Days Out with Friends

A couple of weekends ago, Jeff and I drove up to Cheltenham, just north of Gloucester, to visit the Gilchrist famiy - Kevin and Christina, and their daughters Grace, Rose and Pearl. Kevin is a friend of Jeff's from university, and Christina is from California. We've been trying to spend as much time with them before their big move to Kansas City within a month or so.

They took us on a walking tour of Cheltenham. This is quite a "posh" town where royals, celebrities and other posh people send their kids to school. There are many Victorian-style buildings and houses, as well as small boutiques and cafes.

A week ago today, I got to spend the afternoon with Ally and Jane. Jane was over visiting Ally and Paul from Belfast. I met Jane during our trip to Scotland in March, and again in Belfast in July when the Ardverike group got together for dinner. Ally wanted to take us to a cute village that has a good tea house. "Sounds good to me!", I said. So, we drove to Marlborough, which is about an hour southeast from here. Ally was right... the village was cute and the tea house was good.
We were only there for a couple of hours, but it was fun to spend time with Ally and Jane and to see a new place!

The Big Apple Festival

On Saturday, we drove about an hour north of Bristol to a village called Much Marcle, near Hereford where the Big Apple Festival was taking place. The festival is "a harvestime celebration of English apples and cider in the Herefordshire parishes of the Marcle Ridge."Our day began at Westons English Ciders where we enjoyed a coffee and tea in the cafe before the tour of the Cider Mill. Westons also produces perry, which is like cider, but made from perry pears.
The tour guide explained the traditional way to produce cider (alcoholic). The apples would be put into a large circular trough, and a large stone wheel would be rolled along the trough, thus squishing the apples. The apple pulp would then be put into muslin cloth and squeezed by a press. The juice would then flow into a bucket in front of the press.
Once the demand for cider increased, the mechanized presses were used; the one below was used until 1999!
Although Westons has its own orchards, most of the apples are brought in from orchards up to a 40-mile radius from the cider mill. All types of apples are dumped into the huge baths to be washed.The cider is still fermented in HUGE, multi-story oak barrels as you can see in the background. These are the three oldest barrels, which date back to the late 1800's and are still in use!
After the tour, we drove to Awnells farm nearby. We got to meet Daniel the Hereford bull and other Hereford cows.

I told the cows to say "cheese"... little joke.

We then walked through the farm's orchard, picked a couple of apples, though they weren't too nice.
Here I am picking a perry pear; it wasn't very nice either. We looked for a partridge in the pear tree, but didn't see one... okay, another wee joke.

At the back of the orchard was a hedge of blackberry bushes! Of course, I helped myself to those as well!
Our next stop was St. Batholomew's church. There were a few vendors inside, so I bought a jar each of homemade raspberry jam and chutney and also a little pumpkin.
We climbed up 50-odd stairs to the middle of the bell tower and were given the chance to ring the bells!
Not only were there hundreds of years-old grave stones, but also this rather large tree.

We enjoyed the Big Apple Festival along with the beautiful weather and scenery and look forward to exploring more of the area once we move up to Gloucester.

Golden, Sweet Cornbread

I want to share with you our favorite recipes, and this is definitely one of them! I adapted this recipe from another recipe I found on All Recipes; I've simply reduced the amount of oil and sugar in the recipe so it's a bit healthier. This recipe couldn't be simpler. We love to eat this with my chili, which I'll post the next time I make it. We ate it the other night with baked salmon and veggies. Enjoy!

Golden, Sweet Cornbread

Serves 8

Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal or dry polenta
1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg
1 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Spray or lightly grease a 9 inch round cake pan.
2. In a large bowl, combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, salt and baking powder. Stir in egg, milk and vegetable oil until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pan.
3. Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

A Day of Cheese in Cardiff - 26 Sept.

The weekend before last, Jeff and I drove over to Cardiff in Wales for the Great British Cheese Festival. This was my first time to Wales, so I was quite excited!

The Cheese Festival took place at the Cardiff Castle. We arrived just as the first visitors were being let in, but saved touring the castle for another day.














The main attraction was the large tent containing "Britian's Biggest Cheese Market, where you can buy over 400 different cheeses, meet over 100 British & Irish cheese makers, taste the strongest cheese in Britain or try this year’s new kids on the block."
Each producer set out multiple plates of each of their cheeses. We could sample as many different kinds of cheese as we wanted. It amazed us how different each kind of cheese tasted, looked and felt from each producer.

Not only were the cheeses different from one producer to the next, but there were also similar, yet different, cheeses from the same producer! One producer, called Quickes Traditional Ltd., offered the following Cheddar cheeses: "Traditional Mature Cheddar", "Traditional Extra Mature Cheddar", "Traditional Mild Cheddar", "Traditional Vintage Cheddar", "Traditional Unpasteurised Cheddar", "Traditional Oak Smoked Cheddar" and "Traditional Cheddar with Herbs".
Of course, there weren't only Cheddar cheeses, but also blue cheeses, Red Leicester, Double Gloucester, goats cheeses, Welsh Caerphilly, cheeses with chutney, dried fruit, onion, garlic and herbs, Brie, hard cheeses, soft cheeses, and spreadable cheeses.

