Fusion burrito

Yesterday I procrastinated in a useful way by feeding myself with a fridge dump. It would have been much faster to eat a packet of soup (which I just steam fro 15 minutes, pour in a bowl and add crunch factor), but I had half a wedge of brie to use up and a chicken thigh as well. So using a few other opened ingredients in the fridge I made this:


The list of ingredients:
a herby flour tortilla
some brie
cranberry sauce
small handful of rocket
a skinless chicken thigh fillet
a spring onion
Japanese soy sauce
minced garlic
button mushrooms

Despite the list of ingredients it was very tasty. Lacked a bit of zing and crunch, but for an experiment I was quite impressed. Technically it wasn't a burrito because I didn't fry it once wrapped, but it would have been better if I had.

Pasta & cheese

The other day a friend of mine mentioned she had mac & cheese for her birthday, and since then I've been craving mac & cheese with a hotdog. I could have ordered Kraft's box kit online, waited for it to arrive cooked it with a not very nice hotdog from a jar I bought at the grocery store since the only way you can buy mac and cheese here is in a can and not the same. I was impatient though and trying to be more organic in my food selection (for the planet, not because I think my body can't handle ingesting chemicals)... so today I came up with this:


I used: organic spinach pasta twirls, organic Cumberland sausages, some shredded organic cheddar cheese, and, because I thought it would be good for me to eat some more vegetables with, some quartered organic cherry tomatoes. It was tasty, but nothing like mac & cheese with hotdogs. Does Kraft make an organic version of their cheese and macaroni?

Cauliflower

So I have a new way to enjoy eating cauliflower -- roasted. I found it on Brownie Points. It's such a simple recipe: a little oil, a little salt and cauliflower. I've never enjoyed eating cooked cauliflower because of the mushy texture and metallic taste. My favorite way to eat cauliflower is marinated in a vegetable salad. Lots of raw vegetables (tomatoes, olives, cauliflower, broccoli, mushrooms, carrots, onions), Italian salad dressing (a herby vinaigrette), and time. Marinated vegetables are best eaten in the summer though, with burgers and chips at the lake. But roasted cauliflower is just what I need since cauliflower is in season now when it's getting colder each day.

Hurray for new ways to eat vegetables! My hunt continues for a way to enjoy eating squash -- now that would be an amazing recipe.

juicy floating combo

I comblined the HSMS prompts from yesterday (floating) and today (juicy).

I have an obsession with "crunch factor." I like food that has a crunch (only when appropriate, I do not want crunchy cake). I like my vegetables undercooked rather than risk over cooking them. I add seeds to my salads to ensure a nice crunch in every bite. My favorite salad when I worked at camp was cottage cheese, raisins and sunflower seeds because it was soft, sweet and crunchy! (And it was less frightening than the aging lettuce.) This obsession means I like to float croûtons on my daily bowl of soup. My favorite is Bertolli's Pepite, but today I had generic croûtons that met my crunchy needs.

And peaking out from behind is my answer to today's prompt- juicy. What you just barely see between my bowl of soup and very messy desk is a Pink Lady apple. It is currently my favorite variety of apple. I still enjoy a nice, crisp, tart green apple... but Pink Ladies are reliable - always sweet, always crisp, always juicy. But not as juicy as a pear-- who wants a fruit to be so juicy it dribbles down your chin?

I feel like I should explain why my desk is messy (it's much messier than I let you see in this photo). The truth is that my desk is almost always strewn with papers. Today it was extra messy because I had a complicated bit of forms to fill out and hadn't cleared up the piles of paper already existing on my desk. If there is one thing I have learned about myself it's that I have a natural piling system for filing. Not the most efficient system, but it works. It's something I should work on, but there's not much time to work on it at the moment. Perhaps I will rid myself of that fault one day... or perhaps it will just always be part of who I am. For now it's something I'm not going to worry about.

packet lunch

Each working day, when I get home, my cats are VERY ready for me to feed them. Maegan is waitin' atop the fridge for love and her biscuits whereas Owen greets me at the door with a yell and won't leave me alone until I set down his watery chicken filled bowl. Then I get to sort out my lunch. The last few months, apart from a day here and there when I had leftovers or a purchased sandwich, my lunch has been soup - soup because it fills me up, it's easy to heat up in the steamer and it's easy to count the calories.

