Cold Dark Halloween

The clocks went back last weekend, meaning we’re now going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark, which can be a bit depressing and grim as you can imagine. The thing is, I haven’t really been going to work in the dark since I go to work at around 9am hehehe. And by that time the sun is quite high in the sky so as I step out I’m treated to the sun’s rays gleaming through the fiery autumn leaves overhead and lighting up the ones underfoot. If it’s not raining that is, which it actually hasn’t been very much. Touch wood.

The pic above was taken around 5pm last Sunday, the day after the clocks went back, and I already thought it was dark then.

This pic was taken yesterday.  At 5pm!  In three days’ time it’s gotten darker so much quicker that by the time it’s 5pm it feels like night time.

Surprisingly though, I’m not resenting the dark and cold as much as I have in previous years.  I feel the cold still, but not as keenly as before.  I’m putting this down to the fact that I haven’t really been anywhere very warm this year and we had a lousy summer so basically my body is acclimatised to lower temperatures now.  This will probably change by the time I’ve been on my two holidays at the end of this year so come January I will be shivering my teeth off!

It’s halloween tomorrow!  We’re celebrating by getting some mates round for dinner and a scary movie marathon =)  Really looking forward to it!  I’m not going to bother to dress nice but am planning to wear my ugly grey sweatpants with the elasticated ankles hahaha.  Soooo comfy.  Go me.

Happy Halloween everyone!

My Day – 28 Oct (Tues)

Dear Heri told us what she did today on her blog and now I am answering her question of “How was your day today?” on mine.

I had planned to get up early this morning and take the 7.52am train into work because I had a meeting at 9.30am and I wanted to arrive earlier to get myself ready for it.  Unfortunately my bed was too comfy and I was enjoying my sleep so much that I decided to spoil myself (like I do every morning really………….. why is getting out of bed so difficult!!!) and slept for another half hour.  Eventually I caught the 8.25am into work and luckily there were no delays so I managed to reach work at 9.10am!

I huffed and puffed my way into my department to find no one around.  Apparently everyone was late today.  Anyway I went through my work morning routine of washing my mug and making a tea.  My meeting was in a meeting room on the same floor so that was very handy.  I met someone from the risks team at 9.20am and had a briefing.  When everyone had arrived the meeting started.

You probably don’t want to know about my meeting because it was pretty boring, but we did break at 11am for loo break, coffee and danish pastries.  Which was nice.  Normally people never order danish pastries so that was a welcome change.  At 11.15am we resumed the meeting until 12.30pm.  When I finally returned to my desk after the meeting I noticed that my manager had finally made an appearance so I said “Oh you finally rolled in did you?” to which he smirked and said whilst eyeing the danish pastry I was carrying, “Is that for me?”  So I went off to nab him one of the extra ones and got called a “crawler” by one of the guys in the office, the one with absolutely no class and who likes to make unfunny “jokes”.  In case you didn’t know, a “crawler” is a “sucker-up”.

At 1pm I met GM for lunch.  I say “lunch” but we didn’t eat anything, instead we went to a big Sainsbury’s nearby so I could get some couscous and a cucumber.  It was really cold but at least it wasn’t raining.  After shopping I went back to the office and surfed the net.  I didn’t eat any lunch because I already had two danish pastries before going out.

At 2.30pm I had another meeting but this time it was a one-to-one meeting with a guy I am supposed to be mentoring.  We went over his notes and I gave him constructive criticism and tips on how to perform his role better.  I don’t know if he found the session useful as he’s not a terribly responsive character but never mind.

Our meeting ended at 3.20pm, after which I caught up on emails etc until 4pm when I met with someone from the risks team to go through the results of the morning’s meeting.  That was just a short meeting, after which I did some more work until 5.30pm when I left the office and rushed to the station.  I reached the station at 5.32pm and stood outside HMV to wait for GM and when he finally turned up we jumped on the train together.  GM was slightly late getting to the station today so the train was already quite full up when we got on so we had to sit opposite each other rather than next to each other as there were not many spaces left.

We got home at around 6.20pm, got changed and headed back out again for dinner with our mate.  On the way out to pick him up we got stuck in traffic so we were 15 minutes late.  We had planned to have Vietnamese food but when we reached the restaurant it was closed!  I don’t know if it’s normally closed on a Tuesday or if it’s become a victim of the financial crisis.  But anyway we decided to have curry instead so we went to Clapham to our normal curryhouse for a curry.  They have refurbed their interior a bit!  And changed their menu a bit too which was disconcerting, especially when we couldn’t find chicken madras nor chicken vindaloo on it.  But we asked and the waiter said they could make it for us so that’s okay.  I also had a side dish of vegetables and paneer (indian cheese).  GM had a side of sag aloo (spinach and potato).

We chatted and chatted and chatted even after we’d paid (the restaurant wasn’t busy so it’s not like anyone was waiting for our table), until the waiter came round for the third time to clear some stuff off; by this time there was hardly anything else to clear from our table so we got the message loud and clear.  So we left.  We could have easily chatted for a couple more hours though.  Whilst driving our mate home it started snowing!

We dropped our mate home and continued on our way back with the snow getting heavier.  The drive home was beautiful with fat snowflakes swirling into our windscreen.

And that concludes my day.  Apart from my blogging of course, and my preparations for bed!

