Good Eats

One of the things about moving here that got me the most excited was the food.
Those of you who know me well know that I live to eat!!

Cooking has been a little challenging, only because we still don't have our own kitchen items. I only have a couple of crummy pots, one lone baking sheet, a dull knife, and that is about it.
This morning, we went down to the Borough Market, which I'd heard so much about. It was amazing!! I could have eaten the entire day away. There were Italian monks selling Parma Ham, a thousand and one fromageries, a guy from Poland selling sausages, and tons of organic fruit & veg. I bought some Jersuleum artichokes, a Japanese Pumpkin, and some Comte cheese from the Borough Cheese Company. It was heaven. I can't wait to go back when I am better equipped to make some serious chow. I used the pumpkin to make some soup for dinner, and it was quite tasty, if very simple.

After that we headed down to Whole Foods to check out their cheese room. I chose goat log with Rind Soignon, organic Sheep Bastiaansen, and an unpasturized cow called Celtic Promise. Outstanding. I heart cheese.

I had hoped that they sold Aged Beef, but we couldn't find any cuts we liked. I want to make a special dinner for NYE, since we'll be solo this year. I bought some filets from the butcher for Christmas Eve, but I couldn't even eat it. THey don't age the beef here, and it tastes extremely gamey to me. Guess I'll have to go with a turkey or maybe some lobster.


Alright, I'm off to finish my mince pie and glass of Rioja before turning in early to bed. Ciao!

Christmas Morning with Dr. Kate

We heard Kate wake up around 7 or so, and I ran downstairs to help her go potty before she ventured down to the first floor and saw all the presents Santa had left. I took her down to the kitchen (on the basement level) to check if Santa had eaten the cookies. When I asked her if she thought Santa had come to our house last night, she said "Nooo. I didn't hear him". So she was shocked when she saw the cookies were gone and the carrots had some bites out of them. She picked up the carrot and solemnly told me that reindeer eat carrots, not Santa Claus.

I took her back upstairs into the reception room where our tree is. We wanted to plan it so that Danny could already be in there to capture her face on video. When she saw the presents that Santa had left her, her eyes got so wide and she just kept saying "ohhhhh". It was so cute. She went through her stocking and then onto the presents. Michael was still asleep, and she kept anxiously asking when he would wake up so that she could "help" him with his presents. She was also very happy to see that Santa had remembered to leave some ham for Dexter, and then asked where Tyler & Lesley's presents were.

I've always been a Christmas nut (I can't read the Polar Express without crying my eyes out), but I must say that absolutely nothing beats seeing Christmas again through the eyes of your children. I want to treasure these years.

Here are a few pictures. Kate got a Doctor kit from her Grandma Saeva, and she loooves it. Poor patient Michael has already had to get numerous shots and have his blood pressure taken every 20 minutes.

She also got her very own digital camera, an Aquadoodle from Aunt Sami & Uncle Zach, an easel, and her own little table & chairs from Nonni, and a baby stroller. She loves to push the stroller alll over the house and I've already had to lay down the law that Michael is NOT allowed in her stroller. :-)










In Michael news, he has discovered his hands so he liked many of the little toys that he got for Christmas.

Merry Christmas from the Family

I hope you all had a joyous & blessed Holiday.



This was taken before we headed to Mass on Christmas Eve. We came home and let Kate open up one present which as a new book titled "Katie in London". Then it was downstairs to leave out cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer and off to bed. The tradition here is to leave out Mince pies for Father Christmas, not cookies. I was curious about the mincemeat pie, so I bought some. And no, there is no meat in them! They were quite tasty...similar to a spicy fruit cake.





Today Danny had off work due to Boxing Day (still not really sure what that is about), so we decided to head up to Ikea to get a few necessities. It turned out to be quite the event. It should have been a short bus ride, a tube ride, and then another short bus ride to the door of Ikea. Well, we hopped off the first bus to discover that the train line we needed to take was closed today. So we had to take a few more buses, a tube ride, and then two more buses. Oh the drama. We were very happy to discover that Ikea is a GREAT place for little kids and babies. There were plenty of play stations for Kate, lots of places for me to sit and nurse Michael, and tons of room for our stroller. Most of the stores here are so tiny and have only stair access that it is a huge hassle to have a stroller with us. I typically don't bring it when I have danny with me to help wrangle Kate, but we needed it for our purchases today. Anyway, 4 hours later we were ready to leave (and we still only saw half the store!) and the thought of lugging all the stuff home on all those buses and trains was daunting. So we decided to hire a car service to take us home. Unbeknownst to us, a Tottenham (soccer team) game had just let out so traffic was *horrible*. We were thanking our lucky stars that we had opted for the car service who knew some back roads to get us home. Sitting on a bus in that traffic with all our loot and two exhausted kids would have been a disaster. So we didn't get home until close to 5, rendering the rest of the day useless. Lesson learned: Always check for tube closures on holidays and game schedules when heading up near the stadiums!

