As usual I’ve been stressing about to what to write about in my next blog post. It’s a great feeling to have an idea, create a post, polish it, make some graphics and add pictures and a video and then to see it finally published but then I start thinking about next week. What can I write about next?
Last Saturday I dragged myself up and into the kitchen for a cup of tea. Returning to the bedroom with the tea, Liz was watching Saturday Kitchen and I began browsing through my emails. One of the guests on Saturday Kitchen was the Hollywood actor Stanley Tucci. Stanley has appeared in a number of films and you might remember him from The Devil Wears Prada. Anne Hathaway becomes the assistant to the head of a fashion magazine played by Meryl Streep. Stanley Tucci played the art director of the magazine who becomes a sort of fashion mentor to Anne.
It turns out that Tucci, currently living in London, is a bit of a food buff and amateur chef and he was in the studio to cook some food and talk about his latest book What I Ate in A Year. Wow I thought and as I looked up, a picture of a flashing light bulb appeared above my head with a sign saying ‘new blog post idea!’
I won’t be writing about a year of eating but a week sounds a little more blog post sized so here we go.
Monday
A typical breakfast for me tends to involve poached eggs either on toast or on a crumpet but I do rather like Liz’s full breakfast which she serves with a poached egg, grilled bacon, sausage, black pudding and fried tomatoes and mushrooms. That’s a pretty big meal so we don’t have that every day. We rarely eat lunch and even when I was working I used to just have a sandwich for lunch.
A must for us on a Monday night is a visit to the Ego restaurant in Lytham. They have a special Monday offer which includes two courses for a much cheaper than usual price and also £10 off a bottle of wine. We used to have the sharing board for starters but this week I plumped for the cheesy mushrooms and Liz had the scallops. For the main course I’ll sometimes go for a steak or if I’m not madly hungry I might go for something a little smaller. On our last visit I decided to go for the beef bourguignon and Liz went for a dish off the new menu, lamb kleftico, served in a rather odd way in the paper package in which it was cooked.
Tuesday
Tuesday is our usual stay at home and alcohol free night. We’ll be drinking a lot of tea especially while I’m working on a new blog post so we sometimes decide to go for a chippy tea. Our local chip shop does a cheapy Tuesday deal which consists of an extra large portion of chips, two medium sized 
battered fish and two side orders for which we usually get a tub of peas and a tub of curry. I’m not a great lover of fish but I do like my battered cod or hake. Another bonus is that our local chippy delivers so all I have to do is get the teapot warmed up while we wait for our food.
Wednesday
Once a month Liz and I go out with our local curry club for an Indian meal at a great Indian restaurant in St Annes called Imli. It’s a friendly place and they do a super offer which includes poppadoms and all the chutneys followed by a starter and a main served with either rice or a naan bread. I was once a bit cheeky and asked for chips with my chicken tikka bhuna curry but the portion was a little too large so I’ve reverted back to pilau rice.
Thursday
Thursday is our quiz night and we tend to eat out before going down to the pub for the quiz. This week we went down to Spagó in Lytham who have yet another special offer running on Thursdays. (Noticed a trend at all in this dining out saga?) The Spagó deal is two courses for £12.95 or three for £17.95. The only drawback here is that the wine is a little dear so I sometimes drive down and we’ll just have one glass of wine each and a large jug of water. The menu changes every week and the last time we visited I had the cauliflower soup with garlic and pesto and a main course of lamb stew with mash and carrots. The portions are a little small but perfect if you are not in the mood for a huge meal. The service is pretty good and so I have plenty of time to drop Liz off at the quiz and to park the car up somewhere for the night so I can walk down and pick it up in the morning and enjoy a few beers at the quiz.
Friday
We don’t often go out on a Friday. If I’m back in Manchester I’ll usually make some food for my brother and he’ll come round and we’ll eat and have a catch up. My favourite meal to make is probably chilli or spaghetti Bolognese. I make both those dishes pretty much using the recipes I’ve used for years, even so, sometimes the finished dish will be wonderful, other times not as good. What do I do wrong? Actually I’ve no idea. A few weeks ago I made a curry using minced chicken. As I was making it I realised I had no garlic but even so, the end dish was pretty good.
Sometimes Liz and I will stay at home on a Friday but not so long ago we met up with some friends and went to Olivers, a small place in St Annes that serves pizza and pasta. My favourite dish there is a sharing board which consists of the chef’s home made bread, olive oil, mayonnaise, parma ham, salami, cheese, olives and we always substitute the potatas bravas with a tomato and onion salad.
Saturday
Last Saturday we went to the Number Fifteen pub to watch April Moon, one of our favourite local bands. I say local although Jason and April are actually from Canada. Anyway, prior to seeing them perform we decided to eat at a new place called the Dip, Drizzle and Drink. It styles itself as a Spanish tapas bar. We’d been once before when it first opened and I wasn’t too impressed but we thought we’d give it another go now they have been running for a while. We had another sharing board which was pretty similar to the one at Olivers and followed it with a couple of tapas, meatballs for me and sizzling prawns for Liz. The prawns were a little fiery for our taste but I loved that sharing board. I don’t usually care for green olives but the ones served here were really tasty.
Sunday
I always look forward to my Sunday dinner but this week we were out again. Down at the Catholic church they had a charity night which involved betting on various filmed horse races for a few pence at a time. Sadly I only won one race although I did win two bottles of wine in the raffle. Food was served later which was a hotpot supper. It was rather yummy as usual although bread buns were substituted for the usual pastry topping. Pity as I rather like that pastry. Anyway, there was quite a bit leftover so I helped myself to seconds.
Anyway, all that food talk has made me hungry. Sandwich anyone?
Letters from an Unknown Author! 
I enjoyed that, Steve. You need to do a ‘sarnie of the week’ 😀
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Good idea Paul, I do love a good sarnie!
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