Alfie - AnnaTheApple

January 5, 2015January 5, 2015

Christmas and New Year

Yes I’m so behind on how my Christmas and New Year went… I decided to take a good break from blogging during that time so I could chill a bit.

So here’s a recap of how my Christmas and New Year went. Sadly Ben was ill pretty much from that day before Christmas eve to New Year’s eve. He had lots of fevers and a horrid cough. He had barely any appetite for food or alcohol (which is totally unheard of for Ben) as well so it was a bit of a downer on the festivities. But we still had a good time regardless.

On Christmas day we headed to my parent’s house with Ben’s mum and Alfie. My parents have three dogs of their own and they all get on together really well so it was a fun time for Alfie too, bless him. My dad and me were in charge of cooking so we got down to some preparations and putting things in oven. Thank goodness they have a double oven as the amount we needed to put in there was ridiculous: the turkey, two different sorts of potatoes, two types of stuffing, sausages wrapped in bacon, parsnips and carrots. There was a lot of food!

While that was cooking away we had some buck’s fizz and opened a few presents. This year Ben and me didn’t do big presents for each other because we’re going to the States so soon after Christmas that we thought we’d rather find something out there instead. I received a lot of lovely gifts from my mum and dad and Ben’s mum though.

Then time for lunch!

We had a nice light starter of melon and prosciutto ham. Though I just stuck to melon purely because I wanted to maximise stomach space for the good stuff 😉 For me it’s all about the main course.

Christmas lunch is one of my favourite meals of the year. I adore turkey, cranberry sauce, all the veg, stuffing and gravy. I’m not a potato fan but everything else is fair game.

I pretty much went back for seconds of everything. So good. And because my parents are amazing and they know how much I love this meal, they let me take a good amount of turkey and leftovers home with us so I could enjoy the meal again and again. Heaven.

After lunch we went for a nice walk down the beach with the dogs. I say “we” but I mean the females in the family as Ben wasn’t up for walking and my dad felt he needed to stay behind with Ben and keep him company on the Xbox *sighs*.

The walk was lovely. There were so many people out and about as well. We kept Alfie on his lead purely because he has a tendency to run after anything that takes his interest.

Then when we got home we had some pudding. There were profiteroles, panacotta, Christmas pudding and trifle. I went for trifle which I’d been looking forward to for ages. I was bitterly disappointed to find that I find I really didn’t like it. Apparently I don’t like sherry trifles, only strawberry ones! So I settled for my dependable two apples.

We later played the best board game in the world. The Logo Board Game (not an affiliate link – it’s just to show you how awesome it is). It’s basically asking lots of questions about brands and logos, from Heinz to Fairy Liquid. It’s brilliant and so much fun. While playing that I had some stollen after feeling so cheated from the trifle and it was lovely. The wholemeal flour had made it quite dense though so definitely will keep to white flour next time!

And that was Christmas day. The following days were spent just chilling and really not doing very much. Ben was still ill so we used this quality time to catch up on movies (Edge of Tomorrow – brilliant!, Maleficent, How to Train Your Dragon 2 and some old favourites like The Mummy and the Mummy Returns) while also getting through loads of True Blood (really good, but fairly raunchy and gory).

New Christmas socks and my liquid of choice, Fanta Zero

I made a lot of use of the leftovers as well, recreating the Christmas dinner twice.

And when all the trimmings were used up I made a BBQ turkey stir fry. LITERALLY the best thing I’ve eaten in ages.

So good. I then ran out of turkey. I’m very tempted to buy a turkey crown just to relive the experience again…too much? Maybe so.

We also went to Windsor to see Ben’s dad before New Year as well and had a lovely meal in Bella Italia and caught up with him. Though we had a nightmare journey there; it took three hours in total to drive a one hour fifteen minute journey because of an accident on the motorway and then having a mare finding a parking space. But it was a lovely day regardless.

