Category: General ramblings

A day in the life

Hey

I just liked this picture as I had no other pictures for the post 🙂

I keep seeing posts on a day in the life, and I love reading them-I think I am quite nosey about what other people get up to! So I decided to do my own- for yesterday (Wednesday).

6.50am- Alarm goes off (Radio 4)- visit bathroom, get dressed, blink in the bright lights.

7am- Empty dishwasher while porridge cooks in microwave. Put lunch in lunchbox with ice pack, fill up water bottle for work.

7.10am- sit down to read blogs/ email/ facebook while eating porridge and drinking water. Publish my WIAW post and link up. Reply to the cupcake decorating email- I have booked on to a Christmas cupcake class!

7.30- realise that time flies when I am on the internet- quickly clean teeth and finish getting ready. Brush hair.

7.40-Rush out the door, get bins from around the corner, get car out of garage (grr I used to have our parking space but since Andy bought a bigger car his now can’t fit in the garage!). Listen to more radio 4- tune out and only realise it is the weather forecast when it says about the weather for Wales- ahhh I missed it for the south east!

8am-Arrive at work. Set up classroom for the day (I won’t list all the things I do as it will get very long haha!).

8.55am- let children in- get on with teaching!

10.30am- break time (not my duty day so I get a break)- make a cup of dragonfly rooibos chai tea, and have a cocoa mint nakd bar.

10.45am- break ends- more teaching.

12.15- lunch time- do some marking.

12.30- lunch time meeting- eat my hummus and carrot pitta and pear while in said meeting.

1.00- meeting ends- set up for afternoon lessons

1.15- children back- afternoon lessons

3.15- children leave- tidy a few bits away and get out a few things for tomorrow. Put marking aside for tomorrow morning.

3.30- after school meeting- data analysis makes my eyes go funny. How can people spend all day staring at a computer screen? Makes my eyes hurt!

4.50pm- Leave work and drive home- on the drive home think “Now it is all dark, maybe I should skip the run. We could have a walk instead. Who I am kidding- we will not want to go out on a walk in the dark and cold. Plus we have to wait in for the shopping. So just miss the run? But then I would have to run on Friday instead and I much prefer coming home straight away on a Friday. OK, maybe just a short run then.”

5.15pm- arrive home, quickly change into running clothes.

5.25pm- go out on a short run. Wow it is cold out there! Feel pleased because I did over 3 miles when I really didn’t feel like it much at first.

6.05pm-Arrive home, put dinner in the oven to heat up,  jump in shower (while Andy unpacks shopping which arrived an hour early!)

6.15pm- out of shower (I didn’t wash my hair which saves time of drying it later on too- bonus).

6.30pm- Sit down to dinner- yummy vegan lentil tofu moussaka and roasted carrots, butternut and sweet potato left over from my lunches. This was so tasty and I wanted to take a photo but the batteries in the camera died. Ah well, you can picture it (or click on the recipe links to see them!).

7pm- Make some chocolate cherry brownies- these are for the final prize as Bronagh lives close by so she is going to collect her prizes. No photos though as the camera batteries are still charging!

7.30pm- Check emails, blogs etc.

8.30pm- realise the time and turn off the computer! Sit down to watch some TV with Andy.

9pm- Have a cup of mint tea and my last date almond bar.

10pm- Make my porridge for the next morning, get my lunch ready, clean up in the kitchen, put on dishwasher, get ready for bed.

10.30pm- Read for a bit in bed (and feel pleased that I got to bed pretty early!).

11.20pm- realise I have read for far too long and now will not get my 8 hours! Ah well, will try again tomorrow! 🙂

Now your turn- tell me something interesting about your day.

WIAW- on a Wednesday??

What? Yup, that is right, for the fun that Jenn organises I actually chose a Wednesday. Last Wednesday. The only problem is that it was a week ago now, and I don’t have a great memory!

Breakfast:

Porridge with oats, chia seeds, Kallo soya milk, grated carrots and cinnamon. I left it to soak overnight as usual and it was very tasty.

