February 16th - Almond Day

Today has been Almond Day! I spent most of the afternoon and evening at my friend Miles’s flat cooling party (the opposite of a house warming as he’s moving out). On route to the party I went past the supermarket to pick up drinks and some almonds. I hadn’t given any particular thought to how I would celebrate once I had them and they stayed in my bag for a bit once I got there. A couple of friends have been following the blog since I started it and asked what today was so I told them and that I had almonds on me. We decided the best way to celebrate would be to get everyone involved. It took a bit of explaining to get everyone on board with why I needed them to eat almonds but everyone was intrigued and went with it. Jamie one of Miles’s housemates is really allergic to nuts so instead of partaking he agreed to take the photo and then we would all wash our hands before we went near him again.

Getting ready to eat them!

Eating them!

Right as we finished eating them and taking photos Nora came out of the bathroom and we realised we’d missed her. I took a seperate photo of her eating a celebratory almond and then put them away so no one killed Jamie.

Almond day… almonds are okay but celebrating almonds with friends is great, 9/10!

February 15th - Gumdrop Day

Today is Gumdrop day! I haven’t had a gumdrop in years partly because I was never a massive fan but mainly because I’ve been vegetarian for about 7 years. I don’t eat meat but I do very occasionally cheat and eat gelatine in marshmallows because they’re delicious and they make me happy. I figured if I’ll eat the occasional marshmallow I could eat a gumdrop and not feel too terrible about it. What a slippery gelatine slope.  

I went to the supermarket and it turns out there’s more types of gumdrop than I remember.

There was a 3 for £1.40 deal on which was pretty convenient so I bought all three types and decided to do a comparison test. I have friends coming round at the weekend to play boardgames so I figured I could eat one from each pack and then pawn the rest off on them. I got home and realised that I couldn’t do a straight comparison of whichever flavour was first out of the packet as some flavours are just not as good as others. Instead I dug through and pulled out a strawberry flavour from each pack and got to testing.

The results:

Fruit gums - Immediately became stuck to my teeth. Really firm texture and sticky, overall kinda gross. 2/10 ended up spitting it out.

Fruit pastilles - Okay this is a lot better! Soft enough to actually chew and the sugar on the outside is nice. 7/10.

Wine gums - Also good! A bit too chewy but the best flavour so far. 8/10

Averaging the scores above, Gumdrop day should be a… 5.66/10 but I’m going to round down for the gelatine factor. Overall score 5/10, there’s better candy and I wouldn’t buy again.

February 14th - Donor Day

For Donor Day I had a think about what I could potentially donate. I’m already an organ and bone marrow donor and have previously donated my hair so I was running out of things to give away. I had a look at look at if I would be able to donate blood today a week ago but I recently got my ears pierced so I’m not able to donate for 4 months (a few weeks of which is remaining).

(Aren't all piercings body piercings?)

I’ve been trying to donate blood for a while but I’ve had real problems with being able to get an appointment at a reasonable time. The whole system doesn’t seem to be set up to let people who work 9 - 6 jobs do it. On top of that I’ve had a few piercings and done some more exotic traveling over the last few years which has often meant I’m unable to give blood for a few months at a time. Ruminating on this I decided that the best thing I could do to celebrate today and make the biggest impact would be to make it easier for people to donate. Framestore has about 900 people in our building, that’s a lot of bodies full of blood, a percentage of which I’m sure would be eligible and willing to donate if it was easy to.

I had a poke about the NHS Blood and Transplant website and found that you can contact them to suggest a temporary donation venue. There’s quite a lot of criteria you need to hit but I think there’s a space in the office that would fulfil it. The next step was to see if Framestore would potentially be on board.

I heard back pretty quickly that they were. Going to do some more research soon and see if I can get this rolling!

Donor day… 10/10, if you’re able to it’s such an amazing way to give back.

