Through the pie hole...

... and so my journey ends

2006-10-20T22:02:00.000+01:00

Well the food blog is a year old today and I have decided that this is a natural point to end my food logging experiment.

I hope you've all enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed eating it.

Anyway, my final entry begins with breakfast. A fine canteen job, mainly necessary because I didn't eat any tea last night (went to the pub after training).

This did mean I wasn't very hungry for lunch, so I had a salad from the canteen.

After work I went home and met up with Nathan, Higz and Lee - so we could discuss Nathan's stag do.

We ordered a pizza each, I opted for a large dominos "meltdown" pizza (level 3) - this included Spicy Meatballs, Chilli Cheese Slices, Jalapeño Peppers plus a generous drizzle of American Style Mustard with added fresh Red Chilli Peppers and topped with Chilli Flakes. Due to some phone issues the picture is currently (possibly forever) unavailable.

*edit 06/11/06 - thought this post looked a bit bare for a grand finale, due to me losing my phone with the pic of the pizza on it before uploading. Partly because of this, and partly because they are so damn tasty, I had myself a Dominator with the Meltdown Level 3 topping last night and took a pic to fill the space*

Well anyway, so concludes a year-in-the-life of my stomach. Thanks for reading.. and may all you meals be banquets! Peace!!

Check out what I has made..

2006-10-19T16:40:00.000+01:00

I did go to the gym on Tuesday night, but it was quite late in the evening (due to traffic). Afterwards I popped into Tescos, mainly because it is right next to the gym - but also because I wanted to buy some more of those salmon lasagnes that I had round my parents the day before.

I also needed some sauce for the taglietelli that Sarah had bought some time ago that needed using up and also the chicken left over from the weekend stew.

I ended up buying a few things, the sauce for the chicken and pasta I got was garlic and mushroom. I managed to find a salmon lasagne (only one, though, unfortunately). I also purchased some mushrooms, parsley, some tins of (mainly seafood type) soup, a loaf of bread, lots of herbs and spices.

I also picked up some discounted items from the reduced to clear section. I have noted the good thing about going to the supermarket to get food to eat immediately, is that they sell fish and seafood stuff that needs using up for not a lot. So I bought a salmon terrine (smoked salmon filled with a salmon mousse) for a quid and a pack of seafood for 75p.

I meant to eat it as a starter before cooking the chicken and pasta, but I ended up filling myself up.

I decided to cook the pasta stuff up anyway - so I chopped the chicken, some mushrooms, an onion and some garlic and fried it up. I also boiled the taglietti.

I also spiced up the mixture with black pepper, mixed herbs and lots of parsley.

When the mixture and the pasta was cooked, I drained the pasta and added it to the rest. Then I added the sauce.

Once it was all mixed up and cooked through, I rammed as much of it as I could into some tuppaware. Then what was left in the pan I ate myself. Very tasty.

I actually remembered to take the tuppaware containing my creation to work the next day for lunch, but was dismayed to note that the canteen was serving lamb lasagne (one of my favourites of the canteen specials).

However I warmed my pasta in the canteen microwave and ate it anyway. It was very nice (although I was still thinking of the lasagne all the way through it).

After work I went to the gym again and did my usual workout. I went straight from work, so I could have had a lot of time there - but my tummy started moaning at me, so I was forced to go home and eat.

I tried one of the seafood soups I had purchased, it was some kind of seafood gumbo and contained prawns and lobster amongst other things. I spiced it up with chilli powder, pepper, mixed herbs and parsley and it was quite tasty. I had lots of bread for dipping, so it filled me up nicely.

So to today, Thursday, as we should all know by know.. Thursdays are roast dinner days in the canteen. Today the meat was pork and the portions were generous. One small gripe was that they have started charging for stuffing now - tightwads - 25p for a chunk of stuffing. That must have been what pushed my bill up past 3 quid.

I did have a carrot and coriander soup with a roll for afters though.

Tonight I will be training with Greyfriars again, although I doubt I will be able to play this weekend in the cup match - as I am on-call this weekend. Booo! Which especially sucks as the footy team are having a night out in the evening, which would have been a good drinking chance.

Count the Salmon..

2006-10-17T16:56:00.000+01:00

This log entry kicks into action on Friday afternoon where the canteen did not appeal and forced a couple of us to the Hungry Horse. I had a whole chicken crown with a pork sausage and veg with a jacket potato. A few people in my team at work are not fans of the Hungry Horse, they write it off every time but never giving a very good excuse. I like the Hungry Horse, myself. I used to eat lots of 20oz steaks there (before I started being a bit more careful over my dietry habits). The mixed grills there are also top drawer.

As with any typical Friday afternoon, though, when I got back I ended up working on a fairly large fault that wouldn't go away and (as on-call chappy) had to stay in the office trying to fix it.

This was a concern, as I had plans to go to Saffrons curry house after work with Sarah and some friends. Luckily I managed to resolve the fault before we had to order, so I was back in time to select what I wanted from the menu.

I haven't eaten at a sit down type Indian restaurant for ages and, not being a fan of poppadoms, ordered myself a keema naan for starters. Quite filling for a starter but washed down with Kingfisher lager sorted it out.

For my main course I chose the sag king prawn curry (one of the most expensive curries on the menu). I should probably try ordering a hotter curry next time as this was quite mild, but I just love king prawns and do like the spinach in the curry too.

It did fill me up very well though, perhaps I shouldn't have had a hungry horse for lunch. Or a keema naan for starters. I certainly wouldn't have been able to manage a dessert (not that they looked very appetising anyway).

I was proper knackered anyway, but didn't get much sleep that night as I kept getting paged.

Nonetheless I turned out for Greyfriars on Saturday afternoon (after eating a load of muesli). I started the match again and lasted the full 90 mins, but was left frustrated again and the team virtually collapsed against the opposition from Knowle. We lost 10-0 (although the Knowle team provided the ref, who kept giving dubious penalties).

I drove back from Knowle and met up with the other Greys teams for a beer and voting of man of the match (I got 2 votes for MotM, not sure why).

Then I drove my parents to some hotel in Brislington for a wedding party and then got home in time for a Moroccan stew that Sarah had made from chicken, chick peas, almonds, garlic, apricot and cous cous (I know all this as I found the ingredients in the kitchen). It was very tasty and very filling (especially as I ate most of Sarah's too).

On Sunday I wasn't allowed much of a lie in, as it was Sarah's sister's birthday - so Sarah drove me up to Surrey in the early afternoon. We did stop at Leigh Delamere services on the way, for breakfast. I had a poached salmon and watercress which had probiotic yoghurt in too apparently. It kept the hunger pangs at bay for a bit anyway.

The birthday meal was at a restaurant called the Boat House in Chertsey. I didn't take any pictures, but the food was good. I had a starter of prawn salad with avocado and a main course of a shoulder of lamb with roasted vegetables.

I got dropped off at Reading train station, where I was unpleasantly surprised that the cost of a fare back to Bristol Parkway was £35. Then endured the hour long train ride to Bristol, where my brother picked me up and took me home.

Monday (yesterday) I went to work and ate my lunch in the canteen. There was, again, very little choice (I am going to have to read the canteen feedback intranet at some point for some humour) - but I decided on a vegetable chilli. It was OK. Just OK. I of course had the obligatory soup (vegetable) for dessert, with a brown roll.

After work I went to the gym with my Dad in our new van. I had quite a short work out as we also had to use the time to renew our membership for the next year (worked out about £150 each). I weighed myself after the work out and was 95.5kg.

I got to drive the van home - very strange, not what I am used to (obviously).

My Mum invited me in for tea, so I ate my tea with my parents. It was salmon lasagne and was very tasty indeed! I will have to get some of them from Tesco myself. It was well nice. The potatoes were Cypriot, also pretty tasty.

Well today is Tuesday. For some unknown reason I had a baguette for breakfast. It was a salmon, lemon dill, crème fraiche and radichio baguette. Fancy.

I still had lunch, though. It was an uninspiring line up, but I plumped for the vegetable risotto which I added peas and carrots to. It was mediocre to poor, even by canteen standards. At least the tomato soup was nice and tasty.

Tonight I plan to hit the gym again and then rush home to watch the footy (Man Utd v FC Copenhagen)

Sarah did leave some ingredients round my gaff, so I might cook myself something tonight. Will need to pick up some pasta sauce type stuff though (I have chicken and tagliatelli).

Another week on-call..

2006-10-12T23:52:00.000+01:00

Monday night I was paged around 3.30am which afforded me and extra hour or so sleep before work on Tuesday, which was nice.

Tuesday's canteen orientated lunch was a sausage casserole.. there wasn't much to choose from, but the casserole was OK.

The canteen was out of soup, so I had to have a more conventional dessert - a natural yoghurt with strawberries and honey. Not cheap at £1.45, but not bad.

After work I went home and used up the rest of the prawns in a sandwich with salad, very tasty! I do love prawns. The bread was freshly baked in Asda the day before.

I didn't get up to much on Tuesday night, that I can remember. I think I watched the first episode of Lost season 3 with Higz.

On Wednesday I went to work and ate in the canteen, as usual. I had lamb and vegetable pie, followed by a carrot soup (with the obligatory bread roll).

After work I went straight to the Patchway Sports and Social to meet up with the guys to watch Croatia v England. A pretty disastrous game, really that ended 2-0 to the home team. As England drew away to Macedonia the previous Saturday it leaves us on the same points as 4 other teams, but with 2 of them having a game in hand. Not to mention the team below, which also has a game in hand (that would put them above England if they win).

No more qualifiers until March 2007 for England now, so we will have to wait a long while before we get to rectify the situation somehow.

I felt quite rough on Thursday morning and had to have a bit of a breakfast in the canteen. I had beans on toast with a rasher of bacon and a sausage too. I turned it into a sandwich and ate it (messily) with my hands. Quite tasty though.

When lunchtime came, I wasn't that hungry and it was roast dinner day! The roast was beef and it looked good, but I instead opted for the vegetable lasagne - which was also nice.

I would have had the soup afterwards, as it was broccoli - but I was a bit too full.

After work I went straight to Golden Hill to train with the Greys 3rd and 4th team. I had a good start, bagging 4 early goals. My fitness, touch and confidence are all improving every time. Hopefully I will start the game on Saturday (away against the Eagle House Elite Reserves).

After training I didn't feel too hungry, so just had some slices of toast and marmite.

Tomorrow Sarah is coming down and after work we will be meeting some people for a sit down Indian meal. Curry-tastic!!

White Van Holmz?

2006-10-09T23:17:00.000+01:00

I went football training on Thursday after work. Another pretty good session, definitely felt fitter and scored another goal. My parents needed to borrow my car, as their one is broken - so I dropped that round after football and popped in for a surprise tea.

Breaded chicken with boiled spuds and various vegetables.

Friday was a day that I had been looking forward to for a while.. a corporate event in town on a Friday afternoon meant easy access to a night of drunken debauchery. I had a quick sweet and sour vegetables with rice in the canteen before heading to town.

The plan came off well and myself and several work colleagues were in a pub on the waterfront nice and early. When we got hungry, we went to Lloyds Bar One and ordered our meals (most from the 2 for 6.99 menu, although none of us ate 2 meals at that time - unlike me on my birthday night out at the same place).

I apparently had the lasagne, although I don't remember ordering it or eating it (yes, I was obviously wasted by this point). I do like the lasagnes from there, it's a real shame I can't remember eating it. It must have satisfied me because I think I fell asleep soon after (although I did get a second wind and went to Sloanes eventually with the guys).

Somehow, Saturday morning I woke up in my own bed at home (I have since heard from Tony that I had a taxi back with Mike and himself, although I can't still remember it). After eating a quick bowl of muesli, I got my football stuff together and met up with my footy team mates for the game.

I was pleased to have been chosen to start the match (more to do with lack of other players than my own rise in the pecking order, perhaps), we lost the match 6-1 despite going 1-0 up. I think the highlight of the game for me was a confrontation with one of the opposition full-backs who threatened to meet me after the game, managed to keep my cool and not get sent off - must be getting old.. although I managed to last the 90 mins without getting out of huff, but I think that says more about my involvement in the game than my fitness. Getting better though.

After the game I went home with the intention of going down the social to watch England v Macedonia in the Euro qualifiers. However felt quite knackered, so Lee came round and we watched it on the telly instead.

At half time my lazyness must have peaked, because I couldn't even be bothered to cook myself anythinf - so Lee and I ordered a pizza from Pizza Hut (I was curious to see what pizzas from there are like and I had some mailshot mentioning several offers). Unfortunately I couldn't order online, as the site incorrectly suggested they didn't deliver to my postcode (so probably won't use them again). The offer was buy one get one half price and also some free garlic bread.

I ordered a large supreme deluxe with a "cheesey bite" base (basically the crust was a series of dough balls filled with cheese, quite impractical really) and Lee had a chicken delux with the same size and base.

I ate the whole of mine during the footy and felt quite sick, it tasted nice - but the cheesey bites made it very filling. I don't think Lee liked his much, as he left half of it round mine (and refused to take it with him). So Higz and I had that for breakfast on Sunday.

In non-food news, I also got a van on Saturday. I have been talking of getting one for a while, but now my parents are without a car they decided to get themselves a runner while they are car-less and offered me the chance on going halves with them on a van. So they bought a white Ford Escort 1.8D van from somewhere for 500 notes, which I will take off their hands when they get their one back.

So as I said, Sunday breakfast was leftover pizza and I didn't eat much else until the evening - where I got very hungry and never had much food in the house. I ended up cooking some potato wedges, boiling up some curried rice from a packet and then opening a tin of vegetable curry and eating that. It was, ummm, different. Not bad though.

Today is Monday and the beginning of a week on-call. Well until 9am on Saturday anyway, because a chap from work needed the weekend after off to go on holiday so asked me to swap. Which should work out better for me anyway, as there is no footy game that week - so I may end up playing this Saturday after all.

I had lunch in the canteen today, opted for chicken curry with rice. Not bad. Was a shame the soup was leek and potato, so I didn't bother with that..

After work I went to the Mall, I haven't been there for ages. I wanted to use up some birthday gift vouchers and get some CDs and DVDs. I was also after a kit bag for football. I didn't manage to get a kit bag, but I did see 5 people I knew there - popular place that Mall.

After the Mall I went to Asda and picked up some food for tea. I bought some salad, some herring, some prawns and some mussels. I decked the salad out and sprinkled it with lots of prawns and mussels. I also stuffed the herrings with prawns and mussels and cooked it up. Extremely tasty!

I've also just noticed my insurance is up at the end of the month, I have got a quick quote online and it was 550 quid! That is without the van.. ouch!

Traffic chaos and tasty foods.

2006-10-05T16:40:00.000+01:00

Monday evening didn't go as planned due to traffic getting out of work (a local road closed causing a surprising amount of traffic - and will continue to do so for the next 4 weeks), it took me an hour down one short road - normally it only takes 5 mins to get all the way to and from work.

I did go to the gym after, though, but the traffic did kill my evening. So when I got home from the gym I decided on a bowl of muesli with a chopped up apple, rather than cooking the sausages and pasta I had.

Tuesday I was more prepared for the traffic and I took my gym stuff with me to work.

In the canteen at lunch I had myself a pie with a turkey and sweetcorn filling with peas, courghettes and carrots. Not that bad really. I even had a dessert of mushroom soup.

After work I cut through the traffic and went to the gym (not far from work) until the traffic subsided and then I went home.

With lots of the evening to kill I cooked up the tagliatelle with some spinach and pea sauce (I even threw in a tin of out of date spinach - at least that's used up now). I also cooked some pork and mustard and cumberland sausages. Some of which I ate immediately, some I put on my pasta and some I put aside for another time.

I did spice the meal up a bit with some pepper and various spices and stuff. It was quite tasty and very filling.

After that I went round Welsh Chris' and got drunk while he and his mates played poker. Card games aren't normally my thing, but it did look like a lot of fun.

Wednesday lunchtime was again spent in the canteen, the meal of sausage hot pot was OK - the portion wasn't great so I loaded it up with veg.

It wasn't enough to fill me up and the soup (vegetable) had run out already !!

There were quite a few desserts available, including pineapple crumble, treacle sponge and a few others. I opted for some kind of flapjack cake with raspberry, it was quite tasty and not bad for 40p..

Again I had my gym stuff with me, so went straight there after work and worked out for an hour or so. Then I went home and ate the rest of my pasta that was leftover from the day before. It actually tasted better than the previous day for some reason.

Today, Thursday, I had to get up early and go to the dentists for my 6 month check up. Never pleasant, but over and done with now - and no more check ups until April 2007.

For lunch I again went to the canteen. The roast was lamb, but instead I opted for beef lasagne. Lasagne is always good and this was no exception.

I am planning on going football training direct from work tonight and tomorrow I am effectively working a half day, as I have a workshop in town from 1400 - 1700 - so I may as well stay in town with my work mates and get slaughtered.

It is also Sarah's 27th birthday tomorrow - happy birthday! She is spending it in New York. They do some really good steaks there apparently..

Burgers, Beans and Baguettes.. oh, and Bison!

2006-10-02T17:31:00.000+01:00

Didn't really eat anything on getting home from the gym on Wednesday night. I was really tired, not from the gym, but just in general. I ate just a few rounds of toast and tinkered round on the computer for the rest of the night.

Thursday was roast dinner day (woo!) - the meat was turkey and it was quite tasty. No doubt I supplimented my meal with soup, although I can't remember what flavour it was..

After work I went straight to football training, where I had a good session - felt quite fit and scored 4 goals.

Although tempted to stop at Subway again, I drove on home knowing I had some bread to use up. I had beans on toast in the end, using Mexican Mean Beanz.

On Friday I ate lunch early in order to allow me a full hour in the pub at lunch, so I grabbed a salmon baguette from the canteen and ate it outside while Trew had a smoke (as pictured).

I went to the Orchard for lunch and managed to squeeze 3 Stellas in.

After work I had to go round my parents as they needed to borrow my car for the weekend as their's was broke, Sarah came down from Surrey and met me at their's. Sarah suggested going out for a meal and I fancied Quinceys, so I treated her and my parents to a meal there.

I had a starter of crab cakes, quite tasty.

But the main course I opted for was bison burger (and I paid the 3 quid extra to double up). Man, was I stuffed.. especially with all the Stella I was drinking too.

I finished off with an Irish coffee, after which I felt quite tired and bloated. Needed to sleep.

The next day, Sarah dragged me to Sainsburys to buy stuff for lunch. I always hate going shopping on a weekend, preferring to go late at night on a weeknight when it is quieter. However none of the food in my kitchen was up to scratch for what Sarah wanted to eat (not a beans on toast fan?)

Sarah bought a few packs of Quorn mince, some tasty looking sausages, some tagliatelle, some potato wedges, some organic hot chocolate, some pasta sauces, lots of seed type things (and some dry roasted soya nuts which were surprisingly nice), kidney beans, chilli con carne mix and various other things. Ahh, she did buy me some beef jerky - which is always a treat!!

Then we went home and she cooked up a quorn chilli con carne with potato wedges. Spicy, although slightly sweet too. Sarah asked me if I noticed anything different about the chilli (apart from it not being made with real meat, obv) and I said it tasted alright. Then she said she had made it with chocolate powder.. it did start to taste quite sweet after that (although probably wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't told me).

Later that day we picked up Tony (from his new digs in LW) and got a coach to Monmouth to watch Fate By Chance rock it up in some Community Hall type place (not quite the mosh pit I expected). Still managed to have a fair few sneaky cans of stella on the way there and lots of Fosters (it was all they served) when I got there.

We got home around 1.30am and all crashed (Tony reacquainting himself with my sofa).

Higz got home on Saturday from America, which was good to see. His full Florida review can be found here, I am very jealous of the food they had out there. Almost worth the flight money on its own, I expect.

Sunday morning I woke up and we needed to drop Tony back off in LW and then get round my parents, so we could give Sarah her birthday pressies before she went home (she is off to NY for her actual birthday, so we won't see her).

On the way to LW, we stopped at McDonalds because we were hungry. I tried a "Big Tasty" burger, it was alright - but never worth 3.99 or however much is cost.

Back at my parents' we gave Sarah her pressies and then she went back to Surrey and I stayed round my parents for Sunday dinner.

The roast dinner was chicken and it was pretty big, loads of meat on it.

When dinner was served up it included stuffing and sausages wrapped in bacon - nice work!

I went home and watched some TV while tinkering round on my PC (playing Football Manager 2006, there's a new version coming out soon - I probably won't get it, though, as I am still playing the old one quite heavily).

This morning is Monday and my first food blog entry of October 2006. Incidentally this food blog started in October 2005, almost a whole years worth of food I have eaten there.

The canteen options were quite lame this morning, I ended up settling for a vegetable curry with rice. It was OK. I had a soup with a roll for afters and it seemed to fill me up.

I am going to the gym after work and then will probably eat that tagliatelle, pasta sauce and sausages when I get back (the stuff that Sarah bought on Saturday that we never got a chance to eat).

Some quality eats!!

2006-09-27T17:35:00.002+01:00

My Sunday evening meal was a tub of macaroni cheese, not actually that bad - although nowhere near as good as a proper meal. Certainly, as Sundays go, a bit of a lame effort.

