Chocolate Roulade

I've been lucky to find friends here who love cooking (and talking about cooking) as much as I do, and we seem to have unintentionally established a tradition of weekly/biweekly dinner parties. It's never anything overly fancy; sometimes one person makes everything, but usually we're each assigned a course to bring. I usually bring desserts or bread, because while I do enjoy cooking, I really love baking, and I like trying out new recipes :)

This week was an extra challenge because one of my friends has had to go temporarily wheat-free, a circumstance that has drawn much sympathy from the rest of us allergy-free, bread-loving gluttons. However, this circumstance also provided me with the ideal opportunity to try out a recipe I'd been curious about for a while: chocolate roulade. Naturally wheat and gluten free!

The Great British Bake Off (I cannot express the extent of my love for this show. It's the only tv contest I can stand watching, mostly because I can empathize with a baker when their bread hasn't risen properly) contestants had a lot of trouble with this cake, and I was expecting many challenges and little success. But! Surprise! Success! And such success! It looked good AND tasted good - I think even Mary Berry would have been proud (which is all I could think of when I was folding in the egg whites). This recipe is very slightly adapted from hers, which you can find here. I think the next time I make it I'm going to crush some raspberries and mix them right into the whipped cream for extra oomph.

On to it then:

Chocolate Roulade
Makes 10 slices (not counting the end bits you'll have to trim off...those are bonus slices for the baker)

175 g good quality dark chocolate
175 g + 1 tsp caster (super fine) sugar
6 eggs, separated
2 tbsp cocoa powder
400 mL double (whipping) cream
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp icing sugar, for dusting

1. Preheat the oven to 350F / 180C. Grease and line a large rectangular cookie sheet or a jelly roll tin with parchment paper, making sure there's a bit of excess on all sides. Grease all sides of the parchment paper.

2. Break the chocolate into pieces and melt slowly in a glass bowl over a pot of boiling water, stirring frequently. Once the chocolate is completely melted, remove from heat and let cool slightly (should still be runny, just not hot).

3. Beat the egg yolks and 175 g caster sugar together until light in colour, then add the cooled chocolate and stir until well mixed. (Your batter will likely be rather dense at this point).

4. Beat the egg whites until stiff (but not dry and shiny, like meringues). You should be able to tip the bowl over without the egg whites sliding or falling out.

5. Fold one large spoonful of egg whites to the chocolate mixture, and mix until well combined. Then gently fold in the remaining egg whites and sift in the cocoa. (You'll want to be very gentle at this point - the cake batter has no other rising agent, so the fluffiness of the egg whites is the only thing adding height to this cake. If you're over-enthusiastic in your mixing, you'll lose the light airy texture you want in the finished product.)

6. Once all the egg whites have been added, tip the batter into the prepared tin and gently level the surface. Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes, or until firm to the touch. Once the cake is finished, remove from the oven and let cool for at least a few hours (overnight is fine too) covered in a clean damp tea towel. (Don't let the tea towel touch the surface though - put a cooling rack or something between the tin and the towel.) The cake will likely sink a bit, but don't worry, this is normal!

7. Whip the cream, 1 tsp vanilla and 1 tsp sugar together until stiff.

8. Dust some parchment paper with a bit of cocoa and icing sugar, and when the cake has cooled completely, tip it onto the parchment. (This make take some finagling...I had a bit of a contraption with another icing sugar-dusted baking sheet holding the cake in place as I turned it so it wouldn't fall out and break.) Remove the greased parchment paper.

9. Spread the whipped cream evenly over the cake. Then, using the parchment paper underneath, slowly start to roll the cake into a semi-tight jelly roll. It will crack a bit, but that's okay - it's supposed to!

10. Keep the parchment paper underneath the roll and transfer to a serving dish. Trim off each end to tidy up the look of it. Dust with a bit more icing sugar or cocoa powder and refrigerate until serving (at least 30 minutes). I served this with raspberries, but I think some strawberries and mint would also be really good.

