One a penny, two a penny

Yes I know, Easter was weeks ago, I fail at blogging, but I have beautiful images of hot cross buns to share, that I know you don't want to miss out on.

I was alone on Easter weekend, N has been away a lot for work the past month or so; not to mention the fact that neither Good Friday nor Easter Monday are public holidays here! So it could have been a miserable one, but thankfully I was invited to a two-year old's Easter egg hunt, which made the weekend a whole lot more fun!

We went to a place called Cylburn Arboretum, where I'd never been before. It was really lovely, and had a very English country garden feel which was rather nice.

It was the first time the weather was really nice, although still a little too chilly for our posh picnic really. Still very enjoyable though!

And finally some daffodils!

I filled the Sunday by making hot cross buns from Paul Hollywood's "How To Bake". They came out awesome, but went stale incredibly quickly. The one's I froze right away are still awesome though!

I also indulged in some American Easter candy. Peanut butter for the win! Nom nom nom!

Update

So yeah, I was doing pretty well at blogging regularly for a while there, but then we weren't doing anything interesting, other than watching a lot of Bones, so I didn't have anything to say! And then we did so much fun stuff that I didn't have time for blogging. And I keep forgetting to take photos. So here's a (hopefully) brief update of what's been going on in these parts recently. Enjoy!

Anniversary

Early in February N & I quietly celebrated a whole four years together with some sushi :)

Chinese New Year

I made spring rolls, and N made the most amazing sweet & sour pork! Nom nom nom!

Bara brith

I made bara brith for the first time for a lab meeting and it went down sooooooo well. It tasted so good and was incredibly easy to make, definitely making that one again!

Roller derby

Got tickets for the final match of the Baltimore league's tournament (Charm City Roller Girls). Lots of fun! Man those girls can skate!

Craft council show

Spent the following day wandering around the Convention Centre all day at the American Craft Council show which was awesome! I didn't realise how massive it was going to be, but we were there for four hours! I bought a mug and some chopsticks, ever practical...

Welsh day

We celebrated St David's Day a day late this year. We wandered over to Whole Foods and picked up some lamb, leek and daffodils, and even managed to find some Welsh cheese and "dragon" sushi for lunch! N made Welsh cakes, always amazing.

Fancy food box

We decided to treat ourselves by subscribing to a box of Fancy foods! The first one was an awesome assortment of tea, ginger ale, chocolate and, best of all for us, chorizo (among other things)! Amazing!

St Patrick's Day Parade

For some reason the St Patrick's Day parade was held on the 10th of March.... Anyway, it passed right outside the front of our apartment building, so we spent a happy hour in the sunshine (the one warm weekend so far, very lucky!) watching all the bands and flags go by. They still weren't done after an hour though, I have no idea how long it took!

Baby nephew!!!

N's nephew was born ten days ago. I'm an aunty! Or tante, seeing as the baby is Dutch. So exciting!

Zipcar, Girl Scouts, Six Nations

And finally, last Saturday was pretty fun, if a bit busier than I would have liked! I finally put my Zipcard to use and booked a car for a couple of hours to go in search of a Girl Scout cookie sale! I had a nice chat with one of their leaders about how it works out here, and came home with five boxes of cookies to my name! Hopefully I can find a troop to work with soon, I'm starting to get Guiding withdrawal symptoms! Oh, and the driving was fine, passed without incident, despite missing an exit :)

I followed that triumph with a brisk walk over to the Irish pub in Fells Point to watch the deciding match of the Six Nations. What a funny sport! Has anyone else ever thought how much it looks like a bird laying an egg when the ball pops out of the scrum? hehe :) I don't think I've ever actually watched a match before, but it was a lot of fun. And being in that pub I could easily forget I was in the US for an hour or so! I have to admit, I went down there expecting to not care who won, but as soon as the Welsh started thrashing the English with some amazing tries, I couldn't help cheering for the Welsh. To be fair, rugby wasn't even on my radar until I went to Wales, not that I paid much attention to it even then. But it just felt right to support them for some reason. I guess despite being English I have lived the majority of my adult life in Wales, so maybe that's why!

So that brings us up to date I think! If you want me to go into more detail about any of the happenings above just leave me a comment and I'll write a longer post!

What have you been up to lately?

Go Ravens!

The beginning of this post was written on Sunday night, right in the middle of the Superbowl. I've finished it off with my thoughts in hindsight.

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We had an opportunity this weekend to enjoy a true American experience, as our home American football team, the Baltimore Ravens, made it to the Super Bowl this year. Our building held a party in the community room downstairs, complete with free food, so I thought I might as well see what it's all about. And oh my word, I am so glad I did!

We started our preparations on Saturday, heading down to the shops to pick up a purple shirt for N. Despite my wardrobe full of purple clothes, I ended up getting an official one too!

