A totally normal Thursday today. Middle daughter had to see the orthodontist since she lost her THIRD retainer at friends cottage last weekend. After dentist visit we went to the shopping mall. I don't last long in those places but sometimes there is just no way out of it. Pippi needed jeans and running shoes....
We came home, I parked nicely but forgot to put the gear in parking before I took my foot of the brake and YES I rolled into the car in front of me. The woman saw it of course and FREAKED right out! Ok, so there was 2 little dots in the "lack"(Swedish word for what I am trying to describe) but hardly noticeable. I went in , got my camera to take a picture of the dots. I think I got it but it's hard to say...maybe I post the picture on the blog for people to see, or actually not to see. This freaky owner of the car started to call the car "her baby". That's when I had had enough! People needs to get a life. Specially people without kids. I told her to proceed with her dinner plans, enjoy her dinner with her friend and that it could have been WAY WORSE! If she comes back to talk about how we should go from here I am tempted to tell her that having a brother committing suicide or knowing a 67 year old mother that doesn't recognizes her grand kids due to Alzheimer's is tragedy! Getting a dot on your car's bumper is NOT TRAGEDY. Mark advised me that Ontario is a no fault province, so there!

time really has flown by, can't believe it is almost 2 months since I wrote last time....Have traveled a bit since then. Left Sweden on a chilly early August morning, flew from Sturup to Marseille. Was very skeptic to the whole Ryan Air thing but we had a smooth check in and flight and suddenly the girls and I found ourselves in Southern France....rented the booked ahead car from Hertz and off we went. We had a great map and driving directions to Bandol (thanks Francois). After about 2h of driving we met Mark in a Mac Donald's parking lot. Our family vacation started......
We spent a few days in Bandol, had an authentic Bouillabaisse and got introduced to a great honey from Provence among many other good things.

After lots of more driving and crossing the border into Italy we arrived at the villa we would stay at for the next week together with 2 other families. All in all 15 people. This villa was enormous, we could easily have been 30 people and still been ok for space. It was beautifully located among Tuscany's rolling hills in Chianti area. We ate and drank very well. Cooked sometimes and went out for nice dinners a few times. Second week we stayed in a villa outside Lucca, closer to the coast. Visited Florence, Forte dei Marmi, Pisa and many other places. Again, ate and drank very well. The best meal we had was at a restaurant out in the countryside, they served the best buffalo mozzarella and pannacotta! We went to a butcher in San Gimignano, he was the 6th generation owner and only sold meat from a farm in Spain while playing loud Opera in the background all day long. I actually think it is the butcher Bill Buford writes about in his book "HEAT".

We came back to Toronto after been away for over 6 weeks. It felt great to sleep in my own bed and the girls were very happy to be home.

Now school is in full gear and I am back the bake shop. I am still responsible for lunches and I am starting taste-buddies classes in a couple of weeks. I am really looking forward to focusing on the cooking classes more than the lunches. I just watched a video on epicurious.com with Alice Waters from the Edible Schoolyard kitchen. What a dream to have a place like that to cook with kids in. Check it out! I'll try to post a link to it later. The first cooking class is ravioli making. I want to make samosas one time and then we are baking once and the last time we will make different snack stuff. Have not pin pointet everything yet but I am doing classes 3 times/week and so far one day is full. Have post this now and the get into bed!
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