Alfie - AnnaTheApple

May 17, 2013

The little things

Hello Friday! Wow where did this week go? It went crazily fast. Not that I’m complaining.

I thought I’d do a post on some random thoughts and occurrences of late. It’s the little things in life that keep things interesting!

1. It’s a well known fact that cake on a Friday doesn’t count (FYI this was last Friday’s cake – I didn’t eat cake that went off yesterday. Would I refuse a one-day-stale piece of cake though over no cake? I’d rather not answer that…). Cake is an indulgence I need every week. Without fail.

2. Mini trolleys are AMAZING. This is a tiny trolley from M&S, almost like a basket with wheels which makes me feel like I’m six again. Anyone from the UK: do you remember when they used to do trolleys for children?? So the kids could push a little trolley with their parents as well. I wonder why they disappeared…Oh yes, that’s right because who ever decided to allow young children to push trolleys around a busy supermarket is CRAZY. Hello ankle pain.

3. I can destroy half a melon easily in under 10 minutes. Like a boss. In fact, I have to finish Ben’s off as he is so rubbish at getting all the melon flesh. Take no prisoners.

4. This display on my Garmin annoys me SO MUCH.

The loading bar is full therefore it should be done, right? Oh no. It stays with that full bar for minutes afterwards. While I am stood in the cold just waiting to run. Garmin, stop lying to me!!

5. Why do people leave the teabags in their drinks? Maybe this is a British thing (or a specifically Anna thing) but whenever I see TV programmes (I must say, usually US programmes) and someone is drinking a tea they always leave the teabag in so the little piece of string hangs down the side. It baffles me because doesn’t this over-steep the tea?? Doesn’t the teabag hit your mouth when you drink? It really freaks me out.

Yes, this is not my usual mug. This is my back-up Scooby mug.

6. One of our knives broke the other day when I was chopping vegetables. The knife blade literally pinged past me and hit the wall behind me. It was like the vegetables were fighting back. It would have been funny if I hadn’t been in shock.

7. This photo makes me feel a little sad inside:

He looks so helpless and upset at having being bathed. It needed to happen though. He was getting to one stinky pooch.

8. However this photo brings me right back up to a significantly happy level:

Sea salt Green and Blacks! On offer! Still expensive though. And definitely beaten to the punch by Lindt.

Well, I hope you guys have a great weekend. Ben and me are running a 5k Parkrun tomorrow so I’m quite excited but also nervous. I hate 5ks, they’re just so fast and painful…but we’ll see how it goes! We might be running a 10k run through Moors Valley Country Park on Sunday depending how we feel. I will be taking that one easy if we do go for it. I’m going to take it more of as a nice trail run then a proper race I think as I think I’ll be shattered after tomorrow!

What’s been making you happy this week?

What are your little things in life that keep things interesting for you? Wow there’s a vague question for you

Teabags: in or out?

May 3, 2013May 3, 2013

A Day in the Life of…

Hi guys, I thought I’d do something a bit different today. I was inspired by Chelsea’s post that was inspired from Caitlyn’s post about a ‘Day in the Life’. I love reading these – I find it fascinating what other people get up to around the world and so wanted to give it a bash! Forgive me if it’s dull, I’m not hugely interesting

So this is a typical Monday:

5.40am: alarm goes off. I blearily look around confused. Surely I just went to bed?? Then Alfie jumps on me to wake me up with a lovely slobbery kiss (Alfie is our dog, not my husband. That would be strange).

5.41-5.50am: get out of bed, pee (too much? Sorry), put on running clothes, head downstairs with Alfie who is jumping off the walls ready for his walk. Put Alfie’s lead on and leave the house.

5.50-6am: walk Alfie. The whole time wishing I was still in bed and not about to go running. Usually I’m a zombie walking down the road. If Alfie sees a cat he lunges after it and this seriously wakes me up .

6-6.05am: put Alfie in kitchen on a towel to dry his paws. Basically I’ve left a towel by the door so when he walks in he walks onto the towel then I drag the towel, with Alfie on it, into the kitchen. He loves it, until he realises he’s trapped.

