Naughty but nice - AnnaTheApple

July 12, 2016January 5, 2017

Wedding recap and back to reality

I’m back! After an amazingly epic week away in Spain at the BTN Fitness Retreat I am home safe and sound. I got back Friday and then sadly was struck down with some awful illness for about three days. I couldn’t even make it into work on Monday and spent the entire day pretty much in bed sleeping. I feel a bit better now but still not hundred per cent. Hey ho!

I’ll do a full recap of the fitness retreat soon… it deserves a good coverage. It was a fantastic week and I learnt a lot about myself (both good and bad). Before going to Spain I had my friend’s wedding as well. I’m the genius that books to go on holiday the day after a wedding!

The wedding was so good. It was my close friend, Shell, who I know from university and her lovely partner Rob. The wedding was held in Dumbleton Hall near to Cheltenham. As I live in Southampton this is quite a drive so I stayed with my friends in Bristol, getting the train from work on the Friday. We went to a fantastic Lebanese restaurant, Lona Grillhouse, on the Friday night which rocked my world.

We shared a platter of different meat, including lamb cutlets, king prawns, lamb kuftas, shish taouk and lots more Lebanese-style meat. It came with couscous, chips, nan bread and salad. Very tasty! There was also free Turkish delight at the end when you paid your bill.

The next day we got up fairly early to go and do some running. Kate and Jamie have recently just gotten into running (they came down to do the parkrun the other week with me). Though we’d have loved to have done a parkrun, sadly the nearest one was about 30 minutes away now Little Stoke is no longer there. And we just didn’t have the time with the wedding being at 1pm.

They took me to their local park instead which was basically a 1000 metre track. It had 100m markers and went in a loop. It was exactly 1km.

We did that five times (not the most exciting of runs but very cool to have the markers) and then we got ready for the wedding.

The wedding venue was literally perfect. The weather was good – sunny but not too hot. All in all it was a fantastic day. Shell and Rob are such a lovely couple as well and we were all so happy to see them get married.

It was also nice to have another get together with my university friends and just laugh and chat like we always do. And so nice to put a dress on and be all fancy

There were lots of garden games as well to keep everyone entertained. And a hog roast sizzling away for the evening’s buffet… yessss!

Jamie and I were very pleased about this

Shell’s dress was beautiful as well. She looked amazing.

And of course the food and cake was amazing. Probably the best food at a wedding I’ve ever had. And I have a very good friend, Charlotte, who traded half her pudding with me so I could try both

I had soup to start, lamb (very tasty!) for main and then half an apple tart and half a chocolate mousse thing. The wedding had a Japanese theme as they both love Japan. The favours were these very pretty tea light holders as well as some homemade Welsh cakes (as Rob’s side of the family is Welsh). Lovely touches.

I’m not going to lie. I did drink a fair bit (for me). I wanted to let my hair down and relax. I rarely ever drink… unfortunately I didn’t really stick with a type of beverage and went from Pimms, to a Bud, to sparkling wine, to red wind to then gin and tonics. It tasted great at the time… The cake was delicious (obviously) with a carrot cake layer and chocolate layer.

We all had a good time boogying the night away as well. It was a great evening. My lovely parents came to pick me up at midnight and it was time to go home. I felt rough on the way home. A combination of all those different drinks and too much food (read: cake) meant I might have had to have stopped (*cough* twice) on the way home to be sick. Much to my parents great amusement. As I said, this isn’t something I normally would do! Oh the shame…

I had my alarm set for 6am and arrived home at 2.30am (ouch). And for whatever bizarre reason I woke up at 4:59am and got up! I was so convinced my alarm was going to go off at 5am. So I got showered and ready and then at 5.45am wondered where my taxi was… The penny then dropped that I was a full hour early. Needless to say I reset my alarm and went back to bed (fully dressed).

I have to say I have never felt so ill in my life from alcohol. On the plane I was freezing cold. I asked for a blanket but they didn’t offer them (well, it was FlyBe…). I felt unbelievably rough and it only reconfirmed to me why I don’t drink excessively. And sadly my first night in Spain, after meeting everyone at the retreat, was spent missing dinner and going to bed early. You know I’m not well when I miss a meal time!! Serves me right I know.

