No snow here, although I'm glad not to be in PA.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Snow, just not here
I spent a good bit of time traveling to workshops and conferences for work these last two weeks. I haven't been anywhere exciting though, just rural middle England.
Last weekend I did family stuff with James's family. This weekend we went to Romford for drinks with James's old school friends (have I ever had a drink with a high school friend?), and I went out for pizza and drinks with Belgium David from Lehigh and a friend from work. Woot.
No snow here, although I'm glad not to be in PA.
No snow here, although I'm glad not to be in PA.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Liverpool
Hmm, I guess it's been two weeks since an update. Oops.
Our pretend-to-be-careless-students girls night was a bit disappointing because we spent too much time hanging out and chatting in Tricia's dorm. By the time we went out at 12:30am, the pubs and clubs were full and not letting more people in. Oh well.
I don't honestly remember what if I did anything exciting that week. We went to a beer garden with an old Lehigh friend, had lots of birthday dinners and birthday lunches and birthday drinks (couples here must love the month of April). We made an amazing pizza at some point.
(Has anyone else noticed that the key points in my life seems to be related to food?)
On Thursday I went with some co-workers on a tour of a steel mill in the north. It's operated by client that I'm working on a huge project at work for. The mill was awesome! We saw the blast furnaces, where iron ore is melted at an extremely high temperature and molten iron and black goo come out. We also saw how the liquid steel is poured into molds and transported or rolled into specific shapes. There must be a lot of satisfaction in a job that produces tangible products (Sara, I'm jealous).
On Friday I returned north to Liverpool to be the independent auditor for EuroMillions again. The lottery is run from Brussels. the pretty girl that draws the numbers from the machine is in France, the software that determines ticket sales and winners sits on servers in London, and the team who operates this software is in Liverpool. Damn I love outsourcing!
It was a lonely Friday night, but at least I was free to roam around Liverpool with my camera for a few hours on Saturday morning. :-)
Love always,
Melanie
Our pretend-to-be-careless-students girls night was a bit disappointing because we spent too much time hanging out and chatting in Tricia's dorm. By the time we went out at 12:30am, the pubs and clubs were full and not letting more people in. Oh well.
I don't honestly remember what if I did anything exciting that week. We went to a beer garden with an old Lehigh friend, had lots of birthday dinners and birthday lunches and birthday drinks (couples here must love the month of April). We made an amazing pizza at some point.
(Has anyone else noticed that the key points in my life seems to be related to food?)
On Thursday I went with some co-workers on a tour of a steel mill in the north. It's operated by client that I'm working on a huge project at work for. The mill was awesome! We saw the blast furnaces, where iron ore is melted at an extremely high temperature and molten iron and black goo come out. We also saw how the liquid steel is poured into molds and transported or rolled into specific shapes. There must be a lot of satisfaction in a job that produces tangible products (Sara, I'm jealous).
On Friday I returned north to Liverpool to be the independent auditor for EuroMillions again. The lottery is run from Brussels. the pretty girl that draws the numbers from the machine is in France, the software that determines ticket sales and winners sits on servers in London, and the team who operates this software is in Liverpool. Damn I love outsourcing!
It was a lonely Friday night, but at least I was free to roam around Liverpool with my camera for a few hours on Saturday morning. :-)
Love always,
Melanie
Sunday, January 31, 2010
A Tale of Three Fudges
My mission for the past week was to find the best non-marshmallow fudge recipe on the net. Until this week, I've only ever made fudge by the Marshmallow Fluff "Never Fail Fudge" recipe because, in short, it never fails. As that gooey crap isn't easily available here, I had to branch out.
(During my quest, I learned that fudge was invented by women on college campus in the 1890s. It was named "fudge" because that was one of the words women would use rather than cursing.)
Recipe number one was the simplest (http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/609228). It just involved melting chocolate, sweetened condensed milk, and butter on a double boiler (or two awkward sized pots in my case), adding vanilla, and letting it set. I decided to add some confectioners sugar to help it set as well- big mistake! Despite the little white powdery flakes in the fudge, it turned out well. Nothing amazing, but not bad.
Fudge number two was a plain vanilla fudge (http://www.waitrose.com/recipe/Vanilla_Fudge.aspx). I read a hilarious blog response from an American insisting that this recipe was wrong because it forgot to add chocolate. I don't think s/he understood that fudge was originally made without chocolate. This recipe was a real recipe in that in required me to kill my arms by stirring the mixture constantly until it reached soft-ball stage. The flavor and texture were great, but not all of the sugar dissolved, leaving the fudge grainy.
I was out of condensed milk by this time, so I switched to evaporated milk for recipe three (http://busycooks.about.com/od/candyandsnackmixes/r/millionfudge.htm). This time I added some water to the mixture to ensure the sugar was dissolved. That resulted in my half-recipe boiling over my medium sized pot, and forced me to switch to a massive spaghetti pot half-way through. It turned out to be the best tasting overall of the three. The texture was (or "is", I haven't eaten it all yet) almost too hard to cut, but it becomes wonderfully smooth and creamy in your mouth... mmm...
