Rosalia Rambles

Tag: recipes

  • 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 318, “Season 2”

    Redundancy Review: Day 318, “Season 2”

    (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 slingers and flingers, welcome to Day 318 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Two quick points of order before we get into the swing of things.

    First, after a friend in a Discord server pointed it out, yeah, this is essentially Season 2 of the Redundancy Review. Hopefully now that we have been renewed for a new season we develop certain plotlines further and introduce yet more intrigue to the story.

    Second, another friend of mine pointed out there was an amazing gif to use instead of the “what now?” one I used yesterday:

    I think this one helps sum up how I am feeling with the spectre of unemployment this time around. During the initial period of redundancy there were some aspects of gallows humour in how I handled things but I was primarily navigating the difficult aspects with a heavy heart.

    Now?

    The idea of being unemployed still does not appeal to me, but if I have to be real, there is a certain sense of relief that comes this time around, leading to more gallows humour – I even pulled the sarcastic “What are you gonna do? Fire me?” on my boss when we were talking about my last few light duties until my time is up.

    It feels weird to call this being “laid off” as well, cause I was a contractor, meaning my time could have been up at any moment due to the nature of the role – though I was under the impression that the ball could have kept rolling just a little bit longer.

    But, the weekend is upon us, and I intend to spend it in the company of good people, enjoying good times, and eating good food.

    Speaking of good food, it seems appropriate to christen the new season of the Redundancy Review with a food review, although not from my adoptive home of Shrewsbury this time so I do not get to do my usual intro.

    Instead this review comes from Telford, a short hop on the train, taking us to a wide array of eating establishments including the subject of today’s review: Wingers.

    Wingers is a chain of fast food chicken restaurants in the UK, and this was my first time trying it out, having caught both mine and my partner’s eye multiple times whenever we chose to go out shopping around Telford.

    Now, even though the UK has a good chicken shop culture, I unfortunately did not have the blessings to grow up in an area with many of them, meaning all I really had to make do with growing up was KFC on the off chance I got to go to one. This influenced my outlook going into this as I assumed it was going to be quite similar to KFC.

    It was not.

    And I mean that in the best way possible.

    My choice of meal was a four-piece chicken tender meal, which comes with fries and a drink, which I paid £2.50 to upgrade that to a ridiculously thicc Biscoff milkshake, topping things off with a dip pot of garlic parmesan sauce for £1. In total, combining my add-ons with the base meal’s price of £9.75, this came to £12.25. My usual KFC order of either a Zinger Stacker or a Boneless Banquet would come to around the £10-11 mark, making this just a hair above what I would pay there.

    This was worth the small price increase.

    First off, the chicken, which came drenched in Frank’s Red Hot Buffalo sauce. These tenders were absolutely massive compared to the mini-fillets you would get at KFC, they were incredibly juicy on the inside, with a deliciously crisp crust on the outside, even as the spicy sauce seeped in. Four of these tenders were more than enough to start filling me up on what was a somewhat indulgent lunch.

    And then came the skin-on fries. I am used to KFC giving you a middling amount of fries as an accompaniment to a meal, hence why I was fully unprepared for the surprisingly large portion size that Wingers provided. I even commented as I worked my way through them that I felt it was almost too many fries to go with a lunch meal, but I persevered as they were absolutely delicious, if just a very bog standard fry.

    The garlic parmesan sauce was… alright. It definitely tasted both like garlic and like parmesan but it did not feel particularly special, at £1 though it is hard not to complain, and it definitely added some complexity to the standard fries.

    However, the true star of the show was my milkshake. I am somewhat of a milkshake connoisseur, self-described obviously, but I have tried multiple different shakes across many different fast-food establishments.

    This was, hands down, one of the best I have ever tasted.

    The Biscoff flavour was extremely pronounced, the shake itself was straw-standingly thick requiring several gulps of air to even get it to come up the straw, and considering I had picked the spicy sauce to go on my tenders, it was the perfect accompaniment to cool my mouth down.

    Definitely want to return to Wingers if given the chance, especially considering with the portion sizes on the fries and how well four tenders filled me up, I feel it could make a surprisingly economical treat lunch for my partner and myself if we split a £13.75 eight tender meal between ourselves with only needing to add an additional drink.

    This is… the first time since January that I have actually managed to post a Redundancy Review back-to-back. That is something to be proud of given the circumstances.