Monday lunchtime I hit the canteen and had beef stew and a dumpling (stingy canteen), I chucked loads of veg on to fill myself up nice. The soup was leek and potato, so I didn't bother with that.

As my parents were away on holiday, I didn't need to pick my Dad up - so I went straight from work to the gym. After a nice long work out I drove home and helped Tony move to Lawrence Weston (from my house, obviously). His new gaff is pretty nice, actually.

On the way back home again, I stopped off at Asda and bought a few bits and pieces for the next couple of days worth of food.

When I got home I immediately prepared a nice salad for myself, tandoori chicken on a bed of salad (I even chopped up my last avocado and an onion to mix into it). The salad was dressed with lots of balsalmic vinegar based dressing. I was quite pleased with the outcome.

This brings me to yesterday, where I ate a rather nice chilli with rice in the canteen. I was forced to suppliment the meal with carrots and peas, due to the space left on the plate.

After that I had a bowl of mushroom soup with a roll. One of my favourite soups.

After work I got home and heated some sliced veg (bought from Asda the previous day). Consisted of sliced courghette, cabbage, potato, carrot, broccholi and possibly more besides. Then I heated some mexican chicken which I plonked on the top and ate - very nice.

Once I had eaten, I went round Welsh Chris' to watch Man Utd beat Benfica in the Champions League.. of course here I drank lots of stella.

This morning I was quite hungry, but resisted the temptation to have a breakfast and instead waited until lunchtime to eat.

I had the lamb hotpot for lunch and, for once, bought my (vegetable) soup and roll at the same time. The whole job cost £2.60. Bargain.

Marge Simpson look-a-like..

2006-09-24T15:12:00.000+01:00

After work on Tuesday I went to the gym with my Dad and when I got home I had another leftover food item from the Gower trip, a pot of pasta - just add boiling water (and loads of spices.. obviously).

It was OK, but not something I would buy myself (this was actually Sarah's). I think there's another one in the cupboard actually.

Despite there being a week of rubbish food in the canteen, Wednesday surprised everyone with lamb lasagne on the menu. We were considering going to the Hungry Horse until we found out about the lasagne option!!

It was tasty too and I had a dessert of carrot and coriander soup with a bread roll. Quality.

After work I went to the gym again. When I got home I cut up an avocado and tried mashing it up with some mayo.. it didn't really work, but I had a few slices of Tony's pizza and I wasn't hungry after that.

Thursday was roast dinner day in the canteen, which is always a treat. The meat was pork and the portions were generous. It was good pig.

The soup for afters was vegetable.

After work I went football training and felt quite fit (after a week's worth of gym activity), although my footy skills were quite poor.

On the way home I stopped off at the Subway in Filton and had a foot-long sub with everything.

I opted for the Italian herb and cheese bread.

Whilst I had been training, Tony had been to look at a flat in Lawrence Weston. He liked it so much he plonked a deposit down and will be moving in on Monday!! So sounds like I will be living on my own (until Saturday when Higz gets back from Florida, that is!)

Friday I had a quick canteen snack at around 11.30, it was vegetable moussaka. I ate that with some brocchili and carrots.

I didn't go to the pub for lunch anyway in the end, it was raining...

After work I got a lift down town and met up with the boys for some drinks.

Saturday morning I woke up round Bud, Boz and Poj's house with an hour or so to get to Patchway for the game. Luckily Boz gave me some Hunger Breaks beans (spicy) and also I rang Gale and he came and picked me up (he was heading to Patchway anyway).

I came on as a sub for Greyfriars after being linesman for the first hour of the game. The score was 3-0 to the other team when I came on and the final score was 4-0. I thought I played OK and created a few chances, also my fitness levels were good (despite being leathered the night before).

After the game I met up with the other team members including Gale for some drinks. Then I went home and fell asleep on the sofa.

This morning I woke up and cooked up some egg and bacon sandwiches for Tony and I. I grilled the bacon and poached the eggs, very tasty!

Afterwards Tony talked me into dying my hair blue, as he had some dye left.

Sarah says I am easily led... don't think she's too happy about it :)

I can always shave it off at some point anyway.

There won't be any Sunday roast for me this week, as my parents are away in Woolacombe.

Ahoy, landlubbers!

2006-09-19T17:33:00.000+01:00

Welcome to September 19th - AKA - International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

It is also exactly a year ago that I went to Ibiza with Gale, Matt and Lee. It is also nearly a year ago since I joined the gym! In fact I got my renewal notice through yesterday morning (gonna work out £150 for a year's gym peak time membership, I get a corporate discount through work).

I did go to the gym last night, but I was feeling hungry so I ate one of Tony's corned beef pasties first. This was probably a mistake as I got quite a bad stitch and couldn't run very well. I made up for this on the cycling machine and stuff and when I weighed myself afterwards I was 95.8kgs.

Anyway, I had a craving for some prawn and avocado for some reason (possibly that my mate Trew is always eating avocados).. So after the gym I went home via Asda and bought some avocadoes, some salad (containing lettuce, onion, baby tomatoes, celery, carrot and cucumber), some prawns, some Marie Rose sauce, some crayfish (already seasoned in chilli and pepper) and made myself a nice salad.

First I peeled the avocado, then I sliced it up and layed it out on the plate. Then I covered it in the Marie Rose sauce. Then I placed the prawns and crayfish on the sauce. Then I filled the rest of the plate with salad. Then I poured a generous helping of chilli vinegar over everything.

I have to say, I was very proud of the dish and couldn't wait to tuck in and eat it all up. It was very tasty indeed.

I was thinking the other day how I used to make crazy triple decker sandwiches (pre-blog), I should get some bread and crazy ingredients and revive that old tradition.

So back to today.. the canteen was looking disappointing today - but the steak and mushroom pie was actually quite nice in the end... especially as they had lots of nice veg on offer to accompany it. I had the pie with cauliflower cheese, carrots, cabbage and peas. Filling.

Again I didn't have any soup for dessert, it was leek and potato. Not my style.

Probably going to the gym again after work with my Dad.

Messy Weekend (and on-call)

2006-09-18T17:37:00.000+01:00

Thursday night I was stuck on a call until 10 mins into the training k/o, I still turned up and had a kick about though and wasn't paged out. The training was at Golden Hill (where Bristol Rovers train, apparently).

After the training I went home and slobbed out. I didn't fancy beans on toast again, so I just ate a few rounds of toast and a bit of marmite. Nothing photo worthy.

Friday I went to work, as normal. What wasn't normal was that I decided not to go to the pub for lunch, I had decided instead to eat in the canteen and save any beer drinking for the evening. As I was on-call I thought I would drive to Yate in the evening and meet Mike and Matt for a bevvy and, obviously, as I would be driving, any beer I had in the day would mean I couldn't drink anything in the evening.

The canteen didn't have a great deal on offer, but they did have a kind of filo pastry type basket - which they filled with chilli and accompanied with rice and salad. Quite tasty.

After work I drove Tony to Yate and met Mike and Matt at the Farmhouse pub. After a beer or two, I decided I wanted more and drove my car round Mike's parents house and left it there. Then I walked back to the pub and continued drinking.

I quite liked the pub and even ordered myself a pizza there (ham and mushroom, I think). When the pub shut, we continued drinking round Mike's.

Unfortunately, I got paged about 9am and had to go home to Patchway and fix the fault. When I had resolved the problem, I went to bed for a few hours before meeting up with the Greyfriars team (I had ruled myself out of playing due to on-call, but wanted to go and support them anyway).

They were playing Wessex Wanderers (so far the league's whipping boys) away. Even though I was on-call and feeling rough from the night before, I really wanted to be out with the team. Especially when the game kicked off and it became apparent that the front line were going to get lots of chances. The game finished 8-0 to the visitors (us), so we now have 3 points in the league.

After the game I drove round my mate Chris Head's for a cup of tea, as he only lives round the corner.

Then I joined up with Gale (his side, the A's, had also won.. again) and the rest of the team again at the Bradley Stoke pub. I was getting very hungry by this point, so I went home after a few beers.

Back at home, I made myself a tuna salad (salad with thanks to Higz who left me some food, as he is currently on holiday in Florida - with Nath, Emma, Carla and Lee). I went to bed at around 11pm, after watching a movie (Mission: Impossible, I think.. I first saw that film at the cinema in the Isle of Wight for my 16th birthday - 10 years ago, whoa!)

I woke up on Sunday morning at 11am, I was pretty pleased that I slept for 12 solid hours. Around 2pm I went round my parents and had a Sunday roast, the meat was lamb - tasty.

After the meal, my parents got a film out - but I had made arrangements to go up the Soc with Welsh Chris. I managed to convince WC to drop the soc and just come over mine to watch the Man U v Arsenal game. So we watched the game and had a few beers.

When he left, I chopped myself up a pineapple (one that Higz had left) and ate the whole thing.

This morning, Monday, I got persuaded (damn Martin) to go down to the canteen for breakfast. I had myself a toasted bacon, sausage and egg sandwich - with brown sauce. Very tasty and meant I was nice and full (even at lunch).

This was fortunate, as the lunchtime canteen menu was piss-poor. There was nothing to choose from, so I had a spicy veg wrap for my lunch. I wasn't even tempted by the soup (celery - pfft).

I intend to work quite hard in the gym this week, then hopefully I will be able to make more of an impression at footy training on Thursday!!

More beans and other culinary delights!

2006-09-14T17:17:00.000+01:00

Well despite my rant about baked beans on toast, I got home on Monday night and made myself...... beans on toast! The beans in question were Heinz Mean Beanz (tikka flavour), which we left over from the Gower (I definitely stocked up too much..)

As I was on-call I didn't go to the gym or anything fancy.

On Tuesday, the canteen offerings were very poor. I ended up opting for a peppered steak burger in a bap, with salad and I added some carrots and sweetcorn to try and help bulk the meal up.

It didn't do any good and I didn't fancy the soup on offer either (leek and potato). But when a colleague joined the table with a chocolate crunch covered in chocolate custard, I decided to have a rare dessert.

The chocolate crunch type thing was quite tasty and I properly covered it in chocolate custard too. The whole shaboodle cost me 38p. Bargain.

After work I went round my parents' for tea and was cooked a chicken breast, sausage, stuffing and vegetables. After I had scoffed that, I went home to watch Liverpool in their first European Champions League game (a 0-0 draw against PSV).

Wednesday's canteen offering was not great either, the best option was the lamb and veg pie - which I had with a vegetable chilli side. It was OK, but not amazing - I followed it up with a bowl of leek and mushroom soup.

After work, Lee and Welsh Chris came round my gaff and we watched Man Utd beat Celtic 3-2 in the Champions League and had a few drinks and a dominos pizza along the way.

I selected a double decadence with a mighty meaty topping. I think WC and Lee just shared a large mighty meaty and some chicken strippers. The pizza was, as ever, a tasty treat.

I got paged out in the night, so slept through today until around 11am (when Tony brought me up a cuppa).

As today was roast dinner Thursday, I had a roast in the canteen. It consisted of roast beef, yorkshire pudding, green beans and cauliflower cheese. Tasty.

After work I plan to train with Greyfriars (at Golden Hill in Horfield), I am on-call - so it could be a short run out!! It's only booked for an hour and I've only been called out once all week so far - so what are the odds?

This week.. I 'ave bin mostly eatin' :- Beans on Toast

2006-09-11T18:00:00.000+01:00

After work on Friday I got home and had broke into a tin of "Hunger Breaks" (leftover from my Gower trip), this tin contained beans and chicken nuggets. I ate them hot and on toast (unlike at the Gower). Then I recruited Lee and Tony into coming down town.

We met up with Bud, Boz and Poj at Sloanes. Having been unsuccessful in my quest to blag a lift down, I went with a contraversial bus plot to get us from Cribbs Causeway to Blackboy Hill. The trip took around 20 mins and cost £2.50. This system worked quite well, so I may be applying it again.

Of course, Friday we drank ourselves silly and I then the three of us Patchwegians got a taxi home at the cost of a fiver each.

I had to be at Patchway High for 1pm to meet the other Greyfriars players on the Saturday, so I got up at midday and had another tin of leftover Gower beans - this time the "kebab attack" version of the Hunger Breaks line.

I again played for the Greys 4th team (the 'B' team) and again we lost. This time 8-2 at home to Mendip United reserves. I only played the final 45 mins, but the weather was hot and I got tired very quickly - will need to work more on sprinting in the gym, I think.

After the game, Lee and I met Gale (whose team, the 'A' team, won.. again) and the other Greys players at the Bradley Stoke pub. Lee and I ended up staying there until closing time and I don't think I got round to eating anything.

The next morning I woke up (on my sofa.. bizarrely) and the weather was so nice, I agreed to walk the dogs with my parents. We walked the dogs round Snuff Mills / Vassels park for a bit and then went to the White Lion pub in Frenchay. I didn't drink any alcohol, as I feeling slightly rough, but I did eat a rather tasty mushroom dish (at the White Lion). I forgot to take a picture (I was so hungry!) - it was a starter anyway as we were to have a big Sunday dinner later in the day.

The roast dinner that my Mum made was beef and it was very tasty and filling, exactly what I needed.

Then Higz picked me up and took me 10 pin bowling at Cribbs Causeway with Lee, Nathan, Lewis and Checketts. I was pretty poor, but managed to scrape a 3 digit score in my last game - which was quite exciting.

So to today, Monday, and back to work. I have been very tired all day, as I couldn't sleep a wink last night (I'm sure I did - but you know how it is). I had dinner today in the canteen, it was fairly unexciting - a vegetable rogan josh with rice.

Afterwards I had a vegetable soup with a roll, but even though it was very tasty, it only partially rescued what was a fairly drab lunch. Could have been much worse tho..

Things what has gone in my belly...

2006-09-08T17:45:00.000+01:00

Well I visited my Gramps in hospital on Monday night, he seemed to be in quite a good mood. Then me and my Dad went back to his gaff, where my Mum had cooked us all a nice roast dinner. The meat was beef and it was very juicy and tender.

Before I left my Mum gave me some cartons of soup to take home, as they were soon to be out of date.

The next day I couldn't see much of interest in the canteen at work, so I had a jacket potato (quite small, but only 33p) and covered it in beef and vegetable vindaloo. To bulk it up (and make it look slightly healthier) I threw on some cabbage and some carrots. It seemed to fill me up.

After work I went straight to North Bristol rugby club for football training, as both the first team and the fourth team had games the next day the training was light.

I was going to go to my mate Phil's 29th birthday after work, but it was too late by the time I had got home and made some tea.

The tea I had was a carton of soup that my Mum had given me, brocchili and stilton. I threw loads of ground black pepper in there too, everything's better with pepper!

I wanted to get an early night, as I wanted to be up early the next morning. I don't think I managed it as I stayed up quite late reading "Donnie Brasco", the book that the film was based on.

I did get up early the next morning, though, and made it into work before almost everyone. The reason I wanted to be in work early was so I could leave work early to get to a Greyfriars Athletic 'B' team game away at Hanham.

I worked through most of my lunch to aid my leaving early, but still had time to eat in the canteen. I had a very tasty chicken and vegetable pie with carrots, spouts and sweetcorn.

After the meal, as I knew I would probably be eating my tea late, I had a bowl of courghette and mushroom soup with a roll. My workmates roundly teased me for my pronounciation of the word "courghette" - but I am from Bristol and now and again my accent will allow the odd slip of Bristolian into conversation. This I cannot help.

Nobody takes the piss out of Gibson and he is a Geordie! Some words he says make my ears spin round. Ask him to say the work "book" when you next see him. Mad.

Anyway, I managed to navigate my way to Hanham in very quick time - so I was there by 5.30. There were plenty of players turn up for the Greys, so I was on the "bench" for the first half. Well, actually I was linesman for the first 45 mins - which kept me warm. We were 2-1 down at half time (just like on Saturday) and the second half almost went as badly as Saturday, we were 4-1 down by the time they brought me on the pitch.

Unfortunately the light failed dramatically, so the game was brought to a slightly premature close at 4-1. A dog chasing the ball for 5 mins didn't help matters. Hopefully there won't be too many midweek games on, as firstly they are a pain to get to and secondly it will be getting darker earlier and earlier!

After the game I pelted it home as soon as I could, so I could quickly eat (another bowl of soup procured from my parents', tomato this time - nice) and then I ran (literally ran) up the Social club so I could watch the rest of the England game with Lee, Welsh Chris and Holder.

England won 1-0 away to Macedonia, a Crouch overhead kick the difference between the sides! The highlight of the night, though, was the Northern Ireland defeat of Spain (the landlord is N.Irish - so was quite a good atmosphere at the Soc).

Thursday morning I woke up feeling knackered and slightly hungover (our insistance on drinking whiskey to toast the Irish may have been part of this reason). I decided to have some breakfast when I got to work.

I had beans on toast with a couple of plum tomatoes (don't know why) for breakfast and this really seemed to sort me out.

A few hours later was lunchtime. Of course Thursday is now roast dinner day in the canteen and the meat was turkey. The turkey was very, very tasty - although the canteen woman was laughing at my portion..

I had turkey, stuffing, roasters, red cabbage, carrots, cauliflower cheese and gravy (all made a lovely pattern on the plate when I had finished).

After work I went to the gym and worked out for a bit, weighed myself at the end and was 99.0kgs.. I think that's my lightest yet? Then I went round my other Gramps' for his birthday.

When I got home, Terry was visiting Tony and they had Chinese. There was a fair bit leftover when I got home, so I ate it. No shame. I would do it again if I had the chance.

Today, Friday, I had a sweet and sour veg with rice for lunch and went up the pub for a few pints with Chris. Might go down town later (not a great idea considering I may have my home debut for Greyfriars tomorrow, but since when have I ever had great ideas).

My footy debut in a drink-fuelled weekend!

2006-09-04T17:49:00.000+01:00

Friday I went home via Ashley Down school as Lee was working there and needed a lift home. I dropped him off at his house and went home.

I quickly rustled up some tea, some spicy beans (Heinz Mean Beanz) on toast. Very filling, exactly what I needed to start my drinking binge.

We all got a taxi from Patchway to the Berkeley Wetherspoons pub in Clifton. We had a few drinks there and then went to a pub on Park Street for a few drinks (including some kind of drink Welsh Chris called the "helicopter"..)

I don't remember eating anything that night and there were no foody pics on my phone, so I guess not.

Sarah picked some of us up from town, although Lee and I opted for a taxi instead for some reason (picking up a wandering Welsh Chris and a random along the way).

The next morning I woke up around midday and got up and my breakfast was more mean beanz on toast (perhaps not wise before a game of footy, but then nor is going on a drinking binge!) then I got my stuff together to go meet up for football.

The Greyfriars squad is split into 4 teams all in different leagues. Naturally, being the newbie (and not very good), I was put in the 4th team. I was pleased to see my name on the team sheet as a centre forward (so I wouldn't have to do too much running or worry about defending etc).

The game was away at Severn Beach - I won't bore you with the details but needless to say, we lost 7-1..

When I got home it was a mad rush to eat some food and head to the Patchway Sports and Social to watch England v Andorra. Sarah had some leftover Dominos pizza, so I ate that cold and she dropped me and Lee at the soc.

We met up with Gale (who had helped the 3rd team to a 2-0 victory) and Chris and drank some beer and watched England trounce Andorra 5-0.

Some time after the match, Sarah picked Chris, Lee and I up and took us round Mike's for some drinks.

I ate some wedges round Mike's before Lee and I got a taxi home.

Sunday morning, I tidied the kitchen and then Sarah made some pasta in bolognaise sauce. She also cooked up some garlic bread.

It was pretty damn tasty and set me up for the day, which was useful because the day included going to the Vue cinema to watch "John Tucker Must Die". I recommend you to have a quick look in your pants and if you see a cock there *avoid this movie at all costs* - I found it to draw serious ass. Sarah liked it though..

After the movie, we went over to Bella Italia (formerly Bella Pasta) and had yet more pasta.

I decided on the spicy king prawn linguine and had a side order of roasted vegetables. Proper.

Sarah and I then watched Medium series 1 on DVD for a bit (until my downstairs DVD player died).

Today I was back in work, therefore back in the canteen for lunch. Not much to choose from, so I had the chicken burrito type thing - with rice and salsa.

Then I had veg and lentil soup with a bread roll for dessert (more out of habit than anything).

I was planning on going to the gym tonight, but my Dad just called to ask me to come with him and visit Gramps in hospital - so I'm gonna do that and then go back round my parents' for a roast dinner!! Excellent!!

Last words of sobriety - I'm off to get pissed!

2006-09-01T17:39:00.000+01:00

After work on Tuesday I drove to North Bristol rugby club and trained with Greyfriars Athletic. I was impressed with my fitness, but my footie skills weren't what they were. I put it down to the fact I was wearing studs for the first time in years.

When I got home, I wasn't terribly hungry - so I zapped a bowl of Hunger Breaks (Full Monty) in the microwave. Afterwards I ate another tin of fruit. These Gower leftovers are going to be my staple diet for the next few weeks, I can tell.

For some reason on Wednesday, a few of us (Chris, Tony, Matt and Adam) decided to go up the Bradley Stoke pub for our lunch hour. I stuck to soft drinks, but did order myself a half roast chicken.

