Now I Remember...

Why I don't ever eat Mickey D's very often! Not sure if it's in the States as well, but they've got a new Chicken Legend sandwich and potato wedges here that look really appealing on the menu. I tried one yesterday before grabbing some groceries at Asda. By 4pm that afternoon, I was sure I had some sort of food poisoning, yuck! I felt pretty terrible the rest of the day and was able to sleep on and off through the night. Feeling somewhat better today but still a little "iffy" now and then. The potato wedges were too delicious to have been the culprit, but I'm thinking that sandwich meat or the "salsa" it was smothered with might be to blame...

I must also announce that the wind, the rain and the cold are officially here. We've experienced top notch weather since arriving in August, with only the occasional bad weather day. And most of the time, the rain goes away after a few hours at most. But today, all day, it's been raining, gray, overcast and gusty. I saw several people's umbrellas get whipped inside out by the unforgiving wind, and at one point thought one lady was going to turn into Mary Poppins and be carried up and away! She couldn't have been bigger than a twig and light as a feather.

So it was no surprise that I was soaked once I finished my dog walk this morning, but the dogs never seem to mind the water. They always look at me incredously when I clean them off with a towel as if to imply they'd like to stay that way, thank you very much! I invested in a simple pair of galoshes a few weeks ago and they've turned out to be one of my best purchases. I can handle a wet rain coat and soaked jeans, but not wet cold feet!

Now that I'm feeling better, I'll tackle a homecooked meal tonight... and hope the food poisoning doesn't continue to follow me much longer. We certainly cook a great deal ourselves, for one it fits into our budget better. The cost of living here is so much more expensive (everything in pounds is roughly 1.5 times more expensive in US dollars... ie £5 equals $8), and going from two incomes to one isn't always forgiving. In fact, I've been cooking so much I should probably post a recipe on here every now and then. I make up dinners all the time, especially depending on what I've got in stock. At the end of Jesse and Leigh Ann's stay, I was nervous about what to cook since all I had in the way of dinner was rice, beans, salsa, chips and a can of corn. I combined a package of brown rice, a can of black beans and red kidney beans, a can of rotel, 1/2 cup of salsa, few dashes of hot sauce, can of corn, 1 cup leftover cooked ground beef and let it simmer in a pot for about 20 minutes. I poured the mixture over bowls lined with tortilla chips and topped it off with a little bit of leftover queso. Delicious! I love anything spicy or Mexican-inspired, which is exactly what the meal turned out to be. Everything over here is so bland, you begin simply craving "taste." When I discovered that Asda carried my favorite hot sauce, Cholula, I went overboard the first time I cooked with it. The food was so spicy, my mouth looked like I'd applied a rosy lipstick and had collagen injections!

Mike has his weekly soccer (I mean, football) game tonight after work. Fortunate for him, they play indoors so he doesn't have to deal with a muddy field. Unfortunate for me, there's no indoor seating so going to watch the games isn't an option. I haven't been able to witness the many goals he's scored, but by the sound of it, he's becoming pretty good with his feet!