Travel

Westfjords, Iceland

August 24, 2018 northlondonhousewife

From the Snaefellsness Peninsular and Stykkusholmur, we took a ferry across the water to the Westfjords.

Not the brightest of days, and more than a little bit rough around the islands, the hours were livened up by listening to the conversations of an American group next to us. It seemed to be a party of well-to-do young families ravelling escorted by both an American organiser, and a couple of Icelandic guides. There was also a French woman that initially appeared to be part of the group but with hindsight was probably a member of staff.

One of the fathers piqued our interest when talking to one of the kids, his son (apparently) who he called “bear”. He talked of respecting his 6 (?) year old son whilst talking over him and then disappeared off for a break leaving his even younger daughter to hold the ferry seats. The boy kicked off. The girl kicked back. There were tears all around until the mother a rather beautiful Chinese American lady arrived.

Unfortunately she had decided to share her anger at the length of the journey – she felt misled by the tour guides who whilst they had given her a written itinerary, hadn’t actually verbally read it out to her and stressed the time involved.

There was lots of chat around emotions and validations and respect, all whilst being hugely dis-respectful.

After about 10 minutes of ranting at one of the Icelandic staff, she ground to a halt. & then her husband started up. Putting up his hand to shush her and telling her to listen to him since he’d sat there listening to her complaining.

He talked about the importance of the kids living in the “real” and experiencing the holiday through physical activities, going fishing, visiting real factories etc. rather than just looking at things and places.

And it left us all feeling that no matter how crap our family dynamics might appear at times, they could be a lot worse: I could have named my child “bear” and insisted they visit a fish factory on holiday. We could have lived their childhood in the “real” as opposed to just living. I could have spent my energies filling all of their hours with organised activities, with other people whilst telling them that I respected them (but not enough to actually engage with them myself).

& obviously they had more money than sense, and were easily enough distracted when the Icelandic tour guide suggested stopping off at a hot spot (thermal pool) on the way to their next hotel. No doubt their family will be fine and their parenting techniques aren’t bad just different and considerably more stressing for everyone involved.

Still, listening in managed to pass about an hour with sighs and eye rolls across the table before we rolled off the ferry in our hired car and started to drive towards Patreksfjord. It’s difficult to either explain or capture just how big the landscape was and how high and cold the pass up and over the mountain turned out to be.

Driving twisty roads in the fog, with a drop that could kill you on one size did not add to the enjoyment.

We thought we’d passed the worst and then hit the gravel roads. With a £3000 excess on the car. the idea of gravel kicking up and damaging the car was not restful.

Still, it was extraordinarily beautiful even on a dull and dreary day

& eventually we arrived.

Food

Aubergine larb with sticky rice and shallot and hazelnut salad

August 22, 2018 northlondonhousewife

Larb is a salad from Laos in which the dressing is king. It’s rare for a dish to tick all the flavour boxes, but larb is sweet, sour, salty, bitter and has bagfuls of umami. Here, aubergine, which is baked until the flesh is soft and creamy, sits alongside sticky rice, and both act as perfect vehicles on which to transport the much punchier flavours of tamarind, soy, chilli and lime.

Aubergine larb with sticky rice and shallot and hazelnut salad

You can speed up this recipe by juggling what you cook and when – for example, while the aubergines are baking and the rice is cooking, start on the salad and dressing.

Prep 15 min
Soak 30 min
Cook 1 hr
Serves 4

350g glutinous rice,

For the larb
4 small to medium aubergines (around 250g each)
Rapeseed oil
Salt
2 tbsp palm sugar
2 tbsp lime juice
2½ tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp tamarind paste
1½ bird’s eye chilli, very finely chopped
For the salad
3 tbsp rapeseed oil
200g shallots, peeled, halved lengthways and finely sliced
Scant ½ tsp salt
40g ground hazelnuts (just pop them in a food processor or spice grinder, use peanuts if you’re not allergic)
1 large handful coriander, finely chopped
40 Thai basil leaves, finely chopped
½ red bird’s eye chilli, minced
1 tbsp lime juice

Heat the oven to 200C/390F/gas 6. Cover the rice with cold water and leave to soak for 30 minutes.