Then I go running.

It’s usually between 5-6miles on a Monday. The first mile I hate it. Then I get into it. Unless it’s windy. Then I pretty much hate it ALL.

6.50am: get back and feel really good after the run (though sweaty & tired), let Alfie out, sweep the floor as I’m obsessed. Also this prolongs the time before the shower so I can cool down a bit.

6.55am: head upstairs, let Alfie into the bedroom again. Alfie immediately jumps on the sleeping Ben. I half-heartedly tell him to “lie down” (whilst secretly smiling to myself that Ben has been woken up haha – I am evil). Ben confusedly asks if I’m just about to go running or if I’m back. *sighs*

7am: shower. I love showering – is that weird? I like a really hot shower and could stay in there all day.

7.10-7.30: ponder what to wear and complain of my lack of outfits. Get dressed, comb my hair (this is a beast of a task) and then dry hair (this is the worst part of my morning). Sometimes Alfie stands next to me and enjoys the heat from the hair dryer that gets blown his way. He goes crazy for it. I then straighten my hair. Put contact lenses in and then spray perfume on.

7.30-7.45am: make lunch and get snacks ready for the day if I haven’t done it the night before.

7.45am: make breakfast.

7.50am: eat breakfast. Best time of the morning. I sit and read my Kindle while enjoying my lovely plain oatmeal. Ben is usually up and dressed by this point and says goodbye. We’ve managed to avoid each other successfully in the morning as I’m not an engaging person to chat to pre-breakfast. If he’s super upbeat I tend to become even more moody.

I wash my stuff up and tidy the place up a bit.

8am: leave for work.

8.01-9am: curse my stupidly long commute whilst listening to the news. Sit in traffic and watch people do lovely things like pick their nose, do their make-up or sing to music. Hilarious.

9-10.30am: work, work, work, and then coffee time.

10.31-12.30: work, work ,work.

12.30pm: have lunch. Best time of working day Read blogs and glare at anyone who interrupts me. Sometimes I might walk to the nearby Tesco to get some bananas or random stuff I need. I also write my blog posts.

4pm: apple and banana time. Almost home-time.

5pm: start thinking about home-time. Email Ben to find out when he’s getting home. Both of us have fairly flexible working hours so it varies from day to day.

5.30-6pm: leave around this time.

6.01pm: curse my commute. Listen to music on the way home or the news. Depends where my brain’s at.

6.30-7pm: depends how bad the traffic is to when I will get home. Usually it’s 6.30pm. On o good day Ben is back before me and has taken Alfie for a walk. On a bad day, I’m back before Ben and I have to take him for his walk.

It sounds like I’m complaining and moaning, but it’s easier if Ben’s walked Alfie as I can straight away get on with dinner.

OK, that’s a lie. I straight away get into comfy clothes.

Then I start dinner.

7-7.30pm: After pretty much cooking dinner I give Ben the ‘5 minute warning’ which tells him he needs to stop watching TV/playing on the Xbox and set the table, get the drinks ready (water for me, Coke for him) and be prepared for dinner. Sometimes he’s already done this when I get home. He’s lovely

Most of the time with dinner I’ll read my Kindle and Ben will watch Family Guy/American Dad or some sci-fi series (he loves sci-fi – a few weeks ago it was Roswell). I’m usually distracted if Family Guy is on. It’s too funny to not watch. I love Brian.

8pm: dinner is finished and washing up done. We have our puddings on the couch (yogurt & cheese string for Ben, chopped apple for me). He loves to leave his pudding paraphernalia on the coffee table to annoy me. He leaves there until he goes to bed. I glare at it every time I walk past it.

8.10-850: This is the time of the evening I love. I sit with the Ipad reading the Daily Mail (OK, looking at the pretty pictures, not reading the drivel) and more blogs while Ben watches TV/plays Xbox,

I usually have Snack a Jacks and a hot chocolate as a snack. Then probably some chocolate.

