Cheese!

A while back (shortly after Maggie and I got here, in fact), RJ expressed a craving for poutine. Apparently he'd found "curd cheese" at the grocery store and figured it must be curds the way we know them in Ontario and Quebec (you know, the nice squeaky lumps of young cheese ubiquitous to grocery store and convenience store check outs that are perfect either with chips and gravy or just as a snack? Yeah, those curds...). Turns out that here in the UK "curds" are somewhere between a dry cottage cheese and a ricotta. Delicious, and fun to cook with, but not so great for poutine. So of course, being me, I set out to find a recipe for cheddar cheese curds. I found a couple recipes in fairly short order. Unfortunately they all called for cultures and rennet and other fun specialized cheese making ingredients and equipment (honestly, a curd cutter? Really?!). So I launched myself into another search to learn more about cheese making. I found an online video course that was incredibly useful. Unfortunately all the suppliers are American. Hmm...where to find cheese making supplies over here? I searched high and low. I found a few places, but they didn't have quite what I was looking for. Or they were a little shady. What to do? Turns out, amazon.co.uk carries everything I need. Everything. They even have started kits that are fairly comprehensive. And inexpensive. With free shipping in days. Awesome! And then the build up to Christmas happened and the whole thing fell by the way side. Fast forward to Christmas morning and low and behold, hubby got me a cheese making kit! Woot! A quick stop by the grocery store netted me enough whole milk to inoculate my culture and make a batch of cheese. So I did the culture thing the other day and now have 9 little jars of cheese culture in my freezer just waiting for me to make something out of it. The last one will become more culture (it's like those friendship bread things that were popular a few years ago. Just when you think it's about gone you end up with a whole bunch more...). The first little jar never got frozen since I had all that milk. Today, I made cheese curds.

And oh, so exciting picture of a pot of milk. Really the only interesting thing is the thermometer showing that it's cold. Ooh! Really not a big deal.

Here's what looks like much the same thing. Oooh! But wait, it's not the same! This is the milk an hour after adding the culture. Still not all that exciting. At this point I was a little worried that it wasn't going to work and I'd wasted a bunch of time and money. I'll spare you a pic of the curd mass after adding the rennet and waiting another hour. The pic looks an awful lot like the two above.

This is the curd after cutting it and stirring a bit while reheating things. I have curd! It even looks right! Yay! I might not have screwed the whole thing up after all. What a relief!

Here we have my curds all cozy in a cheese cloth bundle dripping away into a bin. Look at all that whey! I'm thinking ricotta needs to happen. Then there will need to be some lasagna or cheese cake. Hmm...

Here's the cheese all cut into bits being cheddared. Basically it's floating in hot (100F) water to draw out some more whey and stiffen things up a bit. Here it sat for a couple hours with periodic draining of the whey, changing of the water, and tossing of the curds. All very boring, but looking a lot more like the finished product than the first couple pics. It worked!

Finally, I give you salted and mostly ready cheese curds! They're actually laid out to dry over night, but they're pretty good as is. After 12 or so hours drying like this they should be a little firmer and nice and squeaky. I have to admit to sneaking a taste and they taste like cheese curds. It would seem that I have successfully made curds! I suspect this first batch will be eaten as is since, well, yum! I'll make poutine next time. I also suspect there are plans for RJ to bring some curds in to work tomorrow to show off to the other Canadians. Somehow I see a Canada Day party this summer involving curds...

So there you have it! I made cheese! It was actually pretty easy. Once the last of my ingredients and equipment gets here this week I'll be giving cheddar a try. I have the bread oven in the back of the fireplace in lounge 2 that is just begging to be used as a cheese cave. I might also have to give mozzarella a shot in the next little bit. It's a different process that is much faster than either the curds or the cheddar (the former took all afternoon, the latter will take 3 months including aging. The mozza will take about half an hour.).

I'll post about the holidays in the next day or two.

