MMMMMMREs

I am somewhat thankful that my big box of American MRE samples arrived today. MRE stands for Meal Ready to Eat - carefully packed, nutritionally balanced foodstuffs for on duty military personnel.

Thankful because our stupid fridge freezer is being extra retarded. The fridge freezes better than the freezer. His Lordship took an egg out, cracked it over a pan, and promptly nearly messed himself laughing as a "whole" egg fell out. Frozen solid. The salad vegetables were ruined, soggy piles of pale green goop and the yogurts are more like icecream. *sigh*

The MREs have all kinds of yummy things in, the meals themselves are chili and macaroni, and a minestrone dish. We have lots of extras, including peanut butter, cappuchino, vegetable crackers, spiced apples, grape juice, jalapeno cheese spread... all kinds of niceness! The chocolate brownie we shared - and it was AWESOME. Not only is it boosted with extra iron, it also contains over 18% of your daily dietary fibre and tastes like awesomeness! (Alright, so it doesn't beat Mum's brownies, but it had a damn good try of it.)

Lovely Lidl

Ugh. I am SO sick of the RAIN. It has done NOTHING but rain every evening and now all my weekend too. When I'm AT WORK, the weather has been glorious, sunny and bright. As soon as I'm out and I want to go to town, do some gardening, go to the shop, put some clothes out to dry... It's soddin' raining.

I can't finish my giftwrapping as we're out of ribbons, and I don't fancy trying to fight my way down the Queensway to get there with this dark, wind and rain... Even the lack of toilet roll hasn't persuaded me to go shopping, not even the appalling cheap paper the lads consider suitable.

I did however manage to get to Lidl, having forgot how cool it is, but reminded by the startling price of Stollen in Tesco. £9 for a kilo loaf. Lidl do the same size for £1.99. Result: £7 savings and a whole lot of yummy.

I daren't buy too many Christmas foodie bits that I need to chill - the freezer is getting slowly more dodgy again... I do have a few not-necessary-to-freeze bits, like Cadbury chocolate fingers, a tin of sweeties, some mince pies, chocolate coated apricot filled gingerbreads and, of course, my Stollen. It's too early to get the Christmas Tree down, but I'm very tempted.

Dragons are too busy being snoozy. They know the weather outside is bad, and are quietly ignoring it. Tsam has been exploring the travel basket, jumping on, in and nosing around it - which will make it easier when we need to use it, as he'll know what it is and what it's for. I did find a cool little bag to go with it for carrying heat equipment, empty hot water bottle, food boxes etc.

Christmas: Magical, just like the Monocerous constellation. (Courtesy of NASA's Hubble Heritage Team)

Fence Panels and Fuchsia Pots...

Ugh, why do people choose such obvious names for their pets? Somewhere in the world, a dozen times over in this same minute, yet another poor kitten is being saddled with the moniker "Tigger". Don't get me wrong, I love A.A.Milne - but I don't believe you should curse some poor little cat with such a common name. Call your pets something that actually suits them, and he'd be a lot easier to find, rather than half a dozen local "Fluffies" or "Tiggers" turning up at your door when you shout him in for dinner time. Think about it, could you live with being called "Fluffy" all your life?

Terry Tackety-Toes has now hit 9.9g and growing fast. Kyle is fed up with the cooling weather, Tsam has turned into a teenager and is refusing to get out of bed. Seems sensible to me. Mind you, we've had an engineer in to fix the heating at last! Just in time really... Weather down here absolutely shocking - my lavender tree in it's pot blew over, my greenhouse shredded in the wind, several glazed pots blew away across the lawn, one fence panel has come loose, my fuchsia uprooted (I replanted and pegged it) and my ripening fig blew off and the woodlice have eaten it!

I think the bad weather has got to Him also. His Lordship was wondering what to have for lunch and I reminded him we didn't have any bread left when he suggested soup. He went "Oh. Ok, I could do a sandwich instead then?" How would you do that. "Oh. Oh, yeah. Duhhh."

Ah well, thank goodness for Tesco's website - you don't get the full force of the gale winds when you go shopping online!

Stores, Sandwiches, Sweetener and Super-Sugary!

I was looking for a book for a Christmas present and I couldn't find it anywhere in the store. I was sure I had seen it in the window, so I went back outside to check again - and realised the problem. (Read the shop sign!)

We have just partaken in the most odd dessert - it's supposed to be "Tesco Incredibly Smooth Toffee Low Fat Yogurt". It had a light, burnt sugar flavour with thinnish patches and then thick creamy globs just when you're not expecting them. However, I was pleased to find a grand total of one bit of actual chewy fudge in this bizarrely textured foodstuff. The rest of the pieces were... truly strange. It was... it was how you'd imagine eating bubble wrap would be like. They were these almost firm bibbles of substance which, upon applying pressure with your tongue, would sort of deflate, leaving plasticy feeling shards - just like running your finger (or tongue) over popped bubble wrap. Closer examination revealed them to have some form of syrup inside, but I had to fish one out and pop it on the spoon before I noticed.

And here's the winner for me. This "Low Fat Yogurt" turned out to contain around 31% of your daily sugar intake!

Sticking with the lunch theme, we have found the safest word on the internets! It came back with 47 pages worth of google images with SafeSearch switched off - and not one pornographic image! "Sandwiches" - Tasty AND safe for all ages! Better yet, Google even recommended Healthy Sandwiches! (Point of interest - quite a lot of meringue appears on this search.) It only took 22 pages to find a picture-nasty for just "Sandwich" though. (Pic: Southernliving.com)

Happy Halloween!

The Halloween party was great fun! Everybody recognised His Lordship, complete with retro phone and a handful of Ugandan dollars. He pulled off some impressive impersonations, from Terry Tibbs to Mouse: "Can I has a cheeseburger? But without the burger? Or the bun?" Interestingly, His dinner works out about 86,000 Ugandan shillings - roughly £26!

Bless him, He's been so helpful - he spent two hours wearing my wig whilst I shaped and bound it, and then helped me through another four hours of makeup - foundation, powders and colours. Some of it is actually modelling paints, finished off round the edges with miniature black rhinestones! (Although I'm still catching myself trying not to touch my face - even though I took all the makeup off last night...)

It was a great night out and a good laugh with friends - Jana literally didn't know what to make of us all! One of the gang looked just like the girl from the latest Sweeny Todd movie, with her fishnets and her wee top hat - she made the full outfit herself! Drinking beer through a balaclava has an art to it apparently; it makes you look somewhat like a butterfly sipping from a flower. Or a deranged fish...

Himself and I had a lovely meal (as per usual - this is Mulberries after all) with starters of smoked salmon with new potatoes and cream sauce, and a chicken and bacon salad with balsamic reduction. He went for a 10oz rump steak with peppercorn sauce, whilst I took the coq au vin with mushrooms. Garthy's coc au vin red sauce tastes fanTAStic with onion rings.

Bex: "Rumour has it that in 2 years time Youtube, Twitter & Facebook will all join 2 make 1 huge social networking site... it will be called Youtwitface"