Only two or three squares, but it’s heaven.

8.51pm: make my way upstairs to bed. Spend an annoying amount of time plucking my eyebrows (otherwise they’re like hair caterpillars across my forehead).

9pm: get into bed and read my Kindle. Perfect de-stressor before bed.

9.30pm: usually fall asleep. Embarrassingly early I know. Sometimes I manage to stay up until 10pm. Not often…

Ben comes to bed anytime from 9pm to midnight. If it’s later than me it usually scares the hell out of me every single time. Apparently I bolt upright in bed in shock even though he’s as quiet as a ninja coming to bed. I can’t remember this but he’s filmed me doing it once and it is WEIRD.

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And that’s it! Nothing exciting and I’m sorry if you read through that I felt like you’ve wasted minutes of your life But I love reading other people’s days!

If you want to get involved, link up at Caitlyn’s post! It’s quite fun to write 🙂

What’s your favourite time of the day?

What’s the most annoying thing you have to do on a daily basis?

And most importantly, gave a great weekend!

April 21, 2013

10 o’clock brownies

Hi guys, hope you all had a great weekend. I completely de-stressed myself after my busy week. And the sun came out which was just perfect.

Friday night I had planned to leave work at a reasonable time to get home and have a nice long evening with my two favourite Bens. My husband and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream Obviously though this meant leaving work an hour and a half after intended. *sighs* But the consolation of it being Friday was good enough to not dampen my mood.

We had steak again for dinner which was perfection.

With loads of salad and goat’s cheese. Oh this was heaven. Sticky, sweet goodness.

Then we had Ben and Jerry’s (Vermonster for Ben & chocolate brownie fro-yo for me) while we watched Savages.

It was really good. I was so surprised. There were a couple of scenes I had to run out of the room for (read: torture & nasty deaths) but otherwise really good. Salma Hayek was brilliant in it, though Blake Lively was pretty much Serena from Gossip Girl.

Saturday morning I went for my usual long run.

I took it nice and easy and just enjoyed it. The weather was great so I could wear my capris rather than my long leggings. It felt so refreshing to be out in the sun first thing. I really do love my long weekend run. Yeah OK sometimes it’s tough, but I just slow down a bit and take it easy. It’s not always about speed. This is a run where I try not to care what pace I do, I just love the distance.

The rest of Saturday was the usual chore-doing business and not one but two lovely walks with Alfie and Ben in the beautiful sunshine. We walked Alfie just before lunch and then in the afternoon I was just itching to get outside again and somehow managed to persuade Ben to join me again. Whenever it gets sunny I have this immense need to get out of the house and into the sun. I’m worried it won’t last! Get it while it’s ~~hot~~ shining!

And I got my hair cut.

I wanted quite a bit taken off as it’s just got so long. It’s such a hassle to wash, comb, blow-dry and straighten in the morning. Seriously, I feel my life ebbing away with the amount of time I spend on it.

So I said to the lady to take about three inches off and make it a bit more interesting with some layers. Then as she just began blow-drying it the power went! I had to go home with wet hair, which was a bit of a bummer as I love going to the hairdressers as it’s nice someone else having to deal with my hair rather than just me! Ah well. I did get a discount.

Saturday evening we got dressed up to go out for dinner. OK my hair doesn’t look much different to before I know.

But to me it’s a HUGE change. So much lighter in weight and shorter. I also wore my favourite but most painful pumps. I love them, but they hurt so much But I thought I wouldn’t be doing much walking anyway so it didn’t matter.

We drove to the village where I used to live with my parents, about 20 minutes away, to a beautiful little pub on the seafront.

The pub is just there on the left, but look at that sunshine!!

We had a mezze board to start. I know, I’m so predictable. I just love mezze boards.

I also love my husband. He traded me the falafels for the pitta bread. A definite win in my eyes. And he doesn’t like olives.

For main I was torn beautiful butternut squash with feta cheese or BBQ chicken.

