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.
Good morning gourmands and culinarians, welcome to Day 57 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.
The title of today’s review is supposed to be read with a small hint of irony, given the fact there are no illusions about the fact I love food, having written about going to different places to eat and enjoying a wide variety of food types.
Though today’s review is a triple threat of food based topics, as I am currently writing this from my parent’s place on their stupidly powerful internet that I wish I had since they are currently away and someone needs to feed their axolotl.
Hi again Dottie, you might not know me as well as I knew my previous axolotl, but I still love you all the same. Axolotls are wonderful creatures that I really hope more people get to be familiar with, in terms of the widely-recognised leucistic variety that most people have as pets, to the wonderfully bizarre creatures that inhabit Lake Xochimilco.
I do still miss my old axolotl Cedric, even two years after the fact of her passing away suddenly she still lives in my mind, to the point that her name is now my official default for all axolotls. Feeding her was a delight as I had always fed her by hand, she would instantly spring to attention once I opened the tank and dangled the cube of bloodworms in front of her, though sometimes she would knock it out of my hand to come to rest in between my fingers.
I always liked it when she did that.
And yes, Cedric was a female axolotl with a male name. Dottie is a male axolotl with a female-coded name so it all balanced out in the end – even if the metaphorical implications of my parents having a transgender child and two successive axolotls with gender nonconforming names are not lost on me.
But outside of feeding amazing amphibians, there is a food topic from yesterday I want to discuss: I did a full meal where everything was shallow-fried, partially because my partner wanted me to make some panko-breaded chicken I had made a week or so back, and partially to challenge myself on frying different types of food & using a low oven to keep food warm whilst other pieces were frying.
It was… definitely an experience. Not pictured in the frame is a baking sheet ready to smother the pan in case I somehow managed to cause a grease fire, which I thankfully did not – singed myself on the oil a couple of times but nothing too damaging or severe.
Growing up I never really had access to fried foods at home due to the lack of appliances at my parent’s place, so this is all a pretty new experience to me. The final plate included the homemade panko-breaded chicken, breaded mushrooms, mac & cheese bites, hash browns, and half a homemade mozzarella stick (I did make two but the other one kind of exploded/melted in the oil).
In the last couple of weeks I have been trying to push myself in terms of trying new things in the kitchen, and outside of using a pan to shallow-fry stuff something else I struggled on in the past was the three-stage breading process, with I have got a little better on with this style of breaded chicken.
Knowing how to bread stuff properly leads on to my review topic for the day, and rather than the usual “Rosa Eats Her Way Around Shrewsbury” piece, I took the opportunity of having to visit my parent’s place today to order from the local Papa John’s, specifically grabbing their cheesy jalapeno bites as they were my favourite side back in the day… the operative word in that sentence being “were”.
For a bit of context, I never really defaulted to Papa John’s when it came to takeaway pizza chains, always preferring either Domino’s or Pizza Hut, but it was my brand of choice when it came to hanging with friends and was even one of the meals my partner & I had during our first time together, leading to us have a nostalgic connection to the place…
…and upon trying these jalapeno bites for the first time in around a year, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.
They were… not even mid honestly, I would even go so far to call them bad compared to what I remember them being. In my recollection the jalapeno bites used to be these long, thin, strips of green jalapeno with cream cheese stuffed inside before they were breaded and fried, with my memory of them being what started my love affair with jalapeno poppers.
But these were… some kind of weird green pepper that I do not even think is a jalapeno with a miniscule amount of cream cheese. They did not have the specific jalapeno flavour to them and I actually struggled to finish all ten of these bites when before they would be gone before the pizza box had even been opened.
Especially considering the price of £6.89, which does not include any dip by the way when so many other sides do include a dip by default, and what is available from other takeaways not just as a side but as an actual main option for a similar price, the rose-tinted glasses for PJ’s have shattered hard for me, and I doubt I will want to order again.