Bagels

I've been wanting to make bagels for ages, and this weekend I finally did! It was surprisingly easy. There are a lot of good looking recipes out there that require sponges and two days of effort, but the recipe I found (New York-Style Bagels) was really straightforward and low fuss. Most importantly, the bagels turned out really well (if I do say so myself!), although I need to work on my dough ball making skills - shape and size consistency was fairly low :)

New York Style Bagels

 Makes 8 medium bagels

2 tsp active dried yeast

1 1/2 tbsp sugar

1 1/4 cups warm water (you may need another 1/4 cup)

3 1/2 cups very strong white bread flour

1 1/2 tsp salt

Optional Toppings: sesame seeds, coarse sea salt, pumpkin seeds, poppy seeds, cinnamon, raisins

1. In a small bowl, add sugar and yeast to 1/2 cup warm water but don't stir. Let sit for 5 minutes until frothy, then stir until yeast and sugar are completely dissolved.

2. In a large bowl, mix together flour and salt. (If you're making cinnamon bagels and you want the cinnamon mixed throughout, as opposed to marbled swirls, add 3 tsp cinnamon and 1/2 cup raisins now.)

3. Make a well in the centre of the flour. Add the yeast and the remaining 3/4 cups of warm water. Stir until just combined, then tip out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 10 minutes.

4. If you're making cinnamon bagels and want cinnamon swirls throughout the dough, sprinkle the cinnamon and raisins onto the dough now. Knead briefly to combine.

5. Set the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, turn to coat, then cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place for at least 1 hour, or until doubled in size.

  

6. Once the dough has risen, separate into 8 equal pieces. 

7. Roll each piece into a smooth, round ball. **This is where I had trouble. A skin had formed along the top because I'd forgotten to turn the dough. The skin made the dough tough to roll. If this happens to you, I found oiling your hands a little bit and working that into the dough helped, but probably the best is just to prevent the skin from forming in the first place :)

8. Poke your thumb through the centre of each dough ball, then widen the hole slightly by wiggling your thumb. Cover the bagels with damp paper towel and let rest for 10 minutes.

9. Put a large pot of water to boil and preheat the oven to 220C / 425F. Cover a baking sheet in parchment paper, and spray the paper with non-stick spray. If you have cornmeal or semolina flour, you can sprinkle a bit of that around the paper as well.

  

10. Once the water is boiling, use a slotted spoon to lower each bagel into the water. Let the bagels boil for 1-2 minutes (2 minutes for extra chewiness), then turn over and boil for another 1-2 minutes, depending on the desired chewiness.

11. Use a slotted spoon to remove the bagels from the water and place them on the prepared baking tray.

  

12. If you're adding any toppings, use an egg wash to coat the tops of the bagels and apply the toppings. 

13. Bake for 20 minutes, or until evenly browned. The bottoms should sound hollow when tapped. 

You can eat them right away (mmm...so good!), but set whichever ones you don't eat on racks to cool.

Rhossili Beach

One of the absolute best things about Swansea is the beach. I cycle along the coast to campus every single day and I still never get tired of it. On sunny days, nothing beats going to the beach and taking a walk. Nothing :)

When summer comes, there will be multiple beach barbecues to look forward to, but as it's still winter, my friend and I just went for a hike at one of my favourite beaches along the Gower Peninsula - Rhossili. The tidal range here is incredible, and the beach stretches on for miles. Today was even a little sunny (!!) so it was extra fantastic - we saw wild horses, sheep (of course), and a seal (well, it was a seal carcass, but it was still evidence of seals being not far away. So I will include it in my wildlife count for the day. You have to take what you can get here, I think). Afterwards, as with all good walks, we stopped for tea.

Anyway, I mostly just wanted to share the photos of the day - it was so pleasant and sunny, I just had to share.

Motivation

I feel like I start each year with the same blind optimism with which I started the last. I happily list my New Year's Resolutions (or goals, as I tried tricking myself into thinking of them as this year) in my journal, and tell myself, 'This is the year I'm going to get it together. This is the year I make great strides towards having a healthy and happy lifestyle. I'm going to become a real life version of the smiley woman on multivitamin packages and granola boxes, just wait!'

The sad truth is that too often and too soon my optimistic list becomes a record of my failure to change. And it's so frustrating - because I really do want to stop biting my nails forever, I want to get more than 5 hours of sleep every night, and I finally want to make it  through one non-fiction book in a year. I don't feel like I'm setting an unrealistic bar here!

Unfortunately, my problem is that as soon as I have a bad day where I miss some of my goals, everything goes down hill. I end up sabotaging myself and feeling frustrated and guilty about things until the next year when the whole cycle starts again. This can't be healthy.

