On Friday Fives - Cooking and Eating

1. Do you mostly prepare your meals at home or do you eat out more?

Complicated. Breakfast I usually make for myself and I am the designated large cooked breakfast chef in my household and in my wider family.

Lunch - during the week I tend to buy sandwiches, at the weekend I may cook a roast dinner. Does going round to my dad's count as eating out.

Evening meals my habits have changed over the years. When I was single I made a cooked dinner every night unless I was writing that evening, in which case I'd have a sandwich (ham and cheese or pastrami). When MLW and I first lived together we'd prepare our evening meal together after we both finished work. Now that we have a young child MLW does much much more of the cooking of the evening meal. The Captain gets extremely grumpy if he doesn't eat dinner before 6pm, MLW works from home mostly - so during the week she cooks the evening meal and we eat together. I try to cook in the evening at the weekend or cook a roast dinner. I miss cooking - I need to find a way of doing it more often.

I admit that I have become used to arriving home to find my dinner waiting for me.

We rarely eat out but we do have the occassional take away. I am in charge of making those happen. Eating out as a family inevitably involves a Chinese buffet. It is a good thing our nearest one is very good.

2. Is there a time of day when you are more likely to buy food already prepared?

Lunch.

But it's more a time of the week. Thursday evening, the Captain has judo late on Thursday evening so we tend to have ready meals on Thursday. I've noticed the improved quality and variety of microwaveable ready meals.

3. What is your average weekly grocery bill (for how many people)? What is your total restaurant/fast food bill for an average week?

On the first - I have no idea. I make a large payment to the household account each month. MLW does most of the food shopping. An average week sees me spend £50 on eating out excluding lunch.

4. What is your favorite meal to prepare at home?

I like to prepare slow roasted lamb or Drunken Balkan Chicken which is a chicken, roasted whilst stood on its end with a stubby of beer inside it so that it steams from the inside as well. I love cooking steak although I have been foiled in my desire to use a water bath or a zero-gravity grill.

5. What is your favorite meal to order in a restaurant?

If I'm eating somewhere new I often order a steak. I like mine rare. Or I order something which I wouldnt' get a home either because it is fiddly (like lobster) or because MLW doesn't like it (like lobster).

On Five on a Friday for 11th of May

Five Things on Friday makes a Friday Five post

1) The Captain is pushing his luck and his bed time back but doing it in such a charming way that it's actually quite nice. There is inevitably a comic and comedy routine at bed time each night which contrives to push back the actual time of going to sleep. This probably needs to stop because he gets grumpy when tired and also MLW and I need to see each other.

2) Only the one gym session this week as I had to re-arrange today's session as MLW had a work committment. Good touch rugby session. Two tries, bit of running, some of the other dads had their older kids down so they joined in. The guy who coaches the P3s (my coaching boss) is really good with the kids.

3) MLW and I are watching the Bridge and also the City and the City - two unconventional police procedurals involving split jurisdictions. Cowri and Saga are my new role models. MLW has to concentrate very hard on The City and The City and I have to concentrate very hard on the Bridge.

4) I have been through the soccer world cup groups and decided which team I am supporting and which team I hoping to lose in each group

Group A - Supporting Uraguay (always), not supporting Russia (it's always funny when the hosts get knocked out and frankly they deserve it.
Group B - supporting Spain and Portugal, (I love Spain, except the fascists and I have a Portuguese niece) not supporting Morocco but only by default.
Group C - Supporting Australia (Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oy, Oy, Oy), not supporting France (it's funny when they lose - aussi, aussi, aussi, non, non, non
Group D - Supporting Iceland, not supporting Argentina - debt defaulting hyper inflation Peronists, what do they think this is, the early 80's?
Group E - Supporting Costa Rica (goes back to an old five a side tournament,) not supporting Brazil (it's funny when they lose)
Group F - Supporting Mexico (they have excellent goalkeepers) not supporting Germany (someone else should win the world cup)
Group G - Supporting Belgium (plucky little Belgium), not supporting England because I want to see the Sun's front pages
Group H - Supporting Columbia because I worry that drug dealers will shoot the players if they don't do well, not supporting - to be honest I have no strong feelings about the other teams.

5) I have been practising a racing game on the PS4 and getting adequate at it. This is considered cheating by my son who would like me to be good, but not as good as him so that I present the pretext of a challenge but do not in fact actually ever beat him. He's out of luck. I am hoping to arrange a match up against his Australian cousins.