We're moving! Again.

Because of a multitude of factors (which I will enumerate upon request), we are moving again. It will have only been eight months since our last move, but there you go.

We have found a nice detached house in our price range (which to me seems rare for this small island nation). It's not back in Clevedon, which was one of the things we were trying for, but it is closer to where we work, and in a nice area.

I won't give the address out here because I think a little part of Dad would die if I gave out my address publicly on the interweb. I almost resisted including this first picture of the front of the house, since it would probably be easy enough for someone who lived in the area to work out where it was and then track the blog to see when we're off on holiday and then come and steal all of our stuff, if they really wanted to, but it's the only picture I took that has Mark in it.

It's not perfect, and it isn't a new as the place we're in now, in terms of the insides. It also is probably pretty much as bad as you can get in terms of capturing any of the meager sun we get over here because everything is north-facing. But the amount of space we're getting, the lack of immediate neighbors, having a patio in the back and the garage make it really worth it. And we did a great deal with the agent - and how can you pass up a great deal?

This is the view from the upstairs front bedroom, which we'll probably use as our study, since it's going to be the sunniest room. Though I've just noticed that once that tree across the road is in bloom we're really not going to be getting much sun at all.

I wasn't paying attention when I took the photo, so you can see the reflection of the camera in the shot - that's what is making it look like it's one of those weird windows with the curved effect.

Sheep live across the road, and then there's a cricket pitch beyond that. Our Englishness goes to eleven.

This is the living room, with a door directly out to the back, which has a raised area with a trellis thing, then a couple of steps down to the rest of the backyard area. The back is all paved over with slabs, which is fine for me since all I want is a BBQ grill and lots of potted plants and it would be silly to have to mow a small square of grass throughout the summer. Though I guess the plants I find are going to have to really like cloud and shade so I might be a bit limited in my selection.

These are actually right next to the driveway - I just like how over here you know Spring is coming because first the snow drops come out everywhere and then all the daffodils.

Looking back over the post I kind of sound down on the place, but we really like it and it does everything we want it to do. I'm very excited and I think Mark is getting there. He still doesn't quite have enough excitement left over from his new motorcycle (did I tell you all about that? Why do you think we need a garage all of a sudden? ;) ) to be all that excited about the new place, but I think we'll both be really pleased when we've moved in.

We get the keys in a week's time and we'll start to move small stuff over in stages, and then move all the big stuff on the Thursday before Easter (we're taking the day off because over here Good Friday and Easter Monday are bank holidays) and be completely out of the place then. It's all very exciting!

The secret life of celebrities.

When trying to work out when Daylight Savings Time is over here, as opposed to in the US (which is mentioned on our lovely calendar, thanks, Jenny!), I discovered that Brad Pitt's ancestor invented Daylight Savings Time:

Picture of G.V. Hudson

Maybe this is why Brangelina are breaking up - disagreement about whether or not longer afternoons in the summer do in fact reduce electricity consumption and improve road safety.

Meet Ugli.

Have you tried an ugli fruit?




Compared to a grapefruit and an orange:



In its natural habitat:

I got a puzzle for Christmas.

Here I am, doing the puzzle.


The puzzle is progressing:


It is nearly done:

And this is the finished product:


I think you got a feel for what it was like putting it together.

Not quite snowmaggedon...

In light of the snow the East Coast just received, I thought it was time to blog about our own snowstorm, back in January.

It started at night:


A lot of workplaces told people to work from home, including mine - and Mark's meetings were also cancelled, so he was home, too (he's working in this picture - you can tell because that's his work laptop and his home desktop is not turned on):


This is a snowman our neighbor made:



There is a strip of grass between the sea front and the houses (Dad and Jenny, you may remember it is where the sand sculptures were when you visited). It was prime snowman-building land when the snow hit:


I was very impressed by this really tall one. They even used a carrot for the nose, and coal for the eyes, mouth and buttons, just like in storybooks:




I also liked this one, with a hat made out of snow. It kind of looks like a Pillsbury Snowboy from this angle:



It was crazy the way the snow came right down to the water's edge. This is the beach, and all of that snow is on top of sand (and that's Brean Down in the distance):


Haven't had any since this batch melted, a few days after these pictures, so I think we've had our portion for this year.

Cinnamon is my friend.