This week has been fairly typical, which is not what I was aiming for, and which is why I'm writing this post. I had big goals this week - in bed by 11, up by 6, running 3 times a week, no food after 9 pm, at school by 9 am...I was going to be disciplined and energetic. And everything went perfectly well on Monday, but then yesterday happened. And then today. And now I can feel my spiral starting and I want to stop it before it goes any further.

I feel like I should acknowledge (in a somewhat public way, rather than just to myself in the bathroom mirror every morning) that yes, there will be missteps, and I will not meet my goals every day. Goodness knows chocolate can only be refused so many times before one spontaneously combusts...but I'm going to try to not give up on things this year, even when they start going wrong and I feel like I'm failing.

These photos were taken (by the amazing Bente!) in New Mexico, and have no connection whatsoever to the theme of this post other than they make me happy and remind me that things can be excellent (like the chili hot chocolate that was in that cup, or the hot air balloon ride over the New Mexico desert! Life can be SO GOOD!). But they seemed appropriate once I reasoned them out that way to myself.

I did try to find a picture that fit better with the theme, but all I could find was this. Which is, actually, appropriate, but not quite with the spirit of things :)

Happy New Year!

I hope your holidays were excellent! Mine were - I was able to go back to Edmonton for a few weeks and spent Christmas and New Years with my family. I won't be going home this summer (things will be too crazy at school - I'm writing up this year) so I won't see them again for a year...perhaps the longest I've gone without seeing my parents, now that I think about it... Needless to say, it was so very excellent to be able to catch up with friends and family, and to just have time to relax and be busy in the kitchen :) Here's a sampling of this year's experiments - the photos should all link to the recipe, and I think I can highly recommend them all, actually - great successes all around!

Anyway, I'm back in Swansea now, jetlagged and excited to get back into things. This year's going to be crazy, as I mentioned, but I think (I hope?!) I'm ready for it. I have to submit my thesis by December 2012, which is both terrifying, as it requires writing a thesis, and exciting, because I'm really looking forward to whatever is going to happen once I'm finished with all of this. The question of what I was going to do next came up frequently over the holidays, which is understandable but also somewhat frustrating. I've been trying to keep a fairly open mind about jobs and plans post PhD, and while I have a lot of ideas, I have no real expectations as to where I want to be or what I want to be doing directly afterwards.

I've been extremely fortunate up to this point in my life in that opportunities seem to present themselves when I get close to the end of a phase of my life, and I'm hoping/praying that this trend continues. When I first started university in 2001, I had planned on going on to med school and becoming a doctor. I realized fairly early on that that plan wouldn't pan out, and one semester a geography class was the only course that fit into my random 'keeping my head above water' schedule; it turned out to be my favourite course of all, and lead me in a direction I'd never considered. I hadn't planned on doing an MSc, but the chance came up right when I finished my BSc, and as a result I was able to travel and do some of the most interesting work with some of the best people I know. Similarly, a job filling in during a maternity leave became available exactly when I finished my MSc and wasn't sure what to do next, and while that job was beyond frustrating at times, it also taught me a lot about myself and what I could handle. The chance to move to the UK for a PhD literally fell into my lap when that job finished, and it's another chance I'm glad I took - while I feel like I got off to a bit of a rocky start, I have definitely come to love my life here.

All I mean to say by all of that, is that so far nothing has worked out according to any of my plans, and ultimately things have worked out better than I could have anticipated. So I've decided that rather than have any set plan, I'm just going to keep my eyes open this year and see where life takes me. Not in a crazy hippie kind of way - I do have ideas for jobs I'd like afterwards, I just don't have my heart set on any one thing in particular, so in that sense I'm going to keep an open mind.

As well as keeping an eye open for various jobs and opportunities, I'm focusing on getting fit this year - I turn 30 in April, and that, combined with the thesis and everything, it just seems like it's time to find a good lifestyle that will keep me energetic and fit and happy for the foreseeable future. So! My goals (I won't say resolutions, because if I do I won't follow them - I have a horrible track record!) for this year are:

- run 3 to 4 times per week
- run Forest of Dean 10k in < 1 hour (May 26th!)
- finish hiking the Three Peaks (I've only done Snowdon - I must do Scafell and Ben Nevis!)
- stop eating like 6 adult males and start eating like 1 adult female (However, I should be clear that I will not cut out anything from my diet -I  don't know if it's possible to live without bread, cheese and chocolate, and all diets seem to exclude these items...but I am going to try to eat less of things. That seems reasonable. Especially if I want to ever be able to buy a pair of boots that fit over my calves. Blasted German man calves...)

