It’s Fridaaaay! I think my absolute favourite time of the week is Friday evening just as I get in from work. It’s that glorious moment of ‘whew the week is done’.
This week has been pretty good in terms of key dates – Shrove Tuesday and Valentine’s Day. And also, my dad’s birthday (which is also 14th February). Happy birthday for yesterday, dad!
So Tuesday evening Ben and me celebrated Pancake Day with eating pancakes for dinner. Ben had the standard egg, milk and flour pancakes with sugar and lemon. I even managed to convince him to use wholemeal flour (OK, we didn’t have any regular flour so there wasn’t much choice). I’m not a big fan of the sugar and lemon variety, but luckily I was inspired earlier in the day from the lovely Ffion from ChocolateAndRaspberries blog.
Definitely wanted to give them a go and such a simple recipe! So I microwaved some chopped sweet potato for around 5 minutes, let is cool and then whizzed it up with one egg with a hand blender and then fried a few batches in coconut oil. They didn’t quite work out as I hoped in terms of presentation – they fell apart. However, they tasted mighty delicious!!
I topped them off with some stewed plumbs (cooked in a bit of a water and sugar) and then added a good dollop of PB2. Really, really good. Thank you Ffion!
Thursday was obviously Valentine’s Day and my dad’s birthday and it was our work bake off and bake sale. I was planning on making lemon drizzle cake and some cheese scones but on Wednesday night I didn’t get back from work until fairly late…So I decided to just stick to cheese scones. I used THIS recipe and didn’t amend it at all.
In true Anna fashion, something always goes wrong with me and baking. It’s usually because I don’t read recipes properly. It doesn’t matter so much in cooking but baking is more precise and so the problems arise for me. The recipe instructions said:
“Lightly dust the surface with a little flour. roll out the dough no thinner than 2cm”
I read that to be that I was to roll it out to be 2cm, no thicker. So I got very mini flat scones. And loads of them! They were more cheese biscuits than scones. They still tasted good though – and the recipe says they’re 130 calories per each one, but as I made twice as much they’re likely to be half that 
On Thursday morning I put my scones next to all the other bake goods that had been brought in and I felt mine didn’t quite living up to their peers. Ah well.
There was a carrot cake, two banana breads, chocolate muffins, chocolate cupcakes, Mars Bar crispy cakes, ginger cake, lemon drizzle, my cheese scones/biscuits, more muffins, and a marble cake.
Well, we had to stand there and watch one of the managers try a small piece of each cake to make his mind up which was going to win. It was excruciating as I just wanted cake!! And watching him stuff his face was unbearable. At this point I couldn’t care less who won!
In the end one of the banana breads came third, the Mars Bar cake came second, and the marble cake came first.
We later found out that it was actual the winner’s wife who made this cake, not him! Haha.
Anyway, though I wanted a bit of everything I went for two Mars Bar crispy cakes as honestly they were UNBELIVABLY good (I had one and just had to go back for a second), a small slice of carrot cake (very moist and yummy) and a small slice of lemon drizzle as this was my dad’s cake. I couldn’t believe it when he told me he’d baked. He never bakes. I have never known him to bake anything in my entire life.
And it was very good!
I was hyped up and full of sugary goodness by 10.30am. Can’t complain.
We then sent them down to reception to sell for charity to the other companies in the building. I was really chuffed later as I saw a woman from another office walking along with two of my biscuits.
So it was Valentine’s Day. Ben and me had previously agreed to do nothing. I’m not that sentimental in that I need a card or chocolates to know Ben cares. Now I have nothing against other people celebrating it together and sending flowers – if that makes you happy, enjoy it! For Ben and me it was important at the beginning of our relationship when I was at university and he was at home, so sending flowers and cards was lovely as I didn’t get to see him that regularly. This year we just wanted to save some money and not bother.
BUT in the afternoon I was sat in a meeting when someone came in and told me there was a huge bunch of flowers in reception for me. I couldn’t stop the huge grin on my face and feebly saying “we said we weren’t doing Valentine’s Day this year…”. I skipped off down to the reception and found a box of flowers waiting for me to unwrap. The receptionist helped me and we giggled together about how lovely it was. I opened it to find twelve beautiful roses.
Ben’s never sent me roses before (other flowers, yes, but not roses) so I was surprised and initially thought it was a little bit of a cliché but these thoughts were quickly swept away with happy thoughts of how romantic Ben was in a very classic way.
As I headed upstairs I opened the little card that comes with it:
“Love you lots, love Rob xxx”
Who the hell is Rob?? They must have confused the cards! That’s all I could think. As I headed back to the office one of my colleagues saw the flowers and commented how lovely. I told him about the card and said how strange it was. He burst out laughing and said “Rob is the other Anna’s partner”.
Oh. My. God. Reception rang the WRONG Anna (there are two Anna’s in our office) and gave me her flowers. So I walked back into the office, sheepishly gave the other Anna her flowers and apologised for opening them. How embarrassing is that? The whole office thought it was hilarious. I did find it quite amusing (after my cheeks had faded from the beetroot colour). I mean, you have to laugh, right? I told Ben and he felt really bad.
As he should 
So that’s my week. I’ll do a recap on my running at the weekend – it’s been a hard week! And I have a 10 mile run planned for tomorrow morning so finger’s crossed it goes well.
Did you celebrate Pancake Tuesday? What kind of pancake did you have?
Did you enjoy Valentine’s Day? Any surprises?
What would you make for a bake off?
) and I persuaded him to stop at Starbucks just before we got to the office. He treated me to a hazelnut syrup Americano and a HUGE mince pie. First one of the season, wheeee! 
