Food Diary Day 6
Today we went fruit picking at a farm. This has become a regular summer activity over recent years.
First stop is normally always the strawberry fields. The trick to finding big strawberries is to find some rows that less people are picking from which invariably are the back rows. Today we even went across the dirt track to find a field all to ourselves! The easiest way to find the strawberries is to part the leaves and often there will be bunches of strawberries nestled within.
Yum yum.
We also had a little look at the blackberry plants but there weren’t that many ripe ones as yet and even the ripe ones were quite sour so we left them.
Our favourite stop is at the cherry trees! Last year we found some trees which were laden with cherries so ripe they were practically black. They were really sweet and gorgeous and moreish; we spent ages there picking and eating them. This year the cherry picking wasn’t as good but I still managed to pick a whole basket.
Which I made into this cherry clafoutis when I got home! I’ve wanted to make a clafoutis for years, ever since I read about one in a book about a woman who moved to France and learnt how to cook lots of French food. Finally I have made one and I think mine should be pretty close to the real thing as the top was crusty like a cake and the inside was custardy, just like it’s meant to be. GM really liked this and so did I. It was really easy to eat, so much so that I ate too much! =( Whoops for my health kick. Well I’m going to look the bright side and make the clafoutis our one treat for this week. GM and I have decided to give ourselves one treat or one “anything goes” meal per week because we don’t want to be too hard on ourselves lest it backfire and one night we awaken to find that we’ve sleepwalked to the fridge and eaten all the ice-cream! Hahaha.
Food Diary Day 6
Breakfast - Muesli with skimmed milk
Snack - Loads of strawberries
Snack – A few blackberries and raspberries
Snack – Some cherries
Dinner – Leftover red and green carrots with spareribs soup
Dessert – Three slices(!) of cherry clafoutis. It was very moreish, I just couldn’t stop eating it!
Drink – Water
Exercise
30 minutes swimming
2 comments July 4, 2009
Food Diary Day 5
I used my new slow cooker to make soup today. It was okay but I think I need a bigger slow cooker since after I put in all the ingredients it was full to the brim. And I only made my usual amount too. It is nice to have a meal all cooked and ready for when we get back from work though. I can’t wait to do stews in winter, the fragrance of the stew as we come up to our front door will be heaven!
Today giant air coolers were brought in to supplement our air conditioning system at work. They work really well, too well in fact as it was really cold after a while! I found a little cockroach crawling across my mousemat and I suspect it came from the air cooler nearest me. But it shouldn’t be a problem since I didn’t see anymore after that lone one. Anyway I took some tissue, picked it up and offered to show it to my colleagues but they freaked out and told me to go away. Hahaha. Good job I’m not like them otherwise what’d I do with the cockroach? One of my colleagues even wanted to call out a technician to come get rid of the cockroach until I told her I’d caught it and thrown it away. So funny these people.
Food Diary Day 5
Lunch – Salad of bbq grilled chicken breast slices with olives, sundried tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and cucumber slices on a bed of raw spinach. I was clever this time and sprinkled a bit of salt all over the raw spinach which wilted it a bit so it was much easier to eat. No spinach stalks up nostrils this time!
Snack – Three quarters very ripe banana
Snack – Four tangerines
Dinner – One big bowl red and green carrots with spare ribs soup
Dessert – Weeny bit of muesli with milk
Drink – Peppermint tea
Drink – Water
Exercise
Rowed 2000 metres (approx 13 minutes)
35 minutes on weight machines
Phew. I feel so knackered, it’s been a long week.
2 comments July 3, 2009
Food Diary Day 4
As requested by Jo in comments, pictures of the impromptu MJ shrine set up by his fans outside HMV in Piccadilly Circus.
This is the big long strip of paper on the pavement on which many fans have written their farewell messages to MJ.
On the wall fans have stuck up his photos and lots of little notes.
There were quite a lot of people looking at the messages. A couple of guys even started dancing in MJ style to the music.
Food Diary Day 4
Snack – One banana
Snack – Two tangerines
Lunch – Salad of hot and spicy grilled chicken breast slices with olives, sundried tomatoes, sliced cucumbers and cherry tomatoes on a bed of wilted spinach
Dinner – Muesli with semi-skimmed milk
Dessert – One small mango. This was really nice!
Drink – Peppermint tea
Drink – Water
Exercise
30 minutes on rowing machine
15 minutes on exercise bike
30 reps on ab machine
Yesterday was really a day of mistakes. When we got home last night I noticed that the fridge door was wide open! One of us must have forgotten to shut it and left it open that morning. Unfortunately because of the heat all the mango puddings I’d made for GM’s mother had melted. Sigh. I had packs of pork ribs which I opened and sniffed and they smelt alright so I kept them. When I got home today I tried to make soup and as usual, boiled the pork ribs first to get rid of the scum. When I took the ribs out of the pack I thought they smelt a little different from yesterday but they’d been in the fridge so I ignored my nose and stuck them in the pot to boil. And the smell. It smelt so porky and disgusting but even then I didn’t trust myself and waited for GM to get home so he could give me his opinion. When he stepped into the house he said straightaway that the pork had gone off. So we had to chuck everything. What a waste. Even worse was that the smell of bad pork followed me around for the rest of the evening, to the gym and everything!
