Strawberry Planting Success

I finally planted the strawberry plants today. I suspect it might have a riot for anyone watching me; it certainly was for Matt. At first, I tried to handle the compost with a small gardening shovel as to not get my hands dirty or make a mess but I failed at the latter. Matt had enough of me being so "delicate" so he came to the balcony and dug his hands in the bag of compost while I screamed "NO!!! You are wearing your ring!! He laughed and kept at it. Not to be outdone by him, I dug in too, all the time thinking "I can't believe I have my hands in a bag of rotten food leftovers"

The operation was successful and quick and I, well we, were able to plant all the little plants. At first we thought the pot wasn't going to get much sun in the balcony but it turns out that after 2pm, the that corner gets plenty of sun, specially now that the days are longer. If needed, however, we'll put it down in the garden. Let's see if they plants die or what.

I have tons of compost left and I enjoyed the planting process so I think I'm going to plant carrots or something tomorrow! Now I'm starting to feel like Martha Stewart.....scary.

PS. Yesterday's soup was DELISH!!!!

Mutilation, Books, and Strawberry Plants

Armed with a meat cleaver right out of a B horror flick, a pair of bone tearing kitchen sheers and some Good Housekeeping instructions, I lay the bird down on its back and proceeded to hack at it and tear it apart as if it was my worst enemy. It all sounds so gory but it was fun....in a weird and twisted way. I just cut up a whole chicken for the first time in my life and quite honestly, I was a bit intimidated by the whole thing. I kept thinking I was going to chop one of my fingers off with the damned cleaver.

I had been craving chicken noodle soup for a while and after trying some vile UK canned stuff, I decided I was going to make my own......from scratch. I didn't think it would be such a time consuming process but I am an hour into the process and dinner isn't going to be till at least 7pm. I hope it's really tasty otherwise I'll import some Campbell's Chunky Chicken Noodle Soup, which is what I wanted anyway.

On that note, I read on a website a couple days ago that while Americans love home cooked meals, there has been a big drop in actual home cooking and people are eating out more and more. Surprisingly enough, this has occurred at the same time that the sales of cookbooks and cooking magazines have increased to all time high and interest in cooking, thanks to cooking shows, has exploded. Americans fantasize with a dream kitchen and many spends thousands of dollars in kitchen renovations, sometimes taking out a second mortgage to do so only to have those new, shiny kitchens go unused while the family dines out. I have to say, I am one of those Americans.

For instance, I do fantasize about the perfect kitchen, I buy lots of cooking utensils, cooking appliances, cookbooks, cooking magazines, kitchen gadgets, you name it; yet, I hardly cook. I do enjoy cooking but it's just too time consuming even if I do have loads of time. As a perfect example, yesterday we went to Borders and I got not one, not two, not three but four cooking magazines, 3 of them expensive American imports. I don't really read them, I mostly look at the pictures and the names of the recipes and doggy ear the ones I think look good, then the magazines sit in a corner of the second bedroom or perhaps the hallway until I put them away somewhere, along with the hundreds of other cooking magazines I've accumulated in the past 6 years that I just can't bring myself to throw away. I have countless cookbooks, although probably not as many as other people, and they sit on the shelves most of the time; every now and then I pick them up and maybe pick a recipe and give it a shot or if I'm craving something, I'll look it up and try to make it. I am not a good cook; I just follow recipes really well.

As if cooking and buying cooking stuff wasn't enough, I have recently felt the desire to plant my own strawberries, which then gave way to planting my own herbs. So, yesterday before going to Borders, and being the main purpose of our trip, we went to Homebase seeking out the garden center. Again, following a magazine article, I picked a strawberry pot (it has holes on the sides), a bag of compost and a few strawberry plants that are now sitting on the hallway. I will plant them tomorrow and hopefully we'll have berries in the summer.

I'm not sure what's taken over me. I can't quite pin point when I started having all these domestic urges.....me a city girl wanting to plant stuff....preposterous! Maybe it was when I made those cupcakes a few weeks ago. Perhaps it was when a few months ago I, foolishly, volunteered to have my in-laws over for a Christmas Eve meal that would require me to spend 2 days in the kitchen. I had never cooked such a meal before, especially not for so many people. The most people I had ever cooked for were 4 and it was easy shrimp bisque a good 8 years ago. As you can imagine, a meal like that is when all those dusty cookbooks come in very handy.

So, if anyone knows how to stop these domestic urges, please let me know, I have a reputation to keep up!

