Had a good weigh-in this morning after a few up and down weeks. 10 kg is about 22 lbs. My jeans are loose but I’m going to leave it for a few more kilos before buying the next size down.

Weather is still rather chilly but at least we get some sunny days as opposed to none at all. February in London sucks and I never want to spend it all here again. I don’t care if it is high season in the Caribbean. Gray and dreary for weeks on end is a spirit crusher.

Anyway – I’ve got the menu planned for the week:

• Bean burgers and oven chips tonight
• Double batch of chilli con carne for Tuesday and maybe Thursday
• Chicken livers & mushrooms on rice for Wednesday
• Chicken, mozzarella, pasta bake
• Chorizo pizza
• ….and I don’t know for Sunday.

I just realised there is only one vegetarian main meal planned this week – but I’m probably craving iron.  And Andy has been getting by on soup and oatmeal with his sore tooth.  His root canal went reasonably well.  He’s off antibiotics and back on the beer.  Still a few weeks to go before he gets a new crown for the tooth but he’ll appreciate some meat this week.

It is my birthday today.  I knew it was coming up but I actually forgot until I saw the date on a news story I was reading and suddenly realised. So… you can tell how excited I am.  Then I got to thinking about how old I am.  Forty…something.  My guess was 47 but I wasn’t really sure.  Had to pull up the calculator on my desktop to do the math.  Oh yes – I now have zero ability to do mental arithmetic.  Plugged in my year of birth and came up with 46.

Now hang on a minute.  I don’t think I’m 46.  I think this because I spent the whole of 2009 telling everyone I was 46 when I was only 45.  Then it dawns on me, I’ve done the math wrong. It isn’t 2010, it’s 2011.  So yes – I am 47.  And in desperate need of an espresso or brain transplant. 

I might just skip the next few birthdays out of complete indifference. I’ll do something special for 50.
Could someone please remind me when that rolls around?  Cheers.

Made this traditional Scottish soup for the first time a couple of nights ago. Ma-a-n, is it BORING! It’s not bad, just pointless. I kept adding salt and pepper to it but to no avail. I like leeks. I like celery. Chicken is alright. Put it all together – zzzzz. I heated up the leftovers today for my lunch. I was starvin’ hungry but after two mouthfuls I wasn’t certain I could be bothered to chew anymore. I’ve eaten bland things before but this is just…. ennui in a bowl.

If you’ve like boring ass food, here is the recipe. It makes a generous portion for one so just scale up accordingly.

2 chicken thighs, skin removed
1/2 onion
25 g. of pearl barley, cooked
1/3 stock cube
100 g. of leek, sliced
1 stalk of celery
1 pinch of dried thyme
1 tbs of fresh parsley, chopped

1. Place the chicken, sliced onion and barley in a saucepan and cover with 300ml (12fl ozs) water. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes.
2. When cool enough to handle, discard the chicken bones, chop meat into bite-sized pieces and return to the pan.
3. Add the crumbled stock cube, sliced leeks and celery and thyme, and simmer for a further 30 minutes.
4. Stir in the chopped parsley just before serving.

Be careful not to lose consciousness directly over the bowl in case you drown in it.

Our seafood for the week is scallops. I just got our box from Abel & Cole and the 8 scallops they sent are a bit on the small side but you get what you’re given. I’m going to make a recipe from the Hairy Bikers that I’ve made before – Limed Queen Scallops Flambeed in Tequila. Sounds and tastes fancy but is also quick and easy. Just saute some shallots in oil and butter, add lime juice and zest and a tiny bit of sugar, add scallops, a bit of tequila and chives – then flame on and serve immediately.

Since it won’t be much, I’ll also make their Mexican Tomato Rice and a fruit salad with walnuts for pudding. Sadly no margaritas this time.

Now I just have to find a recipe for tomorrow’s dinner that will use up these chicken livers. I don’t think my usual Spicy Chicken Liver Pate is going to work on the diet as it is 30% butter!

Gained a 1/2 a kilo this week. I’m not fretting about it. Some of that will be due to the night before last’s pizza and white wine. Just home made pizza so not too terrible but turns out it put me 200 calories over for the day. The rest is probably hormonal. I suffered with barely surpressed rage most of yesterday. I shouted (mostly via e-mail) at Andy, a builder, a lawyer, the Inland Revenue and a cold-call salesman. Not that they all didn’t richly deserve it and more but I was probably a tad terser and more, shall we say, direct and frank then I might have been normally.

I did feel better though watching this video of a lady of certain years wailing on some thieves.
Watch out hoodies, it’s the handbaggers you need to be afraid of. I especially liked her determined run up to them.

