Food-filled fab Feb

Well, one month in... to a new job and new life and new feng-shui year and things are starting to settle nicely.

On the work front, things are going well... I am purely in the 'knowledge-gathering' stage at the moment, which really makes me feel like a student again. What is nice is that I am getting much satisfaction from my actual degree; I have been reading technical books and scientific articles about baking and confectionery and I really remember learning about this stuff... hooray to the U of A!! Pentosans and proteases were courses that are still proving to be useful. I must say on the whole, each course in the span of my degree has proved useful in post-university life. Hmmm, that is a nice bit of satisfaction. So, what else have I been up to this past month:

The beginning of Feb was 'cold'... old man winter finally popped his head out just about when Punxsutawney Phil (I would have called the squirrel about Phil, but he came to an untimely end after knocking over the bird feeder) should have been due up for a visit. By cold, of course this only means -5-->0 C with about a foot of snow. That being said, the snow decided to turn up just as I was to play host to Come Dine with Me South Birmingham (not actually, but we were due friends for a wine and cheese).

I must give kudos to the wine buyers at Sainsbury's and Oz Clarke, because with some guidance from Mr. Clarke, my wine choices were entirely complementary to my meal. Two points that really made my evening were that A) the wines were Sainsbury's Taste the Difference label- this suggests that the wine is meant to be good, but I am forever dubious of choosing luxury food sponsored by a supermarket for some strange reason. However, because I was looking for specific types of wine in a supermarket, not a liquor store, I had limited choice. The second kudos to Oz's recommendation was that the pairings were perfect for my dinner: Roast pork loin with mushroom and green pepper stuffing; potatoes dauphinoise, and garlic green beans served with a Beaujolais or Gewurztraminer- both wines I almost never purchase, but with the meal, were magnificent.

Feb continued to be a month of putting the oven on over-drive because I re-enacted 'Macaron Madness' for our friends Simon and Louise! They didn't get a chance to taste the delights over Christmas because they were too busy getting married in Australia. So, what better than to make more macarons for their wedding party in Brum also in Feb. Congrats to Si and Lou! I am certainly telling you all now, yellow food colouring still doesn't work in meringue and macarons with cream based fillings should be eaten within the 24 hours that they are in their best... because I had been reading all about cream and fat based fillings earlier in the month, I should have known better, but my mojito (mint and lime) and pina colada (pineapple cream with coconut meringues) were actually quite fantastic. And on that note, another big big congrats to my friends Tracy and Paul who have given birth to baby Brooke on Feb 9th!!

 Oven still on over-drive: Valentine's day lasagnas... Craig bought me flowers, I made him flowers ;)

The latter half of the month has been getting used to my new routine, which I am pleased to say involves three days of proper exercise!! One day running, one day spinning, and one day doing something else... which has been running, or a general cross-training programme. I had a race at the end of Feb that our company was sponsoring: the first 10km race that I entered this year to be used as my benchmark for my goal "run 10km in 50 minutes". The weather was lovely and the course was flat... all good precursors to a good time, and a good time I ran. Officially 51:03, but I am going to have a good ol' British moan here because the time when I crossed the line, read 50:48 and my watch read 50:38, so I am not really sure what happened. In any case, 51:03 means I only have a minute and three seconds to shave off of my time, and judging from my puffy eyes in the picture below, an extra 2 hours of sleep and one less glass of wine would have probably done it. However, if I would have met my goal first race in, AND in Feb, I wouldn't have to enter any more races this year. Bonus was I had my picture taken with a past and a future Olympian: Conrad Williams (400m) on the left and Steve Cram on the right.

On that note, I (and Richard who is playing xbox with Craig and says he wants to be in the blog) will leave you for another month, where I really haven't any plans to tease you with...