Our Days Are Numbered

That is right ladies and gentlemen, we have officially started the process to move back to the US and our days in the UK are numbered!. Today I submitted my petition for alien relative (I-130) and if all goes well, Matt should have his visa by mid August. Having gone through this before, at beneficiary's end, I know that US immigration is anything but straightforward, however, I am keeping my fingers crossed for this one because I really need, want, whatever to be in the US by mid to late August because classes starts on August 27th and I don't want to have to wait another semester.

I don't see any reasons whatsoever why Matt would be denied his visa but I am freaking out anyway, just as I was freaking out when we went through the UK visa process for me, which is, by the way, a heck of a lot simpler than the US visa. So many forms and red tape have my head spinning. I knew there was a reason why we decided to move to the UK to begin with!

Now we play the waiting game......

Trip To The Museum

It had been a long time since Matt and I had gone anywhere shooting or even just because. So, yesterday we decided it was about time we did something. In the early afternoon, he headed to the Museum of London. When we got there, we found out that lots of the museum was closed till 2009 but we decided to go ahead and see the rest anyway, specially because it was free. What we did see was alright but from what I hear, the closed exhibits are the best ones. Oh well, at least we got out of the house for a while, which we both needed.

One Year Down!

Yesterday was our first wedding anniversary. I still can't believe it's been a whole year since the wedding. It feels like it was only yesterday we were saying our I do's and going on honeymoon. I wonder where time has gone.

They say that the first year of marriage is the most difficult and I hope so. Our first year brought along its share of trials and tribulations and I honest to goodness hope that is as bad as it will get. I'd be a hypocrite if I said I never doubted my decision to get married and it would also be very misleading to those who are thinking about tying the knot. It's not all ups, sometimes there are very deep downs.

No one ever tells you that you may at some point during your first year or marriage, and perhaps later on, doubt your decisions, wonder what the hell you have done or worse.......no one ever tells you that at some point, you are pretty likely to panic, out of the blue, and want to run for the hills leaving everything behind and whispering that taboo phrase to yourself...."I think I want a divorce."

No one ever tells you that the person who you thought was your soul mate will drive you absolutely insane at one point or another. No one ever tells you that they will rub you the wrong way and get on your last nerve. I wish someone had told me that I would come to, at times, resent my husband for decisions that I had made on my own only because he was the only person I could blame aside from myself.

So I will tell you, all those things happen. They happen to the best and most secure of us. We are afraid of change and even when we willingly face changes, they tend to freak us out. All of us. I seriously doubt there is a single person out there who has never gone through any of this, no matter how much they love their spouse...which I certainly do.

I will also tell you that it does pass, and if you stick it out, you will be rewarded. I'm still amazed that I have found someone that despite my moodiness and other problems, loves me. I'm also amazed to find that I love him too, despite all his issues, those who I knew prior to our wedding and those I have found out later on. The truth is, he's not perfect, but neither am I. At the end of the day, I love coming home to him. I love sharing my life with such an extraordinary man. I love it that he makes me happy despite everything and that I, too, am able to make him happy. He's the only constant thing in my life and I don't know what I would do if he was to go away.

On a more cheery note! We went to The Ritz in London for dinner last night to celebrate. We had the most amazing meal ever. We specially liked the Chateaubriand that we shared. That was one of the best steaks I've had in my life! The food was amazing, the service was amazing, the setting was too. The whole experience was just incredible. We made the effort to look nice and I sure felt like a million bucks! Matt looked great in his suit and I looked pretty damn good too.....if I can say so myself ;)

Ah.....if only we could afford to eat at The Ritz at least every month! A girl can dream ;)

Darling, I love you and I am looking forward to many, many, many more anniversaries!!!


PS. There is a book called "What No One Tells The Bride" by Marg Stark that I highly recommend! There is another one called "I do, I did, Now what?" by Jenny Lee that is very good too. They are both light reading and pretty short books.

Domestic Goddess....NOT!

Every now and then, I get the urge to bake something. Sometimes I make cookies, sometimes I make scones. Today, I decided I wanted to make cupcakes. Just out of the blue, I told Matt to find a cupcake recipe in a cupcake book I have. I was in the mood for just plain vanilla cupcakes with frosting. He made a shopping list, which he then forgot to bring to the store. Luckily, he remembered what we needed.

Just like every other time I bake anything, I came to the conclusion that it would be MUCH easier if I had a mixer, specially a Kitchenaid. I keep telling myself that if I had a Kitchenaid mixer, I'd bake much more often. Creaming butter with a fork is no easy task!

Just as I put the cupcakes in the oven, I realized I had used 2oz of butter less than the recipe called for. I blame it on the recipe, it called for sticks of butter and I had to do the math to convert it to ounces. I knew I needed 8oz but for some reason I can't explain, I only used 6oz. I was freaking out a bit but then I realized, hey, what's the worst that could happen?