So I went with the BBQ chicken. Seriously I can’t get enough BBQ at the moment. And it came with huge chunky potato wedges. They were so crispy and dunking them in ketchup was just heaven.

We were then going to meet friends for a drink at the same pub but we finished earlier than we expected so we went for a walk along the seafront.

It was a little nippy, but so clear.

Beautiful! Though I massively regretted wearing those damn painful shoes.

Unfortunately, because this is the area I grew up in and went to school, I bumped into a bunch of boys who back in the day were the ‘popular’ guys. I politely said hello, as you do, and they said hello and then a couple of them burst out laughing in my face. Seriously I felt like I was 15 again. My group of friends and I were the ‘boffs’ and weren’t cool back in school. We did our homework and got good grades. We weren’t bullied or anything like that, but we weren’t part of the cool gang. It just felt terrible to feel that small at 24.

Anyway, when I met up with my friends we all laughed about it and thought what idiots they are. We are all quite happy in our careers, with partners or husbands, having moved out and making our way in life. They haven’t. They’re still living the dream that ended quite a few years ago.

It felt great to catch up my friends and a few of us ordered pudding at 10pm. Brownie with honeycomb hash ice cream (no photo I’m afraid, some things don’t last long enough for that sort of thing!).

Friends and brownie. Life’s medicine.

Now it’s Sunday. We had a lazy morning watching the London marathon – so inspiring! The 30 seconds of silence for Boston was really lovely. And wow seriously, those elite athletes were SUPER FAST. And I chuckled to see this picture on Twitter:

Love it!

So now I’m still enjoying a relaxing day of blissful sunshine, chicken with BBQ sauce, and cuddles with this guy:

No matter how many times he’ll spread his kibble over the newly washed kitchen floor, malt all over the just hoovered sofas, drip his wet beard all over the floor after drinking water, bark at every person who walks past our house, I will still love him. Just

What have you been up to this weekend?

Did you watch the London marathon?

Do you ever have moments where you’re brought right back to how it was in school?

April 15, 2013

Steak, chicken and peanut flour pancakes

Ah Monday. So we meet again.

Seems like just a few seconds ago it was Friday and I was leaving work. Ah well. And it seemed to rain from Friday until Saturday night.

This is the dismal view from the window by my desk at work. It looks like February. It felt like February.

Friday night I decided to whip up a different meal from usual. You might have seen that I eat a lot of chicken and not much other meat. I don’t mind pork and I don’t mind beef mince but I can’t stand lamb. Not sure why but there we go. Anyway, I saw a recipe and knew I needed to try it. Main ingredient? Steak.

Basically it’s steak with a honey marinade and goat’s cheese salad. I used THIS recipe but subbed the gorgonzola for goat’s cheese just because I love goat’s cheese. I also left out the walnuts and portabella mushroom as I thought I’d keep it simple.

The marinade was this:

pinch of sea salt
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. onion powder
2 tbs. honey
1 tbs. soy sauce
good splash of Worcestershire sauce

I used thin steaks (as the recipe says) which I was glad for as I’m not that adventurous to try a big old thick steak. They took next to no time to fry. So a very simple meal all in all. And very tasty. The goat’s cheese and steak went perfectly together.

Then we watched a whole lotta House of Cards (the new series we’ve gotten into as we signed up to Netflix). I love Kevin Spacey, there is something strangely attractive about him and his smooth talking. Am I alone in this?

Saturday morning I managed to dodge the rain and get out for a 9 mile run before it started again with a vengeance about 30 mins after I got back. I knew that the run would be tough because of Thursday’s super charged run. Honestly, even if I wanted to run faster I couldn’t have. My legs were so fatigued.

As soon as I started I knew it was going to be tough, so I kept the pace easy and just enjoyed being outside listening to my podcast. Sometimes it’s good to just let your mind wander and just relax into a nice pace.

And guess what I had for breakfast afterwards? You’ll be forgiven for guessing oatmeal, but I had something different. Yes. I know, shocking.

I was going to have some basic pancakes but realised I didn’t actually have any regular flour. Ages ago I bought some peanut flour but have never used it so I thought I might as well give it a whirl.