    But that does it for today. Thank you for reading this edition of Redundancy Review Season 2. Wherever you are, I hope you have satisfying weekend plans put together. If not, and you are simply using the time to recover from whatever the week brought upon you, I wish you a restful time to forget the burdens of the world.


  • Redundancy Review: Day 259-286, “Building Things”

    (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 constructors and builders, welcome to Day 259 to 286 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    On the plus side, it was only a twenty-eight(ish) day gap between posts this time!

    On the down side, still a long ass time not to be writing anything.

    Past me would have said “long time not to be doing anything productive”, but honestly, the reason I have been away so long is because I have been finding my own ways of productivity outside of my work that has kept me away from writing, alongside a holiday taken a few weeks back that served as a major reset to my system that has basically reshifted my current outlook on things substantially.

    There was a lot of stress at my day job, which took priority during the day and I was working on other small projects at the same time, but after that holiday and having an extended period of time to just zen out not doing much put my brain into this current state where all stress and anxiety are basically on the back burner… which has led to me joking that I actually just burnt out the part of my brain that feels stressed causing me to be incapable of feeling it anymore.

    Outside of the jokes, there is a certain paranoia that has come with this relaxed state: why am I not stressed?

    It could be entirely down to the fact that I have spent the last couple of months dealing with stress meaning now that my body has been given the absence of stress it does not actually fully know what to feel. Or perhaps that these feelings of relaxation in the past have often been omens of impending doom on the horizon relating to job news so I am constantly thinking about what might be coming.

    Whatever comes, I feel I am adequately prepared for it, especially when looking back to a year ago. A year ago I thought I was in a relatively secure position, some amount of savings, and things starting to settle right after a big move forward in my life – right before everything became suddenly unsettled with the collapse of the last company I worked at.

    Sitting here now, writing a piece that was meant to start as something else and has now evolved into a reflective piece, I look over my situation seeing a much improved position. I would still be fucked six ways from Sunday if I were to lose my job again, but in terms of financials I would at least be able to take time for soul-searching in order to properly find out what I want to do next.

    There is one thing I know I will always want to do in life though: build things.

    What do I mean by that?

    Well, it can mean almost anything in a way. When someone says they are building something, it can be a piece of software, a physical item, or the vague concept of a “brand”. Humans are creatures that enjoy building things, and there is joy to be found through the process of creation.

    For me, I have several things I can build, and I have always found a fascination with being able to build things.

    Writing on this site is me building my “brand”, one focused around human creativity, honesty in the face of adversity, and talking about my hobbies in a roundabout way.

    But the hobbies I have are also about building. I am back into the flow of building Warhammer 40k models, something which I hope to finally talk about now that I have found my writing spark again. I play a lot of video games that involve building mechanics of some kind, more so now that my partner has tempted me to the dark side with playing Satisfactory. And I build complex flavours into the food I make on a daily basis when the passion and creativity hits me in the kitchen.

    I will always want to build things, and I will always want to take the time to build those things because the journey of creation is what makes the final results satisfying.

    And now, for the first time in… seventy six days fucking hell, it is time for the Redundancy Review to actually feature a review about something… though not about something I built, in fact the review topic for today was picked on impulse based on the route I had to take on my lunch walk today.

    In the past, I was someone that went to KFC fairly often. The allure of a Zinger Stacker topped with a hash brown brought me in a number of times over the years, but as time went on, I found myself going less and less, with the times I did go back in often yielding disappointment as the quality dropped further down in comparison to the prices going up. It was only cause of a recent promotion I found completely by chance when checking the website to see what offers they might have that I decided to go in today, specifically because, as a self-respecting trans woman, I cannot pass up the opportunity for pickle-based foods.

    “Pickle Mania”, as KFC is calling it, is a series of special menu items revolving around the humble pickled cucumber. A staple addition to most fast food burgers now brought to the forefront through a series of pickle-themed offerings, including a chicken burger with two types of pickle paired with a “creamy pickle ranch”, and pickle loaded fries featuring the crispy pickle pieces, popcorn chicken, and the creamy pickle ranch again.

    But the one that caught my eye, both for being one of my favourite items of fried food in existence alongside the fact a mainstream fast food has put them on the menu were the frickles. Sliced pickle that are coated in batter and then deep-fried for a crunchy & briney bite that is hard to beat.

