Cookin'n'China

I'm typing furiously on a tiny, tiny Netbook at Heathrow Terminal 4, with blocked sinuses and ear drums fit to burst at any given moment.

HOWEVER, I am less than 24 hours away from a 4-week spell in China!

So, a brief update on last week's abstention:

Cooking. Perhaps not traditionally something that one would think would be difficult to abstain from. But I love cooking! And although I don't cook every day, I do try to make an effort to hunt down different recipes. When my sister was staying with me, we used to have "Breakfast Saturdays" (or, depending on any lingering hangovers from a Friday night, "Breakfast Sundays") and we covered a whole host of breakfast foods, including blueberry pancakes, savoury pancakes (just like the blueberries but with an assortment of cheese instead of berries) and, my proudest achievement, eggs benedict with hollandaise sauce. Poached eggs are actually quite tricky, but hollandaise sauce is just a load of butter and egg yolk and vinegar.

Anyway, what did I learn from my cooking-free week? That the mere definition of "cooking" can cause disagreements! My housemate and I spent a good 15 minutes debating whether the microwavable soup I was eating was a "cooked meal" - in my eyes, definitely not - putting a pot into a microwave for 4mins and stirring half-way through is the equivalent of shoving a pizza in the middle of the oven. But apparently my "no cooking week" was misleading, as my housemate assumed I'd just have to live off takeaways! This would not have been financially viable. In fact, no cooking meant very little expenditure in Morrisons. Instead of wandering round the aisles looking for different ingredients and inevitably buying a cheese board, my purchases were limited to (the aforementioned) soup pots, fruit, and a load of bread. Definitely ate more apricots last week! No ready-meals made the list - maybe if I shopped in M&S I wouldn't be so put off by them... And I was not averse to accepting others' cooked foods, so I visited my parents for dinner too.

All in all, definitely decreased calorie intake - although that wasn't really the point. And found out that Sainsbury's have great reduced items if you go past 10pm.

I also inadvertently didn't drink alcohol for a week due to a course of antibiotics for an ear infection. This was slightly more difficult as last Friday was quite a draining day, both emotionally and physically, and I would have appreciated a drink to relax with - but life goes on, and I found solace in Mafia II on PS3...I had to play the first mission four times because I'm shockingly bad at video games.

Next few posts will be dedicated to my China trip - hurrah! I'm not sure whether or not blogger is a blocked site there - only on way to find out, I suppose..!