Day 111 - cake or bread?

Happy St George's Day.  I would say that this is a major day of celebration so would expect people to be aware of it, but in fact it seems to generally slip into the background. I wore a white shirt with red tie combo to work but my attempt to celebrate was a little too subtle. As my birthday is on St Patrick's Day I always remember it, as do the pubs with the shamrocks and Guinness promotions. St David's Day is usually met with daffodils and leeks adorning many a lapel, but St George's Day usually gets looked over with maybe the odd country  pub having an event on. It certainly doesn't have the pulling power of Paddy's day. Son 1 also wore a dragon onesie to bed but I think that was chance rather than choice. I did have a read up of the history of St George and you'd think that the dragon story would have made it to the big screen by now. One newspaper said that he was beheaded for not renouncing Christianity and that the dragon story is not to be taken literally. I wonder why not? One point in the story was that George killed the dragon in exchange for the villagers converting yo Christianity.  I'd have thought that a brave knight would have faced the dragon out of courage and valour rather than at a price. Chivalry has a price.

I had to plan for Zucchini Bread Day yesterday by baking the goods last night. The recipe was from ButterWithASideOfBread.com and it turned out really well. It looked far too stodgy when I mixed it, I had to use pistachio nuts instead of walnuts but they definitely work. As it's American it's called zucchini and I was surprised when a colleague asked what that meant. Apparently americanisms aren't as common as I thought. They also call it bread which I think is an attempt to hoodwink people into thinking it is healthy. Vegetable bread doesn't sound as bad as cake, but with 2 cups of sugar in the recipe I think it would definately come under cake rather than bread in a recipe book. My boys wouldn't try it but the baby did and she gave it a good go. She even  said it was cucumber without any prompting.  Not a bad guess, although I think she was referring to the nuts at the time.

I mentioned yesterday that there were a few days to celebrate today, one which I was looking forward to was Picnic Day. I usually have sandwiches and crisps for lunch so thought that it would be nice to pop to the park to eat it. Sadly today saw the reemergence of my vertigo. I was dizzy all morning to the point where it was making me feel quite ill so I had to call it a day. That put paid to my picnic plans. I even cut my sandwiches into triangles and put an extra sausage roll in my bag. Instead of a picnic in the park, lunch was squashed sandwiches on the 11.53 Virgin train from Birmingham.

I'd like to say that I didn't celebrate International Nose Picking Day but who am I kidding. I'll spare you the details.

To celebrate German Beer Day I've had a small can of Grolsch. My vertigo tablets don't say anything about avoiding alcohol and I'm thinking that one 330ml can won't do any harm. It's a shame that it didn't pop up whilst in Berlin as the beer there was excellent. We were mainly drinking something which sounds like it was brewed by Michael Buble. Grolsch isn't bad but not my favourite beer. The choice in Tesco was Grolsch or Becks, not the widest choice considering German beers reputation.

Finally today I'm going to celebrate World Book Night. I've done book day but it turns out there's a book night as well. I was handed a book today called Every Day Is a Holiday by George Mahood. It turns out that George has done exactly the same thing that I am trying. I hope that his readership got past double digits. To celebrate World Book Night, I'm off to read up on how I should be celebrating.

Good night.