Sunday Recap: May 24

So this week has been pretty good. The weather has been alright and I have been doing a lot of overtime at work.  I didn't get up to a whole lot during the week but snapped some photos throughout of the neighbourhood. The one above is my walk from where the bus drops me, the one below is the little shortcut between my house and this lovely patch of empty land that had beautiful flowers growing in it.

Last night I attended my coworker's 21st birthday party and snapped the photo above as I waited for the bus to buy a weekly pass.  The photo below is of Childwall where the party was, I arrived a bit too early so had a wander.

On Saturday I decided I would cook up a storm and made my favourite Lentil & Sausage Stew by Budget Bytes. I love this recipe blog/website. I find the recipes I try to make really easy to follow and make. This soup I have made too many times to count. I add a few things like the addition of corn to it, I do not use dried lentils so just follow the recipe and use one can of lentils. Since I make this so often, I usually buy double the amount of the canned and vegetable items so all I have to do is pick up the sausage and I'm ready to go.

The photos on her blog are a lot nicer but I thought I would photograph my cooking as I went along. I'm a bit of a slow chopper so to prevent my sausage from burning, I cut all my veggies up and then cook the sausage versus doing both at the same time. I tried Heck sausages for the first time, I usually go for the Tesco brand but the sausage selection on Saturday was seriously limited.  I peel the sausages out of their casings before cooking them, the only difference I really found when doing this was that the Heck sausages were a bit more difficult to slide out of their casings.

The second thing I made was the Easy Spinach Ricotta Pasta, which popped up as Beth's latest recipe. I glanced at the recipe list and saw I had everything required minus the ricotta and the pasta. I added it to my grocery list and picked up those items when I headed to Tesco. I do not make a lot of pasta though I really enjoy making it and I had never worked with ricotta before so this was all new to me.  The fettuccine noodles that  got were not the flat ones displayed on her website so I was unsure about the portion of pasta to cook. You can see in the the photo below that my garlic is a little burnt. This was because I was frantically trying to find out the measurements of pasta. I cooked half the box then doubted myself and while dealing with the half portion of noodles, I cooked the last half portion as well. There are not too many photos of the making of the pasta as I was a bit flustered.

The pasta turned out to be delicious and I kept the second portion of noodles out of the cheese so all I need to do is buy more ricotta and mix in the pasta some time this week to make a quick and easy dinner.

As mentioned in the photos above I headed to Childwall on Saturday night to attend my coworker's 21st birthday party. I had never been to a 21st birthday party before as I don't think they are as popular in Canada as they are in other countries. I am still not really sure why people celebrate them. Possibly a thing picked up from the US? You can legally drink in the UK at 18, so not sure what is important about being 21.

Anyways, it was a fun time had with several of my coworkers and I was glad I went. The buffer was interesting and filled with little snack foods that I had never seen before. I tried a sampling and enjoyed everything minus one little item that I was not even sure what it was.

It's a bank holiday weekend so I get Monday off.  Happy times.

All the best.

-Paige

Sunday Recap: January 11, 300 Days!

I cannot believe it's been 300 days since I left everything I knew behind and flew across the world on my big adventure. I have enjoyed everyday I have spent in the UK and hope that the next year will bring some exciting travel adventures.

I've been writing a lot of lists lately in my journal. Lots of cities in Europe as well as plans for the future.

All my photos lately have been of the sun setting. I am making plans to get out and explore Liverpool more. Be a tourist in my own city because for sure there are thousands of places I have not yet seen in Liverpool.

I worked Monday to Friday, nothing exciting there. The business happened on Saturday when I finally hauled myself into town and went on the Sandeman's New Liverpool Walking Tour. It was a really fun tour led by Phil. He took us around the main areas of Liverpool on a three hour walking tour.  I have been on a few Sandeman's tours and I thought this one was very well done. It was nice to play tourist and the weather was great on Saturday which made the tour just ten times better. It was a bit windy but as long as the skies were blue I did not care.  I enjoyed a massive bowl of noodles for lunch at Big Bowl Noodle Bar in Chinatown. I had hoped to take the second walking tour Phil mentioned they were starting to offer but I was the only one to show up so it was a no go.

