As promised...

... here is what I had for tea yesterday - beef stew and dumplings (with carrots and potatoes).

Not much happened yesterday, went to the gym after work and then round my parents for tea. I am covering a colleague's on-call tonight, so no gym. Just chilling at home.

Today's lunch was another trip to the pub, where today I opted for a curry combo (chicken tikka and spicy lamb kebab with lettuce, pitta bread and a yoghurty sauce). This was about 6 quid (which includes a pint of Stella).

I have also finalised the Christmas meal order for next Friday (works meal). I am off to Surrey this Friday (going to Sarah's works Christmas meal) and then staying in Surrey to attend a 4 day Red Hat training course.

Indian Winter

Hello food lovers! I was thinking today about my 2 favourite things (eating and drinking), what if I had to give one of them up?!?! That would be devastating… luckily I do not have to give up either, so here is a quick snapshot of me weekend's eatings...

I think I may have ate some mouldy bread when I got back Friday (I did came home drunk, cold and hungry), I probably didn't discover the mould until too late...

Saturday I probably had some cereal for lunch and a surprisingly nice prawn curry from Asda for tea, I bought far too much (as I was drunk, again, from watching the England trounce Samoa and Wales scrape a lucky win against Australia in the rugby). I ate almost all of it, which wasn't bad considering all the stella I drank as well... only some of the naan bread and 2 bhajis or something survived.

The above image of the goodies doesn't even tell the full story, I ate a load of samosas and bhajis cold without cooking them - the ones shown are the ones that Higz cooked up for me!

Anyway, Sunday was the usual Sunday roast round my parents... I neglected to get a picture, but it was roast beef with yorkshire pudding and lots of veg (the mashed carrot and swede was particularly nice) - I even ate all my sprouts!

Today I had Chicken Chassieur for lunch, quite a treat - and today I had my new phone delivered... Brilliant news all round, really.

Wonder what I'll have for tea? Check back soon and you may find out!!!

Payday Treats

Payday. This close to Christmas it doesn't mean a lot, it's going to be taken up mainly by the purchasing of Christmas presents and Christmas party fundage. However today I have got a lift in to work - as I planned on a few drinks at lunch and afterwards!!! Although this did mean that I never got to drive my car in snow :( (I have never driven this car in snow yet, I was/am looking forward to it - I want to see what it is like driving a 4x4 in the snowy/icey conditions).

I was really looking forward to my pub lunch, today I decided to have a "Carvery Sandwich with vegetables"... 4 quid for a plate of various veg and a sandwich with turkey, gammon, beef, mushrooms and onions inside fresh bread. Fantastic.

I now plan on going back to the pub after work and somehow getting home - but at least I don't have to worry what happens to my car, this time!

A Veritable Feast

Welcome back to my online culinary workshop, a web-based log of all interesting foodstuffs that grace my plate.

Firstly, an apology for not updating sooner... I won't bore you with excuses - but lets just say that my social calendar was too hectic for me too squeeze this in (well, we can say that - it may not be true)... at any rate, since my last update I have :-

• Watched my housemate win a speedboat in a game of Bullseye with Jim Bowen (pics here)
• Been to the Walkabout Bar in Bristol to watch England beat Australia in the rugby and England beat Argentina in the football... a quality day.
• Been to Exmouth for a kit car exhibition and watched England bravely battle against New Zealand in the rugby at a Sports Bar.

OK, so maybe I do have a few excuses for my slackness... anyway, back to food. Well, in the top left you will be able to see the rather special roast dinner I had round my parents' house. It had one of my favourite roast dinner components ever! Sausagemeat Stuffing! Ow yesh, a proper treat.

Well that was a couple of Sundays ago (13/11) and the next day, I had some sort of chicken meal for lunch (pic right)... but I have actually forgotten what that red stuff is all over it (it was from the work canteen) - I'm sure it was lovely, though.

My Mum actually gave me a slice of steak, so Monday evening I cooked it up with loads of pepper and some Thai Chilli sauce. I had also been given some of that white cabbage, onion and something in a cheese sauce (leftover from Sunday dinner), so I warmed that up too. I also opened a tin of sweetcorn and (in my quest to empty the freezer), I used up the last of the oven chips.

A mighty meal, I think you'll agree (although not as meaty as Gale's effort - a homage to Holmz, quality!)

Right, well my latest "homemade" (ahem) effort was the pasta pictured to the right...

A lovely meal, I chopped up 6 lincolnshire sausages and mixed it in with some pasta parcels (spinach & ricotta probably) with some spicy tomato sauce. Lubberly!!

There are many other meals I have had recently, which I did not get footage of. In particular, a meal at Nico's in Exmouth (I can't remember what I had, I was too drunk - but I do recall it was very nice) and a Sunday roast (I opted for lamb) at another restaurant in Exmouth.

Today's roast dinner in the canteen was OK :- roast beef with red cabbage, carrots and roasters followed (yes followed!) by tomato soup. Yesterdays was Lamb Lasagne!! Get in my son!