After work I went straight out to the gym, it seemed like a while since I last went - although I have been quite active. My Dad dropped out at the last minute due to being called to work, so I was able to stay for as long as I wanted. I only managed an hour before getting bored. I weighed myself at the end and I was 100.6kgs, so I have managed to drift back up into triple figures. I blame the toast sandwich I made from everyone's leftovers at the Gower (video of me destroying the evidence here).

From the gym I went round my parents' house for tea. My Mum was cooking porkchops, sugar snap peas, cauliflower cheese, new potatoes and stuffing balls. Very tasty indeed!

Yesterday was, of course, roast dinner day in the canteen - but it was also the last day for lots of people from here - so I went up the pub for a few beers for the first 45 mins of my lunch. Of course, I still managed to grab a roasty for my final 15 mins.. the meat was lamb and it was quite fatty, but tasty nonetheless. There wasn't a great deal of veg out, due to my lateness - so I made do with peas and carrots.

After work I decided against going to the gym, as I had some things to sort out. So I did that and then went home and had a microwave paella that my Mum had gave me. It was alright, but nowhere near as nice as a real authentic paella!! Can you imagine a paella-lasagne hybrid meal? Wouldn't that just be the best thing ever?!?

Today is Friday. Normally I just grab a sandwich and then go to the pub, today I grabbed a jacket potato from the canteen and had a spicy sausage filling. I also chucked some sweetcorn on there as well. It was OK, but I went down the pub afterwards and had a few Stellas in the sun. Then I came back to the office and got on with my day.

I'm off down town later tonight for some belated drinks for Lee's birthday. Then tomorrow I may well be playing footy for Greyfriars, then watching England v Andorra (European Championship qualifier) and meeting up with some more people for drinks! Could be a busy weekend!

A weeks worth of activities plus the Gower!

2006-08-29T17:33:00.000+01:00

So last week on Monday I went home, got changed and then Welsh Chris came and picked me up and took me to the Riverside gym. We did something called "Body Pump", which was an instructor-led class involving various weights and cheesey music. The work out was good, though, was quite knackered afterwards.

Chris dropped me off at my parents after that and I went in and had some tea - salmon with carrots, marrow and boiled potatoes.

When I got home I looked for my football boots and shin pads (for the next day's training), but I couldn't find them anywhere. Well, I found one shin pad in the attic - but that was it. I hadn't used my footy boots since I moved into my house in 2003, so there was also a possibility they might still be at my parents.

I asked my parents to look and luckily my Dad found my boots in the garage, so I went round and picked them up on Tuesday morning before work. I also picked up some self-inflating airbeds for the Gower trip, which when I put in the boot of my car I noticed my other shin pad in there - so I had all the kit necessary for football training after work!

At lunchtime I thought I would have something substantial, so that I wouldn't be hungry later during footy practise, so I had a vegetable risotto with cauliflower cheese and roast potatoes.

I was aching all day, due to the weight training the night before, so was slightly relieved when I turned up for football training and the session had been cancelled (as the reserve team had a friendly). At least I know I have my kit ready for tonight now!

I went home and opened a tin of tuna, which I mixed with some philadelpha cheese spread and some cheese and herb dominos pizza dip (which was in the fridge) and ate in some pitta bread with salad.

Then I got changed and went to the gym. I had quite a light session, as my legs were still aching, but felt quite good afterwards. I weighed myself and was 100kg on the nose. Considering I ate before I came out, means I am probably around the same weight as I was last week.

On the Wednesday morning, I was aching even worse than Tuesday. I managed to crawl somehow to work and, later that day, was pleased to find lamb lasagne on the menu in the canteen. I had this with courgettes, sprouts and carrots. After that, I then had a vegetable broth with a bread roll. I was nice and full after that.

After work, Sarah came down from Surrey and we met up with Michelle and Mike to go out for a meal at the Swan in Tockington. This pub is renowned for their pies, so I duly ordered a very spicy beef pie (the demon devil pie). Mike recommends the beef and stilton pie, so I may have that next time.

The next day was roast dinner day in the canteen and the meat was baked ham. A tasty meal including stuffing. As Thursday was the last working day of the week for me, I met up with Mike and Beaton at the Black Sheep for a few beers.

After work I went to the Orchard with Mike, Gibson and Boz and waited for Sarah to arrive. When she did we had another drink and set off to Asda to pick some stuff up for the Gower trip.

After buying beer and food provisions (coming to the sum total of £111), we went back to the house and got packing.

Well, Sarah got packing - I just cooked tea (ham and cheese Asda pizza and some garlic bread). I also prepared some pitta bread filled with asparagus tips, salad (with balsalmic vinegar) and mushrooms for the impending journey.

The Gower Trip

Friday
We got up on Friday morning nice and early and Sarah drove me to the Gower. We followed Welsh Chris, his missus Sarah and Marcus to the Gower. I ate the pitta bread on the way and tried to sleep. There was some mad traffic on the M4 into Cardiff, but the journey wasn't too bad.

Once we arrived at Hillend campsite in Llangennith, I payed for 4 x tents for 3 nights (coming to a sum total of £216) and then we set about finding a spot in the already busy campsite to pitch the tents.

It took ages and didn't help when we began drinking. We eventually managed to erect all the tents (partly thanks to Welsh Sarah keeping us going with cheese and ham rolls).

We explored the dunes and kicked the ball out for a bit and drank lots of booze, while we waited for everyone else to arrive. Details in my head are sketchy, but I think Tank and Carly arrived shortly before Mike, Michelle and Kathryn (that is apparently how you spell it).

I ate some tins for my tea, although a few days of eating these hunger breaks things (cold) kind of got a bit boring after a while. Mike had a stove and earned himself some happy camper points by making lots of cups of tea - as well as bacon sarnies for everyone on Saturday morning.

Friday night was quite sophisticated, as we finished the evening with various cheeses and port. Tasty.

Saturday
On Saturday morning, I had an all day breakfast in a tin (another hunger break thing) for my breakfast when I got up and some tinned fruit. I washed this down with a can of stella.

The weather on Saturday was a bit brighter and I did get a little sunburnt, Carla and Lee arrived and we all went down to the beach. I had a swim in the sea and we played American Football on the beach. My team got completely hammered and only scored one touchdown. It would have been two, but a lethal tackle from Lee sent me bundling over in the sand just before the end zone.

We got back to the campsite and I was feeling hungry, but luckily Sarah had gone shopping and bought lots of barbeque stuff. Mike was chef and sorted us all out with burgers, sausages and baps and stuff. All very tasty.

One of Welsh Chris and Marcus' mates, Dan, arrived on Saturday and he put his tent up and we all went to the empty car park and played rounders until it got dark.

When we got back to our campsite, Bud had arrived and got his tent up. We all then armed ourselves up with beer and other alcoholic goodness and headed into the dunes for some night time dune partying..

Sunday
On Sunday morning, everyone went to the site's greasy spoon for a fry up. I missed the chance as I was still asleep, so in the afternoon I went up there with Sarah and Bud and had a vegetable lasagne. It was extremely tasty, but that may have been because I hadn't eaten any real food for a few days..

When we got back to the camp, everyone was talking of walking to the Worms Head hotel for a meal and some drinks. It was a long walk to get there, but the food looked nice. As Bud and I had just eaten, we had to watch everyone else eat and just drink ourselves. By the time everyone else wanted to go, we were not moving from the pub and ended up staying there a lot longer.

We had some food (me the lasagne and Bud the ribs), before trying to make our way back in the dark.

All dunes looking the same at night, we were lucky to bump into a couple of Welshies who showed us the way back to our site.

Monday
Yesterday morning, Bank Holiday Monday aka Lee's 30th birthday, we all packed up our tents in the morning and then went to the greasy spoon for breakfast. I had a very tasty fry up.

It was quite filling, but as luck would have it, a few people left certain items on their plate. I don't make a habit of mopping up the leftovers usually, but I was bemoaning my missed opportunity of using the toast to make a fried breakfast sandwich with mine - so I used this chance to have a leftover sandwich.

Using leftover rounds of toast, mushrooms, bacon, beans, fried egg and hash browns I created the masterpiece (thanks Michelle, Welsh Chris and Welsh Sarah!!)

It was quite a messy experience, but a tasty one.

Sarah drove me home in the afternoon and we arrived back in Bristol in good time.

In the evening, we met up with some of the Gower crew (Welsh Chris, Welsh Sarah, Mike, Michelle, Carla, Lee and Sarah and I) along with Tony and Terry and went to the Bradley Stoke and had a meal.

I had the salmon and it was right nice and kind of healthy.

Today
I was back in work and was really knackered all day, didn't sleep great last night (must have been the comfy bed..)

Had a canteen meal for lunch, a reasonable attempt at a lamb curry with rice, naan (albeit a lame one) and some coconut shavings and chutney.

After I had wolfed that down, I had a soup and roll. It was pea and ham flavour, but I only found one peace of ham. It was kind of like watered down mushy peas - but still quite tasty.

I should be training with Greyfriars tonight, feel quite knackered - but I've certainly been constantly kicking a ball around all weekend, so might be alright.

A busy week ahead?

2006-08-21T17:43:00.000+01:00

Thursday night I got home from work and was hungry as soon as I walked through the door, so I opened a tin of vegetable curry (that I had bought for Global Gathering) and heated it up, spiced it up with some extra hot curry powder and ate it on toast.

I didn't do much else that evening, if I remember correctly, as I loaded up my old game of Football Manager and ended up reigniting my addiction.

On Friday I had an early bite to eat, so I could go to the pub during my lunch hour. The canteen now sells tubs of food as well, so I bought a tub of prawns with spicy noodles (which were really nice) and a tub of mixed fruits (pineapple, peach, mango and melon) - both of which I ate at my desk.

After work I went home and started playing Football Manager again immediately, then Sarah called to say she was just hitting Bristol and did I want her to pick some food up on the way through.

Obviously I was all for that, so she picked up a lasagne, some garlic bread and some oven chips. She then cooked this up and we ate it before going round Nathan's to watch the Big Brother final.

The next morning I was woken early by a callout, so when I had finished that I went back to bed - but Sarah was up then. She wanted to go pick up some food for the day, so I gave her my switch card and PIN and let her go out and fetch some food.

She came back with lots of ingredients and a crate of stella (for me, paid for by me). So for lunch we had chicken goujons, salad in balsalmic vinegar and chips with pitta bread. For the rest of the day we just lounged around and watched Life on Mars on DVD.

In the evening, Sarah cooked the rest of the chicken in with mushrooms, peas and broccholi in a cream and Philadelphia sauce with egg pasta. We even had some garlic bread with it, very filling! Still managed some fruit for dessert though.

Yesterday was my parents' 29th wedding anniversary, so I went round there for Sunday lunch. Sarah had already made arrangements to see her friend, Craddock.

I went round there at 1.30 and had a breaded camembert starter and the main course was roast beef, with lots of trimmings (leek and cabbage in a cheese sauce, mashed swede, broccholi, cauliflower, carrots, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and gravy) - was a shame I left my phone in my jacket pocket, as I didn't get any pics. Needless to say it was all washed down with lots of red wine and Stella.

Later Sarah picked me up and we were supposed to be going to the Croft to watch a mate's band play, but everyone else bottled it - so Sarah and I also decided not to go. We went home and Sarah ordered a pizza, but I was too full. Sarah then put on a DVD, but it was absolutely pants - The Libertine. I am fairly sure I fell asleep.

I got up early this morning so I could return the damn thing, as Sarah had got it out in my name and gone back to Surrey this morning before the place opened. However, despite getting there at 9.20 - the blasted place (Cyclops) was still not open. So I drove there at 13:00 instead to return it.

I then got back to work and had lunch the in the canteen, the food on offer was some kind of lamb curry with rice. It was tasty, but I still needed a vegetable soup and roll to fill me up!

After work this evening, I will be going to something called Bodypump at the Riverside gym with Welsh Chris. Tomorrow I will be training with my mate Gale at Greyfriars Athletic FC and Wednesday I will probably just go to the gym.

Then Thursday night I should be going to the Gower for a long weekend camping.

Pizza - like a sandwich, but flatter.

2006-08-17T17:39:00.000+01:00

After work on Monday, I was driving home when my mate Chris (not Welsh) rang me. He wanted to go over some details of his wedding next year (I am going to be best man) and show me the suit that we'll be wearing. We had a few beers and Tony and I ordered a Dominos each, I had a Dominator again (my second ever). The Dominator is a large pizza, with a filling between the crusts (not as much as a Double Decadence, though). The topping I chose was the chicken feast (chicken, sweetcorn and mushroom).

On Tuesday I had a meeting over lunchtime and no lunch provided, so I had to grab some food beforehand. So I bought a prawn cocktail roll from the canteen. Is was OK, but the bread was quite tough and was also sopping wet with cocktail juice.

After the meeting was another meeting.. and this one had cakes - so I had a few cookies, doughnuts, muffins and even a jaffa cake bar.

After work I cooked myself some pasta. The actual pasta was spinach and ricotta parcels and I ate it with bolognaise sauce. I also spiced the whole deal up with plenty of extra hot chilli powder and various ground chillies and black pepper.

Finally, I sprinkled some parmesan cheese on the top and ate it up.

Yesterday lunchtime was lamb and vegetable pie for me. It was pretty good, as canteen pies go. Especially as I covered it in lots of lovely pepper.

After work I rushed round Asda and purchased myself a slab of Stella and a bottle of Strongbow. Then I went home and started drinking.

Nathan came round and then Welsh Chris came round with his missus' Dad and we all had some drinks and watched England trounce the current European champions, Greece, 4-0 in their first match under Steve McClaren.

During the game Welsh Chris ordered him and his in-law a large pizza from some pizza delivery place I had never heard of (Simply Pizza). Shortly after he had ordered, I cooked myself some chicken kievs and ate them.

In the end his pizza took over an hour to be delivered, but Chris managed to hustle a couple of quid off the order. The pizza looked alright, too - but I don't think I will use them, given the long delivery time. Damn I love pizza. I wish I was eating one right now!!

Today I was pretty hungry all morning, but the promise of roast dinner kept me going. However, when I went down the canteen the roast beef looked dry and horrible - so I had a vegetable lasagne instead.

Then I went to the Black Sheep for some lunchtime beer with Mike and Beaton.

Not sure what I will eat this evening, not got much in the house (I don't think). I guess it's a case of "wait and see".

I suppose there's always pizza..

Zoo food rocks!

2006-08-14T17:42:00.000+01:00

Last Wednesday after work I went home and then picked up my Dad and went to the gym. First time back for a while and it was hard work, but at the end of it I weighed 99.2kgs - which is totally my lowest weight yet since starting the gym.

Afterwards, I went round my parents. My Mum was out playing skittles, but she had left Dad and I some tea. Dad had sausages in mash and I had fish pie with veg.

Thursday is currently roast dinner day in the canteen, but I do miss roast dinner Wednesday - a great half way point through the week. By the canteen moving it to Thursday has really thrown my internal clock out of whack. I keep getting my days confused, but it does mean the week seems shorted - imagine if they'd moved roast dinner day to Tuesday!!

Anyway, the roast meat of choice was turkey (much to the displeasure of some colleagues). In fact, it was a very tasty meal and I no doubt followed it up with french onion soup.

After work I went to the gym again. This time on my own, which meant I got there quite late. I worked quite hard, but still nowhere near as fit as I need to be. In any case, my weight was still 99.2kgs. When I started at the gym I was 17.5 stone, now I am 15.6 stone, it's slow and steady progress.

When I got home I had the last of my cans of "Hunger Breaks" (beans with various additional things in there), this one was "kebab attack" - so had kebab meat in there. I spiced it up with very hot chilli powder and had it on toast. Proper job.

Friday lunchtime was, of course, pubtime. I did grab myself a prawn cocktail baguette to munch on the way, which was quite tasty and kept me alive for a bit.

After work I went to the pub again, I had got a lift off of Higz in the morning - so could drink as much as I wanted. I bumped into an Aunt and Uncle in the pub, so had a few beers with them. Mike, Michelle, Katheryn and Sarah arrived shortly after and we drank some more, before going back to Mike and Michelle's house to order in a takeaway Chinese.

We opted for a meal for 4 (Sarah had something seperately). I also had a quarter of a duck and some spring rolls.

After some more drinks, Sarah and I went home. She had bought me some Bock Artois (a new beer from the makers of Stella).

On Saturday we (Higz, Lee, Sarah and I) went to the zoo. Not sure why, someone suggested it and I hadn't been for a while so I went. Obviously there were loads of animals or whatever there, but the highlight for me was the pizza I had. Only 4 quid for a ham and pineapple, which was pretty darn tasty too.

After the zoo, we tried to go to the White Lion hotel around the corner for some drinks - but parking proved impossible due to the Balloon Fiesta that was happening over the bridge at Ashton Court. So we ditched that plan.

I ended up driving to the Three Brooks in Bradley Stoke with Lee and Tony for a couple of pints.

Then Sarah and I went to the Hungry Horse for a meal, she had some 2-for-1 vouchers which made the meal much cheapness. I had a chicken roast dinner, but ended up eating a fair bit of Sarah's meal too.

On Sunday, Sarah had bought some chicken kievs so she cooked that for me with roasters and veg in the afternoon and I watched the Charity Shield on TV.

Later on we went to watch Superman Returns at the cinema, followed by a meal at Frankie and Bennys. Despite there being much of the menu that appealed, I went for the barbeque chicken lasagne again. It was well tasty and the waitress was a gashead, so a very good meal out.

We then went back to the house and watched "Bulletproof Monk" on the telly.

So this morning Sarah went home and I went to work.

I had a spicy sausage hotpot for my lunch - with carrots, green beans and sweetcorn. This was followed by a bowl of vegetable soup (with ground black pepper) with a roll.

Stay tuned for more food related adventures..

Season 2006/2007 kicks off

2006-08-09T17:34:00.000+01:00

My plans to go up the gym on Monday night were scuppered when I got a text from Welsh Chris asking if I fancied a kick about. I had a microwave meal (barbeque chicken and pasta), which I sprinkled some kind of Italian cheese over. Surprisingly tasty and then set off to the Downs.

My team again won (well, we had the higher score - but lost in the next goal wins scenario at the end). I was plagued by a stitch (presumably where all that pasta was still travelling through my stomach).

Yesterday I was in work early, Tony drove me in so I could leave my car at home (so I could go straight to the Rovers match after work). Tony then invited me down the canteen for breakfast and I was rather hungry, so I agreed.

I had beans on toast, with a sausage and a rasher of bacon. I also added a few dollops of scrambled egg (which I covered with a load of pepper), but the egg was tasteless and watery. It did fill me up, though and I didn't need any lunch.

I did go to the canteen for lunch and eyed up the goods, the only thing that took my fancy was the noodles. But they ran out when I got there and the dude said some more would come out in 5 mins. I wandered off and came back in 5, but the same dude was again dishing up the last of the noodles to someone else. I was like "Dang, man. Where's ma noodles!?!?" - so I never ate anything. Which didn't bother me much, as I wasn't hungry anyway.

My plan was to get the bus to Horfield after work, but my mate Trew was going that way anyway - so he gave me a lift. We then went and had a few beers with Bud at the Inn on the Green pub.

As ever, with beer in the mix, it was difficult to tear ourselves away from the pub and so Bud and I arrived at the ground seconds before kick off. We then picked up our complimentary tickets that my Mum had sorted us out (through her work colleague who lives nextdoor to Craig Disley). The tickets meant we sat (yes, SAT - this is the first time I have ever been sat at a Rovers home game - ever!) up with the journalists and players friends/family in the Mead Civil Engineering Stand.However any dillusions of grandeur were robbed of us when we noticed that the visiting team, Wycombe Wanderers, were wearing the Rovers' away kit. How professional.

With the score at 0 - 0 and the clock showing 42mins, Bud and I scooted down to get some half time snacks. I opted for a chicken balti pie, it was ace - although I did burn my mouth. Luckily, our tickets gave us access to the MCE Suite.. so we went in and had a pint and checked out the half time scores elsewhere.

We returned to our seats for the second half and Rovers were kicking off.. spotters badge for Bud who noticed we were 1-0 down. I tried to get the stand singing, but it didn't really work out and I kind of wished to be back down the Blackthorn end (actually, that's called the Bass stand now) with all the atmosphere and swearing.. then I remembered I was SAT down and had beer in my belly, so those feelings were gone.

The game ended 2-1 to Wycombe (the same score as when I saw the same fixture on NYE last year). We soon churped up when we were back in the MCE suite supping Stellas. I was told the players come out in this suite to mingle with us what pays there wages - however the gaffer must have kept them in the changing rooms for a proper larting, as they never came out. Bud and I got kicked out at closing time and then we lucked out as my Mum rang to see if we wanted a lift back.

When I started waking up in the morning I had left my bedroom light on and door wide open, so I must have been in some state!

Anyway, when I got in this morning I was starving - so I went down to the canteen for a fried breakfast. I went for the exact same brekkie as yesterday.. and again didn't need any lunch.

I did go to the canteen for lunch anyway and had a bowl of soup and a bread roll even though I wasn't hungry. The soup was broccoli and cheddar.

