Squashed tomato...

I fell off the running machine today. Not a little stumble, not even a big stumble, but fell flat on my face. Imagine someone lying down licking the floor, well that was how much on the floor I was. My face, nicely rosy from running for 23 minutes suddenly turned from a light pink to a, I don’t even know what colour to call it, well I turned into a tomato.

If being a squished tomato on the floor was not bad enough, the gym was full to the brim so I couldn’t even pretend to myself that only a few people saw. No. One man shouted out “someone stop that machine!” but the rest, the whole gym, just stared, mouth opened. 

Once on the floor, my brain asked itself… Should Tasha be a trooper and pick herself up and go back to running on the running machine, or does she run...away. Fight or flight. Tasha: flight. I ran, like a tomato child, past T-Shirt James, to my friend who was equally standing there staring mouth opened. 

Tomorrow’s agenda: find a new gym. Or grow a moustache. 

Lonely Jumper

It’s officially less than one month until Christmas, and that got me thinking, when is it too early to wear my Christmas jumper?

My sister insists Christmas jumpers are so 2007 so to her it’s always too early. The thing is, I really want to wear mine. I have to admit my Rudolph jumper hangs in my wardrobe all year round even though I am definitely not cool enough to wear it in July in an ironic-cool sort of way. I feel sorry for it, hanging there all lonely, only being worn for a maximum of three weeks per year, so I feel I should wear it as soon as I can, for as long as I can. Either that or I regret paying good money for something I hardly ever wear. 

I really like these Christmas jumpers.

http://www.newlook.com/search/search_departments_list.jsp?_dyncharset=UTF-8&question=christmas+jumper&_D%3Aquestion=+&sfs_ss=Search&_D%3Asfs_ss=+&search.x=0&search.y=0&_D%3Asearch=+&_DARGS=%2Fglobal%2Fshared%2Fsearch.jsp

And these ones... Just awesome. 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ashleytalong/awesome-christmas-sweaters-hpz

Ooo fruity!

Today was full of revision and revision means brain food which today consisted of a delicious fruit, zesty and aromatic cake I made last night. My recipe has far less sugar than usual fruit cake recipes because I think the raisins make the cake plenty sweet enough.

Ingredients 

150 g plain flour

150 g self raising flour

150 g soft brown sugar

250g margarine

Grated rind of 1 orange

Grated rind of 1 lemon

5 eggs

½ tea spoon vanilla essence. 

500g dried mixed fruit

1 teaspoon cinnamon 

Method

- Grease a loaf tin with grease proof paper

- Sieve the flours and cinnamon in to one bowl. 

- In another bowl cream together the margarine, sugar, vanilla essence, orange zest and lemon zest until the mixture is pale and creamy. 

- Add the eggs a little at a time to the margarine mixture, beating well after you add each egg. 

- Fold in the flour into the margarine mixture. 

- Fold in the fruit mixture, making as few folds as possible to incorporate the fruit. 

- Turn the mixture into the prepared tin and bake in a pre-heated oven at Gas Mark 2 for 2 1/2 hours or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. 

-Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes. 

- Turn it out onto a wire rack and leave to cool. 

Enjoy with a large mug of soy hot chocolate. 

xxx