food

Christmas Cookie Exchange

December 15, 2015 by Susan

One of the best things about The Learning Zone is our annual cookie exchange, organised by one of our members. This year we had a whole afternoon of festive fun. The English and drama group put on an amusing play with magically growing hamsters – yes seriously. Then we exchanged cookies – some of which had the most amazing wrapping this year. Then we sang a mix of sea shanties and carols rather raucously which was great!

Here are a few cookie pics to make you which you had joined in!

Our basket of rather cheaply and simplistically packaged cookies, we made chewy chocolate-chip cookies, German lebkuchen and Dutch pepernoten :

But got these amazing cookies in return:

And just look at this house – I think some people were just showing off!

We loved these boxes too:

and there were so many other lovely and delicious cookies from so many other generous people, we feel really blessed to be part of such a great group.

Netherlands 2015 – Maastricht

July 5, 2015 by Susan

Maastricht was an easy 30 minute cycle from out camp site, so we headed there for a couple of days.

The first day after the obligatory visit to the, rather impressive, tourist information centre (VVV)

we set out on a walking tour of the city.

First stop was the magnificent bookshop converted from an ancient Dominican church – Boekhandel Dominicanen

We opted for the fortifications tour so we saw lots of, well, fortifications.

We learned that “molen” means mill and saw some watermills.

Jonathan wanted to take some photos of the deer in the town park.

We ended up back at the very empty town square and had an ice cream, toasted sandwich and a beer before cycling back to the camp site.

Netherlands 2015 – Camping in Limberg

June 22, 2015 by Susan

We love going on holiday to The Netherlands – this year we decided to go somewhere other than the Katjekelder park in Nord Brabant so we headed for a camp site just outside Maastricht, Camping De Oosterdriessen.

This was a great choice: It had a large areas to camp in separated by light hedges,

A lake to swim in,

And some good weather to sit outside and eat the tarts

and drink the wine we bought in France.

Rye Bread

January 3, 2015 by Susan

One of my best friends bought me this lovely book for Christmas, not a diet book but a wheat and dairy free book.

So I had a go at the rye soda bread recipe and it was great!

Family Christmas, New Year and the In-Between Times

January 3, 2015 by Susan

Between Christmas and new tear we met up with both the Gibson and Anderson sides of the family.

Boxing day saw the traditional Boxing day visit of the Gibson family.

We had the usual walks, games, food and fun.

Telestrations – the new game Iain gave us for Christmas was so funny I could hardly play as all the hilarity was making me cough!

We had a gap in the family celebration while Martin went and played on the Saturday night with his Boy Band at The Hideaway in Shanklin

Then Sunday saw a departure from our usual Christmas traditions with a meet up with the Anderson side of the family at a restaurant in the New Forest. The ferry was packed but we squeezed in around a table and while 3 of us played our usual ferry card game of Yaniv 2 of us were swottily attached to textbooks!

This was my first experience of eating at a Michelin starred restaurant and it was a really interesting and delicious experience for me. It was so yummy I forgot to take photos of the food until we got to the pudding – which was definitely the best bit!

We managed to meet up with some friends and found the teenagers thrashed us at Demons – did you know the Archbishop of Canterbury also plays.

And then we saw out the old year and in the new at my favourite place on the island with some of my favourite people, eating curry and chocolate, drinking some sloe vodka, playing games and generally being silly – a great way to end and begin a year!