Sunday cooking and catch-up

I didn't do any shopping this week, determined to cook using stuff I already have on hand. I invited people over last Thursday for raclette so I still have plenty of cheese and bits and pieces leftover from that. Trying to think of something to do with the jar of courgette slices in oil sitting in the fridge, my eye fell on the large packet of chickpeas I got from the Turkish supermarket a while back and since I also remembered the remains of the curry paste in the fridge, I decided on chickpea curry.

I soaked the chickpeas overnight (400g, as I checked my WW book and saw a portion given as 100g dried for 4.5 pts) and after getting back from the pool this afternoon set them to boil. I also sliced the last of the potatoes from the other night and fried them up with a few dried tomatoes and some cheese. So that was lunch while the chickpeas were cooking. Later on I sliced a red onion, a yellow onion, five cloves of garlic as well as a just over an inch-long piece of ginger. That all went into some olive oil to fry off for a bit while I rummaged through the spice cupboard. I wasn't following any particular recipe, just had a quick flick through a few cookbooks for inspiration. I added some mustard seeds to the pan, followed by a small amount of ground cumin, some tumeric, a couple of curry leaves and the seeds from four cardamon pods, which I smushed up a bit with a pestle. Then in went three teaspoons of the curry paste and a few minutes later, a tin of tomatoes. I then added the chickpeas to the whole lot and five or six spoonfuls of the cooking water, as 400g of chickpeas is really quite a lot. I'm wondering if WW really intended that 100g dried is a portion or if it was just given as 100g is a convenient amount to list. I left it simmering and it was only about half an hour later, while talking to my sister, that I remembered that the whole point of the exercise had been to use up the courgette slices. So, back into the kitchen and in they went (minus as much of the oil as I could manage to leave in the jar). Just had a small bowlful and I have to say, it's very, very tasty. Looking forward to eating it over the course of the week. In fact, I've just gone back for a second small bowl and put the rest into Tupperware and it only fit into three containers - really two and a half so it looks like portionwise, I wasn't too far off after all. I'll spread it out by having the half portion with rice. In fact, if I were to eat them all with rice I'd have five portions - we'll see how the week goes.

I haven't really felt much like blogging this week. Haven't even really felt much like reading blogs this week, which is unusual but I'm just going with it. The visual journal idea has fallen by the wayside, too. I have gotten some stuff done though. I've been making a big effort to try to get things under control at work. I seem to have lost the ability to just keep everything on track, my head just hasn't been the same the last few months. I know grief can do strange things but it genuinely feels like I'm kind of broken. My memory is completely shot.

So, rather than waiting for myself to get back to normal, bearing in mind there's no guarantee that'll ever happen and that it doesn't seem to happening now, I spent some time a couple of weeks ago writing out lists of all the stuff I need to do on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. There are a lot of tasks that I need to do which don't take a huge amount of time if I do them daily but build up to enourmous loads if they're ignored (or forgotten about!) for a few days. And other things that we don't necessarily get reminders about but which it is very important to take care of every few weeks.  So far, it's working out fairly well although it's bringing back to me just how much is involved in my job. There are so many little things that might only take a few minutes but of course a few minutes multiplied by twenty starts to build up into much larger chunks of time. And this is just all of the background stuff - my main tasks of dealing with what correspondence and other stuff that my boss and the staff I work for need still have to be done too. To my list of stuff, I've added clearing ten old emails every day. This is working out really well. I've completely cleared my sent items, except for stuff I need to still keep an eye on, which is about seven emails. And by the end of next week, I should have my inbox completely cleared. I do still have some very old emails that at some stage just got moved to a temporary folder - they've all been dealt with and just need to be moved to the appropriate place or deleted so once I've finished with my inbox I'll keep going with that and finally get them all dealt with, too. Honestly, I'm kind of thinking ahead to the end of the year and wanting to make sure that I leave everything in order when I move on.