Do you enjoy getting dressed up?

Do you drink? When was your last hangover?

What’s your tipple of choice?

June 20, 2016

Birthday weekend–part 1

And just like that I’m another year older… I turned 28 yesterday. I’d like to think that I’m wiser and have it all figured out but I absolutely don’t. But I’m happy and enjoying life so I’ll take that!

For the Saturday I had a few of my university friends down. Kate and Jamie (I went on holiday last year with them to Orlando) came down earlier so they could join me at parkrun. Now this is a BIG DEAL. This is the couple who laughed at me for going to parkrun when we were on holiday together. They were the least likely out of all my non-running friends to want to do parkrun. But, major kudos to them, they’ve started running and eating better in order to lose a bit of weight and get a bit more healthy. Jamie has lost FIVE STONE and Kate has lost (I think) over two stone. They’ve both also been doing the Couch to 5K programme and Kate had timed it perfectly as to use parkrun for my birthday weekend as her target.

They got to mine just before 8am and we headed down to Lee-On-Solent parkrun. Ordinarily I do Netley but Kate wanted a nice flat course and my dad was going to do Lee as well as my friend, Mat, who was down from Cheltenham for the week so it made sense.

Kate, Jamie, me and Mat

It was a beautifully sunny day. I was a bit worried about my hamstring but I’d done a quick tester run when I walked Alfie in the morning and it held up OK. Not perfect but alright.

I’d planned to take the run nice and slowly and stop if at any point it became bad.

My dad rocking the England shirt

It was quite amusing to see Jamie and Kate’s reaction to parkrun. They tend to run very early in the morning and never with other people. They genuinely thought they’d be about 12 people at parkrun. Jamie said he was shocked that one minute there were a couple of people and then the next there were hundreds. They were literally taken aback by the amount of lycra and colour about.

The start was a little bit hectic I must admit. There was over 300 people and we were all bunched together. It involved a lot of negotiating around people and trying not to trip over anyone else or be tripped up. But eventually it evened out and there was enough space.

I found a nice easy rhythm. I wasn’t pushing it or feeling out of breath and the hamstring felt OK. I was surprised to see I was running around 8 minute miles.

Photo credit: Eileen Bartlett

Lee’s a good course as you can see runners ahead and behind so I could cheer people on and spot people I knew.

Photo credit: Eileen Bartlett

I’d say the hamstring felt 80% OK. It niggled slightly towards the end but there was no pain, just felt uncomfortable. It just annoys me though as it doesn’t make for a great run as I’m constantly thinking about it and not wanting to push myself to go fast because I don’t want to annoy it. But least it was better than it has been! I finished in 24:15 which felt nice and comfortable.

Mat had already finished in a great time of 20:50 so we walked together to walk my dad in. He was power walking the course and desperate to beat his last time of 51:12. He was finding it tough but the tail runner was apparently really good at keeping him going.

Photo credit: Eileen Bartlett

Towards the end, he picked up speed, overtook another guy and sprinted to the finish. Everyone cheered him in and it was lovely.

Photo credit: Eileen Bartlett

And he completed it in 50:16 so almost a minute off his time! He was made up Kate squeaked under her goal of sub-35 by getting 34:57 and Jamie got 33:58. The absolute best part was hearing how much they loved it. Kate and Jamie are now full-on parkrun converts. On the way home they were already planning their next one (depressingly their local one was Little Stoke so now their nearest one is about 20 minutes away). Jamie was already commenting how he felt he could run further when he finished as well. YES!!! Converting my non-running friends one person at a time

We got back to mine, showered and then my friend Shell and her fiancé, Rob, showed up to join the fun. Again, hearing them tell Rob and Shell how good parkrun was just made my day. A year ago there was nothing I could say that would persuade them that running could be enjoyable. People have to find out for themselves.