In the meantime, cut the aubergines in half lengthways and score a criss-cross pattern on the cut sides. Brush all over with oil and put cut side up on two baking sheets. Bake for 20 minutes, brush the cut side with more oil and bake for another 20-25 minutes, until creamy inside.

Meanwhile, make the rice and the salad. Drain the rice, put it in a pot, cover with 520ml water and add half a teaspoon of salt. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat to its lowest setting and simmer for 15 minutes, until all the water has evaporated and the rice is cooked. Cover with a lid, and leave to stand for at least 10 minutes.

To make the salad, heat the oil in small frying pan on a medium flame and, when hot, fry the shallots until brown and crisp, around 20 minutes. Take off the heat, stir in the salt, ground nuts, herbs, chilli and lime juice, then taste and adjust the lime, chilli or salt as you wish.

To make the larb dressing, put the palm sugar, lime juice, soy sauce, tamarind paste and chilli in a small saucepan with eight tablespoons of water. Heat, stirring, until the sugar melts, then take off the heat, taste and add up to half a teaspoon of salt, if need be.

To serve, put a flat mound of rice on each plate, layer over two aubergine halves, pour on the dressing and sprinkle the salad on top.

Rants&Rambles

Value

August 20, 2018 northlondonhousewife

Sex is a funny business. It has become a hyper-efficient and deregulated marketplace, and, like any hyper-efficient and deregulated marketplace, it often makes people feel very bad.

Our newest sex technologies, such as Tinder and Grindr, are built to carefully match people by looks above all else. Sexual value continues to accrue to abled over disabled, cis over trans, thin over fat, tall over short, white over nonwhite, rich over poor.

There is an absurd mismatch in the way that straight men and women are taught to respond to these circumstances. Women are socialized from childhood to blame themselves if they feel undesirable, to believe that they will be unacceptable unless they spend time and money and mental effort being pretty and amenable and appealing to men. Conventional femininity teaches women to be good partners to men as a basic moral requirement: a woman should provide her man a support system, and be an ideal accessory for him, and it is her job to convince him, and the world, that she is good.

Men, like women, blame women if they feel undesirable.

They do no blame themselves for the things they say or do, or fail to say or fail to do. They do not blame the very narrow definitions available to them of male success in our society today.

And, as women gain the economic and cultural power that allows them to be choosy about their partners, men have generated ideas about self-improvement that are sometimes inextricable from violent rage.

A subset of straight men calling themselves “incels” have constructed a violent political ideology around the injustice of young, beautiful women refusing to have sex with them. These men often subscribe to notions of white supremacy. They are, by their own judgment, mostly unattractive and socially inept. (They frequently call themselves “subhuman.”) They’re also diabolically misogynistic.

“Society has become a place for worship of females and it’s so fucking wrong, they’re not Gods they are just a fucking cum-dumpster,” a typical rant on an incel message board reads. The idea that this misogyny is the real root of their failures with women does not appear to have occurred to them.

The incel ideology has already inspired the murders of at least sixteen people. Elliot Rodger, in 2014, in Isla Vista, California, killed six and injured fourteen in an attempt to instigate a “War on Women” for “depriving me of sex.” (He then killed himself.) Alek Minassian killed ten people and injured sixteen, in Toronto, last month; prior to doing so, he wrote, on Facebook, “The Incel Rebellion has already begun!” You might also include Christopher Harper-Mercer, who killed nine people, in 2015, and left behind a manifesto that praised Rodger and lamented his own virginity.

Incel stands for “involuntarily celibate,” but there are many people who would like to have sex and do not. (The term was coined by a queer Canadian woman, in the nineties.) Incels aren’t really looking for sex; they’re looking for absolute male supremacy. Sex, defined to them as dominion over female bodies, is just their preferred sort of proof.

What incels want is extremely limited and specific: they want unattractive, uncouth, and unpleasant misogynists to be able to have sex on demand with young, beautiful women. They believe that this is a natural right.

