Tag: #foodie

Christmas Ad awards and Sausage Massacres

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It’s over.

The Veganism that almost destroyed me is over, I’m back to my meat devouring self and I have never been so relieved.

I actually have energy now. Well, as much energy as I had before the Vegan thing, which wasn’t much.

My first meal back was meant to be a feast. I bought everything on the McDonald’s menu, but felt sick after eating a single cheeseburger.

I am not usually a sharer of food, but I gave my friends the rest. Now I fear that they will want to share all my food, and I would like to take this moment to clarify:

It’s never going to happen.

Now that I’ve done that, I can move along and talk about what I’ve done this week…

Which is nothing interesting. Bloggers always seem to have money to go and do interesting things every week.

I wish I could go to Borneo and help Organgutans, or skydive in America. Alas, my budget only allowed me to get drunk one night and eat 3 cans of beans and sausage. (I think most people regret more than that when they get drunk, but it adds to how uninteresting I am.)

Aside from the sausage massacre, I’ve either been at work or in uni every day this week. I practically live at uni, in fact I have even started bringing a blanket. It helps me concentrate for some weird reason.

I am absolutely loving how festive everything is though, but like the rest of the nation, I am very disapointed in John Lewis’ Christmas Advert. I don’t care how much of a ‘treasure’ Elton John is, he is nothing compared to that animated bear and rabbit a few years ago.

So far, Aldi and Iceland are winning all the christmas awards from me. I mean, Iceland’s is so informative, well written and even cute.

And Aldi’s is about a carrot who stole the coca-cola truck and has a parsnip for a nemisis.

I feel like they’re opposite ends of the spectrum, but who doesn’t love a good carrot at Christmas?

Puzzles, Garlic Bread and Surprise Parties

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Guess what guys?

I am now officially 22, which means my bones are clicking and my hair is turning grey.

Okay, so I’m lying about that, but I am struggling to get out of bed. Though truthfully, I think it’s due to the bitter winter mornings that have made a sudden appearance, but it could also be my age. Which is why I have a jar of Nutella on my bedside table, ready to fuel me through the day.

I went back up north for my Birthday, it was nice to see my family and we all went to the pub. But my presents were questionable. My sister gave me those puzzles where you have to rearrange letters to make words. She told me however many I got right would be the amount of Euro’s she gave me for Disneyland. They were impossible. I spent all day, literally ALL DAY doing them and still couldn’t figure them out.

Then, about an hour later my mum gave me my second present which was a puzzle and a word search. At this point my brain was frazzled and even Google couldn’t help me. Turns out the wordsearch had nothing to do with anything and she ‘just wanted to keep me busy.’ Because, you know, I hadn’t already been busy all day with puzzles a 13 year old made.

I think I’m just bitter that my 13 year old sister outsmarted me. To be fair though, that doesn’t take much.

I still don’t know what my brother got me. When I got back from the pub I was pretty drunk and then he decided to give me his present. I unwrapped it, it was garlic bread.

But here’s the thing, about 3 years ago my family went for a meal at Nando’s. Jak had garlic bread with his meal.

The meal was great, very tasty, 10/10. But Jak went to the toilet and had a little bit of garlic bread left on his plate. And I mean a tiny bit, it was kind of like a crust.

Everyone had finished and the waitress came whilst he was in the toilet and took the plates away. Jak returned, disapointment in his eyes.

‘Where’s my garlic bread?’ He asked. And that’s when Mum said it. The thing that has haunted me for years:

‘Lucie ate it.’

I was confused. Betrayed. Horrified. But he believed her over my sincere disbelief. Everyone joined in. Ruby, Harley, Ian. They all plotted against me, and Jak is the type to hold grudges.

His birthday card to Ian said: ‘It must be hard living with a garlic bread theif.’

I have a notebook in my shower, on which he wrote ‘I steal garlic bread.’

He brings it up every. Single. Time we’re together.

So it seemed perfectly believable that he got me garlic bread for my birthday. So I put it in the freezer and forgot about it.

Until it was time for me to leave the next day. We popped into my mums work to say our goodbyes, and she asked me if I had the garlic bread for lunch. When I said no, she asked whether I was taking it home. I said ‘No. Because I trust you not to eat it and there’s no room in our freezer.’ To which she almost screamed: ‘You put it in the freezer?!’ Before dashing onto the phone to Ruby, telling her to get it out the freezer.

I still don’t know what is in that box, all I know is that it isn’t garlic bread and it isn’t freezable. I feel like this whole thing could have been avoided if they’d just given me my present like normal people.

