Thursday Night Stew & Oyster

On Thursday night Joe and I attended the launch of Stew & Oyster.  I've been quite excited about the opening of this bar for a while - it's the new outpost of Calls Landing in Leeds city centre which for a few years was our favourite local bar.  Since moving to Roundhay the choice of cool local bars has definitely minimised and its about time a relaxed, friendly bar opened in this neck of the woods.

This is just a short post tonight to say that Stew & Oyster is definitely worth a visit - it's stripped back, laid back, with a great range of interesting beers and tasty wines.  There is a fixed menu of their favourite stews and honorary stews (think mushrooms on toast, croque monsieurs etc) and platters including a very tasty looking pork pie option from Wilsons Butchers, as well as changing specials.  On top of this, they do fresh oysters sold either individually, in threes, sixes or a dozen and with champagne or ale.  One of my bank holiday treats is definitely going to be an oyster or two.

So we will be back over the bank holiday weekend, but for anyone looking for somewhere fun to go in the meantime, try Stew & Oyster.

Oh, and as well as tasting some of the stew (very good) we also had a black pudding, new potato and poached egg salad when we got home!  The black pudding is hidden in the picture but it was a very tasty meal coming out of nowhere (I'll thank my two glasses of wine at S&O for that!)

Stew & Oyster's own beer

Our home time drinks...whisky and chambord.  Eek.

Black pudding, new potato and poached egg salad

Tuesday turkey meatballs

We're back on track after an emotional few days and just want to say thanks to everyone for their kind comments and wishes.  I have Joe back in Leeds, and welcomed him home with a late night at work (woops) and some tasty turkey meatballs!  They were done in a rich tomato sauce and with some new potatoes and salad, which although sounds weird, was quite a nice combination.

Turkey meatballs with new potatoes and salad

Sunday night

Joe is back on the Wirral at the moment so I'm hibernating in Leeds, reading books and watching trash tv (well you've got to sometimes, haven't you?)  I'm not usually one to say personal things in public, but I'm taking the opportunity of him being a hundred miles away to say that I'm the luckiest girl in the world.  There are rare people who have total dedication to their family and loved ones and will be there for them, through all the good times and the bad.  This has been a bit of a nervous week and  Joe is a real superstar. I'm super happy to have him and his family in my life.

Anyway, promise not to embarrass myself (or anyone else) further, so here's my lonely dinner from Sunday!  Pasta with smoked mackerel...probably a good thing no one else was here!!

Pasta with mackerel and salad

Monday - Pizza

Just a short post, as there's only so much you can say about pizza and salad!  On Monday, Joe treated a rather ill me to Pizza Express pizza and a salad, complete with fancy tomatoes.  It turns out pizza is good for a throat infection as I started to get a little better today!  Who knew!

Pizza and salad

Thursday Chilli Treats

My parents are here this weekend for a visit, so on Thursday we had the usual mad panic trying to tidy the flat and remove all evidence of our usual slovenly lives.  I'm sure many people find the same: given only two of us live here, we seem to make some mess!! I don't know what we'll do if/when we have kids...will need to get a live in cleaner or something! 

Anyway, running around cleaning the house means just one thing - left overs!  Lucky for us our left overs are usually pretty good.  This time it was chilli, with salad and pitta bread.  I actually think something like a chilli or a curry benefits from a bit of time letting the flavours come together.  All in, it was a pretty tasty treat.

Chilli

Chilli with salad and jalapenos

Wednesday Night and Last Day at Work

Phew................I can finally say it was my last day at work for the year! Get in!  Joe and I have both been working hard recently so we've taken a proper amount of time off over Christmas, and neither of us are back at work until the 3rd of January!

Joe is celebrating properly, out with work in Manchester.  He is staying over and has said he will not be drinking very much - I quite simply do not believe him and am expecting to be proved right when he crawls home off the train tomorrow!  I, on the other hand, will be feeling virtuous after my yummy bacon, chorizo and pepper salad (oh yes, bacon AND chorizo!) and stubby beer - what could be better?!

Warm salad of bacon, chorizo and peppers

Thursday Night left over chilli

Quickie blog post...the flat is a total tip and Joe and I need to tidy!!

Dinner tonight made the most of my leftover chilli, with pittas and salad - what else could you want?!  Topped off with a club orange - awesome!

