Day 314 - chicken soup, but not as you know it

This past year has been very busy for me as you may well know if you've been reading these posts. It's been eye opening at times, often enjoyable and sometimes amusing.  One of today's celebrations is Chicken Soup For The Soul Day which requires one to take stock of the past twelve months.  I've heard of Chicken Soup For The Soul but thought it was one of those self help books, like Men Are From Mars... I turns out that it's more of a series of books.  I haven't read any but my brief research suggests that they are stories about people evaluating their lives. So that is what I've done today, or am at least doing as I type this, sat on the Aberystwyth train from Birmingham.  I usually have to stand as it gets so busy but today I've been quite lucky. Life outside of celebrating this year has been busy, what with kids starting new clubs and appearing on stage every few weeks. Work never seems to let up for long and the bills keep coming in. It's the same for all of us really isn't it, life is what happens whilst you're planning for the future and all that. As I've spent a good proportion of the last year either using social media to talk about my celebrations or typing up how they went I'm looking forward to closing it all down in the new year and getting some free time back. I doubt that I'll get rid of my phone entirely but I may try to limit my usage. It'll be interesting to find out how the kids have found this last year. They're certainly benefited, in their eyes at least, from the amount of cake, cookies and pizza.

Speaking of which, today was also Pizza With The Works Except For Anchovies Day. (Seamless). Yet another opportunity to consume the bready wonder. Why not anchovies? I've no idea, if you know then please do share. I didn't a very good job with this one. The problem is, what constitutes "the works"? To me that means a bit of everything, but pizza shops don't offer  such a thing. If you want extra toppings they charge more. There's only so much room for ingredients on a pizza so instead of charge let item why not just have a standard charge for no topping,  some topping and loads of topping? I might start my own pizza chain. One ingredient missing from the options - sprouts! My pizza shop will offer sprouts, worry you not. Anyway, the closest I could get without breaking the bank was a meat feast with added peppers. Even the vegetarian option in my take away of choice only listed peppers and mushrooms.  I'm sure it'll taste good all the same. (I mentioned earlier that I was writing from the train,  in case you're confused, I'm writing this whilst standing in the pizza shop. It's either write nonsense or gamble on the fruit machine. 

A late addition to today's list which I didn't get to celebrate was French Dip Day. I assumed from the name that this meant a garlic mayonnaise or something similar. No no. It's a recipe using slow cooked beef. You braise the meat in onion stock with Worcestershire sauce, cut it up and make it into a sandwich using baguette and cheese. You strain the liquid and dip the sandwich in it as you eat it. It sounds very tasty.  I expect it's more American than French but it sounds good all the same. I didn't have time to try it today but it's worth adding to the to do list.