2nd January is the last day of the festive holiday in Scotland but what makes it worse for me is when I turn on the tv and there are no more Christmas themed films and programmes. Today is the day to mentally prepare for the worst month of the year but on the plus side, the long nights are getting shorter (well, kind of!) and we have a month of cosiness/hygge to plan out! Comfort food is a vital part of this.

To start off the 2nd January eating, I ate a toasted sandwich filled with avocado, halloumi, cherry tomatoes seasoned with salt and chilli flakes. All of the main ingredients were from Lidl (love Lidl) except they don’t stock halloumi in my local store any longer by the looks of it. I’m intrigued as to why so….I tweeted Lidl. Crossing my fingers they bring back halloumi.

For late lunch my flat mate (FM) made home-made lentil of vegetable soup. FM is a dream to have as she loves cooking and I love eating. Best combination if ever there was one. As I live in a hygge environment, the lighting is probably a photographer’s worst nightmare.

Before I head back to work tomorrow after a relaxing 4 days off, I have two friends coming round for Thai take-away.  I enjoyed the last one I had (5 days ago) and one of my friends (C) loves the place we are going to order from – Silver Bowl. The 3 of us eat together, whether out or in, regularly, and one of my friends is Thai (S) and her mum is a cook and Thai food is the staple in their home, so we usually give Thai food a wide berth. However, after trying Silver Bowl myself and C raving on about this place S has decided to give western Thai food a try. The main reason we decided on Silver Bowl was because on Friday night last week, C had placed an order on Just Eat and had ordered 2 Thai green curries, one for that evening and the second to have on new year’s day. Sadly, her order was not accepted and this is absolute devastation in our world so to help appease her utter disappointment, I invited the girls round for Silver Bowl. Also, to appease my Silver Bowl craving…

We chose a dish each and I made Thai fragrant rice at home. S had ordered the Penang Gai (dry red curry with coconut milk topped with Thai herbs) but was forgotten in the order. As the take-away was busy and estimated over an hour for the missing dish to reach us, we decided against it. Thankfully, the greediness inside of me had ordered two dishes so there was plenty of food to go round.

In the photo, from top left:

• Mee Gratiem (garlic noodles)
• Pad Ma Kua (stir fried aubergines with holy basil and onions)
• Popiah Jae (spring rolls)
• Gang Dang Goong (red curry with king prawn, coconut milk, bamboo shoots and fresh herbs)
• Gang Kiew Wan Gai (green curry with chicken, coconut milk, aubergines and fresh herbs)
• Gang Kiew Tow Hu (green curry with bean curd and vegetables). This dish is not shown in the photo.

I had chosen the gang kiew wan gai and pad ma kua.

Apart for the missing dish hiccup, the food was just as good and everyone was happy. S even said she would order from there again and gave high praise for replacing authentic ingredients with ingredients that cannot be found in Thailand, and making them work in the dishes.

I was glad to have tried other dishes and the pad ma kua was the favourite out of the whole ensemble.