These are kind of small steps but they are giving me back a measure of feeling in control. This weekend, for the first time in a long time, I didn't spend most of the time thinking that it really would be better if I could go into work for a couple of hours to clear some of the backlog and get ahead a bit. Yesterday, I got the washing done and then I met a friend in town to go to an exhibition of Alexander Calder's sculptures. I'm not much of a one for modern art and yet for the third time, I found myself heading for K20, the only art museum I've actually made it to in the five years I've lived here. Go figure. We also walked around the normal collection and saw some really lovely stuff (as well as some really, scratch-your-head-how-is-that-art kind of pieces. Cough, Joseph Beuys, cough.) I got to finally make a note of one piece which I really, really like, even if it is modern art and looks so simple a kid could have done it. It's called Gamma Gamma and is by Morris Louis. I did get given out to for standing too close to it though. Oops. The Mark Rothko pieces I've seen there before weren't on display but there were two huge pieces of just blocks of colour, which were actually knitted pieces over canvas. So simple but the sheer size and the depth of colour were amazing. They're the kind of pieces you could look at a photo of and think it's nothing special but when you're standing in front of them really are breathtaking. Can't remember now the name of the artist. It seems I'm destined to keep having to go back to check names of artists.

At least my BahnCard got me a discount and my friend told me about a special ArtCard you can buy which gives you admission to all of the museums and galleries for a full year. It costs around 55 euro and I'm going to get one and we've agreed that we will go together once a month. She made the point that a lot of the time what she uses it for is when she's arranged to meet someone and is ten or fifteen minutes early. She can go and wander around for the few minutes she's waiting - not enough time to justify paying in, but if you can get in, enough time to soak up a picture or two.

Otherwise, my take the stairs challenge is going pretty well. I didn't do much else this week in terms of movement though. I did two mornings of stretching and then my back was a bit sore so I didn't want to exacerbate it. I was wearing my older boots and orthotics as I'd had to leave in my good shoes to be fixed again. I got new soles just a few months ago and one of them started to come unstuck. It turns out that I'd worn almost through the insoles so there was no resistance or something like that. So now I have new leather insoles (32 euro) and they re-fixed the soles (free). I got them back on Friday morning and by Friday evening felt such an improvement that I walked home without any problems. So it seems like it wasn't the stretching doing my back in, it was just the old shoes. Must remember that because I know I've noticed it before. I walked home from town on Saturday as well and then this afternoon I went swimming. Just for half-an-hour but it really felt good. I love being in the water. Along with a nice conversation with my brother yesterday evening, staying in bed late reading this morning, keeping on top of the washing up and getting some cooking done, all in all it has been a very nice weekend. Hope everyone has been enjoying theirs, too.

Visual journal - 19th January 2014

Dinner - A Girl Called Jack's carrot, cumin and kidney bean balls with passata and lettuce in a wrap. Very good!

Made a giant pot of leek and potato soup - lunches taken care of for this week and a couple for the freezer

Take the stairs challenge

The lovely Sarah over at Live to List posted at the beginning of January that she was challenging herself to take the stairs in January and I decided to join in. I live on the fourth floor with no lift so I do those stairs every day anyway. But there are also stairs up from the underground station near me and when I moved here I was walking up them every day but since then have gotten used to taking the escalator instead.

Of course, I then started the year with a cold, which was particularly bad in terms of coughing and not being able to breath properly. So I gave myself a pass until I was better. And then promptly forgot all about it. Luckily she posted an update last week and so I was reminded and thought I was better enough that I'd better get on with it. And then that evening there were no stairs for me because I ended up walking home. But I wouldn't have done that either if I hadn't been thinking about moving (I'm not really far enough along that I'm calling it exercise yet, for now it's just movement). On Wednesday I did take the stairs, so that was once at the main train station and once at the underground near home. Thursday and Friday I walked up the stairs from the underground near home and on Thursday I even did two flights at work. I normally do take the lift at work, where I work on the fourth floor, as I'm so often carrying piles of stuff but this time I had just one small file with me after collecting a signature from someone on the second floor so I just walked. I'm keeping track of this on my food tracking blog, because I suspect that much like tracking food, if I don't write it down I'll keep forgetting to do it. But I'm pleased with my progress this week anyway.

And very pleased at my weight loss - at my heaviest last April I had reached a point where stairs were starting to sometimes become a problem as my knees were hurting. Thankfully, the weight I regained between September and December didn't tip me back over into that 'knees hurt' weight but it was definitely one of the thoughts that helped to get me back to trying relatively quickly. I shouldn't have weighed myself until the end of the month but I was actually starting to worry a bit about whether I was even heading in the right direction because while I have done well with food planning the past week, there was also quite a bit of chocolate and the time while I was sick wasn't spectacular in terms of healthy eating either. So I was thrilled yesterday to step on the scales at see a THREE kilo weight loss. Only one more kilo to get rid of the regained weight. And an overall weight loss of 7 kilos since April. Taking the stairs might not seem like a huge deal but it's small things like that which can contribute the most, since they're daily occurrences.

