Weekend (tr)eats

 A trip home generally means a treat or two (which is probably why I do it as often as I can...), and this was no exception. Sadly and annoyingly my camera ran out of battery which is why pictures are slightly limited. This is going to be a long one...

First of all, we have a treat that I gave myself - a Burger King breakfast... I don't know what on earth came over me, but I suddenly felt all virtuous and I only bought a sausage butty. No cheese, no egg, no bacon, no beef, no hash browns. Not even any orange juice.

I ate it on the train, hence the blurry pictures. It was alright. I hate to say it, but McDonald's breakfasts are vastly superior. Their sausages are peppery and salty and savoury - this one was a bit sweet and had a bit of a funny pasty texture. It did have some generic 'herb' flavour and generic 'green' bits, but I was underwhelmed.

Needless to say, I ate it all.

Next up was a quick lunch from Booths. I miss Booths. I think they should expand northwards. A lot. Anyhow we went to the hot counter to get snacks. It smelt amazing, as always. Fat Frank got a rack of chinese ribs and a Cumberland swirl butty. I don't know how he does it - he ate it all, too. And two Creme Eggs. I stuck to a modest 2 chicken drumsticks and some potato salad from the deli counter.

It was delicious, but I was still full from my BK breakfast. The potato salad was nice and minty, and the chicken was especially moist AND greasy. And salty. I don't know how they do it, but it's good.

Tea Friday was smoked salmon as usual - this time I had it with blinis and mustardy sour cream, and really unusually, I shared it with my sister.

Then was the big treat - Pizza Express, the real thing. By which I mean, of course, the restaurant. As opposed to a pizza in a box from Tesco.

Me, my mum, and my two sisters had a girly day out shopping, and we stopped by for lunch. What we like about Pizza Express is how they treat little ones - often the children's menu is just chips and chicken nuggets but here they're specially catered for. They get some colouring to do when you sit down, and their courses are brought as they finish so they don't have to wait for the grown-ups to wade through their pizza.

This time though, my older little sister (is this making any sense?) was brought the children's menu and some colouring. She's twelve. She was not impressed. I thought it was hilarious, naturally. Anyhow, since the children's menu includes dough balls and a cute little pot of veggies, I was allowed a starter (Yes!).

Mmmm, calamari...

My mum had to remind me to take pictures, that's why it's a rather small portion. Most of it was in my tummy. Darn, it was good - soft and salty - not bad for generic frozen stuff. The Caesar dressing seemed a bit odd - I think I was expecting tartare sauce - but my small sister Harriet doesn't like the garlic butter that dough balls come with. I do. And so does squid, apparently...

Here is Harriet's children's menu starter:

Again, this was it half-eaten. But she liked it!

Onto the mains... Small sister had four seasons pizza, smaller sister had pasta and tomato sauce, mum had some kind of chicken-y vegetable-y salad, and I had a Rustichella pizza - 'crispy pancetta, roasted tomatoes, rockets, grana padano, Caesar dressing'. And obviously I had to add hot green peppers to it. I love those babies. Another thing they do is the Romana base - now I'm really sounding like a loser - but basically it's the same amount of dough as a normal base but stretched much thinner, so it's huge and thin. Needless to say I got that too.

Seems I didn't take a picture of the Four Seasons pizza but it's pretty generic Pizza Express - cheese, anchovies and capers, pepperoni, and mushrooms, all assigned their own quarters. Rosie liked it, though I got the anchovies scraped onto my plate. Mmm, fishy.

You can see how crispy thin my pizza was - but it's still chewy and foldable. It was seriously good - almost all the toppings were added afterwards (except the chillies which of course weren't even meant to be there) - so it was all super fresh and delish. The tomatoes were those sun blush ones and the pancetta was crispy - mmmm, I think I'll have this again. Harriet ate all of her pasta and most of the bread things surrounding my mum's salad - shopping makes you hungry even when you are five, apparently. The salad was nice, but not anything special. It is called Pizza Express for a reason, to be fair. My mum liked it though.

We didn't have puddings - did you see the size of my pizza? - but the children's menu is a set price and it includes an ice-cream sundae.

Yum.

I had a lovely pie and chips that evening and a fabulous roast dinner on Sunday at my friend Hana's house, but I forgot to take pictures. It was wonderful anyway and I ate so many roast potatoes that I didn't eat again until today's lunch.

So, on a scale of one to yummy, this weekend was YUMMY. Top notch.