Castleton & Food

It's unusually sunny today, so we packed our walking boots and sticks to visit Castleton, a little quaint village in the High Peak, Derbyshire. The temperature is about 4 degrees lower than from where I live, which means that today, it's about 0 degree. Christmas trees are already out on the streets and the sound system in the public toilet is still playing classical music. It's weird for a public toilet to have music but there you go, odd village as it is.




This is a typical English cottage facing a graveyard and a castle ruin is on top of the hill next to it. It looks beautiful but I don't know how I'd feel if I live in there seeing all the graves everytime I wake up in the morning.

Salmon & Dill Fishcake

English Sausage & Mash

Being a touristy village though, a lot of cafes offer good food. Rose Cottage Cafe is fabulous. The tourist centre suggested this to us, and because we enjoyed the food, we dropped £1 in their box. It's the 'economic downturn', according to the Americans, so a pound is just right for a donation.

Cream Tea

As I am posting photos of food now, I might as well include my favourite Cream Tea. This one is from the only cafe in the Peak Village, a shopping outlet near Matlock in Derbyshire. This tastes nice but nothing can beat the Austrian cafe in a village called Bakewell which serves the best cream tea and bratwurst sausages.

The Peak District is beautiful. I have considered joining a rambling club but seeing that most members are pensioners who spend their time walking (rambling) about instead of knitting socks for their grandchildren, I might as well wait for a little bit. Indeed I do a bit of walking around, but only because I enjoy collapsing into a cafe afterwards, to say I deserve some cholesterol-laden cream tea.

More photos here.

drama out of a crisis

'Well, in front of William was Hannah. Hannah is a girl. She is long and thin. William fell down, hit his face on the concrete and blood went everywhere. It was a good job William was a school counsellor. Because he is injured, I am now the new school counsellor. And because blood was everywhere, the school called the nurse, the nurse called the surgery, the surgery called the hospital, the hospital called the fire engine, the fire engine called the ambulance!'

This is a bit of what I heard from my 6-year-old while he was chatting with his daddy. There is so much in there to analyse. It's funny bordering on fanciful and I don't know which bit is real or made up. I have to remind him of Pinnochio as a reality check sometimes. What strikes me is that if his story involves boys, he only mentions the names, but if girls are involved, they are described as to their appearance, in detail, with an additional reminder that the person he is on about is a different species: a GIRL.

Best Nanay

GET THIS AWARD ON YOUR BLOG CLICK HERE

Girlie passed on to me this award. This made me think. What kind of a mother am I? Am I really best for my children? Also, I've never been 'best' in anything! My cooking is rubbish. My home is not always spic and span. So in a way, there's a little feeling of guilt to be called 'Best Mom' when I don't even cook for my children!

Probably, the 'best' I have given my children is 'time'. I don't want to enumerate what sort of 'time' I have spent with them but I am confident to say that it was both quantity and quality time. I only work a few hours a week, after Lewis turned 1, just to get me out of the house and smell something else other than dirty nappies and milk. I'm glad to say I enjoy every minute of motherhood. One day, when Lewis is in school full time, I could refocus on my career and be financially independent. When the boys are both grown up and living their own lives, I could hold my head up and tell myself, 'I looked after them myself!'

But I don't want to gloat. There are mothers out there who have to work full time and leave their babies to nannies or childminders so they could help feed the family. Maybe I am just lucky that I don't have to and that I have a husband who doesn't mind. There are lots of frustrations in not being able to work full time and earn good money. But this is my choice and the downsides are only for me to swallow. The latest It-bag could wait. My old jeans would still do. But my babies grow and before I know it, they're gone. I just can't afford to lose out on them.

I would like to pass this on to Analyse and Aileen. Great mothers and fantastic career women who know how to balance family life without ending up pathetic like me. I just wish I had their energy!

happy

Out of the blue, the boys came rushing from the kitchen on their tractor to deliver plates, knives, forks on to our dining table. The soysauce was declared champagne and the roasted chicken, vegetables and roasted potatoes became CHRISTMAS DINNER! K came out with all the drinks and played Christmas songs on CD. We all got excited. We sat down to eat, big smiles on our faces, thrilled. Wow! Christmas dinner in November!

We closed the blinds and pretended it was snowing outside. The excitement and the chatter made the delicious meal a christmas dinner in every way. Except of course that it was 13 November and not 25 December.

'Hunny! Life is what you make it!' my husband said as I savoured the wonderful 'christmas dinner' surprise.

Crispy Bites

Crispy Bites, originally uploaded by Soyy.

I am not a dessert or a biscuit person. Normally, when I am offered snacks or after-meal bites, I refuse. I don't mind drinks. I would even happily sit in a competition on who could drink the most tea without milk and sugar. At six in the morning. But McBurgers at mid-morning? Oh no. Oh no.

But it was also mid-morning when a friend handed this Crispy Bites to me and K as we sat in her settee. Before she even finished making a cup of tea, K already munched about a dozen of these peanut brittle-like cookies. My husband is normally a rich tea biscuit type of person, but this morning? He was abnormally munching it like he's just discovered his teeth and now enjoying the pleasures of solid food.

This bag of crispy bites by the way can be bought from the shop with the slogan, 'Spend a little, save a lot'. We're on our way their tomorrow to grab a trolley of this.

homework madness

As soon as we got home from school, I sat down with Zak to do his homework. There is something about homeworks that get to my nerves. He is only 6 years old and for him to do 3 subjects almost every night is too much. I try as much as I can to make it a funny activity rather than a chore and I always wish that the next homework would be all about numbers so that I could copy from the internet the mathematical formulae of the quantum mechanics of chaos and let Zak submit it to his teachers.

This afternoon, we did spelling. Ten words. After the third word, he started acting up. GIRL was spelt as GERL. I would say the word again, stretching my mouth sideways, to emphasize letter I, but he would pretend to be dozing off and unable to concentrate. So I used the words in sentences to make sense. 'Next word is GIRL. Zak is a GIRL!' He jumped up and yelled, 'I'm not a girl! I'm a boy!' So I laughed out loud and told him to write the word GIRL, as it should be. 'Next word is MOST. Mummy is the MOST beautiful of all the mothers in the world.' He smiled and wrote down the word. 'Next word is BLUE. Mummy's BLUE eyes are the most striking ever!' He stared at my eyes, shook his head and wrote down, BROWN.

The Literacy subject was the easiest for him. He had to write 2 sentences that make sense and two that don't. He explored a lot of silly statements and decided to write about defecating with sheeps and urinating with cows. We laughed our heads off before writing the sentences that make sense, which was about him and his daddy going to space taking photos.

I like supervising him with his homework. I am lucky in the sense that I have the luxury of time to devote to them. My job is not demanding and I can always have time off when necessary, like attending school plays, parents' evenings, etc. On the other hand, I don't like the pressure of school work. He is too young to worry about passing tests and finishing homeworks on time. It is not surprising that British school children are more stressed compared to their Scandinavian counterparts. There is too much politics in the school system that the best the parents could do is to be there for their children, help them out and make homework more fun and interesting.