I have other goals for the year, but these are the ones I'll probably end up talking about most, so I thought I'd share them here. I'm off to a decent start I think, I went running this morning and I'm planning to go again tomorrow...we'll see how long I can keep it up!

Good luck with any and all of your goals and resolutions - and I hope 2012 is a great year for you :)

13 Miles Later...

Today was Half Marathon Day, and I think it is very safe to say that it was a success!

I knew going in that I wouldn't be able to run the entire thing, just because of my subpar training, but my goal was to run the first 7 miles and then alternate walking/running for the remaining 6 miles. I'd hoped to finish within 3 hours, since I'm not super speedy :) Of course the ultimate goal was just to finish, the chance of which I was rather doubtful of last night, but I'm happy to say 2 out of 3 goals were achieved!

I ran the first 7 miles straight through, and then stopped at 7 and walked a mile, ran a mile, walked 2 miles and then ran the final 2 miles - so in total I ran 10 of the 13 miles!! I thought my legs were going to spontaneously detach at the hips by the end, but the point is I made it to the end!! I came in at 3:02, which is a bit longer than I'd hoped for, but almost on target. It's annoying to think that if I'd just pushed myself a bit harder at the beginning, or walked a bit faster during the walking bits, I could have been in under 3:00. NEXT TIME!!

I'm not going to lie - the last few miles were tough, especially given my fear of spontaneous amputation, but that feeling when I could finally see the finish line, and I knew I would make it to the end, was amazing! I also had a super cheering squad of some friends from Swansea, whose crazy loud yelling gave me the energy to pick up the pace for the last 350 meters. Never again will I underestimate the power of cheering spectators!

So, there we go - this goal has been achieved! Now I have to pick another race...I want to work on my time, so I'm thinking some shorter ones so I can focus on getting faster rather than distance. I'll keep you posted :) In the mean time, here are some photos from the day...

Cardiff Millenium Centre: site of the longest lines for port-a-potties in the history of the universe. Also, the starting line.

Me and Alex (my super fast running buddy - 1:55!! Go Alex!) before the race. My lovely friend/his lovely wife Anne was our early morning cheering squad, emergency contact, photographer and supply carrier :)

Stretching out our pre-race jitters...

There were 15000 runners there today!

Go Wales! They love all sporty things and dragons.

Almost finished!! 350 metres to go...

I just found the Swansea cheering squad - hence the smile. Trust me, by this point I would not have been smiling if I hadn't seen them!

Medals! And free massages! Fantastico!

10k!

This morning I ran 10k for the first time ever!!!! No stopping, and I managed to keep up with my normal time/km, which is amazing! My friend Sue came along, and I think if she hadn't been there I would have stopped after 7 - I felt like death. But running with someone is so much better than running with music because the conversations can distract you from how much further you have to go and how much you want to stop. She's never run 10k either, so we were both on a bit of a high afterwards :)

The Cardiff half marathon is next Sunday. ONE WEEK! I'm so glad today's run went well, because I think I should definitely be able to do 10 - 12k no problem next week, and then walk/run the rest so that I can finish in a reasonable amount of time.

I got my race pack the other day - I'm number 8031, and they make space for emergency contact information on the back of your number. Ominous. They also provide you with information in case something happens and you can't finish - it all sounds rather horrible, and this is just one of the many moments where I think it would all be easier if we had wands so we could just shoot up red sparks if we're in distress. Alas, I am but a Muggle.

Anyway, I got excited about the distance this morning - I'm going to hurt a bit tomorrow, I can tell already. I'm going to have to remember to stretch many many times today, but right now I just can't believe I actually did it!!

International Thanksgiving

It took me a while to make friends here in Wales. It was weird, because while I wouldn't say I make good friends easily, it's never been as difficult for me as it was here. I think months went by before I had a real conversation with someone here about something other than where I was from and what my research was. The real turning point, I think, was Canadian Thanksgiving last year.

I invited some people I'd met so far, but didn't know particularly well, over to celebrate. I think at one point there were 10 people in my very small living room. Half of them had to bring their own plates, cutlery and glasses as I only have four place settings, and since I have a two seater couch, most people were sitting on the floor. Back in Edmonton I had an overly stocked kitchen and could have entertained 10 - 12 people without worrying about anything other than seating. Here, most things were served straight from the pans, and I used my Portuguese cow creamer as a gravy boat. I was so worried beforehand that the total lack of supplies and space would make a bad impression, but I think it had exactly the opposite effect.