February 13th - Tortellini Day

I used to make tortellini all the time as it’s a pretty cheap and very quick meal. For some reason though I’ve not made it in a few months so seemed like a nice thing to have again.
While I was waiting for water to boil I did some research into the origins of the pasta and came across The Learned Order of the Tortellini based in Bologna the home of tortellini and they take preserving tortellini tradition pretty seriously!

They have some pretty swanky outfits and wear fancy gold tortellini necklaces and tortellini shaped hats, if I lived in Bologna I think these would be my people.

Anyway that was enough history, time to do some cooking!

I ‘made’ the sauce by frying red onion and pepper and mixing in the premade sauce I’d bought. Added to the cooked tortellini and was done. Super easy!

And delicious! Tortellini day… 8/10 It’s a good meal and I should make it more often.

February 12th - Lost Penny Day

This seemed like a good day to celebrate, finding money is always nice! I was a bit concerned that I couldn’t guarantee that I would be able to find a penny though as by its nature it’s up to luck. I thought about it for a bit and decided the best way to celebrate would be to give other people the opportunity to celebrate by dropping pennies throughout the day.

I took a handful of pennies from my change jar and throughout the day when I was walking about dropped them. I felt pretty weird to be actively trying to drop money, I kept making a point of doing it when people weren’t nearby. I didn’t know how to explain why I was doing it if anyone was nice enough to point out that I’d dropped something.

Lost Penny Day… 9/10 I really quite enjoyed doing this today!

Update: One of the pennies stayed on my road for 5 days before it disappeared!

February 10th - World Marriage Day

David and I briefly discussed getting married today but both pretty quickly agreed that we’re not massively into the idea. I’m not a fan of marriage for a lot of reasons, the overarching misogyny, not wanting to be defined by my relationship to a man, not wanting to get married just because we’re at an age where it’s expected, basically I think it’s antiquated. I’m not saying I’d never do it but it would have to be on our terms and the institution doesn’t hold any real significance to me.

While we were on the topic though we did discuss our friends weddings coming up later this year. We have one in Cape Town in June and one in Vienna in August so we looked at the logistics of getting to both. They’ll both be a lot of fun!

World Marriage Day… 4/10 generally not for me, at least not now. Was good to starting working out our summer plans though.

February 9th - Pizza Day

I spent most of today on an airplane, swinging wildly between attempting to sleep and lamenting my lack of sleep (whilst eating sugar). 2hrs into what was close to a 15hr odyssey I was extremely ready to be home and envisioning collapsing on the sofa and ordering pizza. Long story short, we travelled a fair distance, it was long and boring yarda yarda.

On the very final leg of the journey I whipped into the corner store to buy some milk and bread. I was looking around for something else to buy to bump me over the £5 minimum when I realised they're now stocking Dr. Oetker Quorn pizzas! Plaistow, one tiny step closer to gentrification! (I thought we were going to be the first wave when we moved here but no one else followed 😢). I quickly weighed up the options, pizza of likely lesser quality but here or order pizza that will definitely be good but isn't here. I staring into a chest freezer blankly like a crazy women for the better part of three minutes trying to force my jetlagged brain to make a decision. Once I realised what I was doing I grabbed them, paid and bolted.

I finally got home and forced myself to stay up through the afternoon and evening and at a dinner appropriate time cooked the pizzas. They looked a bit bland so I added a bit of extra cheese and this is how it turned out!

It looked kinda meh and tasted kinda meh. Don't get me wrong it was totally fine, might even buy again but really nothing to write home about. I actually think their regular cheese pizza is better but it's nice to see more veggie options! I have to be honest though, this is all falling into the context of having had awesome pizza only a couple of days ago from a hole in the wall in LA so right now I'm being extra judgy.

Overall, Pizza day 5/10!

Also in the spirit of pizza day, Internet please enjoy this photo of my friend Mimi from our last holiday together...

