cake - AnnaTheApple

October 27, 2014

Cake not children any day

Happy Monday, we’re here again. I don’t know what happened to me over the weekend but I was shattered! I even had an hour long nap yesterday afternoon, which is crazy for me! I’m back running consistently so this is probably the case. My foot seems to be fully OK now, whew!

Friday night Ben and me decided to go out for a meal to our recent favourite find (Zippers) and we invited my parents and Ben’s mum to join. Funnily enough my mum and dad had already booked to go to there after we’d raved about it! Happy days.

I went for my salad duo which, once again, rocked my world: salad bar starter and then chicken, avocado and bacon salad.

Apologies for the poor photos – it was dimly lit in the restaurant

And because it is the best chocolate fudge cake I’ve had in ages, I had it for pudding again. Consistently good – and I think I’m qualified to say that now having had it three times! I didn’t take a photo because I’ve already got two photos of it…

Needless to say I think we’re done with Zippers for a bit. We’ll be back for definite but we’ve OOT-ed it recently as you can imagine 😉

Saturday morning I finally got back to parkrun. I haven’t been for soo long due to being busy, injuries and marathons. I really missed it. I went down early to help set up and caught up with the parkrun crew. It was the Halloween special which meant people had dressed up in fancy dress for the occasion which was brilliant!

Skeleton morph suit!

The costumes were brilliant, from pumpkins to zombies, morph suits to masks. I love stuff like this. Sadly all I had to offer was a black sparkly tutu and my colourful RunMummyRun compression socks but it felt fun wearing it.

I took parkrun nice and easy and chatted to lots of people on the way round, which I always really enjoy. Unfortunately talking so much gave me such a nasty a stitch – that’ll teach me! I got just over 25 minutes which I’m happy with for a social run wearing, as it turns out, a rather itchy tutu.

Check out the costumes behind me – amazing effort with the face paint!

The rest of the day was spent just doing the chores, walking Alfie and watching some trashy television watch (*whispers* Made In Chelsea) which Ben and me embarrassingly like to watch and Gogglebox (I’m a new comer to this programme but I am fully addicted – it is HILARIOUS).

Sunday I got up and ran for 50 minutes (Kyle confusingly works in minutes not miles…this makes route planning quite hard!!) then rushed about getting ready to go to church to see my friend Louise’s baby’s Christening-but-not-Christening thing. Basically it was a “welcome to church” kind of thing for their baby, Jacob, but not an actually Christening because they want him to decide on his faith later. I won’t lie, I did not sing at all. No one wants to hear me sing especially if I don’t know any of the songs! Louise is an incredible singer though and is part of the church band so she rocked it.

After the service we headed back to Louise’s parent’s house for “nibbles”. Let’s just dissect this word for a moment…we thought crisps and snacky things, which were out on the sides when we arrived. We nibbled away and had some fizzy pop and were quite content. But Louise’s mum is just amazing at hosting these sorts of things and suddenly an hour later BOOM there was an entire buffet of food. Then after the buffet there was a pudding buffet of lemon tart, chocolate tart, meringues, jelly (all home-made!) and ice cream. Wowza. And of course cake afterwards!

I won’t lie. I went a bit crazy having a slice of both the lemon and chocolate tart (let’s call them slithers shall we? They weren’t huge…) and a couple of slices of cake.

All home-made by Louise herself. Vanilla sponge for the main cake and chocolate for the little trains and square blocks. My reputation preceded me as Louise came over after the first cutting of the cake and handed me a chocolate slice saying “I knew you’d want more”. Full sugar coma commenced afterwards (and an afternoon nap later).

Most of my school friends were there too so it was nice to catch up and have a laugh with them. Mostly taking the mic’ out of my fear of small people and how awkward I am around them. It was actually quite scary how many children were there – Louise has a HUGE family. Needless to say, it’ll be a few years yet before I have the desire to have one!!

Do you go to church? I’m not religious but don’t mind going to these sorts of things.

What are you doing for Halloween? We do nothing. Mainly hide behind our curtains and hope no small people come knocking.

Cake or dessert? I think I’d go with cake.

October 15, 2014October 15, 2014

Post Berlin Marathon

Gosh it feels like ages ago now that I was in Berlin and running the marathon. The days after Berlin were a lot more relaxed (for me at least) than the days before, but a lot more painful as you can imagine!

After the debacle of finding Ben and my dad after the race and then trying to find our way out of the race area, we headed back to our hotel. The boys had a drink and some nibbles in the hotel bar while I went upstairs to shower. I was so thankful that this time around we didn’t have a bath-shower. After the Paris marathon I remember how painful it had been to get my legs over the bath sides to get into the shower *shudders*.