Then Sunday evening we headed downstairs, me with tablet and book in tow, fully expecting to be bored after five minutes. My word how wrong I was! Admittedly I spent the first fifteen minutes concentrating on my food. Thankfully I prepared myself in advance for the nutritional value (or lack thereof) of the food on offer. Beans with bacon in, macaroni cheese, corn muffin, chicken and pulled pork (which was amazing):

But as soon as I started to pay attention and learnt how the game worked, I was hooked! It has been so exciting so far, and the Ravens are awesome! Bit of a fail though, the power has gone out in half the stadium, and it's been nearly half an hour now! Completely insane! Intending to write the rest of my post at the end. If they ever play again!

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So in the end the power outage lasted for a full 35 minutes, by which time we were pretty worried that the Ravens would have lost their touch. I think they were leading by something like 22 points at this point, including an amazing touchdown in which one guy just ran with the ball from one end of the field to the other without being stopped! The San Francisco 49ers managed to pull back though, and by the end there was only something like 2 or 3 points in it. Which should have been exciting but by this time all I wanted was to go to bed and for them to stop having timeouts and showing more commercials!

Talking of commercials, that's a big thing about the Superbowl too. Apparently 44% of women who tune in do so just for the adverts. And each slot costs millions of dollars! It's all quite insane, and although some of them made me giggle, I can't remember what most of them were for, so they obviously weren't that great!

Oh and I shouldn't end this post without mentioning the halftime show, with Beyonce and Destiny's Child. I missed most of it because I was too busy running upstairs to make tea and smash one of my favourite mugs in the process :( But of what I did see, man can she sing!

So overall, even though it did last too long for a Sunday evening, not helped by the power cut, I actually enjoyed the Superbowl! And I'm really looking forward to watching some more Ravens games next season! I found the game so much more engaging and exciting than football. This weekend I'm off to watch some rugby, so I'll be interested to see how I like that! If you're interested to read more/see more about the Superbowl the BBC covered it here, and with pictures here. Or you may prefer the puppybowl... :D

Oh the Ravens won by the way! Go Ravens! I missed an opportunity on Tuesday to go see the victory parade, but my boss took some pictures for us. I don't think I missed much, not knowing who any of the guys are! But it would've been a cool "I was there" moment. But hey, I was living in Baltimore when the Ravens won the 47th Superbowl in 2013, I'd say that was pretty cool in itself!

We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo...

It would have been silly to waste a train fare to Washington DC on just collecting N's passport from the Dutch embassy right? So we went to check out the Smithsonian (read: free) National Zoo too! Now being free, and in the middle of the capital city, we weren't expecting a whole lot, and thought we'd be home in the afternoon some time. But it's actually really big, and we managed to spend about three and a half hours wandering around!

Admittedly the trip didn't start out quite as planned. We arrived around 11am in the pouring rain which was freezing on the cold ground to find all of the gates closed. After hitting up a conveniently placed Starbucks for their free WiFi we discovered that due to the inclement weather they weren't going to open until noon. Not being ones to give up (and being nice and warm and dry with our hot milky drinks and free internet) we decided to wait it out, and I'm so glad we did. This is one awesome zoo!

We started out on the Asia trail, where many of the animals were inside due to the cold. The first thing we spotted was a fishing cat:

Closely followed by a sleepy red panda, which I don't think I've ever seen before because the ones at Bristol Zoo never seem to be around:

And this may be one of the highlights of my day, a real life giant panda! (One for you Panda :) )

Then we moved on to the bird house which was pretty awesome. I didn't take any photos because it was inside, but we saw some cool birds, like a tiny burrowing owl, and some cool kingfishers. There were loads of cardinals out and about around the zoo, which really stand out this time of year. Possibly my favourite US bird:

There were also some birds outside, including these crazy flamingos, which were making a lot of noise and running back and forth for no apparent reason:

We also saw bustards from a distance which are pretty massive! Talking of massive things, unfortunately we weren't able to see any elephants.

The North America trail was also cool, with some more animals I've never seen before, including these awesome beavers. We just caught them being fed :)

And a wolf. oooooo

Apparently after lunch I forgot to take photos, but we saw lots more awesome animals, including an eye to eye encounter with an orangutan! And some cheetahs. And a Komodo dragon!

All in all, a fun day!

Life is Good

Sometimes it's nice to remind oneself of how the little things can add up over the course of just one week to make you feel happy and contented. It might be something nice someone said to you, an effort made on your own part, or simply retail therapy. Here's why I'm happy right now.

Last weekend N and I headed to a local, highly-rated cafe for lunch in celebration of a minor work triumph. We were told we would have to wait for fifteen minutes and were seated in around five, and even though it was packed our food came out incredibly quickly. And any meal which involves complementary cinnamon buns is fine by me!

Saying that, the portion size was massive and I felt yucky for the rest of the day, catalysing another cool thing about this week: I didn't eat too much, and what I did eat was highly enjoyable (with the exception of one failed stir-fry sauce). I recently subscribed to the BBC Good Food magazine on my tablet, which is totally worth the money. And I have started a love affair with real meat! This week I made this Crispy Chilli Beef, and this Pork and Peanut Thai Curry; and N made these Chicken Teriyaki Meatballs and this Honey Mustard Chicken Pasta, all of which were incredibly tasty, with the exception of the sauce for the beef which I somehow messed up.

