During our holiday in Wales, it rained a lot. I bought a stack of coloured polymer clay to entertain myself and I had a fantastic time making little figurines for our Christmas tree this year. I then baked them at 100c for 30 minutes to harden them.

My first attempt was a hedgehog.

Pleased with my initial success, I tried my hand on a bunch of dog dogs.

Then, I tried a making sMuks and sMagic…

Again, feeling rather pleased with the results, I ventured onto further dog dogs… dog dogs camping, dog dogs snuggled in a duvet, yellow dog dog prodding red dog dog with a stalk of brussel sprouts and dog dogs playing hide and seek in a heap of potatoes.

Then, there was the introduction of the rabbits- the rabbit after the snowman’s nose, the rabbit receiving a basket of carrots and the rabbit who binged on carrots.

Lastly, I made the Christmas dinner, the Christmas ham, the bacon and apple wreath and the sausage, sage and onion wreath and a bucket of fried chicken.

I still have quite a bit of the polymer clay left and a suspicion that the other characters of the sMitch saga will make an appearance in a not too distant future.

While we were in Wales, Denty came down with a pretty bad case of the ‘flu. It was proper ‘flu with the fever and all, not the man-flu, contrived to get out of hiking type. Anyway, as he was unwell,  before it starts to rain again, I thought I could take a short walk into the village about a mile away to see if they have a little shop to get more paracetamol for Denty.

I had two choices, to walk the single track road or to take a supposed short cut over the hill. So I wandered out of the very long and uphill driveway…

When I got to the end of the drive, I walked onto single-track road, fully intending to follow it to the village. A mere 10 meters later, I spotted a little footpath through the pine woods on the side, leading up the hill which I assumed to be the short cut over the hill… so I quickly amended my plans.

The pine woods quickly went steeply uphill and became an apple orchard…

The uphillness doesn’t end, but look at the pretty colours!

The chesnuts were everywhere… I used to think they would be nice and fluffy, not ouchie-prickly!

Then there still was further uphill movement… at this point, I was vaguely wondering if I took a wrong turn.

But I wasn’t too worried, the oak leaves were just so pretty.

However, most of the acorn has fallen. While I was taking this shot, a little squirrel was getting quite annoyed with me and started scolding me.

Finally, I got the the peak and it was apple orchard again, at least is downhill this time!

I enjoyed an apple… even though these were grown specifically for cider.

Finally, when I got to the bottom of the hill, there was no village…

Apparently, I climbed up and down the wrong hill… but I soon found a little road and decided to follow it. By the road, the hedges had really cool looking fruits.

The wild blackberries were really sweet…

As well as the wild raspberries…

And the redcurrants…

When I got around the corner, I saw the hill that I was supposed to climb. It was heck of a lot smaller and had many sheeps.

Happily, I headed towards it, passing by a tree heavy-laden with mistletoe.

Finally, I was nearing the cottage… I could not resist stopping to kick up some leaves. I went “shuishshciusshshuish”.

I had a lovely, lovely walk. According to my pedometer, I walked 6 miles, much of it very steep uphill. I think I may have had too much fun for a person supposedly walking to the village to get her sick husband some paracetamol. The village didn’t even have a shop!

Poor Denty waited so long that he wandered out to try to find me, thinking that a two mile round trip should not have taken two and a half hours… Eek. Luckily, he had just started out by the time I got back to the cottage, otherwise I might have to start feeling guilty.

Anyway, after a nice hot soak, he even cooked me a lovely lunch.

A little footsore, but on reflection, Denty was right… my parents would love to come here. There is just so much to see. Granted, I would not want to walk with them as they would probably be way ahead while I try to follow, huffing and puffing like bellows.

To celebrate  the first anniversary of our marriage, Denty and I rented a little (well, not-so-little as it was a four-bedroomed barn conversion) in the middle of nowhere in Wales. The building was a barn once belonging to a nearby-ish farm called Ruthlin Mills, hence the converted cottage was named Ruthlin.

It was a mere 200 mile journey, so Denty and I thought it would be nice to make a little detour to visit Stonehenge on the way there.  You see, about 20 years ago, little Denty found a Stonehenge souvenir bookmark in church and has used it ever since. What was once a leather bookmark with the respectable amount of tassels is now a sorry piece of cow hide with 3 and a bit strands of tassel. Since Denty had never seen Stonehenge, we thought it would be a great opportunity to get him a new bookmark.

