Hard Cold Fries

The temperatures are sub-zero at the moment. Or they feel like it anyway. The air feels cold, hard and sharp like the steely blades of knives against the skin. Knives that have been pre-chilled in the freezer compartment, that is.

I’m holding out a little hope of a white Christmas. It’s not too much to ask if we’re having to suffer this sort of weather right?

In other news, you all know Andy works hard. He actually works very very hard. Bless him. Apparently this is an extremely busy period at work at the moment, and he has deadlines galore to meet. So much so that he comes home sometimes telling me he’s very hungry because he has not had time to have lunch that day! Shocking. I can’t ever imagine working that hard, to the point where I’d forget to eat, or not find at least 15 minutes to buy a sandwich and gulp it down without chewing.

Anyway I was understandably outraged by the damage he is doing to his body. It’s not as if he’s got any fat reserves to live off! So I’ve issued him with stern instructions that no matter how busy he is, he HAS to eat lunch everyday. And because I don’t trust him to not lie to me about having had lunch (in which case he’ll say during dinner time “Err….. yes I had lunch, I’ll have less pasta” and then he’ll be eating EVEN less than before!), I’ve told him he has to give me pictorial evidence of his lunch for the day. Haha.

Here is one from last week.

Not very healthy, but better than nothing!

O christmas tree, o christmas tree ~

We bought a little christmas tree a couple of weeks ago and finally found all the remaining decorations over the weekend. So now our tree for this year is complete!

Our tree is purple.

It is standing on top of one of our amps in the living room. We’ve decorated it with lots of little multi-coloured baubles, plus random individual pretty decorations dispersed all over. And the great big silver star on top of course. And the string of lights.

Here’s one of our newly acquired one-off decorations, a Santa holding a tray of cupcakes.

We bought quite a few glass decorations which are very delicate, but also very pretty. Here is the candy cane, and a glass angel in a gold skirt who is holding a four-leaf clover. I like the little promise of good luck.

This is a clear glass star decorated with frosted glass daisies.

This angel reminded me of one of the decorations at home that Ah Ma bought and that we’ve had and decorated our Kuching tree with since we were little. How nostalgic! I love it.

After all our christmas shopping and tree decorating, I had a seasonal doughnut from Krispy Kreme to celebrate our newly put up tree. The doughnut was the Kristmas Cake with brandy sauce. They weren’t lying, rather than being just a funnily shaped doughnut, it actually really had a cakey texture as opposed to their customary springy doughnut. And it had bits in it, but they were so small I couldn’t actually tell what they were, I suppose they were fruit. It was okay, but I wish they wouldn’t slap all that sugar glaze all over their doughnuts because it was like eating a slab of crystalised sugar and it completely overpowers the dough of the nut, so to speak. Although the brandy sauce was a good touch I thought, as its slightly bitter taste redressed the balance somewhat.

Haha, don’t let me mislead you into thinking we only bought just the one doughnut………!!!

p.s. For completeness’ sake, the doughnuts were, cream-filled with chocolate glaze (bottom left), lemon meringue (bottom right), apple and crumble (second row left), kristmas cake (second row right) and normal sugar glazed (top). All were very sweet. The best was the apple and crumble. But I prefer the ones Heri brought me to buy in Indonesia, I can’t remember the name of the company now, was it J & Co? They also had lots of different flavours, but they weren’t as sweet.

The Lemon Thyme Parsnip Speaks

I have a new favourite sandwich: Marks & Spencer’s Roasted Vegetables and Hummous sandwich. I really like hummous anyway, and the vegetables are done just right, with lots of crunch left. And it’s on wholewheat bread which I much prefer over white bread. Mmmm.

Only problem with it is, if I have it for lunch, I get hungry faster in the evening. I had it this afternoon and it’s only half 5 now but I’m starving, when I normally last till half 6 on other food.

Whilst we’re on the subject of food, I tried a new dish a couple of days ago: Roast Chicken Thighs and Legs with Lemon and Thyme, accompanied by Roasted Winter Vegetables. It was really good! The vegetables were parsnips, carrots, courgettes and red onion. I adore parsnips. I discovered them late, in fact I only started eating them about 2 years ago, but now they rank amongst one of my top winter vegetables.

My chicken and vegetables straight out of the oven. You can see the steam rising off it at the top of the photo where it looks a bit cloudy.

Close-up of the dish. Some of the parsnips and red onions were a bit charred, which was nice.

Plated up complete with the baked slices of lemon and sprigs of thyme for added flavouring. And with my favourite condiment of course, tabasco.

The lambies are at your door

I got sick of the black and it’s the start of December; what better time for a change?

I love it.

Two more weeks to go before the Christmas hols start! Yay! Not that we’re doing anything, but any day off work is a good day hahaha.

“……. wild flowers and trees, and larks in their nests, in the young emerald-green wheat or soaring into a red-streaked sky”

Doesn’t that line conjure up such a beautiful image? And it’s from a trashy novel even!

Oh Ah Ma isn’t feeling well.

Get well soon Ah Ma!!! (^______^)