So I am actually going to attempt going to the gym tonight, although it will have to be quite a light session as I am aching a bit from playing football on Monday night. It will be interesting to see how far I've gone from the 100.4kgs that I weighed when I last went (given that I haven't been for well over a week). I am on-call next week too, so probably won't go then. Might take Matt's advice and run round Patchway. But then I will look like a gimp.

There's never enough Prawns..

2006-08-07T17:48:00.000+01:00

So after work on Thursday I went round my parents and picked up a few tubs of prawns, one of which I ate in the evening (with just a small pot of seafood sauce. I love prawns).

Friday rolled into existance as Thursday expired and I woke up several hours later and went into work. A server had died over the road, so I went over and battled through security to fix it. To help me on my journey I enlisted the help of 2 sandwichs. 1 was Mexican chicken and the other was chicken and stuffing. Both were 95p each. Bargain. Anyway, I munched on these and stomped over to the necessary data centre and "fixed" the problem using a tried and tested restart method. Then I hooked up with Mike, who works at that site, and went for a few beers at a nearby pub (The Black Sheep). I was appalled that the prices here were so high and the beer so crap, but I plugged away anyway. God knows why we used to drink there all the time, in fact, I have even seen a New Year in there (possibly twice).

I then walked back to the office and got back to work. When home time came, I got home and was immediately invited to the Patchway Sports and Social. I hadn’t been there since the England v Ecuador World Cup match, so I instantly agreed. I had myself a prawn sandwich and met up with Lee, Holder and Welsh Chris for a few beers. Luckily I wasn't paged out all evening.

Saturday roared into action with me waking up quite late in the afternoon. I felt quite rough from the night before, but I went downstairs and had a ham and cheese toasty.

Nothing much of interest happened Saturday, just a nice relaxed evening in. I think I ended up watching Jackass the Movie, which was on the telly, and had a microwave sausage hotpot for my tea.

On Sunday I woke up and made myself a prawn sandwich using the last of my prawns. I then worked for 4 hours on a a call out, which tied into around the time my parents came back from Exmouth - so I went round there and had a roast beef Sunday dinner.

After that I drove to the Avon Gorge hotel (White Lion?) to join Mike, Michelle, Bud, Boz and Poj for a few drinks.

Today is Monday, which means I am no longer tied to my pager. This means I can start going to the gym again, I wonder what I will weigh now. I haven't been to the gym for over a week.

I was hungry in the morning and was easily talked into going downstairs for breakfast by a work colleague. I had a bowl of porridge, but couldn't help but yearn for the heart-stopping, artury-clogging, gut-busting fried breakfast that my colleague had. Porridge was nice too, though.. :-/

I was disappointed with the choice available in the canteen at dinner time, though. I ended up choosing a pork chop covered in a honey and apple sauce with sweetcorn, carrots and green beans. Frankly forgettable. I hope they do better tomorrow.

A week off the gym (on-call)

2006-08-03T17:51:00.000+01:00

Monday evening went ahead as planned, I went round my parents and had some microwave Chinese noodles. As I was on-call, I didn't go to the gym or anything (that 2 digit kg weight target must be slipping badly). Instead I tinkered around on my PC until late.

I got paged out in the night which meant I didn't get to work until just before lunchtime anyway, but I made sure I got fed. I opted for sweet and sour pork from the canteen (with rice, carrots and courgettes to bulk it up). This was followed with an obligatory bowl of soup with a roll. The soup was carrot and orange - zesty!

After work I went round my Grandparents to thank them for my card and then back round my parents for tea. The meal was cod in some kind of sauce with boiled spuds, carrots and green beans. I got paged out at 9pm and then went home and tweaked around with my wireless network for a bit.

Wednesday morning, a work colleague talked me into going downstairs for a contraversial breakfast. Normally I only go to the canteen for breakfast if I have a hangover and need some food, so it was a bit wrong to have one for no reason.

It was a good bit of scran nonetheless.

Of course, an early meal such as this only meant that I wasn't hungry at lunchtime. Which wasn't all bad, there wasn't much there. I went for a jacket potato and a kind of familiar sweet and sour pork filling (looked and tasted much like what I had in the canteen the day before..)

After work I came home and did some fiddling round on my network again, this time configuring my wireless and infrared webcam to periodically post images to my webserver. Then I wrote a script on the webserver to collect the last image and move it to a public folder. This means I can remotely view whatever I decide to point my webcam at, without having to faff around with that stupid java program and stuff. Nice.
Anyway, my evening meal wasn't anything too exciting. I had a sliced turkey breast sandwich on white bread, followed by a tin of Del Monte pineapple chunks.

Well, today is a Thursday and that meant roast dinner day in the canteen (this still doesn't seem right, I miss roast dinner Wednesday..) - today's meat was lamb. It was a whole new lamb joint ready to be carved when I went to the canteen.. however the young canteen "dinner lady" seemed only to dust my plate with the fat from around the edge. She's obviously new, as the seasoned old pro's generally cut the joint in half and carve from the middle. Anyway, I gave her my plate back and asked for some actual meat and she duly obliged with a very generous additional meaty slice.

The roasty was a definite winner and I was quite full, but still found the room for a cream of onion soup and a bread roll for "afters".

Some more quality news, my Dad just rang saying he has a bag of prawns that I can have - so I will definitely be driving round there after work to pick them up!

Global Gathering!!!

2006-07-31T18:31:00.000+01:00

So last Tuesday night I did go round my parents and test my tent out. It went up a treat, it is a veteran of many a Glastonbury festival this tent and so I was quite surprised it was still OK. When I got home I ate some chilli cheese on toast and cleaned the house up.

The next day (Wednesday AKA the day that was formerly roast dinner day in the canteen) I had a vegetarian chilli for lunch in the canteen. There wasn't much of a choice. I did bulk it up, however, with some carrots and sweet corn and even dropped a dollop of sour cream on there too.

Afterwards I noticed that the soup of the day was french onion, so I got myself a bowl with a bread roll.

In the evening I went to the gym with my Dad again. Worked out, but not hard because my hamstring on my left leg went quite painful for some reason. At the end of the session I weighed in at 100.4kg's again.

After I had dropped my Dad off at home, I drove to Asda and did some shopping for Global Gathering. I forgot most sensible things and ended up buying 14 tins of ring pull opening foodstuffs (including various "Hunger Breaks", Del Monte fruits and curries), a crate of Stella and some fruit juices.

I also purchased a vegetable pizza from Asda. I grated some extra cheese onto it too and then I spiced it up with my own personal collection of mixed herbs, crushed chillies and ground peppers to make it inedible to the average man. To me, it was a rather tasty piece of pizza.

I did regret eating it all in one sitting though, I felt quite bloated afterwards.

The next day was Thursday AKA the new Roast Dinner day in the canteen. The meat of the day was ham (one of my favourites) and the portions were very generous. The canteen also had a bowl of ground pepper corns to sprinkle onto it, which I did and was quite impressed with.

After work I packed my stuff for Global Gathering and then went round Welsh Chris' for a pre-GG barbeque. I took round some Stella and some meat leftover from the barbeque we had at the house recently, as well as some cheese and onion bread (like garlic bread, but without the garlic).

Friday morning, we (Carla, Lee, Welsh Chris, Welsh Sarah, Ian, Bud, Gale, Mike, Jot and myself) all went to Global Gathering. The food and drink there was very expensive (35 quid for a 24 pack of Carlsberg in the campsite, 3.50 per 500ml bottle inside the festival part), but luckily I had my Stella and tins of food to keep me going.

The only food that I remember buying in there was a roast pork and stuffing roll, which wasn't too bad and only cost a fiver.

I came back from the festival completely knackered on Sunday and ate a few more of my tins. Later on in the evening, my parents came back from Exmouth and took me out for a meal at that new carvery place at the venue. I wasn't that hungry, but still managed to eat my way through a carvery meal with all the trimmings.

Today I came back to work and am on-call (just what you need after a music festival), but it was someone's birthday so I got to eat a load of cakes and stuff. This meant I wasn't too hungry by the time I went to lunch, but I still snarfed down a mixed bean curry with rice and a tomato and carrot soup.

I will be leaving work now and going round my parents, as I have a birthday card to pick up and a ready meal of some Chinese noodles to eat round there.

My 26th birthday and other stories..

2006-07-25T18:41:00.000+01:00

So Wednesday evening I went to the gym with my Dad, I weighed in at 100.6kgs - so quite near my target still.

When I got back to my parents I invited myself in for tea, as I was hungry and had nothing to eat at my gaff. My Mum was cooking fried eggs and chips, but I persuaded her to whip me up a lasagne instead. Microwave job, but quite tasty!!

Thursday, as I mentioned in my previous post, was unusual. Thursday is now the new roast dinner day in the canteen. Fair enough, I thought, so I had a roast beef with yorkshire pudding (rare that they do a yorkshire pudding, but exciting).

I had my roasty and then got myself tested by some Esporta gym representatives who were testing peoples fitness to try and coax them into joining their gym. I was proved to be quite fit (good lung capacity and heart rate), but overweight (28% body fat and a BMI of 28.3). They recommended balancing my high impact gym activity with some low impact gym stuff. I scoffed slightly, as I already combine my cardio work and am seeing a slow reduction in weight and stuff. Unfortunately I gave them my phone number and now I keep getting loads of calls from 0117 numbers and the occassional private number. Silly me.

After work I rushed to the Downs as my mate, Welsh Chris, was arranging a kickabout down there. I was worried that I might not be fit enough for a full 90 mins of 11 v 11 and I certainly doubted my skills as I am way out of practise. The game went quite well and I even scored the opening goal. I had a few chances and even scored a hattrick, one of which was a header. I also had a header hit the post (well, it went over the post.. jumpers for goalposts and all that). I soon got proper knackered, but only about the same amount as everyone else. After the game, I went round Bud, Boz and Poj's house for a glass of water (which soon turned to cans of stella and I finally left there at about 1am).

Friday I had the day booked off from work, so that I could go out drinking all day. Finally got down town at 3pm and I was absolutely starving, so after a quick pint in the Pitcher and Piano on the waterfront - we went next door to Lloyds to eat.

I opted for the 2 meals for 6 quid offer and had a lasagne and sweet and sour chicken. Both meals were very tasty, however a few beers and a full stomach meant that I did feel drowsy for an hour or so.

We drank our way through to the evening and finally ended up going to the Unity rave at Lakota, not before we stopped at the crepe van by the waterfront. I had some kind of spicy chicken crepe and it was beautiful - highly recommended.

I got home about 3am and went straight to bed.

Saturday was my birthday (26 years old now, what an old bastard). It was also the first day of the Ashton Court festival. So after Sarah had got me a McDonald's breakfast (not often will you read about McDonald's meals on here, but it was my birthday and Dominos wasn't open yet).

In the early afternoon, we hooked up with some mates and got a taxi to Ashton Court (stopping on the way to stock up on stella). The festival was great, although again I got completely mullered. I have to say they had some great food there, but unfortunately I don't think I ate anything.. I did partake in some pear cider though - which was great!!

On Sunday, I went round my parents and was given my cards and presents. The new Rovers shirt from my parents, the "Life on Mars" DVD from my brother, some books and a DVD from Sarah and lots of vouchers.

Then we went out for dinner, we went to the Royal in Portishead for a three course meal (and, of course, some wine and some beer).

I had some kind of mozarella and olive salad for starters, which I wolfed down because I was hungry!

Then for my main course I opted for roast chicken, this was also very nice indeed.

I don't usually have desserts, but on this occasion I decided to have a Baileys Crème Brûlée.

According to my Mum I drank 7 pints of stella during the meal and a fair few glasses of wine.

Once we got home, I had some further wine, beer and port and some chocolate cake (which due to my drinking exploits mostly ended up rubbed over the dog's face).

The morning after I wasn't feeling too good and woke up when Sarah left at 6am. I couldn't get back to sleep, so came into work early (which did mean I could leave early though).

Lunch was OK anyway and I really needed it - a peppered steak in a roll with coleslaw and I added some carrots and cabbage to make it look a little bit healthy.

I went to the gym straight after work too and didn't do too badly considering my heavy weekend. Sweated most of my alcohol out.

Weighed myself at the end of it and surprisingly was 100.4kg.

After the gym I went to my parents house and had some quiche and salad with new potatoes and lashings of balsalmic vinegar.

I ended up having a fairly late night last night and therefore have been knackered all day today.

I still made the canteen for lunch and there was some tasty pie. Beef and vegetable pie with carrots, cabbage and cheese cauliflower.

Plan this evening is to dig out my festival tent and stuff and take it round my parents to set up and make sure it's still habitable (as I am off to Global Gathering on Friday!!)

Parties, food and lots of drink...

2006-07-19T17:49:00.001+01:00

Friday night was quite busy for me, I ended up going to the pub after work and then down to Fishponds with Mike to see some mates. Then we stopped off at Tony and Terry's for a bit before going home. I had some cheese on toast and went to bed.

Saturday I woke up fairly early because of the heat and had some breakfast of more cheese on toast and used up the last of my bread. In the afternoon I went round Carla and Lee's for some pre-party drinks. I don't remember much of the party, really, as I was quite sauced before it even started kicking off. Needless to say, reports are that I was a gibbering wreck and asleep on my feet for most of the evening.

I kind of woke up on a sofa Sunday morning and went home with Tony (who's moved in to my gaff for a few days while he sorts himself out with somewhere to live!!), I had a good sleep and woke up very hungry.

With nothing to eat in the house, I made an executive decision to order a pizza from Dominos. Admittedly expensive, but they bring the food to you and it tastes goooood - so I was happy. The pizza base of choice was the ever-indulgant "double decadence" (a lovely cheese and herb sauce inside the base - tasty!) and the topping I opted for was "Tandoori HOT" (Tandoori chicken, onions, mushrooms, green peppers, jalapeno peppers and I selected reduced fat cheese.. didn't taste any different, although I am sure is still immensely calorific!). The pizza arrived after 30 minutes and my hunger was quenched.

Eating dominos pizza always makes me feel dirty and used, but it's so damned tasty.

Didn't do much all day really, except watch TV and drink copious amounts of diet lemonade with raspberry (to help rehydrate myself from the previous day's Stella binge, not to mention it has been crazy hot).

Monday I went to work, as usual, and had a canteen lunch, as usual. I had a beef stroganoff with rice and I added some carrots and green beans (to try and reach my 5 portions of fruit and veg per day). This was tasty, but I couldn't help but feel that the option of stir fried vegetables with noodles would have been better (it looked so good).

After work I went to the gym with my Dad and we had a good long work out. I surprised myself by actually weighing in at double figures in kg (99.8kg). I can only put it down to the heat, as I have drank loads over the weekend and eaten a fair bit too. I then went round my parents, where I was treated to a roast dinner with all the trimmings. The meat was beef and it was spot on.

Then I went round Welsh Chris' and watched a film that was shot in his hometown of Swansea, Twin Town and drank my way through a few cans of Stella.

On Tuesday I had an Ocean Pie for lunch (a little bit mash heavy, but some nice fishy things in their too) and then went to the Orchard pub for some soft drinks in the sweltering heat.

After work I picked up Mike and drove to Fishponds to see one of our mates new car (he has bought an almost identical Toyota Celica GT4 ST205 as me) and then I went round my parents house for a barbeque.

The weather was still roasting, but the food was great. I had a really tasty beefburger with all the trimmings as well as a lot of other things like corn-on-the-cob, peppered turkey kebabs and lamb ribs.

There was also plenty of salad and potatoes to go round. I washed this all down with orange juice (the type with bits in - ace).

I also had a nice steak, which I topped with some mustard and various relishes.

Although my Mum was offering ice cream, I was far to full for anything more.

The weather was still so hot, however, that I had a dip in their pool they put up in the summer. Very refreshing.

Then I went home and picked up Tony and went round Mike's, as Rich was there and it was his 26th birthday (old bastard!!)

Today I didn't go to the canteen for lunch, as apparently roast dinner day has moved to Thursdays now!! This will be very weird, a routine broken (how will I cope?) - instead I just ate a crap load of sandwiches that my boss had brought back from a meeting and then I went up the pub to make the most of this heatwave we are having.

After work I am going to the gym again, I wonder if I will still be under 100kgs? I doubt it given the meat feast I had yesterday!! (at the BBQ, obviously)

The journey continues..

2006-07-14T17:22:00.000+01:00

Tuesday lunch was a fine lamb lasagne in the canteen. Always loving their work on that one!

Some nice veg and some gravy wrapped it all up nicely.

I couldn't be bothered with the gym in the evening, so I went shopping for some essentials.

Bought myself an "extra tasty" chicken from Asda, some salad, bread and oodles of various fruit juices.

So I had myself a chicken salad for tea and slobbed out for the evening.

I dressed the chicken and salad with some super spicy chilli sauce, added some pep to my creation.

The next day was a Wednesday, which is one of my favourite food day's of the week.. as we have a guaranteed roast dinner in the canteen!

The roast meat of choice this time was lamb. I opted for some red cabbage, carrots and sprouts with some roast potatoes and gravy.

After work, I was covering someone's on-call so I didn't go to the gym.

I had a chicken and salad sandwich and again dressed the chicken and salad with some of my chilli sauce - very tasty and can be added to pretty much anything!

Thursday's canteen food was lamb hotpot.

I had this with cauliflower cheese and carrots.

The mixture of gravy, cheese sauce and hot pot made a rather tasty soup.

Must have given me a taste for it, because then I bought a bowl of tomato and carrot soup and a bread roll. A great way to finish my meal.

After work I had a nice salad sandwich and went to the gym for a while.

This afternoon I wanted to go to the pub for lunch, so I nipped down to the canteen first and had a lamb korma with coconut and chutney. Very tasty.

Right. Pub time. At a house party in Patchway tomorrow - should be a laugh.

World Cup 2006 ends!!

2006-07-10T21:47:00.000+01:00

A busy few days, but I'll start with last Wednesday night. Went to the gym after work and then round my parents for tea. Mum had bought a roast chicken from Morrisons, so we had that with some salad and potatoes.

I then went home and watched Portugal lose to France in the World Cup semi finals. I don't know why, but I really enjoyed this game - particularly when Christiano Ronaldo cried like a baby (again).

Thursday I decided to go to the Hungry Horse for lunch, it had been a while since my last visit. My colleague Martin ordered his food first (a 20oz megasaurus steak - brilliant) and then I went up and ordered my Cow Pie (with a jacket potato specified instead of mash).

Martin's meal came (and went), he did buy me a stella though. Then some time later, a waitress came out and said that they had borked the jacket spud and asked if I wanted chips, new potatoes or mash. Trying to be healthy I ordered new potats.

Shortly after, out comes the waitress again.. No new potatoes!! I opted for mash.. best be safe. To be fair, the nice waitress gave me a free pint of stella - so I was happy. Even though the meal was missing cabbage and carrots (but I was late for work, so I just accepted this and ate it - was pretty bloated too!)

Given that I was bloated and had 3 pints of stella, when I got home after work I went straight to bed and slept for a few hours.

I only ate a small bowl of all-bran with a chopped up apple that evening.

On Friday I had a nice early bite to eat so I could go to the pub during my lunchbreak. I had a rather nice (if small and slightly pricey) prawn, poached salmon, crab and baby spinach roll.

I went to the Orchard after work and Sarah met me there, some time later we went home and then met Carla and Lee to go back to the Hungry Horse (they gave me a free stella!! All was forgiven).

We met Mike and Michelle there and had a few more drinks.

I was going to have a steak, but then bottled it in the end and had a salmon kebab salad. It was very nice, but I think the service was quite bad there (I was pissed, so didn't notice to be honest). I think they brought the chips out late and the waitress had an attititude. The manager came out and said she was new and she had put the rude waitress on pots.

As I said, I didn't really notice.. I was still pleased that they had given me a free stella the other day.

We all left at some point, Lee and I ran home beating the girls by ages!!! Then we stayed up drinking and watching telly.

I threw Carla and Lee out at 2.30am (much to their surprise), but I needed some sleep so that I could be ready for Saturday.

Saturday afternoon I got up and cooked Sarah and myself the last of my quorn sausages, some beans and chips. They went down very well.

Not long after that, I drove Sarah round Michelle and Mike's and traded her in for Mike - so she could go drinking with the girls and I could go down town to drink with the lads.

We all hooked up again at some point and then went to the New World restaurant (it was one of Michelle's friends birthdays). The New World restaurant is an all you can eat (which I love) chinese restaurant and kareoke bar.

This time I managed to remember to take a pic of one of the plates of heaped chinese goodness. How I managed to eat all that and still drink copious amounts of booze and not throw up - I have no idea?!

Can't remember much about the evening (as usual), but I did end up walking halfway home from town before succombing to the taxi temptation.

Sunday afternoon, Sarah and I went to the Mall and did some shopping. Feeling a bit peckish we had a spud-u-like jacket potato. Mine was the "special" (tuna with various other odd things in there). Not bad, if hugely over-priced.

After the Mall, we went to the cinema and watched Pirates of the Caribbean 2. Not bad, but a bit long.

In the early evening, we met up with my parents and brother at the new carvery place at the Venue, Cribbs Causeway, Patchway. I had the carvery (well, you gotta really..) and opted for all the meats (gammon, turkey and beef).

