Wadi / Badi / Vadi

Basically these are dried spiced lentil dumplings - sun dried in India, but rayburn dried here in Wales. 

Prepped them earlier this month - soaking white lentils (urad dal), which were spiced and ground to a paste, then dished up into teaspoon sized droplets for drying.  The Indian sun may be quicker - these took nearly 3 days in the warming oven of the rayburn - but they should keep for around a year. 

Today they went into a chicken curry - most recipes said to deep fry them first before putting them into a sauce, but these went straight in - after around 2 hours they were just tender, so maybe the frying would have helped . . .

Tasty but a bit of a faff!

On Safari

Well maybe not quite a 'Safari', but an overland trip round the country for work and leisure, encountering a variety of (almost) wildlife along the way.

Here we have Lego beasts in Cardiff Bay . . .

. . . an upturned 'crane' near Llandrindod Wells . . . .

. . . and a 'Dirty Duck' by the river in Stratford-upon-Avon

Concluding with swans on the Nene in Cambridgeshire (they are there, you can just see the wake!):

Did actually get some work done, enjoy a few sights, and meet up with family too!

Winter Wonderland

Left the house this morning just as it started to snow - already a light dusting on the car . . .









Arrived in work - just a few minutes later - and it was snowing quite heavily, already settling on the road outside the office.


And it continued to snow for most of the rest of the morning - with Aberystwyth gradually turning into a Winter Wonderland:

By lunchtime though it had stopped snowing, and by the time I left work it had almost all melted - a different world.  It was pretty while it lasted though . . .