I had booked my latest favourite restaurant for lunch and we were all pretty excited. After catching up and walking Alfie and Kate’s pug, Doug, we headed to Sadlers in Southampton.

As I’ve mentioned before, Sadlers is THE restaurant for meat (though they also have a strong vegetarian section of the menu too). The last time I went was INCREDIBLE. My friends love BBQ food too so it made sense to go here. I decided to go for the ribs rather than the platter this time as, though the platter is amazing, I was really craving ribs. And they did not disappoint.

HUGE chunks of meaty ribs on top of chips, salad, coleslaw and cornbread. I didn’t even touch the chips. There was just too much meat (which, by the way, is not an issue).

So tasty. Shell and Rob also went with the ribs and Jamie and Kate shared the platter.

Ridiculously (and foolishly) Shell, Rob and I ordered sides as well. Shell and Rob went for some pulled pork and I went for some chicken wings and we ordered the bourbon BBQ sauce to go alongside. (Greed took over sanity here as you can probably tell…).

Yeah I didn’t even touch those wings. There was just far too much going on my plate. And, amazingly for me, I couldn’t finish the ribs. I was beaten! Everyone was. Happily Kate and Jamie said I could take their leftovers home so I took a swan of shame back with me.

Needless to say my freezer is now joyfully stocked with some smoked turkey, gammon, wings, hot link sausages and pulled pork. Happy days!

As we sat there afterwards chatting and basically recovering from the meal, the waitress appeared with a cake with lit candles and they all started singing happy birthday to me. It was such a surprise and so lovely!

Action shot

To be honest, I think the last thing we all wanted was a slice of chocolate cake. But you gotta take one for the team right??

The chocolate cupcakes on top were filled with delicious buttercream. We were literally DONE after having a slice.

We spent a long time at my flat just laying around chatting and digesting. We probably could have napped! It was such a great day. And to top it off they got me some super cool Superdry workout gear.

Because what else would you buy me?? So, an absolutely perfect Saturday.

What is your perfect way to spend your birthday?

Have you converted any non-runners to runners?

What’s your perfect birthday gift?

May 31, 2016

A Marvel-lous wedding and a long weekend

Nothing says the start of summer better than a wedding, cider and a long weekend. In the UK we had a Bank holiday weekend which meant many of us had the Monday off. I also had the Friday as holiday because it was my friend, Ashley’s, wedding.

Very badly timed for me was a team building paintballing the night before…

Luckily I didn’t get hit significantly to create any hideous bruises on me. Though I was on a team with a real suicide squad that just went into the cross-fire like crazy men so I pretty much stayed hidden except for the occasional bursts of bravery.

Anyway, the wedding. Ashley is a good friend from school and there were a group of us who all knew each other so it was going to be good fun. I’d planned to go with my friend Louise to the ceremony but she was late, but not through her own fault. She had made the wedding cake and had to set it up in the morning at the venue but the board was delivered late which knocked on to her getting ready. As a pregnant lady, this was not good stress for her! I really felt for her but luckily she made it in time.

The ceremony was beautiful. Ashley’s dress was gorgeous and really suited her style. The wedding also had a Marvel-theme to it.

The groom, Paul, is a big comic book fan. It was very quirky and individual. Luckily the weather was lovely and warm as well so after the ceremony we spilled outside to sip some champagne and mingle.

My dress is from French Connection

As I stood chatting away to my friends I noticed the photographer. He looked familiar… Yep, he was the same one I had at my wedding. Ahh bit awkward (to any new readers: my husband and me are separated). I thought “nahh he’ll never recognise me so it’ll be fine”. Only he did and he came up to me and chatted away. Apparently a few of my wedding photos go to every wedding fair he does so of course he recognises me! Luckily though he didn’t ask where Ben was.

Pregnant Louise, Jake and me

There were space hoppers, giant Jenga and Nerf balls all about the place to keep us big kids entertained

And then it was time for lunch. It was mushroom soup for starters, chicken with cabbage and bacon and then a chocolate tart for pudding.

