A Small Improvement? + Food Shopping

Tonight's dinner was still yellow, but at least it was slightly more cooked from scratch (well, kind of). Stir fried peppers and sesame smoked tofu with noodles, with a few eggs stir fried through at the end.

We haven't had this in ages - I always think of stir fry as kind of boring, but it was really good! Garlic powder, sesame oil and soy sauce gave extra flavour. This really filled me up!

This afternoon, we went to look round my Mum's new house. Her, her partner and my little sister aren't moving in until mid-January, but they got the keys on Monday, exciting! The house is a new-build so they got to choose the bathrooms, kitchen etc. It's all really lovely, the kitchen especially is amazing - huge, granite work surfaces, leading out onto decking/terrace with amazing views...I told Liam I want a kitchen like that one day! ;)

Afterwards, we borrowed Mum's car to go food shopping. We braved both Lidl and Waitrose, but it was actually ok. Neither shop was too busy and I didn't spot any trolley rage happening!

I bought lots of baking supplies in preparation for tomorrow - sugar, flour, chocolate, eggs, butter etc - and the usual foods - vegetables, fruit, tofu... but I just wanted to show you photos of a few highlights.

It seems that I'm in the mood for marzipan and/or dark chocolate treats:

Dark chocolate covered marzipan log, Lindt dark chocolate with sea salt, block of marzipan

I also picked up some things to help decorate my baking gifts tomorrow - brown/gold ribbon, and some cute mini candy canes!

I spotted this amazing looking salted caramel cake. They also had a chai cake, but this one had a small reduction which was the excuse I needed to buy it! I haven't tried it yet, but the cake has dates as it's first ingredient - I looks like it's some kind of sticky toffee cake with salted caramel buttercream...yes please!

Finally, we also bought some drinks. The ciders are mainly for Liam, but he's not sure if he'll like the new flavours - pear with ginger, and spiced apple with rhubarb - they sound really interesting so I said I'd have them if he doesn't like them! The drink I'm most looking forward to though is the cream soda with raspberry. I used to love cream soda (with ice cream) when I was younger, and I've been eyeing this version up for a while now, but never bought it before!

Have you braved the supermarkets recently? Do you need to do a big "Christmas shop" this year? We're going to Liam's Mum's for Christmas lunch this year, and my Mum is bringing nibbles round to ours in the morning, so we don't really need to buy much in the way of Christmas food. We did buy quite a few treats though, and things like frozen part-bake pain au chocolats for Christmas morning, camemberts to bake with all the sides (baguette, carrots, grapes etc) for Christmas Eve. I'm sure we'll have plenty of food. It's not like the shops are closed for long, but I'd rather not have to visit them right around Christmas if I can help it!