Lasagne x 2

Lasagne is certainly one of my favourite meals - and yesterday I had it twice! It was Roast Dinner Day in the canteen, but I was immediately torn when I saw they also had chicken and bacon lasagne too!! Well, it was no contest really - a new type of lasagne versus roast turkey (this soon after Christmas!) - so I had lasagne followed by some vegetable soup.

I didn't go to the gym yesterday, instead I cooked up a mahoosive beef lasagne that my parents bought for me from Lidl - it was absolutely huuuge (and delicious). It wasn't the first time I had had one though, when Chris used to live with me we would shop at Lidl quite regularly.

Today I was on another course, so went up the Orchard for lunch and a couple of stellas. I had a beef curry (50p extra got me a pint of stella too - aces!), it was alright - but nothing too impressive. In retrospect, I should have forked out some more cash and got myself a carvery sandwich (phwoar, they the bidniz!)

Also - check this out, got given some wine for no reason from work today. Quality!!

Right, I'm off home and then down town for a few more jars. "Christmas" party tomorrow! Woo!

Mid-Week Munchies

So, as is this log's design, a summary of the most recent items I have stuffed into my face... we will begin with yesterday's meal in the canteen - a strange vegetable sweet and sour with rice. I lobbed some cabbage on there too - help bulk it up (as there was no meat to fester in my guts).

I went to the gym in the evening and popped into my parents gaff in the evening, where I was fed some chunky vegetable soup! Marvellous!

Today we went to the Bradley Stoke pub, I had half a chicken with chips and veg. My mate Matt had the scampi (yes that's me sat opposite) - very nice too. We are starting to prefer the Bradley Stoke Inn to the Hungry Horse for our lunchtime pub excursions (2 meals for a tenner, and some pretty nice food).

Below is the amount of hits this site has had since I added the counter thing... a steady stream of visitors - nice work peeps!
Anyway, I was back at the gym after work today... came back and ate myself some tomato soup, not anywhere near as nice as the chunky vegetable - but it seems to have kept the hunger pangs away for now...

I might hit the gym again tomorrow, Thursday I should be visiting my friend Wendy and Friday I will be going to a "Christmas" party in Ashton Court mansion - should be a laugh.

I am also going to Wales on Saturday with my parents and grandparents to see their caravan and have a meal.

So now you're up to date - back to Football Manager for me (in the the Championship league with Bristol Rovers... surely Premiership next season?)

Weekend O' Plenty

I went round Mike's new gaff on Friday evening to help him move some stuff and I ended up staying for tea. We ordered from my favourite Chinese takeaway (the Golden Oriental) and had a set meal for 3 (between Mike, Michelle and I).

This included a spring roll each, barbecued spare ribs, beef with green pepper and black bean sauce, chicken in oyster sauce, sweet and sour pork (Cantonese style) and yung chow fried rice.

Fantastic!

Anyway, Saturday was the day of Mike's moving in party. A cracking night and I was fortunate enough not to be paged out!

This morning, having woken up on their sofa, Mike and I walked to the local Spar and purchased a load of sausages, eggs, bacon, beans etc and Michelle fried it all up and that was any potential hangover nipped in the bud.

The chicken or the egg?

Both! Although, as far as the past day is concerned, the egg came first...

Last night I decided to use up the eggs that Sarah left round, they were a bit past their sell by date - but I'm sure eggs don't go off... do they? I scrambled them up and lobbed in some cheese and slices of luncheon meat which I ate on toast with some (again, very old) tinned spaghetti hoops. Quite tasty in the end, although I grant you it looks quite disgusting.

This morning I munched a corned beef pasty on the way to work and for lunch we went up the Bradley Stoke pub where I had a Chicken and Bacon melt.. not bad for a fiver.

Mike and Michelle's party is coming up this weekend, hopefully I won't get paged out (I am on-call this week).

Might see some of you there?

Anyone would think I liked Roast Dinners...

... well to be fair, I do. I really do. Today is Wednesday and, of course, this day is synonymous with roasts in my world. It was quite a treat today, roast ham with onion gravy.

This week I had pretty much ran out of food in the house, I haven't been shopping this year and the cupboards were looking bare - but my lazyness confounded me to live off whatever scraps I could be bothered to throw together in the evenings. However, I blew the last lightbulb in my bedroom yesterday morning so I was resigned to my fate of hitting the supermarket.