Very tasty! And instead of wine there was apple and pear cider on the table. I’m not a wine drinker at all (apart from Prosecco and champagne) but I do quite enjoy cider from time to time (probably because a) it’s apple and b) it’s very sweet). We also cheekily managed to swap a few of our non-alcoholic fruit drinks with another table’s cider – they were more than happy as they weren’t drinking which was a win-win scenario.

The rest of the celebrations were good fun. There was a HUGE bouncy castle which we all went on (post food and drink probably not the best of ideas…and in a reasonably short dress). But it was a good laugh. And obviously the best part…

Louise’s amazing cake. It was chocolate Bailey’s and vanilla Victoria sponge. Very tasty indeed.

And then of course lots of dancing after Ashley and Paul’s first dance…which went to the tune of Star Wars until Paul jokingly got the DJ to turn it to their proper song (Hero by Nickelback of course).

The groom wore proper trousers for the ceremony!

A lovely evening. Congratulations Ashley and Paul!

I’ll recap parkrun in a separate post as it was a special one (my dad’s first ever!). The rest of the weekend was all very relaxed. I enjoyed a lovely BBQ with my family on the Saturday.

Of course this involved lots of meat. I had chicken skewers, pork skewers and kangaroo burgers. But I did balance it out with lots of salad and roasted vegetables (which you can see part of skewered in the photo – my perfect meat:veg ratio ).

I also managed to get a great selfie with Alfie.

He was enjoying the sunshine too (and managed to get a sneaky sausage as well! Jammy dog that he is).

We had a lovely walk along the beach as well in the evening. The temperature was perfect! I love the summer

I’d decided against the Cakeathon. I just wasn’t up for it: the long journey there, it being such an early start on the Monday (we’d need to leave before 6am) and then not sure how many laps I’d do to make it worth it and even if I’d enjoy it. So I set it to rest and enjoyed the rest of the weekend now far more relaxed. It is a huge shame and I was gutted not to go but I didn’t want to go and regret it. It was the right decision.

Instead on the Monday I went on a little daytrip to Stockbridge with my parents and we had a lovely walk and a delicious lunch out.

The restaurant was called Woodfire and it was fantastic. I had a feta, butternut squash and nut pesto salad. Delicious!

It was a very relaxed weekend…bit of shopping, chilling in the garden, lots of walks with Alfie and my family. I shan’t waffle on any longer, this post ifs far too long now!

How was your weekend?

What’s your favourite salad?

Have you been to any themed weddings before?

May 26, 2016

Random Life

Hello lovely people! I was going to do a Rants and a Raves post but decided instead my thoughts were more random and less ranty or ravy-specific. So here we go…

Spotted: one lone lunchbox on top of a car in my office car park.

I would be really annoyed if this was me (food = my life). I decided to put the lunchbox out of its misery (though I wouldn’t mind lying/sitting on top of a car all day in the sun instead of work if I’m honest…with a book perhaps) and take it to reception so they could email round. The owner had realised he’d left it behind however and met me halfway. Apparently his work colleagues had told him about it – why didn’t they bring it in for him!?

Frozen custard: I’d only heard about frozen custard when I was in the States and you could buy it from a fast food place like ice cream. I never actually tried it though. Anyone had it?

But anyway, there it sits in the Sainsbury’s freezer in the UK! I was very tempted to buy it it must be said but I managed to resist. Portion control and ice cream in my freezer is tricky

Home decor: So this is my TV unit thing that sits beneath my TV which is attached the wall in my flat.

I just don’t know what to put on it though as it looks a bit bare! When I bought the unit I thought the TV was going on it but then I found I could put the TV on the wall which was actually better for where the sofa was going. So now I have this area of space and it feels like I should put something there…like photo frames or potpourri. Can anyone suggest anything? I’m so terrible with stuff like this!

If I were a dinosaur I’d be a T-Rex: If you’re a regular reader of the blog or you know me in real life then you know I’m fairly carnivorous. I could easily give up bread, potatoes, rice etc. But I would really struggle to give up meat. Yes I could get protein from more environmentally sustainable ways but I love it too much.