February 8th - Molasses Bar Day

Luckily today I'm still in LA because I'm not sure that molasses is really a thing in the UK. I’m currently sat in the La Monarca bakery with David before we head to the airport.

We grabbed some waffley delicious lunch at The Waffle and while there I set about my plan of just Googling 'Molasses Bar Los Angeles' and seeing what turned up. All the hits were talking about Milk down in Fairfax but as we're heading to the airport that's really not the right direction. Next plan, searching bakery on Maps and seeing what was nearby. The first result a couple of blocks away was La Monarca and has great reviews! I scrolled through their menu online and spied...'PUERQUITO / molasses cookie'. Close enough!

So we've wandered over here trundling suitcases to find molassesy goods!

It smells amazing and they have all kinds of delicious looking things. Check these out...

So I had a look and they seemed to have everything apart from what I was looking for! They even have horchata cake. If I wasn't on a molasses based mission I'd be all over that. I asked behind the counter about puerquito and they were just about to bake a batch if we could wait 15 minutes. We checked how long we had until we needed to check in for our flight and yes, yes we did have 15 minutes spare, just. So here we are waiting... This lady just put them in the oven 😌

UPDATE:
COOKIES HAVE ARRIVED!!

UPDATE 2:
Cookies are super hot and soft but not what I expected. I thought molasses was like soft gingerbread? This is not that. It tastes more like treacle flavoured dough which isn't bad but it also isn't amazing. David seems to be more into it but I'm finding it kinda bland to be honest.

Molasses bars... 4/10. They're okay but there were other things in the bakery that would have been more my thing.

February 6th - Frozen Yogurt Day

Today has been frozen yogurt day and I've been hanging out in downtown Hollywood so I figured fro-yo would easy to find!

We did a self guided tour along the main strip and along the walk of fame. Highlights included:

While we were wondering around I was keeping my eyes peeled for frozen yogurt figuring we'd just stumble across it. A few hours in I hadn't seen any anywhere passively so I thought I should check the menus of a few places. We were up by the Chinese Theatre and the only real place doing food was a Hooters. I figured that might be weird and funny to go eat some there so we went in...

...aaaand instantly bailed. The vibe is super weird! I didn't even stay in there long enough to find out if they serve frozen yogurt.

Next plan, the Internet! I had a look on Maps and apparently there are tons of places just off of the main few streets. I found one called Frog near to where we're staying that's open late and decided to hit it up on the way back. A few hours later we're ready to head back and I'm excited because at this point I've been thinking about fro-yo for about 10 hrs on and off despite the cold. Well I hit the jackpot! I am so glad Frog doesn't exist in the UK because I would be broke and live on a diet of just frozen yogurt, no joke.

It's a serve yourself kind of a deal with 10 different flavours of frozen yogurt and a massive bar of toppings and then you pay by weight.

I got a bit overwhelmed by the amount of choice and started sampling them all along with a random guy who was there and just as excited as I was. He was originally only interested in the sugar free options but this criteria very quickly went out the window once he discovered the cinnamon roll flavour.

I'm not going to lie, I ate a lot of samples. In fact I ate too many samples and gave myself some pretty bad brain freeze.

I had to take a breather and took the time to make my final decision. I went for a mix of, cinnamon roll, vanilla, dulce latte and ice-cream sandwich.

At this point David reminded me that I would be paying by weight. I had totally forgotten! He figured I had close to $20 but at this point I'd committed and I still needed toppings. I added New York cheesecake bits, dark chocolate drops and waffle cone pieces. Oh my glob. All I could think was…

via GIPHY

It was time to weigh it... And it was only $8.40. Genuinely a shock. I took it back to our AirBnB and ate more of it than I intended while watching Netflix and shoved the rest of it in the freezer for tomorrow.

Frozen yogurt... 9/10, this was seriously exceptional frozen yogurt but as a concept it loses a point for not being ice-cream.

