Other summer news

Being home, I finally got access to flour so managed to do some baking.

We were supposed to be down Cornwall for an amazing 3 week holiday. That did not happen. But I wanted a cream tea anyway so we made one and it was well worth it.

I also introduced mom and dad to my banana cake. I have had to make it 3 times since then. 

Other summer fun:

- lots of sitting in the back garden

- lots of cooking (I had to make the birthday dinners for both Dad and Craig)

- starting work

- arranging a new apartment (moving day is approaching!) 

- picnic evenings at Arley

- catching up with an old friend I haven't seen in 17 years!

I am looking forward to moving up to Scotland but it has been fun to be home. And I still have some time. :)

BBC Good Food Festival

This weekend was the BBC Good Food Festival at Hampton Court and I decided to treat myself to a VIP ticket. (I am a member of Her Majesty's Royal Palaces so got into the festival free and a discount on the VIP ticket.)

When I checked in, I was offered a free ticket for a flower arranging class. So why not? (I did get there a little late as finding the white Marque was a bit harder than expected as they were all white!)

My flowers

Demo

I was definitely the odd one out in the class (only one on her own and below 50) but it was something different and the other people were all very lovely. My arrangement turned out ok but it was more of a "randomly stick them in the vase" exercise. I don't think my next career will be flower arranging.
But I did get the flowers to take home. :)

My "arrangement".

 After the class I rushed to the other side of festival for my cooking demo.

Showing a giant steak

Lisa Faulkner

I will admit I randomly picked a chef as without TV, I have lost track of who's who. She cooked a Spanish style steak and potatoes which smelt amazing! And I got a copy of the recipes t=so I will have to try it out at some point.

The best part of having a VIP ticket was somewhere shady to sit down and unlimited Champagne (the real stuff, not Prosecco), plus tea, coffee and soft drinks. And it was near to the pavilion with some great 50s live music.

View from my seat. 

Great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Once cooled and "hydrated", I went to do some shopping. There were loads of options though disappointing on the gluten food side.

However very well stocked on the gin side. :) It was hard to choose. (I did manage to get some little tasting sizes for an at-home gin tasting I am planning.)

So many options.

Followed of course by more Champagne before heading home. It was free and very nice! What is a girl to do? :)

Plus my feet were killing me! I really needed to sit down before the trip home.

Happier feet.

I did spend more money than I should have given I am saving for a holiday but I did managed to get about 30% of my Christmas gifts sorted. As well a few little treats for myself. There was a lovely non-alcoholic gin which tasted amazing, a real artisan gin, and some Garlic Vodka. It sounded odd and a bit disgusting so I had to try it and turns out pretty nice. It's made from sweet roast garlic and would go great in a liqueur coffee. Plus weird enough to be wonderful.

I also found out my only vase is now somewhat less than waterproof so had to make a couple of vases MacGyver style. 

VT Cheese Festival

One of the best things about Blacksburg in the summer is the number of festivals. There seems to be one pretty much every weekend. This weekend was the first Virginia Tech Cheese Festival. Thankfully it was held indoors at the Moss Art's Centre as the weather this week has really heated up - 90 F with ~80-90% humidity (I wish I was joking about the humidity level). I have been working from home as much as possible as my office is generally in the summer 10-20 F hotter than outside and like a sauna.
I decided to go to this one on my own as it was easy than trying to organize people so I got the bus down there.

Outside the Arts Center

With the ticket, you get a free drink. Someone warned me that I should get a drink first as the queues inside were long and it would be more pleasant with a glass of wine. You don't have to tell me twice. So I grabbed a glass of Riesling and a bottle of Sprite (which turned out to be an excellent decision). Unfortunately the lady was right about the queues and the wine didn't make it to the first tasting!

Cheese

My favorite (they even gave me extra free cheese later!)

 Overall it was not very well organized. They had about 15 vendors split over 3 floors. But each floor only had one queue, so you had to wait in that one queue to try any of them. Even if you didn't want to try some. And they only had 2 drinks vendors, both on the ground floor. Hence why I was very happy to have the extra drink. If you are in a group, you can send someone on a drink run, but I would have lost my space in line and have to start again. Not going to happen.