Peanut Flour Pancakes (Serves 1)

1/4 cup peanut flour
1 tbs. oats
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tbs. sugar/alternate preferred sweetener
2 egg whites/1 egg
1/4 cup almond milk (or regular milk)
pinch of salt

– Basically, mix all the ingredients together, then heat a tsp. oil in a frying pan and pour in the mixture in batches to make about 4-5 pancakes.

– Then add your favourite topping! I served mine with some mango that needed using up.

A random choice perhaps and not particularly beautiful but it tasted pretty good. To be honest, I couldn’t really taste the peanut flour. It tasted just like normal pancakes, but I guess the mango could have helped disguise any differences hehe.

Hurrah a different breakfast for once! Though I did miss my oatmeal…well, you can’t have everything

After getting ready we then had to take Alfie to the vets for his booster injection.

Bless him, he was all fine in the waiting room sniffing around but as soon as we got into the vet’s room he was not a happy bunny. And he really didn’t want his injection and tried as hard as he could to avoid it But in the end it was fine. Honestly he’s a big girl’s blouse. Also, check out the crazy dog hair products you can buy.

They were £9.99 for a spray to make your dog’s fur smell nice. I don’t even spend £10 on my own shampoo!! I think Alfie would be offended if we suddenly turned him into a pampered pooch. In his mind I’m sure he believes he’s a big scary Rottweiler (incidentally, one of my friends has a 2-1 shampoo and conditioner for her pug…).

Saturday evening we met up with Ben’s mum and went out for dinner at a local pub. Usually this pub is quite nice; we’ve been a fair few times. But it wasn’t amazing. Ben and me shared a mezze board for starters which was tasty but nothing spectacular (and we know our mezze boards!)

The falafels were nice, as was the hummus and obviously the sweet potato was good if not a bit huge for a starter. But three olives? Hmmm. And the square pastry things were tasteless.

The main I was really excited about, but the portion was quite small considering it was one of the more expensive things on the menu and this isn’t a fine dinning restaurant, it’s just a regular pub!

It was turbot steak with mango salsa and more sweet potato. The two bits of sweet potato at the top were actually from Ben as he had them with his meal and didn’t want them. They must have had a stupid amount of sweet potato in the that kitchen!!

It was tasty but just a bit small (I was grateful for Ben’s off casts – though I was feeling a bit sweet potato’ed out by this point). But the company was lovely and we had a good natter

Sunday (today) we enjoyed another roast chicken, this time a bit bigger and I left it to roast without adding anything to it as I wanted some plain meat for other meals in the week.

I love how the house smells when you’re cooking a roast! So warming.

I had a whole lot of chicken with veg and, er, yeah more sweet potato…I obviously wasn’t put off too much last night! Deliciously simple. I could have made gravy to go with it but we just fancied something really fresh and simple. And Ben wanted to drown his with lots of garlic mayo sauce. Lovely.

Speaking of Ben…he was keen for me to mention that he’s still going well with not drinking alcohol (he gave up four weeks ago in effort to get more healthy, run more and be ready for the 10k which is in 4 weeks time). Unfortunately his running has had to stop for a bit as he’s had some knee and back issues but hopefully, after seeing the physio a few times, he’ll be raring to go again. Though he is counting down the days until he can have a glass of wine again haha.

*** I’m still waiting to hear back from SlimKicker regarding the giveaway, I’ll post the winner as soon as I know***

What did you get up to this weekend?

What’s your favourite way to roast a chicken?

Do you have a dog? What’s his feelings on the vets?

February 22, 2013

Friday Randoms

It’s Friday! Woohoo! And it is really cold. Very frosty and chilly. But the mornings are lighter and the days are feeling longer. I thought I’d do a recap of the last few days and some random points I wanted to share.

Poor Ben, he pulled a muscle in his back on Tuesday evening…pulling on a jumper. Men! What are they like? He ended up being in agony. So the next day he took a day off work to try and recover but in the end he needed to go to the doctors. He couldn’t drive and I was at work so unfortunately he had to wait until Thursday when I could work from home.