It is men, not women, who have shaped the contours of the incel predicament. It is male power, not female power, that has chained all of human society to the idea that women are decorative sexual objects, and that male worth is measured by how good-looking a woman they acquire. Women—and, specifically, feminists—are the architects of the body-positivity movement, the ones who have pushed for an expansive redefinition of what we consider attractive. “Feminism, far from being Rodger’s enemy,” Srinivasan wrote, “may well be the primary force resisting the very system that made him feel—as a short, clumsy, effeminate, interracial boy—inadequate.” Women, and L.G.B.T.Q. people, are the activists trying to make sex work legal and safe, to establish alternative arrangements of power and exchange in the sexual market.

Home

CheckLists

August 18, 2018 northlondonhousewife

My youngest daughter is safely through A levels to her preferred university, studying her preferred course, a four year MEng. in general engineering.

& of course I have managed to mislay the list of things that we need to do now but to a certain extent it’s all just waiting to hear back from the university on accommodation.

We’ll need to set up a student bank account, which means taking a look around to see what each one offers. In practical terms it’s easiest to open an account if a parent already has an account there, but that gives us a choice of 3-4 banks. That’s a morning trip to the nearest branch and an hour or so spent filling forms. At the same time we could update here ISA savings account to make it an adult account she can link to her current account for savings. It’s not a bad idea to get them started saving a small sum each month.

We need to organise a student railcard though its a university where it makes sense to drive for the second and third year so maybe not a railcard for all 3 years.

Assuming that she gets offered self-catering then we will need to dig out whatever is left and still suitable from her sister’s first year (single quilt and bedlinen hopefully) before heading off to Ikea or similar to buy some pots and pans etc.

University checklist: Important documents

Passport (or other ID)
All official university correspondence, including acceptance letter
All student loan correspondence (to keep track of when your loan is due, and so you can follow up if necessary)
Details of accommodation and contract
Bank account details and recent bank correspondence
Bank card
National insurance card/details
Student discount cards (e.g. 16-25 Railcard, NUS card)

University checklist: Electricals

Laptop or desktop computer
Mobile phone and charger
Extension cable/s
USB memory stick (for backing up important assignments)
Headphones
Speakers

University checklist: Stationery

Pens and pencils
A4 lined notepad(s)
A4 binder(s)
Highlighters
Post-it notes
Calendar/diary
Paper clips
Stapler
Sticky tape
Course readers and other study books

University checklist: Kitchenware

Cutlery (tea spoons, tablespoons, knives and forks – enough for yourself)
Crockery (plates, bowls and mugs – enough for yourself)
Other utensils (e.g. chopping board and sharp knife, wooden spoon, spatula, cheese grater, potato masher, colander, bottle opener, tin opener)
Saucepan and frying pan
Kettle and or toaster for own room
Scissors (do not attempt to double up as toenail clippers)
Baking tray
Tupperware container(s)
Washing up liquid and sponge
Recipe book
Snacks (going to university without biscuits is like going to Barbados without a sunhat)
TeaTowel

University checklist: Bedroom

Mattress protector
Duvet and pillows (at least 3 pillows because they’re useful cushions if you have guests in your room, and you want guests)
Duvet cover and pillow covers
Blankets
Laundry bin (doesn’t have to be wicker, a large and strong plastic bag will do!)
Clothes hangers
Alarm clock (as a backup for the day when you inevitably drop your phone down the toilet)
Desk lamp
Ear plugs
doorstop

University checklist: Bathroom

Toothbrush and toothpaste
Wash bag (especially useful if you’re sharing a bathroom which is a short walk away from your bedroom)
Soap
Shampoo and conditioner, Shower gel
Deodorant
Razor
Towel (x2)
Hand towel
Flannel
Hair brush, hairdryer
Toilet roll
Tampons/sanitary towels

University checklist: Healthcare

Any personal medications and prescriptions
Basic first aid kit (e.g. pain relief tablets, plasters, cold and flu medication, allergy tablets, antibacterial lotion or spray)
Details of current GP and doctor’s surgery
Glasses and prescription
Multivitamins
Birth control pills and/or condoms

Note: All new university students should register with a local doctor’s surgery early on in university life. This will save you having to wait for hours at a drop-in center filling out forms on the day that you’re actually ill.

