restaurant - AnnaTheApple

January 19, 2015January 19, 2015

Am I mad??

I’m trying not to get ahead of myself just yet and go into full on holiday mode. I still have four days left. But that sounds pretty good to me!

This weekend was a busy one as we had a lot to get done, being the last weekend before we go to the States. Friday night I was a lonely spinster while Ben went off with some friends to our local pub for a ‘boy’s night’. I stayed in watching trashy telly and going to bed at 9pm. What a rock and roll lifestyle I have! I was just so tired. I’d been to the gym four times that week (getting up at 5am each time) so I was worn out.

Saturday morning, after a blissful night’s sleep, I was up ready to go help set up parkrun and also run it. This wasn’t my first run back. I’ve been gently getting back into running with some Garmin-less runs, all kept nice and easy (well it felt easy, I have no idea of pace) and short. I’m not going to blog too much about this running as at the moment it’s all very relaxed, no pressures, no goals, just running when I fancy. And I fancied parkrun so decided to make an appearance.

It was very chilly setting up in the morning (about 8am) and we noticed some black ice on the course as we were putting the markers out so we diverted the route slightly onto the grass (which later turned into an absolute mud bath). And then it started to rain icy rain!! I didn’t mind the crisp, dry coldness but icy rain is awful. After setting everything up I did a warm up as I was just SO cold. I didn’t even take my ski jacket off until the last minute!

The run went fine. I won’t lie, I’ve lost a lot of endurance and speed since not running for so many weeks so my easy pace is not what my easy pace used to. But it was just nice to be out in the fresh air seeing familiar, friendly faces. Without any real running goals it means I’m not panicking about hitting paces or mileage. At the moment it’s purely supplementary to my gym goings. I finished in just under 24 minutes which I was happy with and managed to negative split the miles with a nice push of 7.38 on the last mile. I’ll take that!

After clearing everything away and catching up with people, I headed home to Ben. He was somewhat hung over bless him. We got the housework done and then he headed out for bike ride with a friend. The first bike ride since being told to stop all exercise (all OK’ed with the physio). I think it went well and he was happy to feel the rush of endorphins again.

In the evening we headed to Brasserie Blanc in Gunwharf Quays with Ben’s mum to have a superb meal. We were celebrating her birthday and decided to splash out on a rather posh meal. It’s not the most expensive restaurant in the world but it’s fairly pricy!

I had a selection of salads to start, a coquelet for my main and an amazing chocolate soufflé for pudding.

It was so good! Definitely a winner. The soufflé was unbelievably light (not as in less calories as hello it’s pudding, but as in the texture). It wasn’t a heavy chocolate pudding and the pistachio ice cream it came with balanced it perfectly.

Sunday was all about chilling for me. No gym, no running, just nice Alfie walks and a trip into Southampton to take back clothes that we’d ordered online that either looked awful or didn’t fit. I got annoyed in Top Shop as all the jeans that they were selling were either skinny, high-waisted skinny or ‘mom’ jeans. They had so many pairs of bloody skinny jeans. *sighs* So annoying as Top Shop is normally a perfect place for me to get jeans but skinny jeans are not my thing (wrong for my body shape and bloody uncomfortable). But we did managed to exchange a few items for both Ben and me so it was a success.

And now back to the grind. Got some gym visits planned for this week and perhaps a couple of runs. I’m considering running very early on Friday before we get picked up by the taxi at 6.30am as I know I’ll feel crazy antsy on the plane for ten hours otherwise! Am I mad???

Would you run really early when you’re going to fly on a plane later? It’s just such a long time to be sat not moving much…

Do you enjoy going to slightly more posh restaurants occasionally and spending a bit more on a meal that you might do normally?

Did you do any workouts this weekend? Any parkruns?

December 1, 2014

So much food and a re-think

And we have a full house once again! Ben is back from his adventures to Hong Kong and China. He got back Saturday morning and I was more than happy to be woken up! As was Alfie who just went mental.

Poor Ben though suffered so badly from jet lag, as you can imagine. He didn’t feel well and he was exhausted (he had started his journey home on Thursday at 11pm London time and arrived home on Saturday 7am-ish!).

And oh the washing…So much washing. Joy. But anyway we decided to go to Nando’s for lunch (well, what do you expect?) with my dad as my mum was in London with Ben’s mum for a girlie trip. I was amused when the waiter tried to give my whole chicken to my dad though assuming he was having it and not me. He seemed a bit bemused that I could eat it. How very dare him. I’m a chicken eating machine!

By the end of the meal though (2pm?) Ben was really starting to fade (his body was thinking it was 10pm). We didn’t do much else for the day and I had to keep waking Ben up. I felt like a horrible person but we’d agreed he needed to stay awake at least until 8pm so he would be getting back, sort of, into the swing of UK times.

Sunday was spent getting bits and pieces done and then we were off for a lovely Christmas meal lunch at Jamie’s Italian with my parents and Ben’s mum. A three-course meal with a glass of Prosecco! I’d seen an offer online (I think it was £27.95 per person?) and had arranged it a while ago. It was quite good for everyone to get together to catch up with Ben.

Ben and the mums

My dad and me

The amount of food though! Oh my life. The started was MASSIVE. Two huge planks of antipasti bits and pieces (meats, cheese, roasted vegetables, olives, bread), cheese balls covered in breadcrumb and deep-fried gnocchi. There was just too much I think for all of us. We were all feeling a bit full afterwards and dubious about two more courses to come.