Snacks;

Pecan pie for the morning, and lime raisins (these are zingy!) before my run. Both from giveaway prizes 🙂

Lunch;

Massive carrot hummus sandwich and a pear.

I had a run after work but I cannot remember how far I went- I will go for 4 miles- that sounds about right.

Dinner;

Pepper stuffed with giant cous cous, quinoa, chickpeas, squash, plus some more of the filling, a little Delamere goats cheese and some rocket.

Snack;

Greek yoghurt with honey and a little muesli (I have a lot of yoghurt that needs eating!)

Although with this colder weather I feel like I need warmer things as snacks too (to go along with all the teas)- what do you like to eat to help warm you up?

You can catch me!

Because apparently I am very slow and am certainly not the gingerbread man (shh marathon talk listeners, not that type of gingerbread man).

I think my Nike+ is struggling- although I have had it for 18 months now. It keeps losing the signal from my shoes, and today I did nearly 5 miles (and I only just calibrated it)- at a fair pace for me, in 47 mins, but it thinks I did just over 4 and had an average pace of 11.30, and it won’t upload my run. Grr. Anyway it was a bit of a mind battle today- during the day I was looking forward to a run, but after leaving work and driving through the drizzle, by the time I got home all I fancied was a cup of tea and some TV. But I did know that I would feel better after a run, and regret not getting out, especially if later in the week the weather is worse- if it tips with rain on Wednesday at least I know I only have to do a short run because I did a longer midweek one today. It was so dark though- I went up to Sweatshop on Sunday to get some high viz things with my vouchers, but they were shut (grr), so I am planning on stopping by on Thursday after work. I don’t mind it where there are lots of street-lights- I never need to worry about bad pavements, but when I am driving it reminds me of how seeing pedestrians is really hard, so when crossing the roads I was getting a bit paranoid. Was glad to be home!

But I did have a yummy gingerbread man after my dinner to make up for that fact. These are tasty but not that gingery- I think my taste buds are so used to lots of spices that I need more! And more! Also they would be yummy with a little melted dark chocolate on top- does that destroy the “no junk” promise? I will use nice chocolate 🙂

Last night I tried some Teapigs Lemon and Ginger tea ( I love the little piglets so much!)- this was yummy- not too gingery and I think perfect if you were feeling like you had a bit of a cold or something.

How do you eat your gingerbread men? I like to eat the legs first (so they can’t run away- cue evil laugh) but also because then they keep smiling at me. Weird.

Now a technical question- I quite like the idea of a facebook page (sort of getting with the program, I am afraid I am never going to understand tweeting but I can do facebook!), but I wonder if I am better to have a profile instead of a page? I don’t really want people from work reading my blog (I know stuff on the internet can be found by anyone, and if they did come across it then fine, but I don’t want to put it out there to make it easy!) and I tried to make a page this evening. But then I can’t seem to add people (I would like to add my lovely blog friends) like you would on a normal page- anyone with some idea of how it works I would appreciate a few pointers! Cheers.

Nuts and orange fingers

Hey peeps

I am glad everyone liked the look of the Stollen yesterday- I think Germany has the best Christmas traditions. My Dad’s mum was Austrian so we always had a lot of those sorts of things growing up. When my parents come over for Christmas I will be making another one for then.

As well as making stollen, I made some spiced nuts- whisk up an egg white, add a few tbs icing sugar and brown sugar, loads of spices (cinnamon, mixed spice…) and some extract (vanilla/ almond/ orange) then bake.

They need turning/ shaking a few times- these took around 20 mins.

Yum! Leave to cool, then store in an airtight jar. I will make a variation of these as Christmas gifts.

I have also been making some more warm lunches.

Another from my squash box- this was a red onion squash- with such vibrant orange flesh.

This was chopped up along with a couple of carrots and a massive sweet potato, and roasted in the oven for 30 mins with a little rosemary. By the way, I walked up to Aldi today (I actually went to go to Sweatshop to spend my race vouchers, but it was closed despite having Sunday opening hours of 11-5pm, anyway..) and I got a big bag of sweet potatoes for 69p! And a big bag of apples for 69p! And 3 peppers for 69p! Super cheap.