I did however have fun finding all the places I’d chaffed. Not under my arms this time but weirdly just above my bum on my lower back!

The top of my shorts must have rubbed. Fun times.

After enjoying a luxuriously warm and bubbly shower, I headed downstairs all cleaned up to see Ben had got himself possibly the most disgusting looking meal possible.

You can see a fellow marathoner’s foot in the background – there were so many in the lobby!

A curryworst. He loved it so what can I say! Looks a bit funny to me 😉 My dad ordered some chips and like a vulture I landed on those chips with a vengeance. So salty and good.

Then sadly my dad headed off to catch his flight as he was only staying to watch the marathon and had work on Monday (sucker). Ben and me had an early evening meal in the hotel restaurant. It was rather posh!

We had another one of those sharing platters with lots of antipasti style bits and pieces (I got the veg and salad, Ben got the Parma ham and bread – we work well as a team). For main I went for pork schnitzel with fried potatoes and cranberries with a side salad (well, two side salads as Ben didn’t want his). For pudding I went for a peach crumble (it was microscopic in my marathon hungry eyes…but very nice regardless).

Then we went to the hotel room. I chilled in the best way possible.

We did consider renting a film (like we did in Paris) but we were both so tired we read for a bit and fell asleep around 7.30pm. I’m not even joking. I woke up at midnight thinking it was like 3am. I had a banging headache and struggled to fall back asleep but eventually fell asleep until 7am-ish. Headache gone and we both felt so refreshed!

We decided to do some sight seeing so headed off to wander through the Tiergarten and then to the Reichstag.

We saw lots of sights, like the Brandenburg Gate, the Jewish Memorial, Checkpoint Charlie again and a huge mall. Both of us staggered along, me because I was aching everywhere from the marathon and Ben because his knee was playing up a bit after all the walking the day before 🙁

We found a crazy American-style diner (called Andy’s Diner) that took our fancy for lunch. We were both in need of a nice sit down and some food.

I chose a salad and honestly it was possibly the best salad I’ve had in a while.

Chicken, kidney beans, hard boiled egg and lots of salad in a huge crispy tortilla bowl (which is underneath all the salad in the above photo) with a creamy ranch dressing. It literally took me like 20 minutes to eat all of it.

Literally bigger than my head – my kinda salad!

Then we plodded on. In total we walked 34,000 steps (15.5 miles). We were shattered and honestly me legs felt like they would fall off. Ben found it hilarious watching me trying to get down stairs.

My dear husband finding it far too funny that I was in pain

We stopped in the afternoon for another respite. And lo and behold! I found a cafe that sold beer, coffee and cake! A winner all round 😉

I went for a delicious vanilla chocolate cake. It was all spongy and delicious. So good. Ben went for a cheesecake.

It was a huge thumbs up from us. We then chilled for a bit people watching. It was a great spot – down the road from the Brandenburg Gate and the number of people we saw hobble past was quite amusing. There were so many people who had clearly run the marathon.

Dinner that night was a quick meal in a local, but lovely, restaurant and then another early night. Honestly, sleep (and cake) was the best recovery for me!

And the next day we headed home. It was a lovely little mini-break and I loved Berlin and the marathon but, as I’ve said before, it was bittersweet. I really wish Ben could have run. But he’s deferred his place so next year I think we’ll be returning! I might run it if I get in the ballot but we’ll see.

What’s your normal ‘go-to’ meal in a restaurant? For me it’s always a salad.

Do you like to try the local food when you’re abroad? The curryworst did not appeal but the schnitzel was amazing.

Would you ever want to run the Berlin marathon?

October 13, 2014

Boosts, London and Africa

I used to love thunderstorms. The sound of the rumbling and crashing and the flashes of lightening was always quite exciting. Alfie, however, does not like thunderstorms and as he sleeps in our room, we are fully aware of this. He starts barking at the thunder or running around the room in a panic. Or sitting on our pillows trying to get as close as possible to us. He’s frightened by it I think which is all very sweet. But seriously, Alfie, MAN UP. I need my sleep!!

This weekend, thunderstorms aside, was great. It started Friday night with a great run. I got my new Adidas Boosts delivered to work and was desperate to give them a little trial run (ha!)

I text Ben saying I might go for a run after work in Basingstoke and might be home a little later than usual. He was uber happy about this as he was planning a surprise for me and needed a bit more time. He had told me the night before he was going to put his Friday afternoon off to good use and do something special for me. Well, my curiosity was definitely spiked!