    So naturally, I decided to try all three offerings. Loaded fries on the left pickle burger in the middle, and the frickles on the right.

    Small aside, “loaded fries” is definitely a food trend right now, as I have seen several places do their own variations on the dish. I am not entirely sure where it has come from but considering the infinite possibilities for loaded fries and the fact it has been a concept long before this current trend makes me tolerate it a lot more than whatever the hell was going on with matcha or Dubai chocolate.

    Anyway, I will go in order from left-to-right across the items, starting with the pickle loaded fries. These are standard KFC fries topped with the creamy pickle ranch, crispy pickle pieces, and standard popcorn chicken.

    These were… alright. The crispy pickle pieces are an interesting take on pickled cucumber but I felt they lost a lot of what appeals to me in a pickle, they were not briney, they were not salty, they just kind of tasted like dehydrated cucumber more than anything else.

    What stood out to me though was the creamy pickle ranch. Ranch is not a sauce you find often in the UK due to cultural differences but this tasted absolutely divine… provided you like briney/vinegary flavours as it was strong in the sauce, to an almost overpowering degree. Good for my tastes, but might not be to someone else’s.

    Next up was the pickle burger, which kind of gave me the vibe of what a standard American “chicken sandwich” is like compared to the chicken burgers you often find over here. No cheese, just chicken, sauce, and two kinds of pickles: the crispy pieces plus your standard gherkins. This was also just alright, outside of the creamy pickle ranch it tasted like a standard chicken burger, which would be great if the price reflected as such, whereas this was priced at £1 more than other burgers on the menu.

    Finally, we came to what I had come to try, the frickles. These were slices of pickle coated in a black pepper infused batter, which bizarrely did not come with a side of the creamy pickle ranch for dipping. Some places do their frickles as spears rather than slices, but I have a soft spot for slices, little discs of perfection.

    Whilst these were the highlight of the spread for me, I do also sadly have to give them another rating of “alright” with an added “but” afterwards. As far as frickles go, these were not the best I have had, not the worst I have had either, just simply “alright”. That said, for the price of £2.49 for a small portion of frickles in KFC of all places, you could do a lot worse, especially when compared to the price of £8.99 for the pickle burger meal with a £1.99 charge on top of that to add the loaded pickle fries – on their own the pickle fries would cost an almost disgraceful £3.99 which I do not think is worth it on their own at all for what you get.

    It is an interesting little experiment KFC has tried out with these ones, but sadly, it is not really enough to draw me back in regularly compared to the other places I can find lunch where I live. A shame, but we carry on.

    First time in a while writing a proper review, hopefully I managed to get my points across without much rambling. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are able to relax with whatever brings you comfort in this weird, fucked up world that we live in sometimes.

  • 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 143, “Away from the desk”

    Redundancy Review: Day 143, “Away from the desk”

    (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 receptionists and secretaries, welcome to Day 143 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Today’s review is being written from a cozy London hotel room after a pretty intense day of travel, and in finding myself away from my desk I can once more take a moment of reflection on my current situation – or more realistically, do a bit of public rubber ducking for a bit whilst I recline.

    There is definitely a lot I am scared of in the near future. This is a feeling that exists almost perpetually within me, but what makes this current instance different is that my coping strategies have been thrown all out of whack by my initial redundancy.

    Before, I was someone who very much had their moments of catastrophising and overthinking. Once I had got that all out of my system I would return to what I consider my “natural” state: go with the flow, relatively level-headed, and willing to fuck up any challenge that came in my way.

    My old mentor said this mindset was the reason she became interested in, and once described it as one of my greatest strengths before following it up with how she saw my catastrophising nature:

    “I see you throw boulders towards yourself and you never flinch, but then you go ‘oh no a pebble’ and completely collapse.”

    She was always someone I could turn to if I was in a moment of overthinking, a process I lovingly called “unfucking my brain”, and in recalling this bit of analysis she did on me, it has given me some perspective on how I feel about my current situation.

    I have always prided myself on adaptability throughout my career, that even in my moments of panic I could turn those emotions into a positive development experience. Making myself stronger through adversity.

    And I know I can become that person again, but right now I feel unable to balance my desire for professional progression with my borderline need for personal recovery from burnout.

