good friday to easter monday

i've been dreaming of cooking and eating lately. last night i had dreams of egg-in-a-hole and ended up making it for breakfast. earlier this weekend i had dreams of making a bechamel sauce for the first time.. i had been searching through fish pie recipes after we found a deal on fish at tesco. i guess i have food on the brain, but it is only natural after spending a good three days browsing food shops around town with petey. speaking of food.. we've been selectively incorporating english foods into our diet. most notably beans on toast as a lazy dinner, smoked salmon and cucumber sandwiches for a weekend breakfast, tea and digestive biscuits as a post-work/pre-dinner snack and lots and lots of cider. actually, we have been drinking much less beer here.. especially peter. it has been red wine and tesco brand cider for the most part. we have also substituted our usual quesadilla/taco habit with fajitas. they are not english, but bell peppers are much cheaper here, and refried bean/corn tortillas are too pricey.

anyhow, since i didn't realize i would have an extened weekend due to the easter holiday until wednesday, we spent the weekend in manchester.. wandering and getting blisters. we tend to do a lot of that. here is the re-cap:

friday we spent the early afternoon in the northern quarter looking through vintage shops. i bought a 5 pound pair of [non-vintage] flats [terrible idea] and we had another fabulous curry lunch at this and that. we had planned to destroy the pizza hut buffet, but due to the holiday it was not on. afterwards we had curry belches all the up to cheetham hill. we tried to visit a very well-reviewed kosher deli/grocery but it was closed, presumably due to the passover holiday as well. instead we bought lots of veggies at the market and took the bus home, as we had managed to walk several more miles than we expected we would be. that evening we made pizza for dinner to make up for earlier.. homemade whole wheat dough was yummy.

saturday started with an almost full-english consisting of beans, toast, veggie sausages and an egg each. we circled city centre a few too many times.. visited the tiny picadilly oxfam shop, looked for sneakers and visted the northern quarter some more. got some sweat deals at tesco, a giant side a salmon at the arndale fish counter and a new baking dish at tk. for dinner petey made salmon with curried yogurt/cucumber sauce [and cous cous].. a recipe from mark bittman's blog, bitten, in the NYT. it was gooood.
on easter sunday we were lazy.. i got caught up on the first season of skins, did laundry and ate more pizza for lunch. we did get out for bit to walk around, as i was sick of watching peter upload files and have nerd chats online. we went down yet some more canals, past the old granada tv studio and around castelfield a bit.. saw cute little ones in easter outfits. we has our first fish pie for dinner. it was yummy. we finished the night with gin & tonics, then a pita pizza before bed.

ehhh, back to work tomorrow. only four days until another very long weekend/holiday. hooray!