Bread

Today I found the French Patiserie that was recommended to me for nice bread. It is not far from home and I actually managed to park just down the road from the store and I had a quarter for the meter which duly gave me 20 minutes of parking time.

As soon as we walked into the store M said, "I am hungry", I could not blame him really as it all looked very yummy. I tried really hard just to buy the bread but then I could not resist trying a couple of savory pastries and letting M choose something for him and J and W. He chose a little cake thingy that was a piece of twisted dough covered in sugar and a little cinamon and he had demolished it before we got home. We both managed not to eat J and W's before they got home from school and the cakes proved equally popular with them.

The bread is yummy too, I actually had some with just butter - which I hardly ever do (although anything with just butter here is a little disapointing, somehow they manage to take most of the flavour out of it - a bit like they do with yoghurt and cheese and sour cream). Oh, and when some one I was with asked for a skinny latae (sp?) they said "sorry I don't have and skim milk, just 2%" now I want to know what is milk when it only has 2% fat left if it is not 'skim'. I would call it white water, but then I am not one for skim milk, when you have had a cow at home (we really did and my mum would milk her by hand every day) and you get to drink 100% fresh jersey milk, well what would be the point of drinking skim milk - you may as well drink water and have a calcium tablet. You get the same nutrients and the same flavour. D bought some milk from a organic food shop and it was to die for, not cheap though, I think 1 ltr was the same as the 4 ltr I buy from the supermarket.

Food becomes all consuming when living in a strange (in many senses of the word) country so pardon my harping on about it...wait till I get to the bacon...now I really will take a photo of that.

Flood recovery is almost complete - from our side any way. Our Land Lord has been busy all day today fixing walls and skirting boards and ordering new carpet and paint. Some of the walls will have to be repainted and the carpet will be layed after that. It will be nice to have new carpet, the other one was quite fine, but you know new carpet is a bit special.

The washing machine (which was floating throughout the ordeal) works fine and the clothes dryer quite incredibly (since it was completely submerged) also works. The other remarkable thing is that The Beast also survived, I was certain it had become a very big dead sinky thing that would become a garden ornament, but it works. D cleaned it off, vacuumed it out and it works. He even did a bit of a program with it and it all worked fine...amazing. I did a survey today from Smooth Fitness the company we bought it from and when I got to the part where I could leave a comment I told them that the machine was almost totally submergbed and it still works.

No photos today, I was going to take a photo of the bread and I still may, since I have photgraphed pretzels and pots you jsut never know.

LOL
Jxx