    The problem looming over me, as looms over many others, is of course capitalism, why would it be anything else.

    My financial situation is stronger than a lot of my Gen Z peers. In the event of sudden job loss or my physical health catching up with me, I am not in imminent financial ruin, in fact both my partner and some of my closest friends have said I should pull the plug on my contract at the end of the year in order to take a prolonged break.

    But I feel incapable of that, both for the anxiety that would come with losing my income stream and for the worry around the “implication” of what taking time away for burnout would look like. It is already hard enough to find a job in my desired field, and it feels just as impossible to find opportunities for branching out due to the elimination of junior roles at different organisations.

    The benefits of taking a break though would be unparalleled, as I could work more on writing in a given day, actually working on the books I want to write, I can develop out my VTuber concept further, and I could finally stop feeling the crushing weight on my soul that seems to persist into every work day right now.

    At some point I should try write a positive piece on my current roles, as for all the spiritual issues I am currently experiencing, there are still a good number of positive aspects within my current career – it is mainly the painful lack of a clear future right now that is bringing down my morale.

    For now, I am going to revel in the feeling that being away from my desk brings, along with the fact that I am in London for pleasure rather than business for the first time in forever. Not having to rush to a meeting or a function gave me enough time after getting off the coach to visit a place I had always been meaning to try but never found the opportunity to: Bleecker Burger.

    This one comes as a recommendation from my friend Aaron, who always said I should try hit up Bleecker whenever I was in London. Usually my burger of choice when visiting the capital for work was a Five Guys, which, yes, I recognise is a very low bar in terms of burgers but considering I do not have one nearby I always considered it a “treat”.

    Bleecker is a lot more simple than Five Guys – you get burgers, burgers with bacon, and stacked burgers with bacon. It is similar with the fries, you can get them plain, topped with “house” sauce, “angry” sauce, or both sauces.

    My meal of choice was a standard bacon cheeseburger, house angry fries, and an Oreo milkshake, costing me a total of £21.85, which is actually pretty damn similar to what I paid for a similar meal at Five Guys just over a year ago, £21.65.

    So, given the almost identical meal and cost, how does it compare?

    First off, the burger. Bleecker definitely do things a lot more simply, and in terms of pure burger & bun quality they definitely exceed the Guys, but I did find myself missing some of the additional crunch and moisture that vegetable toppings or even mayonnaise would bring. 

    Next, the milkshake. Incredibly thick, creamy, and delicious, there is not much more to say beyond that. A perfect accompaniment to a somewhat indulgent lunch.

    Last, but most definitely not least, the house angry fries. These are far and away above the quality of Five Guys, you get a very generous portion for the price without the excess that can come from there, but the sauces drizzled over top are what make the difference. The house sauce is incredibly creamy with a little bit of tang whilst the angry sauce has a decent kick without being painfully spicy, adding a delicate tingle to the tongue forming a perfect side dish.

    Do I intend to return to Bleecker? That is a definite maybe. The quality and care is definitely there in the food, but there is still something oddly nostalgic in Five Guys for me. 

    Though there is definitely plenty in London for me to try in terms of burger joints, so maybe next time I have the privilege of coming by this part of the country.

    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 enjoy your weekend, you deserve all the relaxation time in the world.

    For more information on Bleecker, visit their website here: https://www.bleecker.co.uk/ 

  • Redundancy Review: Day 106, “Axolotl Duty”

    Redundancy Review: Day 106, “Axolotl Duty”

    (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 gardeners and farmers, welcome to Day 106 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Possibly going to be a shorter one today, as I was once more on axolotl duty for my parents, which is one of my favourite times if just because it gives me an excuse to both take a bunch of photos of Dottie and post those photos on the blog.

    He was actually very hungry today, which makes a difference from how he has usually been when I have come to feed him. I gave him a couple of cubes which he ate before heading off to continue packing my bag with the stuff I needed to bring home, only to return with him giving a very hard stare out of the tank to say he wanted more food.

    Axolotls supposedly have very bad eyesight, but both Cedric and Dottie make me doubt that statement due to how very clearly they look out of the tank when food is around. Cedric was often calm in staring out, being more like “Can I have some food please?” whereas Dottie very much has a “I did not say to stop feeding me” stare.

