John, his mum and I are at Ikea in Leeds on Sunday afternoon. Among other things, we're trying to find a knife block that will accomodate our massive scary chef's knife. While John and I argue over whether the hole in the knife block is more thn 5cm wide, having lost the convenient paper tape measure, John's mum, a midwife, just picks up the display model, spreads her fingers, and deadpans, "No, only about four and a half."
I was a little slow on the uptake, but apparently the look on my face when I figured it out was priceless.
(She was spot-on.)
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Sunday, September 16, 2007
You can drink the water, but don't order the beef
On Friday night, John and I went to a restaurant for a nice meal that we didn't cook ourselves, and which didn't come in styrofoam. John ordered pan-seared rainbow trout, and I ordered an 8oz sirloin steak. I really would've loved a t-bone, but the sale of beef on the bone is banned in the UK because of BSE (better known as Mad Cow), so sirloin was going to be the poor substitute. We waited aaaaaaaaaaages for our meals, we played with our new mobile phones, we drank our drinks, and then the food! My steak had a big piece of gristle running through it, but I was willing to overlook that and eat around it (though it did raise suspicions that maybe this wasn't the best sirloin available). It was rare, and juicy, and...fishy tasting? I ate another bite, and it definitely tasted off. I made John try it, and he agreed that it didn't taste especially beefy. So I took a deep breath and I sent it back. I have never, ever sent an entire meal back at a restaurant, except when I've been served something I didn't order. The waitress tried to tell me that they often have 'this problem' when people order their meat rare, but I wasn't buying it. The steak tasted gnarly. Ten minutes later I had a replacement, accompanied again by limp and colourless green beans and shoestring french fries, and this one didn't taste quite so funny. Was it the quality of the beef, I wondered? The last beef I had before I left Canada was a steak from an organically raised cow that my parents bought half of, so maybe I had been spoiled, but beef isn't supposed to taste fishy. We left a £1 tip (not for the food, but because the waitress was quite rude about me sending the manky steak back), and it wasn't until we were at the other end of the mall that I realized what the problem had been.
There were no grill marks on my steak.
John ordered pan-seared trout.
They fried my steak next to the fish.
I realize it's not fair to have high expectations of a country which brings us black pudding and roast pigeon, but I think it's reasonable to expect a steak to be grilled, non? I'll just order the bangers and mash next time.
There were no grill marks on my steak.
John ordered pan-seared trout.
They fried my steak next to the fish.
I realize it's not fair to have high expectations of a country which brings us black pudding and roast pigeon, but I think it's reasonable to expect a steak to be grilled, non? I'll just order the bangers and mash next time.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Domesticity agrees with me (mostly)
Anyone who has lived with me can attest to the domestic disasters I am capable of creating. There are many good reasons why I dislike doing the cleaning after I've cooked something delicious, and the most important one is that I've probably just made an epic mess of the kitchen and surrrounding three city blocks. I also have a good hit rate with knives, nicking myself about one in a hundred strokes, which when you think about it in terms of carrot sticks - it takes about four strokes to make sticks out of a carrot - is a really high number. I'm also very clever about finding creative ways to burn myself (more on this later), slam fingers/toes/limbs in doors, and generally maim myself whilst being otherwise productive.
A brief recounting, then, of the first meal John and I cooked together at our new flat (I like to imagine this told in a David Attenborough sort of whisper):
Danielle and John are peeling vegetables for a delicious meal of roasted root vegetables with sausage, garlic and rosemary. Danielle is working on the turnips.
"Shit owowowowowowow turn the cold water on owwwwwwwwwwwwwwww"
"I don't think we have any plasters in the house."
"Shit."
Danielle improvises a bandage for her newly shortened fourth finger out of some bathroom tissue and duct tape.
"Wow, this looks really delicious. Are we done preparing it?"
"Oh yes, it's ready to cook, and I have already preheated the oven!"
Black, acrid smoke billows out the oven, which was not stripped of oven cleaner before the lovebirds started it*.
"Shit."
The smoke detector begins to beep urgently.
"Agh, turn it off, turn it off! Just rip it out of the wall, my ears, the neighbours, we haven't even met them yet and it's the night!"