Last weekend I had a sudden, overwhelming need for cinnamon rolls. Over here, they sell them, but they tend to be more pastry-ish than gooey soft, so I decided to try making my own.

I found a recipe for cinnabon-style ones, which I thought would do the trick, but I didn't have any cream cheese on hand (this was a bit spur of the moment), so I used the quick glaze from Paula Deen's cinnamon roll recipe. I made them in my lovely breadmaker, following the additional tips at the top of the recipe, including the extra steps to keep the insides from leaking out of the rolls.

It was incredibly easy - the breadmaker did all the hard work on the dough mode, then I just rolled it out, spread the goo on (half with nuts, half without), rolled them up and stuck them in the oven.

Here they are before:




And after - one pan with glaze, one pan without:






And here they are, in action:


I didn't quite roll them up tightly enough - so they were a bit loose and floppy when I transferred them to the pan (which is why they look a bit abstract, rather than nicely round in the "before" picture above), and they did pull apart a bit when they baked. Putting the glaze on reinforced their structural integrity, especially once it cooled and solidified a bit.

They kept really yummy for about 5-6 days, in a plastic container. I froze half the batch without the glaze, so I'll try defrosting and then glazing the next time I get the urge. I'm also running another test - I've frozen one with glaze, to see how it holds up.

As another test in alternate breakfast foods beyond bagels, today (Sunday the 7th), I made the Cinnamon Raisin Bread recipe in Joy of Cooking. I substituted dried apples for the raisins and used the breadmaker again for mixing the dough. It turned out pretty well, though again I didn't roll it tightly enough, so the swirl didn't go around enough times, and it pulled apart so there is a big hole running through the bread. I didn't quite get the shape right for my loaf pan, and had to moosh it in, which probably didn't help. But it tasted pretty good and was really easy to do. I love my breadmaker!

Christmas 2009.

Here are some pictures from our Christmas this year.

This year, amazingly, I was extra organized, baking-wise, and stuck to the schedule I set for myself, which included lots of new recipes (as mentioned on the recipe list for December).

This picture is from the day before Christmas Eve, and I'm pouring out the peppermint chocolate rum cake, ready for marbling - which turned out to be the recipe Mark and I liked the least. I thought it was going to be Christmassy, and I tried to dye the chocolate part of the cake red, like red velvet cake, to go with the green-dyed peppermint part. But I don't think I used enough food coloring because it just looked a bit auburn. It was ok, and the marbling was well done, if I do say so myself, but the taste didn't really wow us. I don't know if that was me, or the recipe.





One thing that did work out well were the mini-pecan pies I made. I wanted an alternative to mince pies for me, since I don't eat raisins. This is from Christmas Eve day:


We drove to Brean and stayed overnight with Mark's mum on Christmas Eve. Sarah was back in town from Thailand.

On Christmas Day, Mark and I got up and went for a walk along the beach to Brean Down in the morning. You can see the hill in the distance:


You walk up a bunch of stairs and then at the top there's a nice view. Plus some remnants from an old Iron Age fort. Plus this thing, which reminds us of Aslan's table from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.



That's Weston-Super-Mare in the background. You can't really see our flat from here.


Then we had Christmas lunch. I contributed Julie's Kahlua sweet potatoes, cornbread dressing, and homemade cranberry sauce.






Later we played Ticket to Ride.



On Boxing Day, we walked up another hill, called Brent Knoll.



Then on the day after Boxing Day, we walked up Brean Down again, this time with Mark's family (they didn't come with us when we did it before), and we went all the way to the end, which we didn't have the time to do on Christmas Day.

The tide was all the way in and it was really windy and pretty cold.



On New Year's Day we did the last hill in our "Three Somerset Peaks" holiday challenge (there is an annual event here in the UK called the "Three Peaks Challenge" where teams of people compete in a race to walk up the three highest peaks in Great Britain - Ben Nevis in Scotland, Scafell Pike in England and Snowdon in Wales - all in one day). Mark has done it before, but they didn't win, though I don't think that was the point for them.

We had decided to do a Somerset-based (and much easier) version over the holiday period - Brean Down, Brent Knoll and Crook Peak, all of which are less than 15 minutes from our place. And they aren't peaks, just hills, though the views are still pretty good.

We walked up Crook Peak on New Year's Day with Mark's family. We didn't take the camera so we don't have an pictures. It was fun doing all three, though.