Rosalia Rambles

Tag: Local Eating

  • Redundancy Review: Day 478, “Flying back around”

    (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 pilots and WSOs, welcome to Day 478 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    I promise that the plane stuff will come to an end soon, especially as I come near to finishing my first playthrough of Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve. I think I am at what will be my last wall in terms of progression, and whilst it is possibly one of my favourite missions in the franchise without having even finished it, the final phase is getting right on my tits.

    It is extremely rare I time out during an Ace Combat mission, but this mission has actually managed to inflict that upon me today. After that I developed a headache so I focused on finishing off my beef stew for dinner before playing Dead Space 3 with a close friend of mine.

    Being able to be this invested in a game has come as quite a surprise to me. I knew I was hyped up to be able to play a new Ace Combat game, but I was not expecting myself to get quite so into this installment – to the point my partner had to force me off the sofa, making me go outside for food and refreshment. Whilst I did protest initially, my stomach and body caught up with how I had been feeling shortly into our walk, with some cheese on toast from a local cafe perking me right up… until the headache hit but that is both beside the point and repetition.

    The point I am trying to make is that it is very rare for me to spend beyond two hours on any given gaming session, maybe pushing it to two-and-a-half hours at a push but even then I will likely be flagging near to the end and looking for a cooldown activity to finish things up. When a game comes along that I can get invested in, or I am simply enjoying the company of those around me so much, getting up to three or four hour long sessions is entirely possible.

    Usually punctuated with me going “I’VE BEEN PLAYING FOR HOW LONG?!” at the end of the session, having my body catch up with my mind or vice versa, and limping slowly to bed to do whatever it takes to rest my mind after using that much pure focus energy.

    On one hand, I consider it a positive that with the right impetus I can put my mind and body through intense periods of determination for multiple hours at a time – possibly a side effect of my experience working in the repetitive nature of QA. On the other though, it feels a bit weird that my only consistent source of this energy is intense video game sessions.

    Do not get me wrong, when the walls are closing in at work and the deadline seems just out of reach I will pull out all the stops to get the task done, but my focus for that seems more fragile than when it comes to these long sessions. Though if I am honest, “corporate deadlines” definitely do not inspire me in the same way as “hunting a magnificent creature” or “patriotism for a nation that does not exist” does.

    Or maybe four months of unemployment are taking their toll harder than I anticipated and the main way I can spark my dopamine receptors into action is through intense video game sessions because with the way the job market is in 2026, there is very little reward from filling out job applications knowing they will likely end in rejection or ghosting.

    I… should probably reflect on the fact I am saying something like that.

    There is no way I want to end up as a perpetual NEET, though in my current situation I can definitely sympathise with those who are in that position, and I definitely want that satisfaction that comes with a full-time position again, because I enjoy working with cool people on cool projects – especially if those projects are for the benefit of other people. There is the obvious route of “well if you get so much thrill from playing games, why not go into streaming?” which has crossed my mind more than I would like to admit, but:

    1. I am not sure how well my current setup would take to streaming with the games I want to stream
    2. I am not sure how well my personality would come through on a stream in the way I want it to
    3. “Tech layoff getting into oversaturated markets” is already a current problem I face
    4. If I were to put all that energy into streaming, it would probably be better served being put into my writing work as that is how I actually want to interact with the world around me.

    This is to not write-off streaming, as I definitely do want to try VTubing for myself properly at some point, but I would rather be doing that from a position of strength rather than desperation.

    So that leaves me with conquering the monolith of the job search in 2026, which come hell, high water, or hellishly high water, I will conquer – even if I have to start referring to it as “job search in 2027”.

    Managed to get a surprisingly good groove out of that topic, but it is probably a good time to move onto the review segment, which involves me going deep into the backlog all the way back in June for when I went out with my dad and my partner for Father’s Day.

    As a bit of background, I have stopped giving my dad physical gifts on Father’s Day, primarily because in his old age I have started to run out of things to give someone whose main hobbies are “books” and “Lego” without cluttering up their home, so instead I resolved to take him out to dinners or lunches instead with the caveat that I pay… which admittedly is a little harder to do when jobless, but for this one we resolved a split instead.

