Amy Comes to Visit!

Last week my dear friend and co-favorite college roommate, Amy, came to visit.  And we had some much needed girl time. Truth be told I'm still lacking in the girl friend department in England so I am pretty sure I talked Amy's ears off.  Yes both of them.  But luckily, seeing as she is our 12th visitor to England, I'm getting pretty damn good at this tour guiding thing.  If only the British weather would cooperate a little better.  

Here's a rundown of our week in pictures....

The first night we went for a sundown walk in the Peak District.

Picturesque, No?

Then we went to Chatsworth.  Again.  

I love Chatsworth though so thats OK.  Especially the gardens.  

They don't get old.

The of course we had to go to London.  

We stayed in a very cheap girls only hostel which I can highly recommend

 for poor female travelers called Piccadilly Guest House.

 The plan was to see the major tourist spots, but England had other ideas.  

So shortly after this was taken we headed off to Harrods where they were having a sale!  

Hurrah!

We had dinner at my favorite restaurant in all of England, Bumpkin, then we went off to the West End to see Dirty Dancing. Ohhh Johnny!  No one puts baby in the corner!

When we came back to Sheffield I took Amy for a little more English countryside action.  

I love the Peak District.  

It's God's country (according to the locals anyways.)  

I must say I agree... at least when the sun is shining.  

I made a lil picnic.

 But then we had to go home because my hair was just not cooperating.  

Forrealz.

But not before Heidi pissed off a herd of sheep.  Eeeeeeeeeek!  

Sheep are creepy sometimes.

But then we saw these cute little baby horses on the way home.  

Awwwwww.  I love country life.

And then Amy and I passed out.

Note:  While we were curled up uncomfortably on the couch Heidi was in my bed.  

Typical.  

I take this to mean I was a successful tour guide.  

ps.  I didn't include pictures of our spa day at Harrogate Turkish Baths .  (this is due to the fact that there were looooooooooads of naked ladies wandering around and taking photos would have been totally inappropriate... fyi the English are so much more comfortable than Americans with nudity.)  But besides the fact that Amy and I were somewhat uncomfortable with nudies, and we creepily checked out the more ample hair styles sported by the very self assured British ladies, we had a wonderful time at the beautiful spa and this is certainly going on the guest list itinerary.  

Miss you already, Amy!

And thanks to Mr. and Mrs. N for buying her plane tickets!  What would we do without our parents?!

How To Make Your Family Happy

As hard as I tried to please everyone last week, 

it was inevitable that at some point I would fail.

And fail I did, majorly.

I knew Lizzie would love Topshop, and I knew my mom and dad wouldn't like it...

 but since we had already spent a lot of time doing museums and art galleries, 

I thought it was fair to take her on a little shopping trip.

Oh boy did I think wrong.

Enter major family meltdown.  

While I'll spare you of the finer details, 

I will say that I was super pleased that the next activity on our itinerary was 

Borough Market....

If my family can agree on anything, its food.

Actually thats a lie, sometimes we can't agree on food.

But we can agree on eating.

And what's better than a food market for that - everyone can pick what they want!

My mom and Lizzie split a curry...

And my dad got his double burger fix.

I of course opted for a more veggie friendly option...

And Nick got a hotdog

(no homo)

On top of that we inhaled the stinky smell of raclette cheese melting away...

We also purchased lemon polenta cake (oh my gosh yum!)

truffle oil and truffle paste among loads of tasty free samples.   

All I can say is...

Thank God my family likes food as much as they do...

Otherwise the meltdown in Top Shop could have escalated to something like this....

Yes those are riot police and that is paint splattered on the front of Top Shop.  

Don't worry it wasn't our fault.

Lot's of protesters took London by storm on Sunday.  

Eeeeeeeeeeeeek.

But let's not talk politics here.

In other news, to recover from last weeks eating spree

I am currently on my first day of a 3 day juice only detox.

I feel pretty bitchy, so wish me luck.

Then on Monday the husband and I are starting Crazy Sexy Diet.  

21 days of no gluten, animal, sugar, alcohol or caffeine!

Operation get healthy is on!

Who's with me?

Our Cow Molly

Ok so I already admitted Sarah and I are bad influences on each other.

But I must confess - this one was my idea...

Please don't judge.

Our Cow Molly  makes fabulous ice cream right on their farm.

It's the best ice cream I've ever tasted.

Ever.

It's a pretty adorable little shop.  

Speaking of adorable, this little girl lives on the farm.

She introduced us to her favorite cow.

She also likes ice cream.

Note the chocolate covered chin.

I like ice cream too.

I scream for ice cream.

Is there a single picture of me on this blog where I'm not eating?

Don't answer that.

I took thousands of photos so I could make your mouths water.

I had lemon and crystallized ginger ice cream.

A little strange?  Let me assure you it was...

To Die For.

It really was delicious.  

ps.  I am back on the cleanse now.  And I have healthy recipes to share with you soon.

What do you prefer, pictures of ice cream and cupcakes or healthy fresh fruit and veggies?

Tea and Cupcakes

So about that Cleanse....

My friend, Sarah, was here until yesterday, and it didn't go so well.

