Since neither of us gets back to work (well work for Jac, back to thesis/uni for me) until Monday, we decided to go shopping again for bookshelves on Friday. We’d made a number of unsuccessful shopping excursions on previous occasions, but just couldn’t seem to find the right bookshelves to buy. We ended up going to Osborne Park this time to look at the various furniture shops there, including IKEA. I know we recently had Swedish meatballs for dinner, but I just HAD to have Swedish meatballs again at IKEA. It’s a ritual. If I’m there, I just have to have them. This ritual probably occurs less than once a year (we don’t go to IKEA very often), so when the opportunity comes up I grasp it with both hands (or rather, spear it enthusiastically and greedily with my fork). I ordered 10 meatballs, but ended up with 11 – bonus!

Jac had the poached salmon salad, which had a lemon and dill dressing.

On Friday evening I decided to make fried rice to use up various bits and pieces in the fridge that needed to be eaten up soon or thrown out. There was some cooked rice, a bit of SPAM, two rashers of bacon, two and a half pineapple rings and half a can’s worth of baby corn. Fried rice was the obvious option – I also used a small brown onion, two cloves of chopped garlic and a handful of frozen peas. I flavoured it all with cracked black pepper, a teeny drizzle of soy sauce and a few good squirts of tomato sauce, enough to give the rice a red tinge. It was nice for a change to make fried rice without oyster sauce!