekend we went to the summer house and JD and I did some raking. I did raking light and he did proper raking and got a blister. Photo evidence enclosed. Its a lot less spring in Bresse than it is in Borrby.

After raking we invited mum and dad over for dinner and Melodifestivalen watching. Very nice evening it was too, plenty of food, wine and pop songs. The strange looking lady, as JD calls her, won.

Sunday we walked to the train station, up to Monteliusvagen and down through Old Town and then up Drottninggatan. Lovely in the sunshine.

Sol Manana!

Reasons to Love Gondolen

Obvious things

• The location
• The lift
• The view
• The bar

Other things

The maître d' is very charming
The cocktails nice but not poncy or demanding indepth knowledge of different types of vodkas
Food good but not too fussy
Love the lingon bread
Feels nice and steady, not hip and flash
We got to see the owner!

DIF

JD is now a fan of Djurgardens IF. And ice hockey is a lot faster in real life than on the telly. Quite exciting actually. And the DIF supporters are very good, vocal throughout the game which was impressive since their team wasnt really that good...

In the sticks on Sunday

We took the train down to see my sister and her family on Sunday, it was her birthday as well so it was a timely visit. We were fed well and had a lovely time. Best part was trying to assemble the compost our parents gave her. As you can see it was a group excersise.

I am so greatful we bought one 'ready made' which just needed to be plonked into the garden and filled with stuff.

The kids also got their presents from China. All very well received.

House warming party

On Saturday we went to the pub and after Ireland lost to the Welsh we went back to JD's to cook some dinner. Ie Marcus cooked and Jenny, JD and I watched and drank red wine. So we have now inaugurated the kitchen and by all accounts it was the first time the Global knives were used. We finished the evening with some Wii Olympics. We came last in every single event and Mario and friends were dispairing over us.

Double life

Its so exciting have a double life, one here in the UK and one in Stockholm. While its freaky to go and visit JD in my home country its very nice to be able to plan lunches with friends, see relatives without spending holiday time and basically setting up a second life in another town.

So I am off tonight, tomorrow we are going to Dubliners for the rugby (well, Jenny and I will probably nip of for some quality shopping) before going back to JD's flat for dinner and Wii playing. Sunday we take the train down to my sisters for a birthday lunch - great as I can also hand over presents purchased in China while down there...

Monday - lunch with Eva
Tuesday - lunch with Jenny
Wednesday - lunch with EL
Thursday - out with J and J for a civilised evening at the museum (with wine I assume)
Friday - yoga with EL

Then a nice weekend with JD - oh but its the last Six Nations weekend so all Saturday will be spent in the pub again. While I quite like rugby and six nations I must admit I am glad its over soon...

The future is beer

Ah spring is here. Not because the daffodils are out or that I have removed the fluffy fur wheel cover but because the beer festivals are starting.

First out: Shoreham Beer festival on Good Friday, at the Red Lion. Easter being very early this year probably means we wont be standing in shorts and t-shirts like last year. But some nice ales will warm us up.

Then: Glastonwick 2008. This year I think I will camp out there, it was such great fun just being there one evening last time and I reccon it can only get better. Just trying to work out who I can go with as JD is in Sweden then. Shall have to find a replacement man for the weekend. Not for any hanky panky, just to get the tent up.

Mushroom

For some reason all hairdressers love to make me look like a mushroom, spending quality time putting lots of stuff in my hair, scrunching and blow drying. Turns out T&G hairdressers are no different, somehow I thought they would know better. But not. So when the girl was done with my hair and said "how about that?" my instinctive answer was "god awful", but I know by now that by the time I have spent 5 min flattening the hair down it will look ok again.

I actually like the hair cut very much, just really really hate when its all puffed up and also when its covering my ears - making me look like a little fat hair ball.