La Chatte Gitane (or The Gypsy Cat) was the name we chose for our cottage in France at the time. We chose it while on the road, moving house the first time round, from Ireland to France with 2 dogs and 7 cats in the car.
This blog began its insignificant life as a recipe book for friends and family who would ask me repeatedly for a recipe of this, that and the other.
Since then it has taken many different directions, like we did and like gypsies tend to do. Sometimes making a U-turn and revisiting familiar roads and taking a break when necessary.
You'll find recipes here, but also musings about the places we've called home, the gardens that we've established, not always successfully, the homes we've improved and the environments we've lived in. Currently, after yet another stint in Ireland, we're back in France @ Le Mas d'Ayen

Friday, February 20, 2009

What a year it has been !

Not exactly my favourite one !

It has been a long time since I last updated this blog and for that I want to apologize.

As from my previous post you can see that we moved from France back to Belgium. I have had the greatest difficulties to adapt to life here again.

First of all, our lovable dog, Kerel, died rather suddenly on the 7th July, kidney faillure. Why, we don't know, as he got the finest dog food we could afford. It was devastating for us, and fellow pet owners will know what the feeling is like.
All of our six cats adapted very well to life in Belgium, so no problems there.

Another thing is, that I didn't fall in love with the house, nor the area. In fact, I started to hate the house so much it left me feeling numb and depressed. I hardly cooked a few meals, all other times we had take-away chippy, pizza, kebabs. It all resulted in me having put on more weight, and it has also given me a health scare (blood pressure very high, to the extend that my heart muscle is already enlarged). That's me on medication and a low salt diet and leaving out saturated fats (damn, and I so love salted butter).
I disliked the place so much that we started house hunting almost immediately after we moved in. After viewing many, many properties -sometimes losing the will to live- we found a great place (for Belgium) and we moved in on 17 th, January. .... to be continued.
I do enjoy seeing my family and relatives on a regular basis, though, and it was lovely to spend Christmas with them again.
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