Christmas Warm-up

It's Wednesday and you know what that means! Yes, that's right - Roast Dinner Day! ...and this week the meat of choice was Roast Turkey!! A nice treat, although I will probably be sick of it by the end of next month...

It was still a nice, Christmassy warm up for next month tho. I will be eating a lot of Roast Turkey next month, with a Christmas meal in Surrey with Sarah on 3/12, the team Christmas meal on 9/12 and my housemate is arranging a kind of mates Christmas meal for the 11/12!! As usual, all details will appear on here - I bet you can hardly wait, I sure can't!!!

Hungry like a horse!

I went for something slightly different in the canteen yesterday, they didn't have anything too exciting anyway, to be fair.

I opted for egg florentine with roasted vegetables, some brocholli and croquet potatoes.

It wasn't very filling, so I had a "dessert" of chunky vegetable soup with a bread roll.
Anyway, my parents invited me in for some tea when I was dropping my Dad off at their house after the gym. So I obviously went in and ate a nice meal of steamed chicken, steamed veg, stuffing and boiled potatoes. I had actually finished eating my meal before thinking to take a picture, but luckily my brother's meal was in the microwave - so I grabbed a pic of that. Not much different, except my chicken was much bigger and I put loads of pepper and chicken gravy on mine.

Today my team at work were taken to a wine bar for a presentation and a few free beers. Once we got a taste in our mouths, we had to have lunch in a pub too. It had to be the Hungry Horse, cos I was so hungry. I decided on the lamb in the end, which certainly went down a treat.

Freezer clear out

Another crazy weekend, I don't think I really ate anything Friday evening - was more of a beer fest. If I ate, I don't remember it.

I woke up on Saturday afternoon and was obviously pretty hungry, so I decided it was time I "cook" myself something (haven't done that in a while, as my posts show). I needed a big meal (I was going to see Bukem + Conrad at the Academy in the evening).

I decided it was about time I emptied the freezer of some rather questionable contents. There is quite a bit in my freezer that is slightly past its sell-by date... there were a couple of chicken + vegetable pies which were out of date some months back, so obviously needed using up!

I had a few bags of oven chips and wedges that I bunged in the oven too. I microwaved some veg (sugarsnap peas, corn, peas, etc) - it's microwave-in-a-bag, don't worry - that's what you're meant to do! Lots of pepper and some gravy and it was a good meal... I made one small mistake, though - I made some stuffing too, but I didn't realise you had to bake it... so I had to take that round my parents for Sunday dinner instead.

Sunday dinner was, as ever, brilliant. Roast beef, yorkshire pudding, stuffing and loads of veg... accompanied with lots of stella and wine.

This was followed by cheese, biscuits and port and a slice of some rather nice cake (fudge, caramel or toffee or something... I forget).
Need to go food shopping this week, perhaps a curry on the cards?

Sober Chicken

Yesterday's canteen offering was Chicken Chasseur (half a chicken, some peas, potatoes and some kind of sauce with mushrooms and stuff in it). Not bad, but not the easiest meal to rush, as I had to squeeze a trip to the pub in my lunch hour too.

But because of the fact that I was planning on going to the gym in the evening with my Dad, I only had a coke… which Frank the Barman camped up for me! The picture to the right is of the camped up coke and you can also catch a glimpse of my mate, Matt, touching himself on the sly.

When I got back from the gym in the evening, I had a chilli beef pizza for my tea. As ever, I didn't leave it in the oven long enough and it was only warm in the middle. As ever, I was too impatient to put it back in the oven - so I ate it anyway.

No canteen food today, because today is Friday and that means pub lunch. Although it won't be the usual pub today, as I need to go to town and pay the deposit on my team's Christmas meal - might get some lunch there though and test the place out.

Drunken Chicken

Something very strange is happening. Last night I was pretty drunk and bought myself some fried chicken, the reason I know this (I would normally forget) - is because I took a picture before I ate it. I am obviously conditioning myself to grab footage for the food blog (or flog, as its becoming known), which makes this project wholly more interesting. As now I get some insight into what my alter-ego, drunk Holmz, eats. I'm not entirely impressed so far, though - not my finest hour for food.

Anyway, as you should know by now - Wednesday = Roast Dinner Day in my work canteen. Yesterdays offering was ham, one of my favourite cooked meats. Particularly the thick-cut variety which has been basted with something fruity. A quality lunch!

I wonder what is on offer in the canteen today?!?! Hopefully lasagne, that would be good...

The story of my big, fat sausage.

Yesterday I experimented with creating a sausage sandwich, using the strange looking sausage my parents brought me back from France.

Not quite sure what was in it, or how you are supposed to eat it - so I sliced it up and had it in a sandwich... after a few chewy mouthfuls I decided that, perhaps, I should have removed the skin first.
I did try again, this time with cheese as well. Much more pleasant!

Todays lunch was a healthy mix of vegetables in a sweet chilli sauce, with rice (and I plonked some broccholi on my plate as well, for good veggy measure).

By the way, a big food4holmz welcome to November - hopefully this month will be as tasty as the last?!