February 5th - Weatherman’s Day

Today was an easy one to celebrate, the weather here is a bit crazy! LA is experiencing a bad storm, not by UK standards but the infrastructure for so much rain just doesn't exist here. We've spent the day walking along the beach from Muscle Beach to Santa Monica and it started out like this…

We sheltered for a bit and when it'd eased off we wandered out again. The rain here has been super heavy but very stop and start. We kept ducking into places to wait it out but a few minutes later it would have completely stopped. Needless to say we were checking the forecast all day.

By the second half of our walk it had cleared up a lot and we were even able to go sit in the sun on the beach. It turned into a really beautiful day!

Weatherman’s day… 5/10 it was kind of helpful to see when the weather was likely to be changing but knowing ultimately didn't really make a difference.

February 4th - World Cancer Day

Today has been Cancer day (slightly less cheery than these days normally are).

Last week I was hanging out with some girlfriends when it came up that one of them had recently had unusual pap smear results back. Not a huge cause for concern apparently but she was going through the process of getting it checked out further. What did transpire from the conversation though which was alarming to me was that in the UK women are supposed to start having them from the age of 25…

...and I've not had one!

I've moved around a fair bit the last few years and didn't sign up to a GP immediately when we moved into our current home so I guess I must have slipped through the net. All this had been weighing on my mind the last week but I hadn't actually gotten around to doing anything about it so Cancer day seemed like the day to sort it out.

I'm still out in LA but I figured if I called my GP at midnight my time they'd just be opening at 8am their time. I called a few times but unfortunately couldn't get through, getting in touch with them is often a real pain. (Hence not signing up to the GP sooner or chasing the whole pap smear thing earlier in the week.) Eventually I gave up by phone and tried to find an email address for the practice. No luck, but I did find that they have an online booking system. I booked a generic appointment for in a months time as that was the only option. I'll try and get through to them when I'm back home and make sure I can get the test done then.

World Cancer day… 6/10 it's not exactly been celebratory but it was a good prompt to get my butt in gear and organise this.

February 3rd - Carrot Cake Day

I'm not a massive fan of carrot cake generally, it's okay but I'd pretty much pick any other kind of cake over it. I vaguely remember my mum making it when I was a kid and just always being confused by the idea of putting vegetables in a cake when there's so many better things you can use.

While we were out and about today I kept an eye out for some so I could celebrate. We wandered around all day going to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the La Brea Tar Pits. We passed quite a lot of places to eat but nowhere that obviously sold carrot cake. We eventually ended up at the Farmers Market in The Grove in the evening where we found a small bakery stall that had some!

I bought a slice and we sat at the bar next door watching the Super Bowl while I ate it. An extremely American experience all round.

It was really good with lots of cinnamon and a pretty much even icing to cake ratio. One slice between two people was enough though as it was a bit tooth meltingly sweet.

Carrot cake… 8/10 unexpectedly good!

February 2nd - Groundhog day

I spent most of today on the flight to LA but after we’d landed, checked into our AirBnB and seen a bit of the city we crashed out. To celebrate Groundhog Day we watched the CBS coverage of Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his burrow and not seeing his shadow, predicting an early spring for us all.

The fact that the Groundhog is called Punxsutawney Phil raised many questions for me which then led me to the official Punxsutawney Groundhog Cub website where I read up on the history of the day.

“The History

The Christian religious holiday of Candlemas Day has become most commonly associated with the current celebration, but it’s roots are older than that. The celebration started in Christianity as the day, (February 2nd), when Christians would take their candles to the church to have them blessed. This, they felt, would bring blessings to their household for the remaining winter.

As time rolled on the day evolved into another form. The following English folk song highlights the transition to weather prognostication.

If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Come, Winter, have another flight;
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Go Winter, and come not again.

