Cardiff - The Early Days
So, as previously mentionned, I was unwell on Thursday, but kept it quite in check with the wonder of Nurofen cold and sinus (aka British Advil Cold). Uncle John took me into town, for a brief walk around including, finally, a visit to a post office, so I could finally buy stamps! We then stopped at the giant mega tescos to buy ingrediants for my cheesecake. The advantage of cooking something like cheesecake here is that its got nothing measurement or ingrediant-wise that's particularly different on either side of the Atlantic, so no working out substitutions or anything. Some things, like the Guinness, were actually easier to find. The one thing they don't have is Oreo crumbs. I ended up buying a package of oreas and breaking them into bits by smashing them on the counter, and then pressing a tablespoon of butter in with my fingers to make a crust. It actually didn't work that badly, except that I should have bought more oreos, so my crust was a little skimpy (and by that I mean there were holes galore in it. Also, the chocolate I bought seemed to have been treated to make it less melty, which is not an advantage when you're trying to mix melted chocolate into your cheesecake, but I made it work, anyway, the cheesecake seemed to work out okay, and I put it in the fridge and hoped that it tasted okay (hint: it did). Marion arrived back with Granny about 10 minutes after I'd put it in the fridge and seemed quite pleased that she wouldn't have to worry about making a desert. Anyway, that was probably the main event of the day. Also spent some nice time hanging out with Marion and Granny, and went grocery shopping with Marion in the evening to buy the rest of the stuff for the Friday dinner party, and that was about it. I went to bet early in the hopes of feeling better in the morning. Which I did. Not entirely 100%, but I didn't have to take pills constantly to feel okay, and the fever was gone. Unfortunately, I got a stomach ache in the afternoon, and spent a lot of the day just sort of vegging, but still, on the whole, getting better.
After a bit of a nap in the afternoon, I went down and helped Granny with her crossword (I got 'Anarchism', 'Copt' and 'Quarry'!) and then helped Marion get things ready for supper - I made the little smoked salmon blinis, which was fun. They were pretty much just blinis, from the store, with a glob of chive + cream cheese mixture, with a long piece of smoked salmon sort of fanning out the side, and a little piece of parsley as garnish. They tasted delicious and didn't look half bad. I'll get a picture up once I stop being lazy, as I did actually take one. As I finished up, Katie got home, which was nice, haven't seen her in a while.
The dinner party was actually very nice. Lots of lovely food, Marion's guests were very nice (not sure if I'd met them before or not). Cheesecake went over well, too, so yay! After everyone left, I went online to further investigate this sold-out opera I really wanted to see (had been sold out for months, apparently), and discovered that apparently a couple of tickets had been returned, because there were now two tickets in the backrow of the upper circle available for 15 pounds each. Unfortunately, it wouldn't let me buy a single ticket (some theatres have things set up so that you can't buy any combination of tickets that leaves a single seat on its own - it makes sense when there's large chunks all around, but it's a bit silly when there are only two tickets left!), so, as I really wanted to see this opera, I decided to buy both tickets, because, what the hell, the opera is supposed to be amazing, and 30 pounds for a ticket is still pretty reasonable for opera. Anyway, that was it for Friday! I will cover the opera in my next post, as it certainly deserves its own.
After a bit of a nap in the afternoon, I went down and helped Granny with her crossword (I got 'Anarchism', 'Copt' and 'Quarry'!) and then helped Marion get things ready for supper - I made the little smoked salmon blinis, which was fun. They were pretty much just blinis, from the store, with a glob of chive + cream cheese mixture, with a long piece of smoked salmon sort of fanning out the side, and a little piece of parsley as garnish. They tasted delicious and didn't look half bad. I'll get a picture up once I stop being lazy, as I did actually take one. As I finished up, Katie got home, which was nice, haven't seen her in a while.
The dinner party was actually very nice. Lots of lovely food, Marion's guests were very nice (not sure if I'd met them before or not). Cheesecake went over well, too, so yay! After everyone left, I went online to further investigate this sold-out opera I really wanted to see (had been sold out for months, apparently), and discovered that apparently a couple of tickets had been returned, because there were now two tickets in the backrow of the upper circle available for 15 pounds each. Unfortunately, it wouldn't let me buy a single ticket (some theatres have things set up so that you can't buy any combination of tickets that leaves a single seat on its own - it makes sense when there's large chunks all around, but it's a bit silly when there are only two tickets left!), so, as I really wanted to see this opera, I decided to buy both tickets, because, what the hell, the opera is supposed to be amazing, and 30 pounds for a ticket is still pretty reasonable for opera. Anyway, that was it for Friday! I will cover the opera in my next post, as it certainly deserves its own.