University checklist: Miscellaneous

Sturdy bag (capable of carrying stacks of books)
Photographs of friends and family
Small sewing kit
Matches or a lighter
Films/TV series boxsets
Board/card games (e.g. Monopoly, Hungry Hippos or a pack of cards)
Hair dryer/ hair straighteners etc.

Food

White nougat with dried apricot and cherry

August 16, 2018 northlondonhousewife

A fudgy, light mix of caramel and meringue, studded with toasted nuts and fruit

Nougat is basically a caramel whisked into egg white. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you can customise it with all sorts of flavours: different dried fruits, nuts, orange zest and spices. Go and experiment. You will need a sugar thermometer for this.

Prep 10 min
Cook 25 min
Serves 4-6

40g hazelnuts
40g almonds
50g dried apricots
50g dried cherries
1 large egg white
250g granulated or caster sugar
50g golden syrup
50g honey

Roast the nuts at 200C/390F/gas 6, for six to eight minutes, until browned. Chop the dried apricots the same size as the dried cherries.

Have the egg white ready to whip in the bowl of a stand mixer. Put the sugar, syrup and 100ml water in a pan, and heat over a medium flame, stirring gently to dissolve the sugar. Brush down any sugar crystals from the side of the pan with a wet pastry brush.

Once the mixture starts to boil, stop stirring ( the sugars may recrystallise if you do). Continue to boil until it reaches 145C.

Take the pan off the heat and pour in the honey. Swirl it around the pan until evenly mixed, then return to the heat. The mixture will bubble up; continue to heat for a further few minutes until it’s back to 145C.

Meanwhile, turn the stand mixer on high to whip the egg white to stiff peaks. Turn off the mixer, pour a little of the molten sugar into the egg foam and pulse for a few seconds until mixed, then repeat, adding a little sugar syrup at a time, until you’ve used it all up. Continue to whip on high for two minutes, until it starts to thicken, then stir in the nuts and fruit.

Pour out on to a sheet of greaseproof paper, spreading it out into a roughly rectangular shape. Top with another sheet of paper, then roll into a 2cm-thick slab.

Once completely cooled, peel off the paper and use a sharp knife to cut into strips.

Travel

Snaefellsness Peninsula, Iceland

August 14, 2018 northlondonhousewife

We headed north out of Reykjavik towards the Snaefellssness Peninsula and despite ending up at a lovely hotel, were stuck in the worst, smallest rooms there so suffered a bit. Since every hotel room costs an extraordinary amount, anything less than good feels like a cheat, and no room with less than a square meter of full-headheight space could be described as good.

With only one day to pause before heading north to the Westfjords, we headed out across the peninsula in the rain and fog.

And despite the gloominess there was a grandeur to it, as well as quite a lot of water.

There were plenty of open spaces and views, cute bakeries and traditional churches; all with the most sparse and unforgiving background I’ve ever come across.

It really was very bleak grandeur, punctuated by the very occasional bungalow. It seems that the Icelandic people are utilitarian to the core.

Except there are glimpses of pure whimsy, where caverns and caves are described as being the hang-out of trolls with “luscious” daughters.

And back at the hotel, the sun came out to shine.

Shame it didn’t last for the ferry ride north.

Travel

Iceland

August 12, 2018 northlondonhousewife

Planning a trip to Iceland was a strange business. Everyone who has been raves about the place and about the ring road, but when you drill down, none of them seems to have completed the entire circuit around the island.

It seemed logical to plan a round trip by looking at the ring road and any detours, setting aside 2-3 nights at each stop, and trying not to end up with too many all-day drives. It helps to focus on what you regard as the highlights of a visit, which for me is always about the photography, which roughly translates as landscape, animals and city scenes.