Again, this review took far too long to write. My headspace for writing lets me finish articles at least, but getting it done within the span of an hour like I can usually do is oddly difficult for some reason.
Thank you for reading this edition of the Redundancy Review all the same. Go indulge in some actually decent food when you can, and especially share a meal with friends when the opportunity presents itself, those are some of the best moments you can have in life.
Good morning terraformers and landscapers, welcome to Day 54 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.
Yesterday was a seriously good day for me, like… it was the first day in a while that I felt extremely relaxed without the assistance of anything that influences my mood. I had a good burger brunch at Wimpy, I came home and played games with friends including an utterly cracked time at the Arch-Tempered Uth Duna Free Challenge Quest in Monster Hunter Wilds (that is a mouthful), and finished off the day with a lovely takeaway followed by a long cuddle session with my partner.
It was genuinely the first day since I lost my job that made me feel complete again. Frequent readers of the Redundancy Review will be familiar with my usage of the phrase:
“I feel as if my world has collapsed.”
Which was how I felt for the majority of the time that I have been writing the review. My sense of familiarity had shattered with the loss of my job and my worldview has been shifting & changing since that point to accompany that.
In that regard, I feel I have grown a little more cynical than I was before. For all my struggles with burnout & stress in my previous roles, I had always tried to see myself as an optimistic idealist who was willing to go the extra mile: putting in more time, saying yes to almost anything, and pushing myself beyond my limit to get the job done.
And in return, I got hung out to dry by a board of investors I only knew the name of through stalking the company on Companies House. All that effort and dedication yielded a great amount of personal development, but I still had to start from scratch until this contracting role came across my plate.
But I now accept myself for being more cynical, as this is most likely not going to be the first time I see a company heading into the shit in real-time. No matter where the wind takes me I will still give it my full-effort, just without dedicating my heart and soul to a role knowing it could all fall apart as fast as it came to me.
In a way, I have finished grieving for what I had in the past, and with that grief being processed I am starting to rebuild my world bit-by-bit, working towards the person I want to be again with a newfound sense of purpose & belonging.
It has helped me come to terms with my love-hate relationship with routine as well, along with redefining how I want to feel on a daily basis. Up until now, I had been aiming for a “happy medium” in a way, seeking out stability rather than letting myself experience intense emotions. In hindsight, this led to me suppressing a lot of how I felt on certain days which then led into intense negative emotions coming out more than anything.
Highs and lows are all part of life, and instability is not inherently a bad thing, especially if troughs are outweighed by the peaks. It is okay to be sad, and letting myself process this sadness is what I should be aiming for rather than trying to recover back to a middle point.
All this thought has reminded me that I had a severe mental breakdown in November last year due to work. The stress and strain of my new role slash responsibilities weighed down on me heavily to the point that I had no amount of focus to actually do my job, leading to me being put off work for a week to recover. That week was spent doing not a whole lot of anything, my main goal being to wake up and stare at the wall for a bit.
After that point, my craving for the happy middle point started, and that I feel did more harm than good for me. I should have let myself feel sad, to reckon with my stress rather than wanting to hide it away… I also probably should have taken more than a week off and more like a month, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Now I am in an entirely new chapter, and so long as I keep track of myself, however hard that might be, it is whatever I write in this chapter that will become my truth.
That was an intense amount of self-reflection, if still in my signature rambling style, but now it is time for the review, and well, doing a food review yesterday was so nice – I just have to do it twice! That is right, it is time for another episode of…
Rosa Eats Her Way Around Shrewsbury!
Though with a slightly different flavour this time around, as for the majority of these review subjects it has been me going to a sit-down location and having a meal. This time we are venturing into as yet unexplored territory but one I have been meaning to branch out into for a while: a takeaway review.
For a bit of background, there are a large number of what I refer to as “kebab burger pizza houses” in the UK. Takeaway establishments that do not really specialise in anything and instead offer everything.
You want a greasy pizza to forget a long week? Done.