Instead I try and buy as much organic and free range or outdoor reared meat as possible. As that’s obviously a lot more expensive I’ve found a good trick is looking in the section of the meat aisle where meat is just about to go off and so is marked down in price. I’ll only ever buy free range chicken and it’s at least 1/3 of the price cheaper getting it there. I then freeze it so I have no worries about it being needed to be eaten straight away.

Anyway, last weekend my fellow meat-loving friends, Louise and Tom (and their toddler, Jake), met up for a Sunday meat fest. Instead of going out to Sadlers (ahh that epic meal…) which would have been tricky for them with childcare we decided to recreate it at home. I brought buffalo chicken wings, a HUGE rack of St. Louis-style ribs and salad (#balance). They provided sausages, pulled pork, lemon and herb chicken thighs, BBQ spare ribs and chips.

The chips were buries underneath all the protein

It was amaaaaazing. Clearly far too much for us (yes, even for me) but delicious nonetheless. I mean look at that rib:

Jake had some cut up sausages and bread and seemed quite happy. It was a lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon with friends.

Family time: For my mum’s birthday we went to Brighton at the weekend for a daytrip. We went by train which, for my family, was quite novel. We normally drive everywhere but we decided to save the hassle of parking.

Brighton train station selfie

The weather wasn’t great but we weren’t going there for the beach. We wanted to do a spot of shopping and have a nice meal.

We hadn’t realised it was the Brighton Fringe Festival which explained why it was bustling with people and things going on. Though it was a shame about the weather the atmosphere made up for it. For lunch we decided on Browns. I had done some research beforehand to find some nice restaurants but, in true style of my parents, they made no decisions before rocking up to Brighton and then floundering around a bit trying to find somewhere suitable (*sighs*). Also, a few of the places I suggested probably weren’t what my parents would have wanted anyway…But I have a lovely friend in Brighton that I might be able to persuade to take me (especially to any of the cool sounding vegetarian restaurants.! Yes, I can eat a non-meat based meal occasionally!).

Anyway Browns was lovely. Though the waiter was ridiculously incompetent. He took forever doing anything. We ordered drinks and saw them sat at the bar for a good 10 minutes before he brought them over, and even then he brought my dad the wrong drink (but he took it anyway for fear that he might die of thirst by waiting for the correct one). In the end though we came out well because he missed off our last drinks order which included a glass of champagne for my mum. The food, however, was delicious.

I shared this platter with my dad which included calamari, chicken lolly pops, fish pâté, hummus and prawn cocktail. For my main I had a Caesar salad (so predictable) and for pudding I had a brownie. Not my favourite because it was so rich but nice with honeycomb ice cream.

We then walked around the Lanes and did some shopping. This obviously included the Choccywoccydoodah Shop.

My dad, a self-confessed chocolate addict, said it was torture as he wanted everything. But he’s trying to be good (and everything was rather expensive – though very good quality!). A good time was had! My dad was perilously close to falling asleep on the train and all our phones had died by this point – what on Earth would we do!? Make actual conversation with each other?? Like when I was younger, we played some train journey games like the “yes and no” game where you have to guess what the other person is (literally anything, person, object, place) by them just answering yes or no. I felt like a kid again!

Do you play any games on long journeys?

Do your friends have similar eating tastes to you?

Have you ever been to Brighton?

May 23, 2016

100th parkrun

Saturday was a really special day for me; it was my 100th parkrun. If you don’t know, parkrun (always small ‘p’) is a free weekly 5k that takes place on a Saturday all over the UK, as well as many other countries. You just register online, print out your barcode and then take it with you to your nearest parkrun (you can find out which one is nearest to you using their events page).

You then run (or walk!) the 5k, go through the finishing funnel where you’re handed a finisher’s chip. You take that and your personal barcode and get it scanned by a friendly volunteer. Later on you’ll receive an email with your results. It’s simple, free and super friendly. It’s one of my favourite parts of running. I go every Saturday I can, usually to my local Netley one, and I love it. You don’t have to run fast or PB every week, you can plod along, take selfies, natter to other regulars and just enjoy it. Marshals are different volunteers each week and will cheer you on as you run past.

