140…Poutine & Ice Hockey

I tried it! And I can honestly say that if it were not for this blog I wouldn’t have gone near it. Poutine is a French-Canadian concoction of chips, gravy and cheese curd which are like little balls of rubbery cheese. We went to The National, a beer hall by our hotel for our dinner. This place is really cool, perfect for beer lovers as there are a ton of different types of beer from around the world. The drinks menu is displayed above the bar like flight times are displayed on an airport board, complete with the flag of the country the beer is from. I know this is a terrible description so I stole this picture from UrbanSpoon so that you get what I mean. The beer menu is on the right hand side of the pic!

 

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138…Oktoberfest Round 2

Exciting news! I booked my flights to Oktoberfest this year 🙂 Unfortunately the flights for opening weekend were a little too expensive so we’re going to Munich from the 26th – 30th of September. I am SO excited! There is a nice group of us going, 3 boys, 3 girls. BF is coming too which I am really excited about as I know he will love it there. This time we need to remember to book accomodation early so that we don’t end up in a caravan like last year. Click here to read about what we got up to at Oktoberfest last year! And if you’re thinking of going, click here for my top ten rules of Oktoberfest.

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137…Smoothies

This weekend was quite a good one! BF’s roommate is away skiing for the week so I’m taking his place in the apartment. On Saturday we decided to head to Oxford Street to do some shopping. I got some Debenhams vouchers from my old team as a leaving gift and I wanted to pick up a smoothie maker. I buy so many Innocent smoothies each week it seems like it would be cheaper to start making my own! Before we headed out for the afternoon I made us some lunch; Amys Kitchen Organic tomato soup with some puy lentils. I found pouches of prepared puy lentils in M&S last week, you just heat them up for 1 minute and they’re ready to eat. Really easy to prepare and they taste delicious.

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136…Musée d’Orsay

I just realised I had a post about our last day in Paris saved as draft! This is bringing back such lovely memories as I sit in rainy London….I wannnaa gooo baaaackkkK!

As I mentioned before we only had three days in Paris and a long list of things we wanted to see and do. On our third and final day there was only one thing to check off the list…a visit to the Musée D’orsay. I wasn’t sleeping very well at all for the past few nights, I just found it impossible to switch off after doing so much all day. This meant that each morning I would be prodded awake by (a slightly scared) BF and wander around in a grumbling, zombie-like state until I got a hazelnut latte from the Starbucks on the corner of our street. On our last morning we took a different route assuming we would find another Starbucks somewhere on the way to the Musée D’Orsay but we were out of luck. The zombie state remained, much to BFs horror. Still though if you’re going to be insanely tired and grumpy, why not do it in Paris?

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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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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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91…South Bank

While Cara was here she introduced me to my new favourite snack: peanut butter & jam on rice cakes. Well, PB2 instead of proper peanut butter. Click here if you missed my PB2 post. We had this for breakfast with some tea on Saturday.

On Saturday afternoon Cara and I went to meet a few friends in South Bank. This area is gorgeous at this time of year, there are lots of Christmassy stalls and decorations! We went to Las Iguanas for some Mexican food – yep, more Mexican!! I had nachos to start with a fajita salad for my main. The bowl that the salad came in was made out of a tortilla which was quite cool! It was happy hour so I drank not one, but two cocktails!

After lunch we went to the cutest bar on South Bank, Studio 6 for a few drinks. This bar was quite hidden away from the hustle and bustle of South Bank, so cosy and cheap! After a few drinks we ordered food, the boys had lamb and Cara & I shared some ciabatta, olives & olive oil for dipping. This was only £2.30! We shared too many bottles of wine and took a stroll down the Bank where we came across a random party by the shore. There was a DJ and everything! You could only find this kind of thing in London.

This is where the night went a bit off course, and unfortunately my battery died! We went to All Bar One in Embankment for some more drinks then to Heaven, one of my favourite clubs in London. Jade Ellis from Xfactor was performing there that night, she was never one of my favourites but her voice is pretty good. Next up was a 4am McDonalds drive through in a taxi and off to bed…

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87…Chicken soup for the hangover

Turns out our new housemate likes tequila as much as I do! Cue a very hungover Steph on Sunday morning. Luckily I had BF on hand to make me breakfast in bed; grapes, yoghurt and tea!

He was a bit worn out after all of the breakfast-making…

BF was after a different type of breakfast, something serio0usly unhealthy. We went to The Grapes, a pub by my house which apparently does the best Sunday roast this side of the Thames. It’s partly owned by Sir Ian McKellan so I’m hoping to see him in there some day! The pub is really cosy and small with a fire and friendly staff – I know I should love it but I just can never get a seat in there! There are only about 6 tables and they’re always taken so every time I have been in there we have had to sit at the bar. They only server roast on a Sunday so I sat and looked at Christmas flights while BF at half a cow next to me!

After the Grapes we went to BFs where I made a more Steph-style lunch. Crackers with goats cheese, sundried tomatoes & balsamic glaze, with Cambells chicken soup. Man I do love chicken soup! I also drank almost an entire bottle of pink champagne and got quite tipsy.

Later on we had ‘brinner’, (breakfast for dinner) while watching Derren Browns Apocolypse. Clonakilty Pudding and sausages on toast with a massive cup of tea.

I was after something cheap to in the evening so we decided to go to the cinema, we have the Cineworld Unlimited Cards – £15 a month to see anything you like. We went to Paranormal Activity 4 and Skyfall. I scared myself to death in the first film and then fell asleep in Skyfall. I really can’t warm to Daniel Craig as Bond, watching him duck-face for 3 hours is too much! Why the need to pout so much?? I didn’t see much of the film but from what I did see it looks pretty good, especially Javier Bardem.

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83/84….Sushi & Nigella

The past two days meals have been pretty boring so I figure I should combine the two posts. The run up to pay day is usually when I clear out my cupboards of food I have left, or raid the Tesco reduced items!

I arrived back at work feeling quite recharged and motivated, this was only helped by the new keyboard, webcam and extra monitor that I robbed from the now-empty desk next to me. My neighbour moved teams while I was gone so now I’m on my lonesome!

For breakfast I had a yoghurt, and lunch was cucmber maki, miso soup and celery sticks. Boring to you, NOM to me! For dinner I had Special K and Philly. I think you may be starting to see why I have not dedicated an entire post to this day!!

Wednesday morning started with a skinny mocha and rice cakes…

 

BF took my to Wagamama’s for lunch where I had miso soup and the yasai sushi selection. This was my first time having  sushi at Wagamama, I usually get the chicken katsu curry, but I googled the nutritional information before lunch and found out it was nearly 1,200 calories. Now I know I’m not on a diet but that is an awful lot of calories for one dish!

There was roasted red pepper sushi (the one that looks like salmon),and  Shiitake Mushroom & Asparagus, Avocado & Mango, Cucumber and Avocado maki.

Nigella Lawson was signing copies of her new book in Jubilee Place so I managed to snap a very blurred pic of her on the way back to work. I must say, she is very hot in real life!

 

For dinner BF and I cooked in his house. I made one of my favourite starters, garlic bread with goats cheese, sundried tomatoes, rocket, and balsamic glaze. I usually buy the pre-prepared garlic butter ciabatta rolls from tesco, slice it up, add the ingredients and bake at 180 degrees.

BF made pan-fried sea bass with salad and onions.

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