I wore my new Berlin marathon finisher t-shirt and obviously my new Boosts.

Unintentionally colour coordinated!

Having not run for 10 days I was thinking it might feel a bit sluggish. But actually I felt like I was flying. The Boosts felt amazing and my legs felt very fresh. The first mile was downhill but I was very surprised to see a 6.42min/mile! In the end I did 5k in 22.02 minutes. Not too shabby. I probably shouldn’t have gone so fast on my first run but I just felt good and went with it.

When I got home I was welcomed by a very pleased looking Ben and my surprise.

Yep still looking sweaty

A three-layered red velvet cake – all made from scratch. *Swoons*

I was over the moon! What a guy, eh!? And let me tell you, it tastes AMAZING. Cream cheese frosting heaven! He was a bit miffed the sponge didn’t come out that red though, despite using food colouring gel rather than liquid. Bakers, is there a special way to do this?

Saturday morning we got up early to go to London. Ben needed a quick passport change as he’s going to China with work (oooh er!) so we decided to make a day of it.

We did a lot of walking around and saw the classic tourist bits, like Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the London Eye, Houses of Parliament etc. I’ve seen them before but never actually done this with Ben so it was nice.

Also saw some of the roads I’ll be running along come April next year…how exciting! (Providing I’m not injured – I feel like I have to say this as you know how injury-prone I am)

After getting the passport sorted we went to find some lunch. I tried to tempt Ben into going to Wholefoods for their salad bar but that really didn’t go down well…but he did say we could go and have a look 😉

Before that, we found a lovely South African restaurant called Bbar which took our fancy. There were animal prints and animal pictures everywhere and the waiters were lovely. We went for a pitta and dip board to begin which was a little smaller than I had imagined but all very nice (taramasalata, hummus and baba ganoush dips). And for main I went crazy and had a salad. It’s funny because I didn’t even realise there was avocado in it before I went for a big chunk of what I thought was lettuce – it was so camouflaged! Ben went for an amazing burger which looked huge. There were so many burger options, even buffalo and boar.

After a relaxed lunch we walked to Wholefoods and checked out more sights along the way. We didn’t do much shopping or anything that exciting, it was just nice to walk around London together without any real aim.

Wholefoods was just full of young adults – possibly students and, I guess, people like me.

The cakes looked out of this world

It was just rammed. The salad bar looked good but I’m glad we hadn’t gone for it – the queues were huge and it felt a bit claustrophobic. I know Wholefoods is held on a pedestal for healthy and unusual ingredients but some of the things did make me laugh. A cupcake that was gluten free, diary free, egg free and low fat had the ingredients list that would make a Pop Tart tremble. Seriously, so many chemicals with long and scary names. Fairly ironic.

As we slowly ambled back to Waterlook, fairly pooped now, I kept seeing people with whole coconuts drinking out of them with straws. Then a few minutes later we got to Trafalgar Square and we passed a huge area of tents and festivities. It was called Africa on the Square – which fitted into our theme of the day perfectly 😉 We had a wander around (so many amazing smelling foods and cool music) and I found the coconut tent. For the fairly pricey £4.50 the guy chopped off the end of a coconut, popped some straws in and handed it to me.

It tasted divine. Fresh coconut water! Yum. It disappeared rather quickly! Then we decided to head back to the train before our legs fell off. We both fell asleep on the train we were that tired. And embarrassingly I woke up with my mouth open…classy girl right here 😉

Sunday was supposed to be fairly relaxed until we decided to clear out the Cupboard of Death (under stairs cupboard…*shudders*) and some kitchen cupboards to make space for Ben’s new plaything – a Kmix. He’s really getting into this baking lark and with having Friday afternoons off I think I’m going to be seeing a lot more cakes. Can’t be bad, right? 😀

What are your favourite things to do in London?

Have you ever had a real coconut before?

What trainers do you wear?

August 18, 2014August 18, 2014

A busy weekend of all the things I love

Happy Monday lovely people. I hope you all had a great weekend.

Mine was bittersweet. Ben is sadly injured. He’s marathon training like me for Berlin (end of September, less than six weeks- PANIC). And, like I mentioned a few posts ago, he went to the Ultra 12 event and ran 4 laps of 5 miles over 12 hours. He was already slightly injured before going into it (although he hadn’t told me this – he’d only said he had a small niggle) and Ultra just pushed him over the edge. He’s seen our physio and the outcome is he’s sprained his knee and can’t run for a week and then see how it is.

