Why Breakfast Is The Best

Some people drink a little too much and reminisce on past romances....I drink a little too much and whip out the photos of past meals I've loved.

What? You're on Instagram I'm sure, who do you think they created that for? Food porn lovers.

Out of all the meals I cook that I'm most likely to photograph, breakfast is the top contender for most pictured.

My breakfast creations, sadly, are not pretty. Which is why I'll share a few of my favourites now, while the wine is flowing and I'm feeling reminiscent.

Most often they resemble something that your cat barfed up after a night out on the town.

And with that image in your head....

My breakfasts are my favourite thing to cook out of anything. My favourite meal to eat at restaurants is usually going to be breakfast. If a restaurant claims to be all-day breakfast, it's usually my favourite restaurant. And the most looked at, most drooled over recipes in my cookbooks is always breakfast.

I think I've trained myself to love breakfast the most because, as an adult, it's the one meal that is most often cooked just for me and not for anyone else in mind. Because of how my Crohn's operates, breakfast literally is the most important meal of the day. My body has had a nice 6-8 hours of fasting during the night, something my Crohn's loves (intestinal rest period), and a lot of times, the first meal of the day will help determine how well I operate or how low energy I'll be for the rest of my day. So my breakfasts usually revolve around high protein, low sugar, low carb for the most part, and always, always easily digested veggies.

GF bread (it just tastes good to me), smashed avocado with lemon and salt, and nitrate-free bacon. Just trying to keep it hipster-friendly, obvi.

Current fav: avocado, lemon, salt and 'pancaked' eggs...not scrambled, pancaked.

I'm one of the crazy people that will lose sleep if it means getting up early enough to cook myself a big breakfast. No porridge or cantaloupe and cottage cheese for this girl. Take your diets and get out of my kitchen cause that is not how I play. Sure, if I'm trying to lose weight I'll eat soup for lunch and salad for dinner, but damnit there is a good chance that I'll be having three eggs and/or bacon for breakfast.

Bacon. The lover that loves you back. It handles you well......heh, heh....get it? Love handles....


Nevermind...

GF toast, scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, spinach, lemon, salt.

As much as I love cheesy pick up lines, don't ever ask me 'how do you like your eggs cooked in the morning?' cause I would most likely go off on a crazy person rant about how I'd be the one cooking the eggs cause I'm particular and you don't get to voice an opinion on how you want them cooked cause I'm gonna go make some shit up in the kitchen when I'm cooking them and you're gonna like it. DON'T PRESSURE ME.

Future post: Why Am I Single?

I don't know why I'm single, LOOK AT THE GOOD THINGS I COOK.... For myself....cause if I tried to cook this for anyone else, I'd burn the house down and somehow undercook the eggs.

I've always felt the Brits have breakfast down pretty good...or elevenses. I could always go for a sausage roll and a cuppa. The best in Southeast London are either at Heap's Sausages or, as pictured below, Hand Made Food in Blackheath.

A meal I miss from America.

You'll need:

to hang out in your pjs early on a Saturday morning

watching Doctor Who

eating Organic Peanut Butter Bumpers with Almond milk and a side of milky tea. 

It's all in the details.

As much as I love tea, thanks for that addiction England, I will always be a coffee addict at heart. It's literally my family's business. So these are just pictures of love. Enjoy!

Notes Coffee, London

TAP Coffee, Wardour Street, London

 And the creme de la creme....Monmouth Coffee, brewing in my V60 at home.

xx Lindsay

Blerg Kind of Day

You know, I hate Monday's. I just think they suck and not just cause it's the first day back to work after the weekend.

I've had a flare-up for several of the last few Monday's this summer and it's really pissing me off. I am stuck, canceling evening plans, just so I can sit in my room with a heating pad and starve myself better.

Now normally, I'm a "hungry every two hours" kind of girl. No large meal can fill me to last me longer than two hours. This is something I know and accept about myself. And this is now my indicator of how my stomach is faring.

When things aren't going well, I can go hours and hours sans food. Not because I want to, but because my stomach has decided to stop digesting and it is punishing me for whatever offensive thing I ate...kind of acting like a petulant teenager, that bitch.

