h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

time: 17:15 CET
Weather: Not freezing yet.

My cold has nearly gone - I hope I'll be able to sing this evening, but I still have a debilitating cough.

The shortbread, flapjacks etc went down well. Those who ate the flapjacks loved the taste, but did say they didn't look too appetising.

My French colleague said that the date crunchie things tasted like "Figolu". In the UK they were called Fig rolls, but I haven't seen any of them for ages. They're still available in France, though, and whenever we're passing a supermarket in France I always pick up a few packets, the first of which is usually practically empty by the time we reach home.

I finally got everything done at work for once, so that's quite satisfying.

I suppose I could talk about shopping in France. We don't go very often, although it would be so easy to do so - less than an hour's drive, and, of course, on the border, the supermarkets are well prepared for the foreigners who come to shop. It is so different from either Germany or England. The open fish, cheese and meat counters, for a start. The exciting stationery, the fruit and vegetables, and did I mention the cheese?

Several colleagues of mine live even nearer the border and often leave tantalising little creme brulees or creme carameles in the fridge here at work. One thing that everyone buys in large amounts is bottled water. Simply because it is available there - you can get Evian in 5 litre canisters even, and it is cheap because water is heavily subsidised in France. Not sure exactly how much that reflects on the prices, but I'll do a comparison next time I go.

Another department I love is the household cleaners. I au paired in France and am familiar with the household names, and sometimes it's just nice to have something that smells different.

And then there's biscuits, and patisserie, and charcuterie.

And - Did I mention the cheese ?

Fig rolls! I'd forgotten all about them which probably means I've not seen them on sale anywhere here for years either Cheese

I'm envious of you being able to hop over into France so easily. Admittedly I could hop over the border in that time, but I wouldn't get much I can't get here. There's one shop here with a great array of French cheeses, but they are eye-wateringly expensive. I just might have to pay a Christmas visit, though. It will be perfect vacherin time then, too.

Good luck with the singing. I hope the cough stays at bay!

[Amy P]

I hope you made a list of those who dared to criticise the appearance of your flapjacks. None for them next year to pay them out for being so rude.
Re bottled water: the water round here is pretty good (if a bit hard) and, now that I have resolved my differences with Anglian Water, (they reimbursed me over £300 this week)I'm happy to drink it.
In fact I have bought filter bottles for my running and football- playing children for Christmas. You just run tap water into the bottle and it filters as you drink it.
I hope you had a good sing. I thought of you while watching "Choir of the Year" this evening. I'm really enjoying your journals this year.

Well, they were right, WS - one baking sheet of flapjacks was spread a bit thin and did really go too dark, and was crumbly rather than chewy.

I took the other half of my produce to music school this morning and they loved it all and were clamouring for recipes, which I have just written out. (Converting ounces to grams again... Why can't they use sensible measuring systems here? )

Actually, the shortbread recipe I didn't bother to convert. It's

5 oz flour
1 oz rice flour
2 oz caster sugar
4 oz butter.

So I just used "unit" instead of "oz" and gave an idea of how big the unit should be for what size of baking tray. FYI 100g would fill a whole oven-sized baking tray.

The little nibbles were far easier to carry on the train than a whole cake (German-style - the size of a gravestone) would have been. I chucked an ancient (but unopened ) packet of little disposable plastic bowls I found (presumably once bought to fill with peanuts or something at a long-forgotten party) and distributed these around the classroom in the break, each with a selection of my goodies in.

Whoops better not write too much or I won't have anything left for today's journal!