Don’t play with your food

“I wish the real world, would just stop hassling me.”

-Real World by Matchbox 20

Sharpies are possibly the most amazing things in the world…next to food. Sharpies draw on anything! Glass, tin, wood, people and much to my amusement….food! (I do hope they are not toxic!oh well!) It started with melons….which while shopping, I discovered look just like minions. And reduced melons are even better!

So I bought one….going back the next day to provide my new minion melon with a friend.

As much fun as this was to do….it proved to be quite a moral dilemma in the long run, because when you want to eat the melon you have to kill the minion.

You cant kill a minion, they are just too…minion-y and cute!

The killing of the minion was left to me….it was a sad day.

Ah well I did want to be a butcher when I grew up!

Drawing on the melons was thoroughly amusing and I loved it….so much so that I found myself wandering round the flat with a sharpie in my hand looking for things to draw on.

Not great when you rent!!!

Fortunately my flatmate was spared….because I had to devise a way to differentiate the boiled eggs from the normal eggs…..

I do like to be organised!

Oh what a night.

“Oh yes it’s noodle night

And the feeling’s right

Oh yes it’s noodle night

Oh what a night (oh what a night)”

-My flatmate and I, Edinburgh 2012-13

Thursdays are a busy day. Thursdays are a long day. I’m also pretty sure that my Thursdays start before everybody elses and end a lot later.

Both my flatmate and myself get home fairly late, neither of us having eaten either.

Now I don’t know about you, but I am not a nice hungry person, so whatever it is that I have on a Thursday night, it has to be blooming quick!

Enter the savior of my teenage years, Mama noodles.

I learnt to love Mama noodles when I lived in Thailand as a teenager. I didn’t have a normal ex-pat life, all my friends were Thai. So I ate the way they ate. And Mama noodles are what they ate.

Far from your average packet noodles…Mama are spicy (well the Creamy Tom Yam ones that I have are anyway.) And please don’t be tempted to  take them at packet value, you make them your own.

MY Mama Noodles go as follows:

Add some Maggi seasoning sauce, lime juice along with the seasoning and poach an egg in the water. I like to take the egg out after a couple of minutes so that the yoke is still runny in the middle. (mmmmmm)

Then add veg…mooli is good to add, as is shredded white cabbage (and any other veg for that matter, it’s really up to you.)

When the veg is cooked a bit (still crunchy, not soggy) you add the noodles.

Meanwhile, in a living room nearby, a flat mate is getting the DVD ready on pause so that no time is wasted.

Noodle night is also Chuck night.

Ah! Good times.

Long live noodle night.

And the Oscar goes to…..my flat mate

I would normally start every post with a quote.

As this post is mostly a conversation, I feel that it is, in its own right, quite quotable.

Picture the scene:

Its early evening and the bus is busy. My flatmate and I had managed to get seats together and were glancing over our shared Metro newspaper. The conversation went as follows:

Me: Did she win ‘Best Actress’ ? (pointing to a picture of Anne Hathaway.)

Flatmate: No, she won ‘Best Un-Supported Actress’.

Me: Are you sure? I don’t think that’s a category.

Flatmate: No, no, it DEFINITELY said in the paper yesterday that it was ‘Un-Supported Actress’.

Me: (Feeling slightly confused. Then the penny dropped.) Erm, do you think they were talking about her lack of bra?

Flatmate: (Silence for a moment while she looked at the picture. Then she got it, she got it VERY loudly…)

OOOOH! HA!

I would have loved to have been the girl sat behind us on the bus that day…I cried with laughter for the rest of the journey!

I used to watch the Oscars every year. But that was a long time ago. Now I’m just happy to watch something mindless to switch off. But…there has to be some sort of snacking to be done.

My current obsession is Guacamole! I figure that if I just take a couple of celery sticks through to the living room with me then I won’t eat the lot…but then I work out that I have fingers and that they are just the right size for scooping guacamole into my mouth!

I cannot get enough.

(Which is why I don’t have any photos of it to share with you.)

The recipe I use is from a fellow blogger called Illustrated Bites.

Recipe Here.

Whatever your chill out TV snack is, enjoy!

It’s Just One of Those Days

“So I crawl underneath my blanket

so I can hide away”

– It’s Just One of Those Days by Joshua Radin

Do you get those days?

You know, the ones where every cup, glass or plate you pick up has a suicide wish and leaps into the air and onto the floor? And you know what, crockery and glass don’t bounce do they?

Those days when you sleep through your radio alarm playing rock music at you for an hour and at least one phone call to find that you are once again LATE?

Those days when the words just won’t come out right and you seem to offend anyone and everyone in your path just with a smile?

Those days when you forget to take lunch and you’re too skint to get anything?

Those days where you accidentally click the wrong button and post Wednesdays blog post on Sunday?

Those days when you get home and think “Spaghetti! That’ll be quick.”?

Yeah?

I had one of those days too….

P.S. These days are not Wet Lettuce Days, these are just THOSE days!

Wet Lettuce Days

“Gary made me a broth. Which is just soup but its called broth if you’re ill for some reason.”

– Miranda

It starts with a sore throat.

“If I ignore it, it’ll go away. It won’t even notice me. It’ll forget about being anything more. I’m just tired, that’s what it is.”

It goes on to be an even sorer throat.

Out comes the hot lemon!

“You will not become more. I shall exterminate any thoughts of grandous germy-ness that you have. You will not….”

Sneezing (I never sneeze unless the sun is in my eyes, which happens quite a lot with the low winter sun up here..)

Sniffing (Urgh, don’t you hate sniffers. It drives me mad. Even me doing it annoys me. A couple of tissues wedged firmly up each nostril sorts that out.)

Coughing. Coughing so much that you don’t know if your stomach is sore from the work outs that you have been doing in that desperate January effort to get fit or from the constant coughing up of a lung.

Blowing your nose  ALL THE TIME, is there an end to the snot? The gross bit being (if you are of a sensitive nature, don’t read the next part) gunk coming out of your eyes. Its just not nice.

Oh, and one of my favourites (as you are never sure when this one may happen) the unsuspecting ear pop. Ah! You didn’t even realise they were blocked did you? Tadah! You can hear again.

Thing is, everything goes wrong when you are ill. You also become someone else. This wet lettuce character that flops about. The type of person who can no longer get out of bed, the one that slides out and then crawls everywhere else from there. The person that walks to the fridge, opens it and stares at all the food that is in there (because there is food in there) and is such a wet lettuce that they can’t find anything to eat.

The well version of you would shake the poorly one and go,

“Get a grip! Look at all that food there, just cook some!!!”

But the poorly you, would look back through gunky eyes, having just blown their nose and say,

“But there are no biscuits.”

Poorly you lives off cans of soup from the cupboard, the ones that you really aren’t sure how long they have been there. But you don’t care, you want soup. Even if it does taste a bit funky, but that doesn’t matter because, hey, you can’t taste properly anyway!

The poorly you is the one that when your flatmate gets home and says,

“I’ll cook dinner.”

goes….

“OK”

THAT’S when you know, you are really not well.

Note: Thank you for Oscar-Hugo for  demonstrating his wonderful modelling skills.