Before Saturday I had run 99 parkruns, mostly at Netley but I’ve also done others (15 different ones in total). It’s traditional to bring cakes to a milestone parkrun so I decided on two very simple cakes: rocky road and marshmallow crispies. Essentially it just involved melting and mixing. I am notoriously bad at baking so I thought I could handle this.

The rocky road was easy peasy and involved melting chocolate, butter and golden syrup and then mixing crushed digestive biscuits and mini marshmallows into it. There was an iffy moment when I thought I was close to burning the chocolate but thankfully this didn’t happen. After putting it in a large casserole dish it went into the fridge.

Then it was on to the crispies. I melted butter and then added marshmallows and began mixing together.

Simple. Then it suddenly became very difficult. Have you ever tried mixing the sticky gloop mess of melted marshmallows with light little rice crispies?? It is a sticky NIGHTMARE. The marshmallow starts to harden, your spoon gets stuck, you get stuck, there’s pink Spiderman-style webby marshmallow glue everywhere…it’s ridiculous. Then trying to put the damn thing into a dish… Jesus, never again. Anyway they too eventually went into the fridge to later be chopped up the next morning.

But in the end it all turned out OK. Hurrah!

As normal I helped set-up parkrun. I took Alfie with me as my dad was going to pop down to cheer me on and celebrate with me so when I ran he could look after him. It’s always nice to bring Alfie along as he runs along next to us as we walk the course and gets on with everyone.

Despite the weather being overcast, it was a lovely parkrun. My fellow setter-uppers, Chris and Geoff, were celebrating their 50th and 200th parkrun, respectively, as well. So there were a lot of good spirits.

Thank you, Kirsty for the photo

Hedge End Running Club’s female team captain, Kirsty, also arranged for the Southampton Echo to come down and take some photos which was all very exciting. Though we did have to do some cringey running shots. They’re in the Echo today (we even had to give a little interview!).

(Source)

My dad arrived and we got ready to start actually running (after a lovely mention of us in the speech at the beginning).

Wearing my purple 25 Volunteer parkrun t-shirt

My dad cheered and took lots of photos and Alfie stood a bit confused watching all the crazy people running

I ran with my friends Mike and Mark and though I wasn’t pushing it, I found it really tough. I felt like my legs had nothing in them and that three miles felt ridiculously long.

Mike and me (Photo credit: Ken Grist)

To be honest, I was just really glad when it was done, though I did have fun at the end doing the ‘aeroplane’. Got to be done!

Mark storming ahead “taking it easy” with me

And then the cake feeding frenzy began! All three of us celebrating our milestone run had brought cakes so pretty much everyone at parkrun was eating cake afterwards. It was fabulous. And I must say, my rocky road went down a storm and was exceptionally tasty, if I do say so myself.

My dad enjoyed himself too. We had our photo taken in a similar place that we’d had a photo taken on my 50th parkrun (ahh the consistency…).

My dad said he enjoyed it so much that he’s going to register and do a parkrun walk next week! He’s done a 5k before (in around 47 minutes) and he does walk a lot so he says he feels capable of doing it. He felt encouraged that Netley has a number of walkers so he wouldn’t be the only one. He also has a heart rate monitoring watch so he can be sensible too (though he actually doesn’t have high blood pressure surprisingly – but best to be safe! And my mum won’t let him go otherwise…). And because Netley is laps if he doesn’t fancy doing it all he can stop when he wants. I’m very proud of him

My time was 23:16. It didn’t feel like a good, easy run but I’m still pleased with the negative split.

It felt mentally wearing and like a slog. But the cake, the lovely parkrun community who made me feel very special and loved and my dad being there made up for it. Despite having a pants run, I couldn’t stop smiling and I went home very happy. And that’s the thing, parkrun is not just about the running.

What would you bake for a milestone celebration?

Have you ever been interview by a paper before?

Do you like your photo being taken?