    An axolotl’s personality is always surprising to see manifest, and it is one of the things I would love people to know more about axolotls is that they can have surprising amounts of personality. Dottie definitely seems to be more reserved, enjoying his hiding spots of the log and the cave until it is time to be fed where he will then make his presence more known.

    But as usual when it came to visiting my parent’s place to do errands whilst they are away, a local takeaway for lunch was on the agenda, and given how regular I eat at Birches Bridge Fish Bar along with how disappointing the Papa John’s was last time, I decided to go a similar but different route by heading to Codsall Fish Bar instead.

    There is a certain level of spoiled to be had growing up with two fantastic fish & chip shops within walking distance of where I lived, though I have to admit that Birches was always my favourite growing up, and well…

    …my meal from Codsall today kind of proved that.

    In a way I went in mentally ready to compare it to my usual order from Birches, as I ordered a quarterpounder cheese burger with chips, topping that with mayo, lettuce, and onions. For context, my standard order at Birches is a double-stacked cheeseburger with chips, topped with garlic mayo, cabbage, onions, and jalapenos.

    To start, rather than being cooked on a griddle or flattop of some sort, the patty was put into the fryer. Whilst the staff at Codsall did a great job of making sure this was not overcooked; deep-fried burgers always come out tasting vaguely like a hockey puck, and sadly this was no exception.

    That said, the fact this was a floury bap rather than a seeded bun helped to mitigate some of this, and I have to compliment it not being a seeded bun because I have never been a massive fan of them myself. 

    I also need to compliment the chips, because whilst the burger fell below my expectations, the chips smashed them completely. So perfectly soft & fluffy on the inside with the right amount of crunch on the outside along with having the perfect amount of salt on them.

    For this burger meal plus two cans of Fanta (as I was really thirsty after the travel) cost me a very modest sum of £10, being £7.20 for the burger meal and £1.40 each per can. Despite the burger not meeting my, admittedly self-imposed, expectations, it was honestly a nice change from going to Birches and still filled me up extremely well – even struggled as I got to the last few chips in the tray.

    Plus, the fact the staff laughed at my terrible joke after I paid made the experience all the better:

    “Do you need a receipt?”
    “Nah, I don’t think I’ll be able to return this anyway”

    Managed to write a standard length review, which is pretty good going for a small evening of writing as I relax in bed, but that will do it for today. Thank you for reading this edition of the Redundancy Review, wherever you are I hope you are able to take it easy and eat some good food.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 76, “A Good Day”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia’s Rambles)

    Good morning painters and lovers, welcome to Day 76 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Today was a good day for me. It is a bank holiday in the UK, and even though I am a freelance contractor who would not normally get public holidays, I decided to take it off anyway. Partially because of appreciating keeping some semblance of my old schedule as a tech worker, and partially because the events of the weekend left me thoroughly demoralised.

    Thankfully though, two of my closest friends (who coincidentally live upstairs from me) had the day off today, which made it a good time to play Magic: the Gathering together especially considering it is very rare we get the chance to start playing in the early afternoon rather than early evening due to mine and my partner’s work schedule.

    And despite the fact I was not the victor in either game, it was exactly what I needed today. Hanging out with good company, playing a game we all love, and ending it off by sharing a home cooked meal together. 

    Cooking is definitely how I show love to others, being stronger than actual physical affection in my eyes at least. Making a meal is one of the best things I can do for someone, and it is something I massively enjoy in trying to hone my skills in the kitchen and infinitely trying to get better with what I am making.

    Which y’know, ties into how often food reviews feature on the website. Whether I am making it or whether I am eating out, good food with good people is a cornerstone of my life, leading us very nicely into…

    Rosa Eats Her Way Around Shrewsbury!

    I mentioned in yesterday’s review that I had got another one prepared ready for today, partially out of feeling intensely on Sunday and wanting to find somewhere to have a treat lunch, realising I could make another food review out of it and capitalise on how easy they come to me.

    And when it comes to comfort food, pizza is the be-all and end-all for me, with myself having a soft spot for a local joint known as “Dough & Oil”.

    Dough & Oil is definitely more… hipster than other pizza places would be. WIth a small menu of pizzas along with minimal sides, the focus is more on quality ingredients and pillowy crusts than anything else. My pizza of choice? One known as “The Philipo”.