"Shit."
The smoke detector, which was formerly wired directly into the wall, now bears several broken wires and is definitely not attached to the wall.
So that was our first foray into cooking a meal together. Today I had the apartment to myself while John was at work, so to procrastinate from the serious cleaning that needed to be done (have you ever looked closely at your carpets? Don't. Living in a place with ALL laminate flooring has just helped me realize how much shit gets ground into the average carpet every five minutes. Adding a cat who thinks litter kicking is a sport multiplies the mess by a factor of five), I decided to bake my own bread. Also, HSBC and Sbux UK payroll have the combined efficieny of a polio-stricken child with rickets on a bicycle, so finances are a little tight until John gets paid on Friday, and baking my own bread seemed like a cost-saving idea. No word yet on what the electricity to power the oven cost us. In any case, we had yeast from making our own pizza dough, we had flour, I had the required pinch of salt and a very clean counter...and behold, the bread rose! And I poked it, and it fell! Shit! And it rose AGAIN! And then I baked it, and it was stuck to the pan, so I tried to pry it up, and somehow held my knuckles against the pan long enough to sear the flesh from one of them, forming a very colourful and much-less-painful than it looks blister. I rawk at being domestic! And while the bread was rising, I did two loads of laundry (in my combined washer/dryer which I love with the tender passion of someone who knows that she is going to fall out of love when we get the first electric bill) and all of the dirty dishes from the weekend. Then, while the bread was baking, I scrubbed the bathroom (read: sprayed all surfaces with Dettol. Let soak while I watched the ending of High School Musical. Rinsed when I showered later) and mopped the floors, which was nearly as satisfying as baking my own bread, except that I didn't have to give of my flesh to get it done properly.
And the bread? Crusty and heavy, just the way I meant it, since it was to go with homemade chicken ginger soup (that's my story and I'm sticking to it).
*the lovebirds did not put the oven cleaner into the oven. They did, however, neglect to check the cleanliness of the oven before setting it 450*F.
A brief recounting, then, of the first meal John and I cooked together at our new flat (I like to imagine this told in a David Attenborough sort of whisper):
Danielle and John are peeling vegetables for a delicious meal of roasted root vegetables with sausage, garlic and rosemary. Danielle is working on the turnips.
"Shit owowowowowowow turn the cold water on owwwwwwwwwwwwwwww"
"I don't think we have any plasters in the house."
"Shit."
Danielle improvises a bandage for her newly shortened fourth finger out of some bathroom tissue and duct tape.
"Wow, this looks really delicious. Are we done preparing it?"
"Oh yes, it's ready to cook, and I have already preheated the oven!"
Black, acrid smoke billows out the oven, which was not stripped of oven cleaner before the lovebirds started it*.
"Shit."
The smoke detector begins to beep urgently.
"Agh, turn it off, turn it off! Just rip it out of the wall, my ears, the neighbours, we haven't even met them yet and it's the night!"
"Shit."
The smoke detector, which was formerly wired directly into the wall, now bears several broken wires and is definitely not attached to the wall.
So that was our first foray into cooking a meal together. Today I had the apartment to myself while John was at work, so to procrastinate from the serious cleaning that needed to be done (have you ever looked closely at your carpets? Don't. Living in a place with ALL laminate flooring has just helped me realize how much shit gets ground into the average carpet every five minutes. Adding a cat who thinks litter kicking is a sport multiplies the mess by a factor of five), I decided to bake my own bread. Also, HSBC and Sbux UK payroll have the combined efficieny of a polio-stricken child with rickets on a bicycle, so finances are a little tight until John gets paid on Friday, and baking my own bread seemed like a cost-saving idea. No word yet on what the electricity to power the oven cost us. In any case, we had yeast from making our own pizza dough, we had flour, I had the required pinch of salt and a very clean counter...and behold, the bread rose! And I poked it, and it fell! Shit! And it rose AGAIN! And then I baked it, and it was stuck to the pan, so I tried to pry it up, and somehow held my knuckles against the pan long enough to sear the flesh from one of them, forming a very colourful and much-less-painful than it looks blister. I rawk at being domestic! And while the bread was rising, I did two loads of laundry (in my combined washer/dryer which I love with the tender passion of someone who knows that she is going to fall out of love when we get the first electric bill) and all of the dirty dishes from the weekend. Then, while the bread was baking, I scrubbed the bathroom (read: sprayed all surfaces with Dettol. Let soak while I watched the ending of High School Musical. Rinsed when I showered later) and mopped the floors, which was nearly as satisfying as baking my own bread, except that I didn't have to give of my flesh to get it done properly.