New Year’s eve we went to my parent’s house for a cheeky Indian take away and another round of the Logo Board Game. We had planned to go to a friend’s house for a party but Ben still felt ill so we felt it best to have a quiet one with the parentals. My granddad was down from Stoke-On-Trent as well so it was lovely seeing him and he really enjoyed the game too (honestly, it’s a game for everyone because it’s all stuff you could know).

New Year’s eve day we met up with Ben’s mum for a lovely 5.5 mile walk through the New Forest. It was a lovely walk. Not too cold but lovely and crisp. Alfie loved all the mud.

When we came home we gave Alfie a good scrub in the bath and dried him off with my hair dryer (he couldn’t work out if he enjoyed it or not I think) and then we headed back to Ben’s mum’s for lunch. Round two!

This time it was a bird in a bird in a bird, which is always very tasty as you get three different types of meat.

One of my favourite vegetables are broad beans and it’s become a funny tradition to have them around Christmas. I could literally eat them forever.

Then we played Rummiekub which is a number game sort of like cards, sort of like scrabble (see HERE for a good explanation). We all decided a games day was needed as we only ever play board games and games like this around Christmas. This needs to change!

Aaaaand that’s it. I really enjoyed our very low-key holiday, though I was sorry Ben was ill. It was nice though to curl down and watch lots of movies and True Blood. I did lots of walking with Alfie (keeping my steps over 12,000 a day) and enjoyed the gym as well so I definitely got a good balance of relaxing and keeping fit. Mentally and physically I feel fresh and ready for the year ahead!

What’s your favourite part of the Christmas meal?

How do you celebrate New Year’s Eve?

Do you do anything on New Year’s Day?

December 17, 2014January 14, 2015

Rants and Raves #5

And we’re mid-week! Hurrah! Can you believe it’s Christmas next week – as in next week? I’m pretty much in the “I love Christmas, it’s my favourite time ever” camp so I’m fairly excited right now. I know some people aren’t as keen on Christmas and it can be quite stressful, but I just really enjoy it – the atmosphere, family time, food (ALL THE FOODS), friends, music, films…I love it. Anyway, on to my rants and raves!

Rave: And on the theme of Christmas… Christmas jumpers! I’m a jumper lover and it really appeals to me on two levels: it’s Christmassy and it’s warm.

From Matalan

Rant: Ben pretends he doesn’t like Christmas jumpers but I’m convinced there’s an excited little boy in there somewhere…

From Tesco

I’m sure he loves wearing it really. But anyway, Christmas jumpers are amazing. It’s sad they’re only really socially acceptable around Christmas. And I lost my last jumper as I thoughtfully put it away last year…to an unknown location.

Rave: The gym! OK it is early days but I’m really enjoying the variety. I did (my gym’s version) of body pump, which isn’t the Les Mills one but is a very similar concept, at the weekend. The class worked on muscles that I had long been neglecting: shoulders, back, triceps, biceps, chest…it’s been a while. And my body made me full aware of that the next day as I was hobbling around like a 90 year old woman struggling with simple activities.

I also did a class called Pure Blast. It was 30 minutes of high intensity exercise. Basically you either sprinted on the treadmill or cycled madly on the bike for a set amount of time, then did a series of exercises like squats, burpees, sit ups, lunges, etc. before getting back on the bike. Non-stop for 25 minutes (5 minute cool down – or in my case, collapse on floor). This was followed by a core class which was run by the same ~~monster~~ guy. He did a very similar concept whereby you did a certain core move a set time and then moved quickly on to the next move. After peeling myself off the floor I realised I quite enjoyed it. My body didn’t know what had hit it – there was just so much variety!

Rant: My gym, I won’t lie, is one of the cheaper gyms (PureGym) but works brilliantly for me. It’s open 24 hours a day and has loads of different classes which are perfect for my schedule. It’s also massive so there’s never a chance of not getting a machine or set of weights. However it isn’t glamorous by anyone’s imagination and some people who go there (I am heavily generalising here as I know a lot of nice people who also go there) can be a bit intimidating and, for want of a better word, are a bit “rough” (I fully admit to to being a snob). This was proved as I came out of the gym and was cat-called by a bunch of guys also exiting. Me quickening up to get to my car just heightened their calling. Lovely.