I was quite impressed, although they didn't sell stella there - so I think the Orchard might just win that battle (plus the Orchard let you help yourself to vegetables when you get a carvery - and go up for more if necessary).

I had a dessert, which is very rare for me. It was ice cream made with honey with little honey comb chocolate balls. Dressed with honey and chocolate sauce. Very nice.

After this I went round Lee's with some stellas and watched the World Cup Final. It was a great match and Italy eventually won on penalties and then we watched the Montage! Emotional.

Well the World cup is over and there is 4 years until the next one (2010 - I will be turning 30!), still we have the rugby world cup next year and the European Championships the year after. So it's not all bad news.

Well today's canteen offering was pretty good, a chicken and mushroom dish with rice.

I followed it up with some vegetable soup and a bread roll.

After work I went up the gym with my Dad, weighed myself and came in at 102kg. So moving away from my double figure goal.

I went round my parents after work for tea again, it was a chicken breast with bacon and cheese. Nice. Also some green beans, mashed swede and carrot with boiled potatoes and some ciabatta.

Washed down with some Orange juice. I think I got my 5 fruit n veg portions today.

Glückwünsche Italien

2006-07-05T18:06:00.000+01:00

My tiredness wasn't helped yesterday as I had to be in work for 9am for a meeting, so I was fairly tired all day (and I have just realised that I still worked until 6pm.. d'oh!). There wasn't much of any interest in the canteen, so I plumped for some nice looking pasta which I had with peas and carrots. It was nice enough and certainly quite cheap. I had to rush my lunch a bit, because I was meeting Chris up the pub (as the weather was very hot indeed).

After work I went home and milled around for a bit before going to the gym. I had another good workout (weighed in at 100.8kg again..) and then went home for tea. As my freezer was still full of vege stuff, I had some quorn sausages (which were really, really nice) and some chips (which I crazied up again with crushed chillies, ground black pepper and mixed herbs) and a bowl of baked beans.

I ended up getting drawn back into football again last night, I didn't want to - but I started watching it and the open, attacking nature of the game got me hooked all over again (football was dead to me after England got robbed, again). Italy eventually out-classed Germany and won their place in the final with 2 goals in extra time. It's France against Portugal tonight.. Come on France!! (never thought I would hear myself say that!!)

Today I have still felt knackered all day (hot weather + noisy local seagulls = a bad nights sleep), but the upside was that it is a Wednesday and therefore roast dinner day in the canteen!! This week's meat was turkey.. and a very moist and tasty turkey it was too! I had some broccholi, cabbage and carrots as my choice of veg accompanying my fat roasties and the turkey. Some ladels of gravy (always beef.. odd?) and some black pepper rounded it off nicely.

Despite this filling me up quite nicely, I opted to have a second course - as ever, the vegetable soup and brown roll was an excellent "dessert".

Off to the gym again after work, let's see if I am any closer to weighing in at double figures (in kg.. obviously)

It was fun while it lasted..

2006-07-03T22:31:00.000+01:00

Welcome to July, the month of my birth.

Not a great start to the month though. Got down town early on Saturday afternoon and began drinking heavily. I had eaten some beans on toast with salad and balsalmic vinegar before I left, to try and absorb the alcohol.

We tried the new Sports Bar (formerly the club, Creation), which was alright (4 pint jugs of Kronenburg for £7.50 - bargain).

Obviously we were all very disappointed with the result, although not surprised - we've seen it all before. Luckily I had numbed most of the pain with alcohol.

After the match I stumbled up Park Street and to the end of Whiteladies Road to Sloanes bar where I met up with Boz and Poj. I had a brief knap in the pub while the France v Brazil match was on and then we went to meet the other chaps along the waterfront.

I stopped along the way for a doner kebab, I can't actually remember buying it or eating it - but I did find the photo on my phone later.

I can't really remember much else from the night, only that we had a few drinks of the waterfront and then went to the Arc bar and then Timbuk2 (where the doorman nearly refused me entry as I was wearing my England shirt).

At around 2.15 we left Timbuk2 and grabbed a subway baguette. I opted for a foot long chicken teriaki with all the bits and pieces.

I must admit, I love subway food.

After the subway, we went back to Boz, Poj and Bud's gaff where we watched some TV drank some beer and then I slept round theirs.

Bud gave me a lift home on Sunday morning, but he came and picked me up again later - as it was Gale's birthday so we all went drinking again on the waterfront (nice weather for it).

When I started getting peckish, I ordered a Crayfish tails baguette from the Pitcher and Piano. Extremely tasty!

Happily, Mike gave me a lift home - but it has still been a very expensive weekend.

Today I felt a bit crap in the morning, so I got myself an early doors baguette. Chicken, stuffing and cranberry filling. This sorted me out no end.

In fact, I wasn't hungry around lunchtime - so I went up the pub instead.

I went to the gym after work, not before trying some of Higz's fruit smoothy (various berries blended with ice). I weighed myself at the gym and was another all time low of 100.8kg - could be hitting double figures soon. Crazy..

I went round my parents after the gym. My Mum had done me some roast chicken with stuffing, boiled potatoes, salad and pasta.

This was very filling, especially as I got to have a chicken leg too.. and some extra stuffing.

Mum had also made another of her desserts, strawberries in a kind of custard sauce in a pastry type base. Not sure what it is called, but it is always very tasty.

A bit of icecream on there too, which went down well in the summer's heat.

So I am feeling quite tired now, the weekend is catching up with me it seems.

I'm so nervous...

2006-06-30T22:42:00.000+01:00

I've had a few beers tonight, so this might not be the most articulate post.. however it's important to post tonight, as I will be unavailable the next few nights.

After the gym yesterday I nipped up Tescos (not Asda, as Tesco is closer to the gym) and bought some bread, salad, philadelphia cheese spread, smoked salmon and some other essentials. Then I made some sandwiches.. ruddy lovely!

Today I had a cheese and pastrami roll from the canteen for lunch and then went up the pub for an hour and a few beers, then after work I went up the pub for some more beers again. Then I came home and had a tuna and salad sandwich (not pictured).

I then settled down to watch the evenings quarter finals with a few Stellas.

The reason I am nervous is that tomorrow England are playing Portugal in the quarter finals. So by my next post I will know if England have made the semis (top 4 in the world) or have again exited in the last 16. Only time will tell.

Come on England!!!!!!!

Post-gym creativity

2006-06-29T17:56:00.000+01:00

So when I got home from the gym yesterday, quite hungry, I decided to cook myself another one of those "use-up-whats-in-the-freezer" meals. This consists mainly of leftover barbeque goods, much like yesterday.

So I chucked a pair of peppercorn quorn steaks, 3 sausages (meat or quorn, I have no idea), some bacon (definitely meat) and some potato wedges into the oven and then had a looksie in the fridge. I clocked half an onion, which was leftover from those cheese and onion rolls I made last week.

I chopped it up, thinking I would scatter them over my chips or "steaks". Then I had the idea to throw in loads of crushed chillies, some ground black pepper, some mixed herbs, some chilli vinegar and finally a squirt or two of brown sauce. I then mixed it all togethor.

Then, with 5 mins left to go, I opened the oven and threw my crazy mix over the potato wedges to warm up.

It certainly had the desired effect, it spiced things up a treat.

I will have to remember to buy some more onions, as I'm sure that mixture can be spread over anything !!

Well anyway, today is Thursday and the sun has been out pretty much all day. Early signs of a heatwave are being shown and the weather forecast is hot!! Will be 33°C on Monday!!!

For lunch today, I nipped to the canteen as I had heard whispers they were doing lasagne.. although I was mildly disappointed to see it was vegetable lasagne - still nice, but lacking a vital ingredient.

The cheesey bread was quite tasty too.

Didn't bother having a soup "dessert" as I decided to go to the pub and sit in the sun for the rest of my lunch hour (it was lentil soup anyway, whatever that is..)

Was going to go to a leaving party tonight, but have decided to save my money for more important piss ups this month (of which there are many.. and could be more if England progess on Saturday!!!) and go down the gym instead.

BBQ leftovers and other niceties

2006-06-28T17:56:00.000+01:00

This rather blurry shot is of Monday's tea. I was quite knackered when I got home and couldn't be arsed with going to the gym, so I went in the freezer and cooked some quorn peppercorn steaks, a few vegetarian (I think, they were loose in the freezer from the recent barbeque) sausages and some proper beefburgers. I also cooked up some oven chips and then dressed with some leftover Dominos dip (garlic and herb).

I was actually rather pleased with my efforts in the end.

Tuesday lunch I had a rare trip to the pub. We went to the Bradley Stoke, they do 2 meals for a tenner - however there were 3 of us eating, so I got stitched up with the full price. This was mainly because the other 2 were eating expensive steaks, so had the most to gain from the discount - but even so, I had to fork out an extra quid on my lasagne than I would have liked!

Saying that, the lasagne was really nice - even if they did take about 45 mins to bring it out. Won't be going there again in a hurry (or rather, if I'm in a hurry).

After work I went up the gym with my old man, I had eaten a quick burger when I had gotten home and this must have given me some energy because I worked really hard. I was very surprised to weigh in at 102.4kg afterwards, which is defies logic given all the food I have eaten and beer I have drank recently.

After the gym, my Mum invited me in for tea and had cooked up some fish with roasted vegetables. This really went down a treat.

I went home and watched the France v Spain World Cup quarter final and then milled around on my PC for a while before going to bed. I haven't played Football Manager for absolutely ages, so I will have to get on that when I get some time. I can't even remember where I am on it now..

Anyway, today is Wednesday - and the canteen at work was, of course, offering up a roast dinner. This week's roasted meat was beef (I very nearly typed beer then.. wouldn't that be great? Beer in the work canteen!)

The vegetables available today were carrots, swede and red cabbage (always a strange addition).

The fine dinner was finished off with a bowl of mushroom and leek soup with a brown roll. Lovely job!

Right, off home and to the gym now!

Football Fanatic

2006-06-26T18:24:00.000+01:00

Updating of this thing seems to have turned into a weekly affair. Partly due to blogger's lameness and partly my own lazyness. Also, I seem to have been out drinking an awful lot during this world cup.

So last Monday I went to the gym after work and then my parents' invited me in for tea so I ate half a broccholi quiche, salad and potatoes. This meant that I had to chop up the sausages that were leftover from the barbeque and mixed them in with the leftover pasta to put in some tuppaware to eat at work the next day.

So on the Tuesday, I ate the pasta in the morning and went to the pub for lunch. I had a few beers and got a bit excited, as England were playing in the evening. So after work I think I just ate a nice big bowl of all-bran to fill me up and then got to the Patchway Sports and Social with ample time. England drew 2-2 with Sweden to secure a top place finish in the group stages and set them up with a 2nd round tie against Ecuador.

I came into work on Wednesday morning feeling more than a little ill, so I went down to the canteen and ate a bowl of beans on toast (with a sausage and rasher of bacon). This obviously made me feel a bit better.

A few hours later, at lunchtime, I went down again and enjoyed some pasta in a mushroom sauce, with salad and some cheesey bread. Not bad, although strange not to be eating a roast on a Wednesday (I wasn't that hungry after my breakfast). I then had a bowl of carrot and orange soup (even tho I wasn't particularly hungry, but I had to try it).

I went down the gym after work again and weighed in at 102.6kg - my lowest yet! We'll see tonight whether that is still my weight after all my eating and drinking this week!!

When I got home I chopped up some apple and put it in my all bran and then poured milk all over it.. only to discover that the milk was off and I had to throw it all away! I hate waste, especially when I'm hungry. Instead of this, I had some leftover rolls from the BBQ and had cheese, onion and branston rolls. Very nice.

Thursday lunchtime I had some vegetarian chilli with rice, carrots and cauliflower cheese. I then had a bowl of mushroom and leek soup. After work I went round my Nan's to sort out their internet connection and then went to the gym for an hour and then home for some more all bran!!

Friday was Poj's birthday, so I went to the pub for lunch to load up on beers and then straight back there after work. I was really hungry by the time I got home, so I opened a tin of pilchards and ate them in some leftover rolls (surely out of date by this point). Then I went down town and got slaughtered, as is the procedure. Not sure if I ate, there are no pics on my phone - but Mike reckons there may have been some falafel involved.

Saturday I woke up bright and early, but just lounged around all day doing nothing except watching TV. I ate the rest of the pilchards for dinner, but they were rank - I doubt I will be getting any of them again. Too boney - not what you want from a tin.

In the evening, Lee came over to watch some footy and drink some beer. I ordered in some pizza from Dominos. I had heard good things about their "football fanatic" pizza, so I had one of those on a double decadence base. Very, very tasty - but, as the advert states, unashamedly indulgant!!

Yesterday I got up early to go to the Patchway Sports and Social to watch the England v Ecuador match. I had some all bran before I left and then drank an enormous amount of lager down the Soc. Beckham scored a freekick to secure our place in the Quarter final and later Portugal beat Holland meaning we will play them in the next round (dare we believe?)

So today I came into work with the now familiar hangover. Resisted the temptation of a fried breakfast and instead bought myself a roll.

Later this afternoon, I went to the canteen again and had stuffed peppers with rice. Basic and cheap, but did the job.

I'll be heading down the gym after work and no idea what I will be having for tea, but check back soon and find out - right here on Through the Piehole!

Barbeques, beer and football. Great stuff.

2006-06-19T17:49:00.000+01:00

Wednesday last week was, as ever, roast dinner day in the canteen. I was delighted that the meat of choice was roast ham. I unintentionally covered the meat with veg and gravy, so I was not charged for it. I was aware it was cheaper than I expected, but it wasn't until later that I realised what had happened - still, free food is free food.

In the evening I went to the gym and when I weighed myself there, I was my lightest recorded weight since I have began going there.. 103.0kg - I started at 111kg and peaked at 103.2kg (just before going on holiday to Florida), so progress is being made.

Although things will have changed since then, as Thursday was football day.

England were playing Trinidad and Tobago in the World Cup, so I came in to work at 8:30 in the morning and worked through my lunch hour so I could leave around 3.30pm. I still grabbed a couple of sandwiches from the canteen to tidy me over. I opted for one roasted vegetable sandwich and one cheese and onion.

I got to the Patchway Sports and Social club way before 4pm (thanks to a lift from Higz) and the heavy drinking began. England beat T&T to qualify for the next round, but we will be playing Sweden tomorrow to decide whether we qualify top of the group. I will be going up the Social again for this.

It is unknown if I ate anything at the sports and social, as I was too drunk - but there has been mention of bowls of chips being ordered and even a whisper that there was some La Cuisine take away ordered back at Lee's afterwards.

At any rate, I woke up on Carla and Lee's sofa at what must have been around 5am. I somehow got it into my head that I was late for work, so I rushed home and got changed and came into the office.

The carpark was very empty, so I realised I had got in too early (it was around 5.45am, I don't normally get in the office until 4 hours after this). I went up to the office and as it was quiet I had a sleep under my desk for a few hours.

I got up when people started arriving and around 08:30am I went down and got a fry up from the canteen. This seemed to wake me up a fair bit and I almost started to feel normal again.

A few hours later I had myself a bacon, egg and sausage sandwich from the canteen so that I could go up the pub during my lunch hour.

I also went to the pub after work and I think we all ended up at Carla and Lee's again in the evening.

Saturday morning I woke up early and Higz and I worked hard in the garden to try and make it habitable again, the weeds had really taken over. The sun was really strong and we both sweated lots as we struggled to get the garden looking right again.

Once we had decided we had done as much as we could, we went to Asda and bought some barbeque food and then to Argos to get a cheap patio set. The barbeque food was mainly vegetarian burgers/sausages and fish, as both Higz and I are trying to eat healthier.

In the end we had Mike, Michelle, Carla and Lee round for the feast - and Higz was doing a bang up job of cooking up the grub too, until he realised he was supposed to be at work and left!!

The fish I had bought was whole trout. I had put some garlic butter into the fish, wrapped it in silver foil and cooked it on the barbeque. I had bought 4 trouts, but only Mike was interested in having one - so I ended up eating 3 trouts. I have to say they were absolutely lovely, but 3 may have been a bit too much..

I guess I will be dining on the leftovers for a while, as Higz is on his "Lost" diet and thereforerestricted to fruit, vegetables and one piece of meat or fish per day.

Sunday was, of course, Father's Day and it was also my Dad's 51st birthday. So I went round my parents' house in the early afternoon (after I had eaten some barbeque leftovers.. sausages, burgers, chops, bacon) and gave him his cards and presents.

After a few hours it was time to go round my Aunty and Uncles, as they were having a Fathers Day party. So we went to this and they barbequed up a banquet. I had some sausages and chops with roasted vegetables, salad, breaded mushrooms, potato wedges and quiche. Washed down with lots of stella, naturally.

Today might very well be my first sober day for a while, as I am on second line support on-call. I should be going to the gym after work too, which will be interesting after all of the barbequed food and stella I consumed over the weekend!

At least I didn't have any meat for lunch, just macoroni cheese with carrots, green beans and sweetcorn. Tasty.

I know for tea I will probably have some leftover pasta from the bbq and some leftover sausages.. that is unless my parents invite me in for tea after the gym?

World Cup 2006 begins!!

2006-06-13T17:55:00.000+01:00

Didn't manage to get to the gym at all last week. Was either without car (MOT) or out and about.

Happily my car passed it's MOT first time with no problems, so now it has 12 months MOT and tax.

I may have mentioned last week that I bought a few tins of fish (tuna, pilchards, mackeral) for some reason, so the first meal featured is tinned mackeral in tomato sauce on toast with a salad garnish which I had last Tuesday night. It was alright to begin with, but got a bit heavy going half way through.

On Wednesday I was taken on a bit of a jolly by one of our vendor's at work. They took us to shoot some arrows at an archery event in Coalpit Heath. I did alright in the end and my team won both events, with me shooting a bullseye to win the final event.

The jolly didn't finish there, because afterwards we were taken to the Riverside restaurant at The Grove in the town centre. The vendor picked up the tab and encouraged us to order whatever we wanted to eat or drink.

I started with a delicious chargrilled squid on a bed of guacomole, it was very tasty and I washed this down with some Hoegarden (white beer).

The main course I ordered was duck. This came out with some green stuff and berries. I do know that they also brought out some carrots and potatoes as well (not pictured).

The duck was very tender and moist and was complimented by the sweet, fruity sauce. Not to mention I washed this down with a bottle of white wine (shared with my mate, Gibson).

I had some kind of apricot sponge for dessert, I have a pic but it was quite blurred (by this point I had moved on to drinking Nastro Azzurro).

The meal ended with an Irish coffee and a mini bus ride back to Aztec, where I walked home (to compensate for all I had eaten and drunk?)

Thursday lunch I had beef and ale pie and veg, look how thick the gravy is in the canteen nowadays.. crazy!

In the evening, I had a quick sandwich and went to a mate's leaving do. I was only intending to have a few quiet beers and go, but after a few quiet beers I fancied a few louder ones. Didn't stay out too late though.

On Friday, the directorate I work for (technical) were taken to the Bawa Club in Southmead to watch England v Germany in a mock 1966 world cup replay. The players were people from technical. I had a few beers in a bar before watching the game (with a few cans, naturally) in the scorching sunlight (several of my team got quite burnt, in fact). The final score was 4-3 to "England".

After work I watched the last few minutes of the opening World Cup match (Germany beating Costa Rica 4-2) and then had some mates over for a few beers and watched Ecuador beat Poland 2-0.

Saturday was England's first game in the World Cup. I went to Roobar with Scofield to watch the game. I was there at midday and the match didn't even kick off until 2pm!

England beat Paraguay 1-0 and after the match I went round Mike and Michelle's new gaff in Bradley Stoke, as it was Michelle's birthday. I had a fair few more drinks and ate some barbeque food and everything seems a bit vague after that..

On Sunday, my parents took Sarah and I too the Fox Denn in Filton where we met up with my Auntie and Uncle and had a Sunday dinner.

I had mussels to start, which had chorizo and stuff in a sauce. Spicy and nice. I love mussels.

For my main course I opted for roast turkey.

This was a very filling meal and in the end I didn't even require any tea after that.

On Monday, I was very happy because they served a really nice lasagne in the canteen!

I wish, like roast dinner day, they had a lasagne day every week at work. That would be an idea I will have to put forward!!

I went to the gym after work and then back to my parents' house for tea.

My Mum made a nice healthy salad with ham, eggs and balsalmic vinegar dressing and some honey and mustard relish.

For dessert, she had made a fresh strawberry and custard type flan type thing. It was very tasty indeed!! I might have to make one myself.

Tuesday's canteen offering didn't look any good at first, but was actually quite tasty in the end.

It was a spinach and cream cheese pancake wrap. The veg was nice too, but I selected some potato wedges - but they were quite hard and crispy.. so wasn't all that impressed.

Bit of a backlog

2006-06-06T20:02:00.000+01:00

So last Tuesday I got home from work and quickly ate my way through the pasta and cous cous I had blagged from my parents' house a few nights previous. Then I picked Lee up and we went to Asda, bought some Stella and then went round a mate's gaff to watch England beat Hungary in a World Cup warm-up match. I had a fair bit to drink and then I was taught how to play poker (doubt I can remember now tho, I was quite drunk).

