Pancakes are the new cupcakes!

It’s been a funny old week. The weather doesn’t know what it’s supposed to be doing, it changes its mind so often and I seem to be taking my lead from it.

I sort of binned the diet for a day or two. I had so many cravings and hunger pangs that I was struggling to keep cooking the delicious fresh meals I’ve been so used to and enjoying. Peanuts were one such “need” and not the healthy red skinned peanuts that have so much medicinal value. Oh no. If I have a craving it’s usually for something that is not healthy. I wanted Peanut M&Ms. And chocolate raisins. I couldn’t help myself, I shoved handful after handful into my mouth and enjoyed every crunch, every calorie, every yummy chocolately morsel.

But I’m over that phase now, thankfully it didn’t last long and I’m back to wanting delicious fruit and vegetables.  For my lunch today, I demolished a salad with a variety of seed sprouts and a teeny weeny jacket potato. I also finished off the strawberries from Pancake Tuesday by making a tasty smoothie for breakfast.

I received a phone call from a TV producer who was interested in including my Free Cakes for Kids work in a programme he was making. It all sounded very exciting except for one thing, I haven’t actually started it yet. It’s been on the long finger for a while and I was full of great intentions when I first signed up to do it but I sort of got caught up in other stuff and … ok, I’m making excuses. To cut a long story short, this was the kick up the bum I needed and I have rallied a couple of good friends and we’re meeting tonight to discuss it all.

Being on the telly isn’t something that has ever been an ambition of mine. I didn’t even have a video made of my wedding! I hate my voice and I don’t like to see all my annoying mannerisms on the screen! And there’s also the common belief that television adds 10lbs. So, no thank you 🙂

We had  a great Shrove Tuesday. I made a few sample pancakes for the boys and allowed the pans to cool and they tossed them all over the kitchen. Sam thought it hilarious to bounce his off the ceiling and Corrado’s did a good job of cleaning the floor. I made my usual buttermilk pancakes, which aren’t too calorific, and managed to stop at one for myself. The rest were eaten like the kids were in a race. You’d think I’d starved them for a week!

No one noticed the jam was missing!

Me with my little helpers

Cat pancake

Polar Bear Pancake

And sensible me’s fruity-licious pancake

As you can see, we like to play with our food. Cupcakes are so over – pancakes are the trendy sweet treat! The fruit and sweets were put to good use and we had great fun deciding and creating our masterpieces.  (And yes m’lord, those are the peanut M&Ms and chocolate raisins that committed the crime against my diet).

We made an old favourite last night – Argentinean Style Steak from the Hairy Dieters’ Eat for Life book. I finally found low-fat Halloumi cheese in the supermarket and used 2 slices in place of the steak for my own version. As usual, the chimichurri sauce was a feast of flavours – fresh, sharp and spicy. The cheese wasn’t so good – it was all squeak (as Halloumi does) and no flavour. It didn’t cook as well as it’s higher calorie counterpart, it remained hard all the way through instead of having a soft middle and crispy fried outside.  Next time, I’ll buy the regular version and just cut thinner slices.

Argentinean Style (Halloumi) Steak

And the original recipe, made for hubby with frying steak

Enjoy your weekend everybody!

A beautiful rainbow of colours on a plate on a dull miserable winter’s day

Was having a happy dream about goodness knows what (my dreams are very surreal but I got the feeling I was smiling!) when I got a rude awakening by our 10 year old son who was excited about something the kittens had done. It was 5am! I didn’t open my eyes, it was David’s turn to chase Corrado back to bed. Eventually, after about 4 or 5 more similar interruptions hubby got up and made breakfast. I had my “usual” – crumpets, banana and honey with a cup of green tea. I’m going to have to break that habit, there are much more delicious suggestions on the plan. But it does guarantee that I need no more than a small piece of fruit (and a coffee of course!) to see me through until lunch. How many breakfasts can do that?

We took ourselves out for the day and went to visit Granny and Granda Mullan, via Ballymena, where we stopped for a treat and had lunch at M&S. Sam begged us to go to Subway, he’d live in Subway and eat tuna sandwiches all day everyday, if he was allowed. But he cheered up when he remembered M&S = pasta bolognese. His other favourite! (He has so many!). He ate his own and half of Corrado’s. The boy was hungry.

