Danish butter cookies remind me of my childhood and we found a very festive tin at the supermarket today. Some mint green tea for me and english breakfast tea for him as we sat inside and savoured the last tea we’ll be having together in our little house this year. Afternoon tea time always makes me happy.

It was a very good cherry pie, perfect for a hot Saturday afternoon especially after Christmas shopping in the morning. (It was madness, to say the least.) Tomorrow, we will buy some vanilla ice-cream and make this treat even more indulgent than it already is.

I hope your weekend was lovely.

I am addicted to a lemon, honey and ginger tea concoction that Kristy made for us last week. I’ve been having at least a glass a day. It is wonderfully light and refreshing and it seems to be helping Jonathan’s recovery from the flu as well. It is cool and rainy today and i am looking forward to a glass of this healing drink soon.

It’s my birthday next Friday and i am so excited! I love birthdays! Jonathan has bought a dress from me from one of our local shops, Elodie on Bronte. I know this because i am apparently very good at extracting secret plans from my husband. He actually brought one of my dresses to the shop and asked the lady there to recommend something that was similar in taste to what i had. Full marks for thinking ahead! Now the dress, wrapped up in black tissue and in a white paper bag, is sitting in the bedroom and i am not allowed to have a peek/accidentally rip it open until my birthday. This is torture for me.

I believe in birthday weeks so the whole of next week will be rather nice for me. I have a very full week of work but we are watching Interplay at the Sydney Opera House on Thursday night, i’m having afternoon tea with my girlfriends at Bills Woollahra on Friday afternoon and then walking over to Bronte Road Bistro for dinner with Jonathan. On Saturday, we will be at Good Food Affare at Castle Hill. The advertisement for it has been absolutely beautiful and i cannot wait to see it in real life.

I love how this week holds so much anticipation.

My trip to the supermarket yesterday resulted in some swiss muesli being bought. For breakfast today, i had that with some yoghurt, strawberries and milk. Oh, yum! I’ve been having days and days of buttered toast and honey or jam so this was a nice change.

I have also started running five days a week. The first week was quite a torture and my muscles were sore everyday but by week 2, i was keeping a nice stride and that was encouraging. I used to be able to run for an hour without any trouble but considering that i have not attempted that in two years, i was wise enough to start slowly. Also, i live in a hilly place, which really adds to the runs in terms of intensity. My favorite bit of the run is still the end, where i’m going downhill and pass by the house next to mine that has beautiful wisteria hanging off its roof.

It’s my week off this week and it has been so nice. I’ve been catching up on all the television i’ve missed and also packing here and there. Today, i need to clean and pack the kitchen up. It would be so much better packing if if i knew where we were moving too but we haven’t found anything. We have to be out of our current place in 20 days so not too much time left!

Last night, Jon and i watched Wall-E (part 1 of my first year anniversary gift to him) and i must say that i really enjoyed it! The animation was very cool and it was surprisingly a sweet story! Next up, Nights in Rodanthe when it gets released in November. I read the book when we went to the snow and it will be interesting to see the movie. I’m a sucker for those types of movies anyway and will probably love it!

Alright then, i’m off to make a cup of coffee and continue perusing blogs. Ah…days off are great!

I made pancakes again for breakfast this morning with a new recipe i found online and they were great! They were fluffy, didn’t burn and were made with wholemeal (or whole wheat) flour. Combined with a hot cup of coffee, it was a wonderful start to the day.

[Combine 2 cups wholemeal flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tspn baking soda and 3/4 tsp salt in a large bowl and stir. In a medium bowl, combine 2 eggs, 2 cups buttermilk, 2 T honey and 50g butter and stir. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir till just combined. Heat a nonstick pan over medium heat and spray with some olive oil spray. Ladle batter onto pan and cook until bubbles appear on the top. Flip over and cook for about 20s. Serve pancakes with fruit and maple syrup. Makes 10-12 pancakes.]

Last night, i made beef rendang from this recipe. It was so yummy, especially with this stir fried pumpkin and some fragrant jasmine rice cooked with star aniseed, cinnamon, cardamon, ginger and garlic (my auntie’s recipe). So, all good except that it took about three hours to finish cooking everything! I was so stressed afterwards and when i realised that i still had to make the pancake batter for breakfast today and do some ironing (which never took place), i collapsed on the lounge and asked Jon to please pour me a glass of chardonnay.

He had surprised me with a big bouquet of red roses minutes before and i concentrated on the fact that i had a lovely, generous husband whilst drinking my wine and eventually calmed down. Some days, cooking makes me feel relaxed and happy. Other days, not so. But as we sat down to our meal and Ugly Betty on tv, the flavours of the food and knowing that i had slaved over it made me feel quite accomplished.

I finally watched Sex and the City on Tuesday and really liked it. I loved the celebration of love and friendship and gosh, the fashion! I could never walk in that pair of blue Manolo Blahniks or even afford them but they were stunning. I’m probably most like Charlotte, fashion-wise with all her pretty dresses. The movie in its entirety was a fun experience and when i emerged from the cinema into the cold winter night, it left me dreaming about funky boots and made me look forward to seeing Jon and enveloping him in a big bear hug.

It has been raining everyday for more than a week now but Saturday was bright, sunny and just too lovely to stay at home so we set off fairly early and drove to the south coast. It was such a pleasant drive and being in the passenger seat allowed me to be distracted by the ocean in all its wonderfulness.

We stopped at Coledale and spent some time at the beach there before driving to Thirroul (DH Lawrence apparently lived here for a year in 1922), where we had second breakfast at Oskar’s Wild Bookstore and Coffeebar. Jon had the big breakfast and i had pancakes which i had been craving for a while. The pancakes were beautifully done- more crepe-like than pancakey but still yummy. Lots of maple syrup made this delightful meal even better.

After our meal, we wandered around Thirroul and drove along the streets to check out some houses. I found a perfect patch of grass overlooking the water and sat there basking in the sun and dreaming.

It was a beautiful morning.

At night, we went to Leichhardt (Sydney’s ‘Little Italy’) for some Italian food. Of course, we had to stop by Bar Italia for some gelato (double scoop of panne cotta and toblerone) and hot chocolate after dinner. Very content with our after-dinner selections, we walked along Norton Street and just as we were about to enter a bookshop, the entire street blacked out!
It was quite surreal. No one knew what was happening at first and then all the restaurants started placing candles on tables so diners could carry on eating. Although i was glad we had had our meal before the black out, a little part of me wished we could have had our dinner in darkness, faces lit only by candle light and a sense of excitement in the air. It would have added to the romance of the evening.

It started to drizzle as we made our way home on Saturday night and it hasn’t stopped raining since. I hear there is to be a short respite this afternoon but i’m not counting on it.

Meanwhile, having a surplus of bananas at home has resulted in banana pancakes for breakfast this morning and Emily’s banana bread for tea. So very good and perfect for rainy days.

(Well, what do you know. The sun has come out! I guess it’s time for some wet laundry to be hung out to dry.)