As soon as the first person started laughing about just how unappetizing gravy coming out the mouth of a cow creamer was, everything changed; it was the first night I really felt like myself rather than like I was trying to make friends. Thankfully, the friendships I made that night have stuck to the point where I can't imagine what life would be like here without these people - they're a huge part of what makes Swansea a great place to live.

We're having our Thanksgiving dinner tonight, and smelling the turkey roasting in the oven reminded me of last year and what a fantastic time it was. This is my favourite holiday of them all, because apart from the general craziness of cooking and timing the meal, there is really no stress associated with this day. No presents to buy, usually no weather craziness to impede travel plans, and no multi-day family juggling olympics. Just family and friends getting together for one great, relaxing day to celebrate all the good things we've been given and the great people around us.

So Happy Thankgiving (in advance to everyone across the ocean!) from me and Jorge (my cow creamer) - I hope it's a fantastic day for all of you!

Simon and Garfunkle Turkey

I've tried a few different recipes for roasted turkey, but my favourite so far has been a variation on Martha Stewart's Roast Turkey with Herb Butter, the variation being I'm too lazy to make the herb butter, and instead just stuff full herbs in random spots around turkey and add lots of butter.

This year, for International Thanksgiving, I thought I'd combine Martha's recipe with an idea I got from a Jamie Oliver Naked Chef episode I saw a while ago where he replaces the rack of the roasting tray with vegetables. I've tried this with roast beef and had fantastic results, so I thought this year I'd try it with the turkey, and it did not disappoint!

So, if you're still looking for a recipe for this year's turkey, give this one a try! And, let me know if you have any suggestions or alterations - apart from the cheesy name, that is. That's sticking around from now on...

As a side note, in the interests of using all parts of the turkey, rather than throwing out the neck, mashed gravy vegetables, bones and grisly bits left after carving, I save everything and use them all to make turkey stock the next day. The turkey stock can easily be frozen if you're not going to use it right away, or you can make some excellent soup with all the turkey dinner leftovers :)

Simon and Garfunkle Turkey
1 whole turkey (mine was around 11 lbs)
5 - 6 Tbsp butter
1 small handful each of fresh sage, rosemary and thyme
1/2 lemon (optional)
salt and pepper
2 medium yellow onions
2 stalks celery
2 carrots
3 cloves garlic
3 mushrooms
1/2 c. white wine (optional)
A few sprigs of parsley
1 - 2 tsp cranberry sauce
1 Tbsp plain white flour or cornstarch

I've listed the cooking times for my unstuffed turkey first, and the times for a stuffed turkey are in brackets afterwards. It's an extra 1 1/2 to 2 hours for a stuffed turkey.

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. Peel and halve the onions and quarter the celery, carrots and mushrooms.
3. Add all the vegetables in a single layer to your roasting pan and sprinkle with a little salt and pepper.
4. Rinse the turkey inside and out with cold water and pat dry with paper towel.
5. Separate the skin from the turkey breast and drumsticks by carefully sliding your hand under the skin. It should separate fairly easily.
6. Mix salt and pepper with the butter and then rub all over the turkey, inside and out, as well as under the skin where it's been separated.
7. Insert the fresh herbs randomly throughout the space between the skin and the meat; as the turkey roasts the skin will become really thin and partly transparent, so spreading out single sage leaves and placing individual stalks of thyme and rosemary sporadically will look nicer than great clumps of herbs together (if you're going for that aesthetic appeal).
8. If you're stuffing the turkey, add the stuffing now. I didn't stuff the turkey this time (someone else was in charge of stuffing this year) so instead I put a stalk each of sage, rosemary and thyme in the main cavity of the turkey along with 1/2 a lemon to keep things extra moist.
9. Place the turkey over the vegetables in the roasting pan, tucking and tying wings and drumsticks as needed.
10. Loosely cover the turkey with foil and roast at 350F, basting every 45 minutes or so, until a meat thermometer reads 125F, about 2 1/2 to 3 hours (3 to 4 hours).
11. Remove the foil and increase the oven temperature to 400F. Roast for 30 minutes (1 hour), or until the turkey is nicely browned and a meat thermometer reads 180F. If the turkey starts browning too quickly, cover again with the foil.
12. Remove the turkey from the pan to a cutting board. Cover with foil and allow to rest for 30 minutes.
13. Mash the vegetables in the roasting pan, add the white wine, parsley, cranberry sauce and stir everything together, simmering over low heat on the stove and stirring frequently.
14. Collect any extra juices from the turkey and mix with the flour/cornstarch to make a paste. Stir the paste in to the gravy to thicken.
15. Before serving, pour the gravy through a strainer and season with salt and pepper to taste.

