Mental Trackmarks

When we were in Paris, Robin and I picked up some French activity books. One of these books is a book of 120 Énigmes Pour Jouer en Famille. I thought that it might be fun to write out the puzzles, attempt a translation and see if people can figure them out. Robin and I will take turns writing up the puzzles. I have decided to try the first translation. Please be kind, this is not something that I am very good at. I will try not to go directly to google translate but my good dictionary is at home and I suspect that lots of the puzzles will be plays on words that may not work in English

Énigmes numéro 1 :

Un forgeron en plein travail tient un morceau de fer incandescent au bout de sa grande pince. Un magicien surgit : « Si tu me donnes un écu d’or, je le lèche », lui dit-il. Le forgeron lui remet un écu d’or, et attend la suite… Le magicien le lèche vraiment, sans se brûler la langue, évidemment. Comment ?

Puzzle number 1:

A blacksmith working on a piece of glowing hot iron in his vice. A magician suggests, ” If you give me a gold coin I will lick it. The blacksmith gives him a gold coin and watches to see… The magician really licks it without burning his tongue, of course. How?

We will post a solution in a couple of days if we don’t get a correct answer! By the way, the picture of the blacksmith is Robin working with the Blacksmith at Orwell Corner this past winter. She made her own nail and Gordie got to make a hook for hanging plants on.

A little while ago we made the best beets my father ever tasted. Which will be a treat because they will make you very fat. They where made of cream, cheese and beets. The recipe is very easy to make, because you put cut up cooked beets in a casserole dish drizzle on 6 oz of double creme then put on some grated cheddar cheese and cook.  When they finished cooking, they were pink!  

I thought up a very good chicken dip which nobody knows about yet.  Which is six ounces of double cream, with beet juice in it.  That is because, when we finished eating the beets out of the casserole dish we all dipped a bit of chicken into the cream that was left over.  It was so good I did not believe that I actually liked the white part of the chicken.

Today I am planning out my birthday. I am going to have my birthday in Enniscrone. If I was home I would have the Csernyiks over for a piece of cake. This can’t happen so I am going to have a party in Enniscrone. I want to watch Shrek 2, eat pizza, drink lemonade or tea, and go to Waterpoint. I also want to call the Csernyiks. As well, I want to eat popcorn and get into PJs.

As you may have heard from Robin and Sarah, last Saturday Robin and I went to the Enniscrone agricultural fair. When we arrived in Enniscrone Monday night we found a brochure for the fair. Once we paged our way through all of the livestock categories, we found the arts, crafts and cooking section. After much deliberation Robin decided that she wanted to enter a decorated party cake. Sarah decided she wanted to cook with me, but not enter a contest.

Lots of our first week was devoted to getting setup in our new home away from home. The most important part of that setup was making certain that we could locate everything needed for the party cake. Gordie would have you believe that figuring out an Internet provider that would work for us was the top priority, but really cake was number one!

We knew that we would need a hand mixer and measuring cups and spoons. Our new place had a good supply of bowls and even a couple of pans that you could bake a cake in but no measuring cups or mixers. During of our trips into nearby Ballina to sort out our Internet woes, we found a Tesco and there we bought some groceries and found a hand mixer, but no measuring cups or spoons. We also found a discount book store where I found the book Tender by Nigel Slater. This is a great book about growing vegetables and cooking with them. Robin was extremely please that it included a carrot cake recipe, which she decided to use for the cake decorating contest.

After reading the recipe with Robin, I realized why we have not been able to find measuring cups. The recipes here are written using weights and not measures. Had I thought about this some I would have remembered that this was the case from the few European and British cookbooks that I have at home (I don’t own any Irish cookbooks yet, but I suspect that will change). Robin and I were armed with a new goal, find a scale. Which we did indeed find at a hardware store here in Enniscrone.

Enniscrone is a really small place. Less than a nine hundred people, all of whom seem willing to bend over backwards for us dumb tourists. Along with the hardware store, there are two convenience stores where we have been getting our supplies. We did not think to look for a cake decorating set when we bought the mixer at Tesco so we were left to try to find decorating supplies in Enniscrone. We did not find a cake decorating set, the hardware store was sold out of them but they normally sell them. One of the ladies that work at Centra (one of the convenience stores) offered to lend us her cake decorating set. She even offered to “pop off home” to get it for us. Though the offer was really appreciated, Robin decided to try a couple of tubes of ready-made icing that included four different tips and some sugar sprinkles.

Armed with all of her supplies, Robin made a wonderful cake, waited for it to cool, and made some cream cheese icing. All set to decorate, she iced the cake and started on her tulip design. She had to give up on her PEI coat of arms design when we could only get blue and pink icing tubes and red and green food coloring. She took one squirt of the icing tube and was horrified. I think her exact quote was “No! This is awful! I can’t use this! This is not real icing!” She threw out the tubes and proceeded use a spoon and two bowls her cream cheese icing tinted pink and green to decorate her cake. I was very proud of how well she did with just a spoon and her resolve to not use fake food even though it would have been easier for her. Though I did feel a twinge of guilt that I may have broken Robin for today’s convenience society. My guilt rapidly disappeared when we ended up eating the cake instead of entering it into the contest. It was as delicious as it was beautiful.