My first NHS experience

Anyone that knows me knows that I can be an absolute klutz. And often my clumsiness results in fun and interesting injuries. There was the twisted knee from the bumper car, the broken finger on the dive boat, the stress fracture in my toe while cooking...the list goes on. It's rather impressive that I've really only broken one bone (the toe doesn't count since the break didn't show up on x-ray), and only one set of stitches (child birth related don't count). Usually I manage soft tissue damage and that's it. All this to say I'm accident prone.I have not yet registered with NHS. It didn't seem like a priority since Maggie and I are so healthy in general. We don't need a doctor, right? Totally forgot the accident prone thing. Duh!

So last night, after picking Mom and Dad at the airport (yay!) we all went to Rob's office family Christmas party. There were bouncy castles for the kids, there was food, there was wine and beer, there was good company and good cheer. All in all it was a fun evening. The time came to head home and put Maggie (and Oma and Opa) to bed and off we started. Then Rob declared that he had something cool to show us.  Off we went to look. Somewhere along the hallway (painted concrete floors...) I stepped wrong and my shoe slid, my foot went out, and Maggie and I went flying. I twisted to try to keep her from getting hurt (she's perfectly fine...scared more than anything), my knee and hand hit the floor, and something went POP.

The next thing I know I'm being treated by a former combat medic who essentially refused to do much other than call the base EMS. Security showed up, EMS showed up, everyone still at the party showed up...it was terribly embarrassing. There was paperwork. It's a bit of a pain blur. EMS decided that they could do nothing but give me a blanket to support my arm (I totally bonded with that blanket!) and send me off to A&E (accident and emergency). So Rob took the family home (we were about  5 minutes from home) while the last few party stragglers kept me company till he came back.  It's amazing how concerned people can be when your shoulder is sitting at around nipple level. Anyway, Rob came back and helped me into the car and off we went to the hospital.

We walked into A&E at 10pm, Rob filled out the admissions paperwork for me while I sat in a chair and cried like a little girl. I was in a wheelchair headed to xray a few minutes later. The mean, horrible (yet really sweet and pleasant) xray tech took my blanket away, causing the pain to shoot off the charts. Love that blanket! Then back to the front desk to wait for 5 or so minutes for the doc to come for us. He examined me (best line: "Hmm, that's the end of your humerus. That shouldn't be there. I need to check your xrays."). Sure enough (big shock here!) my shoulder was dislocated. Most painful thing I've experienced. Ever. Childbirth was a walk in the park in comparison. Seriously ow! To add to my joy, I'm allergic to the really good pain meds. So off we went to get an IV set up and start pushing drugs that I can take and gets things back where they're supposed to be. I got to see the xrays (I asked). Freaking cool! Bones really should not look like that! Anyway, there were drugs pushed. One of them was a sedative that contained an amnesiac. I remember the doc pushing the drug and joking about doing nursey things, and I remember being wheeled into another room. I was apparently conscious. I'm told it looked really cool when they set the arm. The doc told one of the nurses that it was the loudest pop he'd heard doing one of those. I'm kinda sorry I don't remember since it sounds pretty epic. Instant pain relief! Then back to xray, back for a final exam by the doc, and that was it. I have an appointment at the fracture clinic on Monday. Total elapsed from the time we walked in to the time we left: 3 hours. The staff were phenomenal. I have nothing but praise for the NHS. Fast, efficient, and very friendly.

I should register with NHS.

Books and birds and other things

It's been a busy and interesting week around Pashlers. A lot of waiting, and a lot of flurries of activity. First we had Maggie seeing the advent calendar for the first time this year. She literally squeals every time she goes into the dining room and sees it.

Apparently my fears about letting her down with an all chocolate advent were unfounded. Let the month of the wired two year old begin! *grin*

