And, we're off ...

Castle in the mist, from Princes Street

 After weeks of whiteness, the rains have started and all the snow has melted. I'm kicking myself for not having taken more pretty pictures of Edinburgh, and particularly the Castle, when it looked all fairytale-like. It still looks pretty, haunted & mysterious but it doesn't look like a magical Winter Wonderland anymore.

Street corner in Valletta

Anyway, Peter's feeling better so we're off to Malta tomorrow!  We'll be meeting up with my parents and Peter's parents and his brother Martin will be there as well. Peter is turning 40 in a couple of days and there will be a bit of a celebration. Hopefully it'll makeup for last year when Calum and then I were both sick and he had to look after us.

Weatherwise, it won't be tropical but there will be some sun and it should be at least a little warmer than Edinburgh right now. I'll try to blog when I can, but can't guarantee how much access I'll have to a computer. Belle will be off at her kennel while we're away. I hate leaving her, it breaks my heart a little. We won't be away too long, and SadieBelle will return in early January. There are some changes planned for 2011 and we're all excited about the new year.

Best Thing This Week - FAIL!

The Only Way is Essex gang

I was so excited for The Only Way is Essex Christmas Special. I started watching the show on the advice of Vicky (who runs the fabulous Frenchy's Beauty Boutique which you should really check out) and was quickly, deeply addicted. I realize that it is similar in a lot of ways to The Hills or maybe a Real Housewives of Somewhere franchise but there was something deeply satisfying about the trashiness of well off people not really working and arguing about relationships. Maybe it was the thick Essex accents which I found difficult to understand which added to the exoticness of the locale. Or, the obsession with spray tans, vajazzling and various beauty treatments that kept me sitting in front of my computer for all 10 episodes. And when I heard there would be a Christmas special (or, the Essexmas special), I was way too excited.

Harry

Now it wasn't a complete fail, it just wasn't as great as the first series. Maybe Christmas is so glitzy that the over-the-top silliness didn't play as funny? It also seemed a little bit like making fun of "slow" people. Most of the characters just don't seem smart enough to carry off the huge amount of dialogue-as-exposition in the casual manner they were trying. Whatever the problem it just seemed stilted and off somehow. I am hoping that the new series will be back to the high (low?) standards set by the first.

Here, in no particular order, is my list of observed good and bad from the special:

• sponsored by a cold sore cream?  of course! Why not just say herpes?
• Sam still doesn't look a day under 25, I don't care how "glamourous" she is. She still looks like she's had major amounts of work done to her face (and no, Peter, that's not "how English people look" - that's skin pulled so tight she can't blink)
• Is it me or are all the women trying out for Lola completely out of (auto) tune? Yikes!
• And speaking of Lola - where was Julien?
• The micro pig as romantic gesture conversation between Arg and Mark was hilarious and for once I agree with Mark. However, I thought the scene where Arg gives the pig to Lydia, made me see that maybe they actually do like each other.
• What was Lydia wearing at the Lola audition party? a cropped pirate shirt? yowza! 

• Amy, Sam and Harry preparing the food! Who had that idea? Did you see Amy's nails when she was stuffing the bird?
• Where was Kirk? I need to know...
• I always thought that Sam and Mark were f*ck buddies and wasn't at all surprised when they went off together.

Here's hoping the next series is better!

Two Recipes: A Christmas Tale

Old Town in the snow.

I got up early (ok, 7:30) with Calum to make Apple Cinnamon Muffins, a Nigella's Kitchen recipe which I'd never tried before. Now, young C really enjoys helping me while I cook, which turns everything into a bit of a mess so I was entertaining him in his playpen as I mixed the batter, which may somewhat explain the mistake. I left out the eggs. So, they turned into a kind of soft, gooey pudding with a fantastic crumble top. I'll try them again though. And I will use eggs.

Awful picture of Tuna meatballs

So, for supper we'd decided to try a Jamie's Italy recipe: Tuna Meatballs in Tomato Sauce, over linguine. I used all the right ingredients (even made bread crumbs) but, with time constraints, decided not to refrigerate the balls for an hour. The cooked easily (I suspect sitting for awhile would make them less crumbly though). Now, Peter thought the tasted really lemon-y, but I love lemon and had no problems with it. The Jamie's Italy uses a lot of lemon, so maybe that's just his taste? Regardless, it could be adjusted really easily.

