Cassy hosted her Book Club crew at our place on Friday night and I'm glad it's over! Yes, although I took no part in it whatsoever, it has been quite the extravaganza in planning, shopping, debating, agonizing, cleaning, decorating and eventually, hosting. In the interests of happy living, I've offered to help as much as possible and Cassy has actually allowed me to contribute, which I was pleasantly surprised about! Owing to the nature of the gathering, and despite the fact that local supermarkets now offer heaps more than they did a decade ago, specialty shopping was still a necessity.
Anyway, after all the effort expended, apparently the evening was a great success, with the cheeses, salads, bread, champagne and guacamole to start, before the main course of penne with olives and chicken. Cass made this recipe a while back and has tweaked it a little over time till it appears in its current form. I love it, and apparently it was a big success with "the girls" as well. Cassy's signature pavlova made its obligatory appearance: they refuse to let her cook anything different, they love it so much! This time, the lower humidity allowed it to cook and crisp to perfection, despite being squeezed into our rudimentary toaster oven for the bake: I'm always in awe of Cass being able to produce this in such circumstances!
The week and weekend consisted of a bit of research and a bit of booking for events in London in the next couple of weeks. We're staying in a pretty lux apartment in Kings Cross for the first week and then a super cool new cube hotel in the centre of town in the second week. We're going to see a Premier League soccer match between Queen's Park Rangers and Swansea on New Year's Day and see the Book of Mormon in the West End on Boxing Day (premium tickets at quite a cost!...YOLO). We've got a great range of stuff lined up with no set plan....just depends where the Tube takes us. The only time we're leaving London is to see Stonehenge, Bath and Windsor Castle on a bus trip one day early on.
We've got a little blase about these trips and left things a little late we've discovered! Luckily, we've still managed to get ourselves in to see what we wanted and with a little creative work this week, we should be all set to go super early on Saturday morning. The school camera I have been issued started to play up lately: couldn't have that could I? I requested a new one this morning, so they swapped me over a new one for the dodgy....gotta love that!
Taipei winter has finally arrived with a vengeance: Antarctic style puffy jackets have bloomed on the streets, our little blow heater is working overtime, the second quilt is on the bed, and the girls have disappeared into the inner sanctum of said quilt's folds in the blink of an eye. It's probably a good thing as it gets us slightly acclimatised to the European winter once again, albeit, very belatedly.
I'll have a spell from blog writing for a few weeks as we're away till January 5th: next blog probably the 11th. Happy Christmas and New Year! Photos: Book Club pav, amazing 3D printing by my 5th graders, running repairs for the car through the week, nice label on the oyster sauce and some of the tickets. Oh, and the follicly challenged brigade at the lower school Christmas party on Friday night!