Aside from chocolate and vibrating babies, it's been a week of waiting, deliveries, snow, and Thursday  morning adventures. Last week we were supposed to receive a shipment of wine in preparation for the holidays. I was promised next day delivery, which meant it should have been here last Thursday. The digital box for the TV was supposed to be here the same day. So Maggie and I waiting. And waited. And waiting some more. I watched a delivery van drive by a couple times but that was it. Friday we waited some more. When the mail came in the early afternoon there was a letter from the courier service in question. They were holding a parcel for us since they had "insufficient address information". Please call. Hmm... So I called. They had my BT delivery (TV box) but the driver couldn't find us. There are maybe 40 houses in the entire village. There is one corner. We're on it. You can't miss us. I thought. I was clearly wrong. Anyway, the box arrived on Monday, when we discovered that our TV is not actually compatible with British digital stuff. So TV shopping we shall go. Yay? The wine did not show up Friday. I called the company, who tracked it down and gave the delivery company (the same one with the TV box) explicit directions to the house. The wine did not come on Monday. Tuesday our furniture arrived from two different companies. Neither had a problem finding us. First was our bedroom furniture and mirror from Indigo Furniture. I can't say enough good about this company, and they will get their very own blog post because they are just that awesome. Seriously. If you're in the UK and need furniture, check them out!

                                                

I'll post pics of the bedroom furniture in a separate post (once we get the room set up and tidy...), but that's the mirror we got. Sorry about the flash. You can see how massive it is. I got it because it's gorgeous and I figured it could hang in the hallway or something. I really ought to have checked the dimensions...it's a tad larger than anticipated. I think it's going in lounge 1 on the wall to be a feature since anything less would be an insult.

The next delivery was of our sofas and a bed for Andy's room. No pics of the bed. It's a bed. Nothing exciting. The sofas, however, are gorgeous. Particularly since we got them both, and the bed, for less than 700 pounds. They're comfy, they fit in the room, and they don't look terrible with the tables we got with our dining room furniture. I finally have grown up furniture! Bye bye, student days! Finally! Tuesday was a good day. Still no wine, though. Then the mail came. Along with a box of Christmas gifts from Mom and Dad (which is sitting unopened in their room, waiting for them to arrive next week. Don't worry, Mom, we didn't snoop.) was another letter from the courier service. We have your box and can't find you. Please call. Again. So I called and gave the guy explicit directions and pointed out that we'd received a delivery from them on Monday, so the driver really must know where we are by now. He sounded a little sheepish and promised that it would be sent out the next day. Again. With explicit directions for the driver. Again. Arrrgh!

Wednesday (yesterday) that's what we woke up to. It's still there. Not a big deal compared to what we're used to having just moved from Ottawa, but still. Snow?! In England? Huh. And I laughed when the Indigo furniture delivery guy quipped that we were due for snow soon. The day before. That'll teach me. Good thing we brought our snow shovel with us! A month of sprinklings like this and there *might* be enough to warrant pulling it out. Maybe. Anyway, while watching the snow out the window I noticed a white van that kept driving up to the house and sitting for a few minutes before driving away. I think it did that 3 times. Finally, just when I was starting to think someone was casing the place, the driver got out and came up to the door. Turns out it was our new slats for the new bed (see the Indigo post, coming soon...). FedEx, apparently, does not use FedEx trucks out here. The driver was not impressed. We are apparently "very difficult" to find and should have a sign or something. He sat right in front of the gate. Repeatedly. I think he ultimately went down to the pub to ask where we are or something. So I told him I'd talk to the landlady about a sign or something and he left, muttering under his breath in something that sounded very Slavic. A little while later another white van pulled up and another guy got out. I swear he could have been the FedEx guy's twin. Same Slavic muttering, same grim frown, same look of annoyance. He was further unimpressed by how heavy the box he was delivery was. Hallelujah! My wine finally found me! Go figure, 15 bottles of wine are heavy. That was yesterday. I have wine, I have all the parts for our bed, and we now have 2 more courier companies that can, in theory, find us. Maybe. Seriously, there's one corner in the village. We're on it. The house is big. And white. It stands out like a sore thumb. Yet they can't find us even with explicit directions?! Hmm...