That’s about 16 1/2 pounds for you non-metrical people. (Hey join the 21st century!)

I am very happy with that loss and more then a little surprised.  I put it down to the appalling diet I was eating in November/December.  Way too much sugar, fat, alcohol, etc.  I’m sure the loss will fall to a more reasonable .5 kilo a week shortly.  Nevertheless if you actually find something that weighs 7k and pick it up, it is damn heavy!  I can feel the difference already in my knees.

Our daily calorie allowance is 1700 but I don’t always manage to eat that much.  Breakfast is usually muesli, skimmed milk and a banana with grapefruit juice.  Lunch is often a lean ham sandwich with salad or sushi or houmous and rice cakes.  Plenty of fruit.  Our evening meals have changed the most.  I make sure we have fish/sea food at least once a week and one or two vegetarian meals.  I found an excellent source of mussels and have made Thai mussels twice – it is gorgeous! Last week I made a lovely venison stew with swede.  And of course we make our own curries quite a bit  – Indian or Thai.

We’re having to cook most nights since so much restaurant food is just ludicrously fatty.  We’ve gone from ordering out two or three times a week to once a week if that.  We did have pizza from across the road (Le Cochonnet). They do a really thin fresh crust.  We split a chorizo pizza and I made a salad.  We also had an Indian takeaway.  I had tandoori chicken (basically barbecued with no rich sauce), and saag bhaji (lightly fried spinach & onions) with plain rice.  Put half my chicken aside for lunch the next day.

We’re still drinking alcohol but much less then before.  I might have a half pint of beer or a glass or two of white wine with a meal a couple of nights a week.

Hopefully I will blog more often now that Andy figured out how he broke the blogging software.  Even though I know I’m only talking to myself.

Wow! I am a terrible blogger.  There I said it.

It’s 2011 and Andy and I are too fat.  He was appalled that he is now nearly obese after a life time of thinness.  I am morbidly obese and have been for ages but am sick of it. He took a picture of me at this year’s New Year’s Eve party which he is banned from putting online because frankly I look like a pig in a wig! I need a hair cut too.

So we both started on a diet plan on Monday.  We’re using Tesco Diets.  I joined it years ago before Tesco bought it out.  It offers some good online meal planning and journalling facilities.

We’re just doing a fairly standard low cal, low fat diet – nothing faddy!  So far we’re allowed 1800 calories a day.  Each meal has the same level of calories which both Andy and I are struggling with.  He is used to having no breakfast at all so is having to eat a bit before he goes to work and a bit more when he gets there.  The big change is having a normal evening meal with no snacking afterwards – instead of the large meals often with beer/wine and cheese afterwards.

Speaking of alcohol I am restricted to 7 units a week, while Andy gets 14.  The last time I did this process I found it easier just not to drink.  We’ll see how we cope with the difference.

We are also supposed to be exercising.  Andy is doing a better then I am.  I haven’t done anything so far and am not feeling motivated at all.  Perhaps after TOTM is over I’ll get off my lazy ass.

So there you have it. We will both turn into diet bores.  I don’t expect anyone to take a blind bit of notice of this blog but it serves as a aide memoire for me and means I don’t have to bore people with the gory details of our diet in person.

You can thank me later.

Some friends and work colleagues got together last night for a City pub crawl.  The City of London has a lot of pubs – some very old, some bank refits, etc.  Unfortunately Andy and I don’t get to visit them often because most are closed at the weekend and that is the only time we go to the City usually. 

We met up at The Phoenix just up from Bank tube station at about 5:30.  I had a half of Abbot Ale and Andy plumped for an Old Speckled Hen.  Both perfectly respectable proper british ales.  In fact the serving of real ale, as opposed to mass-produced lager <spit>, was the only non-negotiable criterion for having a pub on the list. The pub was crowded with banker types and quite loud but Simon managed to snag a sofa so we had a relaxing start to the crawl.

Next was the Cock and Woolpack  and we were banned from sniggering about the name.  Of course we did anyway.  This was a smallish Shepherd Neame pub and we all had Spitfire.  Very nice beer with a bit of a caramel taste to it.  Very malty.  Quite crowded in the pub – apparantly bankers aren’t feeling the credit crunch THAT much or perhaps they are just drowning their sorrows.

The Counting House was next on our plan.  This place was first built as a bank in 1890′s and after a succession of banking owners was taken over by Fullers in 1997.  They won awards for the refurbishment & redevelopment done on the building and one can see why.  Three of our lot went for pints of Chiswick and two of us went for halves of Discovery.  The latter was just a tad water-y to count as a proper ale.  There is a small WW1 memorial plaque on the wall to the right of the entrance.  It was put up by whichever bank was in situ at the time.  Fairly unremarkable but apparantly the only such memorial in an English pub.