The next thing I want to incorporate into my day is some stretching exercises in the mornings. I've intended something like this over and over so often but never done it. I even bought some weights last year and the only thing I've done with them since is stub my toe on them (and that more than once!). All just seems sort of overwhelming, when would I find the time, etc., etc. So, I decided to have a CD all lined up and ready to play and the idea is that when I get up first thing to go to the bathroom, I have to stop on the way back to the bedroom, press play and for the duration of the first song to some stretching exercises. I've chosen my Putumayo French Cafe CD (which I used to use as my housework music) as the first song is 3 minutes and 37 seconds long, which is about as much as I want to start with and it has a nice upbeat tempo and feel. We'll see how it goes. If I'm still inclined to head back to bed for another few minutes afterwards that's allowed but at least I'll have done 3:37 of movement.

Edited to add that really, one day what I want to do this full thing (and that part's just the warm-up!) - I have the record (yes, vinyl!) and the video (used to be my mum's but she was about as good as I am now about doing stuff like this) and it's just one of those things that has been in the back of my head for such a long time!

Visual journal - 18th January 2014

My favourite part of the market - potatoes! Now if they only sold roosters.

Visual journal - 17th January 2014

A glimpse at my diary (a paperblanks week at a glance one)  . Not much on this week. The numbers to the left of the day/date are where I am in my monthly cycle. When I first got my period, aged 12, my sister told me it was important that I keep track of the days and, apart from a few years when I was on the pill, I always have. Added to that in the last year or so I now also take my temperature every morning and write it on the right of the page. Very useful and interesting information to have, can highly recommend to any woman not doing this to start it.  In the space for notes, you can see my shopping list for tomorrow - just tried to cobble together a meal plan for the week and that's what I need to get. 

Visual journal - 16th January 2014

Guess where I spent an hour and a half this afternoon?

And then, since I was near home slightly earlier than usual (no way was I going back in to work the way I felt when leaving the dentist, not just for the ten minutes left of the "official" day) I stopped into a shop near me to see what their sale was like and found these. Yes, I know that especially coming home from the dentist I should be rejecting all things chocolately but it's Cadbury's Fingers! And dark chocolate ones, too. This shop is the strangest place, mostly sells clothes and household stuff but also gets in random "international" foods from time to time. 

Visual journal - 14th January 2014

As a result of the fiasco that was the privatisation of the Irish telecom company in 1999 and the subsequent sale of their mobile phone division to Vodafone, I automatically received some Vodafone shares in 2001. And since about 2002 have done absolutely nothing about that. With three house-moves since then, it's no wonder they lost track of me either. It was on the agenda for this year anyway but with the coming sale of the Verizon portion of Vodafone, I've pulled it forward and got the folder out this evening. Will be phoning tomorrow to see what they can do for me. At least I'm well-sorted enough now that I knew exactly where all this stuff was!

Visual journal - 13th January 2014

Today's lunch - lettuce, leftover chicken from last night, topped with Chutney No. 2 from 2009 in a wrap - delicious

Sunday night chit-chat and sealed pot update

Two photos this evening - some of the results of today's cooking. This is pumpkin soup and a smaller pot of leek and potato soup. I peeled all the potatoes I had, which were fairly old but turned out to be in far better condition than I thought and since I had more than anticipated I decided to strike while the iron was hot and use up the leek that has also been waiting a few weeks to be used. I have now used up every single fresh vegetable in the house, which kind of feels good.

The marinated chicken with roasted veg. I added potatoes and onions to the pumpkin. It's really delicious - will definitely be making this recipe again. You can just see the pot with the stew in the background. I'm looking forward to dishing all of this up into Tupperware for the fridge and freezer. So, on to the chit-chat...





What are you:
Reading
Still Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan. Not too interested in reading at the moment - hard to concentrate with this cold.

Watching
Gilmore Girls

Listening to
Stew bubbling away on the cooker and occasional traffic going by outside.

Cooking/baking
Good day for cooking today. Chicken with roast veg. Stew is on the go. Pumpkin soup. Leek and potato soup. Leek and onion sauteed and ready to go into scrambled eggs for breakfast tomorrow.

Happy you accomplished this week
Made it through first week back at work, despite this cold. Got most of the ironing done, too. And am very pleased to have gotten lots of cooking done today. Also sent off forms for my supplemental insurance place, finally got a letter from my old school to send off to the pensions service and remembered to start chasing letters regarding charitable donations for my tax return. Also didn't do too badly on trying to post a photo every day for my visual journal.

