What have I been up to lately?
Falling in love with a supermarket
Whenever I join a new group of people I fall in with their routines, so as to fit in and not be a pain. This is not something I do consciously and it sometimes takes me a while to realise that someone else's routines are not for me and maybe I'd be happier doing things a different way.
cookwitch likes to do the weekly shopping on a Saturday morning at our local shops (where we have butcher's shops and greengrocer's etc). So when I moved in, I followed the crowd and, when doing the weekly shopping, did it on a Saturday morning. I recently had cause to stop by the big Sainsbury's in Romford on a Friday evening and it was blissfully quiet and spacious, there were no screaming children or moaning old ladies blocking the entire aisle with their trolley, there wasn't an enormous queue for the tills; all in all much less stressful than shopping in our local supermarket. Plus, as if that weren't enough, they have a much larger range of everything.
I'm a modern girl and I like my modern conveniences. I know that lots of people think the death of the little shops is a terrible thing, but give me a large modern supermarket any day of the week. I prefer to be able to consider my purchases in private, reading labels and checking prices, so being served by shop-keeper in a small store (e.g. like a butchers) does not work for me; I like the range of products available; and I like to be able to do all my shopping in one place at a time that suits me (which most definitely is not on a Saturday morning surrounded by the awfulness that is local Harold Hill humanity).
Eating a lot
The weekend before last was Thanksgiving and webcowgirl was generous enough to invite me over to dinner (and to allow me to foist rosamicula on the occasion!). There was some very nice food there and a lot of it. In particular, I want her stuffing recipe. I'm not usually a stuffing fan but this was wonderful, and quite unlike the sort of stuffing you see over here.
I stayed over with rosamicula after the dinner and the following day, when we surfaced around 12-ish, she suggested a local Columbian restaurant for breakfast. I've never eaten it before but I'm now a big fan of the concept of steak for breakfast! The restaurant had a leisurely pace that perfectly suited our energy levels and we ended up staying there for four hours. A cup of Columbian coffee each gave us the impetus to journey across to sushidog's for her tea party and more food!
I've been trying to branch out in my cooking recently (I'm not branching very far, the food I like to eat is of the meat and two veg variety so that's what I cook). This, combined with aforementioned supermarket love, has led to some very nice meals, if I do say so myself. Last week, silenttex and I had a gorgeously moist gammon joint (served, as I believe is traditional, with egg and chips) and, after being tempted by trampledamage's talk of Yorkshire puddings, the two of us had roast beef and Yorkshire pud for dinner on Saturday. The Yorkies stuck to the tin unfortunately (but were still yummy) but the roasties were spot on. I was very pleased.
Discovering new authors
Well new to me, one of them was Raymond Chandler and he's not exactly new to the publishing world. I don't know how I've managed to be a crime fiction fan for as long as I have (pretty much since I started reading) without having read any Chandler. Sometimes I'm just contrary that way. Now I have, I shall be reading the rest in fairly short order and, I expect, re-reading them regularly. I am in awe of the man's writing, especially his similes. They're absolute genius. Of course I can't remember any off the top of my head to quote.
The other fellow is less well known, especially here in the UK where he doesn't have a publishing deal. His name is Stephen Dobyns and webcowgirl leant me a couple of his detective novels (he also writes poetry) and I loved them. Just slim volumes (around 200 pages) they are a quick and very enjoyable read. I delayed rosamicula and my journey out for breakfast the other week, in order to read the last 20 pages of Saratoga Haunting in order to find out who did it!
I've updated my reading list here. I've stopped measuring the width of the books I read because a) it was very clear in September (when I reached 67 inches, three inches off my target) that I was going to easily read my own height and more and b) I now read quite a few e-books and how do you measure the width of an e-book? Are they all zero width? Or perhaps all the width of my Palm.
Whenever I join a new group of people I fall in with their routines, so as to fit in and not be a pain. This is not something I do consciously and it sometimes takes me a while to realise that someone else's routines are not for me and maybe I'd be happier doing things a different way.
cookwitch likes to do the weekly shopping on a Saturday morning at our local shops (where we have butcher's shops and greengrocer's etc). So when I moved in, I followed the crowd and, when doing the weekly shopping, did it on a Saturday morning. I recently had cause to stop by the big Sainsbury's in Romford on a Friday evening and it was blissfully quiet and spacious, there were no screaming children or moaning old ladies blocking the entire aisle with their trolley, there wasn't an enormous queue for the tills; all in all much less stressful than shopping in our local supermarket. Plus, as if that weren't enough, they have a much larger range of everything.
I'm a modern girl and I like my modern conveniences. I know that lots of people think the death of the little shops is a terrible thing, but give me a large modern supermarket any day of the week. I prefer to be able to consider my purchases in private, reading labels and checking prices, so being served by shop-keeper in a small store (e.g. like a butchers) does not work for me; I like the range of products available; and I like to be able to do all my shopping in one place at a time that suits me (which most definitely is not on a Saturday morning surrounded by the awfulness that is local Harold Hill humanity).
Eating a lot
The weekend before last was Thanksgiving and webcowgirl was generous enough to invite me over to dinner (and to allow me to foist rosamicula on the occasion!). There was some very nice food there and a lot of it. In particular, I want her stuffing recipe. I'm not usually a stuffing fan but this was wonderful, and quite unlike the sort of stuffing you see over here.
I stayed over with rosamicula after the dinner and the following day, when we surfaced around 12-ish, she suggested a local Columbian restaurant for breakfast. I've never eaten it before but I'm now a big fan of the concept of steak for breakfast! The restaurant had a leisurely pace that perfectly suited our energy levels and we ended up staying there for four hours. A cup of Columbian coffee each gave us the impetus to journey across to sushidog's for her tea party and more food!
I've been trying to branch out in my cooking recently (I'm not branching very far, the food I like to eat is of the meat and two veg variety so that's what I cook). This, combined with aforementioned supermarket love, has led to some very nice meals, if I do say so myself. Last week, silenttex and I had a gorgeously moist gammon joint (served, as I believe is traditional, with egg and chips) and, after being tempted by trampledamage's talk of Yorkshire puddings, the two of us had roast beef and Yorkshire pud for dinner on Saturday. The Yorkies stuck to the tin unfortunately (but were still yummy) but the roasties were spot on. I was very pleased.
Discovering new authors
Well new to me, one of them was Raymond Chandler and he's not exactly new to the publishing world. I don't know how I've managed to be a crime fiction fan for as long as I have (pretty much since I started reading) without having read any Chandler. Sometimes I'm just contrary that way. Now I have, I shall be reading the rest in fairly short order and, I expect, re-reading them regularly. I am in awe of the man's writing, especially his similes. They're absolute genius. Of course I can't remember any off the top of my head to quote.
The other fellow is less well known, especially here in the UK where he doesn't have a publishing deal. His name is Stephen Dobyns and webcowgirl leant me a couple of his detective novels (he also writes poetry) and I loved them. Just slim volumes (around 200 pages) they are a quick and very enjoyable read. I delayed rosamicula and my journey out for breakfast the other week, in order to read the last 20 pages of Saratoga Haunting in order to find out who did it!
I've updated my reading list here. I've stopped measuring the width of the books I read because a) it was very clear in September (when I reached 67 inches, three inches off my target) that I was going to easily read my own height and more and b) I now read quite a few e-books and how do you measure the width of an e-book? Are they all zero width? Or perhaps all the width of my Palm.