Pitta!

Salad

And the chilli - which looks weirdly orange...but was very nice!

Saturday night fuel for Joe's Half Marathon for the Seve Ballesteros Foundation

In case we hadn't managed to make it clear enough, Joe is running the Bradford half marathon and the Edinburgh marathon over the next six or seven months.  The Bradford half has sneaked up on us and is tomorrow so a huge GOOD LUCK to him!  He is running both for the Seve Ballesteros foundation, which raises money for the fight against brain cancer.  If you would like to sponsor him and support this great charity click the link here to donate. 

Anyway back to tonight: as he needs fuel, this means pasta.  I'm not a huge fan of pasta though so to try and make it work for both of us, we had Italian roasted chicken legs and a salad to go with it which wasn't too shabby.

Salad

Roast chicken leg and wing with bacon, garlic, parsley and white wine

The obligatory pasta!

Joe's plate - proper marathon prep!

Thursday - Joe cooking again!!

On Sunday our oven went pop and we are still waiting to have it fixed (should be on Saturday). That, plus the fact that Jo was work late again led to mild panic - no oven and only vegetables in the fridge!! Where is Jo when I need her!!?

I decided the best plan of action was to go to the Co-op; I had an unhealthy days food today which included toast with peanut butter and Jam x 2, ham and cheese on white rolls x 2, pork pie x 1 from J&M Rowlands (good but not quite as good as Wilsons) and way too much Soreen (don't ask). 

I needed something healthy-ish. After much deliberation (I have a supermarket habit of repeatedly picking stuff up and putting it back - weird I know), I decided on having a warm chicken and potato salad and very nice it was too - this was followed by more Soreen. 

The chicken

The cheese

The salad

The potatoes

Other stuff

Salad shot one

Salad shot two

Thursday liquor - rock on

At 9pm I went to pick up Jo from Nation of Shopkeepers where she was having a post work drink, and she had the same dinner as me.....let's hope things get back to normal next week!

Wednesday Night - An eclectic mix - Halloumi Salad & Corn on the Cob

I admit the blog this week has been pretty dull so far (apart from Jo's dinners of course!), but we haven't done too much so far.....we are heading to the Wirral (my neck of the woods) to see friends and family, and we are both running the Hoylake 10k on sunday!! - hopefully there will be some better written content then..........today's dinner is below;

Halloumi Salad & Corn on the Cob

Close-up

Saturday - Shooting, Pork Pies, Halloumi Salad & 40th Birthdays

Our generous and lovely mum (click to blog here) bought me and my bro (Dave Pilla) bought us a afternoon clay pigeon shooting at Coniston Hotel, which was a first for both of us. It was brilliant, but not something that I would so again as Dave is much better than me, and I hate to be beaten by him. He won 22 - 17.

.

Me with my special eye thing (I have funny vision according to Jim the instructor) and fetching ear plugs

Dave doing his shooting thing

The brothers Rees with out great instructor Jim

Joe's scorecard - 17 - I was cheated

Dave's score card - 22 - he cheated ;o)

On the way home we stopped at Lishman's in Ilkley for a pork pie each - it was very good and possibly the best so far.

For dinner, we had halloumi salad for the first time, and it's something we would definitely have again.

Then, it was out into Chapel Allerton for a good friends 40th birthday celebrations. Wolf's day had started at 9am with the rugby and he and the hardcore didn't meet us until 7.30pm! - it had been quite the session that was still going when we left for home at 11pm.

Joe and Jim

Here is a picture of the man in question - happy birthday Robin!!

Tuesday - Little post exercise snacks (well almost)

Ok, well maybe not quite a snack for me...I left work a little later than I had hoped so I went for a quick (ish) 10k home (52 mins which was more of a struggle that I was hoping for!) with a smoothie when I got in. I put milk, chocolate protein, a few strawberries, some oats and whizzed them up until it looked like this;

It tasted better than it looked

Even though this was more than it enough, it didn't feel like I was eating a proper meal so I also had this about half an hour after.....fatty Joe!!

Cheese and ham toastie with salad

Jo was much more refined in her choice and put together a lovely looking bloody mary prawn salad (without the vodka) with a brown pitta - I wasn't a bit jealous!