This meant all plans for him running at the weekend dissolved and he was in a Dark and Shady mind space. I feel so sorry for him as I know exactly what this is like, being injured while marathon training. But he’s got so many miles in the bag already and if it’s only a week (even if it’s two or three weeks) he’ll be absolutely fine. Ben is determined and strong willed, even if he doesn’t get the training he wants he’ll still do Berlin.

But it meant Saturday I was off to parkrun on my own.

Ben decided to have a lie-in instead which I could totally understand and I went down early to help set up.

It’s always a nice crew of people who volunteer setting up so there’s always a bit of banter and good conversation which helped with me being Ben-less.

Ben and me recently got Steve Way t-shirts so I wore mine to test it out.

My not-so-pregnant-anymore running friend was at parkrun which was lovely. Ages ago I posted about how she was still running while pregnant and doing amazingly (find it HERE). Well she had her baby boy about 10 weeks ago and has been getting back into running. So when we started parkrun and she was running a good clip I decided to hang on to her a bit – it’s always easier following someone doing a good pace than doing it on your own.Karen, my not-so-pregnant-anymore friend, running next to me

I felt good on the last lap so decided to speed up a little bit and managed to get 22:08 and third female which I was chuffed about. Nice tempo run!

Then, after clearing down, it was back to the Wounded Soldier. I let him off housework duties so he could mope a bit more and then we had to dash for some coffee with Ben’s mum.

Alfie loves Ben’s mum as she always gives him doggie chocolates

Then I managed to persuade Ben to go for dinner at Nando’s for our friend, Nathan’s, birthday.

Whole chicken and double salad = perfection

Chicken and beer, what more could you need? While chomping away on chicken Ben and Nathan planned to do a swim in the morning and then a cycle. I was planning a long run so decided to join the cycle afterwards.

The next morning I got up early and did 13.1 miles. It did feel like a hard slog for the first half and from mile four onwards I started getting very thirsty. I foolishly hadn’t brought any water thinking the temperature was cool enough. I started fantasying about drinks and wondered if I could beg for water from a shop as I had no money. At 7.5 miles I realised I was quite close to Ben’s mum’s house and as it was 9.15am it wasn’t too early…I rang her and she was more than happy with me dropping by to grab some water. Bliss! Bit of a strange experience to talk to someone on the phone mid-run though!

Ignore the fact that the mile numbers don’t make sense – I stopped to stretch after the first mile and randomly stopped my Garmin completely. So annoying! The run took just under 1:50 which I’m pleased with. I felt stronger towards the end so picked up the pace a bit. It’s funny because Saturday’s parkrun the work was all happening in my lungs and heart, whereas Sunday’s run my lungs and heart felt fine, it was all to do with my legs which is how it should be I think.

After getting back and foam rolling a bit I then had breakfast and quickly changed my top to get ready to cycle with the boys.

Straight away my legs felt like lead. It was a good cycle but it was tough. Usually our 15 mile route is fine and I can speed off along the straights but honestly I felt like an old lady. But it was nice to spin the legs. When we got home it took about 10 minutes for me to take my socks off though as I was so shattered.

As Ben and Nathan went to the pub to watch the football, I showered, reluctantly walked (shuffled?) Alfie round the block and then promptly collapsed onto the sofa with half a watermelon and chilled for a bit. Then Ben returned and we headed to my parent’s for the piece de resistance…afternoon tea.

Awkwardly Ben’s football team had lost and my dad’s football team had won (same match) but they were good sports about it (whew). It also helped Ben was four beers down by the this point and like a hyperactive child.

We went to the same place we went last week (The Tea Rooms in Lee-on-Solent) and it was lovely. Roast chicken sandwiches, a beautifully tasting scone with cream and jam and carrot cake. Ben had coconut and lemon cake and my dad had Victoria sponge (my mum just had cream tea).

As we went for a walk along the seafront Ben spotted an ice cream shop and jokingly (or so I thought) said he really fancied ice cream. I called his bluff and he so he went and bought one!

By this point Ben is both hyped up on alcohol and sugar. Bouncing all around the place, climbing walls and just generally being good fun. I’m glad he was feeling in a better mood (even if it was under the influence…).

Finally a happy chappy with his ice cream 🙂

And then we headed home to crash, both from exertion and sugar, on the sofa. Another weekend complete.

When you’re feeling down, how do you make yourself happy again?

What’s your favourite ice cream? I really can’t stand the Mr Whippy ice creams, I like the proper stuff!

Have you ever cycled after a long run? Triathletes are just amazing! It was very hard.