You craving a low-quality burger to fill you up after a train journey? Sorted.
You require a doner kebab to soak up a night of boozing? No problem boss.
And there is a local joint simply called “Hyper” close to me that completely reshifted my perspective on how good a doner kebab can be.
A large doner kebab from Hyper sets you back £9.49, and as you can see from the pictures, they certainly do not skimp on the portion size or the salad, though it is what lies underneath the salad that makes this particular kebab stand out.
Whatever Hyper do to their doner meat makes it stand out beyond compare to other doner kebabs I have had… minus Shawarma King in Glasgow but they are in a league of their own honestly. It is perfectly seasoned, the shaved strips of meat do not disintegrate once they are placed onto the naan, and they remain perfectly juicy throughout – the addition of hot chilli sauce and garlic mayo only making it more of a greasy, heavenly treat.
The fact they use naan instead of the standard pitta bread that most kebab burger pizza houses do also deserves a highlight. Perfectly crispy, able to hold up to much more pressure and ingredients than a hollowed out piece of pitta, making the bread an integral part of the experience rather than just serving as a doner delivery device.
Pictured also are the sides my partner and I decided to get alongside our meal: chicken strips and mozzarella sticks. For all the praise I heap on Hyper, the reason chips are not pictured here is because the chips they serve are mid-tier as fuck, and often leave us dissatisfied more than anything else.
That said, the sides are perfectly serviceable but nothing entirely special to write home about either. No awards to be won by either but still delicious all the same.
Expect more takeaway reviews in future, enjoying good food is a major part of my life and I want to be able to share the joy I experience in trying things both new and old on this page.
Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. I hope you enjoy a sleepy Sunday wherever you are and the impending Monday blues do not get you down too much.
Good morning revellers and ravers, welcome to Day 52 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.
It is a good friend of mine’s birthday today, and considering the last two years I have not been able to celebrate their birthday properly with them, I am putting a fair bit of effort into hosting a party of sorts for them.
Went out and bought a bunch of picnic snacky bits, got plenty of drinks, and even made a loaf of bread which is going to be the subject of today’s review… yes I am reviewing something I baked myself, I have thoughts on how it went and also it is my website I can blow my own trumpet if I want to.
We are also going to be doing a small Magic: the Gathering event with some Edge of Eternity pre-release kits I picked up a week or so back. Considering the time we are starting it is not going to be a proper sealed event, so we are doing a sort of bodge job Commander sealed instead, which should be pretty fun.
Sent off my first invoice for my contracting work yesterday as well, which gave me an idea of how much my labour is actually paying me and… being honest, so long as I can keep my stress levels in check, I can see myself comfortably seeing out the end of this contract which would give me plenty of time to see how life will change in the meantime.
And at the very least, I now have a very decent nest egg to take with me to my convention trip in September, which considering that has been my goal for the majority of the year should be an extremely good time to relax, cut loose, and be a big nerd for a weekend.
So, as mentioned previously, my review subject today is the loaf of bread I baked for my friend.
On pure looks alone, this has honestly turned out incredibly sexy. It has a perfectly crunchy crust on top and whilst the bottom is a little craggly and overly coated in flour, for a first attempt I think it turned out pretty good.
The basis that I used for making this loaf was a Basics With Babish video where he goes through Jim Lahey’s No-Knead bread technique, mixing together flour, water, yeast, and salt before leaving it to ferment for twenty-four hours to make a very inflated and sticky dough.
Despite the fact it rose a lot within the bowl during the fermentation process, it did turn out flatter than I anticipated, which I am not sure to attribute to the technique I used, the overly long fermentation time, or not properly folding/proofing my dough after I had taken it out of the bowl.
That said, after cutting a tiny piece off and sharing it with my partner, I suddenly understand why everyone says that homemade bread ruins all other breads for you – it was absolutely delicious for how simple of a technique it was to get together.
