West Berkshire BreweryTour

Today has been really nice and chilled

After breakfast, I picked my boyfriend up and we went on the West Berkshire Brewery Tour. It cost £12.50 each and only took 45 minutes to go round as it's not the biggest brewery in the world, however the tour also including a pint glass and three pints, which they were only too happy to serve you. I don't like beer, I never have, so settled for a diet coke instead, however my boyfriend was more than happy to indulge! It was interesting tasting the different types of malt that goes into beer - some tasted like Maltesers, whereas others were more like burnt toast and coffee. 

The tour was pretty cool and the bloke giving the tour obviously knew an awful lot about beer. We've been on quite a few brewery tours - Binghams Brewery, Wadworth 6x in Devizes in Wiltshire... About 5 in total, I think? I was the only woman in a group of about 15 men which was slightly odd, however I guess it's not the typical thing that women like to do? Shame really, as it's quite interesting :-)

Once we'd been round, we headed back to the bar and it was already 12:15, lunch time.

Thankfully I'd already planned ahead, I had half a pot of houmous left over from yesterday and some wholemeal pita bread, a pepper and another nakd bar. I'll be honest, it wasn't as tasty as usual and I think that was due to the fact that the houmous was in the car for an hour - it's quite impressive the difference in both taste and texture if you eat it straight from the fridge, versus when it's left in the car for over an hour - Don't think I'll be doing that again.....

After the tour, we headed back via Reading so stopped to get some petrol and got some fish to cook for tonight as we'd decided on how we were going to use the Riverford Vegetable box veg - Oven baked cod with crisp potatoes, wilted spinach with nutmeg and steamed carrots...Yummy. I also decided to stock up on a few essentials - More porridge and more nakd bars. The Bakewell tart one is quite hard to find, so I decided to make the most of the fact that they had a large number in, and bought have a box - Doesn't exactly look like the most balanced shopping list, however I do have a lot of fruit and vegetables at home and I now have enough porridge and snacks to take to Northumberland with me, so I don't have to give in to my partners Mother offering me cakes and sandwiches every 5 minutes.

After dropping the fish and other food stuffs at home, we headed out for a drink in a local pub - I'm trying to drink less diet coke and Pepsi Max (although it's still one of my vices I don't want to give up altogether, so am just drinking it in moderation) so actually ordered a mineral water instead.. 

I also think it's a bit silly to be mindful of the calories you're eating, but totally oblivious or not mindful of the ones you're drinking. Apparently there's 139 calories in a can of coke and 35g of sugar. I know 'pub coke' is different, however I still think I'd rather not drink a lot of it. Apparently you'd have to do a lot of exercise, just to burn off one can of the stuff.

It was nice sitting in the sun, having a chat - We don't usually do that, we're always doing one thing or another and to actually 'chill' and enjoy each others company was nice

Dinner tonight was a nice piece of cod with some lemon and pepper butter, with the organic carrots and spinach I had got from the Riverford Veg box, topped off with some thinly sliced potatoes which we boiled for 5 minutes, then put in the oven and roasted for 15 minutes with some groundnut oil and a little bit of salt - It was really nice.

We watched 'The Fast and the Furious 7', which I have to say, was pretty watchable if not ever so slightly unbelievable (they might be good, but driving a car across 3 buildings in Dubai? Hrm.... ) I thought they did a rather classy tribute at the end of the film to Paul Walker who sadly lost his life in a car crash. 

I'm now sat at home, watching 'The Woman in Black' on TV. I've got it on DVD as it's a Horror Movie and I'm rather partial to them, however it's on TV, it's not a bad movie and I'm happy to watch it whilst browsing eBay for more antiques :-)