Wednesday was luckily roast dinner day and the meat was roast beef (quite generous portions too). I went to the gym in the evening and went round my parents' afterwards for tea.

I had cheese and onion quiche with salad (with balsamic vinegar dressing) and boiled potatoes. Not bad at all.

Thursday lunchtime I had some vegetable pie with some carrots, brocholli and roast potatoes in the canteen. It was OK, filled the gap.

In the evening I went to the gym again for an hour or so, afterwards I went round Mike's new gaff so he could shave his head again. Then I went to Asda and bought a few essentials (cereal, tinned fish, apples and lemonade..) and when I got home I had a small tin of pilchards in a curry sauce followed by a bowl of fruit and fibre. For dessert, a golden delicious apple.

On Friday I had a quick sandwich for lunch (it was labelled chicken and stuffing, but was actually chicken korma - result!!) from the canteen and then went to the pub to enjoy the sunshine and drink some coke.

After work I had some more fruit and fibre and watched a little bit of Big Brother before going to the gym for a bit. Shortly after I got home, Sarah arrived from Surrey. She came down so that we could visit my parents who were on holiday in Dawlish.

We set off on Saturday morning and, after a fair bit of traffic on the M5, we arrived in time for me and Dad to hit the pub to watch another World Cup warm up match (a 6-0 drubbing of Jamaica). I got quite drunk so memory a bit fuzzy, but I think we walked down to Dawlish Warren for a meal at a pub called Mount Pleasant. I had a smoked salmon starter and duck l'orange for my main course. I forgot to take a pic of my starter and wolfed it down, the duck I pictured (and probably ate) before the veg arrived.. I'm sure it was all lovely, but I had continued my drinking since watching the footy at the pub and therefore can't recall.

Sunday I woke up early (having gone to bed early, drunk) in an annex attached to my parents' caravan awning. The sun was out very early and it was pretty warm, my Mum decided to cook us breakfast outside. A very tasty English breakfast to prepare us for a very active day. We walked into Dawlish and let the dogs swim in the sea, had a clotted cream ice cream (from Gay's Creamery - quality name! Sarah bought some fudge, I asked who packed it - nobody understood..) and then sat in a pub garden for a drink in the sun.

When we had walked back I had a bit of a nap in the sun (I think I have burnt) and then went to a local footy pitch for a kick about with my Dad. Didn't last too long as we kept spooning the ball into the nearby trees. I need some more practise, I think.

In the evening we all went to a restaurant called the Blue Ball which is just by Junction 30 on the M5. I have had a Sunday lunch there before which was absolutely amazing, but we didn't realise they don't do Sunday roasts in the evening. The menu was pretty small, but everyone's meals looked great. I had mackeral for starters.

My main course was venison (deer?), rabbit and wild mushroom pie (again pictured without veg, that arrived shortly after). This was absolutely amazing. Very tasty indeed. I couldn't tell you which bits were rabbit and which were deer, though - but both were very tasty!

Then Sarah and I got on the motorway and cruised home, well almost. 20 miles from Bristol we hit heavy traffic and we went about a mile an hour (quite literally) and travelled one mile. We got off on junction 20 (Clevedon / Nailsea) and drove traffic-free to Portishead where we rejoined the (now empty) motorway. Sarah dropped me off at my gaff and then drove another 100 miles home to Surrey. Quite a trip.

On Monday I had a really nice meal in the canteen. Some kind of turkey dish with noodles, it was very tasty and I was left wishing it wasn't 2.75 per portion as I fancied another plate.

I was still hungry so I had a bowl of vegetable soup with a brown roll for dessert.

I didn't go to the gym in the evening, though, as I was far too tired from the night before.

So instead I made myself some tuna and salad sandwiches and stayed in and configured linux on one of my spare PCs (webserver at old webcam address).

Tuesday lunch was a rather tasty sausage hotpot in the canteen, which means that's 2 decent canteen meals in a row - which is not something that happens very often!!

Took the car in for it's MOT after work, so could be an expensive month!

Free Bar and Beer Festival??!? A dream come true..

2006-05-30T17:43:00.000+01:00

I got home and ate most of the remaining barbeque chicken on Friday and then went up to Sloanes Bar on Whiteladies Rd for a couple of drinks (not too many, I was on-call until 9am Saturday).

On Saturday I got up and had the rest of the chicken in a sandwich and then drove to Surrey. It was absolutely battering it down, which stops me from driving too much like a lunatic anyway.

Sarah cooked me a pasta and pesto meal with some strong cheese (no garlic, as we were obviously heading to the wedding reception afterwards).

The wedding reception was at a hotel in Bracknell, very posh.. and (to my delight) the bride and groom were picking up the tab at the bar!! So obviously I had a few beers to toast the happy couple. There was a very nice looking buffet too, but unfortunately I was still full from the pasta to eat much more (although I think I ate a fair bit of it towards the end, but who knows - I was obviously trolleyed).

Sarah and I stayed the night in the hotel and on Sunday morning, we had a full English breakfast (one of those "help yourself" dealies - ie. All you can eat). Needless to say I ate all I could eat :)

As I was in the area, I thought I would give my mate Mark Pitt a call. He is the author of the book "Book of the Roid" (which is now on Amazon). He informed us that there was a fete type thing happening in nearby Maidenhead and suggested we went (there was a beer festival inside). Sarah drove Mark, Nico (Mark's mate) and myself to the fete and we had a great time there. Sarah enjoyed the dog show, while we enjoyed the many ales and ciders that the beer festival offered (a few casks were drunk dry in the end). We also won a few prizes on the tombola (mostly alcohol).

After a while, Sarah and I had to go back to her parents' and so we dropped Mark and Nico off and met up with her parents for a Sunday meal at the Hungry Horse in Bagshot, Surrey.

They didn't have the first 2 things I ordered, but in the end I managed to negotiate a lamb joint (unfortunately I forgot to specify what potato I wanted, so ended up with mash - which I don't usually like. Although this was OK when mixed up with the lamb gravy and veg).

I had quite an early night on Sunday, as the early morning and lots of drinking had wiped me out a bit. This did mean I woke up quite early on bank holiday Monday morning though.

Sarah and I decided to go to the cinema in the afternoon and I treated her to a meal at Franky and Bennies in Bracknell for lunch. I haven't eaten at a Franky and Bennies for a while (despite there being one in Patchway), but the menu looked pretty fab! I had a starter of crayfish tail cocktail and some garlic pizza covered in mozarella.

For my main course I had a barbeque chicken lasagne (oh yeah, it tastes as good as it sounds). I might have to pop to the one in Patchway soon, there was a lot on the menu that I also fancied.
We couldn't decide on what to watch at the cinema, so ended up sitting through X-men 3 (seemed to go on forever)

After the film, I drove home to Patchway and in the evening I had the last of my mean beanz (jalfrezi) on toast with some cous cous stuff my Mum let me take home. It certainly filled me up.

Today it was back to work time. I had a little argument with the canteen staff. There wasn't much there and I was in a hurry as I needed to be on a conference call with the French soon, so I just decided on cajun chicken breast in a bun with fries with salad. However they didn't have any salad, so I chucked some red cabbage on instead - they tried to charge me 25p extra! The cheek! The situation was resolved when they said they would let me off this time, but next time I will have to pay extra :)

Tasted like shite in the end anyway. What a waste of 2.75 (they didn't even have any fivers, so my change of a tenner was just a crap load of coins).

Tonight England are playing Hungary in a pre-World Cup friendly. I will probably be watching it round a mate's house with a few Stellas.

Another Bank Holiday Weekend afoot!

2006-05-26T18:04:00.000+01:00

Well Tuesday after work, I had myself a bowl of muesli with chopped apple and an orange. There wasn't anything else available really.

The muesli I have is some cheap own brand stuff from Asda, incredibly cheap and doesn't taste too bad. Unfortunately is loaded up with quite a lot of sugar which I don't get on with so much anymore (seem to have lost my sweet tooth).

On Wednesday, it was of course roast dinner day. It was roast pork this time and it was fine.

Once eaten, I enjoyed a "dessert" of cheddar cheese and brocholli soup with a brown roll. Muchos tasty.

In the evening I just ate another bowl of muesli due to absense of anything else in the kitchen and then went to my Nan's for her birthday.

Thursday lunch, I just grabbed a quick mushroom mousakka from the canteen with Greek potatoes and salad and then went up the pub.

In the evening I went straight up to Asda and bought myself some essentials (such as two fresh roast chicken, one barbeque flavour and one extra tasty). Then I went home and had one of the chickens (extra tasty) on a bed of rocket and watercress with basalmic vinegar. It was great, and when I go home in a minute I will be tucking into the barbeque chicken. Nice!

For lunch today, of course it is Friday, I grabbed a sandwich from the canteen downstairs - organic salmon, grain mustard and spinach on white poppy seed bread. Fairly tasty, then off to the Orchard for a few lunchtime Stellas.

I'm off to Surrey tomorrow (my girlfriend's boss's wedding reception.. should be some good eats there?)

Hopefully I won't embarress myself like last time..

A New Toy

2006-05-23T17:42:00.000+01:00

After work yesterday I drove round Argos and purchased myself some bathroom scales (for 3.29 - much cheapness).

Looks like I was about 105kg, which is obese according to the BMI scale - if you consider I am around 6'1 or 6'2 tall (I'm guessing).

Anyway, whilst round my parents I was served a delicious salmon meal, not quite sure what the sauce was - but it was nice.

The potatoes were apparently Jersey new potatoes or something, they were scraped and boiled and surprisingly tasty (I'm not normally a great fan of boiled spuds, but these were proper).

I went home soon after, as I had left my pager at home and was concerned I might get called out.

This afternoon I had some pasta type things in some kind of mushroom sauce - it was actually quite nice despite the fact I can't remember what it was.

The cheesey bread was pretty tasty too.

Despite the portions being unusually ample, I still fancied something more - however I didn't opt for a soup as a dessert (as it was leek and potato, eew). I instead chose to try the much hyped carrot cake for 70p. I must admit, it was surprisingly tasty - and counts towards your recommended 5 fruit and veg portions per day*

*-probably

A varied diet keeps my tummy interested..

2006-05-22T15:16:00.000+01:00

Wednesday night I went to the Patchway Sports and Social to watch Arsenal play Barcelona in the European Champions League Final and I got nice and trolleyed. I had a chicken sandwich before I went, as the soc' can be unreliable with the kitchen (sometimes open, sometimes not). It was open on this occasion, but as I had already eaten I didn't bother.

Thursday lunchtime I went to the pub and had another one of those seafood club salads, with inclusive fruit drink (opted for apple this time). Not all trips to the pub have to result in beer being drank.

After work, I went to the gym (my weight is still teetering round the 104kg mark - which is borderline between overweight and obese according to the BMI indicator) and then went home and had another tin of mean beanz (mexican flavour this time) on toast.

On Friday I grabbed a baguette for lunch before going to the pub, it was a cheese and onion relish roll - but it was quite bland. Once down the pub I had a pint of stella, but given that my mate Matt was on the cokes still, I had a coke for the second round. I went down the pub for a few beers after work, though.

My mate Mike called whilst I was at the pub and asked for some help moving some stuff out of his attic, so I popped round there and had a few more beers and helped him with his attic. When we finished, we sat down and drank some more beer and ate the pasta bake that his missus Michelle had prepared.

Saturday morning I was up bright and early to go to Japfest at Castle Combe. It was very busy and there weren't many burger vans (the ones there were had massive queues). But I still managed to grab myself a hotdog towards the end.

In the evening my parents treated me to a meal out at Bottelinos in Emersons Green. We had tried various other places which were all too busy, but we finally got a table at the Italian.

I had a really nice starter of prawns and avocado. I wasn't sure if you could eat the skin of the avocado, but I did and I seem alright.

Obviously this was all washed down with lots of Stella and wine.

My main course was a tasty seafood fettucini with parmesan cheese and pepper. I didn't have a dessert, I had an Irish coffee instead... and a Stella.

Sunday I didn't go round my parents' for a roast, as I opted to stay and have beans on toast at home. This time the beans were Tikka flavour. Quite nice.

In the evening I went round my Auntie and Uncles, as it was my cousin's 12th birthday. They laid on a spread and it was pretty nice (chilli, curry, etc). Then I went home and watched the latest episode of Lost with Higz and Lee.

Today's lunch in the canteen was chicken and vegetable pie, about the only meat type item on the menu as they are really trying to push veggy stuff this week for some reason.

I'm on-call until Saturday morning this week, so no gym for a while. But no beer either.

Health Kicks

2006-05-17T17:27:00.000+01:00

Monday night I went to the gym on my own, and as my half of the fridge was empty, I went down Asda afterwards. I got myself some Hovis wholegrain granary bread, some salad, butter, prawns in cottage cheese and some other sandwich fillings. Should keep me fed until the weekend. The fridge is looking quite healthy now (especially as Higz has filled it with his Lost diet contents).

When I got home I had a sandwich using the prawn cottage cheese and salad. It wasn't too bad - might do that again some time.

Tuesday I went to the Orchard pub for lunch, but again intending to go to the gym in the evening I decided against a pint. I actually ordered myself a seafood club salad with a fruit juice included in the price (6.50).

It was surprisingly filling for a salad, it had lots of chunks of fruit in it and lots of tuna and prawns. Tasty.

When I got home I had myself a mexican chicken and salad sandwich and drank some of my "innocent" smoothies and went to the gym.

Shouldn't really have eaten before the gym, but managed a fair bit of time there.

Quite a few of my mates are cutting down on boozing/eating and a few are starting to exercise a fair bit more too. I don't know what has started this trend, but if I ever start talking about quitting booze - umm - give me a slap. Hard. In the face.

I am eating a little healthier than I used to though (err - don't count last weekend's pizza anyway).

Today is roast dinner day in the canteen. One of my faves too. Roast ham. They even had some good vegetables out too. Fair play.

I am not going to the gym tonight, as it's the Champions League Final.. Arsenal vs Barcelona! So I am going up the club to watch it (and get drunk). I had better shoot off home so I can have a sandwich first - food at the soc' is quite difficult to obtain :(

Joys of the FA Cup Weekend

2006-05-15T17:49:00.000+01:00

After work on Wednesday, I went to the gym with my Dad. I was planning on (finally getting round to) doing a food shop, but because of the thunder and lightning I ended up looking after my parents' dogs (they get upset during thunderstorms or fireworks displays), as my Dad had to go to work and my Mum was out with some of her friends.

I nicked some bread off them as compensation and used this to toast up and serve covered in some Heinz Mean Beanz (Sweet Chilli flavour this time, but I have several other flavours in my cupboard still to try). The dogs just milled around the downstairs of my house until my Mum came to collect them, but by that time I was too knackered to go out. I did, however, clipper my head to grade 1 - which was satisfyingly short.

Thursday the weather was quite nice again, so I only had a baguette for lunch before toddling up the pub to sit in the sun for an hour. The baguette from the canteen contained bacon, turkey, cranberry sauce and salad. I didn't drink any beer up the pub, as I fancied going to the gym again after work. Unfortunately, once home I couldn't be bothered to go anywhere and just had some marmite on toast to fill the gap.

As usual on Friday I didn't have a proper meal for lunch, I just had a salmon and prawn organic roll from the canteen and went up the pub for some Stella. After work I met up with Chris and we went to his mate's 30th birthday party at Almondsbury Sports and Social club. We stopped at the Swan Inn first, for a lasagne and some beer - although turns out there was food at the party too.. which was obviously a bonus!

Saturday morning I woke up at around 8.30am (the joys of hangover) and couldn't get back to sleep, so I had some muesli and played around on my computer for a few hours. Around 1pm Lee came round and we went up the Patchway Sports and Social to watch the FA cup final and drink some beer. It was a great match (bad luck, Hammers) and as usual I got pretty drunk. Lee invited me to a party, but I was too tired from the night before - so I just went home and ordered a pizza from Dominos. I justified this to myself, because I had no food in the house and I was obviously unable to drive anywhere. I chose to try a Full House Dominator. From what I remember it was very nice, but that was 15 quid gone in an instant. Imagine how many beers that would get you? (assuming 2.50 each, it would get you 6 - that is science for you)

The pizza must have been good, because apparently I offered a slice to my housemate Higz (who is on an interesting Lost-based diet.. available on eBay) and he was tempted. Fair play to him for turning it down though. I doubt I could be that strong.

Anyway, I was in bed by 9pm on Saturday and I didn't wake up until 11am the following day. I walked round my parents in the afternoon and was treated to a dual-meat roast dinner, pork and beef! The veg was pretty good too, although I didn't know quite what to make of the asparagus tips - never had them before and they were slightly strange.

Well today's lunch was a quick canteen visit and consisted of some lamb based stew type thing with cous cous (which I love) and salad. It was OK, but I am thinking of heading up to the Swan in Almondsbury one day this week for lunch - as their lasagne was absolutely lovely on Friday.

Also, should probably do some more shameless plugging of my mate Mark's new book. Available now on eBay (limited edition signed copies).

How to fix a Grumbly Tummy

2006-05-10T17:40:00.000+01:00

Monday night I went to the gym for the first time in a week (I don't go when I am on-call) and had quite a good session. When we finished, Dad and I went back to his where Mum had cooked us both a meal. Cottage (or Shepherd, I can never remember the difference) pie with broccholi and carrots.

On Tuesday, I went up the pub for lunch with every intention of drinking coke. However the barmaid saw me and Matt coming and said "2 stellas?" and we both said "Yes". The pub's kitchen was being renovated, so anything from the carvery was a no-go. So I had a prawn sandwich. It was very tasty.

After work my Dad gave me a lift down town so I could have a drink with Wendy in Clifton. We met at Bar Humbug on Whiteladies Rd and I had a few drinks of Staropramen and ordered a salmon and avocado baguette - which was very nice (it's been a while since I last ate avocado, I had forgotten how much I liked it).

Props to my housemate Higgy, who dropped everything to come and pick me up from Clifton later on that eve!

So today I wasn't feeling great in the morning, but managed to drag myself to work and my tummy grumbled all morning - but I resisted the temptation to go down to the canteen for a fry up and instead waited until around 1pm before going to the canteen to get my weekly canteen roast (today is was turkey and the portions were generous).

My mate Matt shaved his bonce grade 1 stylee last night. Might have to equal him tonight and do the same, perhaps even better it with a grade 0? We'll see, I haven't bought these clippers just to gather dust in my bedroom.

Happy 21st Nath!

2006-05-08T17:46:00.000+01:00

Thursday night I got home and enjoyed the rest of my quorn spaghetti bolognaise (just as nice re-heated, I tell thee). As I was on-call last week, I didn't really get up to much. Just lazed around and played Football Manager.

With regards to food, I have mainly been eating cereal (I really need to go shopping!) - although I managed to eat a fair bit at Nathan's 21st birthday party on Saturday night! His girlfiend's Mum laid on a proper nice feast. The whole thing was actually a pretty good gig, shame I had to stay sober - but at least I could offer my services as designated driver.

Sunday I went round my Mum and Dad's, where I enjoyed a nice roast pork dinner with sausagemeat stuffing and veg and stuff - 'mazing!

Today's lunch in the canteen was a fairly poor effort, vegetarian chilli and rice - followed by onion soup :-/ Still, I am off to the gym in a minute and my parent's have offered me tea round there afterwards - so things are looking up!!

Quorn Spag Bol?!

2006-05-04T17:37:00.000+01:00

As I have been on-call this week, I haven't been up to much. Just slobbing around the house after work, really.

Got home on Tuesday and made myself a couple of Chinese chicken and salad sandwiches - which went down a treat. On Wednesday (roast dinner day, of course), I had roast lamb for lunch in the canteen with carrots, roasters, sprouts and red cabbage. The lamb was a bit crunchy and fatty, but good portions - so can't complain too much..

When I got home on Wednesday evening, I was fairly hungry so I decided to make use of the Quorn mince that Sarah had left in my freezer. I also used up the rest of the mushrooms I had left in my fridge and also chopped up an onion.

One of the good things about Quorn is that you can cook it from frozen (unlike minced meat), so that was quite cool - I just dumped the 2 packets of Quorn mince in with the mushrooms and onions and heated it up in the pan (obviously whilst I boiled the spaghetti, which incidentally was supposed to be out of date in 2004 - rubbish, it was perfectly fine!!).

I then added 2 bottles of Dolmio Bolognaise sauce and stirred up togethor.

Naturally, I spiced things up with some ground black pepper, ground chillis, mixed spices, garlic and stuff.

I mixed it all up and served it on the spaghetti (a little too much in retrospect).

A touch of parmesan on there too, lovely jubbly!

Actually, I am quite looking forward to going home (from work) - as I know there is still a load of this stuff left and I am quite hungry.

I didn't bother eating anything for lunch, as it was such a nice hot day we went up the Orchard to sit in the sun and drink some stella.

Summer is well and truly on it's way.

Right, I'm off home to eat the remains of yesterday's Quorn spaghetti bolognaise and slob around for the evening.

May Day Feasting

2006-05-02T17:46:00.000+01:00

For lunch last Thursday we went to the famous Toby carvery at the Orchard (we still stubbornly call it the Orchard, even though I am sure it is just called "The Toby Carvery" nowadays?)