Very long queues.

Also a lot had bread or crackers with the cheese on, which makes sense. But for someone who can't eat wheat, it sucked!

Looks good

 At least VT can make fun of itself. That the only explanation I have for the amount of cheese related merchandise.

Cheese everything

Cheese hat anyone?

 The Moss Arts Centre is very nice and though I was standing in line for a long time, the view was pretty good at times. And, when not so pretty I had my book. That is when not eavesdropping on the sometimes bizarre conversations around me.

Cathedral style windows

They also had live music outside which was good (though they must have been melting), but as everyone was inside and couldn't hear it, I was a little confused as to why.

Music

 And they had a little petting zoo. Well, some cows and sheep. The calves were so cute. :-)

Chilling in the sun

So cute.

teenagers!

On the way home, I stopped by the UPS store to buy boxes. I am starting to organize my packing. However it was not fun getting them home on the bus!
On the evening, I cooked dinner (the cheese and broccoli bakes sort of worked) with a cheese platter of my recent acquisitions for dessert.

Gouda, Fetina and cubes of horseradish cheese.

Sadly I was woken up in the middle of the night by a bug bite on my leg. It didn't seem bad during the day. Now it is roughly the size of my palm. :-( And the itching is driving me crazy!!!!

 On Sunday I attempt to sell some of my clothes at a consignment store. Apparently my style is too old. Very insulted. But they only want clothes for teens and considering the clothes they had, I think I should be happy to say I don't have any of those. But I did have a nice meal at a friends house on his deck to end the day, so not a complete loss.

Past few weeks

So the past weeks weeks have been pretty boring thanks to a LOT of work :-( accompanied with a significant lack on funds (thank you US taxes). I spent one weekend helping a friend move house and the others just trying to get through work I didn't manage to get to during the week and more job applications. The only thing I have done for fun is helping out at the RAD class occasionally. (Fight night is always fun!)

However it does seem like winter is coming to an end. (I am not holding my breathe as we have had snow in April before but still, there is hope.) It also brings out peoples lack of driving ability. (Honestly that is only thing I can think of to explain this! And even that is pushing it.)

Worse parking ever

 It was fun watching, from a restaurant, the number of people trying to turn into these spaces and then visibly cursing out the idiot taking up 4 spaces. I have seen someone taking up 2 but really! 4?!?!

I also found a packet of the most interesting flavored crisps (chips for the Americans) I have seen in a while. (Like I said it has been a dull few weeks, with not much than work in my life.) They were ok but I don't think I will be be buying more. (They taste a bit weird to start then ok, then after a while, a bit sickly!)

Truly American

Tonight I was feeling homesick (there's a lot going on a home right now and it is hard being away) so I made a curry. It takes time to do it properly with making the spice mix (and in Blacksburg actually finding the spices!) but was definitely worth it. The GF naan bread were ok and probably about as good as I am going to get so I was happy! Of course I then ate my weight in curry!

Butter chicken and GF naan

I start the student police academy on Monday where I will learn about police life, including SWAT and hopefully how to drive a police car. I also get to do CSI. :-) So hopefully I will have something interesting to do (other than work which does not qualify) over the next few weeks. 

Happy Halloween

On Halloween this year, I decided to stay home and cook. (And given the weather I think I made the correct choice!)
I have a great recipe for pizza dough which has just 2 ingredients. It was so simple and tastes so good, though getting it into a snake was a bit tricker.

Snake calzone

"Are you talking to me?"

It was filled with mushrooms, olives, homemade tomato sauce, and pineapple. (Which is basically what I had in my kitchen!) And of course an Italian wine. Well if was Friday night!

Halloween special dinner

This weekend has been a real mixed bag of really good and really bad. But campus is very pretty at the moment with the fall leaves. It is not going to last very long. :-( Another week and it will be dark nights and super cold. It supposed to go below 0 C this weekend. Winter is coming. So I have been enjoying the sun whenever I can.

Near the department

Drill field,  looking towards the Memorial.