And the bread? Crusty and heavy, just the way I meant it, since it was to go with homemade chicken ginger soup (that's my story and I'm sticking to it).
*the lovebirds did not put the oven cleaner into the oven. They did, however, neglect to check the cleanliness of the oven before setting it 450*F.
Monday, September 10, 2007
In which we have a house, then we have no house, then we have a flat!
After passing the one-week mark in our flat without actually burning it down, killing each other, or being late for work, I think it's safe to say that we'll like it here. I wasn't kidding when I said that this is the nicest place I have ever lived - the other people in our building are comprised of 1 Alfa Romeo driver, 2 BMW drivers, 1 Mercedes-Benz driver, 2 Mini drivers, a Fiat and two Fords. Oh, and six VWs of varying models. We're definitely the poor cousins here! We've got two bedrooms as well as a combined kitchen/living room thingy which is just begging for a kitchen table right now, along with about a million other small and annoying things that you don't think about until you don't have them, like a spatula. And bedside tables (my glasses and alarm clock live on the cat carrier at night, which might explain why our cat, Poo, is never seen on my side of the bed).
The view out of the living room and kitchen windows is some commercial-industrial stuff in the middle distance, then the A630 Parkway about a kilometer away (distant swoosh), and then lots of green hills, and stars. I was satisfied once I realized that stars can be seen from our window. Also to be seen from the kitchen side is the gutting of several houses which sit on land about 2 yards lower than ours, which were flooded with contaminated water in the June floods. There's nothing like seeing a family of 4 living in a caravan on what used to be their front garden, while a mini backhoe digs out their former dining room to make you consider your circumstances very closely.
The whole moving into this place has turned out to be very lucky on a few levels - we had a place to live lined up, deposits paid, before I got here, and the woman kept delaying sending us the lettings contract. First it was in the mail tomorrow, then Tuesday, then Friday, then DEFINITELY on Monday...and when we finally got the contract, 3 days before we were due to move in, it was complete and utter bullshit. It was the type of contract housing advisors at Universities should show students and say, "Never sign something that looks like this. The landlord will spend your money on drugs, change the terms of the lease when you're not looking, and then pretend not to recognize you when the kitchen floor rots out." Which isn't exactly what happened, but close enough. So in truly litigious North American fashion, we are suing the fomer landlord-to-be for the return of the entire sum which we paid her...plus interest. It seems only fair, given that she wanted us to be content with an email address as her legal point of contact.
Enter John's coworker, whose sister had been trying to let the flat where we live now through an agency for nearly 3 months. When John first heard about it, he dismissed it out hand because the posh agency charges you £160 for the privelege of considering your application for tenancy, and he'd heard horror stories about people trying to get their deposits back. Acts of nature (terrible flooding which devastated Catcliffe, because of the proximity both to the River Rother and a major marshland, which equals very flat surrounding land) conspired to keep the apartment empty, and when he mentioned his housing woes at work the day after we got the lunatic contract...well, six hours later he'd seen the place and informed me in no uncertain terms that I'd be crazy not to love it, and I'd better love it, because the lease on the shared room where we were living expired a day before we could move in here! Our village has a pharmacy, a pub (with a second one under renovation after the floods), and a chinese takeaway, as well as a WoolWorths and a major supermarket chain. Oh, and a nature preserve a five minute walk away. And a bus to each of our workplaces every half hour. For those of you at home in the colonies who might be worried that I've changed a lot since moving here...some things are always the same. I still ride the short bus.
The view out of the living room and kitchen windows is some commercial-industrial stuff in the middle distance, then the A630 Parkway about a kilometer away (distant swoosh), and then lots of green hills, and stars. I was satisfied once I realized that stars can be seen from our window. Also to be seen from the kitchen side is the gutting of several houses which sit on land about 2 yards lower than ours, which were flooded with contaminated water in the June floods. There's nothing like seeing a family of 4 living in a caravan on what used to be their front garden, while a mini backhoe digs out their former dining room to make you consider your circumstances very closely.