Hiring a car in Iceland seems ridiculously expensive, especially if you plan to include any gravel roads or a trip to the Highlands interior which requires a four wheel drive vehicle. We end up paying around £3,000 for 20 days.

The Summer weather isn’t great even by UK standards so I expected rain and around 15-20C but it could be worse: it was worse.

Iceland is obviously said to be a landscape photographer’s dream. There are glaciers, ice flows breaking up in the bay, moon-like lava fields, beaches with black, red and pink sand, geysers and hot springs, and an over-abundance of waterfalls almost everywhere.

When it comes to animals they have puffins and whales. There’s only one city, Reykjavik, but I was hoping for some wonderful modern architecture combined with some more traditional buildings.

It’s also worth remembering how expensive food can be in Iceland. A simple bowl of soup for lunch (or sandwiches) with tap water to drink, ends up costing around £15 per head. A rather unimpressive pizza would cost around £30 in a pizzeria in Akureyri. Whenever we sat down in a cafe (we decided restaurants were just too much) we spent at least £100.

So around half of the accommodation is self-catering. A quick look through receipts suggests a block of cheddar would cost £7, a loaf of bread £3 etc – so also not cheap.

At this stage of totting up the extraordinary costs, I realised that cheaper shortfall flights (around £1,000 for four of us) were not going to offset enough of the living costs – it’s an expensive trip with car hire and hotel bills adding up to around £12,000 for four people. for three weeks. Cut it down to two weeks and you’re looking at around £9,000. To cut it down even further, you could use airbnb accommodation throughout, or even hostels.

Food is taxed quite heavily in Iceland, plus it starts expensive because much of it has to be imported whilst for home grown or made food, labour costs are typically high making production costs high.

So the itinerary ended up looking something like this in my head, amended with strike throughs and italics for what actually happened:

Arrive Reykavik: Reykavik Residences £1,600: 2nights, self catering arriving late so really only 1 full day
- ~~Whale Watching~~ Didn’t happen on a rainy blustery day
- Modern architecture, cathedral & Harpa Concert Hall & Civic Centre, Old Harbour, basically an excuse to mooch about;
Transfer to Hotel Egilsen, Snaefellsnes PeninsulaWest Iceland £1,000: 2 nights bed and breakfast;
- On the way there are some landscape sights to see views of Vogelmir etc.
- Saxholl Crator, Gerduberg Basalt Columns (Snaefellsjokull National Park) Stykkisholmir Harbour (ferry)
Transfer to Hotel Latrabjarg £1,400 bed, breakfast and supper: Westfjords by ferry and car: 3 nights
- Puffins on the Latrabjarg Cliffs, the most westerly point of Europe. Raudasandyr beach for a walk and seal hunt.
- Dynjandi waterfall
Transfer to Akureyi Apartment, for a full day (7 hour) drive: 3 nights, £550 self catering:
- Whale watching from ~~Husavik~~ Akureyri, which basically has a family of three humpbacks living in its huge fjord £250 (3 people).
- ~~Dettifoss~~ – just had enough of gravel roads by this stage so Dettifoss was out but Goðafoss Waterfall was in, on the route through to the Eastfjords..
- Lava castles at Myvatn
- Trollskagi drive & views
Transfer to Fosshotel, Eastfjords £1,300 3 nights bed and breakfast;
- ~~Puffins at Borgarfjorddur~~ – just too long a drive on gravel tracks, so abandoned this in favour of a smaller route closer to home
- Seydisfjordur – which turned out to be a very pretty town on a sunny day.
Transfer to Fosshotel Glacier, South East Iceland £1,100 2 nights, bed ad breakfast;
- Stopping at Hofn for lunch – note that food in Iceland is not one of its selling points but soup and bread for lunch became a mainstay of our trip.
- Jokulsarlon lagoon & glaciers, Fjallsorlan
- Lakagigar Laki Visitor trail
- Fagrifoss waterfall
Transfer to Hotel Skogar, South Iceland: 2 nights self catering £1,000;
- Vik beach & puffins
- Skogarfoss, ~~Seljalandsfoss~~ – no gravel roads, but after this number of days, who needed another waterfall.
Transfer to Hotel Stracta, South West iceland £1,300 : 3 nights bed and breakfast ;
- Gullfoss, Geysir & other bits and pieces within distance of Reykavik ~~including possibly the Blue Lagoon~~ – by this stage of the holiday, we’re all basically retreating into our wifi and trying to do as little as possible.
- ~~Brief trip into highlands Kjolur Route~~ – just not going to happen at the end of the holiday
- Anything left over from the initial day in Reykavik e.g. Arbaer Open Air Museum which turned out to be a perfect, very undemanding visit, just right for the last day.
Transfer to Reykavik Airport and fly home.