Once again I am spending the weekend working and cooking (including my favorite soup) and cleaning. But my apartment smells great now and I feel quite accomplished! :-)

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkins and Pizza

On Saturday I went with Steve and Eva to a few fall festivals. The first was at a Horse farm. We got here as they were opening so things were still getting going but there was still plenty to do. Starting with an assault course.

Race around the cones

They had lots of pumpkins around, as does everywhere at the moment. Apparently painted pumpkins are just as common as carved ones around here.

Painted pumpkins

There was a pony ride, trail rides, and tractor rides. So Eva went on a pony ride.

Looking a bit cautious (it was big pony)

Lucky the pony

We did get tickets for the tractor ride but no one seemed to know what was going on. I thought about offering to drive but doubted anyone would get on the back if I did! So we amused ourselves with the games around. Well, Steve and Eva amused themselves and I took photos!

Seesaw

Lassoing the "bull"

Get that bull!

It become a tug of war - Eva won of course.

The weirdest was the udder toss which just sounds wrong. It's like corn holes, where you have boards with holes in and the idea is to throw bean bags throw the holes in the opposite teams boards - very popular in tailgating (pre-football drinking and eating in car parks). Except here they had gloves filled with water to look like udders and the aim was to throw them into the opposite teams bucket.

Toss the udder 

Climbing on the hay bales

Nap time!

After the horse farm (we never did get those tractor rides), we headed to Sinklands, which is a pumpkin farm where  they have a festival throughout October. There was lots to do and very colorful.

Pumpkin scarecrows.

They had lots of pumpkins still, though this was the last week. I decided not to get one as I still have about 3 butternut squashes in my fridge. I don't think a pumpkin will fit. (I have developed a serious addiction to homemade butternut squash soup!)

Pumpkin patch

Colorful pumpkins

We got some chili and sandwiches for lunch and tried to avoid the yellow jackets (local wasps) while eating. (Eva wanted to give them her cheetos to make friends.) The sun was out and it was so nice sitting outside. It is not going to be possible for long. It is supposed to snow this coming weekend! :-(

Tractor

They had a very cute little maze which Eva enjoyed.

Headed for home!

They also had some animals to pet. My favorite was the cutest little kid I have seen in a long time!

Mini ponies.

Cute kid

I also went into my first corn maze! Eva was leading and did a very good job. (Though we did take some interesting routes which I am not convinced were actually paths.)

Corn maze

The advantage of being a kid.

After the maze, we had to go on the hay ride. (I made sure! I have never been on one before so we HAD to!) We got some kettle corn for the trip. It was only about 10 minutes but fun munching away as we bounced along.

Tasty kettle corn.

They also had a pumpkin toss - Shooting pumpkins from a sling as far as they can go, which is quite far. It seemed fun but a waste. I would rather find a way to eat them!
I was really tempted by the tiny pumpkins. I have no idea what I would do with them but they were so cute.

Lots of little ones!

The creepy Hokie bird was also out. It's a guy on stilts and very steam punk. He even had a tip jar but it was on his butt. Strange!

Steam punk Hokie bird

Last stop was for ice-cream. I stole a bit of Steve's pumpkin ice-cream, which was tasty but I had eaten way too much kettle corn by this point. (And Eva was not going to share any of hers - she put away the whole tub!)

Tiger eyes.

More pumpkins.

They dropped me home for a few hours while Eva went to her friends Birthday party. I try to avoid those - loud! So I skyped home to catch up as my parents have been away for the week. After the party, on the way back Steve and Eva picked me up and we made pizzas. I was going to try a new recipe for the dough but forgot a few of the ingredients. :-( But thankfully I brought some bases (just in case the recipe didn't work). I was going to take photos but the kettle corn had worn off and they didn't last long enough. :-)
Eva and I curled up and watched a movie before books and bedtime dancing. It was very sweet. Steve and I then drank too much wine before I got a taxi home.
The rest of the weekend was the normal - work. :-( But needs to be done.

This week has been the usual - work. But I am going to the ballet tomorrow night which I am very excited about. It has been ages and I am looking forward to seeing the new arts centre at VT.