My Mum kindly invited me over for some gammon steak and then I braved the supermarket, which was a million times quieter than my last visit (which must have been a couple of days before Christmas).

I managed to buy the bulbs I was after, a 24x440ml pack of Stella (for Saturday's party), some Innocent Smoothies (I love these) and all the other essentials (food etc). I even picked up some cereal on the off chance I might one day be up early enough to eat it (I was this morning, so I had a large helping of rice crispies!!)

Good luck to Burton Albion tonight, playing Manchester United in the FA Cup 3rd round replay at Old Trafford. Come on!

The good thing about training...

... is definitely the free food, and I am (as you know) a complete glutton.

The past couple of days I have been attending training sessions on a new platform my team are supporting. Obviously, it's nice to be out the office for a couple of days for a change of scenary - but it can be quite tiring staring at a powerpoint presentation for so long.

But the lunches are the highlight of the day.. lots of assorted rolls, sandwiches, pasties, scotch eggs, onion bhajis, vegetable samosas, chicken on a stick - as much as you can eat - it's just like a party.

So, to summarise, training food rocks!

Creativity with Sausagemeat and Stuffing :)

Not much to report on the eating front over the past few days, apart from the Roast Dinner I had around my parents' house last night (of course!) - Roast pork with sausagemeat stuffing. I was given the job of making the stuffing, so I got a bit creative.
Obviously the making of SMS (sausagemeat stuffing, not short message service) involves the mixing of sausagemeat with stuffing (I use sage and onion) and then oven cooking until cooked through. This time I chopped up some onion and added that, so give it some extra flavour.

It worked really well, I don't have any pictures of the final product - because I was too desperate to eat it (I was quite hungry after walking round Vassells Park with the dogs).

It should be a quiet week this week, I am both skint and on-call - but this just gives me an excuse to hide in my room all week playing my new game :)

Actually, I'm looking forward to watching the second episode of Life on Mars tonight, I don't tend to watch much telly - but this is alright.

He said "Let there be Roast"...

... and thus there was Roast. Roast Pork to be precise. Not bad for under three quid. The canteen round here aint too bad (especially on Wednesdays). It's a joy to come in to work just for that.

Blogs seem to be all the rage nowadays, I discovered yesterday that my mate Gale also has a blog. As he is also linking to mine, I thought it was about time to add a counter to this thing - should help me to gauge interest in my gastronomical diversity.

Also linked my flickr profile, now complete with a few pics of my brother and I indulging in our Christmas tradition of hanging up stockings every Christmas Eve. Most of which I don't know the date for at the moment, so you'll have to guess how old we are in most of them.

Going up the gym shortly, then back home to play on my new game (which seems to be eating up most of my time recently).

Turkey Mess...

Yesterday I was forced into "use stuff up" mode, as the "fresh" veg (from Christmas) in the fridge was starting to look somewhat different and the frozen turkey breast was months past its sell-by date.

So I bunged the turkey in the oven on max before I went to the gym (where I weighed in at 107kg that time - which is still classed as obese, apparently). When I got back the turkey was a bit burned, so my housemate Higz had been forced to turn the oven off. I chopped up the veg (carrots, cabbage and broccoli) and boiled it up, drained it and used the boiled water to make the gravy (much healthier, according to my old housemate Chris, as it traps in the goodness). Then I went to work on the turkey, once I had cracked through the hard burnt shell - there was much meat inside and it was quite tasty. Obviously I chucked a load of pepper on the plate, to spice it up a tad - but on the whole it was a good filling meal.

Today's lunch was at the Hungry Horse again. I wanted to try something different, so I opted for a prawn salad. It was OK, quite filling, but a bit bland. I think I will stick with the usual steak type thing from there from now on.

Not much else of interest to report on the eats recently, not been so interesting since Christmas. Had a good roast dinner round the parents' on Sunday night and a few canteen meals since the last post. Including a turkey fillet with mashed potato (which I never used to like, but it's growing on me a bit now - only if it has other ingredients mixed in tho).

I also had a Domino's pizza round Lesley's on Friday night, we opted for a large "Full House" and watched Heat (good film - recommended).

Roast dinner day tomorrow, I wonder what meat it will be? Stay tuned and find out...

Nice picture of my crotch there, by the way. Very attractive.

Muoio di fame - ha messo il cibo nel mio ventre!!!