Then I cooked 50g quinoa and 50g wholewheat giant cous cous with some vecon stock, added a tin of tomatoes, chilli flakes and a tin of black eye beans.

This made 5 servings all layered up, and some more roasted veg for dinner on another day.  After all that chopping I have very orange fingers, so to match I nibbled on;

Yum- Montezumas Milk chocolate with orange- soooooooo good!

Favourite orange thing? I wonder how many people will answer with pumpkin!

PS I also made the vegan pumpkin spice cake, so stay tuned for the recipe 🙂

Stop! Stollen time

Woo!

I made the most of my weekend at home- seems like it has been ages (well, we have spent the last 2 weekends going away for races).

Saturday started with some gingerbread porridge (2 boxes for £3 in Waitrose, but they only had 1 box left!)- nice but I think it could do with more ginger! I think I am a spice addict.

Then it continued with an 8 mile run- I could not decide between a 6 and 8 mile run (I was aching a lot from body pump on Thursday-I had to miss last week due to parents evening, and normally I would go down weights if I miss weeks but I didn’t and was worried that I would not actually finish the squats track), so went on how I felt at mile 3 (when I have to choose the route home)- I was feeling great so I carried on. I even contemplated rounding it up to 10, but then thought Andy might worry about where I had got to. 1 hr 32 which I think is my quickest time for that route too. (We went out last night for a friends’ birthday and I had some chocolate orange raspberry torte for dessert- must be my rocket fuel).

This was meant to be my post run snack, but I actually forgot to drink the milk. The Larabar was amazing though- tasted very similar to the almond fudgy bars.

Then it was stollen time! Hooray! This recipe is vegan and is based on the one in Rachel Allen’s Bake (which also has the best Christmas cake recipe, gingerbread house and white chocolate peanut butter blondies need I go on- check it out). It made me 3 loaves- one normal and 2 smaller.

First up and the fruit needed soaking- 400g fruit (I used 50g mixed peel and 350g mixed fruit, but I have added cranberries, cherries etc before), 100g ground almonds, 50ml brandy, tsp vanilla and tsp almond extract.

Then heat 220ml almond milk and add 2 tsp dried yeast- leave to bubble for 10 mins. As the almond milk was sugar free I also added a tsp sugar here to help the yeast.

Meanwhile put 500g strong bread flour in a bowl with a load of spices- I did cinnamon, ginger, cardamon, cloves and nutmeg. See, spice addict.

Add the frothy milk and stir it- then knead in 150g pure spread and 100g caster sugar.

This gets sticky! You may need to add a little more flour to make it into a soft dough.

Then leave covered for 2 hours to double in size.

Hooray!

Then put it on a board and roll out, pour on the fruit mixture and knead it all in.

Then split it into however many loaves you want (I did 3). Roll each one out, put some marzipan in (which seems to be vegan? For some reason I thought it contained egg whites but the ones I have are just sugar and almonds) and sprinkle a few flaked almonds inside.

Then roll up into a loaf shape and attempt to seal the crack down the middle. Leave for an hour to rise. Then heat the oven to 200C.

Bake for 40-45 mins, and then dust with icing sugar. This is in the recipe but also handily covers the bits where the dough opens back out again.

I could not wait to try some (with some lovely vanilla rooibos tea). My one came out blurry, but look at this slice;

The marzipan in the middle is the best bit! 🙂

They keep for a while (if you can resist them) and also freeze well- so I have put one in the freezer and we are taking the big one to Andy’s parents tomorrow.

I hope you all had a lovely Saturday too- what did you do to relax today?

Also on a totally random note, I have seen that clif bar do seasonal flavours– how good do these sound? : spiced pumpkin pie, iced gingerbread and peppermint stick (US peeps- are they as nice as they sound?). Actually they sound like latte flavours too, but they are clif bars! Amazing. Maybe they need a stollen flavour to add to the collection….