Merry Christmas

How are you going to do that, Minister?

With more snow to come, this Christmas promises to be full of high drama. We will be safely at home, full of food and merriment. Belle and I wish you all the best for the holiday(s) of your choice.

2010 review: books

The past year was such a great year for me reading wise: I discovered some great young adult fiction, found out what all the Twilight fuss was about, read some really great fiction and co-founded a feminist reading group. Interestingly, most of the books I fell in love with this year were Lainey recommendations.

Belle, being nosy

In January I discovered the Twilight series and am not ashamed to say I briefly become a bit of a Twihard. I can understand why people get so involved in the books and movies (although I've no idea why people become obsessed with Robsten). The character of Bella is basically blank, one that all of us who were teenage girls can relate to. She recalls the dreams of high school and the wish that the beautiful boy in high school had recognized how special we were. Breaking Dawn just fell apart though - ugh. It's weird how I agree with almost all of the critiques but really enjoy them at the same time. The movies are a whole separate discussion but I've heard some awesome spoilers from Lainey about the final two!!

And then I discovered Jessica Darling. Megan McCafferty She's a great character: funny and smart and special. So far I've only read Sloppy Firsts & Second Helpings and am waiting for for the rest of the series and can't wait to learn what happens with Marcus Flutie!

Continuing in the Young Adult vein, I read the Mockingjay series by Suzanne Collins. Now, I don't have a really good idea how popular these books are because no one I know seems to have heard of them. I will say that they are fantastic - the female character is strong and smart and makes choices for her life, unlike some other teen heroines we know (cough Bella Swann coughcough). I am so looking forward to seeing this series on screen! Hopefully there's a bigger budget than the Twilight movies ...

Oh! I also read some adult fiction. One Day by David Nicholls blew me out of the water. It's so good and well written, poignant and bittersweet. It's premise is so easy: a snapshot of 20 years of friendship in one day every year. But it's so much more that that. Reading it made me laugh and cry and left with a feeling of missing these characters as if they were friends I'd been catching up with and wishing I had a little more time with them. It gets extra points for being set so well in Edinburgh.

Finally, most recently I read Room by Emma Donoghue. I was a little leery starting out with this book because of the subject matter: a boy and his mother are being kept in a room by the man who kidnapped the mother. It sounds so grim but, told from the little boy's point of view, it turns into a real work of beauty. Amazing.

Of course I read other things but these were the books I fell in love with and am still thinking about at the end of the year. Any suggestions for what I should read next?

Shortest Day of the Year

6 am, December 2010

December 21st was the Winter Solstice and the shortest day of the year. Happy (belated) Solstice!

Yesterday, the sun rose at 8:42 and set at 3:40 - less than 7 hours. It starts getting lighter quickly. Although it was longer by less than a second today, we get about 8 seconds more light each day and, by the end of January, we'll have 3 minutes & 59 seconds more sun a day.

I've always ranted about the light here. We don't always have a lot of it, but what we have is amazing. I'll try posting more photos as I get them.

Christmas & it's time to watch movies

First snowfall on the canal

It's snowing. Again. It's all perfectly Christmas-y, all white like a dusting of icing sugar and looking like a greeting card. But it's snowed so much and the nation is pretty unprepared: roads and sidewalks aren't clear and it just takes so long to get anywhere. A middle of the night hospital trip with Calum (he's fine, just mild croup - all very exciting), turned into a hike across the Links, because we couldn't dig the car out and taxi service here in the ice and snow. 

With Peter sick (Calum's better. Thank G*d) all I want to do is curl up and watch movies. 

So when the Guardian posted this http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/dec/15/peter-bradshaw-favourite-christmas-movies on their website, I started making a list of my own Christmas movies. I'm not a huge Christmas person, the sentimentality and religious stuff drive me up the wall. As for the movies - well, the obvious ones like It's a Wonderful Life, don't really work for me. Sometimes it's not a Christmas movie per se but just something that I always seem to see over the holiday season. A friend used to associate 007 movies with Christmas because that's what her family used to watch. I feel the same about The Sound of Music. 

