Naughty but nice - AnnaTheApple

July 10, 2014

Things lately

Things are plodding along quite nicely round here. Though I’d hate to look back at my life and think of it as a “plod”. Rather that though than a sprint I suppose!

I guess you could call this an ‘odds and ends’ post of stuff that’s been happening lately:

Ben making carrot cake

This is big, big news people. For so long Ben has been promising to bake for me. But these promises have never materialised to actual calorific-dense baked goods (despite me buying him ingredients and everything). I’m the one who cooks, he’s the one that apparently bakes.

Last week he had the week off as he was starting a new job so he had no excuse. Being a typical man, he left it to mid-afternoon Friday to begin his task. I got regular text updates as to the progress of the cake…

Apart from a minor zest grating related injury (and a lovely photo of it sent my way – in case I wasn’t fully aware of the sheer hard work he was putting in), it all seemed to be going swimmingly.

That is until I got a bit of an urgent phone call: “Anna, I forgot to add the carrot in before I put it in the oven. What do I do??”.

He even sent me a selfie to adequately express how he felt.

Luckily he was able to get the cakes (there were two) out of the oven asap and stir in the hastily grated carrot (no further grating related injuries here thank goodness). Whew. Rectified. But amusing nonetheless 😉

Ta da! How good do they look? As the loaf tin was a little small for the batter, he made a mini round cake as well…with a better cake to icing ratio if you ask me 😉 It tasted divine and it was all I could do to not consume the entire two cakes in one sitting. And yes, there was carrot in it 😉

New mattress

Ben’s above selfie could also adequately describe the feelings we felt when our lovely new mattress was delivered the other day.

“Pants” would be one word to describe this situation. There are others I could use. Thankfully we can swap it (and pay the extra) for the correct mattress size. Not sure how we got this so wrong really…I don’t know how we both survive in this big wide world pretending to be adults.

Trips to London

Getting up at stupid o’clock to get the train to London for a meeting is no fun. Especially when it means eating my porridge in the car while my dad drives us to the station.

Lots of things in my life change and new habits form, but eating porridge for breakfast will never change.

And I’m sorry all you lovely Londoners but I detest going there. It’s stressful, busy, crowded…and dirty. Yes I realise most cities (and places in general) are dirty. But I freak out.

Essential requirement for me!

And just randomly, a mini escalator. For all those lonely people who have no friends to stand with…

Room for one only

Or people who are so so busy they need to use the mini escalator to hurry up them quickly, by-passing the more normal sized busier escalator (I found this out as I was dallying around taking photos of said escalator while a man tried to hurry past…).

Birthday trip to Chichester

On Sunday Ben and me went out to Chichester to go shopping for a belated birthday trip. Rant alert: I got a little bit angry in one of my favourite shops (Oasis) when I realised they didn’t stock my size is anything I liked (bar one dress). It’s not an obscure size either – a normal size eight. The lady in the shop just shrugged and went “yeah I know” and after a long pause “look online”. Gargh!! I like trying stuff on and I’m there willing to buy stuff NOW. I understand that they can’t stock masses of every size but they had about three size 20s in everything. Your loss, Oasis, was FatFace and New Looks’ gain.

We stopped at one of my favourite restaurants for lunch as well: Trents.

We had a sharing platter (hummus, sundried tomato dip, beetroot dip, stuffed peppers) to start, followed by a Caesar salad for me (of course) and a club sandwich and curly fries for Ben, followed by crème Brule for Ben and chocolate brownie for me.

I had run 10 miles in the morning and I was FAMISHED. Sadly my salad didn’t quite cut it. I enjoyed it but it wasn’t one of the best I’ve tried (no croutons and no anchovies). Ben was struggling so I helped him out with eating some of his sandwich filling (bacon and chicken) and his fries. Win.

That pudding. Oh wow. It could have done with vanilla ice cream to balance it rather than hazelnut ice cream but it was pretty damn amazing. Afterwards I was like “pft, that was easy. Three courses done and dusted.” After leaving the restaurant for a shopping continuation the fullness hit me like a ton of bricks (literally in my stomach). I couldn’t bare to even look at people eating or drinking. I couldn’t eat anything else for the rest of the day and required an hour long nap when I got home. Whew. Pretty good day I’d say!