I'm not sure whether she is a bad influence on me... or I am a bad influence on her.

But we are definitely a bad influence on each other.

But you only live once right?

And I had to take her to Cocoa.

It's just the cutest place ever.

I know you've seen it before.

yawn.

But it just makes me happy.

So here it is again....

We drank so much tea!

I felt little crack headish after my

2,398th cup.

Can you tell?

I think Sarah did too.

When in Rome, eh?

If you come visit me I'll take you here too.

Promise.

ps.  I missed you this week, blogosphere.

pss. That shirt I'm wearing is the first thing I've bought from a thrift store - part of number 80 on my 100 things to do list.  What do you think you fashionista bloggers - cute or totally grandma-ish?

Chocolate Tasting Evening at Cocoa

Since moving to England I have become addicted to tea.

When in Rome, eh?

I must admit it took me awhile to "get" what the British obsession with tea is all about.

But last night we went to Cocoa, 

a tea and chocolate shop with our new cougar club for a chocolate tasting evening.  

If only someone would've taken me to this place when I first arrived...

I would've jumped on the tea bandwagon much much sooner.

Isn't it the cutest?  

The adorable shop owner took us on a tasting journey 

from 100% dark chocolate all the way up to white chocolate.

I thought I hated white chocolate, 

but I realized I just have never been given the good stuff.

We also got a doggy bag of truffles.  

I am the annoying person who always eats half of each one....

In the front of the shop there were rows of candy and and tons of chocolate.  

My favorite was dark chocolate flavored with chili and lime... 

I never knew what my life was missing until I tasted that.

Delicious!

I have a feeling I will be taking American visitors here and helping them to get on the tea train.

Is it cheating if chocolate is involved?

Picnics and Chameleons

On Tuesday Nick had off work for the Easter holidays so we had a picnic!  It was a bit chilly and windy, but there were plenty of people out enjoying the park... even the icecream man made an appearance!

We picked up some sandwiches from this little place called The Honey Pot, which I'd been dying to go to.  It has such a delicious sounding name don't you think?  Especially when all the other sandwich shops have names like "Pulled Pork Sandwich Shop"  Umm... not the best place for your favorite vegetarian.

Alas, in the country, vegetarian food is hard to come by and even in The Honey Pot, the best they had to offer was a sub par egg salad sandwich.

While we were out we stumbled across the coolest reptile shop ever.  Now I'm not normally in the business of sharing my dreams on this little blog, but a few weeks ago I had the most vivid dream about Heidi playing with a pet chameleon named Charlie.  I have been wanting a chameleon desperately ever since, but where the hell do you even buy a chameleon? Well this reptile shop sold them!

The owner asked if I kept reptiles, and I replied, "no but I had a dream about a chameleon and I've wanted one ever since!"  I could see his crazy lady / terrible reptile pet owner alert going off in his head, so I pulled the....

I've worked with cheetahs....

And elephants....

and Sumatran rhinoceros line. (coolest animal ever FYI, this is Emi and Harapan, they're famous)

I'm not sure if at that point he thought I was a complete nutter, but he seemed to believe me enough to tell me its chameleon breeding season!  And brand new (captive bred) chameleon babies will be available in a few weeks!

(Via)

Now these little cuties run about £100 a pop, and thats not including the fancy set up they require.  They're also prone to stress meaning they die easily and only live for 2-5 years if well taken care of.  Plus, the reptile guy said they are a lot of work and give you no affection, he recommended a bearded dragon as they are apparently more affectionate reptiles.  However, I still want/need/must have a baby chameleon.  

HAVE I LOST MY BLOODY MIND?

St. Pancras and Benito's Hat

So tonight Nick and I went to "The Foodie Fortnight at St. Pancras".

St. Pancras is an international train station and we knew they were doing something food related, so we went along.

We saw Chef Atul Kochhar, who according to their brochure is the chef at Benares, "one of the best indian restaurants in the world".

He was on this tiny stage with tons of people around him and we couldn't see anything really.

Plus he was making some seafood dish - which I wasn't really interested in.

So we didn't stay long.

However, St. Pancras is one of the nicest train stations I have ever seen.

It was filled with little french looking cafes which I love.

Nick says it's because if the people coming in from france were forced straight into British food they would die of shock.

I tend to agree.

One of the shops in the station was called Sourced Market.

They had great veggies and I was dying to take a pumpkin home but thought it might be a pain to carry.

So we opted to buy cheese.

We got some Stinking Bishop and Stilton.

Hopefully I'll come up with a dish worthy of all the dirty looks I got on the tube this evening.

Stinking Bishop REALLY does stink!

Now as an American in London there are certain struggles I face daily.

These include never making a satisfactory cup of tea, often not being able to understand British accents and nevermind the accents of our neighbors in this predominantly indian neighborhood, oh and trying to figure out how British women wear nice shoes all the time and walk in them without wanting to kill themselves.

But one real struggle has been the lack of Chipotles.

I love Chipotle.  Nick loves Chipotle.  We need Chipotle.

But tonight Nick took me to Benito's Hat, a decent Chipotle substitute.

I must admit the fact that there were no mexicans was a little off putting.

But they made a decent burrito.