Offensive food that she hated today: graham crackers with peanut butter.

So frustrating. It's only a little processed food...but noooooo, Sheila threw a tantrum. (Cause I need to name my stomach at this point.  We agree on nothing therefore she is a separate entity than myself. And a cranky one at that. I'm sunshine and daisy's compared to her.)

I did fine with breakfast, quinoa with dry roasted pecans, blueberries and some agave nectar...so healthy and I actually like it. But true to form, not 45 minutes later I was STARVING. Like "I will bite your arm off if you don't give me some bacon" kind of starving. So I went with some healthy, natural, practically paleo snack that I had with me...homegrown roma tomatoes with olive oil, basil and kosher salt. Amazingly delicious, I am loving it, it's going great. I finish it and then BAM...starving yet again. Barely took the edge off.

Coworker suggested it's because I've recently being trying out this whole exercise thing and it drives your hunger way up. I think it's that, and I've had no meat today. Poor choice lady, poor choice.

So I went for something sugary and tasty, not complicated...graham crackers and peanut butter. Boy-o did it satisfy. Delicious! .......

...20 minutes later I knew I was in trouble. Rejected. My stomach started to puff a bit, groan a bit and then just quit on me. No more food...no more hunger, just a sore stomach and I get to appear like I'm preggers.

OH JOY.

Are you jealous yet?

Now I just need to sip on water, eat nothing for the rest of the night, and rest with the heating pad.

At least I have Dr. Who season 6 on DVD to soothe the cranky in me.

C'mere you sexy thing you. He's no David Tennant, but he shall do for now.

Sincerely,

Cranky McGee

Dr. Who and Proper Fry Up

Nothing picks a girl up like a proper fry-up and some Saturday morning Dr. Who watching. Hey...everybody needs their version of Saturday morning cartoons and season 4 is one of my favorites, specifically the episode "Partners in Crime". Best introduction episode of a new companion. I love it. Makes me cry at the end, every time, the bit with Donna's granddad. Just. Can't. Stand. It.

This past week I found myself just a tad bit tipsy and at my favorite British goods shop in Clarendon, VA. Woke up the next day with a purse full of McVities Milk Chocolate Digestives, Cadbury Chocolate bars, a can of Heinze beans, a few cigars as well (hey it is a cigar shop as well, called Classic Cigars & British Goodies) and my bank account out $30.00. Worth it. Especially for the chocolate and the beans.

And now for my Saturday morning breakfast before heading off to a full day of work, I get the treat of beans and toast, poached eggs, and a few vegetarian sausages thrown in for good measure. Top it all off with a cup of tea. Just a little bit of heaven.

In other news, I might be going to an audition on Monday, Memorial Day. We'll see how it goes and if I'm able to make it out of the apartment. With all the time that I spend at work these days, it's difficult to pry myself away from the comfort of my bed at home.

I hear I'll have normal hours in the summer....gosh, whatever shall I do with myself? Re-read all the Harry Potter's before the last movie and start in on my massive Jane Austen and Shakespeare book fests I've decided to do? Good plan....

...such a nerd.

Ta!

Is there Life After London?

The answer is no. Absolutely not. I have big plans for my post-London trip and they mainly center around Dr. Who marathon's in my jammies, gorging on all the Cadbury chocolate I'm bringing back with me, and warding off the crying jag's with red wine. Ya know...per usual for my post-London trips.

Also, my roommate and I are getting rid of our cable. I still have my internet/netflix so after I'm back and done obsessing over monologues and grad applications, I have a long list of movies and miniseries to retreat into including: Battlestar Galactica, Downton Abbey, Little Dorrit, Bleak House, Wives & Daughters and the new Sherlock Holmes show.

Isn't life just grand when you're not really living it?

After I come out of my post-London coma...I'll slowly ease back into polite society, hopefully not in my jammies, and start looking for some theatre classes to take and some community theatre auditions to go on to keep myself sane.

Bit sad that I'm still two weeks away from actually going to London and I'm already dealing with the emotional trauma of coming back to the states after the trip.....yes. I should get professional help. But it's okay Dr. Konstantin Frank makes an excellent red that will do just nicely.

xo

Book Reading...For The Unemployed...

