Mum’s birthday bash
Posted by Anna
Thursday
Drove to Devon for my mum’s 80th birthday, taking Emma and her boyfriend. I had to borrow David’s little Peugeot as my car’s a 2-seater. Getting up at 5:30am, I ate a yoghurt before I left, and had a snack on the way. We arrived mid-morning, but didn’t tuck into the extensive buffet that my sister put together (she’s in catering so it looked very professional), until 1:30pm. She’d made the birthday cake — a huge delicious-looking home-made passion cake with cream-cheese and whipped cream icing that everyone said was amazing! I didn’t eat much, saving myself for the formal dinner that evening, but found it hard not to ‘graze’ in the afternoon (indulging in a few doritos and cashew nuts). At the dinner, I passed up the starter. The main course was a choice of chicken in a cream sauce or roast beef, so I went for the latter, with veggies. Desserts were a choice of toffee icecream, strawberry pavlova or profiteroles. I decided to indulge. I thought it would be sickly, but the choux bun was light, the whipped cream filling didn’t seem to have sugar with it, and the chocolate sauce wasn’t the ganache I expected, but rather a very light and runny milk chocolate sauce that looked and tasted like slightly thickened hot chocolate!
| Breakfast | Yoghurt | 70 |
|---|---|---|
| Snack | 2 “Eat Natural” bite-sized mini-bars | 300 |
| Lunch | Bread | 300 |
| Garlic sausage | 80 | |
| Nuts and potato chips | 250 | |
| Dinner | Roast beef + veg | 450 |
| Profiterole | 300 | |
| Drinks | 2 cups of tea + various 0 cal bevs | 20 |
| Total Calories | 1,770 | |
Friday
Staying in a hotel, I had the accompanying breakfast, although stuck to the continental, rather than cooked. We left at 1pm without eating, as none of us were hungry. The journey home up the M5/M4 through Friday afternoon traffic was horrendous and took 5 hours (not including stops). We did a whistle-stop visit (half an hour!) at a retail outlet at Swindon getting there at 3:30pm and had something to eat, but because it was late, there wasn’t much of a selection to choose from. When I dropped off Emma at nearly 7pm, I was so exhausted by the arduous stop-start drive (my legs and knees were aching, leaving me wishing David’s car was an automatic with cruise control!) that I had to rest before I could continue the last mile in my own car home! I had no appetite so just had a snack and had to go to bed at 10pm!
| Breakfast | Toast + jam | 200 |
|---|---|---|
| Cereal | 150 | |
| Yoghurt | 100 | |
| Snack | 2 “Eat Natural” bite-size mini bars | 300 |
| Pringles | 250 | |
| Fresh pineapple chunks | 70 | |
| Lunch | Slice of cheese pizza | 400 |
| Dinner | 3 crispbreads + ex low-fat cream cheese | 150 |
| Drinks | 1 cup of tea + various 0 cal bevs | 10 |
| Total Calories | 1,630 | |
Sylvia said,
31 May 2008 at 2:31 pm
Profiteroles done well are amazing! I haven’t made them in years (probably a good thing!) but they are surprisingly not that hard to make – and so much better than the frozen things most people get.
Those figures are very low for going away for a big birthday bash! I hope you are feeling very proud of yourself!
Anna said,
31 May 2008 at 11:39 pm
I think the one I ate was home-made, especially as the chocolate topping wasn’t at all like the usual syrupy chocolate sauce.
I was pleased with myself and would have done even better were it not for the journey down and back taking so long, with me ending up grazing on the stuff Emma and Chris had brought for the journey.
It’s made me realise next time I do a long drive, I need to consider what I might want as a snack on the way which is easily edible and won’t leave the steering wheel covered in stickiness/goo/something else nasty!