I had a 5 mile run planned so got up early and did that Thursday morning and then we rushed straight out to get to the morning appointment. No time for a proper breakfast so this had to sustain me:

Black coffee and banana. It placated the starving beast within for a short while…

#1 Random Point – does anyone else detest the doctors? I appreciated everything they do, don’t get me wrong. But I feel at risk of catching something at the actual place. Maybe it’s because I’m a bit paranoid and OCD about dirt and germs, but seriously I will never touch those magazines no matter how much the front cover is screaming at me. And everyone there just looks depressed and ill. It’s not a happy place (which I guess is to be expected).

Anyway, after Ben had seen the doctor he came out looking a bit sheepish. His back just required a bit of time to heal as it was ‘only’ a pulled muscle and nothing serious. Ben did tell me he used his appointment wisely though.

#2 Random Point – Ben decided to talk to the doctor about a whole list of issues he’s been experiencing – back unrelated – to make his trip “worth while” (e.g. he’s had a sore foot for a while). Men hate going to the doctors, so when they have to go it’s almost like they’ve saved up a list of problems so they don’t have to go back for another 10 years.

We then went home and I got on with some work. Alfie was a bit confused with my presence and I think a little bit annoyed that I wasn’t sat on the couch with him enjoying some Alfie-Anna time.

I was sat at our dinner table trying to focus. Then this happened:

He jumped straight up on my lap as if to say “hellooo, remember me?” This makes using a lap top a bit tricky…

After giving him some snacks I managed to get him to fall asleep on the floor next to me so I could concentrate.

More coffee.

#3 Random Point – coffee tastes so much better in your favourite mug.

Oh speaking of mugs. I do have a mug at work which I leave in the kitchen. Now I know it doesn’t exactly have my name on it but it does annoy me when in the morning I go to make a coffee and find it’s not there. THEN later in the day I see that culprit with it and making their drink in it. Rude. I mean seriously, is it not clear?

Being at home, it was nice that I could have whatever I wanted for lunch. I had got myself in the mood for scrambled egg and cream cheese when I realised we only had two eggs, rather than my preferred three. So I rustled around and made myself a random combination of chicken, random veggies (carrots, mushrooms & spinach), plumbs, cream cheese and BBQ sauce.

The sweetness of the plumbs and BBQ went well with the creaminess of the cream cheese. Not a bad meal!

In the evening, after doing the food shop, I had my scrambled eggs so I was happy. I had cream cheese, mushrooms (again) and onion.

#4 Random Point – I’ve only just discussed a brilliantly easy way of finely chopping onions without being a whizz chef with an amazing knife.

By keeping one of the ends on it holds it all together so you can easily chop it. Many of you I imagine are now going “yeah, duh!” but I never knew this! [And I wanted to show off my favourite apple chopping board ]

#5 Random Point – we have so much cake still in our freezer it’s ridiculous.

This is pretty much the entire bottom drawer full of cake. Cake from our wedding, cake from last Christmas and cake from the Christmas before.

Speaking of cake. I had an attack of the munchies on Sunday and decided it was time to kill my mini bride.

This was the top tier of our wedding cake and it’s been sat just hanging around for ages .It’s fruit cake so it’s fine to last but those little people needed to go. As in, be eaten.

Ben had his groom as well. I was quite hyped up on sugar after that…but it was definitely worth it. RIP, mini bride.

Right, so it’s almost the weekend – hurrah! Tomorrow I have my 12 mile run planned for the morning, then I drive to Bristol to meet up with my university friends to celebrate one of their birthdays. Then I drive back Sunday. Busy busy but lots of fun I hope!

What are you up to this week?

If you’re married, what was your cake like? Ours was lemon for one tier, vanilla and jam for the middle tier, and then fruit for the top.

Do you have a favourite mug? I have a favourite coffee mug and a favourite hot chocolate mug (which is huuuge, I like my hot chocolates super-sized!)