That brings us to today. That was the view out our window shortly after 11. See that green truck? That is the book truck, which is probably Maggie's favourite truck. Ever. She's been pestering me about it for days, and practically vibrated when she saw it pull up. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the Cambridgeshire mobile library. It stops there every month, grants  us access to the entire Cambridgeshire library system, and will do special book deliveries for us if we request them either at a branch or online. It's absolutely free and grants Maggie and I each 12 books a month. It's a truck full of books (seriously, wall to wall books inside that sucker!) that Maggie gets to go inside. There's a kind gentleman librarian who will help out, and who lets us take up to 24 books a month. And it stops just outside our house. How cool is that? I think it's awesome. Maggie is pretty sure I'm understating things. It is by far the coolest thing she's every experienced. It's a truck. Full of books. That she gets to go inside. And, best of all, it's GREEN! That was how our morning started. Maggie was in seventh heaven as we walked home with a bag full of books. Then, as we walked past the greenhouse, I noticed a rather frantic little brown bird inside. Uhoh. The poor little guy kept flying into the various windows trying to get out. I think he slipped in through the open louver windows and couldn't figure out how to get out. Maggie and I went in with the intention of shooing the little guy out to no avail. He kept divebombing us and then flying into a window, missing the open door by inches over and over. Finally the poor little guy perched on the wall, clearly exhausted and terrified. He let me catch him and perched on my hand while I carried him outside. He sat on my hand and let Maggie and I pet him before hopping off into one of the bushes to recover. Maggie is now on cloud nine. Not only did she get to go on the book truck, but she got to pet a bird. So incredibly cool! I'll head outside in a little while to make sure he's moved on and isn't too hurt (he seemed okay when we left him, just really tired and freaked out).

All in all this week was a win. Some downs (my spinning wheel's drive arm/axle snapped last night), but mostly ups. And hey, if things really start getting me down I now have 15 more bottles of wine in the house, so things are definitely coming out in the win column for that reason alone! *grin* Now to run around like a maniac to get the house ready for guests next week. Wish me luck!

The tradition continues...

Yep, still here! Really! Frantically trying to get ready for the holidays and impending full house for the same. We will have furniture in the lounges in time...I hope. 2 weeks and counting and right now we have a rocking chair and a computer chair to sit on. Eeep! Dedicated furniture shopping day tomorrow, so hopefully this will be fixed within the week. Fingers crossed for us! (Apologies to Mom, Dad, and Peter if you're sitting on the dining room chairs or the floor...please know that we will have tried to avoid that scenario.)

Anyway, crazy and unprepared though I may be for the holidays (shopping? For gifts? What's that?! Again, eep!), I have managed to get at least one thing done, even if not to the extent I would have liked. I present to you Maggie's advent calendar:

Yes, I know it's a terrible picture, but it's the best I can do tonight. And yes I know I'm a horrible mother because a) it's all chocolate and b) none of them are wrapped. I almost forgot about the advent calendar, and I haven't managed to unpack the wrapping paper yet. I'd like to think I still get a mom point for getting it done on time (just). I absolutely adore this calendar. My mother made it for me as a kid and I think this is my single favourite Christmas tradition, bar none. Not only is my own mother awesome and always (at least as far as I can remember) made sure that she wrapped each of the gifts, but she also managed to usually have actual gifts rather than copping out and doing chocolate all the way down. I still have a couple of them kicking about. Most of them were small and inexpensive, but still, it was special. So much better than those cardboard calendars with the little pop out windows. Thanks to the world's best Mom for making this and starting the tradition! I'm hoping that Maggie has such fond memories of this calendar. Next year there will be proper gifts on it. There were last year. December just kinda snuck up on me this year. Did you know it comes after November?!

So that's the start of the Christmas season in our house. This is the first year I'm actually hosting my parents. Fingers crossed that I can live up to it!

I knew she was too quiet...