It’s finally Friday tomorrow, thank god. But apparently it’s going to rain really heavily. I just hope it doesn’t rain when I’m going to and from work. If it’s cooler because of the rain that would be good, I don’t think I can stand the heat these days. This morning I almost wished it was winter!
2 comments July 2, 2009
Food Diary Day 3
Sooooooooooooooo hot. But luckily the aircon was working a bit better than it was yesterday so between that and the fan I had blowing straight at me, I was pleasant today.
I was also wearing a dress, I guess that helped. It’s the dress that all of us bought in Perth! The triplets dress hahaha. I got lots of compliments on it. Unfortunately I wore my red shoes to match and my feet felt like they were swathed in a gazillion layers, practically like they were in casts. Maybe that’s how the ladies with their bound feet in olden day China felt during summer?
I made a big mistake this morning though. After I’d put on my dress I looked down at my legs and thought “Oh no, hair removal needed!” but I was pressed for time so instead of epilating like normal I decided to shave. GM was in the shower so I decided to skip the water and soap part and do a DRY shave. Never ever do a dry shave. My legs started getting all tingly and there were these long red scratched stripes up and down my legs where the razor had been and at other bits I had razor rash! I was late catching my train though so I left the house with my legs looking like they’d been scratching posts for the neighbourhood cats. Luckily by the time I got out to Victoria the redness had subsided somewhat and even though it was still visible nobody at work seemed to notice! Phew.
Perhaps I should call this food diary series “The Perils of P-T”. I seem to have a disaster story for you everyday!
Food Diary Day 3
Snack – One banana
Lunch – Salad of hot and spicy grilled chicken breast with cucumber slices, little cherry tomatoes, olives and sundried tomatoes on a bed of raw spinach. This is pretty much the same salad as the one I had yesterday only I didn’t have time to wilt the spinach last night so I decided to have it raw instead. I have to say raw spinach is a bitch to eat with just a fork and no knife to fold it into manageable mouthfuls. Some spinach leaves are big! I had to open my mouth really huge to stuff the forkfuls in, so embarrassing in the office. I was ducking my head really low everytime I had a fresh forkful in the hope that perhaps no one could see. Also, at one forkful a leaf was in an odd position and the stalk went up my nostril! That was really embarrassing.
Dinner - Rice with veggies, fried fish, vinegar spareribs and white fungus with pork soup.
Dessert – Mini strawberry cornetto!!! (; _ ;)
Snack - Little pack wasabi green peas! This one was GM’s fault. He said he wanted some so I said “Okay we share” and opened it, ate some, offered him some and he said he didn’t want any because he’s on a diet!!! So evil!
Drink – Two bowls white fungus and pork soup
Drink – Peppermint tea
Drink - Water
Exercise
None!
4 comments July 1, 2009
Food Diary Day 2
I don’t have any photos for today.
Not because I didn’t eat anything but because I went out to dinner with GM’s uncle (please don’t mention his name in comments!) and his horrible (I mean, REALLY horrible) new gf and didn’t feel like taking any pictures.
Whilst I didn’t take any photos of food today, I took photos of the shrine Michael Jackson fans have set up outside HMV in Piccadilly Circus to commemorate his brilliance and legacy to music. It’s just loads of handwritten messages and photos of him plastered over a big wall and a couple of pillars, plus a long strip of paper on the pavement. Do you want to see? They also played his songs non-stop but I’m not sure if that was from a portable player that the fans had brought along or if HMV was kind enough to do this for them.
In work news, unlike yesterday the aircon didn’t break. But it might as well have because it was boiling hot in the building! I seriously have never perspired so much WHILST SITTING DOWN. Tomorrow I am wearing shorts, a strappy top and flip flops to work, I don’t care.
The weather is forecast to be the same tomorrow but it gets even warmer on Thursday. Oh no. And then on Sunday it’s going to be 17 degrees and raining heavily! Why!! I’m going out on Sunday!
Oh I nearly forgot to tell you that I snagged my new blue top! I wore it today and at the end of the day when I was talking to the receptionist I snagged it on a splinter on her counter. So sad. Major heartpain.
Food Diary Day 2
Snack – One banana
Snack – One and a half tangerines. They were so sour my teeth ached so I had to throw away a half.
Lunch – Salad of hot and spicy grilled chicken breast slices with olives, sundried tomatoes, cucumber slices, tiny cherry tomatoes on a bed of wilted spinach. Spinach is my new love.
Dinner – Rice with mapo tofu, black pepper beef fillet, sweet and sour prawn balls and roast duck. I had planned to have Japanese food but the gf apparently doesn’t eat raw food. They don’t seem to know that the Japanese don’t eat EVERYTHING raw. She doesn’t eat a load of other things also. Really special little flower.
Drink – Peppermint tea
Drink – Appletise sparkling pear juice. It was so hot in the office that I had to waste calories drinking a stupid drink I normally wouldn’t ever drink, just to cool down.
Drink – Water.
Exercise
None!
Horrible day.
4 comments June 30, 2009