For mains, I had a Venetian fish stew (as did Ben’s mum), my parents had steak and Ben had turkey. There were polenta chips and roasted vegetables as sides as well. It was absolutely delicious. I thought I’d taken a photo but alas I had not. It was basically a tomato stew with lots of clams, mussels and fish and a piece of toasted bread with a delicious cream cheese spread. I could have easily gobbled up all the roasted vegetables and polenta chips as well but I had limited capacity in my stomach by now! This does not happen often.

For pudding it was a brownie with salted caramel ice cream.

Ohhhh it was so good. Pretty much the same as I’d had the other time I went to Jamie’s a few weeks ago. But honestly, just as tasty. Stomach space was not a problem now.

I did require a long walk with Alfie when I got home as the food was sitting rather uncomfortably in my tummy. Sometimes I find a good walk can help digestion!!

And then it was another evening of me poking and prodding Ben to keep him awake, bless him. One day at a time!

Sadly I’m still not running. I won’t lie, I do feel down about it. I don’t mind about speed or PBs or anything like that, I just want to run. I’m so glad Ben is home as it makes things so much better though! Like I said before, I don’t need to panic just yet as London is so far away. I just wish I understood why I always seem to get injured.

I’m pretty sure running six days a week wasn’t good for me. When my coach gave me that plan I should have spoken up and said no this isn’t going to work. I just got excited about running so much and convinced myself that it was fine because I was running slowly and not very far each time. And at the time everything felt fine during each run. I suppose it just topped out on that 11 miler.

I think my body at the moment needs more rest days in between, regardless of how far or how fast I run. And incorporating more specific strength training. I do do strength training but I guess I need to challenge my body in other ways than what I’ve been doing and Kyle’s going to help with that which is brilliant.

So he’s readdressed the plan going forward so things won’t be so full-on and more strength training…but first I have to get back into running again! Oh the ever cycle of running and me…

Have you got any Christmas meals planned other than the big day?

What’s the worst jetlag you’ve had? How do you recover ?

Do you enjoy a ‘proper’ starter or a sharing starter with lots of little things?

November 3, 2014

Blisters suck (don’t worry, no photos!)

My post title’s rather grim sorry but I thought I’d give a good warning that I wasn’t going to have any actual blister photos.. I hate it when people upload war wounds on Facebook or social media without warnings.I’m quite squeamish.

Anyway before the blister talk…this weekend started off with some fun shenanigans with a bunch of friends for one of their birthdays. We started off in Pizza Express and despite my very best intentions the pudding menu lured me in…chocolate fudge cake again. Not nearly as good as Zippers I must say but I persevered. Tough times 😉

One of the guys that came out had just had DOUBLE knee surgery a couple of days ago and was walking on crutches (though he said he had been told to be in a wheelchair!) and our table was downstairs which was just ridiculous. But like a soldier he got down (and later, up) those stairs! Incredible. I couldn’t even imagine getting off the sofa let alone going on a night out.

Lots of drinking (well, a little bit of drinking for me being the biggest lightweight in the world) and dancing and I was ready for bed. It’s been quite a while since I last saw 2am! Having been up since 5.20am I was absolutely pooped.

The 5.20am wake-ups have been due to getting in my runs before work. I don’t actually mind it – I much prefer waking up early and getting it done than having it hanging over me all day. But all this running is making me tired! I was supposed to run parkrun on Saturday but that was never going to happen after a 2am night out and feeling slightly delicate meant running was totally off the agenda. Wise decision I think!

So I’ve been acquiring some rather horrendous blisters due to buying slightly more firm insoles for my trainers. They’ve absolutely savaged my feet. The problem is I keep running on them which doesn’t really help heal them…Compeed blister plasters have been a lifesaver (though ridiculously expensive!!) and I’ve even gone so far as to tape my feet up using zinc oxide tape (which I got from Amazon if you’re interested).

Lifesavers

The problem is I really need those insoles because I’m so flat footed, but getting used to them is just hell. But they are getting better thankfully.

Compeed plaster on the right, and taped up on the left

Tape does help, but honest to God it is an absolute bitch to remove afterwards, as you can imagine.

I had planned to do a local 10 mile race on the Sunday and was all but raring to go on Saturday but with my blisters still not feeling amazing and having not run further than 6 miles since the marathon I thought it would be best to give it a miss (incidentally my coach had said this to me but I had chosen to ignore him…whoops). Sensibly instead I ran 7 miles at home, knowing that if I had any issues I could get Ben to pick me up rather than embarrassingly DNFing in a race with the lame excuse of bad blisters.

The 7 miles went well, nice and relaxed running and no blister issues, but it was tough. My endurance has just plummeted. I think it was a good shout about not doing the 10 miler but I did miss the fun.

Later in the afternoon we went to Nando’s and ate lots of chicken which is always good. After getting home and walking Alfie, I was absolutely pooped. Really makes me concerned about a half marathon I’m meant to be running (not racing) in a couple of weeks. Not really sure about that anymore! If 7 miles is tough 13.1 miles isn’t going to be a walk in the park. Need to mull this over…

How was your weekend?

Have you ever had issues with blisters? What are you failsafe ways to recover from them?

Is it silly for me to do the half marathon? It’s usually a distance I’m OK with and I could get a 10 miler in this weekend…

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 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.