146..Blue Cheese Steak

I went home to Cork last weekend for a quick 25 hour trip to see my family and my dog/obsession Dexter. Was so good to see everyone! I barely had enough time to fit everyone in so I need to plan another longer trip home soon! If only Dexter could come to visit…

I still can’t quite believe how much alcohol I managed to fit into those 25 hours…when I got home, it was back to work and back to attempting a healthy diet. For breakfast I had porridge with agave nectar, banana and fruit for breakfast. I’m drinking Dr. Stuart’s ‘slim plus‘ tea which is really just fennel tea but tastes really good. I think you can buy it in most branches of Holland & Barrett.

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134…Alkaline Diet

Another day, another attempt at a healthy breakfast. Greek yoghurt with pomegranate and fennel tea!

For lunch I felt like sushi so went to my favourite, Wasabi, and got the Yasai sushi box. It’s always a bit of a waste of food when i get this as I don’t tend to eat the tofu parts…which makes up like a third of the box.

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120…Christmas Round-up

I don’t know about you guys but I had a pretty good Christmas Day! I think you appreciate time with your family more when you move away from home and it was certainly good to see everyone again! My brother Nick ended up on hospital over Christmas unfortunately but he should be on the mend soon!!

We had to have breakfast before we opened our presents. I think that making someone wait for present time on Christmas is basically child abuse but my dad doesn’t agree. Everyone was having a full Irish breakfast so I made Aoife and I a fruit salad.

Now for presents!!!

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119…Dublin Ctd..

Oohhhh my head….

We got to bed at 6am and awoke with sore heads and hungry stomachs. Cara took us to a cafe by her house for brunch. I had butternut squash soup with peppermint tea. Cara’s lunch looked lush, I had massive food envy! I think it was a potato cake with different types of cold salads.

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112…Edinburgh

When I go to Edinburgh, part of me feels like I am coming home. My sister Laura moved here for Uni about 4 years ago so I have made quite a few visits to see her. I remember the first rime I went to visit while I was in Uni I came back to Cork, logged onto Monster and applied for about 15 Edinburgh jobs so that I could move over there! Now when I go up the city is so familiar  – I think I’m even getting used to the cold 🙂

Aside from my airport drama, I had the best weekend! I arrived at Lauras house tired and hungry at about 10pm on Friday evening. Laura, the amazing host that she is, had cheese, crackers, white wine and mushroom risotto in front of me before I could take off my scarf.

After this we went to a really cute bar called Bon Vivant for some wine and catch ups,

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100..Death By Cracker

Wahey! My 100th post 🙂

So, the liquid fast ended on Thursday night with an amazing risotto and bruschetta from La Figa. Friday was MANIC! There was seriously too much to do in one day, so food took a bit of a back seat. After sharing a bottle of wine with Nikks after work I went home and got my drunk munch on – I ate soup, cheese on crackers, and an entire bag on microwave popcorn in about 30 minutes.

On Saturday BF and I had plans to meet Aoife and her boyfriend Dave at Winter Wonderland – my first trip there this year! Unfortunately the rain ruined our plans, so we decided to meet for lunch instead. We went to the cafe in Liberty  department store near Oxford Circus for some afternoon tea. While the menu didn’f offer very much choice, there were still a few nice looking options. Aoife went with cream tea, poor Dave couldn’t find anything suitable (it wasn’t the most macho of menus) and BF and I plumped for the cheeseboard. I also decided to have a glass of champagne!

First issue…the menu stated that the cheeseboard contained nuts, which BF is allergic to. No Problem, we thought, we’ll let the waitress know that he is allergic and she’ll make sure the board arrives without any nuts. We were wrong. Cheeseboard arrives sprinkled with caramalized walnuts. No problem, we thought, lets just remind the waitress that we already mentioned his allergies and she will make sure a new board is sent. We were wrong. The waiter decided to ask the chef to just remove the walnuts from the board. Luckily a waitress with with a bit of sense overheard and told the chef to make a new cheeseboard from scratch. Great! we thought, we’re safe. Again…how wrong we were.

So in telling the waitress that BF was allergic to nuts and could we have the board without walnuts, we also asked her to check that everything else on the menu was safe for him to eat. This, apparently was not done. About 10 minutes after we started eating, BF took a bite out of one of the crackers and realised there was something in it that he was allergic to. Despite all of the other screw ups that were made, this was the point where I really started to get frustrated with the staff. We asked them if they had checked the crackers as BF was having an allergic reaction – they insisted that they had, and that they were free from eggs and nuts. We asked again, this time they sent someone downstairs to check the boxes and again said that there was nothing on the board that he would be allergic to. The waitresses, and the manager stand at our table, looking at BF who is visibly struggling, and continue to say that everything they gave us was safe for him to eat. We managed to get BF some antihistamines which seemed to calm the reaction so there was no need for the EpiPen thank god. It was such a scary experience, made even worse by the staff being so incredibly unhelpful. I am never, ever eating in this place again and if you have allergies I would recommend avoiding it also.

Here is the killer cheeseboard…

Here are also a few pics I snapped of Oxford Street while we were leaving the cafe.

After I got BF home to sleep off the effects of the anthistamines I made a little nighttime snack of apple and yoghurt.

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