The best news this year

The company that I work for hosts an actuarial conference every year for all actuaries working for the group. All of us are challenged to come up with a new idea, research it and present it at the conference, and the best paper wins a prize - well, the top 3 usually win prizes. Anyway, this year I worked with my best friend in the office and 2 other colleagues from a different area, and we actually won first prize! A trip to London for the 2012 Olympics! I am beyond thrilled. We have tickets for the final day of the athletics (including the 100m final) and the closing ceremony, our flights and accommodation etc. are all paid for. How absolutely awesome is that?!? I'm leaving probably on 9 August, we'll leave the kids with my in-laws who will take unbelievably good care of them, and we'll be away for just over a week. It's actually still sinking in, but I simply can't wait. This will be the first time that I'm overseas with my husband - we've each been away to Europe separately, he's been in the UK and I've been in the US but never together. It's going to be fantastic!!

We won a Global knife!

The results for Eat for the Earth were announced today, and we're one of the lucky winners! We didn't win the big prize of a Global knife block, but we did win one of the knives. Woo-hoo!

A surprisingly disappointing dinner

We went out to dinner at the Attic last night. It was my 3rd visit there, and the previous 2 times the food has been absolutely phenomenal. My expectations were obviously high last night - and I was actually quite disappointed.

Their new winter menu was launched only last week, so I was quite curious to see what they came up with. Some old favourites are still there - the chilli salt squid starter, the crab & fettucine main meal and so on. But we each had only choices that we haven't tried before.

My starter was a slow poached duck egg served over tenderstem broccoli with a herb aioli. Lovely stuff, but the egg was poached firm, instead of soft as I expected, and there were only three tiny pieces of broccoli on the plate. It was supposed to be served with toasted brioche, but instead there were a few crumbs on the plate, the biggest roughly the size of my pinkie nail. My husband chose the winter mushroom salad with gorgonzola, red onion and pine nuts, but there was no sign of any gorgonzola or red onion in the salad. The mushrooms were well cooked but when you order a meal with gorgonzola, you expect to receive it!

My main was the pork belly, which was mostly lovely if a little less tender than I expected. But it was served on a little square potato cake that tasted like the potatoes had been frozen - you know that almost floury texture that potato gets when it is thawed? It tasted like that. Plus the sauce that was served with the pork was entirely savoury, and usually pork is served with at least a touch of sweetness. So that was unusual. My husband had the duck 2 ways, and that was really well cooked, so no complaints.

Then we waited about 20 minutes to be able to attract our waitress' attention, and once she finally took our order for dessert it was almost 40 minutes before we received it. We queried it with our waitress after about 30 minutes and she had to ask again what we had ordered, and then said that it's "definitely coming". I had the salted caramel pot, very nice but the flakes of salt were huge so the taste alternated between too-salty and not-salty-at-all, a little disappointing. It was also supposed to be served with a sea salt tuille, but instead again I received a 1cm by 1 cm little square of baked dough, flavourless and adding absolutely nothing to the dessert. My husband's dessert on the other hand was HUGE, a piece of pear and almond tart big enough to serve 3 people, and the tart base was really hard and overbaked.

Then once again it took forever for our waitress to visit our table so we could request the bill. We told her that we were in a hurry to get home and relieve our baby sitter - the long delay on the dessert meant that this was about 30 minutes later than we expected. And despite us commenting on this urgency, she was still standing around doing nothing for about 10 minutes (I could see her from my seat).

When the bill finally came we were charged corkage on 2 bottles of wine even though we only had one, which caused more delays.

So yeah - all in all a really disappointing evening. Given all the other great restaurants in the area I honestly don't know if we'll be back.

Pics from my overseas trip

I finally got all my pictures from my phone onto the computer, so I can share with you a few highlights of my US trip.

Me in front of the White House:

My boss in front of the capitol

The Iwo Jima monument - I can never remember the official name:

My colleague Matt

At the baseball game in Baltimore

The museum of modern art in Baltimore - I LOVE this!

With my brother in New York

I missed the kids terribly so spent a lot of time (and money!) in toy stores. This is the Toys R Us in Times Square:

I really wish these super-sized angry birds were available in South Africa!

Central Park

It was an awesome trip, seeing my brother was the best part of it, and I hope to go back someday.

Eat for the Earth - the picture gallery

So we hosted our Eat for the Earth dinner on Tuesday and it was awesome! I have some (bad!) pictures of the event, so here goes:

The semi-organic lemonade, home-made. Semi-organic because I couldn't find local organic sugar so I sticked to the regular stuff:

Starters was a home-made roasted tomato and red pepper soup:

Fresh organic tomatoes from Woolworths slow-roasted in the oven for about 6 hours:

Until it looks like this:

The peppers were from the Bryanston organic market, and went under the grill until properly blackened. Then into a pot to slooooowly combine all the flavours. We didn't even need to add any stock, because the tomatoes still had enough juice left in them to make the soup liquid enough.

That then got pureed and served. Beautiful.

Then we had a pizza course, home-made bases made from organic flour. One had brown mushrooms and the other mozzarella balls and baby tomatoes (all from the Bryanston organic market). The tomato one had fresh basil from the garden added just before serving.

This was then followed by the main course - butternut canneloni topped with a spinach and ricotta mixture, organic passata and an organic cheese sauce (with organic butter, flour, milk and cheese!) Baked in the oven and served with salad from the garden.

And to end the evening, an Italian apple cake with all organic ingredients except the sugar and baking powder:

Oh, and for the kids I made cupcakes, topped with green icing and let them decorate their own "gardens". They loved it!

All in all the evening was a fantastic success. A few more pictures:

Hanno in the very messy kitchen, filling the butternut canneloni

My friend Dee grating some pecorino cheese from the Bryanston market for the cheese sauce:

Everyone had an all-natural meal, baby included:

And my geek friend Simon wearing my dune-inspired apron, after lighting the fire. The wine was Laibach's Ladybug 2009, a beautiful (and award-winning) organic wine.

The table setting. We used potted African violets as decorations, and they doubled as thank-you gifts for the guests.

And there you have it! The results for the winners should be out this week, and we're holding thumbs that we did enough to qualify for one of the prizes. But even if we didn't the food was phenomenal and the evening was awesome, and it's all for a good cause.