Crispy Chilli Beef, photo courtesy of BBC Good Food

Added to this, a week last Thursday I finally joined the gym on campus. It works out really cheap if I actually go regularly (motivation!), and is awesome: everything is included in the price including classes, lockers and a towel service, the gym area is massive, and they have a lovely pool! I went swimming twice last week and tried out water aerobics yesterday which was so much fun!

Pork and Peanut Thai Curry, photo courtesy of BBC Good Food

So with that I'm starting to work towards my goals for this year one step at a time so as not to overwhelm myself. If I did that I would surely achieve nothing at all. In terms of my weight loss goal, I lost 1lb last week, which is perfect. And we've made a step in the right direction with wedding planning this week by finally setting up our savings account, exciting!

Chicken Teriyaki Meatballs, photo courtesy of BBC Good Food

I can't write a post about last week without talking about the amazing bread N made. He did a simple wholemeal loaf from Paul Hollywood's book, "How To Bake", and I think it may have been the best homemade bread I have ever tasted!

Honey Mustard Chicken Pasta, photo courtesy of BBC Good Food

This weekend was fun too. We went out for pizza on Friday evening, and I did very well with only eating some and taking the rest home. I worked on Saturday morning, but the afternoon involved an impromptu but very successful shopping trip with a friend, resulting in the bargainous purchase of this spectacular pot! I am christening it as we speak, so I will let you know how that turns out.

So that ended up being pretty wordy, but that can only be a good thing, it adds up to a whole lot of happy! What has made you happy this week?

December fun times

Although I'm having a good week at work, it's probably not all that interesting to you (and I don't want to jinx anything by writing it down, although I can tell you about my triumph in getting an ultracentrifuge to work!) So instead I'm going to tell you all about the non-Christmas related fun times we had at the beginning of December when N's friend was visiting from NL.

Studying the extensive beer list at Alewife

Excuse me for still being excited about this, but one of the awesomest things we've ever done was to join the aquarium! I'm so happy we finally went there, and now we can go whenever we want, and it's so close to home. Actually we joke about going in there just for coffee or lunch, and the Saturday before New Year we actually did pop in, which was stupid because it was soooooo busy, but it doesn't matter because we didn't pay extra for it! :-D

There's a waterfall:

And an Australia section with these amazing pig-nosed turtles:

And obviously lots of fish:

And a rainforest bit:

And a temporary jellyfish exhibit:

And a dolphin show! So cool:

Another place I finally made it to was Fort McHenry, the site of a very important and unexpected American defeat against us pesky Brits during the Revolutionary War in 1812. With this and going to the American History Museum in DC, I've really learnt a lot about the battle of 1812 recently, and considering my general disinterest in history, I'm really finding it fascinating. The fact I'm living in the city where the first Stars and Stripes was made, and it flying over the fort during that battle was the inspiration for the American national anthem helps. And probably also the fact that it's not just a part of American history, but of British history too :-)

So here's to more exploration of the local area in 2013! Anywhere local you want to check out this year that you've been meaning to visit for ages, but just never got around to?

Happy New Year!

So 2013 is upon us, first to recap how we spent the end of 2012.

I was waiting to tell about Boxing Day because I left my camera behind at our friend's apartment, but turns out that I didn't take many exciting photos, despite a few inches of snow! Unfortunately we didn't get to play in the snow because it started raining as soon as it stopped snowing, but we did have a lovely day playing with Duplo and board games, and eating leftovers, and of course partaking in the Boxing Day box, a family tradition that I couldn't bring myself to miss!

The time between then and New Year's Eve was spent doing some much needed chillaxing and not a lot else as far as I can remember, although I do recall an overwhelming trip to a massive supermarket which featured a British section, and a separate outing to the (very busy) aquarium and stuffing my face at the Cheesecake Factory!

New Year's Eve involved A LOT of food again, with N and I putting together lots of party bites, most of which I forgot to photograph :( I did capture this one image, which is of the second batch of food to come out of the kitchen! After this there was also dessert. Ah, happy memories.

And now it is January 6th. I don't usually mind taking down the Christmas decorations, but I feel like Christmas came and went before I was ready for it this year. Although I'm keen to get back to the lab (at least I am now that I've recovered from New Year, the first three days back were not fun!), and feel like I've been sitting around at home long enough, our apartment looks pretty bare now that the decorations are down. And we have a very sad looking tree in the corner, that we can't bare to part with. It's been there for over a month and it's barely dropped any needles, and it wasn't exactly cheap, so it seems a shame to throw it out! I was thinking bunting, any other ideas?

:(

So what does 2013 hold for our household. Well for N, it seems a fair amount of travel is in order, at least for the first part of the year. And for me, well I tend to set goals for myself all year round, but I do think this is a good time of year for reassessing and re-focussing. This year, I thought I might share my latest goals, to see if it makes me more accountable:

• Join Girl Scouts
• Lose my American souvenir belly
• Plan our wedding!
• Stop scratching my face

What are your plans for 2013? Good luck and have a wonderful year!