The truth is, they weren't the best I've had but they weren't bad either. They would have been a bit more moist had I used the right amount of butter but they are good anyway, specially with the butter frosting and the sprinkles. To me, eating the baked goods is not as much fun as actually baking them. I love to cook and I love to bake. I really should do it more often. That I blame on my small kitchen!

As If I needed More Reasons To Want To Leave London!

Now that I actually leave the house and take the tube to work on a regular basis, I have adopted the London way of catching up with the news....I read the Metro in the morning on my way to work and The London Paper and the London Lite in the evening on the way home. Most of the time none of the news really catch my eye, they are mostly a shooting here, a stabbing there, so and so wants their £28 million back, etc. However, yesterday The London Paper had an article about the most expensive cities in the world to live in. I knew London was very expensive, but it never occurred to me that it's gotten to the point where it is even more expensive than Tokyo.... for the first time ever. It has been ranked 4th in the world with Oslo, Paris and Copenhagen as 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively. Previously, London ranked 7th.

"The capital shot up the league of the world's most expensive cities, topping Tokyo for the first time, and costing 25 percent more than New York City" That's pretty outrageous, specially considering what most people get paid here. I always have a hard time comprehending how some people can afford to live in London when I hear what their salary is. According to the survey, a pint of beer in London costs £3, a loaf of bread costs £1.09 and a pint of milk 50p. The same items costs 58p, 50p, and 40p in Mumbai, one of the 3 cheapest cities. Manchester prices were a quarter lower than London's. No other UK city was on the list. In comparison, Atlanta is now the cheapest city in the USA with prices below the average in Casablanca, Morocco.

This evening's headline was equally disconcerting, if not more so. It read "London is 'capital of sex slave trade' " Apparently, thousands of young girls are brought to London with promises of work but once here, are forced to prostitute themselves, forced into sweat shops, etc. Some of these girls are as young as 14 and are coming from Eastern Europe, China, and West Africa. While it's mostly men that run these human trafficking operations, oftentimes it is other women who lure these girls out of their homes. How a woman can do that to another woman is beyond me.

Scotland Yard "also fears that children are being brought here from Africa to take part in religious sacrifices"

As you can see, London is a less than ideal place to live. That is just scratching the surface, not a day goes by that the newspapers don't have some shooting, stabbing, or other violent crime news. Tube beatings, muggings, rapes, you name it. Despite this, a significant amount of Londoners swear crime in London is much less than crime in any given US city because of the "lack" of access to guns, etc. I guess the Nile is not just a river in Egypt.

10 Random Tracks

A while ago, there was a thread started on UK-Yankee.com and the original post went like this:

"Sometimes I worry about my music choices. I mean, if I were mowed down by a bus whilst crossing the street and someone picked up my ipod to see what I was listening to at the time of the accident, they'd get a really odd impression of my personality. To attest to this, I performed a little experiment....just put it on shuffle and have listed the first 10 tracks that played."

I wonder if people can really tell much about you and your personality based on your choice of music. I, for example, have a pretty eclectic music taste but I'm not that way with everything else. So, I am going to do the test again and see what comes up:

1. "Cara De Nino" Jerry Rivera
2. "Without Me" Eminem
3. "El Desierto" Mana
4. "Fuiste Un Troso De Hielo En La Escarcha" Chayanne
5. "En Las Nubes" Jerry Rivera
6. "Declaration Of Love" Celine Dion
7. "La Chula" Mana
8. "Algo De Mi" Camilo Sesto
9. "Somos Novios" Luis Miguel
10"Let's Make A Night To Remember" Bryan Adams

So, after that, I concluded you'd be able to tell I speak Spanish and have really bad taste in music. Just for the record, I don't have much Celine Dion music on my iPod! So, how about the first 1o songs in English? Let's give that a try:

1. "Hey Baby" No Doubt
2. "You Got It" 'N SYNC (I plead the 5th!)
3. "Tricky, Tricky" Lou Bega
4. "Missing My Baby" Selena
5. "Baby Keep Smiling" Lou Bega
6. "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" Rod Stewart
7. "Breathe" Michelle Branch
8. "Not Coming Home" Maroon 5
9. "Just A Little Bit Of Love" Celine Dion
10."Uptown Girl" Billy Joel


So, what does that say about me??

News Revealed

OK, about this big change, I'll put some of you out of your misery! No, I'm not pregnant (sorry mom and dad!) but we have decided to move back to the US THIS year! Of course, that is no big secret now as I'm sure most of you who read my blog already knew that. I didn't want to say anything because I was in the process of getting a job and I didn't want this go get back to them before the contracts were signed. We are aiming for August but it all depends on the visa situation. So there :)


OK, I'm off to shoot a wedding now!