Category Archives: Saturday Spotlight

Every Saturday (or most Saturdays, anyway!) I publish a spotlight on one thing or a group of things that have held my interest that week. Often, this will be craft-related, or food-related; otherwise, it might be a book, a film, an album… anything, really, that’s caught my eye.

Episode Eighty One – Plate Piled High

So, Masters degrees are stressful. There’s a lot to learn and only one year to learn it – and when the subject at hand is a skill like conference interpreting, a year seems like an impossibly short amount of time to pick it up. But I’ve been progressing well enough, and at the mock conferences we’ve been running these past few weeks I’ve really surprised myself with how much better I do when a) I’m interpreting a live speaker as opposed to a recording, and b) there’s an audience sitting there and actually relying on me to understand what is being said. The good news: That’s exactly what interpreting is like in a professional setting. The bad news: It’s not what it’s like in the final exam. All in all though, I’m feeling pretty confident.

IMG_1634

Sometimes I take pictures of the lecture slides.

Continue reading

1 Comment

Filed under Cooking, Scotland

Saturday Spotlight Twenty One – Summer Styles

Well, here I am back in Bonnie Scotland! I’ve been staying with my broadbandically-challenged grandmother, so posting wasn’t really on the cards until I came home to my mum’s for the weekend. So far I’ve been taking full advantage of my good friend BT by catching up on all my blogs, and browser window shopping to my heart’s content.

Continue reading

2 Comments

Filed under Saturday Spotlight

Saturday Spotlight Twenty – Things I’ll Miss

Well, well, well. Look what we have here: the last day of my year abroad. Weird, huh? Especially for those of you who have been following my journey since before I left home for Costa Rica last July. I’m feeling a little sad to be leaving the semester (and the year) behind – but also eager to get started on the next stage of my life: my final year of university and a great job! (At least, I’m confident that it’ll be great, though I haven’t started yet).

  Continue reading

3 Comments

Filed under France, Saturday Spotlight

Saturday Spotlight Nineteen – Tabouleh

Happy Saturday, one and all!

A while back I decided to share a recipe for French onion soup since it’s so often been my dinner here. Today I think I’ll do the same with a lunch dish I make over and over because it’s so simple to make and makes me feel healthy ^_^. My handy handbook says you need to eat starchy foods (rice, pasta, bread, potatoes, etc.) at every meal, and we all know that raw vegetables are healthier than cooked ones, not to mention easier to prepare! So this recipe fulfils a couple of your dietary needs, whilst also being a) delicious, b) very filling and c) portable enough for picnics and packed lunches. The fruits will give you a nice quick shot of energy, and the starch in the couscous will keep you going until dinner :)

Continue reading

4 Comments

Filed under Cooking, Saturday Spotlight

Sunday Spotlight Eighteen – New Blog Love

I had a few ideas for the opening sentence to this post and I just couldn’t choose, so instead of choosing, I’m going to list them all:

1. Has it become cliché to use a noun such as ‘blog’ and add ‘love’ after it to create a new noun phrase? Something tells me this relatively new phenomenon has already passed into the ‘mainstream’ phase.

2. I’m so glad both the days of the weekend begin with an S so I can post my spotlight a day late and not feel guilty.

3. Ironically enough, I actually spent Sunday hiding in the shade of my room, avoiding the sun at all costs – this is because my Fry-day, on the other hand, did live up to its name and I’m nursing the worst burn I’ve ever had. Who forgets to lotion their back during a SIX-HOUR beach trip?!

Continue reading

6 Comments

Filed under Crafts, Saturday Spotlight

Saturday Spotlight Seventeen – 5k on 5/5!

Welcome, readers, and happy 5,000-page-views day!

Yes, today I passed the milestone of 5,000 page views on my blog. Hooray! That’s not all that impressive for a 2-year-old blog, but I’m proud of it, and since probably about 500 of those come from the entire first year, I’m staying positive :P Who knows, I may even start getting big-headed and feel qualified to post some blogging tips on here soon. Haha.

Continue reading

4 Comments

Filed under Cooking, Crafts, Saturday Spotlight

Saturday Spotlight Sixteen – French Onion Soup

Remember how my room is really tiny, my kitchen has no facilities, and as a result I more or less confined myself to salads as my evening meal? Then remember how I posted about my cours de cuisine which was helping me break that habit and start cooking real food? Well, further to that, I thought it’d be nice to start posting about what I’ve been eating since arriving here. I’ve been making an effort to try to take advantage of French food, but my more pressing criteria are definitely budget (my weekly earnings quickly dropped from 51€ to 26€), speed (I prefer to spend as little time in that grubby communal kitchen as possible), and ease (more because of a lack of equipment than a lack of cooking skills, of course. Although I do lack both). So just so you know, any recipes you see on here in the near future will likely cost less than 3€ a person and be perfectly possible to produce using only a stove top and a toaster oven. That’s right, I don’t even have a microwave. Pity me.

Ok, so I'm new to food photography, but this looks appetising, right? Right?

Continue reading

8 Comments

Filed under Cooking, France

Saturday Spotlight Fifteen – Care Package Incoming!

That’s right, I did just reference Call of Duty in my post title. Why? Because I’m one heck of a BAMF, that’s why. And also because I actually did receive a care package, and I want to tell you about it. No, it’s not from either of my parents, actually: it’s from Jenny, a.k.a. Pearlswirl jewellery on Etsy (or ‘jewelry’ as she likes to spell it – silly Americans).

So I was still trying to bring my heart rate down to normal levels after my oral exam on ‘La crise moderne de la fin du XIX siècle’… when I stumbled through my door and found a small parcel sitting on my bed waiting for me. Aside from feeling weirded out by the fact that my room was different from how I’d left it (it happened again yesterday when I came home from another exam to find a smoke alarm installed on my ceiling); I was giddy with excitement too. Who doesn’t love getting mail? And when I recognised the handwriting and confirmed the sender by the return address, my heart did a little flip. This was going to be special. Continue reading

5 Comments

Filed under Crafts, Saturday Spotlight

Saturday Spotlight Thirteen – Good Habits

Hello, hello!

Today is a beautiful day, sun is shining, birds are singing, people are canoeing on the river outside my window, candy floss is whipping up on the branches of Strasbourg’s trees, and I saw 2012’s first wasp today. In short, I’m telling you what you already know: Spring is here!!!!!

Just a smattering of candy floss on this one, but I'll take it!

Continue reading

2 Comments

Filed under France, Saturday Spotlight

Saturday Spotlight Eleven – Songs I Love

Hi everyone! It’s late, I’m not in bed and I have to get up early tomorrow to go collect Grant from the airport :)

It’s strange to think that I’ll be welcoming him to Strasbourg, a place where I’ve been living for months now and I’ve built my own little scenario here. I wonder what he’ll make of it?

I listen to music a lot. I live far out from the city of Strasbourg so I spend a lot of time in public transport, going to and from places, and I don’t know many of my classmates so I listen to music as I wait for class to begin. I certainly wouldn’t say that I know much about music, but I will say that there are a few songs that I feel like I know in the same way as one knows a person. I don’t savoir them: I connaître them. I thought I’d share these songs with you because in the last few days I’ve had a few occasions where I’ve realised that the music I’m listening to has drastically changed my mood. These are songs that I love, songs that make me feel a certain way, songs that bring back a certain moment, songs that I want to put in totally inappropriate playlists because I love them so much. I hope you enjoy!

Continue reading

2 Comments

Filed under Saturday Spotlight