Alfie

Kids (and adults) all over the globe are obsessed with Frozen.

Apparently so is our dog, Alfie. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is what he does all day when we’re at work. He just wants to build a snowman…

Do you prefer online shopping or going into the actual shop? I like to try things on because invariably things that I think will look nice look awful. And it’s the whole faff of sending stuff back that really annoys me with online shopping. But it annoys me when a shop is seriously under-stocked in my size for pretty much everything.

Ever ordered a large purchase that turns out to be very wrong?

What’s your worst baking disaster? I could write a book for mine so it was nice that Ben, ‘Mr Baking Pro’ got something wrong 😉

July 9, 2014July 9, 2014

Am I healthy?

This is a question I’ve been asking myself recently.

I like to think I’m fairly healthy. I do lots of cardio-busting exercise running 4-5 times a week. I do some strength work to try and smooth out biomechanical imbalances. I always hit my ‘5 a day’ fruit count (no, not just with apples ;))I eat stupid amounts of vegetables. We’ve swapped to organic or free range meat and I try and buy organic vegetables and fruit where it ‘matters’. I’m at a healthy weight, everything functioning like it should (or I hope at least!)…no major spot break-outs or lack lustre hair. Perfect, right?

Hmmm. There is something that I never really mention on the blog. Most people would probably say it’s not a big deal. But I’ve started to wonder about my consumption of artificial sweeteners.

It’s no secret of my love for sweet stuff. I could eat cake every single day if I let myself. I don’t because I want to be healthy. I’ve often had comments from people like “where do you put it?” or “I wish I could eat like that and remain so slim”. Well my secret is I don’t eat it every single day. Obviously it appears on my blog a lot because I love cake and it’s a whole lot more interesting than “here’s another apple…”. But if I’ve eaten a lot of cake or chocolate one day I’ll balance it the next day or the next meal. I do love healthy food and eating salad for a meal is my kind of thing.

However, like I said I love sweet things but I can’t eat calorific sweet things all day long. So I’ve found ways around this. And now I’m starting to wonder if my ‘work arounds’ aren’t much better.

‘Sugar-free’, ‘no added sugar’…these are words I’ll look for. I’m not interested in ‘fat free’ or ‘low fat’. It’s all about reducing the sugar for me. However I’m not all about reducing the sweet taste. And here lies my issue.

Am I consuming too many sweeteners every day? What are the risks with eating too many sweeteners? What is this doing to my health in the long-term?

To put this into perspective this is what I consume every single day:

No Added Sugar Squash

I drink squash by the bucket load. At work I have a 500ml glass and I probably drink at least three of these with squash every single day at work. Sometimes more. It’s very rare that I’m actually thirsty. I drink squash because I get bored at work and it stops me from mindless snacking…so instead I’m mindlessly drinking. I’m also constantly going to the loo. Good for getting my daily steps! I have to buy a 1.5 litre double concentrate squash every week for work. Less than 10 calories per 250ml? Perfect! Let’s ignore that long list of chemical-sounding ingredients shall we? Hmm.

Low Calorie Mint Hot Chocolate

I will have a large mug of this every night.

I take this hot chocolate with me if I go on holiday, to friend’s, I took it with me to Endure and when I stay with relative’s. It’s the last thing I have at night and I love it. Alfie loves it too, he gets to lick the mug afterwards (shh, this isn’t disgusting at all. You’re wrong). Also probably the one reason I have to get up every single night to pee. But less than 40 calories for a mug! It tastes delicious. I can’t even touch Starbucks hot chocolate in comparison to this chemically formulated brand. I’m well and truly hooked. But again, those ingredients look so dubious. Sure once in a while it’s fine…but every single night?

Low Calorie Jelly

Like my hot chocolate, I’ll have a pot of sugar free jelly every evening. We used to buy the ready-made pots but it would cost us a fortune the rate I was getting through them (like 70p per pot). Now we buy the sachets that make four pots a time (we kept the old pots and make the jelly in them) for the same price. I actually found out my lovely running friend does this too!Sorry for appalling photo which you probably can’t read!

She probably doesn’t have one every single day though…and on bad days I might have two (‘bad’ days like “I fancy chocolate but I ate cake earlier so maybe I’ll have another jelly instead”).