Rave: Alfie. Need I say more?

Alfie gives me hope that one day when I become a mother (*heart palpitations begin*) I will sink into the role easier than I think. I just love this fur ball more than words – even if he does decide to poo when his walk is 99% over and we’re well and truly past the poo bin.

Rant: OK this is something I’ve been meaning to post about. When Ben went to China (and Hong Kong) he asked me if there was anything I’d like him to bring back. I said some Chinese sweets as I was intrigued what they’d be like. Verdict?

Not sweet at all. In fact, there were these so-called ginger sweets (actually I have no idea what they were called at all as the description is in another language) which blew my head off! The after burn was ridiculous. I was bitterly disappointed. You live and learn.

Rave: Hey check me out posting not one but two ‘outfit of the day’ photos in one post! I used to do this a while ago but then stopped because…well, I’m actually devoid of any style and my clothes are quite boring. But I was quite proud of this outfit. If you think it looks stupid/ugly, please don’t tell me as I want to continue to live in my fantasy world… 😉

Jumper from Matalan, skirt very old stolen from sister years ago, socks from River Island, necklace and boots I can’t remember (this is possibly another reason why I don’t post my outfit that often)

I much prefer summer to winter but winter does have the benefit of long boots and layering. And long socks! They were so toasty. Almost typed “tasty” (food is never far from my mind clearly).

Rant: Working from home is amazing. However deciding to “chance” doing an update on my computer in the morning before I started work was not wise.

I started it at 8.30am and it didn’t finish until 1pm. I kid you not. I felt terrible because obviously I couldn’t do any work. My manager was aware and it had happened to someone else in the office the other day so it wasn’t really an issue. I pottered about doing chores and bits and bobs. I suppose you could say that’s a good thing – but I’m the type of person who when genuinely sick and can’t go to work is convinced they’ll think I’m lying or taking liberties. I hate people thinking I’m dossing about or not doing my job. I got what I needed to do done for the day though so it wasn’t too bad in the end.

Rave: I’ve done my one month free of Kindle Unlimited. I downloaded (for free) and read Thorn Birds (wowza is that an epic love saga or what! Slightly creepy as well) and the The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window (absolutely fantastic – very dry and sarcastic humour but this really appealed to me).

I also downloaded Life of Pi and Great Expectations as audio books and listened to these in the car on the way to and from work. I loved Life of Pi and really recommend it. I chose Great Expectations as I don’t think I’ve read a Charles Dickens before and thought I really probably should. It was over 11 hours long though!

I decided I was going to cancel my Kindle Unlimited account though as I didn’t think £7.99/month was worth it. I do read a lot of books but I usually aim for the cheaper ones and there wasn’t enough audio book selection to keep me interested there. This meant that I had to listen to Great Expectations quite often towards the end of the free month as when you cancel Kindle Unlimited they remove the Unlimited content from your devices. Though I’ve managed to duck this so far by not connecting my Kindle to WiFi (sneaky, sneaky), but for my phone (where I listen to the audio books) this was impossible.

Anyway long story short: I enjoyed Kindle Unlimited but I’d prefer to spend £7.99 a month at Audible where you get a free audio book from a huge selection every month. I did enjoy Great Expectations though – even if Dickens often decided to use 12 words when one would have sufficed.

Do you enjoy reading/listening to audio books? I love getting through twice as many books by using my ‘dead time’ when I’m commuting to listen to something.

Have you ever tried “foreign” sweets before? Generally I’ve had good experiences but I think this is because I’ve always had more “Westernised” sweets.

Are you a Christmas jumper lover or hater?

December 15, 2014

So excited

The weekend has just flow by. I can’t believe how close to Christmas we are now! And how close to Ben and my next holiday – wooo wooo!