Stinky Cheese Love

Several years ago GM and I took his mum to Sunday lunch at the Savoy, just for fun. The starters and mains must have been unremarkable because I don’t remember what we had (and I have a looooong memory for good food) but the dessert. Oh boy. I can still feel the crisp and crunch followed by sticky gooeyness of the caramelised crust of the tarte tatin (upside-down apple tart) GM’s mum and I shared (it was a big tart made for two). But having said that, the star of the meal was the cheese plate GM had opted to have (he’s not big on desserts, sadly). Or rather, the star of the meal was one particular vile smelling cheese. I had to smell and re-smell it about 6 times because I was so absolutely gobsmacked by the intense stink of seemingly a combination of a month’s worth of unwashed feet’s toenail scrapings and various different forms of pus. Nice. It was a pungent, in-your-face odour, but when I finally got over my shock and tasted it, it was creamy and nutty. And that is when my fascination with smelly cheeses was borne.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get the name of that particular cheese so ever since then I have been having trouble trying to find it.

When I told one of my colleagues my little story he suggested that I might be after the Époisses which is apparently a cheese so smelly it’s rumoured to have been banned from French public transport.  Which sounded great to me!  So when I found out we were going to Paris for a weekend, I put out word for our people over there to start looking for my Époisses for me so that I might hopefully be reunited with my first smelly cheese love.

However, I actually saw some myself in a bog-standard French supermarket!  I not only managed to buy one in a pretty wooden box but I also managed to bring it back on the Eurostar!  Although I had to triple bag it because one bag just couldn’t hold back the smell from permeating the atmosphere around it.

My sources in Paris went to a fromagerie (cheese shop) for my Époisses and bought different ones in varying degrees of ripeness.

This was the very ripe one which was more acidic and stronger than mine in the wooden box.

All in all I really like this cheese, however ripe it is (although I prefer it to be at least runny).  It is fragrant, salty and has a pleasant acidic tanginess in addition to being really smooth and creamy and goes down very easily.  However, was it my enigmatic first love from the Savoy?  Nope.  The stink of the Époisses is an all permeating one that is capable of punching you in the face from a distance of 2 metres whereas you couldn’t tell that the Savoy cheese was going to smell so phenomenally vile until it was fairly close to your nose.  And even then the Savoy cheese still wins in the stinky stakes.

Am I ever going to find my Savoy cheese?  I don’t know.  But at least I’m getting to enjoy other smelly cheeses in my search =)

This is how I like to eat my cheese, with cranberry sauce on crackerbread.  I would prefer eating it with bread (preferably Poilâne) but bread really bloats me and I can’t keep indulging myself so crackerbread it is.  I am loving cranberry sauce with my cheese because the sweet tartness of the cranberry really complements the nutty creaminess of the cheese (or in the Époisses’ case, tangy creaminess).  Brie and cranberry sandwich is my newest love actually.  Actual dried cranberries are better than cranberry sauce, but the sauce is cheaper and easier to spread for an easy snack.

In case any of you were disturbed by that fourth photo of the very ripe Époisses, here’s something amazing to lift your spirits back up.  Look at the size of that persimmon!  Isn’t it beautiful?

KNACKEREDDD

We’re back from our weekend in Paris!

We didn’t do much, just a lot of eating (as usual) and strolling down random streets looking in shop windows.  I love window shopping in Paris, all the things are so pretty and shiny and covetable.  Damn it.

And of course I took some photos.  I took quite a lot of photos in fact and someone even asked me whether phtoography is my new hobby.  They also asked if eating was my new hobby; I don’t know where they get these freakish ideas from because of course they’re not new hobbies, especially not eating, I’ve been eating from time!

Anyway I say I took lots of photos but I’m lazy to upload them at the moment.  What with all the rushing around I feel like I didn’t have a weekend and getting up for work this morning was TORTURE.  Don’t people say that old folks don’t need to sleep as much as young ‘uns?  Well I’m really getting on in my journey over the hill but why is it I still find it as hard now to get out of bed as it was when I was 16???  This is ridiculous.

I’ll try to sort out my photos and upload them soon but I don’t know how long I’ll be since, in a bid to lessen our pain in the mornings, GM and I have made a pact to be in bed by half 10 every night, hopefully falling asleep by midnight latest.  This means that I need to eat, wash, write emails and relax in about 3 hours so that really leaves very little time to fiddle about with technology.

Talking of which I nabbed a new memory card off someone in Paris so I’m off to load some songs on it for my commute!  Hehehe.

Autumn Moods, Autumn Foods

I took this photo the other day after I’d gotten sent home from work for being too sick.  It speaks of autumn far more eloquently than I could ever do with words.

Right now it’s perfect weather for making huge comfort food meals, snuggling under a warm blanket and watching the dvds that I’d accumulated over the summer.  I just watched “The Notebook” – I cried buckets even though it’s essentially a very predictable love story and the lead actress had a (smack-worthy) smirk on her face half the time.  But I’m soppy, what can I say?  I watched “Brokeback Mountain” the other day and I loved it.  I wish I could produce works like that; simple and yet powerful and heartbreakingly beautiful.

Tonight I made lasagne for dinner.  The white sauce was really rich this time but I kind of enjoyed that.  I want stodge, stodge is in!  Hahaha.