    The Philipo is the standard tomato sauce and mozzarella base, topped with spicy nduja salami and piquante peppers before being sprinkled with fresh pieces of rocket. The price point of this pizza is where the hipster element of the venue comes in, with this lovely pizza pie clocking in at a steep £15.

    On one hand, I can recognise this is extremely unaffordable, especially when it comes to pizza – the same amount of money can pay for a larger takeaway pizza that can become multiple meals or pay for several supermarket pizzas that can be stored for longer and make even more meals beyond that.

    But on the other hand, as a very infrequent treat, this pizza hit the exact spot I was looking for. Spicy toppings, an incredibly soft and flavorful dough, and hitting the craving for a slightly more luxury pizza. Specifically the nduja salami on this one hit my usual craving for spicy food perfectly, warming my mouth perfectly and waking me up sufficiently for the rest of the day.

    Somewhat related, I really wish there were more places to buy pizza-by-the-slice in the UK. When it comes to craving the comfort of a pizza at lunchtime, I find myself very thin on the ground for options. I am either committing to something like I did yesterday, sitting down for a proper lunch and a large-sized pizza, or I am scrolling the menu of the local Dominos to get a small personal pizza that hits the spot, but feels a little overkill for a lunch.

    And before anyone chimes in: no, Greggs does not count as pizza by the slice. It barely counts as pizza if you ask me.

    A venue like Dough and Oil I think would be ripe for such a business venture, serving delicious slices of specialty pizzas for a reasonable price to anyone who might be walking by.

    Side tangent over, finishing things off.

    Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. If you are in the UK I hope you have been able to enjoy your bank holiday, and if you are someone who has been working today, I hope things have not been too difficult for you.

    For more information on Dough & Oil, visit their website here: Dough & Oil

  • Redundancy Review: Day 65 & 66, “Embracing the Flip-Flop”

    Redundancy Review: Day 65 & 66, “Embracing the Flip-Flop”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia’s Rambles)

    Good morning flips and flops, welcome to Day 65 & 66 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Initially tried writing Day 65 yesterday as a semi-placeholder day, but I ended up being way too spaced out to finish writing anything. I am not entirely sure what was causing the space-out or the dizziness, but I can reasonably assume it is one of the bigger changes I have been working on in the background.

    Recently had a friend compliment me on how I put stuff out into the open so willingly and they like that about me, with today’s topic being no different.

    For about two weeks now, I have been weaning myself off my antidepressants.

    Disclaimer: My words are not meant to be taken as advice to either stop taking antidepressants or decide not to pursue them. If you feel your medication is helping you, then continue taking it, likewise if you feel medication is what you need to help you. Always follow the advice of your doctor when it comes to antidepressant medication and consult them before any major changes.

    Bit of context, I had been on the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) Sertraline since about November of last year, having had a mental breakdown around that time due to a large combination of factors and wanting to see how the medication would help me out.

    In short, it brought my mood into a consistent “happy medium” point as I frequently called it – and for a good amount of time I was satisfied with existing in that happy medium. But as time went on and I became redundant, that happy medium was something I no longer wanted to have as my baseline.

    With the way my brain works, combining a potent cocktail of estrogen, ADHD, and general mental fuzziness means my emotions fluctuate wildly throughout a day sometimes… actually hold on I have the perfect image to use this for:

    Yeah it looks pretty much like that for me on a given day, whereas my antidepressants would stabilise my line in the middle. For some people, that is all they would need, craving stability and a mood that does not shift throughout the day.

    For me though… it feels weird to say, but I want to try embrace all my emotions more – even the negative ones. I want to feel the highest highs and the lowest lows, not suppressing how I feel and just letting my emotions fly out.

    It has been hard for me to embrace emotional expression, and to an extent I still find a fair amount of difficulty with it. Not so long ago I would suppress any negative emotion I had because I did not know how to process it properly, which inevitably led to things boiling over in my mind and causing me to lash out anyway.

    That is not to say I am an expert at it now; because I am really not. Learning how my brain and emotions work is a long form process for me that I think will still take a significant amount of time to understand, but I want to learn about them in their purest, unrestrained form before figuring out how I want to work with them.

    Similarly, I find myself wanting to embrace the flip-flop in my career as well. Right now my contract role is sustaining me in a way that is working, but I have ambitions way outside of the tech industry that I would love to explore as well.