I was very disappointed with the range of lunches today. The only low-cal sandwiches had ham and chicken and there were no salads without meat or bread either! I settled for an almost harmless egg and cress which was a shocking 340 calories for so little. But I suppose it was lunch and I wasn’t grabbing a bag of crisps or a slice of cake to enjoy after it. My bucket of Americano kept me busy and my hands away from the two giant chocolate chip cookies the 8 and 10 year old child-bins were enjoying.

I resisted a slice of lemon cake and a cherry bakewell at the inlaws’. Wasn’t I being strong?? 😀

I was looking forward to tonight’s dinner, “Vegetable Quorn Stack”. As regulars to this blog know, I don’t eat Quorn. The whole reason for giving up meat in the first place was the texture and taste. Especially chicken, the texture gives me the willies!!  So at the supermarket yesterday I browsed the aisles for an alternative to suggest itself. Halloumi made the first bid for my attention, so into the basket it went.

Vegetables and halloumi stacked and ready for the tomato sauce and feta

The finished meal. Within minutes the plate was empty!

The range of vegetables in the dish sounded lovely – all firm favourites. Sweet potato, aubergine, courgette, red pepper. They were to be cooked in a tomato sauce and the ingredients stacked on the plate with a crumble or two of low-fat feta on top. But, I couldn’t resist changing that around a bit. I chargrilled each circle of the vegetables and stacked it all in a baking dish, starting with aubergine, then sweet potato, courgette and finally the red peppers with the thinly sliced halloumi in between the pepper halves. (Halloumi has twice the calories as Quorn so half the quantity was used, hence “thinly sliced”). The tomato sauce was poured over it and it was baked for a good 15-20 minutes (wasn’t paying attention). The feta (again half the quantity because I couldn’t find a low-fat version) was sprinkled over the top for the last five minutes of cooking.

I enjoyed eating every mouthful of that meal. Nearly licked the plate!

A feast for the eyes – Corrado’s beautiful fruit salad, artfully arranged but less artfully polished off by the three of us (Sam doesn’t do fruit).

And the best bit? Corrado’s wee happy face as he proudly made a beautiful fruit salad for dessert. Such a variety in that bowl – he takes after me and enjoys a variety of colour on a plate. I feel healthier already 😀

Weigh in tomorrow. Groan What will be revealed? My lack of exercise over the last few days is bound to have made an impact but I have been very loyal to my daily calorie count. One day I went 43 calories over, but that shouldn’t matter, should it?

I’ll know tomorrow …

Final pig-out of Christmas 2013

Definitely. No more over indulgence for me. It doesn’t actually feel good at all!

I did have a bit of a bad week, despite my promises to myself to go easy and not eat unless I was hungry (except Christmas Day).

I had the munchies last night, not good. I’d a few glasses of vino as it was Saturday night and that was my undoing – I got peckish. Luckily we didn’t have crisps or other really bad stuff in the house and I wasn’t tempted by the kids’ selection boxes. But I found a bag of pistachios and wolfed down half the packet. I had a wee nibble at the cheese too and some oatcakes.

This was after a lovely dinner, so I had no business being hungry.

Last night I made the Hairy Dieters’ Argentinian steak (Halloumi cheese slices for me) – it’s definitely a firm favourite of both David’s and mine – the fresh herb dressing is so moreish. I didn’t have the frying steak that I normally use, as per recipe, I was using up meat from the freezer – so it was a tuna steak! And I remembered to take a photo of it but not my own – don’t know what I was thinking, was probably too hungry.

In an attempt to use up all the very naughty food (a bit like Shrove Tuesday) I had a croissant for breakfast today. David served it so it was rude to refuse. It went very nicely with the pot of Starbuck’s coffee that came with the hamper my sister, Marion, gave me for Christmas.

But it wasn’t going to be a lazy day – we’d asked the kids last night what they wanted to do today and they voted for a trip to the beach with the BBQ! And why not? It was a lovely sunny winter’s day and the forecast was for rain from this evening and all day tomorrow. Armed with matches, kindling sticks and flasks of soup (to keep us warm while the fire got going) off we went to Brown’s Bay.

David’s favourite thing in all the world is sitting in front of an open fire, preferably an outdoors one where he can happily poke at the embers with a long stick. So we left the fire bug to it and combed the beach for driftwood. There was slim pickings today but we managed to find a few dry-ish fallen branches.