Looking forward to next week
Hopefully getting a letter from my supplemental dental insurance place telling me they'll cover 450 of the cost of the partial crown before I actually have to go in to the dentist on Thursday.

Grateful for this week
Not everything being back to full swing after christmas so that I didn't have to cancel too much in the evenings ('cos of the cold). And once again, my mooncup - it just makes life so much easier.

Bonus question: if you could choose any time period to live in, which would you choose?
Tough one this as it's a thought that leads me down philosophical thinking pathways - would I be the same person I am today (impossible) and what would I be like. If I could be the person I am today, transplanted somewhere else, then I think I'd quite like the Regency Period (in London and so long as I was one of the rich, obviously). Or the 1960s (in America).

If you'd like to join in with Sunday night chit-chat, post your own answers to the questions above, along with a photo or quote or something from your week and then head over to Half-Dozen Daily to link up.

Sealed pot update
The sealed pot has been fed regularly this week, which I'm kind of pleased with. Except that having change to put in it almost every day means I've been spending every day. I need to set up a small envelope/account/pot somewhere with money in it to cover extra expenses when sick. Not talking so much about medicine or anything like that but more about being realistic that I am not going to be interested in cooking or any kind of food preparation not just when actually sick in bed but for at least a week when I'm better but not really back to full fitness yet. That means buying lunches, at the very least and it would be good to have some money stashed away for these situations rather than letting my budget be just completely thrown off.

If you'd like to catch up on the goings-on of those joining in with the sealed pot challenge, you can find them over at SFT's blog.

It's a cooking Sunday

I'm trying to take it easy in order to shake off this lingering cough. I did drag myself off the couch a short while ago to start the marinade for the chicken I want to cook. And that turned into doing all the dishes, peeling the carrots and chopping the pumpkins. So I'm all set and just sitting down now for some more rest and a nice yoghurt (going to break the horrible habit of never finishing the yoghurt that's in the fridge!)

I was going to do spicy dal and carrot soup, the chicken (with roasted sweet potatoes and parsnips that was posted on That Curious Love of Green the other day) as well as make some stew. Even remembered to take the beef pieces out of the freezer. But since I was only half planning and hadn't written anything down, didn't get to the market yesterday and, even when I did go to the supermarket, didn't have a proper list, I've had to make some changes.

I had just exactly enough carrots for the spicy dal soup. Not thinking that beef stew with just beef and some onion would be a bit boring and, more importantly, not at all helping me towards the more veg-filled healthy eating I'm trying to get back to. So, the carrots will go into the stew and I'll have to wait until next week to make that soup.

Okay, so how about the chicken? Well, since I did pass by the meat counters in the supermarket yesterday I remembered to buy some. It's French, so not local (and forgot to look it up before throwing out the packaging and am not going rooting in the bin now - the border is about 300 km away, so at least that much anyway) but at least it's definitely free-range, 80% grain-fed, organic chicken. Totally forgot about the sweet potatoes though - got too distracted with the lettuce situation I think. Looking for veg in a supermarket has just become such a strange and unusual situation for me. I'm not terribly fond of parsnips anyway so I was thinking of doing the sweet potato with some carrots but as we've already seen, I've had more ideas of what to use my carrots for than actual carrots so that would have been a bust. I did have two hokkaido pumpkins that I got before christmas though. And now I'm very glad I'm using them because although they looked perfect one had just started rotting in one small spot. By next week I probably would have had to throw out half of it, instead of a roughly one inch square.

So I have one pumpkin to use with the chicken and have just put the other on as soup. Just the pumpkin chopped, enough water to cover it well, salt, pepper, cumin, some tumeric and a sprinkle of ginger as well.

The beef hasn't defrosted yet so I'll wait till this evening to make the stew but the carrots are ready and waiting in a bowl of cold water.

And the chicken in marinating is the fridge. Not at all bad for a quick burst of movement brought on by just getting up to do that one thing!

Visual journal - 12th January 2014

I didn't get moving out of the house yesterday in time to get to the market and had forgotten that one of the things I had promised myself for this week was to get some salad to go with the leftover chicken I'm planning on having in wraps for some lunches next week. So I tried to convince myself to get some in the supermarket and realised how spoiled I have become with fresh salad direct from the farmer. Oak leaf lettuce that looked nice from a distant looked horribly dry and unappealing up close. And although I looked at the bags of washed and cut stuff, bloated with whatever gas it is they use (is it CO2?) - doesn't matter that it may not be harmful, it disturbs me somehow - I just couldn't find them appetising. Then, in a second supermarket, I found this.