This “interpretation” of Candlemas Day became the norm for most of Europe. As you can read, there is no mention of an animal of any kind in the preceding song. It wasn’t until this traditional belief was introduced to Germany that an animal was introduced into the lore, hence another evolution of February 2nd. If, according to German lore, the hedgehog saw his shadow on Candlemas Day there would be a “Second Winter” or 6 more weeks of bad weather. As German settlers came to what is now the United States, so too came their traditions and folklore. With the absence of hedgehogs in the United States, a similar hibernating animal was chosen. This leads us to yet another evolution in the legend and to present day Punxsutawney.”

— http://www.groundhog.org

I then went down a slight Internet rabbit hole and man is this holiday crazy!

“According to the lore, there is only one Phil, and all other groundhogs are impostors. It is claimed that this one groundhog has lived to make weather prognostications since 1886, sustained by drinks of “groundhog punch” or “elixir of life” administered at the annual Groundhog Picnic in the fall. In this respect, Punxsutawney Phil is unique; the lifespan of a groundhog in the wild is roughly six years.

According to the Groundhog Club, Phil, after the prediction, speaks to the club president in Groundhogese, which only the current president can understand, and then his prediction is translated for the entire world.”

— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punxsutawney_Phil

I then also decided to research what the difference is between a Marmot and a Groundhog as they both have celebration days today and the groundhog in the video sure looks a lot like what I would call a marmot? Turns they're the same thing! I learnt a thing!

Groundhog day… 7/10 interesting as a weird tradition and kind of novel to watch it while I'm in the US. It definitely sent me to some of the weirder parts on the Internet today.

February 1st - Bubblegum Day

Today is bubblegum day! I knew I was going to have to run around Oxford Street after work to try to find some kind of bra solution for the backless dress I've got for the award ceremony so I decided to also go to the American candy store while I was there. We were on a tight turn around to get everything we needed and get back home to pack. So I decided to split the party and abandoned David in a queue for the Primark tills while I went off on a side mission.

I got to the store and was a bit overwhelmed by how much stuff there was and how brightly coloured everything is.

I had a look for a bit and was underwhelmed by the amount of bubblegum on sale! Eventually I found some but the selection was a bit rubbish.

I ended up picking up strawberry as it sounded the best and it was good!

Bubblegum day… 8/10 I don't chew gum very often and haven't blown bubbles in a while but it's fun :)

January 31st - Backward Day

Today I decided to fly to LA, 50 hours before the flight left. David's been nominated for a VES award and we decided, fuck it let's go! He's just left being a compositor at ILM to work at The Foundry so as neither of us are now working as VFX artists we may never get another nomination between us.

Very exciting but how is this relevant to Backward Day I hear you ask. Good question...because it isn't. The point I’m trying to make is that I was extremely rushed and in a flap trying to organising getting us to the other side of the world with no notice. Visas take 72 hours to process and we're pretty much winging it. So I may have forgotten to celebrate today.

Backward day...1/10 the whole thing was a mad stress and kinda, well backward.

January 30th - Inane Answering Message Day

One of my many faults is that I very rarely check my voicemail messages. If it's an emergency people normally text and if I see I have a missed call from someone I know I'll pretty much always call them back before I think to check my messages.

It does mean though that when I do pick them up I normally have 5 or 6 and they're always from my mum and grandma and it's lovely to hear their voices.

As they're the only people that leave me messages I decided to record an answering message for them. I'm sure more people than them will hear it (in fact I'm pretty sure my work phone forwards on to it) but I don't care…

Inane Answering Message Day… 7/10, I’m sure my new one will make my mum and grandma happy :)

January 29th - Puzzle Day

A few years ago when we moved into our home David's mother bought him a puzzle of the area which we've always intended to do but hadn't gotten around to. Well today that changed!

It may only be 450 pieces but this doesn't appear to be as easy as I thought it would be. A lot of the pieces are very similar. We sorted through, got all the edge pieces and started working on putting the sides of the puzzle together. We worked on it for the about an hour and this is as far as we got.

Puzzle day… 9/10 surprisingly cathartic. Been meaning to find a new activity to do that doesn't involve screens and this could be a good one. Will update as we get through this one.

