Some people eat the strangest things

So, we didn't quite go to China town today but we did go to a Chinese/Asian supermarket called Wing Yip. There's four of them in the UK and one of those four is situated in Birmingham. So in the middle of an industrial estate there's a grocery store and a restaurant built in chinese type architecture with a huge gate over the entrance tothe car park. It looks nice :) At the moment they're rebuilding the store though, so it looked very much like a warehouse on the inside. They had loads of stuff though.

Getting back on the waggon!

So I've started weighing my food and controlling my intake of calories again and it's going well so far, no major cravings to be honest (just itsy bitsy small ones). I alway need something to snack on during the day though, to keep my energy up, so when I was down at Morrisons yesterday and saw they had Müller light greek style Yoghurt on offer I though I'd try it. I looked at the contents and the info about nutrition and I didn't think it looked that much worse than the yoghurt I'd normally have for breakfast in Sweden (and a good yoghurt is hard to find here without it being some sort of desserty type product, according to me). They had the Müller one in the flavours Coconut and Lushious lemon, so I took one of both.

Sick - again.

Aaaand I'm ill again. Some sort of stomach bug most likely, I will however spare you the details. I'm on the mend though, I think it was just a short episode. Have not yet had breakfast though, so I am slooooowly starving to death (as if). Hope I'll be ok by the weekend though as we're going into Birmingham on Saturday to have a poke around Chinatown and see if we can find more of that elusive spice that we like so much but can't find. Fingers crossed!

Huggles
Saga xx

Welcome back, sweet anxiety!

The last couple of weeks I have slowly cultivated and nurtured my anxiety again and after a particularly bad weekend I am now motivated to get rid of the weight I need to get rid of. Again. I lost a lot of weight last year and it came back with a vengeance this summer (well, not all of it). So yesterday I put my running shoes on and I went for an embarrassingly short walk/jog. I really need to work on my stamina again, so I will try and run a few times per week, even though I'm not a fan of running outdoors. I prefer running on a treadmill as that gives me full overview of how far I've ran, at what speed and how many calories I've burned. I like numbers. I love statistics.

I was thinking I should find a 5k next spring to run. I've already decided me and Hanna are doing Blodomloppet again just like we did this year, but  I'd like to run something here in England as well. I'll see if there are any  charity races around here. Maybe by next fall I will be doing 10k?

The reason all this kicked into full gear again this weekend was partly due to [square] pizza and some sort of mousse/slimy type dessert called Angel delight. It was.... Weird... And very sweet. So now it's about time I shape up again - literally and figuratively! Feels good to be a bit sore today from the jog. Now I just need to keep it up.

Who's with me!?

Huggles
Saga xx

Caramelized pecans

So, a while back the wonderful Ms Poppy said I should do a cooking show-esque blog about how to make cinnamon rolls. Well, I don't quite have the things I need for cinnamon rolls, but I did make caramelized pecans for Rob yesterday, so I thought I might share that with you for now :) It's really simple.

Caramelized pecans

This is not so much a recipe as an estimation and all numbers are approximate!

Ca 200-225g of Pecan nuts
3-5 tbsp Monin Caramel Syrup
1-2 tbsp Vahiné Caramel Saveur Vanille (optional)
1-2dl caster sugar

How much you use of each ingredient depends on how much caramel you want, from light coating to thick coating. If you find there's too much caramel for your taste when you're done you can just pour some off, as it's liquid when it's hot. Make sure the pecans don't come out with it! Do not - NOT - just pour it down the sink though as it might mess up your pipes when it hardens... It's better to pour it onto some aluminium foil and letting it set first and then just putting it in the trash.

Smells like scam

Just had a phone call to the landline. When I pick up there's a guy saying he's calling from Windows Support and my computer has been downloading malware according to him. Besides that he has NO means of authorisation or identification. I told him I haven't had any problems with my computer but he persists and says I need to turn on my computer. I go along and tell him it's switched on and so he puts me through to some other guy. This guy in turn asks me to open a search page and look for team viewer. Team viewer is a software that allows a computer to be remotely controlled and to have files deleted and/or installed by another computer.