    Which when considering the price and what we got, it was not a bad deal at all.

    The venue for this dinner was Ribeye Steakhouse in Shrewsbury, a place where my partner and I went near to the end of last year as part of a Christmas gift from his mother, and a place I knew my dad would love. We had a brief debate on the table about what each of us could order, but we remembered that they offer sharing cuts of beef, so we went to check out the fridge where we saw this insane 900g lump of sirloin sitting right in front of us, priced at £8/100g. Splitting that three ways with two extra sides on top of the two included sides in the sharing price with three drinks worked out cheaper than us buying individual meals.

    It took a while to come out, though that was down to both the size of the meat and having to commit a food crime in ordering it well-done… dad’s idea, not mine. The official position of Rosalia Rambles is that the ideal red meat cooking temperature is “able to be revived under the correct circumstances”, or “bloody rare” in brief.

    But once it all came out, with the sides of creamed spinach, onion rings, and beef dripping fries put onto the plate, accompanied by a flat mushroom and some bearnaise sauce, it made for one incredibly sexy presentation.

    Now, the bill. Even with extra sides, this all came out to a surprisingly reasonable total of £88.70, with a surprising lack of service charge which is a rarity around these parts. Given how delicious the meal was and how lovely the staff were in giving us a countdown to our meal with how long it took, we decided to round up to an even £100, essentially giving a 13% tip on the meal. Split evenly between myself and my dad, that was a cool £50 each – still pretty pricey, but when you can indulge in a steakhouse dinner for £33~ a head, that is good value for a once in a blue moon event.

    My partner and I have said that we intend to go back there when either of us have big job news to celebrate, and I anticipate the day I can savour a big cut of beef my own way there.

    One should hope I end up writing these earlier in the day now that my fixation is starting to wane, but I am still proud of my regularity. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are doing well. The week is almost over, and hopefully a relaxing weekend is ahead for all of us.

    We all deserve it.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 458, “While it lasts”

    (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 enjoyers and savourers, welcome to Day 458 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    If I manage to finish this today, it will be one full week of posts for the first time since…

    …five months ago in April, fucking hell.

    I say “if”, because whilst I am sitting here writing a post out on my old battered laptop, I continue to find it a struggle to put words together on everything I am feeling lately. Perhaps it is a sense of being overwhelmed, that there are so many stimuli assaulting me on the daily that finding words to describe all of it feels like an impossible task.

    In a way it is a privilege to be able to write like this. To sit in an undisturbed space away from others with only my own thoughts for company, being able to use the power of modern technology to write them all down and publish them online for all to see.

    Bit of a weird reflection coming from someone who earlier in the week declared their distaste for social media as a whole, but the world we live in is one of polar opposites right now. So many are struggling the world over, even in developed countries, but advancements in technology have made resources available to more people while those advancements also produce many of the challenges that face humanity as a whole.

    There is an insane amount of luck involved for someone like me to exist in the way I do at the current time, and as the title suggests, I am aiming to enjoy the time I currently have in the best way possible, because the tides could shift for better or worse at any moment.

    This extends to me enjoying time with my parents, which is something I felt I would never get to say when I consider the situation four years ago. We were locked in a bitter cold war over the state of my transition, and I went six months without seeing them until I finally broke down the walls. Nowadays I would consider not seeing them for six months extremely strange given I will see them at least once a month, if not more frequently.

    Given the fact they are aging and I am getting reminders of that on the regular, I am aiming to try and enjoy what time I have with them when I can. Family emotions can be complicated, and while I feel they may not fully understand the person I chose to become, I know that they know it makes me happy which is ultimately what they would want from me.

    Nothing can last forever, and whilst the pain from anything ending can last longer than anticipated, I will always aim to appreciate the fleeting nature of life where possible.

    Dragging up something from the backlogs today for the review topic, especially as I get to do something I have not done in a very long while. It is once more time for…

    Rosa Eats Her Way Around Shrewsbury!

