With the heavy rainfall today, our street looks more like a lake than anything else so the motivation to do some grocery shopping was greatly diminished. We needed bread for lunch and ingredients for our evening meal, but we ended up baking Irish soda bread and we might improvise something for dinner too. (Hurray for provisions)

The soda bread turned out to be a nice larp bread. It's very easy to make (if you have a dutch oven, which we have) because it does not need to rise before baking and it tastes good. The original recipe I used dictates two types of flour. We only had one (tarwebloem) and just used that. It worked out ok. It took some more oven time than the recipe states, but that is because our oven just s*cks. So, for future reference I'll post the recipe here:

Ingredients:

• 500 grams of flour (tarwebloem)
• 400 ml buttermilk (karnemelk)
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (zuiveringszout, check your apothecary)

Preparation:

• Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius
• Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl
• Make a little hole in the middle and pour in the buttermilk
• Stir with a spatula or spoon, or just knead it by hand into a sticky dough
• If it's too dry, add more buttermilk and if it's too wet add more flour. Too moist is better than too dry.
• Knead well, but not too long because then the bread would become tough
• Put on a baking tray or into a baking tin and flatten it a bit
• Cut in a cross on the top with a knife. About halfway down into the dough
• Put in the oven for about 45 to 60 minutes, but keep an eye on it to make sure it won't burn to a crisp
• When the crust is hard and an inserted skewer comes out clean again it's done. (When tapping the bottom of the bread it should sound hollow

It tastes great with lemon curd, jam or chocolate spread but cheese works well too.

Hmm... looking outside I see the rain pouring down once more. Just when there was a little part of the sidewalk visible again. We will survive without doing groceries but I want to go to a try out lessen jazz dance this evening. I hope it will be dry (enough) when I have to leave the house.

Dead Fox Junction was great. Everybody had put lots of effort in their costume and character and it all just fit together. It was wonderful to see how the village came to life. Ehmm.. so to speak of course, since the story was that all villagers were dead and trapped in a time loop.

At the end of the story, Saturdaynight, Olga and I were dressed as Native American dancers (I dislike the word 'Indian') and performed a spiritual dance to "guide the spirits to rest". It took place in a very bumpy field, which made dancing quite a challenge. Afterwards I was panting from both the adrenaline (power-out disabled some nice light effects, resulting in quite some stress; we had to improvise the dance) and the exercise. That, plus the fact that my fake suede skirt didn't fit well and I just don't like the look of myself in the mirror, motivated me to go find me some sports again.

I'm quitting taekwondo. I lost the motivation. The teacher wasn't all that great and I have no ambition to train another three years to get the black belt. (As far as skill goes I'll be ready soon enough, but you have to be a World Taekwondo Federation member for at least three years before you can do your black belt exam.) I do want to continue belly dancing. I'm good (enough) at it and it is fun. It also confronts me with a huge mirror every week, which will keep me motivated to do something about the 'accumulating blubber' (whahaha! so dramatic).

However, I'm looking into martial arts once again. I have found a school that is almost half an hour (by bike) away from my home and has lessons of 1,5 hour. I hate 1 hour lessons: when you're finally warmed up the hour is almost gone. It is kung fu / karate / kempo /tai chi and promises to have lots in common with shaolin kempo which I've done for 9 years (black belt). Matthijs says he'll join me for a try out lesson, if there are such lessons.

This week I'll also try to participate in some try out lessons of 'freeform jazz' and streetdance. Belly dance, however fun, does not do enough for my stamina. Something more powerful like jazz or streetdance is more demanding (no, I won't try Zumba...). So, after trying out those dance classes and the new martial arts I'll have to choose which I will continue. Belly dance on Monday (quite late, 20:30-21:30), martial arts on Wednesday and Friday (20:00-21:30), freestyle jazz on Thursday (20:30-21:30) or streetdance on Friday (18:45-19:45).

Let's see if I can work off some kilos.