**Another option is to simmer the turkey neck in just enough water to cover, and add that stock to the gravy for extra flavour. I've made gravy with and without the turkey neck stock and it's been fine both ways, although I like the idea of being able to use all parts of the turkey, and so I generally do add this step.

Three weeks to go...

The Cardiff Half Marathon is in three weeks. Three weeks!!! I think up until now I've mostly been excited. A little nervous of course, just because I've never done anything like this before, but mostly excited. But today I just got a bit panicky - I mean, I'm still going to do it, it'll be fine and I'll realize at the end that I was worrying for nothing, but right now? I'm feeling more than slightly apprehensive about the whole thing. Why on earth did I say I would do this when I've never even run a 10k? Should I have backed out over the summer when I hurt my leg and couldn't keep up with the training? I hate the idea of quitting anything, but I wonder if, once I knew that I wouldn't be able run the full distance, I should have backed out so that someone who could run the full distance could participate?

There was a 10k race here in Swansea today, and there were people who just went to watch. And I hadn't really given it much thought before, but it hit me that there would be spectators in Cardiff too... Currently, I wake up an hour and a half earlier than I would like just so I can run when there are fewer people out and about. And while I'm no Phoebe Buffay, I'm not what you'd call a graceful runner either - my face is always beet red, I'm puffing away and sweaty (of course). I wonder at these girls who seem to be able to run in hot pants and a sports bra with minimal jiggling and without breaking a sweat while I jog along in as many compressing layers as I can get away with without overheating (if they made breathable running burkas, I'd probably invest). And what if I can't do it and then everyone sees me fail?

My point is, nobody needs to see me run. And as I write this I realize how ridiculous I'm being. Who cares? Nobody is actually going to be watching me specifically, they're just there for the general event and for their friends. There will be so many people there that nobody's going to notice the girl in the half burka running in front of them, even if it does take me ages to actually run across their line of vision. And I'm not going to fail.

I think what I like most about running is how you can completely lose yourself to absolutely nothing and just run. No stress, no worrying, just focusing on making it to the next bench, or the next bend. And then when you get there you think 'just one more, and then I'll walk for a second', and you keep doing that until you reach the point that you can see the end and then you realize you can make it - and that feeling is amazing. About 100 metres from the end of my route I always force myself to run as absolutely fast as I can, no matter how long I've been running or how tired I am, and I think that's my favourite part of the whole run - knowing that I feel (sometimes) like death and still being able to do that bit at the end...I'm literally grinning when I actually finish, knowing that I've done that.

So I'm not going to worry anymore about this craziness. I may not be the fastest or the best, but it makes me happy. And even though I won't be able to run the full distance, I'm running. And one day I'll run the full thing, although hopefully by then I won't feel the need for the half burka.

Goal of 7k, no stopping, reached last week!! This week's plan is 7k (Monday), 5k (Wednesday) and 7k (Saturday).

Mmmm...

Fall is my favourite of all the seasons - I mean, spring is excellent, of course, with all the new flowers and the warmer weather, but fall is my absolute favourite. The weather outside gets crisper and everything inside gets warmer. I can't think of fall without thinking of pumpkins, cinnamon and nutmeg, Thanksgiving, baking and orange and brown. All of my favourite things :)

I have friends coming over tonight to watch The Great British Bake Off (so so excellent - who doesn't love a good natured baking competition?) and I was so excited to make fall foods - irish soda bread, butternut squash and ginger soup with rocket salad and some Saskatoon Berry wine for dinner and then lemon poppyseed cake for dessert. I don't even know if it will be good, but it smells like fall in my kitchen for the first time this year, and I love it :)

when the weather wins...