When I got back to Crewe, celebrations with Ian began. We got a train to Alderley Edge to go to The Alchemist because I love cocktails. But when we got there, we found it had shut down in June. Thank god we had a meal booked at The Botanist after, so we just had a few drinks at their bar instead.

I don’t know how they make their Crispy Onion Petals but they are the literally food sent from above. We had a bowl of them each and some sausages, that was just for starter. I have a feeling I eat far too much, life would be so much cheaper if I hated food.

My birthday was on Wednesday, and Natalie’s birthday was on Friday. (Remember Natalie? My friend that can’t say no?) So Sadia, (Nat’s girlfriend) planned a surprise party for her. I thought it was a pretty good idea until I got there and remembered that Nat doesn’t like surprises, or attention. But she seemed to enjoy herself after she got over the initial hatred.

Sadia went all out, and got us a joint birthday cake. I mean, Natalie doesn’t like cake but since it was also for me I thought it was lovely and I will eat so much of it that I’ll hate cake until Christmas. Which isn’t that far away but would still be an accomplishment.

When they lit the candles all the fire alarms went off, so people went from singing to screaming. Turns out drunk people and fire alarms do not mix. Me and Nat then held hands and cut the cake like we were married, but watching the footage back, it wasn’t that graceful. It was mostly us trying to figure out how two people can hold one knife.

Today I had a spring autumn clean and bought some fake plants from Aldi, which is why the photo at the top seems random. I have this thing were if I get really stressed, I will clean frantically.

Nothing can stop me doing it, Ian has tried many times. I think it’s just my way of having a mental breakdown.

The plants were a bonus because I don’t trust myself with real plants, and they’re perfect for the calming atmosphere of the bathroom. Or at least, that’s I told myself when I was convincing myself to buy them. I almost didn’t because I thought: ‘No Lucie. You don’t need them.’

But I’m glad I did in the end.

Cheesecake, Mcflurrys and Gimp Suits

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Okay, well, this week I seem to have gone from doing nothing but working and watching an ungodly amount of Youtube, to actually doing things successful humans do.

I had my first week of lectures this week, which has both made me panic about the future, (Turns out it’s almost impossible to write professionally. Who’d have thought?) and jump with joy at how productive I’m being.

I also made a huge Beuno Cheesecake. Though I ended up throwing half away because I overestimated how much two people could eat in a week. I did the same thing with Cottage Pie.

My eyes are so much bigger than my belly, and because most of my friends are either vegetarians or intolerant to everything, I can’t even use it as an excuse to have a dinner party.

But I did manage to force Natalie to have some of the cheesecake, even though she doesn’t like chocolate that much. I have introduced Natalie before, haven’t I? I can’t remember.

It’s great because, like me, she has the inability to say no to things. So I knew if I asked her to come over after lecture, she wouldn’t put up much of a fight and I could stuff Cheesecake in her face without any complaints. As much as this makes me seem like a bad friend, I swear, I’d do the same for her if I had to.

Work has been work, nothing exciting. EXCEPT THE RETURN OF THE SMARTIES MCFLURRY. Honestly, one scoop of that delicious ice cream makes the sky crack open and angels descend.

And then the Nacho Cheese Wedges have returned, which causes earthquakes and opens up the gates of hell.

I’m not sure how it’s not false advertising. You think Nacho Cheese Wedges would be, well, nacho cheese on wedges. But no, it is in fact, cheese bites coated in wedges? I don’t understand.

Why not call them Nacho Cheese Bites? Stop trying to be extra and just name them what they are.

Whilst I’m having a bit of a rant, can we talk about American Horror Story? I’m a fan of the show, but what the hell happened? (Spoilers ahead.)

Okay, I was on board with the apocolypse theme. But from what I understand, this is the plot:

A nuclear bomb is about to hit America. A famous ‘influencer’ has paid to find safety in an underground bunker-type-thing. She’s a bit of a bitch and leaves her boyfriend to die and takes her Personal Assistant and Hairdresser with her instead. The hairdressers mum also goes along for the ride, because why not?

Also headed to the bunker is this teenage boy ans girl. Obviously set up to get together. Teenage boy is taken from his family because he and this girl have something in their DNA the government want to preserve.

Turns out the person in charge of the bunker is a bit sadistic and ends up having a man killed, and then fed to the other survivors including his boyfriend. She likes torturing the rich. Demon baby from the first season turns up, except he is now a fully grown demon man and gets to choose people to go the the ultimate safe place.

He? Or another demon? Gets in a gimp suit and has sex with the hairdresser. Turns out the hairdressers mum hates the fact he’s gay and loves leather and wants to sell him off to a dignified man. She catches him having sex with gimpy and reports it.