At the end of January we’re off to Florida to go and do some theme park craziness (though missing out Disney World as it didn’t rock our world at all the last time we went) for 8 days, and then travelling to Dallas for 6 days. The first part of the holiday we’re going with a couple friend of ours, Kate and Jamie, and they are literally obsessed with theme parks and Florida. They’re going for two weeks which was just too hardcore for us, which is why we’re then going to Dallas.

So this weekend gone we went up to Bristol to stay over at Kate and Jamie’s house on Saturday to get down to the Holiday Master Plan, i.e. where we want to go, what we want to do and more importantly what kind of restaurants and food we like and want to go to. Jamie is a HUGE food enthusiast and loves all the American-style food and, well, food in general. Jamie is like the male version of me basically. Food is important to us!

They cooked an amazing feast of food. Honestly it was incredible.

There were tortilla chips with dips, oven-roasted hot and plain chicken wings, corn on the cobs, home-made burgers, crispy bacon, ranch dressed slaw and regular salad and my personal favourite RIBS.

Ribs are one of my favourite meals in the entire world. I adore them. It was such a good spread, but it didn’t end there.

Pudding!

Home-made brownie, hot fudge sauce and Hagen Daaz vanilla ice cream. Oh my life. All in a special Mickey Mouse bowl (sink?). The photo above really doesn’t do it justice but as you can see there was a HEFTY amount of ice cream there – a slab I would say.

We all stumbled to the finish line in states of absolute fullness and severe feelings of sick. We literally sat there in silence (I’d like to say a satisfied silence, but it was more a silence of necessity as movement in general was painful at that point). I regret nothing though 😉

What was really fun was we took Alfie with us and he got to meet their pug, Doug. They seemed to get on well – though Alfie refused to allow Doug to sniff his bottom. Not sure what that means in Dog Code. But Doug didn’t mind Alfie having a sniff. I like to think that this is Alfie asserting his Alfa male status 😉 Or just being grumpy!

We had such a fun evening, ending in a random Harry Potter quiz to get us ready for the mayhem ahead. We’re all huge fans of Harry Potter, roller coasters and general silliness that it will just be like being a kid again I think. And we’re staying in the same hotel which is a walk or a short bus ride from Universal Studios so it’s perfect. And we’ve got tickets to an ice hockey game!! It should be mental 😀

The next morning we all went for a walk with Alfie and Doug to their nearby park and had a nice long walk – the conversation never veering far from the impending holiday. We are all SO excited.

We got back and Jamie did a fabulous pancake breakfast for Ben and Kate. I brought my porridge (what did you expect?). My friends know what I’m like (apple obsessed, porridge lover…) so they didn’t mind. Ben was in chocolate chip, cream and syrup heaven though.

He stacked up his three pancakes (first batch) with white and milk chocolate chips in between each layer, coated with golden syrup and then finished with cream. He loved it. I’m actually not a massive pancake fan (or crepes for that matter) so America in that respect is a little disappointing at breakfast for me. I’d much prefer just my regular porridge as the idea of lots of sweet stuff in the morning doesn’t do it for me. When we last went to Florida we had a villa so I could satisfy my porridge need by making it myself but this time we’re in a hotel. It might be time for me to branch out. Watch this space…

And then we were on our merry way back home. It was such good fun and I now have a list of restaurants that I’m subsequently going to peruse through. Does anyone else do that? Find restaurants beforehand and then look through their menus? It gets me really excited about what’s to come!

And so we drove back home, Alfie on my lap. He hates travelling in the car but when he got to look out of the window he was more impressed.

What do you eat for breakfast on holiday? Do you branch out and have something different? Any recommendations for a pancake un-enthusiast?

What’s the most exciting part about going on holiday for you? For me a big part if trying new foods. But going with friends now is going to add a brilliant new element – and we’re all similar to each other in different ways so it makes things very easy.

Do you enjoy roller coasters?

November 20, 2014January 14, 2015

Rants and Raves #3

I’m feeling grumpy. It can’t be helped really. It’s Thursday, when really it should be Friday.

I don’t want to moan…but I will. Sorry. I’ll try not to just rant the entire post.