It's from Belgium, sold by the BelOrta co-operative and also marked Flandria (Flanders) - a quick google shows me that we're talking about just over 200km, which is about 125 miles, so even though it wouldn't fit in a local, 100-mile-diet, it's not too far off from it. It's not organic but does say "responsibly grown" on the packet and the website for the co-op auction is interesting. The packaging is that funny mix of Dutch/French/German/English that sometimes happens here with companies selling to multiple markets. The other lettuce in the second supermarket didn't look any more appealing but look at this one:

Still growing - roots still attached, with soil around them. So even though this lettuce (it's actuallt three different plants) has been grown in a pot far too small, it seems like a pretty clever way to get slightly fresher salad transported. Will be interested to see how it tastes. I really should try to grow some cut and come again lettuces in pots inside, I think. Haven't managed to grow a proper lettuce yet but it has to work sometime!

Visual journal - 11th January 2014

Things like this are the reason I have too much stuff - 4 Partylite votive candles that I set on this lovely glass saucer/candle holder, not realising that they become completely fluid when burning (they're supposed to). Managed to catch it just before it completely ruined my table but that's at least four years ago. I haven't made candles for years and although I vaguely thought I'd use these to melt down and make new ones out of, they've just been sitting in a drawer taking up space. Went to a Partylite party this afternoon and brought this along to give to the candle lady - she can use it as an example of what not to do. And now I get my nice glass saucer back to use for the type of pillar candle that doesn't become completely fluid when burning.

Visual journal - 10th January 2014

Managed to get a short walk in at lunch today so headed towards the river (that's the Rhine, for those who didn't already know). The water level is a bit high but nowhere near flooding yet, unlike some of the pictures I've seen of Dublin this week. I have seen this river with the water well up over the tarmac in the foreground and with most of the trees in the background under water, though.

Visual journal - 9th January 2014

My giant door stop for the kitchen door that won't stay open without one. If I had more doors that I wanted to keep open, I suspect I'd have a big collection of door stops by now - I've seen some really lovely ones over the last couple of years.

Visual journal - 7th January 2014

Slippers - a frivolous purchase last year, still love these slippers

Visual journal - 6th January 2014

Had a very rushed lunchbreak today so just had to very quickly snap this and had no chance for even a second try. These magnolia trees are near where I work and in the two weeks since I was last there have started budding in earnest - it has been an extraordinarily mild winter so far, with just a few freezing days.

Sunday night chit-chat and sealed pot challenge update

Haven't done one of these for a while so I thought I'd maybe get back into the habit now that tomorrow will see me back to a 'normal' working week again.

No photo today though, just a quote from the comments on SFT's post today that I really liked:

Follow your head and your heart won't understand, follow your heart and your head will work it out

What are you:
Reading
Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan - one of my birthday presents. Bit slow-going but good so far.

Watching
Gilmore Girls - blast from the past. Also watched Tootsie earlier today - love that film.

Listening to
Nothing much - just the Gilmore Girls.

Cooking/baking
Nothing today - still dosed with a cold so taking it easy.

Happy you accomplished this week
I iced my very first cake. Also managed to do pretty well on cooking the food that I have on hand. And kept on top of the washing-up, even today when I had already told myself that I didn't need to do it if I didn't feel up to it.

Looking forward to next week
Hopefully getting better!

Grateful for this week
A warm place to be sick in peace and quiet, with enough food in the house to get by on. And a good internet connection - what did we do before it?

Bonus question: Do you enjoy any winter sports?
Eh, no. Don't really enjoy any sports to be completely honest. A nice walk or a quick swim is about it as far as my enjoyment goes. And while a brisk walk when it's chilly out but you're wrapped up warm is lovely, I'm very bad as far as balance and keeping it goes so I don't really like walking when it's icy or slippy.

If you want to join in with Sunday night chit-chat, post away and then head over to Half-Daily Dozen to link up.

Sealed pot update
Not doing too badly with my pots this week. I've had quite a few 50c pieces to go into my phone-box one, have made start on my 5 euro one and cleared my purse of all other change several times to go into the main pot.
The sealed pot challenge is hosted by SFT - head over there if you'd like to see how others are doing with their pots this week.

