Weekend Things - Meal Out + Lots of Chocolate

I'm sure I use first part of that title most weeks but hey ho! How were all your weekends? Good I hope. We had quite a quiet one which was nice.

My Dad was down visiting, so after Izzy had been to gym club on Saturday morning, he had Izzy and Toby for a few hours so that Liam and I could go shopping.

We had lunch first, obviously. We decided to go back to Giraffe, after we had such a nice lunch there a month ago. It is much easier when there are just two of us - we were seated inside immediately! I decided to have a "Hippy Hippy Shake" for my drink - a smoothie of pineapple, passion fruit, mango, banana and pomegranate juice.

Really tasty. I drank this way too quickly, but then stuck to tap water.

I actually ordered the same main as last time - a Farmers Market Vegetable Burrito - love this!

As we had the luxury of knowing that our meal wasn't going to be interrupted by the children getting bored, we decided to share a couple of sides as well. More like, I persuaded Liam to share so that I could try more things. It works. We, of course, had some sweet potato fries.

These came with chipotle aioli which was delicious, and the sweet potato fries were the best I've ever had - crispy on the outside but soft on the inside, yum.

We also shared some corn on the cob with red chilli butter.

These were ok, but could have done with being hotter. All in all, a great meal though. We were both too full to even consider looking at the dessert menu!

The main reason of the trip was to take back the dress I bought last time (nothing like leaving it until right at the end of the 28 day return period!) and to try to get my iPhone fixed (fail, it's out of warranty but apparently might be helped by updating the software...if only my laptop didn't take 2.5 hours to get only part way through step 1 of 5 of backing up I might be able to try this out!). We also made a trip to Hotel Chocolat, where I wanted to buy everything in the store. I managed to exercise some restraint though (!) and only buy two things. I let out a little squeal when I saw dark chocolate salted caramels, and fruity Christmassy pretty chocolates sounded great too!

I haven't actually opened the Christmas Mess chocolates yet (what is wrong with me?!!!) but the salted caramel ones, as expected, taste delicious.

At the end of our shopping trip, we went to Marks & Spencer. We had a gift card so decided to use part of it to give us an easy dinner. I opted for a Super Wholefood Salad, which I've seen raved about on several blogs.

I have to say, I actually didn't like this. The peppers tasted really vinegary, and the lemon dressing was too strong for me (even though I only used half of the pot). The butternut squash was also not cooked as much as I like - it was still really quite hard to cut. I ended up just eating the asparagus and broccoli.

Luckily, Liam had chosen a chocolate brownie dessert which made up for it - yum!

On Sunday, we met up with a friend who we haven't seen in ages. She has a son the same age as Izzy so it was nice to catch up. I had a quick breakfast before we went of spiced apple yoghurt with cider apple butter...

Delicious, but not overly filling. I was starving by lunchtime!

I woke up yesterday morning with the most awful shoulder/neck pain. I don't know what it was, and luckily it had gone when I woke up this morning, but it was so painful. I couldn't twist my neck at all and even sitting, let alone moving, hurt. Luckily Liam has had similar pain when he's trapped nerves in his neck, so he was quite sympathetic.

Therefore he took over lunch duties yesterday - he made tuna quesadillas for everyone else, and made egg mayonnaise and avocado (my request, not something he randomly came up with!) for me. He even chopped it all up so I could eat it one-handed, and photographed it too - thank you Liam! :)

I love this combination. I've been craving egg mayonnaise for days, and avocado is always a great accompaniment!

Dinner didn't really happen last night as we were all tired and I was still in pain. Luckily there was a mini pizza lurking in the fridge that fed the children, and Liam and I had unpictured peanut butter on toast, and then lots of chocolate! Perhaps not the healthiest or most exciting "meal", but it did the job!

What was the best thing you did this weekend? Any exciting plans for the week? We are off to Bath next weekend, which I am really looking forward to, I love going to the Christmas Market there. I'm also looking forward to having Izzy at home on Wednesday when the school is closed because of strikes - we've got plans to make muffins when Toby sleeps, and possibly go out on her scooter once he wakes up, depending on the weather - I can't wait! :) It will be nice to break up the week with a relaxed day - I hate the rush to get her to school each morning!

Edited to add: My brain keeps going back to the last paragraph of this post (above) so I thought I'd better add a disclaimer! Not that I can get what I want to say straight either...fuzzy brain!! I didn't mean to sound like I was trivialising Wednesday's strike at all. Obviously the strike is not "fun" and I really feel for the teachers and everyone else who is striking. I was simply talking on the surface level, that I'm looking forward to having an unexpected day at home with Izzy.