As soon as I realised he was spelling Team viewer I told him I have no intention whatsoever to let him into my computer. He answers that there are threats to my computer and it will be infected by today, I keep saying I think the biggest threat is letting an unknown person into it and he says people are trying to hack into it and it will be destroyed in one hour! I say I think I'll leave it to my Anti-Virus and the loving care of my own personal computer support - Rob <3

Smells like scam to me. I'm not stupid, mate, I'm not going to hand my laptop to you on a plate just because you say so.

So he gets annoyed and ends the call by saying Merry Christmas!? Dude.. It's October for f#cks sake!

Bastards....
Saga xx

I'm silly xD

Went to Morrisons to pick up a couple of things for dinner and when I was in the queue and as a guy behind me started putting his groceries on the belt something caught my eye. It was an Almondy Daim tart! What made me react first though was the little Swedish flag they put in the corner xD It made me so happy! It's silly really. It said "Almondy Daim - Authentic Swedish almond tårta!" on the package and it just made me go squeee inside :3 Quietly of course. I think it's enough that I mutter to myself in a language no one understands when I shop, I don't need to randomly go squee in queues as well. So while I waited for the lady in front of me to be done I was singing the Swedish National Anthem (only the first verse - I'm not weird) in my head. Yeah. That's how excited/nostalgic a little flag on a piece of cardboard made me :D

The English lyrics are not perfect, but they will have to do...

Sweden <3

Huggles
Saga xx

Weekend

I thought I was going to spend the weekend recuperating from my cold, but the future had something different in store for me. Matt wrote to me on Facebook asking if me and Rob were coming out with him and Dave for the saturday night and even though I suspected I had a fever I wasn't too bad off, so I took a couple of tablets (not the super tablets Rob bought me before that knocked me out for a couple of hours and  completely erased my fever and cold, I can't rememer the name of them) and they made me feel a bit better. So we went up to Hednesford again, to The Plough and Harrow. Was a really nice pub (even if the guy behind the bar wasn't too happy about how merry and perhaps loud the men were, according to Matt). We were going to go to an eighties night on the other side of town, but we couldn't be arsed so we had a walk down to Woody's, Hanna will know the place :D

I'm sick :(

Rob had a cold last week so, ofcourse, I catch it... I had plans for this week, but right now I don't feel like doing much. We're going to do some cleaning today though and I have some laundry to get through. When I'm well again I'm taking a trip to Birmingham so I can get started on Christmas gifts. Want to get them done as soon as possible so I can relax.

Also, I really miss Amadeus today... <3

Could use a cuddle from my furry little friend.

Non-contagious huggles
Saga xx

Who do you think you are?

I've been following the Swedish version of 'Who do you think you are?', where famous people get to go find their roots through genealogy, for the last two series. I love it! I've been interested in genealogy for several years now and have found family members of my own in the church books as far back as the early 1700's, so far. About 8 generations from me. What I have is very shallow knowledge however. I have a big family tree (and it's not quite done yet as I am nowhere near finished on neither my mother's nor my father's side), but I don't know any details aboutmost the people in it. I'm not yet skilled enough to find my way through court documents or military listings. I haven't really had access to them either... At the moment my account at Ancestry is inactive, but when I find a jobI will reopen it again. Until then all I can do is poke through the family tree and long for whenI can get started again.

On a different note I got my NHS number in the post yesterday! I am now a full member of the NHS system, so healthcare - check! I need to go over some other stuff I might need though. That's the difficult part of moving - you're never really sure what you need to do or not. So I need to just take a step back and make sure I have covered my bases.

Anyway, Rob asked me to do some stuff today, so will go do that and then I'm going to do some writing! That story sadly won't write itself!

Huggles!
Saga xx

Weekend abroad (yes, really)

We have been back home again after our short weekend abroad, in Scotland, for several days now. I intended to update the blog at the beginning of the week, but I just never came around to it, so, as Hanna would make me say: I'm sorry, I'm bad.

Anyway, the reason I say 'abroad' is because even if Scotland is a part of the Union, they are still a separate country (Whales is it's own country as well) - just try calling a Scot an Englishman and see what he thinks about the English... Believe me, I've done that.