On Sunday I had a very fun and full day. I took the bus into town with my housemate Nicola and met up with Jamie to visit my other housemate Danny's new coffee shop 92 Degrees. It's just opened and I think it's wonderful. I'm very happy and excited for Danny. After enjoying our hot beverages we headed down Bold Street and into Liverpool One where we stopped at American Pizza Slice for you guessed it, pizza. I had a delicious spicy vegetarian and a slice of Hawaiian. I was very impressed with how much pineapple was on my slice. We headed to the Odeon afterwards and watched Into the Woods which I thought was very well done and had an interesting storyline.  When the movie ended we went to Wagamama's in Liverpool One for some dinner. I enjoyed the chicken care lomen which was ramen noodles in a spicy coconut and lemongrass soup topped with grilled chicken, cucumber and beansprouts. As with my big bowl of noodles on Saturday, I succeeded in filling my craving for noodle soups. I still have yet to find a pho place but these two dishes were very good.

Monday Wanderings in Amsterdam

These photos are all taken on Monday 13th of October when I was wandering around Amsterdam. That morning I had gone to the Anne Frank House as soon as it had opened before going to the Pancake Bakery and enjoying a massive pancake labelled as their Canadian pancake. It was delicious and filled with bacon and amazingness.  I wandered to the Noordermarkt, which on Mondays transforms into a large flea market.  There is lots of fabric, clothes, home goods and cosmetics on sale. The market seemed to go on forever but I eventually found my way to the other end. With no real plans I walked over to Haarlemstraat and enjoyed the sunshine as I made my way towards Centraal Station with its large parking for bikes in search of the I amsterdam card at the tourist centre.  After picking up the card I ventured across the city to check out both the Waterloopleinmarkt and the Albert Cuyp Markt. Leaving empty handed at all the markets I was left wishing I had found something to take home but nothing caught my eye. I ended up on Museumplein where I popped into the Rijksmuseum to have a gander at the beautiful art. I really enjoyed the museum with its large collection of Dutch masters. I headed from the museum over to Pathe City and watched the 100 Foot Journey which was very good.

Saturday in Jordaan

I woke early to fly to Amsterdam from Liverpool. My cab from Davy Liver was £11.32 and the nice man came and picked me up at 4:30 am. The airport is not very far from my house but unfortunately the 80A bus does not run that early. I got through security and enjoyed a bit of food. Soon it was time to board and we were up and away. The flight was very quick. A time change of an hour and we landed in Amsterdam at 9:10 local time. I got my passport stamped and was on my way out of the airport with lovely thoughts of just how pretty all the Dutch border security are. I caught the 197 bus from Schiphol to the Rijksmuseum and walked around the block to the Flying Pig Uptown where I was staying. I had booked into a four bedroom for one night as the three bed was not available for the entire duration of my stay. The room was right by reception so was very easy to access. After doing all the checking in business I had plans to head into the Jordaan and check out the Noordermarkt before eventually going to Dam Square for the Sandeman's New Amsterdam Free Walking Tour.

From the Flying Pig to the Noordermarkt was about half an hour. I managed to find the shop that I had wanted to stop in the last time I was in Amsterdam. De Kunstboer, is an accessory, bag and art shop. They sold some really cool bags that I wanted to buy but I held back and just got some really cool postcards.

I stopped at Citea for a delicious spicy chai before heading into the Noordmarkt which on Saturdays sells a lot of organic food. There were lots of bakery treats but I had my eye on Winkel for their apple pie.  There was only a small queue for the pie and it was very worth it. If you're in Amsterdam you have to try it.  It's not very expensive either, I think maybe ~€3.30 or something for a delicious slice of apple pie.