Update 1: (10/02)

We've started work on the red main roads running through the puzzle. They're almost in place!

Update 2: (15/02)

It's done! It's finally done! Check it out in all its glory…

I have no idea what we'll do with it now that it's completed but we'll leave it on the kitchen table for a bit and maybe buy a new puzzle to replace it.

January 28th - Blueberry Pancake Day

I semi-regularly make pancakes but always more crepe like ones which aren’t blueberry conducive. I threw out my normal recipe and looked up how to make thick American pancakes.

I got the ingredients together:

I mixed the dry ingredients together in a jug, cutting the recipe in half so I didn't end up with tons of pancakes.

The jug is normally big enough when I make pancakes but once I started measuring out the wet ingredients it was clear it wasn't going to all fit. I moved dry into a big bowl and wet into the jug creating all the washing up in the process.

I then whisked it all together. I could only find one whisk attachment but it was enough. Ain't nobody got time for hand whisking.

I then threw in half the blueberries (saved half to have on top) and started cooking them.

Look how unphotogenic and uncircular they are. My hob isn't flat and drives me mad, everything just slides to the front of it and I'm pretty sure my frying pan is also warped. Anyway I cooked them and made tons despite having cut the recipe down.

They were pretty good even if I say so myself and there were so many!

Blueberry pancakes… 8/10 they were yum and will probably make them again at some point in the future!

January 27th - National Geographic Day

I was aware that this day was coming up so when I was up at my parents and I noticed that they had a old National Geographic about...and I mean old, I asked if I could steal it for a bit. They’d used it for research on one of their books a few years ago and they weren’t using it. I stashed it away for a while until today came around and I could celebrate by looking through it.

Well clearly this is awesome. The articles were interesting but mainly because of what they considered far away and ‘wild’ back in 1926. Two of the main features are on events and people from Italy and Poland. The world is just a much smaller place nowadays.

I also loved the ‘Sixteen pages of illustrations in full colour’ being boasted about on the cover. They were kinda beautiful and clearly pushing the limits of what could be printed back then.

The best parts of the magazine as far as I’m concerned though are the adverts. I did a pretty thorough leafing through to try to find any old-timey misogynistic ads but surprisingly couldn’t find any, kudos to National Geographic. I loved these ones...

I was wondering if it was particularly expensive back in the day so I did the conversion and interestingly it actually comes out to roughly the same price as a copy costs now. ($0.50 in 1926 is roughly $7.11 in 2019.)

National Geographic day...7/10 I loved going through this old copy and seeing how they portrayed the world back then. I subscribed to it for a few years and used to really enjoy reading it, supporting it as a publication and the photography standards. When it became a part of the Murdoch empire and gave up it’s non-profit status though I cancelled my subscription. I’m very conscious of voting with my purchasing decisions and I didn’t want to give them my money anymore.  

January 26th - Spouse’s Day

I figured this would be an easy day as I would spend it with David and I could write about us because he’s my spouse. So I spent today with David but funny thing...it turns out he’s not my spouse :/ I thought it was like the term partner but sitting down to write this I decided to Google it and turns out it specifically means a husband or wife and he ain’t either of those things.

Neither of us are massive on the idea of marriage so I don’t know if I’ll ever have a spouse. I think if either of us was super into the idea we’d have already gotten married but we just have other stuff going on and don’t feel the need. Obviously there’s still societal (and family) pressure but I’m really grateful to live in a time and place where I can make the decision to not be defined by marriage and children.

Anyway as the closest thing I have to a spouse check out my favourite photo of early relationship David and Eme:

I forget how young we were in so many ways when we got together, we were different people back then. Check out the difference between then and last week.

It’s coming up to 6 years together now and he’s still the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

Spouse’s day...6/10 I didn’t really celebrate it correctly but I do like the idea of a day to appreciate your significant other. The world can always do with more of that!