My Christmas Movie List, in no particular order: 

Christmas Crafts with Sarah and Calum

• Lethal Weapon - a pre-wage wad Mel Gibson is great in this action movie with fantastic Christmas music. Great to watch while writing Christmas cards.   
• Home for the Holidays - not really a Christmas movie (it's set at Thanksgiving) but it's about the holiday season. Just a great movie, directed by Jody Foster and starring a tweaky Robert Downey Jr. 
• Die Hard (both the first and second movies) - more great movies to watch while writing Xmas cards. The baddies are so over the top they completely make up for any family sentimentality at the end. 
• Trading Places - watched it ages ago and remember liking it. But the Guardian was so positive about it, I rewatched it and realized how great it is. I wanna watch it every Xmas.
• Love, Actually - over the top? Yes! As I described it to Peter: a little like eating too much creme brulee. Sweet and yummy leaving one with a sugar high but happy and satisfied. Not something you'd want everyday but once a year is great.

That's my list - anything you think I should add?

Best Thing This Week - a tie

This week there is a tie for the Best Thing title. I debated long and hard which one to use as they both fantastic and ended up using both.

THE WEDDING DRESS ANGEL
Every year the wedding dress shop in Morningside has a Christmas wedding display. This time the display features a strapless wedding dress. Perfect for an evening winter wedding!?! I know that the wedding dress industry has gone over the top and every woman wants to be a princess on their special day. Tiaras are popular choice and who can forget Celine Dion's wedding crown that induce headaches and hair loss. Heck, my wedding dress was important to me and it only cost $80 (and I wore it with $12 shoes), but I do have to ask who wears wings on their dress? Or wants to shop at a store that advertises such things? This is an awesomely crazy dress and one of the best things this week.

AWESOME HEADLINE OF PATHOS

This was actually the second headline I saw about this incident. I didn't photograph the first but remember the words "rapist", "athlete" and "fireball". Of course this headline really gets to the core of the matter: the word curler just adds to the tragedy.
Tabloids style headlines are very popular here and even the "good" papers use over the top headlines to attract attention. I love reading them - they are works of art that manage to capture the most salacious of events in the same amount of syllables as a hiaku.

Friday Night Arts and Crafts

I'm so bad at Christmas gifts this year. I've a pile of knitting projects (two hats and a pair of socks) all of which have a few rows on them. My fingers are such a mess: dry and cracked, I'm dipping them in industrial strength glycerin what-have-you. Of course all the laundry, nappies, dishes and general mommy lifestyle doesn't help. All the little cuts and dried parts catch are catching on the yarn and when I cream up the yarn gets coated in a film - yuck.

Also available in orange and green

I've been trying to figure out what to get for my friend M's little girl Miss C. M is one of the coolest people I know and her style is completely unique. Miss C has awesome clothes too. So with the knitting projects looking unlikely, what to do? I bought a couple of white (boring) vests and tie dyed them in a dark purple. I used long sleeved ones so that they could be worn under summer clothes. It was really easy after I got over my fear of using dye. I did some of Calum's at the same time and love the results.

2010 Review: California

Hiking in Indian Canyons

In February Peter attended a workshop in Santa Barbara for a couple of weeks and we went with him. Diana met up with us for a week and we spent a fab time going to Sephora among other fine retail establishments, shopping at Whole Foods and discovering the Jessica Darling series (ask me about Marcus Flutie).

We went off to Palm Springs for a couple of days when Peter had finished his work. Palm Springs is a really funky desert town. Lovely and warm, even in February! Calum & I  got to swim in the hotel pool. And we went hiking into Palm Canyon, Murray Canyon and we also made a trip to Joshua Tree. It was Calum's first real hiking experience (he seemed to enjoy the experience): he's such a little trooper. loved deserts and hiking in them since we went to Utah a couple of years ago. I really feel the need to spend more time in deserts - it's almost a spiritual thing for me. Too bad I don't deal well with the heat and sunburn so easily.

Home Made Fish Sticks

When I first moved to Scotland I watched Rosemary Shrager's School for Cooks regularly. The food was pretty traditional: racks of lamb, pork medallions and sole goujons. I wasn't entirely sure what a goujon was until I bought some at Waitrose and discovered that they are fancy fish sticks. But really good fish sticks, for grown ups, made with proper parts of fish in a light crust.