We ended up purchasing the following 6 cheeses:
"Blacksticks Blue": a soft and creamy amber coloured blue veined cheese, handmade in the heart of Lancashire by the Butlers family using local cows milk.
"Dorset Red" from Ford Farm: handmade & matured on the Dorset Coast, a hard English aged cheese naturally smoked over oak chips.
"Innkeepers Choice - Mature Cheddar Cheese with Pickled Onions & Chives".
"Real Yorkshire Wensleydale" from the Wensleydale Creamery in Hawes.
"Real Yorkshire Wensleydale with Ginger".
"Real Yorkshire Wensleydale & Cranberries": the 'crammed berry' cheese.

The men were competing in the cheese tossing championship. The object of the game was to see how far the pairs could toss a large log of cheese. Each time the partner caught the log of cheese, he would take a step back. When the cheese hit the ground, their turn was over and the referee measured the distance between the partners.














In the afternoon, we took two classes at the "School For Big Cheeses". The first class was titled "Science of the Ploughman". We compared the flavor of 5 different Cheddar cheeses to 5 accompaniments: pickled onion, bread, apple, chutney and tomato. The accompaniment brought out different flavors from each cheese.



















The second class we took was called "Singing the Blues" - Steve Peace, cheese maker at Carmarthenshire Cheese, has created several award-winning Blues himself and has gathered together 10 new and traditional British blues to demonstrate their extraordinary diversity and complexity. A unique opportunity for Blue cheese lovers.














We compared 10 different blue cheeses, including a Stilton, a goats cheese and an unpasteurized cheese. We were given huge hunks of cheese, simply too much to consume in one sitting! The "teacher" explained that the process of making blue cheese is different than that of 'normal' cheese and that there is actually mold throughout blue cheese, not just in the blue veins of the cheese.














We are not cheese connoisseurs by any means, but we thoroughly enjoyed the day and have had our fill of cheese for the year... or maybe two!

A Day in Oxford - 19 Sept.

A couple of weekends ago, Ally and Paul invited us to a cookout at Paul's parents' house near Oxford. We gladly accepted the invitation and took the opportunity to visit Oxford... and what a lovely place it is! The University of Oxford is the oldest surviving university in the English-speaking world (according to Wikipedia) and is made up of 38 colleges. Jeff's sister, Sharon, attended St. Hilda's College.

Our day started out with my first attempt at making a full English breakfast: a fried egg, tomato, sausages, bacon, baked beans and an English muffin, and of course, HP sauce to top things off. Usually cooked mushrooms would also be added, but I didn't have any in the fridge.


This is the Radcliffe Camera which houses the Radcliffe Science Library.

We continued walking around the university, seeing impressive architecture and beautiful parks.

Auf Wiedersehen Deutschland...Hello England!

We arrived in England 4 weeks ago, and so far so good. The Lord has really blessed our first month here.

On September 2, the movers came, wrapped up all of our furniture in bubble wrap, packed up our belongings into boxes, and loaded everything into a moving container. Jeff and I packed the car so full, we thought it might burst. Until the moving container arrives in Gloucester after closing on the house, we have only what came with us in the car.

After staying our last night in Munich, we started the long drive to Bristol. We stayed the first night in Heidelberg, Germany. This has a special place in my heart, as this was the first city I ever visited in Europe, when I was 15 years old, and the last city I visited before leaving Germany. We walked around the castle gardens, had an ice coffee in the main square and walked around the city. It was a great way to spend our final day in Germany.


The next morning, we drove from Heidelberg to Caen, France, where we caught an over-night ferry to Portsmouth. We drove through northern France, including Paris. We caught a millisecond glimpse of the Eiffel Tower...ooh la la! We arrived in Caen about 4 hours before boarding time, so we walked around the city of Caen and the fortress there.

Around 9pm we boarded the ferry, fell asleep and woke up the next morning in Portsmouth. After eating breakfast in Winchester, we finished our drive around 11am on September 4 in Bradley Stoke, a suburb of Bristol. We picked up the keys to the apartment... I mean, the flat... unloaded the car and moved in!


The three windows on the ground floor is our flat.

Welcome to the Bolton Blog

Dear Family and Friends,

We set up this blog so that you can stay up to date with what has been happening in our lives and see photos we've taken. Living so far away from all of you, we thought this would be an easy way for you to check up on us every now and then, and for us to be better connected to you. Feel free to write a comment after the entry, send us an email or drop us a line... we'd love to hear from you!

Much love,
Jeff and Lauren