we really got it down to a fine art on Sunday in a sleepy Sunday town

Hi! How was your weekend?

Mine started with getting my organic veggie box, as usual!  I don't know how I did without this now!  We really look forward to getting the box and seeing what treasures we have for the week.  It's really encouraging me to cook with different vegetables too.  I don't know about you, but I certainly was in the trap of buying the same vegetables every week, whether I intended to use them or not!  Courgettes, for example, always ended up in the trolley and sometimes they would be bendy like bananas by the time I got round to using them!  There is far less waste with this box, which is fantastic.  It's good to just get enough of what you need, and not have the same things all the time.  This week we got:

Purple carrots!

Squash, spinach and onions

Romanesco cauliflower

as well as tomatoes, lettuce, and potatoes.  I'm so curious to try the Romanesco cauliflower!  Anyone have any ideas for what to do with that?

The rest of the weekend was fairly relaxing as weekends go!  I had a lovely chat to my sister:

I can't remember if I said anything on here or not, but Tom and I are spending roughly half the UK winter in Australia!!  We're going to be there for Christmas and most of January.  I Can't. Wait.  I haven't been home since 2009, and never for this long either.  It's going to be fantastic to spend some quality time with my family and friends, and meet the new additions that have arrived in the last two years!  We booked the tickets back in April, before I did the marathon, so it feels like ages ago, but the time really has gone so quickly.  I'm determined to savour every minute of it.  Only seven weeks to go!!

Did some reading with a chai latte handy:

I have somehow made this tiny cannister of Peppermint chai last!

I also, as forecast, made a cake from the Rachel Allen book Tom got me for my birthday, to use up some of our Tintagel honey:

And the result:

Given my recent icing disasters (!), I wanted to make a simple cake that didn't require icing!  This gorgeous loaf didn't need anything at all.  We had a slice warm out of the oven and were quite beside ourselves with pleasure.  I altered the recipe a little, only used 1 egg, and added a generous pinch of mixed spice.  It's just divine, I'll put the recipe up later in the week.

The cake was accompanied by some Marco Polo tea from Hobart, gift of my friend Kristy:

We were out on Friday, to some old friends of Tom's (who are now my friends too!) who put on a splendid Moroccan feast for us.  The night got off to an interesting start though.  I am still on "London time", and by that I mean, my head hasn't really computed that I can't just leave the house when I'm ready to leave, and there will just be a train there waiting for me within five minutes.  Out here there is a timetable!  If we missed the 6:20 we were going to have to wait for an hour for the next one!  Whoops!  So Tom and I ended up running to the station.  It normally takes me 25 minutes to power walk it,  but we ran it, in normal clothes and shoes, carrying bottles of wine, in about 17!  We were a mess when we got there, but we made it......and then the train was delayed!! :P

The Moroccan theme carried on into my beauty regime:

One of my sisters is really into this Moroccan oil - and I have bought her some for birthdays and Christmas for the last year, and been curious about it myself.  I was going to buy myself some next pay day, but lo and behold there was some in my Cosmo Blog Awards goody bag!  It is possibly the most divine hair product I've ever used.  You only need one pump each time you use it, add to damp hair and then blowdry.....your hair will be soft and silky like it has never been before!  Sas has raved about it too, and now I know why!

Unfortunately poor Tom was a bit ill over the weekend so we laid low for the rest of it!  I worked on the novel, and enjoyed some of it, and found other parts of it frustrating.  I started out the redraft thinking "oh, this is great!  Did I really write this?" to "this is shit!  No one's ever going to read this!" So I stuck to very basic edits rather than rewriting total sections like I planned.  There's no point doing anything major or drastic when I'm in that frame of mind.  I went to bed very late but found myself unable to sleep, so got up and wrote again, by hand, until everything that was in my brain was out there in words, on paper.  It worked and I fell into a deep sleep when I went back to bed!

And also, as predicted, I made some twice baked potatoes once Tom was feeling better:

To keep the metabolism firing on all cylinders, and in order to be able to enjoy all the lovely food pictured above (!), I headed out for a lovely run this morning, delighted that it was an hour earlier, and enjoyed the usual smells and sights - the pubs gearing up for Sunday roast, other people out running or riding their bikes, even horses here and there.  I didn't have much in the tank, as we'd only had soup and toast for dinner the night before, and I'd only had a glass of juice before setting out.  But never mind, I still thought I ran well.  I have been working on lifting my legs a bit more in my runs rather than shuffling along, so I thought I was a lot faster than I usually am.  But I stupidly forgot my watch! Oh well, next time!  Hopefully it wasn't a fluke!  Ended the run with tricep dips and sit ups, and then a ginormous warm shower.  I think the showers you have after you've been for a run and given it everything you have are the best showers of all!

And congratulations to SLSB reader Bron who ran the Auckland Marathon today, and to my mate Samone who ran her first half marathon in Portland, Victoria, also today!  Both ladies did smashing times!  Well done!!  I am very proud of both of you :)

Otherwise, lovely readers, I'm winding down - Sundays now have that jellyfish quality they used to have when I was at school, when the school shoes would be all lined up for polishing by Dad; bags and uniforms would have to be laid out and packed the night before; and bedtime was strictly observed!  I live for Wednesday nights now!!

There's lots more to come on SLSB this week - including a give-away! - so stay tuned!!!

Hope you all have a happy and healthy week xx

PS: Skinny Latte Strikes Back now has a Facebook page!  Hope you "like" it! :)