Calum loves fish sticks and Sainsbury's wasn't able to send me any in the last order. I had some raw fish I needed to use so I thought I'd give it a shot. They weren't difficult to make and I had all the ingredients in my pantry. The results were yummy - Calum ate them up in a flash and we enjoyed them too with a light cracker crumb crust. They can be made with chicken too and served with a variety of dipping sauces: a classic tarter sauce or something spicy would work. I made a yogurt dip with lemon and parsley.

Goujons

Goujons

• White fish (not sure what kind - I use whatever the people at Eddie's give me)
• Egg
• Cracker Crumbs (this time I used Jacob's Cracked Pepper Bakes)
• Corn Flour

Beat the egg, put to one side. Mix the cracker crumbs with some corn flour. I wasn't using any measures for this.

You'll want to heat oil in a frying pan enough to coat the bottom and give the fish a nice brown colour. Cut the fish into strips (they don't have to be perfectly shaped but you want to be able to handle them easily). So, I set up a little assembly line: dip fish in egg, coat it with the crumbs and place it in the hot oil. I fried it until both sides were a lovely golden brown. Any leftover can be used in a very tasty sandwich.

Best Thing This Week

I was going to save this and post it at some later point but sometimes you just need to bust out the good stuff. I found this via Lainey on Friday and have already watched it a a dozen times and forwarded it a bunch too. This is The Best Thing This Week:



It takes the place of the David Hasselholf "Hooked on a Feeling" video of a couple years ago that I played a couple of million times. If you haven't seen it (and you really, really should) check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJQVlVHsFF8 )
My favourite part is the fist pumping while dancing. He so into it, really selling it. Of course the random dancing fish people are pretty good too.

The thing about Celine is that she seems like a good person. Now, she seems kind of crazy. Definitely over the top. Judging from the video and a couple of Oprah interviews I've seen, she seems to be enjoying life on a different level then most of us. But in a fun way - she's a bit of a kick, right? I mean she wore that outfit to the Oscar's and got into some kind of tussle with Joan Rivers about the hat during the ceremony.

Celine seems like a decent person: according to Lainey she isn't into the freeloading that so many celebrities are and she pays her bills. She's active in charitable work and really seems to give a lot to her fans. Now all this is based on a few gossip columns and an Oprah interview from years ago so who knows? She may have Lohan-ed herself into oblivion and I wouldn't know a thing about it. But I like the idea that she's out there in all her loonieness enjoying life to the extreme, loving harder than anyone else and generally being awesome. And that video? Is pure gold. Thank you Celine, you are truly a gift that keeps on giving.

March 17th 2009

I am a very superstitious person. I believe in pleasing the universe and try not to piss it off. If something seems to be working for me I stick with it. I believe in not talking about things in case I jinx any good that may be coming my way. I have lucky shirts and there is a hat I wear to make sure Team Canada wins in hockey (it works - just saying).

One thing I've been really nervous to write about is pregnancy and my child. While I was pregnant I didn't really talk about it. While other friends celebrated their pregnancies, I watched a lot of Gossip Girl and prayed for the best. This nervousness continued after his birth. I've been afraid to write about him until now for many reasons: I didn't want to tempt the gods and jinx anything. Also, to paraphrase my mother in law "never brag about your children - they will always show you up".

Also I've been exhausted and otherwise preoccupied chasing this kid around. But he's over 21 months now and hardly the frail soul he once was. I'm finding I have more time and am trying to organize my time in order to take some classes and get back to writing in some form regularly. This will include some information about him, so I thought I would introduce him. Peter and I have talked about it and decided for a variety of reasons not to post photos of him.

Calum Bryce was born 7 weeks early, on St. Patrick's Day. Due to a shortage of space in the NeoNatal Unit in Edinburgh, I was transported to Glasgow when my waters broke. I ended up going into labour there and spent a week in the hospital after an emergency c section. Calum was sent to Edinburgh and the Royal Infirmary after a week in Glasgow where he was kept until his weight went up and he figured out the nursing thing. He was a wee scoot as they say in Glasgow, weighing about 4 and a half pounds at birth.

After such an exciting birth and first months the next 20 months have been pretty uneventful. He's grown and is now big compared to a lot of his friends. He eats like a champ. After a long time of sleep issues he now sleeps (mostly) through the night. He's an active and funny little guy and I couldn't love him more.