Oh, and sadistic lady hates it when people have sex. So him and the teenage boy and girl are in big trouble but demon man pardons the teenagers and makes the hairdresser stab his mum to death.

Sadistic ladies best friend is a robot based on demon man’s mum. (You what now?) The influencers Personal Assistant turns out to be a witch. (Again, what? The plot is getting fuzzy now.)

Remember the boyfriend that was left to die? Yeah, he’s alive. He survived the nuclear bomb with nothing but a deformity and a few cancers. He travelled all the way across America to stab the influencer in the face.

The demon man wants witchy woman dead. So he and the robot poison everyone with apples (how original) and the robot shoots sadistic lady.

So everybody is dead. Mr and Mrs important DNA are dead (What was the point in saving them from the wrath of sadistic lady? What about their DNA?) Hairdresser is dead. (What was the point in having a whole episode about him?)

But then some of the witches from Coven turn up and revive the influencer, her personal assistant and some woman who we haven’t seen much of, other than her being grateful to be alive.

I’m not sure what the theme is anymore. I’m not sure what the plot is anymore. I am purely watching it to try and get some answers, only to be left with more questions.

Or maybe it’s trying to symbolise the never ending questions of life? Or not? Who knows? Not me.

Swimming, Assassinations and Ice Cream

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So, I’m writing this in the back of Ian’s Dad’s car, which is good news as it means I haven’t pucked and been banned from it forever.

The south was great, and I discovered I’m a bad person because I desperately want Ian to inherite his grandparent’s house.

They have many rooms, a lovely garden (Though I couldn’t help but think ‘Oh god. The maintenence, it must take hours to cut. You can tell you’re an adult when thoughts like that cross your mind. But that’s a crises for another time.) And even their own swimming pool.

Ian has asked me politley not to kill them off, but I can’t call the assassins now, they won’t give me a refund.

I do think if I had my own pool I would be much healthier because I love swimming but hate public pools. It’s the only exercise I enjoy. But my generation is doomed to never buy houses, so I will be a poolless widow forever unless we inherite thiers. Ian won’t ask for it though. He still has a thing called pride, whereas I’m happy to grovel at their feet and tell them all the health benefits it will give me.

Whilst we swam, I asked Ian to take a photo of me on the whale. (Not real, you fools. Inflatable.) He had bought me a Little Mermaid bikini the day before and I have become obssessed with it. I asked him to take a nice, elegant photo of me. But instead he captured this monstrosity:

Thankfully, he had accidentally changed the video setting so it’s only a second long. I thank God for that every day.

Aside from swimming, we went into Brighton where I stuffed my face with sandwiches, ice cream and Shakeaway.
We walked through The Lanes and had a stroll along the beach.
There are only 2 big cities I would ever live in; Edinburgh or Brighton. Though the crowds at Brighton startled me a little bit.

Have you ever tried to eat a meatball sandwich gracefully, with the wind blowing your hair all over the place?

You can’t. It’s impossible.

So many people witnessed a stumpy ginger troll destroying a sandwich, leaving hot sauce on her forhead and chunks of meatball in her hair. Luckily Ian’s family had decided to stay home, and he already knows I’m a monster so it was fine.

Overall, it was a great getaway and even my attempted skin care got complimented.

What I mean by that, is that the day before I left, I mushed a banana up with oats and honey and smothered it on my face before placing cucumbers on my eyes. That was when Ian came home and found me laying on our bed with half of the breakfast aisle dripping from me.

I tried to explain that I’m too poor to buy facemasks but he didn’t understand.

The good news is my skin has been lovely and soft since so I totally reccommend it.

So that’s pretty much all I have to talk about this week. Now, please excuse me. I have assassins to tend to.

Food glorious food

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Okay so if the layout of this post is weird it’s because I’m attempting to be tech savvy. I’m writing this on my phone, and you’ll just have to make do while I figure this out.

Whilst staring at the ceiling trying to figure out something to write about, (This has become part of my blogging routine. It’s hard to write when all you do is work and sleep.) I went through lots of topics in my head that I know about, but couldn’t find anything to get my creative juices flowing. (Ew. Don’t worry, I will never use that phrase again.)

And since I don’t want to cause arguments or be political, expressing strong opinions on here is a no go.

But then it hit me. I do have an opinion on something that won’t hurt anybody’s feelings: Food is fricken awesome.

I don’t even know how people diet. Or how people are vegetarians, I mean I know why, and it’s an amazing cause. But it also takes some serious will power. I do not possess that kind of power. I will eat anything that finds it’s way onto a plate.