It was definitely a good first foray into bread baking as well, and considering one of my goals this year is to make a ciabatta loaf, I think I made the right first step.
Thank you for reading this bread-based edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to relax this weekend and enjoy some good food.
Here’s the video I used for my bread loaf as well:
Good morning idols and divas, welcome to Day 39 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.
True to form with the weekend, this is the first time I have woken up feeling somewhat relaxed in a long while, especially considering how many challenges I ended up encountering during my first week of contracting.
That said, I have not slept in like I was anticipating. It is currently 8:48am as I start to write this which is not all that long past my usual wakeup time of 8am, I feel a small amount of grogginess in me but not to an overwhelming degree like on the weekdays.
Regardless, my cortisol levels will probably thank me for not feeling stressed right now, letting my body slowly return to normal before it inevitably begins all over again on Monday.
Something that affects me greatly in terms of my career path is how hard it is to trust my own emotions at points. My mind is often in a state of flux due to both estrogen and the way my brain has always been which makes it difficult to settle on how I am actually feeling on things, leading to confusion and uncertainty within myself.
Returning to the tech space has, without a doubt, made my stress worse – which is weird to consider that when my state of being before that was unemployment, something that makes anyone stressed regardless of background. But even though my unemployment was stressful, I was following a plan to try get myself set up as a writer of sorts.
Would it have made me anywhere near as much money as I make in the tech space? Most likely not, at least not for several years.
Would I have been happy living on the back of my creativity? I definitely think I would be.
My intention is to still make the most of this contract, because whilst I get stressed I am still able to prove that I am able to do the job day-to-day, it is just a matter of trying to find the appropriate coping strategies that help ease the pain.
I think that is what might drive the conflict within me. On one hand I am fully capable of doing tech-focused roles especially in regards to QA, being able to navigate my way through a vast multitude of problems and proving the adaptability that so many people compliment me on.
But conversely, the life I am so good at leading puts me at odds with living a lower stress lifestyle. The tech world, especially the startup space I have worked in for the last three years, moves fast and does not let up in terms of presenting challenges. I recognise that I am the person I am today because of how many challenges I have faced, but at the same time I desperately want to stop being challenged so I can focus on other areas of my life.
A much longer mental check-in than I had anticipated this morning, but the topic kind of rolled naturally to me.
This leads us on to the review, and whilst I was not able to put out a proper review yesterday, I have got another exciting episode of: “Rosa Eats Her Way Around Shrewsbury” for you all – this time with an extremely new restaurant on the scene.
When I say The Gate is extremely new, I mean it only opened on July 2nd this year, a mere 17 days ago at time of writing. A dual offering of a brunch menu during the day and a steakhouse menu when evening rolls around, it provides a unique twist to a historic underground location.
The location has a bit of personal history for me and my partner as well, as the Traitor’s Gate used to contain a burger restaurant called Lyon’s Den which unfortunately closed a while back – though it is with only a twinge of sadness I say that, as new management in the final days of the Den led to a severe drop in quality, service, and atmosphere of the establishment.
But regardless, we were excited to return to a familiar venue with a new purpose for a good meal. Full disclosure, whilst pricing will be talked about in the review, the meal was paid for by my parents as it was my dad’s birthday meal (thanks mum and dad!).
It was surprisingly quiet for a Friday evening, for the longest time we were the only people in the restaurant with a handful more coming in as we were getting ready to leave. My partner asked about it as we were leaving and we got told they get more busy on the weekdays than the weekend currently, which is a good sign that their dual-offering is working.
We ordered our food, and admittedly it did take a while for our starters to come out to us, but considering the quality of what we received, it was no detriment in the slightest.
I ordered the Buffalo chicken wings as a starter, which came with four full wing joints, for a total of eight wings for £7.50. It even came with a little bowl of water to wash your fingers off afterwards which was definitely needed.