We decided to use the cake as my belated birthday cake. I also most felt like a little girl again. When I was a child, my birthday always coincided with the fair at home. Here in Enniscrone I had a birthday celebration complete with fair and a lasagna made with Sarah. What a great day!

A few days ago my dad told me that thir is a new Terry Pratchett book out. The main character is Tiffany and it is called  I Shall Wear Midnight. I can’t wait to know more about it. What I know is that it has the Nak Mak Feegules in it and Tiffany becomes a very good witch. My dad is looking for it for me. I really hope he can find it so I can hear it. Right now I’m reading Wintersmith which is a very good book. I think you should read it instead of me writing a long summary; but I will write a small summery now.

Wintersmith is about Tiffany learning to be a witch by traveling to many different witches. I just passed the part about when the witch she was working with died. Which, in fact, was my favorite part because she toyed with the locales by pretending to be dead when she was not; but Tiffany was not fooled, which was neat. 

Thats it, robin

A few days ago I made a delicious roast chicken which every one in my family liked I did most of it on my own but I got help from my mom she handled the chicken but I did the rest.
recipe for the roast chicken:
Ingredients
1.5 kg chicken
1 tbsp of olive oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper

1. preheat oven to 200′C ( 400′F
2. smear chicken all over with olive oil +rub with salt and pepper
3. place chicken in roasting pan
4. roast for 1 1/2 hours baste every 20 minutes until golden brown
5. to test if the chicken is cooked: stick a fork into the wing if the juices run clear,NOT PINK, it is all cooked.

if you like this way of cooking chicken leave me a comment and tell me

I got a new iPod yesterday. It is pink and I like it a lot! We needed a new way for me to listen to music because I was using Mom’s iPhone and this was not working well because Mom needed her phone and also the ear phones were broken, well at least one was and the other was getting fainter and fainter.

Today I am going to try to get The Sound of Music soundtrack put on my iPod. Daddy put Lou Bega, and lots of other albums on it already. I can use the iPod now. Last night I was having a hard time with the volume, but I have it working now.

That was fast. Three out of the four of us have come down with a rather nasty cold. Everybody is barking like herd of lovelorn elephant seals in the December. We did manage to get into Ballina to do some shopping. I got new underwear. Something a person may not consider on a trip is the wear and tear on the few pairs of underwear that one takes. Today, to me, getting new underwear is a big deal.

We also lost an iPhone recently. The biggest effect that this has had on us is that one of the girls was having a more difficult time listening to music when everybody went to sleep. We also bought a new older model iPod at a small store in Ballina and both girls are resting happily with their own music.

Because of the aches and sneezes we did very little other than read and eat. Not the worst thing that can happen. It is an incredible luxury to have the option. As a “present” to the girls for coming out to Ballina we found a four-euro movie by Walt Disney that featured The Rock and was every bit as bad as it sounds. Both girls enjoyed watching it and this gave Jan and I some time to go to bed and nap. Apparently we are not above plugging our kids into a television to allow us to get some sleep. I am not proud of this; I am just better rested.

On the other hand, we are reading Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett at the moment and Janet and Robin are taking turns reading aloud for each other and anybody else who wants to listen. Anne Frank’s diary is also on the reading list. It is quite long but the girls are about halfway through it. Unless there is a major change in the “not feeling well” crowd I am anticipating a very similar day for tomorrow.

In Ireland there are many folk tales see Not Inspired By Walt Disney by Gordie Noye

I am writing about The dullahan which is a fairy that rides a horse and holds his head with his hand. He is headless, but he carries his head with him. He whips his horse with a human spine and calls out the name of someone who is about to die.

The dullahan comes out near Irish feasts days especially the end of August and the first of September. He only comes out at midnight. If you don’t want the dullahan to get you, an artifact of gold may frighten him away. Even so much as a gold coat pin falling on the ground is enough to frighten him away.

The most common feast for the dullahan to come out is the Crom Dubh. There is a story of a man who saw the dullahan himself calling out the name of a man about to die. Here is some more information about the dullahan.

When we go to Waterpoint we have to wear a bathing cap. I did not like this idea in the beginning but Mom said “If you want to go swimming, you have to wear a bathing cap!”. So I wear a bathing cap. I like the huge water slide that goes outside the building and back inside to end. It starts inside too.

To get into Waterpoint you have to write your name and membership number and if you are going to the pool, the gym, or both. I can’t go into the gym yet because I am not 16. You also have to be 16 to go into the hot tub or the sauna.

I am swimming at the pool as well as playing. I like the pool and especially the water slide.