Then we went off plan.  Dave took us to a couple of Nicholson pubs – The Red Lion and The Ship. Both were quite old, unique in character and tucked away in little courts and alleys that you’d would be unlikely to stumble upon by accident.  Can’t remember what we had at the Red Lion.  It had a younger crowd then the other pubs we visited and there was a band setting up for live music downstairs.  At the Ship we all had Doom Bar – a cornish ale.  Pretty obviously a naval themed pub with a brass plaque on the floor depicting a ship and the compass points.  There were loads more people outside then in as it is tucked into a long courtyard alleyway between a very narrow church and a strange white building with funny architectural details like waves on it.  We surmised that perhaps the building was built for a maritime insurance firm.  It isn’t very far from Lloyds.

Back on plan we went to the Crosse Keys.  This place too is an ex-bank and cavernous.  Thankfully they’ve carpetted it or the noise would be deafening. 

Crosse Keys

They had a massive selection of real ales, but sadly 8:15 is late for a City pub on a Thursday <shrug> so quite a few of them were finished.  I think I ended up with a pint of Golden Fox.  Andy ended up with a very nice pint but since it was his fourth choice I can’t recall what it was!  Looked like a nice pub but don’t go on a Thursday. It was curry night and the place reeked of not particularly nice smelling curry. 

Anyway the crowd had thinned considerably so we got a couple of sofas and some packets of crisps to relax at our final destination.  I think the people who went for pints most of the night were a bit bloated.  I couldn’t manage that pace without somebody pushing me around in a wheelbarrow so had stuck to halves all night apart from the last pub.  A nice group of people and a fun night out.

On the way back to the tube Andy was caught short and headed into an alley.  I thought he was going to have a pee(!) but really it was just an excuse to go to another pub, The Jamaica Wine House aka the Jam Pot.  Using the facilities we felt obliged to have a swift half each.  Very olde worlde pub, well worth a proper visit.

I turned 45 on Sunday.  We started celebrating on Friday and kept it up all weekend.  Well we ate, drank and were generally merry – so pretty much a normal weekend apart from the addition of cake.  Yum! 

45th Birthday Cake

 I got some lovely flowers from my folks, the latest Neal Stephenson book from Andy as well as Adele’s CD and some gorgeous silver earrings.  Trudy sent a beautiful dark pink scarf which I’ve been wearing ever since.  Nice cards from family and friends too. 

Partying came to an end on Monday.  I am way too fat again so back on the straight and narrow.  I’m going to try to stick to a MAXIMUM of 4 units of alcohol a week.  And the takeaway dinners will have to be cut down considerably.  Boring but necessary.  So far I’ve made a lovely celeriac soup and salad that lasted two meals.  Tonight we’re having Mexican Lime Soup.

Some tidbits for your amusement follow:

• How to freak yourself without drugs – Hack Your Brain
• Cool street art

This winter has been particularly cold and London saw its first significant snowfall in about 16 years.  This a picture of me cavorting in the heavy snowfall outside our flat after midnight.  The snow was about 5 inches by the time we got up in the morning.  Andy trudged to the bus stop to go to work but soon came back.

Michelle in the snow

There was so much snow that anyone able to do so took a snow day.  No buses ran, few trains and the London Underground petered out during the day.  Much fun was had by all as snowmen popped up everywhere.  Check out the Unripe Photo blog 2009/02 for more photos.  It has since snowed again in London, twice!  But not enough to stick overnight or to disrupt traffic overmuch.

At some point during this month Michael (my brother) invited me to play Pirates on Facebook.  I accepted and started plundering, pillaging and burying treasure.  Those of you linked to my Facebook profile are probably sick to death of the updates about this.  I don’t know how you turn them off or why ANYBODY not in the game would want to read all that rubbish.  So apologies to all my Facebook friends.  Anyway I’m up to a Level 19 Pirate, and I think Michael has maybe played twice!  Dunno how much longer I can be bothered with it.  We’ll see.

Last weekend Andy and I went to an art fair in Covent Garden. It was a selling exhibition with works on offer from £200 to £15000.  We didn’t buy anything but we saw some very cool contemporary works.  Then we went to Pacifico and had margaritas.  Oh and some food, but mainly margaritas.  This is Andy trying not to get salt in his mustache and me after Andy asked if I wanted any dessert.

Would Madam like a wafer thin mint?

No salt in the mustache, por favor