We toasted lots of bread and enjoyed the sound of a bunch/paddling/raft/safe/skein/sore/string/team of ducks. Who knew there were so many collective nouns for a flock (that’s what I was going for but it’s not right apparently) of quacking birds! They paddled up and down the beach, occasionally taking flight when Sam got too near.

Apart from a metal detector enthusiast and the occasional dog walker, we had the place to ourselves. Strange that, an empty beach at the end of December!

After all that fresh air, we were in need of a warming dinner on our return home. I had a bag of baby potatoes so used them to make (oven) wedges, skins on. I had mine with a beetroot salad. David had a rump steak (another freezer find) and the boys had tinned tuna with the bits of salad they like.

Sounds harmless, doesn’t it? BUT! I made a bread and butter pudding too. The panettone, given to us as a gift, was getting stale. Corrado was the only person to enjoy it up until then (it was very dry) so I thought I’d waste-not want-not and add some raisins, custard and mixed spice and bake it. It was delicious – I had quite a big portion too (I’m ashamed to say).

As always, I’m not looking forward to tomorrow – [danger music] Monday weigh-in. I know I’ve gained, I’m not kidding myself with even hoping for a maintenance weight of the same as last week. Bob Hope and no hope.

But the good news is that I’m ready to start again. I’m ready to plan and execute more delicious recipes from my favourite cookbooks – the Hairy Dieters.  I feel better just thinking about it 🙂

 

Adoption, halloumi and Argentinian style steak

Where do I start?

At the beginning, I suppose!

I’ve been hankering after adopting another cat for a while now, but had to convince the other half and get the kids ready for it. Our last beauty, Holly, passed away aged 15, four years ago next week. She was our baby for 13 years, so she was a teeny weeny bit spoilt! Just a few days ago I heard about a litter of kittens needing new homes and made contact with their rescuer. I was under strict instructions to enquire about two – tops!

To cut a long story short, I went up to Ballynure today to see these little bundles of joy and brought Corrado with me.  He has been really sick for 2 days now – grey pallor, not eating and talking like he’s got a whole toilet roll shoved up his nostrils. From the moment I told him about the kittens (when I drove into Catwoman’s drive) he’s had rosy cheeks, been very animated, ate a pie for dinner and has talked non-stop, so much that I had to ask him to “zip it” earlier this evening! But he was feeling fit enough to go to Ju Jitsu, so back to school for him tomorrow morning.

Just got call from Catwoman – she’s bringing the kittens tomorrow and not Monday as discussed! I’m not telling the kids, they will find out at 3.30pm when they tumble off the school bus demanding snacks.

Speaking of snacks, I did OK today in the eating stakes. Not great enthusiasm for the diet, at first, but I recovered.

David decided to do a bit of a “Pepsi Challenge” with porridge. I mentioned that I called upon him to buy some the other evening on way home from work – he did, but decided to buy the usual Quakers Oats and a bag of Tesco own-brand and let me make both up to test him. Since we got married in 1993, we have been faithful to the Quakers brand, we’ve dabbled in posh designer oats but always preferred our Quakers. HOWEVER, I made up own-brand and thought it was a bit knobbly, with some husks in there, but David guessed it was the good stuff!  Wasted on him 😀

Lots of fruit eaten today and this buoyed me up a bit. So my plans to make the Hairy Dieters’ Argentinian-style Steak with Onion and Radish Salad went ahead. Having consulted with @chilliupnorth who made it the other night, I made my veggie version with Light Halloumi.

I wasn’t going to blog tonight, as I am so tired, but David marched me over to the PC to tell the world that this meal was the best he’s had to date since our commitment to weight-loss started! The chimichurri sauce was effortless (thanks to the food processor) and so fresh.

Before I show you the photo, I have to tell you that radishes are not in season in our local Tesco, so I had to improvise, adapt and overcome and substituted the crunchy salad vegetable with mangetout and scallions (spring onions to you heathens out there!).  And I used red onions instead of going through the steeping white onion pallaver – just not enough time! I also added a bit of mixed salad leaves into the prescribed veg mix to make it look more, otherwise I’d have been missing the pre-diet chips!

Halloumi Chimichurri with Onion and Mangetout Salad

I think I’ve been revitalised, so it’s back to being good from now – no more shortcuts. Except I’ve to meet “the girls” tomorrow night to swap our Secret Santa gifts! No doubt there will be much clinking of glasses. Should I stick with maintaining weight rather than losing until after the Christmas feasting?  Probably!

Q: What do you call a pile of kittens?

A: A meowtain!