August 12, 2014

The one with all the selfies…

This past weekend was quite a strange one for me. Ben was off camping for a running event called Ultra 12 (solo or relay runners running Saturday 7pm until Sunday 7am). I had planned on doing it as well and being part of a team of six with Ben but as it got closer I realised my time was probably better spent focusing on the marathon.

I didn’t feel too bad leaving the team because this actually meant they could get more laps in without me and they’d get a better running experience (I hoped) from it. Obviously I was sad I wasn’t going and being part of the team but I knew my decision was sensible (albeit boring). I’d get to go to parkrun on Saturday and do a longish run Sunday.

This past week or so I’ve had a few niggles I wanted to put to bed so have been focusing a bit more on cycling and hoping the niggles don’t develop further. So far so good. Just means I haven’t been able to run as far in my long runs as I’d want at this point. But I’m not dwelling on it or panicking.

Friday night I was on my own and watch the Dallas Buyers Club (a film I knew Ben wouldn’t want to watch) occasionally interrupted with a few selfies from the husband to keep me informed of all his good behaviour…

Preparing well for the race the next day

Saturday morning I cycled the four miles to parkrun and helped them set up.

Parkrun selfie

Then ran a nice and easy parkrun with a friend from my club. I just ran on feel and didn’t want to push it but felt good at the end and picked up the pace a bit (to the surprise of my running partner, whoops!) I would like this documented that this was my first ever royal flush negative split parkrun (I know it’s only three miles but still, this is something for me!)

Very pleased with that! Then I helped pack up and cycled back home.

Ben was away until Sunday lunchtime-ish so I’d planned on hanging with the parentals for Saturday until Sunday morning, where I’d planned to do a nice long run along the seafront (as my parent’s live closer to the sea than we do).

I took Alfie with me and we headed there at lunchtime. I enjoyed a nice walk down to the local village with my parents to pick up some supplies for the evening dinner.

Then we had a nice lunch and headed out for another walk, this time along the seafront to stop for coffee in one of the little tea rooms. The walk was very windy but lovely in the sunshine.

I do love being near the sea. And this helped take my mind off that I was missing out on all the Ultra fun and Ben 🙁

Sea-side selfie

I sent some selfies to Ben and he responded likewise so I sort of felt in the loop.

Ben and Nathan

The weather was looking to turn to the worst however…

Some less happy than others!

Anyway, back to the walk. Our plan was to have coffee and to also buy a slice of cake each to have after dinner. Well that did not work out at all after seeing the amazing selection and having worked up a bit of an appetite for a snack.

Yeah right I could walk a slice of cake the two miles back to the car without eating it!! We all agreed cake would be far better now than after dinner. Good decision, yes?

That absolute beast of a slab is red velvet. So. Damn. Good. My dad had an incredibly sized slice of carrot cake and my mum had the same as me. I think I need to return though for test purposes because they said they had a cinnamon bun cake and I’ve never tried one of those before.

Our walk back was powdered by cake; we were stuffed! As we continued to walk we all agreed our planned steak dinner was probably not a good idea anymore. It’s a shame because it was going to be Steak Diane and this is one of my favourite recipes my dad cooks.

Anyway we had a lazy evening of a snacky dinner (soup for me) and a good film, the Guilt Trip. This film is just made to watch with your mum. Seriously. It was very funny and the perfect choice for the evening…while Ben and the team were working hard in the night…

Head torches to the rescue?

The next morning I planned on running 10 miles down the beach…until I looked outside.

It was absolutely pelting it down and the wind was unbelievable. Hurricane Bertha was saying good morning it seemed. Running along the beach in this? No thank you! I’m not a fair weather runner (I’ll run in wind, rain and snow any day) but this was stupid. I’d get blown away! My parents agreed I shouldn’t go out so instead I enjoyed a bit of Xbox with my dad (geek at heart I’m afraid).

Then I made my way home and had the lovely company of my returned exhausted runner. The team absolutely smashed it and came first for the mixed relay runners – how about that! They were amazing and I’m so glad they all enjoyed it. Ben managed four laps (of the 5 mile course) so he was pretty spent for the rest of the day.

His well deserved medal still round his neck

I’m a very proud wife! He did amazingly. Though I don’t regret not going, I am sad I wasn’t involved and didn’t get to see them all do so well. Next year!

What films have you seen lately?

Have you ever done a relay race?

Do you enjoy spending time with your parents? My parents and me are very close and I’m not ashamed to say I like spending time with them. And Ben’s mother in law as well. I’m very lucky to have such a lovely family! (Cheese alert sorry)