The sauce was the perfect blend of sweet, spicy, and rich, with the chef definitely not skimping on the amount put on the wings, that said the amount of sauce did not negatively impact the crispiness of the wing too, the skin being perfectly crisp to compliment the flavour of the sauce – with the experience only being elevated by the addition of the blue cheese dip served alongside it.
When it comes to blue cheese, and by extension, blue cheese sauces, I can usually be a little apprehensive of them tasting more like the mold than the mold enhancing the flavour of the cheese. But this sauce was the perfect compliment to the wings, an amazingly creamy accompaniment to a very generously portioned starter for the price.
It was a similarly long wait for the mains to come out, which our lovely server Callum did apologise for as he brought them out, making a point to say everything is cooked freshed, but taking into account the quality again, it all makes sense.
My main was the appropriately titled “Elephant Classic” burger, with my standard addition of a fried egg, bringing the total price to £19 for this absolute beast-sized burger, accompanied by a side of hand-cut chips. (£17 without the egg)
Is this the priciest burger I have reviewed thus far? Yup, beating out my Beefy Boys offering by over £5.
Do I think the price is worth it? I absolutely do.
The patty on this burger was thiccc, you can tell it is thick because I added an extra C on to how I described it. It was easily at least a half-pounder – in actuality I would guess the patty was closer to a full pound than anything else given how dense it was, and despite that density the inside was not dry at all, still being perfectly juicy.
That said, all shows need their supporting actors, and the hand-cut chips were an absolutely perfect co-star. Crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and perfectly seasoned with salt & pepper, they needed no sauce to accompany them, standing out perfectly on their own merit.
One side I specifically asked to order was the creamed spinach, my personal favourite side when it comes to matters of steak. Admittedly when it came out I was a little worried, the cream sitting in the dish with the spinach itself looking a little plain made me think I was going to be underwhelmed.
The exact opposite happened.
Despite its appearances, it was one of the best bits of creamed spinach I have ever had.
One of the main dangers when making creamed spinach is that it will come out soggy and bland due to the fact spinach contains a great deal of water which can severely dilute the quality of the sauce. But this humble plate exceeded all expectations, the spinach was moist without being soggy, the cream and the leaf itself were perfectly seasoned. If not for the fact I was sharing it with the table, I would have happily eaten it all myself.
When it came to desserts I was too full of meat and dairy to even consider going further, so I finished my meal with a mocha (which I forgot to take a picture of) that delivered an insanely strong hit of coffee, serving as the ideal finisher to a delicious meal.
That said, my partner had a dessert of a churro sundae, which I will include a picture of here because it was an absolute spectacle of a sweet treat.
For a new restaurant on the scene, I did come in with a fair bit of skepticism. But I walked away wanting to return, and wanting to recommend this place to the highest degree.
Independent restaurants are the heart of towns and cities, bringing immense amounts of variety amongst the big chains that can often dominate. I can wholeheartedly recommend The Gate, I am wishing them every success in the future.
That was my longest food review in a while, with a lot of passion being translated onto the page. But I hope it shows how much I love food as part of my life, and makes you curious to try The Gate.
Thank you for reading a much more substantial Redundancy Review today. I hope you can take a relaxing Saturday wherever you are, treat yourself to some good food, or if you are able, treat your friends to good food too. The best memories are made around a dinner table with people you love.
For more information on The Gate, visit their Linktree page here – it will let you view both their menus, book a table, and visit their Facebook page for even more info: https://linktr.ee/thegateshrewsbury
Good morning knights and squires, welcome to Day 25 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.
A later start today, but it feels nice to be relaxed for the first time in a while. This whole experience I am going through puts me under varying amounts of stress day-to-day, so having an afternoon yesterday and a morning today where I do not feel that as hard as I usually do is an incredibly liberating feeling.
I do not think I have used that word enough in regards to some parts of this journey: “liberating”. It is a weird one to use considering how redundancy has completely upended my life, but it has also brought benefits to me.
