Brittany

Back at home after a wonderful two weeks in Brittany. We took the ferry across from Portsmouth to St Malo, which meant we could also take our trucker Toyota crammed full of gear. A small cabin and travel cot meant the babies could sleep during the crossing, while Eddie and I hid in the miniscule bathroom with a stash of salami sandwiches, chocolate and a bottle of red.

Holiday highlights:

Amazing seafood
A rather alarming (and probably alarmed) crab we took home in a plastic bag for supper, who promptly skewered the sides with all its claws and frightened the life out of poor Will. It then wouldn't fit into the saucepan....at which point Eddie took charge and I scuttled out of the kitchen and left him to it. It was delicious.


Huitres - oysters to you and me. Absolutely delicious but you can have too much of a good thing. The last 6 we ate ended up giving Eddie acute paranoia that this time he'd eaten the 'dodgy' one and was about to spend the rest of the night throwing up. He was fine, but our oyster eating days are over for the forseeable future.


Dinner a deux - Eddie and I attempted to go out for one night only. Our foolproof plan was to drive around for 20 minutes or so until the boys went to sleep, then park the car outside this amazing seafood restaurant we'd found and have a fabulous meal. Dolled up the the nines we set off full of beans. An hour later eyes bloodshot and head nodding, Will piped up; 'not sleeping in the car, Daddy!' At which point we admited defeat, drove home and resorted to finishing off the left-over mince in front of the telly.

Beaches
So much variety, from rocky outcrops full of pools to explore, to huge expanses of white, soft sand and huge surf. William was in heaven while James picked up fistfuls of sand and ate them. The result? Poos like pumice stones. Nice.

Icecream
Pregnant with William I developed a huge and sudden aversion to ham (which remains with me to this day). Carrying James I craved pistachio icecream, but living in Newbury I stood NO chance of finding any, nor have I found any anywhere in the UK since he was conceived and all this time I've been looking. At last, in Brittany, I achieved closure and finally got to eat my longed-for glace pistache. 9 months in, 9 months out and a scoop of icecream. Phew.


Home
The best thing about going on holiday - coming back. Until we started on the laundry anyway.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Turkish Delight will get you a long way

It's roasting today, 30 degrees plus, and I've been up to Argos to buy the boys a cheap two man tent so they can go out later, build a fire at the back of the garden and camp out for the night. We've got frankfurters and rolls, bananas to roast in foil and Nutella to go with them. But no marshmallows. As we all know, no camp is complete without toasting marshmallows, so with the dual purpose of finding some, and collecting Pokemon, the boys set off on their scooters on a search for marshmallows. They had no luck at Brummell Road or the Co-Op, and a tomato-faced William came home empty handed while James continued on to Waitrose for a last try. He finally came home twenty minutes later, bright red and clutching a packet of heart-shaped marshmallows. Stomping past Dolly and I he announced "Got them on the house. They couldn't find the ones I wanted, so they gave these to me on the house." A pause as he rummaged in his pocket and I digested this incredible ...
Read more

Lunch breaks and baking cakes

It's James' birthday on Monday, but he's got his mates round tomorrow and he wants to have his birthday cake then, so they can all sing Happy Birthday and take a slice home. All well and good. Apart from the fact that I have back-to-back calls pretty much all day, and friends round for dinner. AND, I refuse to buy one. With an hour between calls it has just been possible to wolf down a fish finger sandwich (using the thinnest of slices, Eddie having eaten the rest of the loaf while I was on my previous call), mix up a chocolate Victoria sponge and get it in the oven. Icing I can sort out later. Then I wondered, as I often do, whether it would ever occur to a man to take his lunch break to bake a birthday cake. And whether high-achieving women would just go and buy one because they were focused on work and couldn't spare the time. And whether it is career limiting to spend time baking cakes when you could be working through your lunch hour. Yesterday on a call we w...
Read more

Sourdough-off

Image
Time to teach the boys to make sourdough. This is going to be an excellent project - from start(er) to finish. They have to write down the instructions each step of the considerable way and I hope at the end when they bake their loaves they'll have the same sense of achievement that I feel whenever I manage to bake a sourdough successfully (which to be honest, isn't often, but still...). Today is bake day. Will's first out of the traps as James is away on a sleepover and not back until after lunch. We were a bit worried William's starter had died yesterday as it developed an ominous layer of fluid on the top, but after school drop off I drained the fluid and gave it a stir and by this morning it had recovered so much it had actually bowed the top of its tupperware up. We poured in into lukewarm water and it floated beautifully. Mine NEVER does that. #sourdoughenvy.  This is the recipe we're using - so far it hasn't failed me.  https://www.rivercottag...
Read more