Rant: With Ben being away it is quite lonely at the moment at home. I get very set in routines when I’m on my own as well. Walk Alfie, cook dinner, watch TV, go to bed. Nothing exciting really happens. I’m used to having him there to joke and laugh with, or moan and groan at…depends on the day and mood really 😉

And with the 8 hour time difference it’s a struggle to keep in contact with him. Especially as with him being in China they don’t allow Facebook or Twitter, and I need to wait for him to get access to the limited Wifi in order to either WhatsApp or Skype. Humph.

Rave: Although saying that, with Ben not being here, this means dinner can be whatever I want it to be without having to worry if Ben will a) like it b) eat it.

Looks rather grim doesn’t it? But actually it was really tasty. I literally threw chickpeas, Brussels sprouts, courgette, onions, mushrooms and kale together with cream cheese and BBQ sauce. It’s just what I fancied. For me BBQ sauce and cream cheese are big winners.

Rant: perhaps ‘rant’ is too strong a word here…but Ben does make me laugh. He goes to Hong Kong and China and he eats… Italian. To be fair, he can’t go wherever he pleases as he’s with work colleagues but still. He ate Japanese one night which I suppose is at least that vague area of the world to some extent. Though he did tell me he had the strangest Hawaiian pizza which had a sweet dough with tomato sauce, tinned fruit salad, olives and cheese on it. I did say to him he’s probably better off actually eating the local food! *sighs*

Rave: Alfie is very loving at the moment as I’m the only one there. Despite Ben’s side of the bed being free, he still cuddles into me at night. My furry hot water bottle.

But it also means I’m the one who has to clean up his sick when he wasn’t well the other day. This is usually very firmly a blue job…but currently no blue is here to help.

Rave: getting cool things in the post. I received a Fuelify goodie box which contained a lot of exciting products.

A full review will be coming soon!

Rant/Rave: a mix of the two if you like. It’s no secret that I hate my commute. It’s a fair way from Southampton to Basingstoke and can take on average an hour (sometimes more) to work and then from work every single day. It grinds on me. Even when it’s plain sailing it still takes 40 minutes. To me this is absolute dead time. The radio is OK but I despair of BBC Radio 1’s Nick Grimshaw in a morning (I was a huge Chris Moyles fan – sorry non-Brits, basically Radio 1 sucks as the best DJ left a few years ago and now it’s run by a moron) and I’m not quite ready to switch to BBC Radio 2 (which is aimed at a slightly older audience).

Aaaaanyway, long story short, I’ve signed up to Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited (30 free days) as I saw they had audio books available too. I do read a lot as well on my Kindle, but thought while I drive I could listen to another book. Normally audio books are fairly hefty in price so I was pleased this was part of the deal. I decided to go for Life of Pi.

I’ve got the book on my Kindle but when I tried to read it I just couldn’t get into it. But listening to it is fantastic! In just over two days I’m 40% into it and it’s so good. I need to see the film as well now. Listening to it in the car just makes the journey zoom by as I get sucked into the narrative.

I’ve also downloaded Great Expectations to listen to next as I’ve never read it. I’m aiming for the more ‘dense’ books as I’ve found I can get into it easier than if I tried to read it. I’m still reading another book at the same time as well. Will see if I’m swayed by this Kindle Unlimited business by the end of the 30 days I think!

And that’s all I have in my current lonely, empty existence…well it’s not all bad. The house is extremely tidy and I’m only using one loo in the house (we have three) so that means only one bathroom needs cleaning this weekend! Wahay it’s the small things, right? 😉 I’m going to my parent’s house on Friday night for an Indian and staying over with Alfie so that should be good. Then really it’s just one week till Ben’s back! Hurrah!

What have been your rants and raves this week?

How do you cope when you’re alone in the house?

Do you listen to audio books?

October 22, 2014

A little bit of this and that

I was down to run the Great South Run on Sunday but I’ve decided not to anymore. I’m actually quite pleased about this considering how blooming windy it is at the moment! What is going on??