There was no denying I was going through some degree of burnout in my old job. I was still delivering what was needed of me on the daily but I also struggled to get out of bed some days in the lead up to the end times – dragging myself to my desk and putting on my best face.
It was honestly the people that kept me going a lot of the days, I worked with extremely talented and personable people who made even the hardest times go by quicker. The culture, even with all of us working remotely, was what kept me in till the bitter end.
(god getting woken up at 3am has thrown me off today, struggling to keep my mind on track)
But now that I am out of work, there definitely is something positive from being away from the tech sphere and doing my own things. I have struggles but I also have runway, leading to me existing in this flip-flop of zen and panic, but ultimately letting my mind recover from the experiences I have been through.
Writing every day is helping with that too. Being able to sit down and express myself through the written word is a peaceful feeling even on the days where my brain does not want to co-operate with me, and I remain ever thankful for anyone who takes time out of their day to read my words.
The dream is still to be able to make some form of living off of writing, be it being hired as an in-house copywriter for a company or freelancing my way around, always finding something new to work on. Is this a lofty goal in the age of AI? Of course, but what I am building for myself is an identity of human creativity, what I aim my “brand” to be in a way.
If you are looking for someone to write something thoughtful and emotional, consider hiring me. This project is but a fraction of what I am capable of, I would love to prove my worth against a wide range of works.
Eating my way around Shrewsbury
Yup, that is right. Welcome back to another exciting edition of talking about somewhere to eat in Shrewsbury!
With my redundancy payments coming in, and after putting money into both bills and savings accounts, my partner and I resolved that we would go out for a proper meal at a restaurant. We tour cafes and small eateries pretty frequently, but it had been around two months since we had last gone “out out” as it were – for obvious reasons.
Considering I was going to pay, it was my choice as to where we would go, and I picked one of the best places for burgers in town: The Beefy Boys.
The Beefy Boys is a small-scale chain restaurant with only four locations across the UK: Hereford, Cheltenham, Bath, and of course, Shrewsbury. Very good going for a group of four friends who came together over a love of cooking, a wholesome start that reflects in the quality of their food today.
After we got seated by the extremely friendly staff, we got to work on deciding what we wanted. Beefy Boys is one of the few venues I have seen today that offer free refills on soft drinks, a very good offer considering the asking price of £4.25 with both myself and my partner getting three glasses worth out of it.
With food though we decided to be a little more indulgent. One of the main differences at Beefy Boys is that you can decide what kind of burger patty you want:
You can go for a standard smashed patty, which comes with two thin patties on the burger
You can go for a thicc patty, cooked pink in the centre
You can go “Oklahoma-style” smashed patty, which has onions pressed in during the cooking process
Or you can go for “Cali-Style”, which is a thick patty grilled in mustard – mimicking how the fast food chain In’n’Out do their “animal style” burgers
Everything beyond a smashed patty incurs an additional charge, but having the freedom to upgrade your burger however is a very nice touch on the menu.
For myself I got what is known as the Pizza Boy with smashed patties. This is a burger topped with pepperoni, marinara sauce, a big lump of breaded mozzarella, and served with a garlic and herb dip on the side. I am a lover of all things cheesy, and this hit the exact spot I was looking for when coming back to Beefy Boys.
My partner got the Bacon Boy with the thick patty and an egg added on top. Unsurprisingly, this burger contains a large amount of bacon, coming loaded with crispy bacon strips, bacon jam, and baconnaise. A solid choice for any porcine purveyors out there.
When it came to sides, we know from past experience to only order one portion of fries, as doubling up with the absolute majesty of these burgers leads to feeling extremely bloated… that said, an old special has now made a permanent home on the menu in the form of chicken kyiv fries – fries topped with chopped chicken strips, garlic mayonnaise, and garlic butter.
These are an extremely indulgent treat, but are oh so worth it. We finalised our sides with an addition I specifically wanted in the form of mac and cheese balls, which came with a little side of chipotle ketchup. These were crunchy, creamy, and absolutely divine when paired with the sauce, perhaps a little overkill considering everything else on the plate.