    A couple weeks back I spent an afternoon hanging out with one of my closest friends with the goal of discussing writing together, mainly what story projects we had and bouncing ideas off each other to see where things could be improved but mainly to enjoy talking shop together.

    As part of this, and the fact I did not eat dessert when provided at a hangout a couple days prior, she agreed to pay for my lunch that day. Whilst I will discuss the price as always, this was paid for by someone else. Thanks for that!

    After going to one coffeehouse initially and having it be far too busy to actually hear each other speak, we took a short walk up the hill to go to a hole-in-the-wall venue known as the Bear Steps Cafe, where I noticed they had a lunch special on that day for a BBQ pulled pork panini served with fries that also came with a hot drink for an extremely reasonable price of £9.99.

    So obviously I had to take that deal, the opportunity to get a hot sandwich with fries and imbibe a delicious mocha whilst not breaking my friend’s budget was too good to pass up. The fact it came out with a gorgeous crisp crust on top of the panini with parmesan and herbs sprinkled over top made it even more decadent than I could imagine.

    The pulled pork was exactly how I like it: sweet, smoky, and tender all in one package. The cheese blend used to bind the panini together was perfect, in all likelihood it was some catering blend of cheeses rather than being a dedicated cheddar or mozzarella, but it had the perfect amount of stretch and flavour to it that made worrying about the details irrelevant.

    The fries were about as standard as you can get, but there is never really a need to a cafe to go above and beyond on fries if you ask me, especially if they are included as part of a meal. I do not go to a cafe expecting the finest beef tallow triple-cooked chips, I am perfectly happy with the most basic fries to add a little bit of extra carbs to my meal.

    Finally, my mocha was also pretty standard to the best of my memory. There is never really a way modern coffee machines can go wrong with making a mocha, and whatever balance is there for me is usually a pleasant experience of getting to savour the flavour of chocolate whilst getting one of my many needed caffeine hits throughout the day.

    And again, this entire spread was the very reasonable price of £9.99. A sit down lunch in an independent cafe can very easily cost more than that in other locations, and getting a moment to sit down with a close friend to talk about a hobby we both share.

    That covers everything for today. Thank you for reading this edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are able to enjoy the weekend. If you are one of the many who works on the weekend, I hope you are able to navigate the trials of everyone coming at you for the most minor of things. I see your hard work, and appreciate you persisting through it all the same.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 320, “Calmer than Usual”

    (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 salarymen and manufacturers, welcome to Day 320 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Sunday is usually a day I prefer to keep quiet with minimal engagements, partially out of an existential dread that comes from knowing I have to go to work the next day and wondering what the hell is going to come across my desk when I do.

    But now with the bizarre calm I find myself in from knowing my employment with my current company is coming to an end, today has been a mixture of relaxation and letting myself exist rather than worrying about what comes tomorrow.

    It has however been plagued by a pretty annoying headache, so I have not been able to push myself to do the amount of things I have wanted to today. Specifically was wanting to make a roast dinner for myself and my partner but ended up changing plans to a much simpler leftovers meal.

    Despite my pledge to wanting to keep this a daily series again, I find myself struggling to figure out what to write about for the “personal” segment of the review. Partially because whilst there is a lot I want to say about I feel in my current situation, I cannot properly express myself without getting sorely unprofessional in my conduct, and because it feels like very early days in these next steps.

    I am relaxed, which I consider the important thing. I know there is going to come a point where panic will set in once more and I very much will need a source of employment to keep the lights on, but, for now, there is a certain peace in having space to breathe again and not worry about things on Sunday.

    There is a joke to be made here about not worrying on Sunday because all I have now is time to worry about being unemployed, though I am going to remain on the optimistic side whilst focusing on writing, recovery, and slowly tuning up both the tech and the writing portfolio.

    Though if I am honest… I have doubts if I want to carry on in the tech industry after all this.

    If we include my time in university (bit of a stretch but stay with me), the year I worked in the games industry and the four years I have worked in the XR industry, I have an eight year career in tech.

    And outside of the money, which admittedly is very good, there is not much that draws me in anymore, and plenty that is pushing me out.

    I think I will talk more on that tomorrow – not exactly like I have much to do on a work day now.