    As a massive VTuber fan, the idea crosses my mind of getting a model and trying to establish my own brand of content in a massively saturated market, not only for the potential niche I would love to try to fulfill, but also as a way of further introducing things that make me happy to other people.

    I aim to continue improving my baking skills, along with working towards making homemade pickles and sauces with the aim I could one day sell them at a market of sorts, and of course writing work falls into this mix as well, either as a professional copywriter somewhere or just picking up odd jobs here and there.

    My position in life right now is not entirely in danger, so for me, this is the best time to explore and try new things to see what I might want to do as a career outside of what has been familiar to me for so long.

    For now though, I shall continue on the path I am currently walking, enjoying my card games, plushies, and everything else in between. The most important thing in between being food, which is a perfect and not-at-all awkward segue into another exciting episode of…

    Rosa Eats Her Way Around Shrewsbury!

    It has been a while since I have done one of these, and this time I hit up a proper local joint called “Bird And Beer”, specialising in fried chicken and beer, in case the name did not give it away.

    This is a place my partner has been asking for me to try since he went while I was away in Scotland, and tonight we finally went out together as a treat. The menu is decently sized but offers all the favourites: strips, wings, burgers, and a good variety of sides.

    Now, I am someone who appreciates the spicier things in life, and constantly tests my limits in regards to my spice tolerance. Usually I am pretty good with whatever I decide to throw at my mouth, esophagus, or stomach, having once tackled ghost pepper chilli sauce and enjoying it with some regularity.

    With this in mind, I decided to order the spiciest sauce available on the menu to coat my chicken strips, “Cluckin’ Hot”, a concoction of fresh garlic, ginger, and Scotch Bonnet chillies, topped with jalapeno salsa, sliced red chillies, and chilli flakes in case you have not already regretted your life choice by ordering this.

    Included in my spread was a portion of “Bird Disco Fries”, skin-on fries topped with melted cheese, yet more jalapeno salsa, and the mysterious “Bird Sauce”, which I did not think to ask what it contained. A bowl of fried pickles (frickles) finished off my meal, and were incredibly lovely, especially as I struggle to find these delightful treats on menus nowadays.

    Okay, enough positivity and beating around the bush.

    The Cluckin’ Hot sauce was quite possibly a mistake. To give the lovely staff at Bird and Beer credit, it was a flavourful sauce which is something that often falls by the wayside when it comes to places devising their spiciest sauces, favouring pure heat over taste. 

    I am not sure if it is the combination of the hot sauce with the fresh chillies, or the hot sauce with the jalapeno salsa, or the fact I ordered spice on top of spice, but something about this meal absolutely demolished me, to the point I was turning red, coughing, and slamming my fist lightly on the table.

    It is hard for me to even pass a proper judgement on the quality of the chicken strips themselves because my mind has been so fixated on the absolute pain and suffering I inflicted upon myself with their spiciest sauce…

    …only to discover it is not the spiciest thing they offer, and, in fact, they offer a Challenge Sauce made from Carolina Reaper and Trinidad Scorpion peppers, complete with some stories about past contestants who attempted the challenge and rightfully regretted it. The staff said they did not have any in stock currently but if they did they would have offered me some to try.

    Not sure I would have taken it mind, considering that as I am writing this review some thirty minutes after consuming the devilish sauce I am still feeling the effects of it from my head spinning to my stomach very much not agreeing with my decision – time will tell how much I suffer later on.

    As mentioned, the staff were lovely though. The service was on time, the vibes were immaculate, and in terms of eating out in the modern day, this was a fairly cheap meal, coming in at £57 before the service charge, which included two mains, two sides, two drinks, a pot of blue cheese sauce to mitigate my terrible decision making, and a dessert for my partner.

    Which came in the form of a god damn deep fried Mars bar, a Scottish delight brought right to our doorstep.

    The little bit I tried of it was amazing, the batter was exceptionally light and the flavour of the chocolate and the caramel melted together in this unholy log of deep-fried goodness was amazing.

    I definitely will return, hopefully next time for something a little less painful and making it so I can enjoy the flavour of the chicken without re-evaluating every life choice I had made up until that point.

    Food reviews are always some of my favourite to do, especially when it comes to reviewing local joints that definitely deserve the love. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review, I hope the weekend stays cool for you and you are able to relax.

