Peach Pie

Yesterday was an important day! Following in the traditions of the women before me, on both sides of my family, I made my first fruit pie. I've enjoyed many a pie before, but yesterday, with Momma's supervision, I made one myself!

Dad returned this morning from Moz, and we saved the first piece for him! I might not win a pie competition like my grandmother, but it tasted pretty good! :)

At last!

Well, friends, the day has come...I have my first day of work today!  I'm still waiting for a call about the teaching job, but in the meantime, I'm working at a local bakery.  If the teaching job works out, I will be trying to do both jobs as well as school full time! I'll be a busy girl for sure, but that's generally a good thing for me.

I continue to enjoy my first class in the M.Ed program.  I've been so encouraged by the responses of the faculty!  During the course, I have felt a bit overwhelmed because the other students are all teachers.  The flip side is that I am the one with the most cross cultural experience.  As a result, it seems to be working out quite well! 

It scarcely seems possible, but I'm already halfway through my first eight week class!  My next course is linguistics.  I took linguistics as an undergrad, but that class is a foggy memory.  I think I enjoyed it.... :) 

Well,I better be off to do some homework before work!  I am rather excited for my first day of work.  I'll let you know how it goes!

2012 is just around the bend...

Yesterday was a very fun day.  To be honest, I didn't even leave the house.  A friend of Joanne's (and now also one of mine) came over and brought her two children with her.  We spent a few hours just chatting and entertaining the kids and being entertained by the kids.  We engaged the help of Zoe and David in taking ornaments off the tree.  This idea was not inspired.  David found it more fun to take ornaments back out of the box and dump them on the floor.  Zoe wanted to sweep up every pine needle that fell, which was an impossible task.  

After they made their departure, Joanne and I made the gigantic effort of taking out our tree.  Joanne is now rethinking the beauty of having a cut Christmas tree.  By the time we had the tree out of the house, I think over half of the needles were on our carpet!  

We had to sweep the carpet well before we could even attempt to vacuum!  I maintain that a real tree was worth it.  They are so pretty.  I only wish we could have gotten a live tree to replant in the garden.  

After that rather prickly endeavor, we cleaned up the house and eventually settled down to watch a film.  Part way through the film, Joanne mentioned that our friend (who had stayed over Christmas eve) had left some pie crust dough in the fridge and told us to use it.  (She didn't need it for the peach pie she made for Christmas dinner.)  We  starting thinking of cinnamon buns.  Mmmm... 

So we went to the kitchen and I started rolling out the dough.  We quickly realized that this dough did not look good.  I'm not sure what the problem was, but it did not look right to either of us.  But I remembered that I had some puff pastry in the freezer left over from one of my previous baking experiments.  So, we binned the dodgy dough and got out the puff pasty.  After defrosting it in the microwave, I unrolled it, only to find out that I had a lot less than I had remembered!  By this point, we were quite giggly at our unsuccessful efforts.  Joanne looked up a recipe and we then made the dough from scratch, also using the remainder of the puff pastry.  

Once mixed, I rolled out the dough and Josie spread a lovely concoction of brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter over the dough.  We rolled the dough and then sliced it.  After a brief ten minutes in the over, our kitchen smelled lovely.

Once cooled from the oven, Josie made me giggle by saying, "Come, let's go ice our buns."  I couldn't stop laughing and advised her not to say that particularly odd sounding phrase again. :)  But we mixed up some icing sugar and check out the result:

I think our efforts with the dough were rewarded.  Oh, they are yummy.  I was amazed at how easy they were to make too.  It is definitely a recipe to save!  We will probably be enjoying some tonight as part of our New Year celebration.

Neighbors have already begun their celebratory fireworks.  I was chatting online to a friend in China, who is already in 2012.  Time is a funny idea.  It's a bit strange to think that now I'm exactly one month away from leaving London and moving back to Pennsylvania.  As I've thought about the future year, I keep thinking of this song from Disney's Pocahontas (A flash from my childhood when my sister and I could sing almost any Disney song word for word).  Pocahontas is in her canoe and sings:

What I love most about rivers is

You can't step in the same river twice

The water's always changing, always flowing

But people, I guess, can't live like that

We all must pay a price

To be safe, we lose our chance of ever knowing

What's around the river bend

Waiting just around the river bend

This coming year has a lot of unknowns but most of the time, that doesn't bother me.  I have a sense of anticipation about what is just around the river bend. Sometimes it bothers me and I just want to know!  But at some point, we go around the corner and we see.  And then there is another river bend up ahead, holding more unknowns.

This is my 270th blog post.  I know that doesn't seem like much for most bloggers, but it represents a lot of writing and rambling on my part, a lot of reading on your part, and a lot of memories.  We shall see what the next year holds.  I'll keep posting and I hope you'll keep reading.  For now, Happy New Year!  

Sugar Cookies

Today was my day to bake cookies to give to my neighbors.  Everyone always seems to give store (boxed) cookies as presents this time of year, but I've missed my family's tradition of making cookies.  I decided I would make sugar cookies and give plates to my neighbors and friends from my house group at church.  I recently ordered cookie cut-outs and a friend had a large baking project and gave us her leftover food coloring and sprinkles, so I was good to go!

