Pre-Valentine's Day Musings

Is not celebrating Valentine's Day a grand romantic gesture? 

The Bavarian is not at all a Valentine's Day person. He never was. Until I met him I was mostly single on Valentine's Day and even on the ones I wasn't, it all felt a bit too much with the cards, flowers and meals. 

It always seemed to be to be more of a punishment for single people than a celebration of love for those in love.

So we have passed a happy 15 years without feeling the need to splash out on one particular day of the year when everyone else is doing the same.

Isn't it much more romantic that The Bavarian brought me home a bunch of green, white and orange flowers on St. Patrick's Day? Or that I got to stay in bed for the whole day to recover from a sinus infection that happened to hit me one Valentine's Day? Or that he bought me Diarmuid O Muirithe's book 'Word We Use' as a surprise and for no reason other than he knew I loved that column in the Irish Times?

Today we will visit the town we married in, but we'll be there for a football match. Tomorrow will be St. Valentine's Day and we will celebrate it just as we did on Wednesday when it was St. Scholasticaa's Day or in mid- January when it was the day of St. Paul the Hermit. We will be celebrating a normal day as a couple and as a family.  

What Lies Beneath

Generally speaking, tiles would not be my choice of flooring for anywhere other than the bathroom. Even at that, I found it very hard to find tiles I really liked when we renovated our bathroom a couple of years ago. We settled on these wood-effect tiles in the end and I am still very happy with them.

Our wood-effect tiles in the bathroom

The only exception to my no-tiles-outside-the-bathroom rule is if the tiles are beautiful, original vintage tiles. I love the look of 1930s or 40s hallways - a plain border and a geometric pattern in various colours along a narrow hall with the staircase on the right. 

When we were making some changes to our house before moving in, we had a toddler, a newborn and a tight budget. We painted the hall and left the laminate floor as it was, since it was in good condition. 

Soon after we moved in, our neighbours mentioned in passing that it must be nice to have a tiled floor. We, puzzled, said we have laminate. "Oh, they must have put that down over the tiles" they said of the previous owners. Apparently, there once was a nice tiled hall floor in this house. 

Mid-renovation. The floor stayed.

In my grandparents house, which happens to have been built around the same time as ours, there is still the original tiled hall floor. I keep imaginging that there is something similar underneath our laminate. Something along the lines of these patterns would be fantastic.

   

The curiousity has been gnawing away at me for years now. Every so often I bring up the subject of ripping up the hall floor with The Bavarian. He is curious too, but practical. The laminate is well attached. There is no option of pulling out a slat or two to see what is underneath. It is an all-or-nothing job.

What if there is just a concrete floor? Or ugly  or damaged tiles? Do we really want to risk it when we haven't the budget or the time to deal with the disaster that may result?

For now, we have decided to leave the floor till the boys are older. It is the sensible parent thing to do, isn't it? The laminate is warmer than tiles and there is less chance of things breaking if they are dropped that if they were dropped on tiles. 

So for now I will dream of my double doors and original tiled floor and save for reproduction tiles in case there is nothing to discover beneath the laminate. 

If you are interested, pop over to Pinterest and have a look at the looks I am currently swooning over. 

Schau dir Fionnualas Profil bei Pinterest an.

Why I am Not Posting Pancake Recipes

I love Pancake Tuesday and would happily eat pancakes for each of my three meals today. I also love to cook and to share recipes. But you know what? I don't have a pancake recipe. 

I put plenty of plain flour, a pinch of salt, an egg or two, a dash of sunflower oil and a lot of milk into a mixing bowl and whisk it with a fork until it has the right consistency and no lumps. Then ladleful by ladleful the pancakes get fried, tossed and served.

I am a pancake purist on Pancake Tuesday. Spread with butter, sugar and lemon juice (from a lemon, not a bottle) and rolled up is the way I love them. My boys will eat them like that too, but if there is Nutella or maple syrup in the house, that's what they prefer to spread on theirs. 

Because they are half-German, you see. They don't have that Irish love of sugar and lemon on a pancake that I have. In fact they are a bit lacking in enthusiasm for Pancake Tuesday in general. 

Every year I tell them Pancake Tuesday is coming but every year it gets usurped by Faschingsdienstag, the main day of German carnival, which also happens to be the day before Ash Wednesday. 

Pancakes just can't compete with the parades, the dressing up, the traditional eating of jam donuts and with having the day off school. 

But I will not give up. There will be at least one meal of pancakes today. At least.