Now you can have a full carvery for only a fiver, a fantastic feast (although does leave you slightly drowsey after eating such a large lunch with a few Stellas in your lunch hour). I opted for a slice of each of the meats, as ever (turkey, ham and beef) and opted for a giant Yorkshire pudding as well as stuffing. I also chose to have horseradish gravy. Fantastic.
In fact it filled me up so much, that I didn't even need any tea. I was still full up late in the evening, which is good.

Friday's before Bank Holiday weekends are usually special, but as it was the closest Friday to my mate Mike's birthday, we all piled in the Orchard after work for a few beers and then back to his house for some more drinks.

All I had had for lunch was a "organic" tuna sandwich (it was all they had left in the canteen), so I was starting to get hungry (and pissed, too much beer on an empty stomach). Luckily Mike and co all decided to order in a curry from an Indian restaurant. My mate Trew has always raved about Omar's curry house in Horfield, so we ordered from there. Being pissed I decided that a prawn vindaloo with special fried rice was on the cards. I can't remember a great deal about it, but I certainly knew about it the next day!! (what was I thinking?)

I woke up early on Saturday morning (I was on-call from 9am and got paged out.. at 9am), when I fixed the fault I drove over to the Post Office to pick up my signed copy of Book of the Roid (a future bestseller surely!) and when I got home I had a chicken tikka and salad sandwich.

When Sarah arrived in the afternoon, we immediately went to Asda to pick up some supplies (1x garlic chicken, 1x barbeque chicken, 3x onions, 1x box of mushrooms). Sarah then made a pasta dish using tricolor pasta, pesto, garlic, onion, mushrooms and pretty much the whole of the garlic chicken. A pretty decent meal, although she made far too much for one sitting, so I had the remains on Sunday (along with pretty much the entire bbq chicken - nice).

Monday was a Bank Holiday (May Day!), so we met up with Mike and co for a lunchtime meal at the Tinto Lounge on Gloucester Road. The food is always nice (but very expensive), this time I had a tuna steak on a bed of Thai prawn curry with noodles. It was really nice and I had a fair few Stellas there before moving on to the Anchor up the road. I enjoyed some more Stella there, before Sarah had to go home to Surrey and I don't remember much after that.. except that I woke up around 10pm and couldn't get back to sleep for pretty much the rest of the night - d'oh!

Today I was back in work, so for lunch I went to the Subway on Gloucester Rd with Martin from work. I obviously went for a foot long sub. I had the cheesey bread (toasted), chicken tikka and cheese filler with every single salad option possible (except for cucumber - I hate cucumber). I dusted it off with some sweet onion sauce and job's well and truly a good 'un.

Anyway, may I say a Happy 2nd of May to all Gasheads. It's been 16 (long) years since Bristol Rovers beat Bristol City 3-0 at Twerton Park to clinch promotion to the old Division 2 (I suppose this would be the Championship league nowadays). Rovers lost over the weekend ruling out any chance of a playoff spot. England's hopes of World Cup success may have also been dented, as our explosive young forward Wayne Rooney fractured his fifth metatarsel (big toe?) over the weekend so will probably not be fit and well for the finals.

Roast Beef Wednesday!

2006-04-26T17:55:00.000+01:00

<-- As promise a picture of the chicken pie I had for my tea round my parents' after the gym on Monday night. Definitely lucky as I had no food at home (and still don't actually). So to Tuesday.. it was payday, so we celebrated by going down the Bradley Stoke to enjoy their 2 meals for a tenner deal. I had the salmon and a few stellas to prepare me for going out in the eve.

After work I went off down Gloucester Rd to watch the second leg of the ECL semi final between Arsenal and Villarreal. I got very wasted and, due to some confusion at La Cuisine, I ate a chicken burger and a spicy beanburger (both before Lee had finished his cheese burger too). It certainly tasted better on it's way in than on it's way out (must have been dodgy).

Congratulations to Arsenal anyway, who made it to the final of the ECL - meaning there will have been an English team in the final twice on the trot (against the same opposition too, if Milan beat Barcelona later!)

Well I was slightly hungover this morning, but luckily it is Wednesday (so roast dinner in the canteen). The meat today was beef, and I was treated to two thick slices - which I supplimented with roasters, sprouts, red cabbage and carrots. Some horseradish sauce, gravy and pepper topped the meal off nicely.

St George would be proud!!

2006-04-24T22:03:00.000+01:00

Last Thursday I they had lamb lasagne in the canteen (redeeming themselves for lack of roast dinner the day before?), it was a proper job too! I had that for lunch with some boiled potatoes, carrots and cauliflower cheese!

Which I then followed up with a bowl of cream of mushroom soup and a roll (for my dessert, you see).

Yet more lasagne followed, as when I got home I warmed myself up the remains of the lasagne from the night before.

Of course I pepped it up with various spices first (and grated lots of cheese over it). I munched that and then walked to the Social to watch Arsenal beat Villarreal 1-0

As usual, I didn't eat much on Friday. Just a quick sandwich for lunch (was a bit hungover, so that really did the job) and went to the pub (which really sorted my hangover out). In fact I was back
down the pub after work for a quick stella before I went home and had myself some garlic and herb quorn kiev type things, with some vegetable fingers, some vegetables and some potato wedges.

Saturday morning I woke up and, although really fancying a La Cuisine pizza, I "cooked" myself some boil in the bag cod in cheese sauce with some veg and croquet potatoes. It wasn't bad, but the pizza might have been a better option.
I think that was pretty much all I ate on Saturday (apart from maybe the last of my Easter Eggs).

Sunday I went round my parents' and cleaned and waxed my car and had a traditional English roast (in honour of St Georges' Day?). The meat was lamb on this occassion.

Today I was back in work, I had some spicy vegetables with noodles for dinner in the canteen. Not too bad, and much cheapness.

After work I went to the gym and then round my parents' for tea. We had chicken pie, but that will have to wait until the next blog entry, pic still on my phone!

My housemate, Higz, has made a kind of online top trump game using his mates as the theme - I don't really agree with some of the scores he has dished out, but a bit of a laugh anyway and it looks quite cool.

Another non-food mention is for my mate, Mark Pitt. He has just had his first book (Book of the Roid) published (under the name Damian Black) - good luck to him, should be on Amazon soon (watch this space!)

Easter Weekend

2006-04-19T18:26:00.000+01:00

I guess I should pick up from last Thursday (which was obviously more like a Friday, as Friday was a bank holiday). Well I got home from work and Sarah cooked me up some quorn nuggets with potato wedges while I drank some Stella and spoke to some statistics man who visited.

Sarah and I went to the Glastonbury film after that, not bad but a bit long. The Levellers were actually really quite good.

We spent most of Friday cleaning my house, a proper clean too. I think Sarah made me a waffle sandwich in the morning and for dinner (dinner = daytime meal for all you toffs out there) she cooked me up some quorn escalopes with peppercorn sauce and some croquet potatoes.

All that cleaning had brought Sarah on a migraine, so I treated her to a chicken curry and chips from the chinese - while I had a king prawn curry and special fried rice. I didn't remember to get a photo of this, but it was quite nice.

In the evening I went to pub and then on to Rukus at the Thekla. It was the last ever drum n' bass Rukus and I got pretty drunk.

When I woke up with a hangover on Saturday morning (I got paged out, as I was second line of support on Saturday) and had myself a meal consisting spinach and ricotta pasta in a spinach and ricotta sauce. It started off nice, but seemed to make me feel sick towards the end of it.

Sarah and I did some more spring cleaning before we went out for the evening to the Black Sheep with Carla and Lee. We had a few drinks there before heading back to Carla and Lee's gaff. Sarah had to go home to fetch a cardigan and while she was gone, I shaved my head with Lee's clippers. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

When Sarah got back we ordered some take away food in from La Cuisine. I opted for my usual 16" La Neptune (mussels, prawns, anchovies, etc). As usual, it didn't disappoint and satisfied my hunger pangs.

I was first line of support on Sunday, so I was woken fairly early by my pager. Once I had sorted all that out, I ate the remains (yes remains) of my pizza and took Sarah round Mike's as she was off out with his missus for the day.

Mike and I then hooked up with Bud, Boz and Poj to go down the pub (I was driving, as unfortunately on-call).

Later on that evening, I met up with Sarah in town and ate at a Greek place on Park Street (I think it was called "All in One" or something). I had myself a delicious lamb kleftiko and then proceeded to eat everyone else's meals before driving everyone home.

Once back in Patchway, Mike and I went round Carla and Lee's again - where we shaved Mike's head also and watched King Kong.
Easter Monday afternoon when I woke up (another lovely bank holiday..), Sarah and I went to the Hungry Horse for lunch - where I had a rather nice peppered salmon kebab salad - before going to the cinema to watch "She's the Man" (god, that was awful - but Sarah enjoyed it).

Then we briefly went round my parents' house before Sarah went home to Surrey and I went home to cook myself up a massive lasagne! I peppered it, put ground chillies on it, seasoned it up with all sorts of spices and then cooked it and ate it (well, half of it - other half to eat tonight).

Yesterday was it was back to work for me. Not much in the canteen, so had macaroni cheese with some veg and croquet potatoes. In the evening I went to the gym (weighed in at 105.6kg) and then went round my parent's for tea. I had left my phones at home, so no pics - but was a really nice quiche with salad, potatoes and coleslaw.

Today is Wednesday, which is usually roast dinner day (!!) - but the canteen were not serving this as the pork they had ordered in was not sealed properly and went bad. Instead, I was forced to endure chicken breast in some kind of sauce with rice and salad.

Not bad, but I am looking forward to going home and finishing the rest of my lasagne. Then I am off to watch Arsenal v Villareal in the first leg of the European Champions League Semi Final.

Should be interesting..

Good Friday tomorrow!

2006-04-13T17:31:00.000+01:00

Well, I went to the gym on Monday night for this first time since before my holiday. After quite a light workout (I was out of puff within half an hour..) and a bit of a pump on the weights, I weighed in at 104.8kg. Not too bad. Means after a fortnight of eating and drinking I only put on 1.6kg (quarter of a stone). Ached a bit since then though, more because of the weights than the exercise.

I went again last night too, but was still aching far too much to have a decent workout.
Monday night was good, though, my parents gave me a cooked roast chicken (it was a few days old and they were going to throw it out if I didn't take it off their hands). I ate the whole bastard thing when I got home.

Tuesday we went to the Hungry Horse for a bit of a treat. I had a lamb joint with a jacket potato and veg.

When I got home I had a butternut squash soup with bread and croutons (and an apple for dessert).

Wednesday was, of course, roast dinner day (first one I have attended for a while) and it was roast ham as well. My favourite. A few good vegetables like carrots, red cabbage and sprouts too meant that I had quite a treat.

In the evening, I used up some cod and mozarella cakes, some salmon and prawn cakes and some croquet potatoes with vegetables. Very nice. Quite a big plate in the end, very filling - but tasty too.

Today I skipped lunch and went to the pub, but Sarah is down and has hopefully cooked I up some scran that I can munch quickly before heading to the Colston Hall to watch the Glastonbury film documentary and the Levellers (whoever they are?)

Back into the old routine..

2006-04-10T17:41:00.000+01:00

Well, I am back to work and immediately back into being on-call, so this week I have not had as much sleep to recover from the jetlag as I would have hoped. But it didn't take me long to readjust to the UK foodstuffs!

In fact, I have mainly been living off of roasts and sandwiches all week. I did miss my roast dinners whilst away and my parents cooked me up one for the first Sunday I was back.

Seemingly, still with a thirst for roasts, I went to the Orchard on Monday afternoon and had myself one of their famous carveries (at a special discount price of five pounds!).

On the Tuesday afternoon, we decided to go to the Bradley Stoke for dinner - where I reacquainted myself with the roast chicken. This was very tasty and also only cost a fiver (2 meals for a tenner deal).

Wednesday was, of course, roast dinner day in the canteen - but roast turkey didn't seem to meet with much approval, so we went to the Orchard again for another carvery (not much more expensive, but much better portions.. not to mention that they sell Stella!)

Thursday I decided to give the canteen a go again and had beef in a creamy mushroom sauce (not bad, but not amazing either).

Friday, of course, was pub day anyway.

Sarah was down this week, so on Saturday we went to Asda and bought some food for this weekend and next weekend. I expect more will be revealed as I eat it, but on Saturday evening she cooked some croquet potatoes, breaded vegetable things and some veg. It tasted better than it sounds..

Sunday she woke me up with some potato waffle sandwiches, she rated them quite highly - but I thought they were missing something. Perhaps if she does it again I will ask her to plonk a fried egg, some ham and some cheese in there too or something?

In the evening we went round my parents' house and had Sunday dinner. Starters of breaded camembert with salad, followed by Roast beef and Yorkshire pud, with various veg and stuff. Of course washed down with Stella and wine. I'm definitely back in England now!

Another bump back to reality this evening too, my first trip to the gym in a fair few weeks, I wonder how much I weigh now (I was down to 103.2kg before I left, but we will see!)

I am only second line of support for on-call this week, so maybe I will be able to get some more good quality sleep. Also it's only a 4 day working week today as Friday is Good Friday!

An American Banquet

2006-04-03T20:26:00.000+01:00

Well, this is exactly what the food blog was designed for! If only I ate this well every week. I have just returned from 2 weeks in Orlando and here are a few stills of the American cuisine I sampled whilst out there.
After a crazy long flight there, we settled in and went out for a meal. The first restaurant we hit was a place called Uno's Chicago Grill on Internation Drive, Orlando (where most of the restaurants we ate at were located).

I forget what starter I had, but I opted for a teriaki salmon for my main course and enjoyed several pints of Stella before going home

and sleeping.The picture to the right, in spite of being quite dark, shows the skinless potato with sour cream and stuff on. I also had some veg with it and a garlic bread thing. Very tasty and a nice way to start my American culinary adventure.

Whilst in America, we ate several times at the Ponderosa Steakhouse - the all-u-can-eat buffet never fails to delight. Especially the all you can eat breakfast buffet. You can help yourself to as much sausage, bacon, beans, eggs, french toast, pancakes, syrup and much, much more as you can!!

This is one plate of the several I would eat in one sitting, sometimes I would eat some salad or fruit as well (just to make it look as though I was being healthy).

Hence the pic of the fruit I have posted here.

We did eat in the Ponderosa one evening, had a steak (and Sarah's chicken) as well as an all you can eat "grand buffet" (spaghetti,

mincemeat, bolognaise, vegetables, curry, chicken nuggets and much more besides). I would pretty much leave the place feeling sick with fullness.The next restaurant on my list is the Black Angus restaurant. I wasn't planning on eating a steak there, but after a few beers I changed my mind and had myself a very tasty Black Angus 16oz New York Strip.

It was very nice, if slightly pricey.

Another restaurant we enjoyed was the Bahama Breeze. The portions were nice and large, even the starters. So much so the waitress was very shocked we ordered a starter each. I had the Spinach Dip and Island Chips for starters (described as a breezy blend of spinach, artichokes and cheese, with a hint of nutmeg, served warm with tortilla chips).

This was very tasty and filling, especially as I ate the rest of my families leftovers.. but I had ordered the seafood paella for my main course and was determined to eat it (it was lovely).

The menu described the Paella (apparently pronounced "pie-ay-ah") as a traditional Caribbean casserole with shrimp, sea scallops, mussels, chicken, fish, Spanish sausage and peas, cooked with moist and flavorful yellow rice.

It was fantastic and makes up for the fact I never got round to having one when I was in Ibiza last September.

We did actually go back to the Bahama Breeze, as it was so nice, on the last day of the holiday. The one downer is I was actually ID'd on the first visit to this place. Stupid Americans.

One of the early days in the holiday, I managed to convince the rest of the family to visit Gatorland - we actually had a good time in the end, we fed the 'gators and I tried some alligator ribs and alligator nuggets. Very tasty.

On the whole, the food in the parks were pretty good and not as expensive as I would expect.

We obviously did all the theme parks.. Disney's Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Epcot, MGM Studios, Typhoon Lagoon as well as Universal Studios, Universal Islands of Adventure, Sea World, Discovery Cove (swim with dolphins) - it was quite a hectic schedule. But the villa was nice, with a private pool - so we did do some relaxing.. and one of the days me and my old man hired a Ford Mustangout for the day.

Anyway, back to the food (all this food stuff is making me right hungry)!! We did visit TGI Friday's one evening and I had another New York strip steak with some kind of sauce for my main course (but I can't really remember what I had for starters).

I ate this meal with vegetables and salad and washed it down with Stella. Nice work. I expect I finished this meal with an Irish Coffee.

One of the park snacks I really like is the Turkey Leg! Here is a picture of my Dad and I tucking into one of the giant turkey legs in Typhoon Lagoon!

Because they are smoked they taste quite different to turkey, almost more like ham or gammon - but very tasty! If quite messy.

As you can probably see, America wasn't all about the steak for me. I was also eating lots of seafood, fish and pasta. They really seem to do seafood quite well out there and I really love my seafood.

Pictured right is the seafood chowder that I had in an Irish restaurant of all places, near Pleasure Island in Downtown Disney.

Another fine restaurant we visited (twice) was the Olive Garden.

I had a Zuppa Toscana soup to start (described as spicy sausage, russet potatoes and cavolo greens in a creamy broth).

They even brought a salad out for us to share between the starters and the mains.

For my main course on this occasion, I had Seafood Portofino (descibed as mussels, scallops, shrimp and mushrooms with linguine in a garlic-butter wine sauce).

It was very enjoyable and we all decided that the Olive Garden would be worth a return visit.

As I had been banging on about going to a seafood restaurant like the Crab House or Red Lobster for the whole holiday, everyone finally succombed and we went to the Red Lobster for our evening meal quite late in the holiday.

You could pick your own lobster to eat, if you fancied it. But nobody did.

I had the New England Appetizer Sampler as my starter, this is Lobster, Crab & Seafood Stuffed Mushrooms, Bacon-Wrapped Sea Scallops & Fried Clam Strips.

As my main course, I had the Ultimate Feast, this was succulent broiled Maine Lobster Tail, tender Snow Crab Legs, savory Shrimp Scampi & lightly breaded Fried Shrimp.

It took a moment for me to work out where to get the meat from the crab's legs.. but the once I found it - wow. Lovely.

The lobster tail was also good, I am definitely going to have to have that again (maybe get a whole one next time).

Nobody else on the table were so adventurous, although my Dad did have some steamed oysters. They looked alright, but everyone was quite revolted by the slurping.

Anyway, as I said we returned to the Olive Garden on another occasion and I had the Hot Artichoke and Spinach Dip for starters, this was a blend of artichokes, spinach and cream cheese. Served with Tuscan bread.

Delicious!

For my main course I opted for the Tour of Italy, this consisted of homemade lasagna, lightly breaded chicken parmigiana and creamy fettuccine alfredo.

The final day, we had our evening meal back at the Bahama Breeze. For starters I had the Coconut Shrimp, which their menu describes as "our guests' favorite! Crispy large shrimp hand-breaded with sweet flaky coconut, with our delicious citrus-mustard dipping sauce". Not bad. For my main course I chose to try their Lobster and Shrimp Pasta, which offered Sweet Caribbean lobster and shrimp in every bite! Sauteed with fresh mushrooms, herbs, brandy and cream and tossed with linguine. A fine way to end the holiday.

Coming soon :- 2 weeks of Sun, Sand and Steak!!

2006-03-16T23:38:00.000Z

Well not much food eating of interest in the past week. In fact, I have been avoiding buying food as I am off to Florida tomorrow.

So Wednesday night I even only had a salad with cheese and branston for my tea! Nice and simple.

So I went to the gym on Wednesday, and weighed myself - I was 103.2kg (my lightest yet). This was notable, because I will weigh myself when I get back from the states and see how much I have put on with all their fatty foods I will be ingesting. I plan on trying some proper big steaks.

Tonight, after packing, I went out for a meal with my parents up the Masons Arms - I had a stilton and mushroom melt to start and a salmon with prawn skewer thing for main course. Lovely job!

Anyway, only a few hours until I am off to Orlando, FL. No doubt I will be back in 2 weeks with tales of big steaks and all you can eat breakfasts!!! I can't fucking wait! Get in my fucking belly.

The usual... eatin', drinkin' and bein' merry

2006-03-13T17:25:00.000Z

Friday after work I was so hungry (I had skipped lunch to go to the pub), so I went to Asda after work and bought myself a garlic chicken. I then went home and ate most of it. Once I had played some Football Manager (pretty much won everything there is to win with Bristol Rovers), I ambled on over Carla and Lee's with Higz.

We watched some more season 2 of Lost and everyone else ate some fajitas (unfortunately I had eaten too much chicken to be hungry, but that was probably lucky for everyone else!!) - I went home after watching some South Park and had myself a reasonably early night (to prepare for Higz's birthday night out).

I woke up on Saturday morning around 2pm and walked to the Patchway Sports and Social club with my Dad to meet up with Lee to watch some sports and drink some beer.

I ate the rest of that garlic chicken in a sandwich and then got a taxi to town with the guys and proceeded to get very drunk. Not really sure what happened, but I don't think I ate anything anyway (quite the reverse, in fact - apparently I chundered all over a dance floor somewhere).

