Weekend round up

Seriously, how can it be Monday again already?? The weekends go by far too quickly, most depressing.

The weekend was lovely, fairly busy, but I am not overly good at doing nothing so I won't complain (beware, fairly long post to follow).

Friday night, I went over to see my friend Caroline in Uxbridge. We went out for dinner to a French restaurant called Auberge, where I indulged in Steak (leather would perhaps be a more appropriate description) and Frites, washed down with delicious cherry beer. We then headed for cocktails - of which I indulged in many, before heading back to hers at around 2am (I'll gloss over us almost having a fight with a couple of 'Youths' in the taxi queue for pushing to the front, I am not sure why I think I can take on the world when I've had a few). Once home, obviously we decided we'd not consumed enough so had some left over chicken curry that her OH had cooked. 84 points later, it was time for bed at around 3am. I had a lovely wake up call from her 2 little girls at 0615am, you can imagine how amazing I was feeling.... 

I headed home, had a quick shower and rushed to the train station to get the train into London. I grabbed a Soya Hazlenut Latte for the journey and had planned to have a quick power snooze en route. However, I am far too nosey, so when I found myself sat next to 4 women dressed in bondage gear (let me just say, I am not overly familiar with bondage clothing, but it's how I would imagine slightly toned down bondage clothing to look), clearly, I had no option but to listen in to their conversation (in fact it was impossible not to, the whole train was enthralled). I have no idea where they were off to, but they seemed fairly excited by their plans for the day. 

I met up with the lovely Karon and Tina and we headed towards Covent Garden for lunch. Unfortunately, Sarah couldn't make it, which was a shame, so it was just the 3 of us in the end.

We wandered around Covent Garden for a bit, before heading for lunch at Pasta Brown and deciding to not worry overly about points for that meal... I find that really hard these days. Don't get me wrong, I have not been particularly saintly this year on the old diet front, but I still have the mindset that I need to be looking for the best option on the menu, so adopting a 'sod it' attitude was fairly difficult! In the end, I had Cheesy Garlic bread, followed by Chicken Milanese served with Pasta Pomodoro. Lovely. Here is a picture of the 3 of us when we stopped for dessert later on at Cafe Rouge. (Chocolate and Banana Crepe for me).

It was a lovely day and very nice to meet Karon and Tina, I felt like I already knew them having read their blogs for a while. We are planning to meet up again in the New Year which will be lovely.

When I got home from London I was shattered and still fairly full from lunch, so I roasted a Gem Squash in the Oven and had that whilst watching the X Factor. I was in bed by 9pm - very rock and roll!

Yesterday, I had to work for a couple of hours in the morning, but other than that, had a fairly lazy day.

I cooked a lovely Mushroom, Leek and Onion Risotto for lunch (8) and literally lay around doing very little.

Mid afternoon, I decided to try my hand a baking a cake. Below is my attempt - sounds odd but it was delicious - Chocolate and Beetroot Cake!

I keep getting beetroot in my Able & Cole box, so I was a bit fed up of just boiling or roasting them. This was surprisingly good, the beetroot just adds an extra moistness to it and gives it a lovely slightly reddish tinge.

I pretty much made up the recipe (adapted from here) as I went along to try and keep the points down but thankfully it turned out ok.

Chocolate and Beetroot Cake (10 slices at 4 PP each)

• 50g Cocoa Powder 
• 120g Spelt Flour
• 50g Brown Sugar
• 2 medium Eggs
• 50 ml Oil (I probably used less than this)
• 40g Lurpak Light
• Large Beetroot grated (I boiled mine for about 10 mins first to help get the skin off)
• Granulated sweetner if required

(perhaps don't quote me on the exact measurements as I kept adding and removing bits as I went along...!)

Mix all of the ingredients together, pop in a greased loaf tin, bake at around 180 degrees for 20 - 30 mins (until a knife comes out of the centre clean). Voila. Lovely!

I have definitely used up all of my weekly allowance over the weekend, but yesterday was a fairly good day and hopefully today should be the same. Not as hopeful as I was last week for a loss, but crossing my fingers anyway. 

I think that's enough rambling from me for now, hope you have all had lovely weekends. I had better get on with some work otherwise I'll be here til midnight. Happy Monday y'all.