*** Braais ***

In my "home" everybody barbecues.  It is like a cultural necessity in South Africa, usually paired with copious amounts of alcohol consumption.  Only back home these rituals are called "braais", for many years I have been mocked calling a braai a barbecue... The past two days here in grey and rainy Scotland have been bearable and even SUNNY! So last night a couple of friends and I went to Irvine for a mini-getaway and had a barbecue.  Marvelous and so delicious.  I thought the world needed to know that...

*** lanterns ***

I like little lights and lanterns and things on strings... I found this while browsing pinterest (again!). Magnificently amazing idea: Break open a glowstick, throw it in a jar, shake it up and hey presto you have yourself a glowy jar-lantern.

It looks like something that could have been popped out of Autodesk Maya with a glow effect stuck on. But it's real-life. Wow.

*** soup ***

The other day I was looking forward to making butternut soup, the most amazing butternut soup recipe ever.  Always a definite winner.  I spent a quite considerable amount of time, lovingly chopping ingredients, boiling vegetables and what not, before I attempted to blend this soup.  Usually I do this using a kitchen device my family refers to as a 'magic wand', but on this occasion I was not able to locate this wonderful piece of equipment and consequently decided to chuck everything in the blender.  I have seen people do this, not a problem, right? Wrong.

I poured everything into our liquidizer, pushed the button to blend. Which worked well for the first thirty seconds or so, thereafter I heard a strange- and very unhealthy sounding- grinding noise and saw that the orange mixture was splatting into the bottom part of the blender.  At this point I thought it a good idea to salvage whatever soup was left in the blender and hurriedly turned off the plastic twist attachment.  The rest of the soup should still be ok, right? Wrong again.

The second I lifted that plastic container off its mechanical counterpart all my lovely, but boiling hot, soup poured through the bottom of the jug (which I had now noticed had lost its entire plastic base) and all over my hand.  Not only did I burn my hand, but instinctively tried to lick off the hot soup- as my hand was burning- and scorched the top of my lip.  Not the cleverest idea.

Needless to say I was not a happy camper- and a soupless one at that.  My flatmate donated a polish soup as compensation for my loss, so all is well that ends well. I still like soup.