    For more information on Bird and Beer, visit their website here: Bird&Beer | Fried Chicken | Craft Beer | Shrewsbury

  • Redundancy Review: Day 59, 60, 61, & 62: “Missing Milestones Due to an Impromptu Break”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia’s Rambles)

    Good morning truants and delinquents, welcome to… a fuck ton of days missed cause I felt like I should take a break, this covers Friday 8th August to Monday 11th August essentially.

    Why did I take a break? Well, I was trying to write something a bit more meaningful on Friday after having done a placeholder day on Thursday and… I just could not, no matter what kind of topic I wanted to tackle I could not find my rhythm, flow, or prose, tossing ideas into the void and feeling frustrated at what I was producing.

    So rather than forcing it, I decided on an impromptu break. Going into my weekend with the goal of enjoying myself and not thinking about writing which I definitely feel I needed.

    It might be that I had been getting burnt out with the idea of writing this series each day, even though I had a topic I could have written about on Friday by the time the evening rolled around, my focus was just not in it.

    Taking a break was good, and finding some time to relax helped a lot in not feeling as stressed… and then I found the window in our bedroom had cracked leading to an awkward moment of texting the landlords to try get that sorted but outside of that the weekend was great.

    I also finally got my first pay from my contracting role, that let me build my savings nest egg further, contribute a meaningful amount to the bills account once more, and treat myself to a few small things. Additionally I have been planning the last bits of my cosplay for my convention in less than a month’s time, so, hopefully that all comes together.

    It does feel a little bad I missed two milestones due to taking my break, missing both the sixty day mark and going past the two month milestone of being made redundant. It… feels weird to think of such a life changing event feeling simultaneously recent but also having a specific time behind it.

    Anyway, I want to post something today, and even if my review topic is another loose one, I want to share something I did that made me happy.

    I had never made a cake from scratch in my life until last week, with a friend of mine helping me out with this recipe:

    Easy caramel cake recipe | Good Food

    Even with my friend helping me out with each step, the recipe is incredibly easy to follow and made a delicious cake. Plus decorating the top with chocolate pieces in the shape of a rabbit made it look really cute as a caramel bunny cake.

    Initially I did want to do more for missing so many days, but, I guess my heart is still not as in it as I want it to be. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review all the same, please stay hydrated and cool in this weather.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 58, “Another Placeholder Day”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia’s Rambles)

    Good morning lorems and ipsums, welcome to Day 58 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    It has been another day where my writing headspace was hard to find, so I write this at a little past nine in the evening here to primarily fill space and get a review out there – I promise the weekend should be more productive as my brain settles down from some of the changes I have been forcing it through.

    Today’s review builds on yesterday’s review, as it was not just the disappointing jalapeno bites I ordered from Papa John’s:

    (only just remembered this as I was getting the article ready: look at this stupid ass cut pattern they did as well, I have got six total slices, two of which are massive)

    My order did, in fact, actually include a pizza. Shocker, I know, to order a pizza from a pizza place, but it is a weird quirk I have when it comes to such places in that I tend to judge them not on their pizzas, but on their sides, hence my immense disappointment at my side of choice yesterday. 

    Any pizza place can deliver pizza, but it takes a special pizza place to make non-pizza things work too, take a shot every time I have said pizza thus far to get really wasted.

    It was a simple pizza, chicken, ham, and pepperoni, one of the most basic combos you could get. Whilst my experience with the jalapeno bites was disappointing, my experience with the pizza was… just fine I suppose?

    There is no such thing as bad pizza, it is almost an impossibility to have pizza be bad, but my pizza yesterday was exceedingly middle of the road, especially when compared to what I am able to get locally that scratches both the greasy itch and the higher-quality itch. Papa John’s was just… fine. Nothing special. It served as a perfectly passable pizza.

    But that further dispels the feeling of positive nostalgia I had towards them, in my side of choice being disappointing and the main event being nothing special either. In a way it helps me feel less bad about not being able to order it easily where I live currently, but it also brings me down a little as my companionship pizza place of choice has let me down…

    …that said I did buy like four pots of special garlic sauce as part of the order and have not had any yet. That shit tasted like liquid gold back in the day so I am curious to see how well that holds up.

    Thank you for reading this truncated and somewhat rushed Redundancy Review. Normal service should return upon a relaxing weekend full of things to review.