Sugar free chewing gum

A bit like my squash obsession, I’ll chew a lot of chewing gum at work. Mint gum after my morning coffee, maybe a fruit-flavoured one before lunch, one after lunch, one after my other coffee, one because I’m bored…I get through a lot. I’ve heard horror stories about what it does to your insides. I don’t even want to know.

I reach for these sugar-free alternatives to keep myself in check and not over-do the sugar-rich things I love. But is this any better? Recent research has shown that diet drinks actually don’t work as the body is tricked into thinking that calories are going to be arriving and they never do – so you crave more sweet things. And what’s the story on sweeteners and whether they’re bad for our body or not? Do we really know in terms of long-term consequences? Do I want to know?

I want to cut down or cut out completely…but the sad fact is I know I can’t give up my hot chocolate. I love it too much. And my one jelly…that can’t be that bad can it? But I can reduce my squash intake. Yesterday I’m proud to say I drank one 250ml of squash (to keep me sane…) and the rest was plain water or this:

Water with lemon slices. Boring as hell I assure you and doesn’t quite hit the spot, but it’s a change I’m willing to make.

Small steps right?

Do you think you’re healthy?

What is the one thing you do that you know is not healthy?

What do you think of artificial sweeteners?

June 25, 2014

My Cake Day, whoops I mean Birthday

Right, bare with me. I know I talk a lot about cake. I’m trying to tone things down a bit (talking about it and eating it). BUT it was my birthday…so I’ve got a free pass.

My birthday was last Thursday, and sadly I was at work so it was fairly nondescript. I hadn’t asked for anything from Ben as I couldn’t think of anything I’d want. In the end we agreed to go on a daytrip and do some shopping together and have a nice lunch out. But this will need to be sometime July as our weekend’s are so fully booked!

Just to rewind quickly back to Wednesday first. I ran the 10k Race for Life in Basingstoke with my newbie runner friend. She’s ran the 5k RFL before and she has done quite a bit of training so I wasn’t worried she wouldn’t complete it. She’d previously done a training run of 11k in 1hour 15minutes so I suggested we try and beat that and maybe aim for around an hour.

Ben, my mum, my dad and my friend’s husband and son came to cheer us on. The three of us girls were kindly bought a flower by our respective loved ones (*cough* let’s not talk about how I cajoled Ben to do this *cough*).I’ve never been to or raced a Race for Life before (if you’re not aware, it’s a women’s-only charity based event raising money for breast cancer – pink is a major theme!). It was completely different to any of the races I’ve been to before. There was a kind of party atmosphere and it was very informal. So many people had pictures of loved one attached to their backs for whom they were running and raising money for. It was very sobering.

The race was all on grass and through a very windy course completely off-road.

We were running around 10-11 minute miles. I found this quite challenging as this is quite slow for me. I don’t mean any disrespect to anyone who runs at these paces, this is just something personally I found. It helped though as I could chat away and encourage my friend easily.

My lovely sparkly pink nails done specially for the event

My friend achieved the brilliant time of 1:04! To be fair, she could have got a better time but we were held up a fair bit by walkers (it was a two lap course). She’s really getting into it now though: she’s going to Parkrun at the weekend and trying to improve her times. I’m so proud 🙂

Right, so back to Thursday and cake. Sorry, my birthday. I got into work to find one of my other friends had made my friend and me a Mars Bar crispy cake to celebrate our 10k.

Ohmygawwwwd this was incredible. I could eat so much of this, it’s so moreish. I had about two…yeah let’s say two, pieces of this. Then at lunch I wandered over to nearby Tesco to by the standard cakes for the office. A weird tradition but one that I think is important to be upheld 😉

I tried to be good. I tried to buy things that didn’t really take my fancy. Except I picked up Smartie cookies. How can you resist a Smartie cookie?

When I got home one of our friends was over and Ben was being all sheepish. I wasn’t allowed in the living room. My friend (yo Nathan!) gave me some birthday goodies…err think he’s got me down to a tee!

Mini rockit apples (a variety I must say I have not been acquainted to before), some M&S sweets and muffins. Boom. Edible gifts are the best gifts in my book 😉

Then the piéce de resistance…I was allowed into the living room. And there on the table was the most phenomenal cake I have ever seen.