    Gonna reach into the backlogs for something to review today, which came from the local market about a month back… which means, I can finally do one of these again…

    Rosa Eats Her Way Around Shrewsbury!

    God, I missed doing that one.

    Anyway, at Shrewsbury Market there is a stall simply called “Eat In”. It offers a decent variety of Italian ingredients for making pizza, pasta, or antipasto alongside offering Roman-style sourdough pizza by the slice, topped with your choice of oil or hot honey.

    My usual order is a simple pepperoni slice, but on this day in the past, one pizza caught my eye and I could not resist trying it.

    This is an XL piece of pizza topped with Shropshire ham and mushroom, which was then topped off with Kashmiri chilli oil, also made by a local trader. This cost me £6.80, which is slightly higher than what I would usually pay for my pepperoni sliced topped in a similar way, £4.50, but is also way bigger than that slice.

    Pizza by the slice is something I wish more independent places in the UK would offer. There are not many options outside of Greggs, which is… passable but not really what I would be looking for in terms of a pizza lunch, and I do not exactly want to purchase a pizza from somewhere like Domino’s or otherwise as it is both a bit overkill and would spoil my appetite for dinner.

    Eat In serves my needs exactly, and it helps that each slice of pizza is made with absolute love, having amazingly fluffy dough, a crisp crust on the bottom, and a spicy oil on top to bring out the best of the local ingredients.

    Now I have made myself hungry damnit. 

    Ahh well, I can just go to the market on Tuesday and indulge.

    That will do it for today, I am going to spend the rest of my evening relaxing and maybe jamming some Umamusume in before bed.

    Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are able to rest easy knowing what approaches tomorrow. I hope that work is easy on you and nothing massively brings you down.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 207, “Re-establishing Discipline”

    Redundancy Review: Day 207, “Re-establishing Discipline”

    (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.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 136-137, “Good Enough”

    (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 adequates and passables, welcome to Day 136 & 137 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Totally did not skip a day because I spent almost five hours playing Clair Obscur last night.

    Nope.

    Would not have happened.

    Did not immediately finish work to have a delicious kebab takeaway before getting fully immersed in the game…

    …yeah, no, after the work week I had and the actual work day I had on Friday, my brain was just fully in the mode of turning itself off and focusing on trying to disconnect myself from my current situation.

    Not that it helped this morning, as I woke up at my regular time of seven in the goddamn morning only to immediately start worrying about work on a day where I am supposed to be trying to disconnect from it all. 

    Trying to separate my emotions from my work is hard sometimes, and again, it is one of those qualities that a lot of people find admirable that I find makes it harder for me to live my life without worry. Having my emotions in my work makes me care more about the end result, which leads to me putting in hard work in order to make the clients happy and my colleagues’ lives easier.

    But when things go wrong, I feel the pain, the hurt, and the disappointment it brings all too much. Even in such a small company where there is a blameless culture and the focus is put on improving the process rather than finding someone to scapegoat, I find it hard to separate myself from the fact that something I did as a piece of work did not yield the optimal result.

    Which is where today’s title comes into play: worrying about whether or not I am “good enough” for the role I currently play.

    The short answer is “yes, yes you are”, the slightly longer answer is “Rosa this is just impostor syndrome and redundancy trauma kicking in”, and the long answer unpacks both of these statements.

    I did not actually interview for my current role, at least not formally. Given that it was a collection of former colleagues retained by the investors to continue the company’s work, all that really happened was two short conversations with the CTO and CFO to explain what needs doing as part of the role, with me accepting a couple of days after.

    Ten days, by the way, that is all it took for me to go from those initial conversations to starting work again. No formal interview, just people asking me back because they felt I was the right person for the job.

    My feelings around this process are… weird. I know for a fact this does happen in the industry at large through the referral process, but it makes me feel as if I did not “earn” my position in a way – but I did earn my position. It was earned through all the hard work I put in at the previous company by making myself adaptable, dependable, and pleasant to be around even in high stress situations.