Ben’s obviously not running it either and we’ve been invited to a church ‘welcoming’ thing for our friend’s baby so we decided to give it a miss this year. And though my foot is feeling better I just don’t want to risk it. It’s such a faff of a race; so many people, difficult to park, crowded…and I didn’t enjoy it at all last year (I hurt my knee). Lots of people from my running club are doing it so it is a shame in that respect and it was £41 for entry!! And you can’t even transfer your bib to someone else or defer. *Grumble grumble*

Anyway, I thought I’d write a random post of bits and bobs that have been going on – a collection of titbits, if you like, that didn’t make the cut for a post of their own.

I often go for a walk every lunch time at work for about 20 minutes. Usually to the nearby big Tesco or sometimes I mosey about a few charity shops. That might sound a bit sad but it’s a habit I’ve had since university when I was looking for cheap books or DVDs. But really any shop with this sign will pull me in regardless:

Cake and charity, a match made in heaven 😀

Speaking of cake, Ben, our friend Nathan and I went to that lovely restaurant, Zippers, in Port Solent again. We went there a few weeks ago and I really wanted to go back because they had an amazing salad bar. Last time I went I just went for the salad bar as a starter which meant I could only visit it once (though I did pile it high to get my money’s worth). This time I decided to go for it as a main so I could keep going back as many times as I wanted (hello, I’m a salad machine).

There were chickpeas, feta, roasted vegetables and just a whole host of veggies. SO GOOD. I’m pretty sure they thought I was a bit strange having three monster plates of salad. But I love it! And the sweet potato fries on the side as well… and the chocolate fudge cake for pudding as it was so good last time. It’s a good job this restaurant is just that little bit too far to go back every week (unlike Nando’s).

It really helped get me motivated for a cycle the next day as well (a thick slab of chocolate fudge cake with chocolate sauce and ice cream has a good way of doing that). And I got to wear my new cycling jacket (from Aldi!! Cheap as chips but the quality is awesome!)

I haven’t cycled in over 5 weeks and I optimistically thought I could keep up with the guys from the club but after about 6 miles I told them to go on as I just couldn’t keep up. They were lovely and told me to not be silly but I just felt they’d get a better ride without me and I didn’t want to feel pressured to keep up. So I pedalled off for a solo slog. I got in 23 miles in the end but bloody hell it was hard. It’s amazing how quickly you lose it when you don’t do it regularly. I was puffing and panting all the way round and going a lot slower than before. But regardless, it was a good workout. My legs afterwards felt pooped.

Annoyingly it was quite muddy and wet on the roads and having a white bike is just ridiculous.

Normally I wouldn’t be precious about this sort of thing. It’s a bike, it’s going to get muddy. It’s hardly going to win awards for what it looks like. But we keep the bikes in the living room as we don’t have a garage (only a car port) so we don’t have a proper place to store them (let’s not talk about the Shed of Death), which means I do actually have to clean it. Well, it was lovely and shiny afterwards anyway.

And related to cycling (smooth segue…?) in one of my orders from Wiggle they forgot to send my Haribo with it (they always send a packet of sweets with your order) and I Tweeted about it saying I was sad I missed out. They generously said they’d send me some and a few weeks later I received a post office slip saying I needed to pay £1.20 for unpaid postage. I had no idea what was being posted but paid it anyway out of curiosity.

Then the next day lo and behold I received an envelope with two packs of Haribo in from Wiggle. It was very nice of them to send it to me, but for £1.20!? They needn’t have bothered! The sweets are probably worth 10p! Oh Wiggle, what a shambles. But in fairness to them they have given me a £2 Wiggle voucher to make up for it. Well play, Wiggle. Well played.

Anyway I’ll leave it there with just one last photo…

Alfie avidly watching the telly. He loves getting involved 😉 and as you can see, my very clean bike in the background 😀

Do you often buy things online? Are you fan of Wiggle?

Are you a fan of buffets or salad bars?

Do you look for bargains in places like charity shops or cheaper supermarkets, like Aldi or Lidl? I’m not a shopping snob, I love a bargain as long as the quality is decent.