Today Maegan had a special treat of wet food for lunch thanks to Ocado's penchant for giving away free stuff - making today a complete packet lunch.

Redecoration continues

As you can see (if you've been here before last Sunday) I did a little redecorating again. The purple just wasn't working for me. I like purple, but it just wasn't what I wanted I like this green one. I'm not thrilled with the picture but it's a good shot with a smile. And in a way I kinda like looking at it knowing that I've lost weight since then. If you saw me now you'd see it in my face that I've lost weight. That makes me happy. The green makes me happy too. My favorite color is actually orange, but green makes me happy too.

The photo was taken by my friend Jessica when she was here visiting me. This shot was near the pond at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. If you ever come to visit I will take you there (if you want to go). It's one of my favorite places in Cambridge. The rest of the banner was made using products from Scrap Girls. If you want to know the product list then leave me a comment and I will belatedly post the list. But as for now, it's back to real life decorating. The study is looking really good (and yes, study works better than den in m opinion). We just have one more coat of matt white on two walls and the ceiling, a coat or two of gloss white on the skirting and door, a shelf to add, carpet tiles to purchase and fit, and a portion of wall to paint green.* That may sound a lot, but when I think of all the work we've done so far this week... the light at the end of the tunnel is much more visible, so to speak.

Today is going to be an errand running day, even if it is Neil's official birthday. Happy birthday to my lovely hubby Neil! He's decided he would like to go to London on Sunday to celebrate. This is because we can have sushi for lunch, go to the aquarium, and then finish the day by seeing Wall.e at the BFI. Sounds like a nice day out to me, a great way to finish off our week's holiday, and the perfect way to celebrate my love's birthday (food, fish and film are three of his favorite things). Today's errands will be exchanging a couple of Wii games for store credit (hopefully), dropping off a friend's birthday present before she dashes off on her two week holiday in Wales, looking for curtain fabric, and picking up the last of the 8 foot shelves. We ran out of time to pick up the shelf on Tuesday since we had dinner reservations at Loch Fyne (lovely, lovely food) and yesterday was filled with rain. It's gotta be nice when we go because we have to walk the shelf home. It's 8 feet long... do you think they'd let us on the bus with it? Today looks sunny apart from a probable afternoon shower. I'm going outside to enjoy this while it lasts.

*I crossed these items out on July 11th. Woo-hoo! We're gettin' it done!

New variation on a previously new theme.

Although I think I gained a pound overnight because of it (and I know I gained a pound because I weighed in on the Wii this morning) I'm still marveling at the wonder that was chocolate, rum and raisin bread pudding last night. We were having Mexican food last night, which here means flour tortillas and salad with all the trimmings, so I suggested we have our favorite Mexican pudding... chocolate and tequila. However we don't have any tequila in the house, the last bottle we had gave us headaches. Instead of making a special trip to the store we decided that rum and raisin sounded good, and we always have rum. Always. It was lovely. Neil is so adept at bread pudding and he used just the right amounts of the extra flavors, in my opinion. Unfortunately there is a lot of pudding because he's not so good at portion size - so I may be gaining another pound tonight. Oh dear, and tomorrow is goal day too. Don't think I'm going to make it. I suppose to be a good blogger I should have taken photos to post on here. Guess that's going to take a little bit of practice. Perhaps I'll start leaving the camera out of the bag so it's more accessible. That's one of those tricks I heard about getting more candid shots of one's children, but how do you know where the camera is all the time?