Vespas in Paris

Green. Awesome sticker. And ...

... orange. Awesome sticker.

Sigh, Paris.

How I heart your street art.

Keeping a handle on it

I'll be at my new school in a fortnight, which is making me apprehensive and excited all at the same time. I'm keen to get back into class after being away from "proper" teaching for so long. I'm apprehensive about getting to know all the people I'll be working with, and I'm nervous about getting back into the swing of full-time work again. I keep having those panic moments, you know the kind when you realise something new is headed for you and your heart starts racing a frillion (yes, that's a standard term of measurement) miles an hour? Yeah. Those. Lots of those. Wish I'd stop having those.

I'm going in for a morning next week to have a really good look at the resources in the library, to find out exactly what day staff return and to possibly harass someone into giving me a timetable so I know exactly what I'm teaching.

Yeah, I know. The timetable thing won't happen. It never does, and when you do get it well before the start of term, it always changes anyway. Still, a (slightly nervous) girl can hope.

Ray of light

I took this (what feels like) ages ago in Hyde Park during an English spring. It has been raining and raining and raining something chronic since the beginning of August - supposedly the English summer. It's driving me bonkers. I'm cold. It's wet. It's grey. And it's not even Autumn. Yikes.

So, to make myself feel better, I take a retrospective look at my photos from the English spring, and try to remember what it felt like to have the sun shining on my face and on my shoulders (because, and, I hate to sound negative, but let's be honest - it's only going to get colder and greyer from here on in).

The proof is in the pudding

Phew!

Luckily, I managed to re-establish my pudding-making credentials this evening. Things were getting a little bit drastic and I wasn't too pleased at the thought of having to hand over pudding-making duties to my flatmate. I'm sure he'd do well, but I want to make the pudding in this household. Isn't that a delicious word? Pudding. Mmm. Scrumptious letters all of them. Especially the 'p' and the 'dd' and the 'ing'. Okay, the 'u' might not be to everyone's taste, but I think it works well here.

I used a Jamie Oliver recipe for "Lemon Curdy Pud" which you can find here.

It was quite nice. I forgot to put the lemon zest in when you are supposed to cream the butter and sugar, but put it in with the flour. I thought I'd really stuffed it up, but once I folded in the whisked egg whites it came together.

Now there's none left (!), so I'll have to find another pudding recipe for tomorrow. Perhaps one that lasts a bit longer will do the trick.

A small, mere trifle of a matter

I made a trifle. What I didn't make is a picture of it (photo credit & recipe here), but this (above) is how I was hoping my trifle would look. Needless to say it doesn't look much like the picture that went with the recipe, but they never do, do they?

The trifle I made does have raspberries & grated chocolate. And it does have a mixture of custard & cream. However, I couldn't find the kind of sponge fingers I liked, so I substituted them for something else. Thus began the trifle experiment. A trifling experiment, if you will (oh, tres drole).

So instead of the sponge fingers, I used chocolate chip brioche. Which is a bit spongier than what I originally wanted. I'm hoping they've not turned to mush, because the recipe calls for them to be dipped into a mixture of coffee and coffee flavoured liqueur. I did my dipping quickly, so hopefully it's not too bad.

Oh. Also, I'm a bit worried that I might've put a smidgen too much booze in the dipping mixture. I put in exactly the measurement the recipe called for, but I think my brioche might be a bit drunk. And we all know that brioche is a bad drunk.

Sunshiny days

I took this ages and ages ago when we first came to the United Kingdom and were living in Canterbury. I was feeling pretty down, a little bit homesick and very overwhelmed. We were staying with my flatmate's family, who were lovely. Their ten-year-old daughter decided that because I was feeling down, a bunch of flowers might make me feel better.

And, not surprisingly, they did make me feel better.