(During my quest, I learned that fudge was invented by women on college campus in the 1890s. It was named "fudge" because that was one of the words women would use rather than cursing.)
Recipe number one was the simplest (http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/609228). It just involved melting chocolate, sweetened condensed milk, and butter on a double boiler (or two awkward sized pots in my case), adding vanilla, and letting it set. I decided to add some confectioners sugar to help it set as well- big mistake! Despite the little white powdery flakes in the fudge, it turned out well. Nothing amazing, but not bad.
Fudge number two was a plain vanilla fudge (http://www.waitrose.com/recipe/Vanilla_Fudge.aspx). I read a hilarious blog response from an American insisting that this recipe was wrong because it forgot to add chocolate. I don't think s/he understood that fudge was originally made without chocolate. This recipe was a real recipe in that in required me to kill my arms by stirring the mixture constantly until it reached soft-ball stage. The flavor and texture were great, but not all of the sugar dissolved, leaving the fudge grainy.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Snow Stops London From Functioning
These last two weeks I had financial audit secondment training (even worse than it sounds), went out for dinner with the girls work, had a pleasantly lazy weekend, started going to a gym almost regularly, went to a salsa dancing that lacked leads, met with Nic and Dan (from Lehigh) for drinks, and probably did a good bit more that I can't remember. Tonight Tricia and I are pretending we're 20 and second-year students at KCL without cares or responsibilities, and hitting the clubs (although actual students know that student nights are Tue-Wed-Thur).
Love always,
Melanie
Sunday, January 10, 2010
T-Shirt (or is it Tee-Shirt?) Blanket
A few people have commented on my tee-shirt quilt, asking how I made it. There's plenty of crafty sites online that describe the process, but I thought I'd supplement them with the design I used.
I used a 14"x14" cardboard square as my base unit because I noticed that most of my full-front shirt designs fit into this size. I used a half-size 7"x14" rectangle shirts that only had print across the top (for example, "Staff" or "Scuba Michigan"). Finally I made a quarter-sized 7"x7" square to be used on shirt with only an emblem or logo in the top corner.
The blanket is composed of five vertical strips that were each 14" wide and 14"*5... umm.. 70" long. As you can see, I offset the bigger 14"x14" blocks with the smaller sized pieces. The other side of the blanket is a solid piece of dark blue flannel (because I love soft things) and one of my mom's old sheets is sewn into the middle of the blanket for added warmth. It's amazing how many memories you can fit into a few feet of fabric.
I used a 14"x14" cardboard square as my base unit because I noticed that most of my full-front shirt designs fit into this size. I used a half-size 7"x14" rectangle shirts that only had print across the top (for example, "Staff" or "Scuba Michigan"). Finally I made a quarter-sized 7"x7" square to be used on shirt with only an emblem or logo in the top corner.
The blanket is composed of five vertical strips that were each 14" wide and 14"*5... umm.. 70" long. As you can see, I offset the bigger 14"x14" blocks with the smaller sized pieces. The other side of the blanket is a solid piece of dark blue flannel (because I love soft things) and one of my mom's old sheets is sewn into the middle of the blanket for added warmth. It's amazing how many memories you can fit into a few feet of fabric.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
New Year, Old Me
I considered writing over the holiday break (I was back in PA for two weeks), but I would have just said "food-family-more food". It wasn't a bad break, although it would have been better if tiny-penised men with big trucks would learn to drive. A chunk of my family, including my 91 year old grandmother, were driving to Pittsburgh in my Mom's van when a huge front-grilled Dodge Ram 2500 pushed a beautiful Lexus into the back of the van. We had stopped fairly quickly, but the Lexus behind us had stopped as well (I know, because after being hit a few years ago I've developed a habit of looking behind me). My seat didn't have head rest, so I ended up with minor whiplash and a sore neck and back for the holiday. I also had daily trips to Greensburg to see a chiropractor, which allowed me wonderful opportunities to accumulate family errands as well.
We flew back to London on the last days of 2009 and had a nice peaceful New Year's day with James's family. Returning to our flat was one of the best parts of the holidays. It was hold, but felt so peaceful and homey. :-)
I'm so bad at blogging. Since starting this post, I've stopped to grab white chocolate mints, experiment with Windows 7 GodMode, play with #uksnow, watch bits of Narnia, IMDB Tilda Swinton...
Love always,
Melanie
We flew back to London on the last days of 2009 and had a nice peaceful New Year's day with James's family. Returning to our flat was one of the best parts of the holidays. It was hold, but felt so peaceful and homey. :-)
I'm so bad at blogging. Since starting this post, I've stopped to grab white chocolate mints, experiment with Windows 7 GodMode, play with #uksnow, watch bits of Narnia, IMDB Tilda Swinton...
Love always,
Melanie
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