Visual journal - 5th January 2014

Some older photos today - my very first homemade christmas cake

Ready to go into the oven

Ready-rolled marzipan ready to go

Marzipan-covered cake - instead of the traditional apricot jam glaze to stick the marzipan to the cake with, I used some of my own strawberry jam to finish up a pot I had already open

Forgot to take a photo before covering it with cling film and need lots of work on my decorating skills but I do think it looks like a real cake. Friends that I did this for are only coming home this evening so haven't heard yet whether it tastes nice or not.

BBC Big Read - only ten years behind the times

Browsing through some of the comments on SFT's sealed pot challenge I came across In My Playroom and one of the pages on this blog is for the BBC Big Read Top 200 books. I googled that and it seems to come from a survey they did in 2003 to find the UK's best-loved books (see here). We all know I can't resist a good book list, so I decided I'd copy that one too and maybe try and incorporate some of these books into my reading this year, too. I might choose a couple of books from the Rory Gilmore list, too. 

Red = read, not likely to re-read

Blue = previously read, would re-read

Black = never read

Green = never read but already on unread shelf to read soon

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie 
101. Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
102. Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
103. The Beach, Alex Garland
104. Dracula, Bram Stoker
105. Point Blanc, Anthony Horowitz
106. The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens
107. Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz
108. The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
109. The Day Of The Jackal, Frederick Forsyth
110. The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson
111. Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy
112. The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾, Sue Townsend
113. The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat
114. Les Misérables, Victor Hugo
115. The Mayor Of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy
116. The Dare Game, Jacqueline Wilson
117. Bad Girls, Jacqueline Wilson
118. The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
119. Shogun, James Clavell
120. The Day Of The Triffids, John Wyndham
121. Lola Rose, Jacqueline Wilson
122. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
123. The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy (although only the first part)
124. House Of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
125. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
126. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett
127. Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging, Louise Rennison
128. The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
129. Possession, A. S. Byatt
130. The Master And Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
131. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
132. Danny The Champion Of The World, Roald Dahl
133. East Of Eden, John Steinbeck
134. George's Marvellous Medicine, Roald Dahl
135. Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett
136. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
137. Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
138. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
139. Girls In Tears, Jacqueline Wilson
140. Sleepovers, Jacqueline Wilson
141. All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
142. Behind The Scenes At The Museum, Kate Atkinson
143. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
144. It, Stephen King
145. James And The Giant Peach, Roald Dahl
146. The Green Mile, Stephen King
147. Papillon, Henri Charriere
148. Men At Arms, Terry Pratchett
149. Master And Commander, Patrick O'Brian
150. Skeleton Key, Anthony Horowitz
151. Soul Music, Terry Pratchett
152. Thief Of Time, Terry Pratchett
153. The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett
154. Atonement, Ian McEwan
155. Secrets, Jacqueline Wilson
156. The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier
157. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
158. Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
159. Kim, Rudyard Kipling
160. Cross Stitch, Diana Gabaldon
161. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
162. River God, Wilbur Smith
163. Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon
164. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
165. The World According To Garp, John Irving
166. Lorna Doone, R. D. Blackmore
167. Girls Out Late, Jacqueline Wilson
168. The Far Pavilions, M. M. Kaye
169. The Witches, Roald Dahl
170. Charlotte's Web, E. B. White
171. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
172. They Used To Play On Grass, Terry Venables and Gordon Williams
173. The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway
174. The Name Of The Rose, Umberto Eco
175. Sophie's World, Jostein Gaarder
176. Dustbin Baby, Jacqueline Wilson
177. Fantastic Mr Fox, Roald Dahl
178. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
179. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Richard Bach
180. The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery
181. The Suitcase Kid, Jacqueline Wilson
182. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
183. The Power Of One, Bryce Courtenay
184. Silas Marner, George Eliot
185. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
186. The Diary Of A Nobody, George and Weedon Grossmith
187. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
188. Goosebumps, R. L. Stine
189. Heidi, Johanna Spyri
190. Sons And Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
191. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
192. Man And Boy, Tony Parsons
193. The Truth, Terry Pratchett
194. The War Of The Worlds, H. G. Wells
195. The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans
196. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
197. Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett
198. The Once And Future King, T. H. White
199. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
200. Flowers In The Attic, Virginia Andrew

Visual journal - 4th January 2014

Since the start of the break (21st December) I have been doing really well when it comes to dishes. The dishes from one meal are done at the latest when the next meal is being prepared. I need to keep this up once I'm back in work next week!