Sunday was a day of recovery. My parents took me out for a meal at the Fox Den. I had a starters of mussels (I love my seafood).

For main course I had a roasted salmon with assorted veg. Not too bad. Apologies for the poor quality images, the lighting in the Fox Den leaves much to be desired. Food is nice though.

The food did me a world of good, but I was still feeling a bit rank - so even though Higz and I had people over in the evening, nobody was drinking.

I think today's canteen meal deserves a place in this entry, braised lamb and cous cous. I love cous cous, not entirely sure what it is - but I like it!

Big up the cous cous!

Pie saves the day!

2006-03-10T00:22:00.000Z

Since specifying that I ate in the canteen every day in the recent online questionairre thingy, I have only eaten in the canteen once this week.

Pictured left is the meal I opted for on Tuesday, a beef hot pot with some added veg.

Not too bad, to be fair. If maybe a bit ordinary. I think I had a cheese, salad and picalilly sandwich in the evening - not much to write home about there.

Wednesday is roast dinner day in the canteen, however we opted to go to the Bradley Stoke pub for lunch - there were 3 of us eating, and I got the short straw of being excluded from the 2-for-1 offer. I had myself a full price (!!) sticky chicken salad. A paltry portion, certainly not worth paying full price for.

I had to console myself with some Stella (one pint of which had an ever-expanding head - I had to drink it quick before a mess was made!)

Anyway, Wednesday was also my housemate's (Higz) 26th birthday - so we went round Carla and Lee's in the evening and watched some South Park. Everyone ordered in pizza from Dominos, apart from me - as I was still full up from eating too much muesli and cornflakes before I went out and couldn't justify paying for a pizza (especially as I still felt aggrieved by the salad I had forked out for earlier!!)

Happily, the birthday boy gave me a slice of his Tandori Hot Double Decadence. Nice. He then blew out the candles on his chocolate birthday cake and we got to eating that.

Today (well, Thursday.. I appreciate that it is Friday now - strictly speaking) the canteen had Lamb Lasagne on the menu.. which is great news because the lamb lasagne is always spot on, but I felt like going up the Bradley Stoke pub and having some stella and a 2-for-1 meal with someone to give the place a chance to redeem itself with me.

I chose myself a steak and ale pie with chunky chips and it certainly filled I up - so the Bradley Stoke pub is just about back in my good books now.

The week is afoot

2006-03-06T22:24:00.000Z

Thursday night I went to the gym, but as I had eaten quite late - all I had for tea was a bowl of cereal.

Friday was completely different, did the usual of going to the pub for lunch and after work. Almost missed my Mum's birthday get together because I fell asleep when I got home. I did get round there in time to eat some buffet though (including some prawns - excellent).

Saturday Higz and I went to Asda (I needed Stella and some food), I got myself a sage and onion roast chicken (hot - fresh from the spit). Everything was going fine until we tried using the new-fangled automatic cashier thing. What a kerfuffle. It just didn't work at all, for anyone! Not recommended.

Higz had himself a pizza and I ate half the chicken (some of it in a sandwich) and then we watched the rest of Lost season 1 that I hadn't seen yet (while drinking Stella).

Later in the evening I watched the boxing, which climaxed in Joe Calzaghe out-boxing Jeff Lacy with style.

Unfortunately, my parents were in Exmouth over the weekend - so I missed out on a Sunday dinner and instead just ate the rest of the chicken in a sandwich.

Lee came over in the evening and Higz rigged his laptop up to the telly and we watched a few episodes of season 2 of Lost and drank some Stellas.

Today was good, I went to the Orchard again for lunch. I was hungry, so I had another carvery sandwich. This time I had gammon as my meat of choice. The weather was nice, too, so we sat out in the "garden".

I can't wait for summer, lots of sitting in beer garden drinking stella and eating more of these delicious carvery sandwiches.

Anyway, when I got back to the office, I filled out an online questionairre about the work canteen.
Anyway, this evening I had myself some cheese and marmite toasted sandwiches created by my very own magical toasting machine. Not too bad.

Well, my 2 batteries have arrived as ordered from eBay - and they seem to work. Not bad for 99p - hooray for cheap Hong Kong-ese imports!

Now I have some spare for Glastonbury next year. Proper.

Always with the roast...

2006-03-02T17:36:00.000Z

Yes! As expected, yesterday's roast dinner was ham. I always like it when the canteen do ham as the roast dinner, usually they are glazed in something fruity - and the gracy is kind of sweet and fruity. I even snuck a few un-seasonal sprouts on my plate for goodness.

When I got home yesterday I went ate the last of my 1kg applewood smoked turkey, the last of my salad and the last of my wholegrain bread in one last sandwich. Then I went round my mate Lee's to watch England beat Uruguay in a pre-World Cup 2006 friendly.

Today I totally missed my lunch break due to being too busy, so I went from 3-4pm instead. As the canteen does not serve food at this time, I walked up the Orchard with my mate Matt and had a carvery sandwich. I chose the beef and filled the sandwich with onions as well as cramming as much veg on the plate as I could.

It really has hit the spot, I still feel quite full now. But I'd better get practising, as I'm off the the land of "all you can eat" later this month and need to start stretching my stomach so I can get even more value for money.

Off to the gym in a minute, so probably eat some cereal later (as I have nothing else in the fridge or cupboards at the moment). Then tomorrow, it is Friday (woo!), which is also my Mum's birthday (48th?).

Pancake Day!

2006-03-01T13:19:00.000Z

It was Shrove Tuesday aka Pancake Day aka Jif Lemon Day yesterday. Something about Jesus eating loads of pancakes this time 100 years ago or something.

Anyway, lunchtime snuck up on me and I went to the canteen and had a rather filling beef goulash with rice and a side order of courgettes. Did the job.

After work I headed straight round my parents' house, as I knew they would be doing pancakes. I wasn't disappointed. I don't know how many I ate in the end, but I know I didn't need any tea!

The first few pancakes contained simply raisins, some chocolate sauce and lemon juice.. but towards the end I started adding slices of banana too. Very nice.

Probably the next time I eat pancakes will be in Florida when I go later on in March.

After my feast I went over Carla and Lee's to watch The Village and Zoolander on DVD with them and Higz. I managed to trip over a stump in the woods on the way, tho, covering myself in mud.. and this was before I even touched any stella!!

Anyway, time to wrap this up - as I hear the canteen calling.. and as we all know by now - Wednesday is Roast Dinner Day (and I hear today is roast ham, one of my favourites!)

Champagne and me get on

2006-02-27T23:21:00.000Z

Friday was the usual quick sandwich for lunch and then off to the pub for some beers. I went down Asda's after work and did some very basic shopping.

I was intending on buying myself a roast chicken, but the queue was too much for me - so I opted to pick up a kilo of "buy me whole" applewood smoked turkey. At a tenner, I thought it was a bit expensive - but when I ate a slice I realised it was money well spent - that's some tasty shit right there. Especially in a wholegrain bread sandwich with some salad. Ace.

I had a quiet night in on Friday, on account of the fact I was aiming to go out early on Saturday morning for some day time binge drinking as it was me mate Matt's 30th birthday.

Things went exactly to plan, I had a quick sandwich on Saturday morning and then headed off to town. We went to Lloyds Bar One and my mate Chris ordered 2 bowls of chilli (buy 1 get 1 free) - so I ate the "spare" one. Great.

We then got stuck in to lots of stella and champagne, I got so drunk that I missed most of the Scotland v England 6 Nations match (probably for the best!!). I can't remember anything from then on, but needless to say I probably had a great time.

Sunday I woke up early with a proper hangover and a horrible feeling of guilt. I then discovered that I had lost my phone battery and had to order one from eBay. I almost made myself one of those amazing sandwiches, but my parents called and offered to take me out for a meal. We went to the Fox Den and I had a starter of tomato soup and a main course of sirloin beef. I drank a few stellas and some wine to help kill my hangover, and it seemed to work - so Dad and I went and met some of my mates in the Patchway Sports and Social to watch Man Utd win the Carling Cup.

I may have had another one of those great sandwiches too, when I got home - but I can't remember.

Today was OK, found out I hadn't been too crazy on Saturday. Which was nice. Went to the Bradley Stoke for lunch and I opted to try the roast vegetable lasagne. It was very nice, although seemed to be lacking a crucial ingredient..

I went to the gym after work and then went round my parents for tea and watched the last Life on Mars in the series. Tea was nice, pork chops - which I haven't had in a while. Pancake Day tomorrow, dunno what I'm doing yet.

Coming Soon :- The Weekend

2006-02-23T22:49:00.000Z

Not ate much of interest this week. Monday night I went to the gym and then went round my parents' for tea and watched Life on Mars. They cooked me up the same chicken meal that I had last Thursday.. only with fresh veg and roasters this time.

Tuesday I had a rather forgettable mushroom curry for lunch and I probably went to the pub after that. After work I picked my car up from being serviced. Cost me 320 quid, which just about eats up the surprise bonus I'll be getting this month :(

When I got back, I had a marmite sandwich and went to the Patchway Sports and Social with Carla and Lee. We watched Real Madrid get beaten by Arsenal in the European Champions League 1/4 finals 1st leg. I got very drunk and when I got home, I discovered that my keys were missing from my pocket (with my only car key on there!) - luckily I retraced my steps and found the keys in the local skate park (??).

I had to have myself a bit of a fried breakfast on Wednesday morning to recover, seemed to do the job and then a few hours later I battled through a roast turkey dinner too (it was was Wednesday, after all).

Today's lunch was excellent, I had cajun beef or something - it was amazing. For dessert, I had broccholi soup. Proper.

Stella - the one constant in life?

2006-02-20T22:14:00.000Z

I guess we should pick up from Thursday evening, it seems like so long ago - let me see if I can recall..

Ah yes, I was unexpectedly sans la voiture due to some Toyota specific parts being ordered from factory, I was forced to spend the evening in (not so bad, won the Premiership and FA Cup with Bristol Rovers on Football Manager).

My Mum had given me some food earlier in the week with the strict instruction of eating it immediately - but my fridge is super cold and it still smelt OK, so I cooked that up and ate it.

It contained 2 chicken breasts with stuffing wrapped in bacon and some sausages in a kind of barbeque type sauce. There was also some cheese and potato dish I had, so I bunged it all in the oven and ate it with some salad and loads of ground pepper and some of that pizza style ground chillis and spices.

Friday I had a sandwich for lunch so I could have more time in the pub, then in the evening Sarah came down from Surrey for the weekend and we ordered in a large cheese and tomato pizza, garlic bread and potato wedges from Dominos (too plain a selection to even bother with a picture). We then went round Carla and Lee's and watched Stand By Me and Napoleon Dynamite (which was fucking funny!) and drank some more beer.

On Saturday, Sarah and I went to town to meet Sarah's friend for lunch. Despite going to Corn Street, where there was a massive selection of different restaurants (Lebanese, Italian, Mexican, etc) - we ended up going to the Commercial Rooms (Wetherspoons).

It wasn't all bad, though, as they do 2 meals for 6.29 or something - so I had a bowl of chilli and rice and a lasagne with salad (and obviously several cheap Stellas).

That evening Sarah and I ordered in some Chinese from my recent personal favourite :- Golden Oriental. We had lemon chicken, spicy beef, soft noodles, mixed vegetarian fried rice, chicken satay and a spring roll.

Of course this was all washed down with another of my personal favourites - Stella!!!

Carla and Lee came round and we all watched Donnie Brasco and drank some Stella. Now that's a recipe for a good evening.

Sunday, Sarah and I were supposed to be meeting one of her friends in Weston - but as luck would turn out, we met up with them down on the Waterfront instead.

This is good because Weston is a shit hole.

For some reason I can't explain, possibly just to torment me, but all that fine cuisine in the area to try and we ended up at the fucking Commercial Rooms again!! :)

As I knew I was to go round my parents in the evening for Sunday tea, I didn't opt for the 2-4-1 offer and instead had steak and ale pie. Which I washed down with lashings of cheap Stella.

Sarah and I went round my parents after that and were treated to a tasty meal which included breaded camembert for starters and roast beef for main course.

We all then sat and watched Crash before Sarah went back to Surrey and I met up with Higz and Lee back at my gaff and we watched a few more episodes of Lost (and, possibly, drank some more Stella).

I love Lasagne. She's so damn tasty...

2006-02-15T21:05:00.000Z

Well the working week is drawing to a close, which means the weekend is on it's way. Woo!

Monday evening I went to the gym, worked really hard for an hour and still only managed to burn off about 700-odd calories (less than 4 x 550ml cans of Stella!), ah well. Still weighed 107kg.

When I got home I had myself a cheese, turkey slice, salad and pickled onion sandwich (yes, it works!).

Tuesday (Valentines Day) was great (even though I only got one card!!) as the canteen was serving lamb lasagne!! Ruddy fantastic.

In the evening I went and watched Rovers lose 1-0 at home to fellow play-off contenders Cheltenham, all was not lost though because I got completely wasted afterwards.

My car is currently being serviced, so I had a lift to work (cheers Trew!) and this enabled me to eat some Muesli to try and stop any type of hangover kicking in.

Being Wednesday, I should be telling you about the roast lamb the canteen was serving up.. however this was not to be, as my work mates fancied a visit to the Bradley Stoke (and I didn't take much convinving, especially after getting a second meal free last time).

I opted for half a roast chicken and it was well worth the fiver it cost.

I went to the gym for a bit after work today and managed to sweat some of last night's booze out. Afterwards I went round my parents' and had some chicken wrapped in bacon with veg and roasters. Tasty!

Pie!!

2006-02-13T17:52:00.000Z

Well I remembered to bring my chicken sandwiches to work last Friday and, frankly, I'm as surprised as you are. I munched them all over the course of the day and it meant I had more time for drinking in my lunch hour.

I don't think I got up to much on Friday evening, I went round Mike + Michelle's to feed their cats and then went home, ate pretty much the entire barbeque chicken and then slept for a bit.

I was on-call last week and Saturday I was rudely paged out at 8.22am (which is before the "weekend rate" threshold too - so I wasn't all that happy), once I had fixed the fault I had another kip before watching France vs Ireland in the 6 Nations. I got up and made myself a muesli breakfast before proceeded to tidy the house up.

I had Lee, Carla, Nathan and my Dad over to watch Italy v England and drink some beer. My Dad went home soon after the rugby at my Mum's behest, but the others stayed and we ordered some Chinese from the Golden Oriental (over an hour and a half delivery time, must have been busy - even for a Saturday night).

My meal of choice was honey roasted spare ribs (very nice), sweet and sour duck (could have been sweet and sour anything for all I knew, still nice tho) and Singapore style rice (spicy). The order was quite extensive and I was under express orders from the guys to request some free prawn crackers (even though they always give you free prawn crackers!) - anyway, a good meal nonetheless.

Sunday I got up in time for roast dinner round my parents, roast beef and yorkshire pudding to be precise. Sunday dinners have got to be my favourite meal of the week.

Today I am no longer on-call, so will be going to the gym in a minute - which will be good considering the pie I had in the canteen today. Steak and mushroom - not bad at all.

I'll leave you with a link to an up and coming blog by my mate Trew, it promises to analyse the evolution of spam (not the food type.. the annoying, yet often amusing, tripe that lands in your e-mail inbox without invitation). Please have a ganders, and possibly bookmark, what must truly be an entertaining journey through Trew's junk folder as it happens… http://spamcritters.blogspot.com

Magnificent Work Roast and Double Salmon Treat

2006-02-09T23:35:00.000Z

Phwoar. Check that out for a roasty. This is yesterday's roast pork and it was bloody lovely.

I know I always get excited about Roast Dinners, but the canteen roasts are never normally that great. However I was quite pleased to get a very generous helping of pork and the veg was actually quite nice too (I am starting to get a taste for sprouts) and the gravy was thick (very rare in our canteen).

I have also started using the canteen pepper grounder, which just about capped this treat off.

Anyway, I think I only had muesli for tea yesterday. Not bad, quite filling.

Today we decided to go to the Bradley Stoke pub, I thought I would have some steamed salmon with some salad and a jacket potato (not bad for a fiver).. my day, however, was made a million times better when they accidentally brought another salmon and salad out - I didn't complain, the salmon was even chunkier than the one in the pic. Brilliant, 2 meals for a fiver. Spot on.

Went to Asda after work to get Sarah a Valentines' Day card, as I was there I made sure I bought a 24 pack of Stella, 2 fresh of the spit chickens (1 x barbeque and 1 x garlic - tasty), salad and some Innocent Smoothies. That pretty much sums up my average shopping trip really?

I devoured the garlic chicken when I got home (used some of it to make chicken and salad sandwiches for work tomorrow.. if I remember to take them, that is!)

Friday tomorrow, my favourite working day of the week.

Holmzy Special

2006-02-06T15:36:00.000Z

Thursday I resolved to cook myself some tea, I was rather running out of ingredients - so had to be slightly creative with my masterpiece. My parents had given me some sausagemeat stuffed ravioli, so I boiled that up with some old carrots. Then I bunged in a load of pickled onions, gherkins and cauliflower and then opened a tin of spaghetti hoops into the mix. It kind of looked edible, so I went for it. OK - I had to spice it up with lots of chilli, mixed herbs and black pepper - but it was perfectly filling.

In fact, I had the leftovers of that on Friday. Although I went round my Aunty and Uncles in the evening, got quite spannered in fact. Always a bonus.

Saturday I woke up around 1pm and went down the Patchway Sports and Social with Chris and Lee, got very trolleyed whilst watching England trounce Wales in the 6 Nations (Rovers beat Bury too, so quite a good day). Unfortunately, I was too drunk to do much else and went home to bed around 6pm (not before putting some prawn toast in the oven.. and promptly forgetting and burning them to charcoal).

Sunday I went round my parents' for tea and had a splendid roast lamb and watched Scotland out-muscle France in the 6 Nations.

Today was my Great-Grandmother's funeral. She died aged 98 (born in 1908). The wake was at Parkway Tavern and the food was all paid for by my late Great-Nan.

Clearing the backlog...

2006-02-01T17:33:00.000Z

Nearly a week without an update, I am most ashamed. Although I am sure you'll be happy to hear that I have plenty of scran to tantilise your tastebuds with in today's posting.

As the Grandmaster Flash once said, "taking you back (way, WAY back)" to last week (Thursday, in fact). I went into the posh area of Clifton in the evening and had lots of drinking.

My housemate, Higz, kindly came and picked me up around 11pm and took me to Asda. I did a very poor week's shop (I bought a massive bottle of skimmed milk - why?) - as I hadn't eaten that evening, I also got some kind of pre-cooked chicken wings. They were probably quite tasty.

Friday was the day of the "Christmas" party. I was excited all day, enjoying some kind of chicken in an alcoholic sauce for lunch and building myself a chicken tikka sandwich when I got home (using the multi-grain loaf, tikka'd chicken, mayonaise and salad that I had bought the night before). The sandwich was great, washed down with lashings of Stella (naturally). In fact, I had caned 6 cans before I even got the bus to the party.

Apparently there was food at the party, but I don't recall..

Skipping to Saturday, I woke up early (as I usually do after a skinful) and tinkered round on my PC until I was well enough to drive to Surrey (the trip to Wales was postponed, so I decided to go and visit Sarah and her family instead).

Saturday evening I was treated to my favourite type of meal an all you can eat buffet! The joint in question was Pete's Palace and the food was grand, but the place was rammed. I didn't really do myself justice, I felt, and only managed to eat 2 heaped platefuls of Chinese goodness. Something must be wrong.

Sunday I woke up with a tremendous cold. Sarah dubbed it man-flu, but whatever it was it knocked me a bit for six (I am never ill, so probably over-react to a slight cold).

To try and sort myself out, we went to Staines (Aiii) and had a meal at Nando's. I had a quarter of a chicken, spicy rice and coleslaw. Pretty cool. We then went and watched Jarhead at the pics, was pretty good - I reckon.

I drove home on Sunday evening and made myself a cheese, salad and pickle sandwich when I got there. That was all that nice, fresh bread gone.

I was still feeling quite ill on Monday, but I had quite a nice lunch in the canteen - some kind of spicy vegetable noodle dish (I also added some extra veg - for goodness). I went down the gym in the evening, to try and sweat my cold out. Afterwards I went round my parents' for tea - chicken breast in bacon, stuffing, roasters and lots of veg!

Yesterday I had some hotpot (too boring a pic to include..) in the canteen for lunch and then went to the footy with Gale in the evening (a 3-3 thriller against Leyton Orient). I had a proper Cornish Pasty from the ground for my tea (and, of course, lots of beer). Unsurprisingly this hasn't really helped my cold.

Today is, of course, roast dinner day and wouldn't be complete without the obligatory roast image. The featured meat was roast beef.

Lasagne x 2

2006-01-26T17:52:00.000Z

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

2006-01-24T21:52:00.000Z

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

2006-01-22T19:05:00.000Z

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?

2006-01-19T17:51:00.000Z

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...

2006-01-18T17:44:00.000Z

... 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...

2006-01-17T17:42:00.000Z

... 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 :)

2006-01-16T17:41:00.000Z

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"...

2006-01-11T17:38:00.000Z

... 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).