A Paris marathon birthday cake, made by a very talented lady at Ben’s work. I mean seriously, how absolutely fantastic is that?? There’s a little me on the top, even wearing compression socks! And the medal is very similar to my Paris marathon one – she got Ben to describe it!!

Needless to say I almost cried and then debated whether I should have dinner or just eat cake? Well, the sensible Anna implored the Cake-Frenzied-Anna to eat something sensible and then gorge on cake.

Alarmingly though I was only able to have one slice as it was so dense and sweet – but 10/10 in terms of flavour and consistency. And four layers?? Jam and butter cream? Heaven.

And I guess as we’re on the subject of cake I might as well mention the incredible chocolate cake I had a slice of (I say slice, more like WEDGE) at my other friend’s birthday party on Saturday. How dare she have a birthday so close to mine! 😉 It was a bit of a shame considering after my cake-filled birthday I had decided to lay off the cake a little bit…then arrived at Saturday’s birthday BBQ to find this bad boy. How can you refuse?

Whew. So there we have it. What more could a girl want? This week I’m trying to eat less cake. That’s my mission. It hasn’t gone entirely well but the motivation is there and that’s half the battle right?

What is your dream birthday scenario?

Favourite type of cake…? I’m not sure I could narrow it down. Each cake has its merits.

Do you like more formal or informal race events?

June 18, 2014

The Scone Debate and dog selfies

My friends from university came down on Saturday for a visit… (*whispers* because it’s my birthday this week) Well we combined it with a sort of hen do celebration for my friend, Charlotte, who’s getting married in less than two weeks. She is doing a ‘planned elopement’ to Italy with her to-be hubby for a romantic ‘just them’ ceremony.

Sadly I couldn’t make Parkrun in the morning. It would just have been a nightmare to have got back in time and wash and dry the beast that is my hair. So many hours of my life wasted drying it…But I did manage a speedy 5k on my own earlier in the morning. Anyway, my friends arrived at 10ish. We had the usual hen do bits and pieces (penis straws are always standard, right?) and some cupcakes one of my friends had made to celebrate Charlotte’s wedding. We caught up and then headed out to my favourite tea shop…

Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately perhaps) it is very close, about 2 miles. So we walked there chatting. Girls just like chatting don’t we? Ben joined as well and was an honorary girl for the day 😉

I’ll never get sick of afternoon tea. I had ham and mustard sandwiches, a fruit scone with cream and jam and a slice of LEMON MERINGUE sponge cake. Sorry for the caps, I got all excited. There were pieces of meringue on the top all crushed and lovely. Seriously good cake. Though I must say, the best part of afternoon tea for me is the scone. And there’s always the debate of jam or cream first. I’m of the opinion that it should be jam first, then a dollop of cream. Otherwise the jam gets all smeary? But this is a fairly heated debate. Ben is a cream then jam man – how are we together?? 😉

Then we had a good long walk back through some lovely countryside. The next day was a five mile easy paced run and then a 15 mile bike ride. I never feel the same love for bike rides as running but it was nice. I still can’t not break on downhill’s though. A cardinal cycling sin I hear.

We popped over to my parent’s house later on as it was Father’s Day. We all just sort of monged out in the conservatory relaxing. Can parents ‘mong’ out? Not sure. We had some selfie fun with their absolutely mad dog Lexi.

She is literally wired all the time. She’s the same breed as Alfie (Westland Terrier cross with a Cavalier King Charles) but she couldn’t be more different. She’s a beast. She’s eaten a bag of POTATOES before. And bitten through a can of beer, spraying it everywhere. What fun for my parents.

Ben doing his best ‘gangster’ impersonation. I think he’s been watching too much of The Wire…

Tonight I’m doing the Race for Life with my friend from work. She’s a fairly novice runner (and I mean that in the nicest way). She’s done a 5k race before and has now made the leap towards a 10k. She’s done lots of training and even went to her local Parkrun (ahh I’m so proud!) so I’m sure she’ll be fine. I’m going to run it with her and support her.

She told me last year she had no one to cheer her on or hug at the end because her husband and son didn’t really understand the importance of it and didn’t go (I think it’s a cultural thing, she’s Indian and in India running isn’t really done, or so I’ve been told). I found this heart breaking and said I’d sign up and run it with her. Ben is coming to support, my mum and dad will be there and she’s guilt tripped her husband and son into watching now so she’ll have loads of support. She’s hoping to run it in around an hour so finger’s crossed for her please!