To finalise, we decided to get milkshakes as our dessert, which is where “indulgence” started to slowly eek into “overkill”. They were absolutely delicious, extremely thick and a very generous portion, but I had to stop at least twice during mine to contemplate what I had done.
Now, for the price breakdown:
Two refillable soft drinks: £4.25 each for a total of £8.50, where we both got three glasses each out of it
Pizza boy with smashed patties: £13.70
Bacon boy with thick patty and an egg: £16.15
Chicken kyiv fries: £12.50
Mac and cheese balls: £7.70
Biscoff milkshake: £8
Banana milkshake: £7
Total cost of meal: £73.55 8% service charge: £5.88
Total cost overall: £79.43
A very expensive meal overall, but hopefully the price breakdown shows the general impression of what you get for your money at Beefy Boys. Additionally, the service charge is discretionary, and you are able to remove it from the bill if you want.
But you should not. Not only because service staff definitely deserve the extra boost where possible, but also because every time we have gone to Beefy Boys the service has been immaculate. Staff are friendly, the food comes out promptly, and the overall atmosphere inside is fantastic.
It was a worthy date night out after two months of stress, and whilst the current situation prohibits doing it on the regular, I will definitely be returning to Beefy Boys.
Thank you for reading today, hopefully I have not made you too hungry – but if I have, I hope you can treat yourself to something indulgent today too. It is Saturday after all, and the week has been a long one.
Good morning miners and crafters, welcome to Day 12 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.
Made it through the hottest day of the year so far pretty alright honestly, the temperature readout on the fan in my bedroom said it was 26 degrees Celsius this morning and in general the inside of the flat feels more pleasant to be around.
That said, this morning feels a lot worse for me due to encountering other sources of stress last night. I am not going to go into too many details but the short of it is fighting for what I am entitled for due to my unemployment status and that being made difficult because of the administration company handling the situation.
Woke up feeling tired as hell because of it, and it sucks knowing I can not attempt to start fixing things until tomorrow – will probably try to take today a little easier to try to keep my energy reserves intact.
Considering I have been temporarily screwed out of what I am entitled to, why not consider helping me out and hiring me for some writing work? If these reviews prove anything I can tackle a wide-range of topics and I have plenty of experience in writing professional copy for all sorts of projects.
With the weather being so hot yesterday, cool drinks were on the agenda, and something I picked up on a recent Asda trip really helped out keeping my temperature down.
(I mention Asda a lot in these reviews, I am not sponsored – just a fan)
As a small introduction, one of my goals this year was to learn how to make perfect frappes in my blender. I have a variety of supplies all around the kitchen along with different recipes to try out, but success is currently limited.
Cue my surprise when I saw a mocha frappe powder from my favourite chocolate producer, Galaxy. I picked it up and was excited to try it out.
On my first time of using the powder, I followed the blender recipe on the packaging exactly:
100ml of milk
100g of ice
4 heaped teaspoons of powder
This… did not turn out so well. The mixture was delicious but it wasn’t as sippable as I would have liked it to be, often needing me to poke it with a spoon to get it to pour.
I was not deterred though, and I tried again a little later with the following recipe:
200ml of milk
125g of ice
4 heaped teaspoons of powder
Not only did this blend together better, this went down so smoothly. Hitting the exact spot I wanted from a homemade frappe – creamy, chocolatey, and a good hit of coffee, along with making a greater quantity of drink.
In Asda this powder cost me £2.98, and with current milk prices of around £1.20 for 2 pints, it is extremely cost effective to make homemade frappes with this, something I very much appreciate in my situation.
That about covers everything for a slow Sunday redundancy review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to relax today and take things easy, you definitely could do with some chill time.
Galaxy Mocha Frappe powder is available at Asda and Tesco in the UK.