And quite a few of the people who have been to Iceland and loved it, still add up the number of days and shake their heads at three weeks worth of holiday there. I just can’t see how to cut it down further without skimping on something.

Food, Rants&Rambles

Picnic

August 10, 2018 northlondonhousewife

After a tennis match, the Home team provides a meal for the 12 people who have played. Since our club is tiny and comes without a kitchen, we all take some food along and essentially have a picnic afterwards.

So looking forward to the next match, I’m thinking that we’ll have something along the following:

Puff Pastry Tart – essentially an assemble job with tomato sauce, pesto and antipasti leftover from the weekend
Potato and leek frittata – basically the stuff you find at the bottom of your fridge and cupboards
Green salad (probably Nigel Slaters, fennel salad with parmesan dressing)
Tabbouleh, though maybe using quinoa rather than cracked wheat because I’ve got some cooked lying around in the fridge.

And someone will bring along either bread and butter, a fruit salad or pre-prepared desert like tiramisu, whilst another will bring wine and beer to the party.

& even though it’s all very simple and easy to make it will taste brilliant after three hours playing tennis.

Home, Rants&Rambles

Today

August 9, 2018 northlondonhousewife

Wake up and reach for the coffee.

Deal with the dead (almost mummified) mouse corpse behind the fireplace. So much for the cat sitter not finding any rodents.

Discover the very lively mouse cowering at the back of the grate, and with the help of two out of three cats, corner it and trap it in a glass. It looks like we’re back to the days of our mouse “catch and release” programme.

Have a couple of conversations with the neighbours whilst re-locating the mouse including the guys with the bruiser who terrorises my babies. Managed to keep it civil. His fat cat has been put on a diet, which might explain some of it’s grumpy menace.

Elsewhere agreed to visit my very elderly next-door neighbour to ostensibly to chat about her garden, but basically to schedule some time to chat see how she’s getting on. Wondering vaguely whether there will be people around to take an interest in us when we’re in our 90s or whether it will even be considered normal or acceptable to show an interest in your elderly neighbours. Obviously I am also hugely interested in her lovely garden as well, not least because it’s always great to crib ideas.

Lunch.

Had a tennis lesson and got things together for tonight’s mini-tournament of mixed doubles.

Looked through the garden now that the weather has broken to a more manageable 25C to determine what has survived and what has not. There are lots of gaps up on the gravel roof after 6 weeks of no rain and 30C and some surprising survivals. One of the perennial wallflowers has died but there’s another in a pot to replace it. All of the roses and iris have survived (some judicious watering while we were away).

Engaged in a few political conversations on-line to absolutely no obvious effect, but at least I’ve tried. I find the current political climate entirely without rhyme or reason.

Sorted through some more of the photos from Iceland – still difficult to believe that it was so grey and gloomy – and finding it odd that it’s such a difficult country to photograph well. Maybe the landscapes are just too big to capture easily. Certainly the details are much more easily captured with endless decent pictures of cute puffins.

& now I’m off to taxi the kids around. Surely by now they should be driving themselves, even in London?

Travel

Reykjavik

August 1, 2018 northlondonhousewife

All cities are sad in the rain, but perhaps none more so than Reykavik.

I was expecting some bright and modern architecture which was strangely lacking apart from two stand out buildings: the cathedral and the Hella Concert Hall down by the harbour.

The cathedral is almost Lutheran in its severity, built from what appears to be concrete.