    This then plays into my greater impostor syndrome, as I sit around after a rough day wondering if I am good enough for any position outside of my current one, that I want to step into another career path not just because I feel there is a greater purpose for me outside of the tech industry, but because I am ultimately not suitable for this career path anymore.

    In my worst moments, these thoughts eat at me greatly, but then I think back to playing Clair Obscur last night: running into the walls, either trying to find hidden paths or disguised switches, jumping around seeing if I am able to bypass any zones through sheer determination & Skyrim-horsing, and discovering broken builds on my own steam.

    Quality assurance is not just a career for me, honestly it stopped being that long ago. It is hard-wired into my brain, bringing all the transferable skills along with it.

    An eye for detail.

    A problem-solving mindset.

    Being able to throw myself at a wall as many times as necessary until it breaks.

    Even if I end up speccing out my career into automation testing, once more embracing the programming life I thought I would leave behind forever, I will always be a manual QA at heart – because nothing brings my soul joy more than pushing software to its absolute limit.

    I am good enough. My bad days do not define me. The mistakes and mishaps of my career do not mean I am not good enough. I am the sum of every success and scar across this long journey.

    One thing that did help ease my impostor syndrome a little was an interview for a store manager retail role. It is not a role I feel I want to take, especially because it would mean leaving my current contract and team, but being able to have an interview again for the first time in almost four years genuinely helped me remember that I am someone with a good breadth of skills and a large amount of my favourite thing in the world: stories.

    Stories about times I helped others, when others needed to help me, and every difficult experience that in the moment felt like it was the end of the world, but now look back at it knowing I got through it, almost with a weird fondness given how everything ended up.

    My love for stories persists, even through the hard times – just wish I had more time and energy to write out the ones still inside my head.

    But for now, we always have food reviews.

    Oh yeah, I have missed getting to write this out. It is time for another exciting edition of…

    Rosa Eats Her Way Around Shrewsbury!

    It has been… far too long since I have got to write that. I have done food reviews in recent weeks but I have not actually talked about any of the food offerings in my adopted home for almost a month, and I have got a good one today.

    On Tuesday, my partner & I went to the market to buy some supplies for upcoming dinners in the week… except that I went ahead to the cheese counter, while my partner’s eye was caught by a sandwich bar.

    Upon returning to him, I fully understood why. They were offering “doorstop sandwiches” with any variety and amount of fillings you like for an extremely modest £5 – more expensive than what you get in terms of variety with a supermarket meal deal, but given the quality of the bread and the sheer amount of food, it definitely becomes worth it.

    And I know that because I returned on Friday to Pete’s Sandwich Bar to get my own creation.

    The above is their doorstop sandwich offering filled with chicken strips, coleslaw, pickled jalapenos, and sriracha mayo. The photo does not do the bread justice, this loaf was pillowy soft but still robust enough to hold up to all the moisture contained within my sandwich.

    Speaking of moisture, this is exactly why I chose coleslaw as my main vegetable filling of choice, and gives me an opportunity to talk about my firm belief that coleslaw is the best accompaniment for any sandwich, wrap, or burger.

    When it comes to adding moisture and crunch to any of the food items I listed, there is no better option than a beautiful coleslaw as it provides equal amounts of both, especially when the dressing is homemade and the person making it has the opportunity to add so many different ingredients such as English mustard, lemon juice, and grated garlic…

    …yes this is just me talking about my own recipe for homemade coleslaw now, being able to consistently make good coleslaw has ruined supermarket offerings for me now it just does not hit the same without my additions.

    Anyway, back on track. This was a fantastic sandwich, and getting to support a small, local business over a supermarket or a well-known sandwich chain that I have not actually eaten at for two years is well worth the extremely small premium I pay on top of a meal deal.

    I will end off this food review though with a bit of introspection. I am extremely lucky to be in a position in my life currently where I am able to indulge in lunches that are made by small businesses, and to also be able to go out to cafes & restaurants as well.

    I know this time may not last forever, especially with my current job uncertainty, but I at least want to take some time to acknowledge that I am lucky that I get to write about good food, even as part of my hobby.

    That will cover 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 take the weekend easy, I know what I will be doing: playing more Clair Obscur.