They are definitely not perfect, but 36 cookies 33 cookies later, I have plenty to give away.  My little Christmas trees are my favorites, but I do like the Christmas stockings as well.  

Dinner Party

Last night was one of those special nights that warms the heart.  Laura and I both invited a friend over for dinner and we had a lovely little all girls dinner party.  I cooked, choosing to make it a Tex Mex night, bringing a little of North American culture to London.  I cleaned our newly rearranged lounge, did some tidying in the garden, grocery shopped, baked, cooked, and before long, we had a feast.

We had hard and soft shell tacos, veggie mince and real mince for the carnivores, baby spinach leaves and lettuce, shredded cheese, sour cream, salsa, cornbread muffins, black beans, onions...the only thing I couldn't find were tortilla chips for dipping in the salsa.  To finish the evening, I made brownies.  Rather than the American ice cream, we topped it off with single cream.

O surprised me by bringing a dessert as well.  She tends to do that.  She went to Paul.  

Paul is a very clever man.

O said in her delightful French accent, "It is Forêt Noire."    Oh, well, looks fantastic even if we don't know what it is!  After dinner, I asked O what it was called once more.  "Forêt Noire."  "And that means...."  "Well noire is black and forêt...it means...lots of trees..."  Suddenly, lightbulbs went on.  "Oh, black forest cake!"  Oh, it was good!

All in all, it was a great night.  A dinner which turned out a well, two great desserts, and a nice movie with friends.  As I walked O to the station, I was really touched that she kept repeating, "Your home is so welcoming." That is an answer to my prayers.  I always want my home to be a place where people feel welcome to come in, share a meal, and unwind from a stressful week.  

Bollywood Night

We have a tradition of "Bollywood nights" among our group of singles, or at least, the beginnings of a tradition, considering this year is the third year we've had such an event.  It's fabulous.  We cook, we talk, we watch a three hour Bollywood film with subtitles, we eat more at the intermission...in short, we have a grand time.

This year we watched a really sweet story called Rab ne bana di Jodi, which means "a match made in heaven."  It's a romantic musical in Hindi, so 81% of our group needed subtitles to understand the film :)

It's a great story.  The male lead Surinder falls in love with Taani.  Through a series of events, they end up getting married to fulfill her father's dying wishes.  He loves her, she wants to be a good wife but doesn't love him.  She hears about a dance competition in town and asks if she can take the lessons offered.  Surinder only wants her to be happy, so he agrees.  However, he wants to make her fall in love with him.  He completely changes his personality and appearance and meets her at the dance lessons, identifying himself as Raj.  Taani doesn't recognize him and they are assigned to be dance partners for the rest of the lessons.  Surinder continues to change his appearance back to Surinder each evening when he goes home, and to become Raj for the dance lessons.  Surinder starts to realize that Taani might fall in love with him, but then he realizes, she will be in love with Raj, not knowing he is also Surinder.  In a way, he begins to compete with himself for her love.  It was really a good choice for the evening.

As always, we also made plenty of food.  The few of us who were cooking panicked a little, wondering if we would have enough.  We ended up with loads of food!  We had bhajis (garlic and onion concoctions), raita (a cucumber yogurt sort of dip for the bhajis), saag (lamb and spinach curry), paneer korma (paneer is a kind of cheese, but it isn't like any kind of American cheese and korma is a creamy sauce...I made this one, by the way!), garlic naan (bread), paratha (a flat bread), rice, and a roast chicken!  For 9 people.  We actually did an impressive job of consuming most of the food!

the naan bread is in the centre, and the paneer korma is in the left of the picture)

the roast chicken and the paneer korma

To top it all off, I made a really easy to make batch of "Oaty Biscuits" which are just a cookie made with oats, brown sugar, coconut, and maple syrup as the main ingredients.  It was a very late night by the time I got home, but a very fun one as well.

Bread Machines and Baking ;)

Another difference I've found in England is the use of scales in measurements for recipes.  Rather than using measuring cups, recipes will call for a certain weight of a dry ingredient.

So, in my recipe for cornbread, which I made in the bread machine for the first time, I needed to measure out 350 grams of flour and 140 grams of cornmeal.  I'm not sure why there is a difference.  Although, I'm trying to remember that I only really know the way the women in my family cook.  (The men in our family don't really cook, so therefore, I can't know their processes.  If they venture near, it is only to the barbecue or the ice cream churn.  I'm not mocking, merely observing!  We always appreciate the outcome!)  Perhaps other families in the USA do use scales as well.

Regardless of it's done in the oven or the bread machine, the end result is a house that smells like fresh bread and a nice yummy addition to my black bean soup that I'm hoping to make tomorrow.  It was to be dinner for tonight, but I ran into complications.  I remembered that dry black beans should be soaked overnight.  Got that part.  Somehow, I didn't see that they needed to cook for several hours still. Which meant, leftovers tonight and black bean soup tomorrow!