Just in Case Santa took a detour

We went down to Trafalgar Square on Christmas Eve. Kate had great fun, and wasn't wholly convinced that pigeons, not reindeer, pull Santa's sleigh.




href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit_u-GIt2aOWBRMNsuvZvmFJM8I6QdS2TiXXHsRO6vKZ4i1yysGrcaNUlc5aYCL2yDiWSK9P2M3fMGZAtUgbdls12JlrnW_W8lwW-e6JwZ8aj6dxv52lLGzy1Lfr5YuI1Im-zZCGaTGYw/s1600-h/IMG_3265.JPG">



And since Michael doesn't get too many shout-outs these days, here is a pic of him from that day too:

The driving isn't the only thing that is backwards

Things that keep tripping me up here in Jolly Old London:

1. Of course, the traffic being on the wrong side of the road. I feel like I have to look both ways about 50 times before I feel safe stepping foot off of the curb.

2. The light switches are backwards. You turn it up to switch the light on. Most of the light switches are outside of the rooms (i.e. in the hall). Also, every single electrical outlet has a light switch on it that must be turned on before it will work. There are also numerous mystery switches for which we have no idea what they operate.

3. The metric system. Everything is in grams, kilograms, Celsius, etc. Not too much of a problem except when I am cooking. I'm having a bugger of a time trying to figure out how many kg=1 cup.

4. The commbination washer/dryer. It is *tiny*. It will fit about 2 bath towels and maybe a hand towel and that is it. And it will take about 5 hours for it to dry the above load, and even then it is still damp and extremely wrinkled. It has already shrunk many of our clothes, and I'm fretting about what to do for some of our nicer items that I absolutely don't want to shrink.

5. There are no electrical outlets in the bathrooms. The idea is to keep any of those zany Brits from doing something rash like blowdrying their hair in the shower. Since the only mirrors in the house are in the bathrooms, I've been trying to style my hair in the reflection of the brass light switch plate in my bedroom. Not looking too good these days.

6. No closets. I knew this, and yet it is still so bizarre. I've not figured out what exactly one does with all their shoes when there is no closet to put them in.

7. There is no standard format for phone numbers here. In the States, a number will invariably look like this: (123)456-7890. Here, it could be any combination of this:
000 1111 2222 or 00011 112222 or 00 0111 12222 and so on. It makes it very difficult to try to memorize any number. Also, the first digit of the number denotes whether it is a home line, mobile line, or business phone. This is important to know, since you are charged differnt amounts to call each one.

8. You have to pay to use shopping carts at the grocery store.

9. We don't have a disposal in our sink. I was so perplexed, trying to figure out how you do the dishes when you can't just scrape everything into the sink.

10. We also don't have a microwave. Reheating food has been a small challenge.

11. They don't sell eggnog, my favorite Christmas drink which I look forward to all year. I'd make it myself, but I don't have an electric mixer to beat the eggs. And Santa Claus is "Father Christmas".



I'm sure there are lots more things that I don't even know about yet, but those are the ones I've encountered so far.

Christmas with Mickey

Danny's office had a Christmas party yesterday. Those Disney folks do Christmas Parties up right! It was the best Christmas party I've been to, even though there was no booze for the weary parents.


She played pin the tail on the tiger. Apparently, we still have some work to do on teaching her exactly where tails go. She didn't even have a blindfold as an excuse.

Fishing for Nemo:



We were very lucky that Goofy showed up, since he is currently Kate's favorite Disney character. We're not really sure why, but she likes "that dog one".


Getting painted to be "as pretty as a Princess":



Michael slept through the whole event. What a party pooper.

We're Here!

We're here! We arrived in London last week. Like the stereotypical dumb Americans we might be, we didn't have heat for two days because we couldn't figure out how to light the boilers.

We still don't have internet, phone or tv at the house, so I'm feeling quite isolated these days. I'm paying $20/hour right now at Starbucks, but I only last as long as Kate's patience.

Anyway, I'll post more details later, but I wanted to let you all know that we all arrived safely.

Our clothes, Christmas presents & decorations, diapers, etc., are all still in the US. They were supposed to leave 2 weeks ago. It is looking like we might not have them before Christmas now. We had 2 shipments coming over, one air and one sea. The Air shipment was supposed to arrive last week but it keeps getting bumped for some reason. I'm trying to remain optimistic, but I'll be extremely upset if we don't have our things before Christmas. Not to mention that I'm quite tired of wearing the same 4 outfits I packed in my suitcase!!