Potato salad!

Dear Yumi,

I’m very sad that this will be my last reply to your posts! I hope you will still continue to write comments after tomorrow. It has been very nice reading everything you have written and answering your thought-provoking questions. Even when you are half-asleep your English is very good!

You corrected your ‘even’ sentences well…

But she always said she did not wanna talk about it. She did not even wanna remember So I could not really ask anymore to her.

and…

She told me that she even slept only 4 hours every day to finish all the daily work.

Just one small point though – I think instead of saying ‘to finish all the daily work’ it would be better to say something like ‘so that she could finish all her daily chores’. Chore is a better word that work here because it is more descriptive of the kind of work she was doing in the home.

You also used this sentence in your latest blog…

We felt we can not even remember the student life, although it was just a year ago!

And here you’ve also used it correctly – well done! There’s something about the tense you’ve used at the beginning though which sounds a bit strange although I think it is still correct. It might sound better to say ‘We can’t even remember our student life’ and THEN you could use ‘even’ again by saying ‘…even though it was just a year ago!’ Whaddya think?

It was interesting reading about your student days… I finished university in 1999 – it really does seem very far away! I met Ed, my husband, at university, so I’m glad I went, but I didn’t have the time of my life while I was there. - mostly because I missed all my friends from school. I studied Experimental Psychology which was quite interesting, but I think if I was to do it all over again I would do something like South Asian Studies or something like that. I don’t know what it’s like in Japan, but in the UK you have to decide what your major subject will be when you apply. In the US I know that you decide in your third year which I think is much better. I was only 16 when I decided which subject I would do!

Oh yes, you also asked in another post about whether getting married when you were over 28 was too old. Well these days in the UK I think it’s quite common to be at least that age when you get married. Ed and I got married when I was 26, and then had Louie when I was 28. People keep telling me that that’s quite young to have a baby these days as so many women in England concentrate on their careers before having children. I always wanted to have children when I was relatively young though.

Okay – now I promised ages ago that I would include a vegetarian recipe so in your honour, Yumi, I have decided to give you and all our readers one of my favourite recipes and the only thing I have had a craving for since I have been pregnant this time… Potato salad! Okay… I know it’s only a simple dish but it is delicious and very easy to make – and who doesn’t love potato salad! I know it’s quite popular in Japan. The secret of this one is in the dressing…

Ingredients:

5-6 medium sized potatoes
Pinch of salt
Pepper
1 small onion or 3 spring onions.
1 small handful of fresh parsley
Four tablespoons of yoghurt
Two tablespoons of mayonnaise

Method:

Peel the potatoes and boil them in water with a pinch of salt. Meanwhile, chop the onion very finely into small pieces. If you are using spring onions chop both the white and green parts. Make the dressing by mixing the mayonnaise and yoghurt with a little bit more salt and some freshly ground pepper. Chop the parsley and add this to the onion. When the potatoes are cooked (be careful not to overcook them or they will go all mushy), let them cool for a while until they are just warm, not hot. Add them to the onion and parsley and pour over the dressing. Mix it all together. If you want a bit more dressing then add more yoghurt and a little bit of mayonnaise. Put it in the fridge and let it cool and then eat! Yum scrum! It’s best served with a green salad (lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber etc) and makes a lovely lunch.

Well I hope you like the recipe and that you can buy all the ingredients where you live. If you'd like to see some more vegetarian recipes have a look at the BBC Good Food website. There are heaps of non-vegetarian recipes too.

Okay Yumi well I wish you all the very very best for the future and like I said at the beginning it has been great blogging with you :-)

Take good care and don’t work too hard!

Love,

Amy xxx

p.s. I really liked your photo from the Taj Mahal – here is one of us!



Vocabulary definitions from last time:

A function: what something does, it’s reason for existing!
To put something behind you: to stop thinking about something and start concentrating on other things.
Two doors down: two houses away
To absorb: to take in, to make part of something

And today’s…

Thought-provoking
Half-asleep
Chore
The time of your life
Craving
Dressing
Finely
Mushy

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