End of the month salticracks...

I can't wait until the end of the month, can payday possibly be so far away?  I baked cookies on Tuesday night (ridiculous - first time ever!), they weren't bad, I might make them again, you never know, it wasn't as much fun as I thought it would be.  Licking out the bowl was the best part of it...because the rest of the household were sleeping so I didn't even have company.  I was not aware that "vanilla extract" was so bloody expensive!!!  R50??!?!?  For a teeny-tiny little bottle!!  Bloody hell!

Anyway, we braaied today and my dad and Cathy came over (National Braai Day, here we come, how cheesy), so I got my grubby paws on a copy of Jamie Oliver's first (I think) cookbook and decided to make a potato, avo and watercress salad.  I hate, hate, hate following recipes, so the first thing I do is substitute the cress for celery as we don't get cress in SA, so I was happy to substitute something with another item.  I go to the absolutely amazing Spar in Silver Lakes with the really rude cashiers and really polite packers........hold that thought, I need to add something and I'll continue with my story later...

So the cashier rings up the items (not many - maybe 10 or 12 items?) and then barks the amount at me, I hand her my bank card with a smile, chatting to my son all the while and not really paying much attention to the person that clearly hates her job and should be doing something else - like nothing perhaps, and she barks the question: cheque or savings?  I answer her, she bellows at me to type in my pin, I type in my pin (bear in mind that I can be a bit of a chatterbox and my son has a motormouth, so there's non-stop chatting going on here which is a distraction of note for me), then the transaction goes through, the cashier literally flings the slips at me and all of a sudden I've had enough of her attitude and ask her if she's always so bloody rude or if she's just having a bad day.  She looks at me all confused and says "sorry?".  I say again, "are you always downright rude or are you just having a bad day?".  She doesn't even respond and I turn in a huff and flounce out of the store.  This begs the question - DON'T CASHIERS GET CUSTOMER SERVICE TRAINING??  It wasn't bad enough for me to go and list it on Hello Peter, www.hellopeter.com however, I'm going to go there right now and load a complaint about the stinky service that I got from the Pick n Pay in Hillcrest earlier this week.  Their service is ALWAYS up to shit, without fail, but this episode took the cake - go and have a look http://www.hellopeter.com/pick-n-pay-complaint-[324210] ...back to my original story!

 ...and come right with everything except, while I'm there I decide to make a pavlova for dessert and as luck would have it, Spar had no frozen fruit.  Annoying.  I then went to Woolies, nothing on the shelf in the freezer except the lable.  So I go to another Woolies.  Again, nothing.  3rd Woolies, yet again nothing and now I'm really getting annoyed.  I go to Pick n Pay and lo and behold, they have exactly what I need, and plenty of it!  My pavlova was absolutely divine!!!!!  I made a pasta salad and the Jamie Oliver salad.  If I can give you a hint (yes, perhaps I should've figured this one out before I made it, but I always trust Jamie implicity - if I could hand-pick a best friend, he'd be it), the combination of cold potato and lemon juice is, put bluntly, disgusting.  Completely disgusting.  The avo was very nice, the celery was nice, the seasoning I used was great, the lemon was hoooorrrrrrible with the potatoes.  YUCK!!

Til next time, shop like it's going out of fasion!  Enjoy!