Week #34 of my NEW52 life ...

When I started out along this path of new experiences, I had no idea that so many of them would be food related. Yet here we are at week 34 and once again I'm sharing images of recipes I've tried out for the first time. This week, I have one savoury recipe and one sweet recipe.

First off, Whisky & Chilli Prawns ... finger licking good, right? Well, if truth be told, this wasn't an over-riding success but I think that's because the prawns I used were just too small. The recipe can be found here and is pretty straight forward to follow. Here's how they should look ...


Mine weren't particularly sticky, but again I think this was due to the size of the prawns. Instead of using the left over glaze as a dipping sauce, I cooked up some noodles, added some chopped corriander and tossed everything together ... resulting in a slightly sticky Asian influenced prawn + noodle combo ...

Not bad, but could be better. Note to self: BUY KING PRAWNS NEXT TIME!

Next up and it was Whoopie time! I've been wanting to make these for a while. Even the name "whoopie pie" sounds like a celebration of all things good & sweet doesn't it? And oh boy are they sweet!!!

These definitely aren't for the faint hearted (or those counting calories for that matter) as there's a whole lot of sugar in them there pies! But DH has the sweetest tooth of anyone I know and as far as I can tell, he approved ...


Both recipes are from Lorraine Pascal's Baking Made Easy recipe book ... which just so happens to be my favourite recipe book at the moment!!! Can you tell?

Week #33 of my NEW52 life ...

When I first sat down to compose this post, I figured I had nothing new to share this week. I've been incredibly busy at work recently, so much so that I've been doing about an hour & half overtime each evening AND I've worked the last 3 Saturday mornings too. I've been too busy at work to be doing any NEW52 things ... or so I thought.

On reflection, I've actually had quite a few NEW experiences this week ... just not necessarily what you'd refer to as good ones. In fact a couple of them have been down right BAD! OK, where do I start?

Monday: it started like any other Monday, with my daily 15 minute commute to the office. As I approached the business park, the traffic began to build and I crawled along at no more than 5 miles / hour ... aaaarrrgggghhhh!!! But this slow speed allowed me to hear a weird grinding noise that I wouldn't otherwise have noticed. I rolled my window down to try to gauge where abouts on my car the noise was coming from, but without luck. The noise wasn't noticeable at higher speed, only when driving in 1st or 2nd gear. Oh joy! I parked up at the office, had a quick look round but didn't see anything obvious, so didn't think much more of it ... until 6:30pm when I went to get in my car to go home, only to find the driver's side rear tyre looking a bit deflated. Crap! I drove to my nearest garage and pumped some air into the tyre, enough hopefully to make it home and consider my options. #badnew52

Tuesday: my tyre didn't look too bad, but when I applied some pressure, it had just a little bit too much "give" for my liking. Crap, crap! I left my car parked up and got a lift to work with DH. Actually we do usually drive together in the same car (we work at the same company) but with all the overtime I've been doing of late, it's been easier for us to drive in separate cars. Anyhoo, the good thing about going into work with DH, meant I left the office "on time" for the first time is a couple of weeks. Yeah! #goodnew52

Wednesday AM: carefully drove my car to the local tyre sales garage and watched intently as the mechanic whipped off my tyre and check it over for defects. Turned out the valve was leaking and that's what was causing the tyre to deflate; it was also the cause of the weird grinding noise I'd heard on Monday's drive to work. Anyhoo, £16 and 20 minutes later and all was well with my little Ford. #goodnew52

Wednesday PM: whilst I stayed on at work, DH + DB decided to go food shopping. Our fridge / freezer and cupboards have been looking woefully bare of late and there's only so many times you can eat cheese-on-toast for dinner. Anyhoo, more fool me that I hadn't written out a shopping list. The boys did an OK job of getting the basic food supplies (bread, milk, fruit etc), but there were a couple of unexpected items too ... a couple of DVD's to be precise! DH is a bit of an impulse shopper and he'd bought the movies Source Code and Paul. #badnew52 or #goodnew52

Thursday: nothing much happened today, other than at the age of 40, I got my very first cold sore. Crap, crap, crap! Hey, nobody said all the NEW things had to be good did they?!?!?! #badnew52

Friday: left work a couple of hours early so I could pop to the salon to get my hair cut. Yeah! My stylist is a lovely lady called Tracy and she's an absolute hoot!!! I'd go there every 8 weeks just for a natter ... the fact that I get my hair done at the same time is a bonus! #goodnew52


And there you have it; my week filled with some good and just a couple of bad NEW things too. So how was your week?

Week #32 of my NEW52 life ...

S'mores ... or s'more pops to be more precise! That was my NEW52 for last week.

I'd read about s'more pops on Amy Atlas' Sweet Designs blog (I ♥ this blog btw!) and thought they looked pretty straight forward to assemble and would be a fun little treat to make.

Here's what Amy's looked like ...

And here's what mine looked like ...


Aside from the fact that mine weren't professionally displayed as part of a dessert table, and that I could only find flat wooden lollipop sticks (rather than the thin round white style), I think they look pretty similar ... don't you?

They tasted pretty darn good too!

An unexpected visitor ...

Yesterday evening, I was sat on the sofa, minding my own business and catching up on a few of my favourite blogs, whilst my brother was in the kitchen ironing a shirt for work the following day. All of a sudden I heard "meeeeeeooooowwwww" ... what the heck!?!?!?!

"Who are you?" my brother asked ... "meeeeooowww". Kitty then wandered into the front room to meet me. "Hello" I said, "where did you come from?" ... "meeeeooooowwwww".

Having said hello, he proceeded into the hallway and promptly trotted up stairs to have a nose around the bedrooms. Oooooh, the cheek of it ... we'd only been introduced a minute earlier and already he was making himself at home and peaking through every open door and cupboard!

"Here kitty, kitty, kitty" I chimed ... "meeeeeoooowwww". "Who do you belong to?" ... "meeeeoooowww". Kitty flicked his tail in my direction, licked his paw and washed his face. Well I never!

As he bounced down the stairs, my brother had wisely closed off all the doors to other parts of the house and the only option kitty had was to either go back up stairs (which I think he seriously contemplated for a moment) or out the front door.


Bye bye kitty. Thanks for stopping by ... "meeeeeeooooowwwwww!!!"

18 years ago today ...

9th August 1993

Week #31 of my NEW52 life ...

Cue the cheesy 1970's disco music because my NEW for this week is all about the car-wash ... whoa, whoa whoa, I'm talkin' about the car-wash girl ... hahaha ... now this may seem hard to believe, but in all my years as a car owner / driver, I've never actually driven through an automatic car-wash. Not ever! But that changed this week.

I bought a gold service wash & wax for the princely sum of £6.99. I drove round to the tunnel(?) then carefully edged my car into position ... forward a bit ... back a bit ... perfect. Windows up? Check. Radio aerial retracted? Check. Here we go ...

The first pass was just like driving through a heavy rain shower ... but without having the wipers going at full pelt.


Then came the rollers. Eeeeeeeek ... those things are scary! Just when I thought they were going to squash my car, they lifted, parted and pummelled the top and sides with their rotating bristles instead.


You can't really see the next part in my photos, but it was basically like going through a giant hair-dryer! The blowers sent warm air over the car bodywork and windows and basically blasted away the surplus water, whilst at the same time applying a fine mist of wax ... very clever.


Now, because this was my first time going through the car-wash, DH came with me to make sure I lined my car up correctly. He assures me that he wasn't actually worried, despite the expression on his face in this photo ... tee-hee!


I realise I don't actually have a photo of my car to share but that's because I forgot to take before and after the wash photos. Oh well, maybe I'll remember the next time!