The whole moving into this place has turned out to be very lucky on a few levels - we had a place to live lined up, deposits paid, before I got here, and the woman kept delaying sending us the lettings contract. First it was in the mail tomorrow, then Tuesday, then Friday, then DEFINITELY on Monday...and when we finally got the contract, 3 days before we were due to move in, it was complete and utter bullshit. It was the type of contract housing advisors at Universities should show students and say, "Never sign something that looks like this. The landlord will spend your money on drugs, change the terms of the lease when you're not looking, and then pretend not to recognize you when the kitchen floor rots out." Which isn't exactly what happened, but close enough. So in truly litigious North American fashion, we are suing the fomer landlord-to-be for the return of the entire sum which we paid her...plus interest. It seems only fair, given that she wanted us to be content with an email address as her legal point of contact.
Enter John's coworker, whose sister had been trying to let the flat where we live now through an agency for nearly 3 months. When John first heard about it, he dismissed it out hand because the posh agency charges you £160 for the privelege of considering your application for tenancy, and he'd heard horror stories about people trying to get their deposits back. Acts of nature (terrible flooding which devastated Catcliffe, because of the proximity both to the River Rother and a major marshland, which equals very flat surrounding land) conspired to keep the apartment empty, and when he mentioned his housing woes at work the day after we got the lunatic contract...well, six hours later he'd seen the place and informed me in no uncertain terms that I'd be crazy not to love it, and I'd better love it, because the lease on the shared room where we were living expired a day before we could move in here! Our village has a pharmacy, a pub (with a second one under renovation after the floods), and a chinese takeaway, as well as a WoolWorths and a major supermarket chain. Oh, and a nature preserve a five minute walk away. And a bus to each of our workplaces every half hour. For those of you at home in the colonies who might be worried that I've changed a lot since moving here...some things are always the same. I still ride the short bus.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
It's aliiiiiiiive (or why I hate being disconnected from the internet)
John and I have moved from a neighbourhood that was pretty much in downtown Sheff to a wee village sort of halfway between Sheffield and Rotherham (other city, smaller than Sheffield) called Catcliffe. Ancestral home of coal miners and glass workers, Catcliffe is sleepy and recovering from being flooded out during the June flooding. Don't worry, John checked the flood maps before we signed the lease!
Unfortunately, it takes ages to get a phone line/internet/connection to the real world set up, so we've been offline for what feels like ages (and is really more like 6 days). I am getting a mobile phone on Friday, when I get my first paycheque (it will take an entire other post to explain why one should not pay HSBC for the 'service' of their 'instant and easy to use' Passport bank account, and also why Sbux payroll can suck my cat's anus), and we should have internet at home on a regular basis by then. For now, I am stealing someone's wireless signal and cherishing every moment of Facebook time that I get. Especially since we are still sharing a computer.
Work is great (busy), the flat is beautiful (nicest place I have ever lived), I am thinking of taking horse riding lessons (if I can track the trail of horse poo on our lane to the source), and a king sized bed has made life so very, very much better.
More updates soon, but now I have pizzas to make, ale to drink, and BBC to watch.
Unfortunately, it takes ages to get a phone line/internet/connection to the real world set up, so we've been offline for what feels like ages (and is really more like 6 days). I am getting a mobile phone on Friday, when I get my first paycheque (it will take an entire other post to explain why one should not pay HSBC for the 'service' of their 'instant and easy to use' Passport bank account, and also why Sbux payroll can suck my cat's anus), and we should have internet at home on a regular basis by then. For now, I am stealing someone's wireless signal and cherishing every moment of Facebook time that I get. Especially since we are still sharing a computer.
Work is great (busy), the flat is beautiful (nicest place I have ever lived), I am thinking of taking horse riding lessons (if I can track the trail of horse poo on our lane to the source), and a king sized bed has made life so very, very much better.
More updates soon, but now I have pizzas to make, ale to drink, and BBC to watch.
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