Maggie informed me this afternoon that she wanted to play in her room. She bid me farewell and cheerfully headed up the stairs. I was overjoyed! Could this be the beginning of her independence? She's been very tied to me since we got over here, and while I love my daughter I'd really like to have a little time apart from her. Using the facilities alone would be a fantastic treat! Anyway, off she went to her room, and I settled in to answer some emails and chat with a friend, all without Maggie's not to gentle "help". Bliss! At first I could hear her running around (how does such a small person make so much noise? Honestly!). Then it got really quiet. And then there was a rather loud thump followed by nothing. Uhoh! No crying though, so either she was fine or she was unconscious and I had a real problem. I was just about to fly up the stairs to check on my precious, breakable, delicate flower (*snort*) when I heard her start to sing. Right, okay, the kid's still alive. As I resumed breathing and went back to my emailing and chatting I started hearing what sounded like a radio. Interesting...we don't have a radio on the second floor. My phone maybe? No, that's in my purse and has no music on it anyway. Unless she's downloaded some. Which I wouldn't be at all surprised by. So I sat here puzzling about how she managed to turn on a non-existent radio when it dawned on me that she's managed to get that really irritating Christmas moose out of the cradle. The one I put in there because she's too small to get at it. Hmm. Okay. Fine. It's upstairs, I can't hear it all that well, it's all good. Then I heard more music. And more. She apparently managed to get all three really annoying musical toys out. Okay, still fine. She can listen to them when I'm down here and somewhat insulted from the sound. Back to my email and chat. Or not. That's about when she started calling for me in a somewhat panicked voice. Right. Okay, fine. Off I go up the stairs to see what the problem was. Maggie met me at the top of the stairs with a big grin. I asked her what she needed help with and she cheerfully informed me that she needed me to dance with her. Uhuh. Okay, fine. I can do that. Email will keep. So we head into her room to dance to the "music".  Only to find this:

Eep! The thump was apparently the top of the toy box coming off when she was climbing up to get the irritating toys out of the cradle. The singing was what accompanied the destruction. Now I know. When little miss heads upstairs alone to "play" I will have some work putting things to rights again. It only took me an hour to tidy up the mess that took 10 minutes to make.

This is what the room looks like now. I suspect it will not stay that way long. Ah the joys of a toddler! *grin*

Lest we forget

Today is Remembrance Day. It's a special, somber day for me. It always has been. So of course there was a service in the cards. Today's service, however, was special. Just down the road, in Old Weston, is a church whose cemetery houses 4 Canadians killed when their plane crashed during WWII. The graves have been here, and have been honoured and remembered, since 1944. The plane, however, was just excavated last year, finally allowing a full picture of their last moments to be reconstructed. So today we, along with the entire Canadian community, attended a Remembrance Day service alongside those graves, led by a minister who was a boy in the area during the war and who remembers the day the four men were killed. It was a beautiful day. It was one of the most low key services I can remember. No pomp. Last post was played on someone's iphone. There were no dignitaries. Just a quiet ceremony beside the graves with a single wreath laid followed by mass in the small parish church. It was, without a doubt, the most touching Remembrance Day ceremony I have every attended.

Furniture!

Yesterday we went into town to get groceries and to make the next installment in the great cell phone epic (looong, unimportant saga of first world problems. Long story short I will have a phone tomorrow evening. It only took a week. *sigh*). Anyway, while there we decided to go into the Heat and Stroke furniture store to take a look at what they had. Turns out they had lots that we really, really liked at fantastic prices. So we made our selections, paid for them, paid the whopping 25 pounds for delivery, and had to agree that today would be soon enough (have I mentioned that I LOVE how quickly things are delivered in this country? And how inexpensively. Seriously, 25 pounds to have 10 pieces of furniture delivered the next day? On a sunday? And the guy actually apologized for the price and how long it would take. Honestly! Back home we'd be waiting for a couple weeks and paying through the nose. Love it! So the delivery truck arrived today, well within the delivery window. Not only did they bring us pretty stuff, but they took our old dining table away so we don't have to deal with it. They'll sell it as is, the Heart and Stroke Foundation will get more money out of the deal, and we don't have to figure out how to dispose of it. How is that a bad thing? This is what our dining room looked like when they were done:

Apparently the furniture we selected was all from a store foreclosure or something, so everything is brand new from the factory for a fraction of the price.

Our brand new lovely nesting tables. I have no idea where they will end up, but they were pretty and a great price, so who cares? I'm sure we'll find somewhere to put them to excellent use in one of the two lounges.

Our new coffee table.

One of our 6 new dining chairs.

To go with our new dining room table (with gratuitous cute toddler picture).

And the matching sideboard. I think ultimately we're doing to put wine racks inside this to solve our wine storage issue. I love the grain in the wood and the metal details. So pretty! And all this for under £1000 including delivery.

And finally a picture of Maggie in her father's boots. She seemed to think it would be a good idea to wear them. I thought it was cute.