I found the perfect hausfrau breakfast at Co-op: raspberry and amaretto live gourmet yoghurt! Party bokeh 100% necessary.

Relevant: the other day I was making a wonderful breakfast smoothie. I put in bananas, blackberries, and thought "what else? maybe a little vanilla extract? almond extract? amaretto!" I stopped myself before my healthy breakfast smoothie turned into a breakfast cocktail. On that note, here's a gem from the semi-homemade archives. Pardon the poor quality, you can skip to 0:58 for my favourite one.

Self worth and gratitude lists

It's quite hard to retain self-worth when you don't have a full-time occupation (i.e. studying, working, raising children). It's easy to fill your days with things that would normally be accomplished alongside said full-time occupation. I've really enjoyed having the time and energy to cook actual meals, more or less every day, and even created an Excel table with the ingredients for 10 of my favourite basic meals. It makes online grocery shopping a lot easier. Doing laundry is surprisingly satisfying as well, especially when you get to order special soap for special stains and then actually pre-wash your special items by hand, using the special soap, before putting them in the washer on a special program.

However, when your most only productive task in a day is cooking, and then when you cook for others and someone happens to not like it, it can be pretty soul-destroying. Of course I'm overreacting, but it really is the only thing on which I could be judged or praised (and I'm always looking for validation), so disappointment can hit pretty hard. Now, to stay positive (and remind myself to wear pants every day), I tried a daily gratitude list. The idea is to list (usually) 5 things for which you're grateful at the end of each day. I went with 3, and kept it up for about a week and a half, until I realised that nearly 80% of my gratitude sources were food-related. If I were a dog, people would describe me as "incredibly motivated by food", which I guess isn't necessarily a bad thing as it can be quite easy to teach food-motivated dogs new tricks.

Anyway, I gave it a break (during which I actually did loads of things that could've gone on my list, like "a country weekend in Cambridge", "saw friends in Finland", "cycled to Brighton", "became an aunt"), but now I'm back on it. My friend C was doing something similar (100 days of Happy, where you take a picture of something that makes you happy every day) and she said it was great, because it motivated her to make an effort and do something nice if nothing special had happened.

Today I will definitely be grateful for the sunshine, and that my knee hurts less than yesterday. On Monday I hope to be grateful for my local dry-cleaner for getting weird dirt off a suede jacket. Tonight I would also like to be grateful for an ace waacking class, where I totally outdo myself in freestyling.

Half price pie

Today's big success was a co-op pie. There are several shops by P's house, and contrary to what his housemate might suggest, I headed to co-op rather than tesco. I was looking for a pie, and for some reason I thought this co-op would be the same as the big one on North End Road (by my second house), but I was just hallucinating. Alas, it was a small one, and the pie selection was nowhere to be seen. HOWEVER, a cheeky steak pie was hidden among some sandwiches, but I thought "gross" and tried to find the chicken and something one. No luck. Couldn't even find the original pie shelf. So I go back and tell the previously rejected steak pie "You will be delicious with the on-offer Chilean red wine I got yesterday", pick him up, and lo and behold! Reduced from 4 pounds to just under 2! It was like that story of a guy who helps a beggar, and then the beggar turns into a fairy godmother and is like "you've done well, I shall now reward you with all the good stuff". My extra good stuff was reduced salad and raspberries. And I was right: the discounted red wine was the perfect accompaniment to my half price pie. I felt like a winner.