Rowies, Butteries or Aberdeen Rolls?

Well, which is it? I seem to remember I only ever called them rolls, until I moved away to Edinburgh where that meant something else completely.

Anyway, I'm going through a cooking phase at the moment and have been trying out recipes in the Sopranos Family Cookbook. Minestre, Braciole, Eggs in Purgatory - all great!

My latest attempts have been at baking, with a passable Quiche Lorraine and on Tuesday a batch of Aberdeen Rolls. Now I realise why they were tagged as being so unhealthy!

I could get all ingredients except lard. So the internet provided a method to make my own. My capable assistant, CC, picked up a kilo of pork fat and set about wet rendering our own lard while I was at work.

The recipe came from a Scottish Cookery book that I got as a gift a few years back. It's a fairly time-consuming process, although getting the dough to rise was easy in this hot & humid climate. A lot easier than when Mum and I used to try and make pizza dough in Aberdeen!

By the time they came out of the oven, it was after 1am and the initial reaction was disappointment. But since then I've been heating them up on the George Foreman grill for breakfast and they taste pretty good. Not quite authentic but I think I need to tweak the ingredient quantities a bit.

Next attempt is going to be soft floury baps...

It has been said by some that my recent enthusiasm for cooking has been a tactic to avoid changing nappies etc. Never!

My PC at home is currently on the blink, so I haven't uploaded any photos for a while. CC has some good photos of Catriona to put up, waiting until I get the PC fixed.

2 months

Well, Catriona is 2 months old tomorrow. Time flies!

We've taken her down to the Consulate to get her birth registered in the UK, so she will have a UK birth certificate next week. Dealing with the British Consulate is a bureaucratic and costly business - almost £200 (4.91m VND) just to get a birth certificate issued. Then there's the passport...

We've been talking about getting away next month, so looks as if we'll be going up to Dalat for a weekend. It'll be nice to have some cooler weather and get out into the countryside a bit. I might try to sneak out for a game of golf, but will play that one by ear!

The Baby Carrier

We used the baby carrier to go out for the first time on Saturday. We did try before but she was too small. Within a few minutes she was fast asleep. The carrier works great and she seems pretty comfy in it.

Here's a video of it: -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnW9mfMhkIA

As you can see in the video, Walker is in the doghouse after chewing the skirting boards. We've now painted them with a mixture of vegetable oil and raw chillies. Seems to work, as first attempt at going back to the same spot sent her straight to her water bowl!

Swings 'n' Things

We've been having some problems getting Catriona to sleep in the early evenings. Putting her in the stroller and pushing her back & forth seems to do quite well, but its a bit cumbersome for the apartment.

We decided to get a baby swing. I spent at least an hour sweating over what to pick - a Rocker or a Swing - and which model to get. Finally got the one pictured. It's pretty cool; it plays music & lights and it has a motor to power the swing - no more pushing the stroller round the apartment!

All good in theory but would Catriona like it? So far, so good. She goes to sleep in it quite easily and likes following the lights.

She was up to the doctor again today for follow-up from last week. All's looking good although she has another couple of days on the medicine.

Well, off to have some mulligatawny soup for dinner, made by my own fair hand.

Smoked Monkey

We took Catriona round to Sam and James' new apartment on Saturday afternoon for a few hours. A couple of bottles of wine, a few beers...bit of Guitar Heroes on the PS3. Not very good at the latter, but managed to do okay at Tiger Woods' Golf.

Found out that Sam's dad has a smoked monkey in his freezer. Why, you may ask? For eating, apparently. I suppose a bit like smoked duck, although not sure it would sell as well in Sainsbury's.

Sam's dad had to hand-carry said monkey from Africa. Can't imagine what the X-Ray machine operator must have thought when he saw that...