Do you like a lot of support at a race? Both my parents and Ben’s mum love to come and watch and cheer us on. Though my dad properly likes to get involved – he likes to pre-read the course map, find a good spot, work out our paces of where will be when. He’s a runner at heart!

Do you have any pets?

The Big Question: jam or cream first?

May 28, 2014

Cake (of course), champagne and a whole load of shopping

Other than cycling and swimming, the weekend was still a busy one. It started Friday night with Ben getting a sports massage from our local friendly sports therapist Kyle.

I must say, there was an element of pleasure in watching my husband get a deep massage, rather than it being me this time! He bared up well – no major swear words or serious grimaces.

Then, after swimming and parkun on Saturday, we got ourselves nice and dapper ready for my mum’s birthday. What better way to celebrate than to take my parents for champagne afternoon tea?

We went to the fairly local MacDonald Botley Park hotel. It was very posh. We had little dainty sandwiches, two (two!) scones each and small dainty cakes. As I’ve had my fair share of afternoon tea and I feel I can judge these things quite well now 😉 I must say it was very nice. The scones were superb. Personally the cakes, though tasty, weren’t the best I’ve ever had. I much prefer a big slab of one particular cake rather than tiny portions of different cake (there was a chocolate coffee thing, slices of lemon poppy seed cake, plain sponge and fruit cake).

Can we just continue to talk about cake a moment? I’ve fallen off the wagon and into the dessert trolley it seems. My previous one week without cake only heightened my need for it. Things weren’t great last week.

Well obviously they were great taste-wise, but not great for my sugar consumption!

I went to Wagamama’s with work friends and after feeling rather saintly (but still a tad hungry) after my chilli chicken salad and miso soup I was persuaded to look at the pudding menu – well, I hardly need persuading! This then resulted in two of us ordering a stupid amount of different puddings. It was being expensed by work and some people weren’t having pudding…so it all evened up. In the end I had the above chocolate fudge cake, half a white chocolate cheesecake, I had some coconut ice cream, raspberry ice cream and a try of the passion fruit cheesecake. Needless to say I felt a little full afterwards. It was rather funny to watch people’s faces as my work colleague and I demolished a table of puddings.

But I think I fully put to bed my incessant craving. Obviously I then had afternoon tea on Saturday but I’m in a good place now with my cake love – it’s manageable 😉 Though I did have a baking fail on Monday when I attempted to make a chocolate peanut butter brownie to take into work the next day.

I think it’s probably safe that I can’t really bake very well. Who knows how many cakes I’d try to make in a week otherwise? Dangerous for both bank account and waistline.

To be fair, after I scraped the burnt bits off it looked a little better. A bit of melted chocolate drizzled on top sort of livened it up as well. But cutting it the next morning was a proper arm workout. It was a brick, there’s no denying it.

But can I just say: there was none left on Tuesday evening. Not such a fail after all? Or maybe my office are that desperate for baked goods…

Jumping back to Sunday, Ben and me had a lot of shopping to get done. New trainers, new trail shoes, a tent (for our upcoming 24 hour race in June – I’m trying not to think about that right now), camping chairs and walking boots.

We both successfully got the new trainers (Mizuno Nirvanas for me). It’s funny because I went with the intention of changing from Mizuno’s as that’s what I’ve always had and I thought I might need a change. I’m a serious over-pronator so always have to go for a stability shoe. But out of all the ones I’d be advised to try and had a little run in, the Mizuno’s felt the best. Saucony’s felt very rigid and the Brooks were second best but just not as good.

We got the walking boots done and dusted too.

These are for our upcoming trip to Snowdonia to see my grandad (who is a qualified British Mountain Guide and used to do crazy amounts of rock climbing, mountaineering, and still goes mountain biking and lots of walking – as well as the slightly less exciting golf ;-)). He’s taking us up Snowden (or at least pointing the way) so we needed to be prepared. We’re very excited!

And other than Monday’s cycling and Nando’s extravaganza, that’s pretty much it!

What’s been a recent baking fail for you?

Have you ever ordered more than one pudding off the menu? It felt so indulgent and extravagant!

Have you been hiking before? Anywhere nice?