I am a great fan of Italian food. For many years, in fact, lasagne was my favourite meal. I have also always been a fan of pizza, spaghetti bolognaise/carbonara, linguine, ravioli, etc.. So when I tried Gnocchi several years back, my expectations were obviously high - and it didn't disappoint.

Gnocchi is a potato based dumpling and the other day, Sarah bought a few packs of mozzarella stuffed gnocchi. So yesterday I decided to use the rest of it up with some bolognaise sauce.
I also still had quite a few fresh vegetables left, so I chopped up a few carrots and broccholi and boiled them up with the gnocchi.

When the gnocchi began to float, I knew they were done and drained them out and mixed them up with the bolognaise sauce.

I then chucked a generous amount of spices I had in the cupboard over it all (crushed chilli's, ground black pepper, garlic, chilli powder and lots of mixed herbs).

It was a great meal, my mouth was really stinging for ages - but it was worth it!

I went to the gym after that feast, thought I would better after all my Christmas eating and drinking. It wasn't as busy as I expected and I had quite a good workout (while watching Arsenal v Man U) - although my weight has gone back up to 110kg (I was 111kg when I started the gym in October last year and managed to get down to 106kg at some point before Christmas). This makes my current BMI (Body Mass Index) 31.1 - which according to this site makes me obese!! Obviously doesn't account for muscle.. ahem!

Anyway, today is roast dinner day (in the canteen) and today's meat was beef. A fine meal, although I was mildly upset to note that they had run out of mushroom soup.

So until next time.. Avere un buono mangia!!

Welcome to 2006 - a World Cup Year!!!

Well I made it. I have continued flogging into a new year. Welcome to food4holmz 2006 edition.

This post, as the first one of 2006, should be more of a special feature - and believe me, there is plenty of recent chow activity to cover from the last week to bother to get going down any sentimental 2005 review shite. Not yet, anyway.

So back to 2005 briefly (I know it seems like ages ago), well I went to Jesters comedy club on the evening of the 28th (which was ridiculously funny, again) and had a 10oz steak (for 3.99) and a couple of beers at the Wetherspoons opposite (the Magic Box - ooer). A few jugs of Coors in there and I was pretty wrecked. When I got back home, I apparently stayed up and chatted to Lee and Higz (who were round my gaff watching DVDs) until around 1.30am.

I must have needed hair of the dog, because the next day I went down the Orchard and had a spicy turkey jacket potato and a couple of beers.

I also had a pretty wicked meal in the evening, as Sarah made me bubble and squeak (mashed potato, cabbage and onion lightly fried and served with some Lincolnshire sausages and some peas). Even though I was knackered, I still found time to go drinking (albeit at Hollywood Bowl). Apparently I didn't go to bed until around 3am that night.

That must have been why I opted to go to the Bradley Stoke pub for lunch the next day, 2 meals for a tenner - so I had the salmon (Sarah had lasagne, which also looked pretty good).

In the evening, I went round my parent's for a meal. The meal was cooked by one of my Aunties and was a (rather alcoholic) Beef Bourgonon with assorted vegetables. I also had a starters of king prawns!

The next day was New Years Eve. I don't think I ate much, as I went to the watch Rovers (tragically, they lost to Wycombe 2-1) - but my Uncle did buy me a proper Cornish pasty at the Memorial Stadium (an amazing treat, they rock!!)

I went to the Patchway Sports and Social club for the NYE celebrations, however I couldn't drink to much, as I had got a bit sozzled at the Rovers match.

But was still a good evening out.

For New Years Day, Sarah had invited Carla and Lee round for a roast dinner and a much deserved chill out. So she made roast chicken (even with sausagemeat stuffing!!) which was, of course, quality! Dessert was vanilla and/or mint vienetta (nice!). We then watched DVDs and drank various lagers and wines until the wee hours.

The following day was a Bank Holiday, so I went to Brean for the day with Sarah, my Mum and the dogs. When we got back home, Sarah went home to Surrey and I went round my parents for a "Sunday" dinner (roast pork!!) - I ate myself stupid and then went up the Orchard with Mike and Michelle.

I will get round, at some point, to doing a mini review of last year's tidy tucker - including some of my greatest home-made achievements, favourite meal out, best takeaway etc.. So that should be something to look forward to.

Anyway, welcome to 2006 - may all your meals be tasty ones!!