(for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)
Good morning tyrants and despots, welcome to Day 207 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review…
…given the events of this morning the greeting seems very much on point with world events rather than the topic of discussion at hand… three days, all it took was three days for the world to start going to shit again.
Ah well, hopefully this is the year that various tyrants around the world finally start to choke it through various means, we just have to pray that whatever takes their place leads to a more fair world – and whilst I would love to include Starmer under the title of tyrant, he is more just a tosser than anything else, and I dread to think what a Reform government would look like.
Anyway, that got extremely political early on and whilst I could easily continue down this path, I want to try stay on topic.
It is the first Saturday of the year, and I found myself starting way later than I had wanted to initially. The plan was to go shopping at Asda early on in the day to do a proper food shop to restock the fridge followed by a good session of gaming, early in this case meaning around nine in the morning.
This did not go ahead as intended, as by the time my alarm went off I did not feel as if I had slept well enough, combining this with my partner telling me to go back to sleep it ended up being close to half ten before we started doing anything for the day.
I feel conflicted on how this morning went. On one hand, it is the weekend, and as someone who currently works a weekday job with regular hours, the weekend is my time to relax so I should not be putting pressure on myself to be insanely productive at all times, especially as someone who can, will, and has worked themselves into a state of severe burnout several times before.
On the other hand, I have essentially had two weeks off of work and my discipline is mostly definitely lacking right now. This had started to happen before my break as well, as I found myself starting later than my usual time in the morning due to needing a bit more extra sleep or finding it hard to clamber out of bed.
That lack of discipline can be attributed to seasonal depression though, something I am hoping to see the other side of within the coming months, alongside the usual end-of-year exhaustion that comes from working near flat out in the twilight months.
Hopefully I am able to get back into my usual routine given I have had plenty of time to rest, which has helped to clear my cough and stomach issues up extremely well… there is something to read into there around stress making illness worse.
Pacing myself as I ease back into work should help with rebuilding my discipline as well, there is a lot of stuff to do in the first month or so of the year with what the company I am working for intends to do but hopefully I do not need to go full tilt until two weeks or so in the future.
Watch as I have now jinxed myself.
Similarly, keeping a routine to my writing would help as well, not only to help reach my goal of 180 Redundancy Review posts, but also just for the satisfaction that writing brings, giving me a moment’s peace to reflect on things and put my words onto the screen.
I have a vague idea of what I want to be writing about for the next week or so, which should hopefully give me plenty of posts for the foreseeable future, but as we all know, my schedule is anything but consistent.
The good news is that some of these topics are from a backlog of sorts, and within this backlog we have yet another exciting episode of…
Rosa Eats Her Way Around Shrewsbury!
In the week just gone my partner and I took an excursion to a local venue called “Ribeye Shrewsbury”, a steakhouse which recently opened. We took advantage of a very generous gift from my partner’s mother to pay for the majority of this, so thank you very much for that!
For starters, my selection was the twice fried chicken, served with what was described as “chicken skin mayonnaise” which seemed like a spiced mayo with batter bits sprinkled on top, whilst my partner had truffle potato croquettes, served with parmesan sprinkles around the base.
Both of these were absolutely phenomenal. The chicken was extraordinarily crisp whilst being extremely juicy on the inside, the lightly spiced mayo only complimenting the flavour further with each delicious bite. Three very decently sized strips for £9 served as an amazing starter.
Though if I have to be honest, I think my partner won out overall. Something about the way the potato croquettes were prepared made their insides extremely smooth and velvety whilst the outside was delightfully crispy, the little parmesan shavings adding a much needed boost of salty tang to make the flavours of the potato pop. Three well-sized croquettes for £8 made for another good starter.
But whilst the starters were delicious, and something I could very much see myself munching on casually, they are not the reason one goes to a steakhouse. You go for the excess that comes with consuming a pure slab of beef, and these were our selections:
My choice was a 250g/8.8oz ribeye, cooked to my preferred doneness of rare, which might upset some readers to see, but to me there is no more perfect way of enjoying red meat than to eat it almost still alive and dripping with delicious juices. My partner’s choice of meat was a 300g/10.5oz sirloin cooked to a more sensible medium rare. Both were served with an upgraded side of beef dripping chips, roasted flat mushroom, and roasted cherry tomatoes on the vine.
Additionally, there was a side of six beer-battered onion rings and on my plate there was an added pot of bearnaise sauce, my preferred steak sauce of choice for rare meat.
When it came to starters my partner and I shared so we were able to try a little of each other’s, but sadly this did not happen for our steaks as we were fully engrossed in the sheer amount of flavour they contained for each of us. The meat was cooked perfectly for my taste, the chips were crispy with the perfect amount of finishing salt added to them, the mushroom was surprisingly flavour packed, and whilst I did not indulge in a tomato myself due to a dislike of whole tomatoes, my partner told me even they had a big amount of flavour to them.
The onion rings were perfect as well, they are sort of my side of choice when it comes to trying out a new place, with these being perfectly crispy, not soggy on the inside as some onion rings can be, and serving as the perfect extra touch to the meal, and whilst it was nice, the bearnaise sauce did not add a massive amount to my enjoyment of the meal, and especially considering the price of £4 for the small pot, it will not feature again if we manage to return.
Now, for the full price, which came to an admittedly eyewatering £109.55, which breaks down as follows:
- Twice fried chicken: £9
- Truffle potato croquettes: £8
- 250g ribeye: £28
- 300g sirloin: £35
- Upgrading both of those to have beef dripping chips
- Onion rings: £4.80
- Bearnaise sauce: £4
- “Golden Static”, which was a lemon and elderflower drink: £5.95
- Small sparkling water: £2.80
- Two glasses of Coke: £7.20
But, this price comes with two disclaimers, the first being that this was mostly paid for by the generous gift from my partner’s mother, who covered £100 of this cost. The second disclaimer is that we actually paid more than the bill price, paying an even £120 once the card machine was brought over.
The service was fantastic, and the initial amount did not include a discretionary service charge as many places around town do, so we figured we would add approximately 10% onto our final amount both for the sake of roundings, and because the staff were genuinely amazing to provide us with such a fantastic meal.
Will I go back to Ribeye? If the stars align to get another generous gift that would enable such a fantastic meal or if a moment to celebrate in excess comes up, but it will not enter into the regular visits such as Floro Lounge or Wimpy… two massive polar opposites in that statement.
But that covers everything for today, thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to relax and enjoy yourself in the first weekend of the new year, taking things easy before work once more comes for us all.
Rosalia Rambles 