Lopsided chocolate cakes, mojitos and friends...

Yes I cursed the cake. It tasted great, no problem there, it was aesthetically not as pleasing as I would have liked. You see..I thought I had two 23cm springform cake tins (well in SA I had so many I could not keep track) but when I went to fish them out I discovered a mistake had been made...in DUBLIN I only own ONE. Sadly the cake batter had already been doubled and was lusciously brown and silky waiting for its receptacle for the final phase.
Anyhow...I had to place ALL the batter in the tin, bake and pray...that it did not get burned by the required extended cooking time. The cake came out of the oven lovely and large and I was rather pleased with the result.
Sadly when it came to cutting the cake in half for icing and sandwiching back together purposes things went a litle awry. I did not do a great job cutting in half...more like 1/3 - 2/3 ratio, then I iced it and discovered that the cake had a mind of its own and had decided that sliding and sloping was the game it wanted to play. I did actually contemplate baking another cake but considering 350 grams of good quality chocolate had been used for the icing alone I decided I would ply my guests with mojitos and any other form of alcohol they showed an interest in and then the impact of my lopsided cake would go unnoticed.


Of course the day was a great success, food was plentiful...South Africans have a TERRIBLE habit of bringing at LEAST 2 different kinds of meat to a braai, and generally 2 people bring enough to share...when everyone does this the meat pile grows horrifically...the alcohol supply depletes while the men braai and the women chat and we all go home happy.





Just LOOK at all that meat...a casserole dish AND a lasagne dish both FULL.

Whistle stop tour of our last days

I have not even gone through Sunday, Monday or Tuesday yet....a whirlwind tour then? After all it is 00:18 and I am due to wake up at 05:00 to catch a plane to London, so be VERY impressed that you are even been given this much!!!!
Sunday was Marianne's birthday.....we had breakfast at the hotel, went to Masstrecht -too tired to remember the spelling -SORRY!!!!! It is a very old Roman city in the south of the Netherlands and because I am exhausted you will need to Google for more information! We did wonder around, enjoyed lunch there and then made our way back to Kerkrade because we were having dinner at a Greek restaurant for Marianne's birthday....a GREEK restaurant with pizza and pasta on the menu...??? NOT that I am complaining because Jess was very happy to order a pizza! I was craving vegetables by this stage of being on holiday and ordered a VERY traditional Greek meal.....Baked vegetables in roomsous (cream sauce) - a mix of broccoli, cauliflower, peppers and spinach....YUM. Traditional....NO.
On Monday we went to Snoworld to have a look at options and discovered that we could have a 4 hour snow pass for €23....we wanted a lesson but the instructors were fully booked and as Marianne is a good skier we opted for a lesson from her!
Well....I really do not want to bad mouth myself BUT....I moaned like a baby about the ski boots. I have never been more uncomfortable in my life! I did ski, I DID fall and I DID have fun...but I still need a little convincing that a ski holiday is a good idea....I mean I wear CROC's!!!! Comfort people....
Anyway, the skiing was great, I stayed on the baby slope but felt like an expert when I managed to do a few turns and even got Eric and Lara down the baby slope on my own! This morning I felt vindicated when I discovered a beautiful blue bruise on my right shin from the ski boots...see...not moaning for NOTHING......The kids had an absolute ball and I think we will be saving for a ski holiday...aching feet or not!
Today we had to make our way to Eindhoven for our flight home, we had a lot of rain....Holland was sad to see us go!!! Kirstin was sad to leave, she was trying to convince us that pig latin helped her get to grips with Dutch..mmmmmm.

A lick and a promise

I have not heard that saying in years and it just popped into my head when I was surveying my house cleaning efforts today. Could have done more but I will get by and when Rose popped in for tea I could sit her in the lounge without removing all manner of things from sofas and floor.

