Marathon Monday: BRITA Boost and Foodelity

Wow. It’s February. I’m still on schedule – I hit 25km this weekend (15 miles) a fair steady pace – though I do owe a huge thank you to the Ford Madox Brown pub, who were kind enough to let a sweaty lady head in to make use of the facilities. Phew.

With 10 weeks to go, I’ve also booked the hotel, train tickets and will be figuring how to bribe one of my sisters to stop by and feed the cats – Mr GFB is off to a stag weekend in Palma, so won’t be with me this time around. It’s going to be rather strange.

It’s also almost the end of BRITA Boost – helping me boost my hydration during January, and to the others taking part, offering alternatives to alcohol to get them through dry January.

So why do we drink? Relaxation (which led me to a manicure and almost napping in the salon), confidence (which had me working on some super heavy weights with my trainer and looking at how to maintain confidence during the marathon) and taste (that had myself and Keeley dashing down to London to make mocktails).

Next on the list? Socialising and for this challenge it was time for a little dinner party at home and the recreation of those mocktails.

Foodelity were to supply the food for the evening. Knowing I had *ahem* a fussy friend dining, I chose a suitable menu for all four of us and awaited the delivery. Foodelity do the hard work for you – measuring, weighing, and providing the recipes – all to a delivery date of your choosing.

Mine arrived, bang on time and I started to get rather excited. Unfortunately there were a few problems.

It appeared as though the handling of the package had been a little rough and in the time it took me to walk down a corridor and head down from the second floor to ground floor in the lift, the handle on my box broke. Disaster.

Struggling home, I crossed my fingers and waited to survey the damage.

Carnage.

I lost tomatoes, ale, olive oil, and the oil for cooking the fish. Thankfully all replaceable items, but disappointing nonetheless.

So, what were my choices? For starters two of us opted for crispy chilli beef, one for the scallops with pea puree and the challenge was the goat’s cheese souffle with apple and walnut salad.

I was really pleased with how easy everything was, especially the souffle – I was thrilled with both how easy it was and how good it tasted. I’m going to need to reproduce that.

For mains, we had ox cheek ragu with papardelle and bacon wrapped monkfish. The ragu takes around 3 hours to cook, so I actually cheated and set that going the day before. The monkfish (or in this case cod as that’s what was sent) was much speedier and went down a treat.

Finally, dessert. Three opted for the chocolate orange fondant with creme fraiche and one for the lemon syllabub with crushed amaretti biscuits.

The syllabub is ridiculously easy and delicious. The chocolate orange too, is rather easy to make, though we didn’t like the creme fraiche as an accompaniment and would have much preferred something softer and less acidic.

Of course, now being well versed in mocktail making, we had lavender sours throughout the evening – these went down exceptionally well with everyone. So much so, I couldn’t get one to hang around long enough to get a picture.

So, socialising without alcohol. Did we miss it? Well, it maybe took us a few more minutes to relax, but not really is the answer. And when it came to my training the next day, I didn’t have to worry about a hangover or any dehydration.

And the Foodelity packages? My one piece of advice would be to make sure your timings work for each course, because aside from the damage – and perhaps a quick swap of the creme fraiche for something like an orange flavoured cream – I rather liked the idea and the recipes themselves.

But maybe the courier needs a quick lesson in handling fragile goods….