And then there’s people who ‘forget’ to eat. How?? It’s a human need, do you people forget to breathe too?

I just don’t get it. Ian can’t even get me out of bed unless he is well equipped with chocolate and coffee, and even then he struggles.

My love for food and my easily-influenced personality also mean I spend a lot of money on recipes I see on Facebook. Facebook is like ‘Here’s how to make lasagne but with garlic bread instead of pasta’ and 5 minutes later I’ll be in Aldi, striding down the aisles like I have money to waste, which I don’t.

Aldi is also troublesome. There’s a few aisles that change every few weeks. Most of it is random rubbish that I want but don’t need, and one of the aisles is full of exciting food. I think the last thing I bought was Caramel Popcorn Coffee. Sadly, it was disgusting. But the smell should be in a Yankee candle, and the little chocolate drops in it are cute.

There isn’t much more I can say about my love for food, and to be honest, I’m struggling this week so I think I’ll just keep this short and sweet.

Hopefully I’ll continue next week, but I’m going on a trip to Seaford (Which involves a 7 hour car journey with Ian’s dad. He pretends he’s recovered from the first time I met him and threw up in his car. But I notice him nervously glancing at me in the mirror every so often, not that I blame him. It was an awful first impression.)

My point is, I will write if I have time. If not, it’s going to be a horrifically long fortnight for you all.

Toasties and… torture?

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It has been another blazing week since I last wrote, and people have been enjoying the heat in traditional ways, with BBQ’s and beach visits. I, however, spent my day off paying to be locked in a room with my brother and boyfriend.

That’s right folks, my little brother, who is actually a teenager and isn’t very little, came to stay and I thought we’d go to Manchester for the afternoon and do an escape room.

‘But what does that have to do with the delicious sandwich at the top of this post?’ I hear you ask, even though you probably didn’t. And the answer is absolutely nothing, except that it was my brothers dinner at Northern Soul Grilled Cheese. They do delicious mac and cheese toasties for a fiver, and honestly it was so worth it. Jak’s had pulled pork added to it, whereas mine was in a pot mixed with sriracha, sausage and crispy onions. I think my taste buds had a little food orgasm, it was that good.

Anyway, that was the only photo I took through the whole day as I’m very much a ‘live in the moment’ type of person. So, let’s get back to talking about the escape room.

We booked a room called ‘Captured’ as I wanted to do a scary one. I’m a sucker for horror games and basically being scared. I actually find it interesting that humans seek enjoyment from the thing that most species avoid. You don’t see mice going up to cats for the thrill, or fish pretending to flop about on land for a few seconds. We’re so weird.

We were blindfolded and taken to the room, where a video started playing and we took the blindfolds off. We didn’t get very far after that, though I think we were about half way when the timer ran out. The room was Saw themed, and each time we got a clue the jigsaw laugh played, which got a bit annoying when I was stressed.

I won’t go through all the puzzles, because spoilers, but for one of them you had to pull a rope to lift up these little doors. This was the first thing that went disastrously wrong. I went up to the rope, and started pulling on it, and as far as I knew, it didn’t do anything.  But then, from behind me, Ian said ‘The doors are moving! I think they’re giving us a clue.’

But instead of putting two and two together, I just went over to Ian and watched the doors. They didn’t move again, so I assumed my boyfriend was a nutter and went back to pulling the rope. I heard Ian gasp and say ‘Did you see that?’ So I stopped, checked, and nothing was happening. I went back to pulling the rope, this time frowning and getting a bit frustrated. This went on for a while before Jak noticed what was happening, and informed Ian that I was the one activating the doors.

If Jak wasn’t there, I swear we wouldn’t have got past that first puzzle. Which is actually really bad, considering me and Ian live alone together and might start a family one day.  That is not a day the world will ever be prepared for.

We also broke a puzzle, and the woman had to come down into the room and fetch the key for us. We worked terribly as a team, the boys hopping from one puzzle to the other, and not listening to anything I said. I’m aware that what I say most of the time is pretty stupid, but they could have at least tried my guesses when we were stuck.

Basically, I wanted to kill them both by the end of it, and to make things 100x worse we had to run for the train.

I am not a graceful runner, and I was not in a sports bra. Instead I was in skinny jeans, docs and a low cut top. My boobs were bouncing in pain, almost hitting me in the face. I was also out of breath and sweaty, and then the guys decided that since I couldn’t talk through my panting, they would tease and insult me about the whole ordeal.

Overall, I loved having Jak over to stay, even though we do not work well as a team and I feel like I have discovered that me and Ian are as stupid as each-other. Pray for us.