After the little detour, we continued our journey to Ruthlin.

The cottage, like I said, was in the middle of nowhere and in order to get there, you have to drive pretty much on a single track road (my dad would love this!).

This is what we found at the end of our journey…

It was so lovely that it was perfect. The cottage had no mobile phone reception, no internet/computers and the only “technology” was the tv (with the five basic channels) and a dvd player. I have forgotted how liberating it is to hideout for a bit from the world and just enjoy Denty’s company.

Further shots of the cottage…

This is the river at the end of the garden. Due to the incessant rains, it was very swollen and muddy so I could not fish. Besides, I found out a couple days before the holiday that there was a “catch and release” policy at that stretch of the river… I was disgusted, I tell you! There are usually otters playing around there as well, but like I said, the river was very swollen. Maybe they were flushed downstream, paddling frantically with their little otter paws.

This is the stonewall at the cottage that doesn’t seem to serve much of a purpose except for being very green and pretty.

This is the heap of logs that is now no more…

This is the fire that Denty built out of the heap of logs that is now no more…

Finally, my one and only internal shot of the cottage. This is the floor to ceiling windows (two floors height), offering very nice views of the countryside from the comfort and warmth from the fireplace…

Denty said “this would be a very nice place to take your parents to”… More about the holiday in my next few posts.

I had a craving for rice last night, so when I got home, I made a claypot chicken rice. Disregarding minor details like I have neither a claypot nor a charcoal burner. it turned out excellent. It even had the slightly burnt bits of rice at the bottom of the pot.

First, I put one and half cups of water to boil. Then I dumped in some chicken thighs, Chinese cooking wine, sesame oil, a knob of ginger, two twigs of smashed lemongrass, light soya sauce, dark soya sauce and pepper. After simmering the thighs for 15 minutes, I added one cup of rice, covered the pot and let it cook for another 15 minutes.

I swear, I really did intend to take photos of my nonstickpot chicken rice, but the entire thing was so delicious that I simply did not have the time.

So, for all of you readers out there (except Denty who watched me gobble the massive heap of rice in stunned silence), it was kinda brown and ricey with chicken scattered about.

I went to the Photographers’ Gallery late this afternoon to scope the Christmas party venue I am in charge of organising. The gallery was fantastic, and best of all, was very near Selfridges.

I had to pop in the food hall, shed a few tears at the oysters (ones that are caught but not eaten by me) and bought a nice little package of salmon sashimi.

Good snack, that was.

Denty asked me what I wanted for dinner last night, so I said “steak!” Denty then asked me what kind of steak did I want, so I told him “I don’t care, as long as it is big”.

So, Denty made the executive decision and bought a two kilogram chunk of fillet steak.

Fine… we did not eat it all in one go… I managed to butcher it up into seven servings. We ate two servings and the other five is happily sitting in our super-cold freezer.

A bit of griddling by Denty later (two minutes on each side for mine), I made some peppercorn sauce (butter, handcracked peppercorns, salt, brandy, cream and chopped parsley) and the accompaniment of lightly sauteed oyster mushrooms (in olive oil, garlic, chilli flakes and chopped parsley).

Mmmm… *keeps thinking of the five servings in the freezer*

[Photograph of the dog dogs playing hide and seek]

I really like my dog dogs. I especially like Jumbo Dog Dog’s considerably sized nose. I like to hug his nose when I sleep and sometimes, to make the sleep extra yummy, I fluff his nose a little.

I know that “my side of the bed” is wherever I end up, but I was woken up last night by Denty fluffing my head …

We started off with this…

It has taken two months, but this is where we are now.

Poor Denty carted 2 tonnes of gravel from the front of the house to the back and poor Muks levelled it into shape. I think there is not anywhere that does not hurt…

Do you remember that craze in the 90s that made most of us go around cross-eyed? 3D-stereograms!!!!

Any guesses what this is?

Denty, Paddy and I went to Harrogate last weekend. We almost made a beeline to the teashop after parking the car. Well, what else do you do in somewhere so quintessentially English? To make it even more English, we even (Denty was very keen) queued up at Betty’s Tea Shop for 30 minutes.

The wait was definitely worth it. I had a sapphire blue ceylon tea and a fresh fruit tart. The tea definitely tasted better than the ones in the Ritz and Claridges.

After a happy face-stuffing session and a little wander, we headed to the apartment we rented for an evening of loafing.

Paddy enjoyed watching the autumn leaves from the window.