So since I've been in a new city, with no cable mind you (AHHHHHHHH! The horror!!), my reading habits have picked up considerably. Which is good considering I own around 250 books that I've collected over the 5 years I've worked in the book industry and have yet to read. I actually see these books as my babies and have dragged just about all of them, or the amount my family allowed me to drag with me, here to D.C. I get pangs of guilt and pleasure when looking at them because a) I feel so bad about neglecting them and b) I'm still so excited to read them when the time comes.

And apparently the time is now. Welcome to my unemployed reading list!

First of all, I'm 3/4 the way through Bitter Is The New Black by Jen Lancaster. Best book to read if you're a girl and you're unemployed. LOVES IT. She's amazing and makes me feel better that someone as fabulous as her has been through what I'm going through. I can totally relate. It makes you feel better when you know you're not alone, am I right? (Blog world responds with a resounding 'Duh!')

Before Bitter I finished Cormac McCarthy's The Road that I borrowed off of a friend. It's not normally the type of fiction I'm drawn too (see above reading material) but I really wanted to be able to say I've read something that's won a Pulitzer...at least once. (As an English degree holder, I should be ashamed of myself.......am I? Not really....) My official review, it was....interesting. It is a great book to read when you feel all depressed about your life because then you can say "at least I'm not forced to live a life of desolation and loneliness, with only my young child at my side, trying to fend off cannibals from eating him." McCarthy's prose was also very well done. It was an easy read but still made you deal with big issues. Kind of like tricking you by getting you sucked into the story with his little words and easy text. The bastard. And so you can also tell, not really an upper. I think he was trying to leave the reader with a feeling of hopefulness at the thought that man will always survive, no matter the conditions, and the human heart will prevail, good over evil. But still....not an upper people.

Quickly, before I bore you to death, the other books I've recently finished are as follows: Alexander McCall Smith's The Careful Use Of Compliments, Emily Giffin's Love The One You're With, and Stephenie Meyer's The Host. McCall Smith, I love you and everything you write. I can't even adequately review his stuff for you because unless you've read through any of his massive collection of works, you won't understand the love. Truly like a warm bath and a glass of wine after a long, hard day.

Emily Giffin always pulls me in, even if it's on a topic I hate (like cheating spouses or people considering cheating) and she'll make me love it. Anything you write Giffin, I will submit to knowing I don't stand a chance of staying away.

And Stephenie Meyer is officially the Queen of Happy Endings and creating a world of perfect fantasy. Not fantasy like, hey there Star Wars and space jets, but fantasy like, "that is SO not going to happen in the real world, but I melt and hope for it anyways". She is that good, people. Cynics need not apply. This was her most science fiction-y book yet and still I was sucked in. ( I don't normally get excited about that genre...well, actually, I didn't so much Pre-Doctor Who obsession, but Post-Doctor Who obsession I'm beginning to try new things...and I like it!)

After I finish Bitter Is The New Black I will have to up the amount of plays I'll be reading and then shall hopefully write about them here. I'll try not to make the book/play posts too boring...I may even throw in a free glass of wine. Of course whether it be for you or for me is up for debate...

Warmly, DinsyDay

Dr. Who Obsessed

Currently I'm working my way through the second season of Doctor Who. A season that was quite expensive to purchase, thanks for that BBC, but I had to get anyways with my 40% off limited time only coupon. My recent unemployment from my day job (still slaving away at the bookstore part time though) has left me with ample time to get obsessed all over again.

Now I know this is technically a show that is not quite geared towards attracting people in their twenties, such as myself, but I can't help it. How can you not love a show that has humor, sci-fi stories that are understandable, and David Tennant? I love him. I really, really hope the new guy is just as expressive. Tennant acts with his entire body. And that makes him hot.

Yes. I'm weird like that.

Hey at least I'm not obsessing over reality tv anymore. Baby steps.

p.s. Just to give you a peak into my British obsession, I'm watching Dr. Who while drinking PG Tips and having Weetabix. I miss England and this is like my comfort routine.

p.p.s. Maybe I should work on getting a life.....hmmm...