I think camping is one of my favourite things to do - I love being outside and hearing nature at night (so long as that nature doesn't include bears!), I love being wrapped up in a warm sleeping bag and reading with my head lamp, and I love waking up in a tent. I love drinking a cup of hot tea in the morning while sitting outside your tent and planning a hike and picnic for the day - it's all just pleasant. So all of this was what I had in mind when my friend and I decided to go camping at the Brecon Beacons this weekend, a national park about an hour away from Swansea.

Unfortunately, neither of us counted on the sheer determination of the rain in Wales to foil our plans. We'd left Swansea Saturday morning, in spite of the pouring rain in the city, thinking that things would clear up by the afternoon (tip: never trust the Met Office. They lie.). It rained the whole way to Brecon, sometimes so hard that we could hardly see the sheep along the side of the road (no roadside fences here - we like sheep to be free to cross at their own convenience), and continued to rain intermittently all afternoon. There was a brief and welcome break when we set up our tent at the campground, but it started raining hard again in the evening and didn't stop until this afternoon. Lovely.

Both of us are geography students, and we've both spent enough time doing field work to not actually care about rain. But there's a big difference between having to do doing field work in the rain and choosing to spend a day hiking in the rain. So we agreed to postpone the hike for a sunny day, and ended up exploring a bit by car instead. Which brought us to a wonderful, wonderful place: Hay-on-Wye.

 

Hay-on-Wye is right on the border between England and Wales, and it's best known as the book capital of the UK - there are so many bookstores there, many of them used, and all of them full of character and just general fantastic-ness. Fortunately we could both spend hours (literally, as we discovered today) trawling bookstores, and so we spent an excellent day wandering between bookstores and searching for books. I tend to make a beeline for fiction, sci-fi/fantasy and cookery, but in one store I wandered over towards the 'self-sufficiency' section, because a book on henkeeping caught my eye (I have a not-so-secret dream of living out in the country with a large vegetable patch, hens and bees. In my mind it is fabulous, but I feel like the reality would be somewhat different...). Anyway!!! Imagine my surprise and then excitement when, right between henkeeping and goat husbandry I saw:

That's right - SOIL SCIENCE!!!! My unexpected and inexplicable academic passion. It was great - soil surveys from England and Wales, historical soil records from the UK and some textbooks. Such happiness! The woman at the cash register did give me a funny look when I handed over my pile of soil books, but really, when you can buy a textbook for £3, you just do it. Any student knows this.

Anyway, while the weekend did not go as planned, it was still pretty perfect. At least it stopped raining long enough on the way home for me to take pictures as proof that we actually went there!

Success!

I went running again this morning - so far this week I've somehow managed to stick to my activity plan...very satisfying. Anyway!! This morning I went running with a friend and was able to do the full 5k without stopping once, and we were talking the whole time! I've always wondered how on earth people have the breath to talk and run at the same time, but today I was one of those people. On top of that, our time wasn't horrible, and we weren't going any slower than I normally do, which means I could definitely speed up when I'm on my own and not die, which has been my feeling before now.

How great!

Another 5k on Sunday, and then it's up to 7k next week.

Hymns

Tonight I was with some friends from church, and near the end of the evening the woman leading the discussion passed around some hymn books and asked us all to pick our favourite. Now, a lot of people my age don't like hymns much. I get it - they're old fashioned and they generally involve either an organ or a piano. Rarely a guitar, no drums. Never drums. But I, being somewhat old fashioned myself (I can admit it. Sometimes I feel like an 80 year old in a 29 year old body), kind of love them, and because most people nowadays don't like them so much, we tend not to sing them at church very often. So I was rather excited about the prospect of singing a bunch of random hymns on a Thursday night.

However, as a Lutheran/Alliance/Baptist church girl in a Methodist church environment, this became a difficult task, because apparently (although I didn't realize this until I moved here) there are different songs for different denominations (as though we needed yet another way of dividing people...). So I grew more and more disappointed as I flipped through the index at the back looking for the hymns that immediately sprang to mind from growing up in a hymn-y kind of church and finding none. Until I spotted it - Be Thou My Vision. It's my fall back hymn. The one that springs to mind at the most random times and always makes me feel better about whatever is going on. It is tied only by It Is Well With My Soul, which nearly always makes me cry.

Anyway, we went round the group and sang everyone's hymns (with a piano, thankfully...otherwise that could have been dreadful), and then we got to mine. And the only thing I could think about the whole time we were singing was my grandfather, and how he would have been smiling if he'd been there.