So the "anniversary" of my second born's birth arrived and in true Kirstin style we got to spend the day at home. We were supposed to go into town, have breakfast at Lemon and then do a horse and carriage ride from Stephen's Green but alas the weather would not cooperate. As it is the day of "anything your heart desires" as long as it does not entail the loss of too much cash we turned to Kirstin for plan B. And so it was that I found myself in front of the stove making crepes with bananas, Nutella and marshmallows....FOR BREAKFAST. Kirstin also decided that she wanted to stay home (yay!) so we spent the morning obeying her command. Derrick, Rose and Emily arrived for tea with Kathy hot on their heels.
Malcolm was getting back from the USA and I could not get hold of him, the weather was revolting and I had heard that some flights had been grounded in London so things were not looking too good. he was due to land at 14h00 so when I had not heard from him by 16h00 I was ever so mildly worried. This was assuaged shortly thereafter with a call to pick him up outside a pub in Stillorgan. So I left everyone to their own devices, coffee, tea and cake provided and went dashing off to fetch the father of my offspring. Dinner was a piece of cake - ha ha - Kirstin has a standing order for macaroni cheese on her birthday so it was easy as pie (sorry) to whip up (oops sorry again), helped along by a packet of M&S ready cooked crispy streaky bacon, one of our finest discoveries in Ireland thus far ;) Bacon without the splatter is a big + in my book, although if it is a big breakfast fry up the splatter of bacon is still a necessity.
12th birthday done and dusted, holy schmoly my BABY is 12...

Whale of a day

Phew life is suddenly enormously hectic. My once a week for 4 hour job has turned into 3 days a week and even though 2 of them are half days I still only get home at 3PM. No complaints though, because at the moment I am thoroughly enjoying the interaction with people, and as it is all new there is much to learn. In a couple of months I know I will be bored but this is only part-time so it’s grand.

So rewind time….28 March

The day before Kirstin’s birthday…. In traditional style she got to choose a cake and alas I discovered that she still wanted to turn to my children’s birthday cake books for her choice, she has made some very challenging cake decisions in the past, I have made a horse carousel, a teletubbie cake, with all 4 hand made plastic icing teletubbies lolling about on a hill, a fairy toadstool…I am sure you get the picture and some of you even remember the cakes!
A whale was the choice of the day, sigh of relief, but of course I did not have a big enough tin so I had to downscale the template, luckily it did not require too much skill as it was fairly basic.
Blue icing (Yuk) was called for so a trip to SuperValu was necessary.
When I walked out the door I bumped into my neighbour who insisted I come in for a QUICK coffee. Her grandson is working in South Africa so she loves to chat and over an hour later (no complaints, the cake and the company was excellent) I left only to discover that it was pouring down and I had to change my walk to a drive.
Of course I was now ever so slightly stressed as I had a cake to bake and I had foolishly booked movie tickets too. Luckily Kirstin wanted a chocolate cake (with blue icing mmmm) so I could make Nigellas cake which is THE BEST because you just bung everything in the food processor and whiz. Needless to say I did manage to get the cake done in time and we meandered down to Dundrum to do a bit of shopping before the movie, the kids had bought themselves each a Nintendo DS Lite so they needed games…
We went to see 27 Dresses, a sweet romantic comedy if you have nothing better to do. Then it was home to ice the cake and lots of food colouring was required mmmmm.
More about the big day another day...because I need to do a spot of cleaning today.

Ahhhhh Lee Ann...

A BRILLIANT birthday poem just for me from Lee...

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOUUUUUUUUUU
YOU LEFT THE SA ZOOOOOOOOOO
YOU LIVE IN GREEN IRELANDDDDDDD
AND WE ALL MISS YOU TOOOOOOOO

HIP HIP ……………… HOORAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HIP HIP ……………… HOORAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
NOG ‘N PIEP……….. HOORAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What to do for the BIG 4 0

Yep, hubby will be 40 on March 01 and I am already stressing. I have looked at flights back to S.A for us all, obviously that is where all our friends are, but once we pay for the flights there will be no money for a party! Malcolm does not know what he wants, fishing at Lake Kariba (alone), a visit to the swamps (again alone), a sojourn to Europe (with us), back to S.A. with a visit to the bush thrown in or NOTHING. He is SO busy at work he comes home exhausted and the last thing he wants to face is the Natalie inquisition. Do I just go ahead and surprise him or do I bite my tongue, grin and bare it? Now if we had won that lottery a month ago we would have no problem, in fact Malcolm and I had already decided on the party, the venue, the presents etcetera... argh!!!!!!!!