Sushi For Breakfast

Day 87 Just a quick post with today's pic - my birthday cake, complete with space candles:



The cake was very nice, my friends have just been to visit and we've now consumed half the cake between us all. My sister and her partner are coming later, I'm sure they'd like some after dinner too :)

Will post again later with a full report.

Day 85 Have had a day off and visited Birmingham, and now my feet are sore and one of my toe joints is throbbing. But a good day, despite all the massive amounts of rain that meant I had to stop at one point to stand under the dryer in the ladies' at the Pavilions for five minutes.

I went to stock up on Crabtree & Evelyn soaps, but they don't do the regular range soaps individually any more, you have to buy a set of three. I contemplated buying shower gel instead, but the soap trio is the same price as a smallish bottle of shower gel, so I went for the money's worth option and bought trio sets of Summer Hill and Nantucket Briar soaps. I also visited Hotel Chocolat for Easter goodies, I went with Selectors in the end - a set of praline mini eggs and two bars with easter eggs pressed into them. They were selling off some Valentines stuff too so I also got a strawberry heart lick.

I was also sooo predictable and bought some Jelly Beans from Selfridges, they have a new set of flavours collectively called the Ice Cream Parlour, not sure what flavours they actually are but may investigate online as the flavour leaflets they had appear to be a few years old. They also had Green Tea flavour, which I've never seen before. I also bought a book from Waterstones - Buzz Aldrin's autobiography - I used to buy so many books from Birmingham, but now book space is strictly rationed I can't return home with bags of them like I used to.

And so to the photo - ever since I saw House sucking on one I've been thinking about frappucinos, so I bought a stawberries & cream frappucino from Starbucks above the station. This pic was taken on the train while we were waiting for departure:



It was absolutely delicious, who cares how many calories and how much sugar. One every 6-12 months is a healthy dose.

Day 81 Yaaaaay my Sainsburys is back open! The refurbishment means I need to learn my way around the new layout, but the fruit & veg is at the front again. I bought some Clementines today - I've just eaten this one and it was rather nice:



Yes, this kitchen paper was bought during the festive season. We buy in bulk so are usually a season behind, Christmas is celebrated with autumn leaves, or if there was a really good bargain, with daisies.

But I spent £70! In mitigation this includes a £15 iTunes card, Easter Eggs, and making up for last week's lack of provisions. But I now have lots of lettuce in the form of eight Gem Hearts in total, plus almost two full packs of tomatoes, so with the Clementines I've no excuses for not getting five-a-day.

Day 74 I just took this out of the oven. It's for our collective lunch tomorrow, other people are bringing in stuff too. The cheese was supposed to be taleggio, but no-one had any (Sainsburys always do, but they're closed for refurbishment) so I had to use mozz.



It smells nice, too. It's from a Nigel Slater recipe, and is one of my few tried-and-tested cooking ventures (so long as I can get the ingredients).

Day 65 My uncle is staying with us overnight, before he catches a flight tomorrow morning. He's a big fan of Chinese food, which gives us the perfect excuse to have a takeaway. Only downside is that I got fried rice instead of plain boiled rice with my Chinese Vegetable Curry, so it was rather on the warm side.



It was accompanied by talk on the best places for Chinese food in the various locations around the world we've all lived in or visited. We managed to create rather a long list.

Day 54 Lunch from Sainsburys. Have had this lots of times in the past, but first time since before Christmas. It's very nice.

Day 47 Hula hoops. If you don't like them, why not? They are a classic. Yum.

Day 40 One of my colleagues brought these in on Friday, we'd got through plenty of them then but there were all these left today:



More about these delicious chocolate seashells here. I love these, but my friend doesn't, she thinks they should be even nicer than they are, judging by their appearance, so she associates them with disappointment and so won't touch them. Which means more for the rest of us :P

Day 28 Tomorrow we are having a bake sale/dress down day at work to raise money for Haiti. I have spent most of the evening making cupcakes, in blue and red as they are the main colours of the flag of Haiti.



Now the kitchen smells of full-fat butter. Also, mixing the cake mixture killed my cheapo hand blender. I noticed a brief burning smell, hope it didn't transfer to the cake mixture :/

Day 17 We're getting to the end of our Christmas goodies. The tub of hula hoops is unopened, and the biscuit tin has a few jaffa cakes left inside. There's also the hollow chocolate Santa, a bit of the chocolate snowman and a few of the Cadburys Roses and Thorntons sweets that aren't so popular (the fruit creams, the teethbreaking toffees etc).



And I've had an email from the Hotel Chocolat Tasting Club to say my Valetines & Easter catalogue is on its way. Now all we need is spring - and while the snow has gone for now, we might have some more this week.