And so I just wanted to post this, in his honour. Because while I'm pretty sure all of my friends are aware that I'm a Christian and I go to church, it's not something I talk about very often. I'm not ashamed or embarrassed to talk about it, if it comes up in conversation I'm open and happy to talk about it, but I've never liked the 'In Your Face' Christianity that seems to come so easily to some. I'd rather just be, and let others be as well. But I can't sing hymns without thinking of my grandfather, and I can't think of my grandfather without thinking of true Christianity and how much, in my mind, he exemplified that. He would have been happy seeing me tonight, and even though he'll never read this, I just wanted to say, out loud (or on the internet...whatever.) that I had a lot of fun singing a bunch of random hymns on a Thursday night. And I wish he could have been there.

Running, craziness, and accountability

There won't usually be multiple posts in a day, but that earlier one was more about why this whole thing started, and this one is entirely different.

Around the middle of April, a friend and I were talking about how we wanted to start running, as we live in a city with a great running trail along the coast, and neither of us take advantage of it like we should. Anyway, it took us a few weeks, but by May we were right into it and had gone from jogging for 1 minute and wanting to die to jogging 5 km without stopping. That's a big deal!

I've never been an athletic person. I love walking, I love hiking, I love being out in the water. But sports and track activities have never been my thing. But I will admit it here - I LOVE RUNNING! I sleep better, I've got more energy, I feel fitter, more comfortable in my skin and in my clothes, I feel more confident and I just feel all around happier when I've been running. It's great! My friend shared my enthusiasm completely, so it was with happy and naively optimistic hearts that we signed up for the Cardiff Half Marathon on October 16, and started training to be able to run 21 km.

Unfortunately, I hurt my leg back in June, and my friend busted up her knee and her ankle around the same time. I could barely walk on it, and it's only very recently that I've been able to go out running again without wanting someone to just take pity on me and amputate my useless limb. However, it's now September. The half is in just over a month, and I'm back to being able to run 5k. Just barely.

Needless to say, I'm panicking a bit. I signed up for this and I want to do this, but I'm wondering if it's even possible at this point? What kind of crazy person signs up for a half marathon 2 months after they start running?

Anyway, I've come up with a new training schedule that involves running at least 5k three times a week, and cross training by doing yoga on running days and a cardio/crazy Jillian Michaels workout video on the off days. I'm hoping that by crosstraining and building up my cardio and flexibility I'll be able to run at least 13 km in Cardiff.

And that's okay, I think. At the beginning of April I couldn't run at all, and while I may not be able to run the whole thing, I'll for sure be able to do part of it, which is something I'd never ever thought I'd say.

So - here's my first 'accountability' post. Running 3 times a week, yoga 3 times a week, crazy Jillian 3 x a week. And I will rest on Sundays. Yikes.

eager feet...

I think it's fair to say I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to Lord of the Rings...the friend I went to see the third movie with will attest to this, as I vividly remember shrieking at her in the cinema parking lot when she asked why the eagles didn't just carry the ring to Mount Doom in the first place and save everyone else the trouble. I still don't know if I have an acceptable answer to that...

Plot discussions aside, there are a number of poems and lines throughout the books that stick with me like no other poetry can, and The Road Goes Ever On And On is the best example of this:

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
~ J.R.R. Tolkein, Fellowship of the Ring

And then there's this bit as well (and then I promise I'm done):
"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door...you step onto the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to."

It recently hit me that this is the last year of my 20s. Don't get me wrong - I'm not nervous about turning 30. I'm not having a crisis of any kind, nor am I feeling any desire to go back in time and relive my glorious youth...it's better left behind. No, what I'm feeling is this sense that 30 is going to be my year, and while I think I'm not doing horribly, I know I want more for myself.

I found a list of goals at the back of a journal today, and reading through them, I realized two things. Among the random crazy goals, I have also set realistic (not low, realistic!) goals for myself, and while I've met some of them, there are still many that are yet unrealized. Like eating a chocolate croissant in Paris, visiting New Zealand, learning to play the guitar and the fiddle, baking and decorating a wedding cake, becoming a daily runner, and to be comfortable in my own skin. And those are just the realistic goals - who knows what will end up happening - I never planned or hoped for Wales, but here I am, and it's been amazing!

I've kept a journal for years, but there's something about this turning 30 thing that makes me want to share where I am in my life right now and what happens along the way. So here I am. And as cheesy as it may sound, I'm going out of my door with eager feet - we'll see where this leads!