Time to target the muffin top

For years I've been eating like I still go to the gym every day, when of course I stopped going not long before TLM was born 11 years ago.

Ice cream, cakes, biscuits (cookies), chippies - damn my sweet tooth and taste for greasies.

Just like it says in just about every bit of literature you'll find about middle age spread, the extra weight has crept up on me and it only hit me a couple of weeks ago that I really have to do something about my "clothes shrinkage".

My bum lift jeans can no longer lift my bum, because they are too tight around the waist. My NYDJ jeans  will still zip up, but it's easy to see that they are having to work a lot harder than only a year ago. And the pretty maxi skirt that fit me just right last summer will no longer button up at the back.

Yep, it is time to do something about it.

A couple hours of Google searching ("lose spare tyre") and three fitness-over-40 type books later, I have settled on a plan of attack:

• I already make sure I go for a walk every day - from here on every other day my walk will be interval-training style. Every time I hit an upward slope I'm going to go up that as fast as I can, then slow down for the flat and downward bits. Interval training is supposed to be good for targeting belly fat.
• Will try to do stretches and mobility exercises...
• I'm going to cut right down on the sweeties and greasies. None at all during the week, but letting myself have a treat or two during the weekend so I don't go postal. This is the bit that I expect will make the most difference.
• I'm keeping a food journal so if I do fall off the wagon, it's all there on paper so I don't forget it.
• I'll only have one between-meal snack mid-morning and another mid-afternoon (rather than whenever I'm bored or slightly hungry)

This only started on Tuesday so it's early days yet. I know that last time I tried to go sugar-free I only lasted a week. But that time, I was motivated only by the desire to be healthier. Fear of falling down the roly-poly black hole is a much stronger motivation for me at the moment. (Okay I also don't want to get Type 2 diabetes.)

Wish me luck!

Three times free - lunches

You may recall that last month I distinguished myself at work by gobbling down three ice creams in one session, outdoing any of my workmates (though to be fair one of them is a vegan and there is only so much popsicle you can suck).

Well today I had the opportunity to do the same with lunches.

The big all-day meeting that had been planned for today, which I was not expected to attend, got cancelled. But the lunch was not cancelled, so all the staff were treated to free lunch.

Unfortunately for me, I had only just eaten my home-made roast pork sandwich (not free-range, but at least the poor animal's suffering was not for nought). But I did my best and heroically chowed down in a piece of ginger crunch and a few slices of tropical fruit

Fully sated by now, I was off to an afternoon meeting - actually the afternoon session of another all-day meeting (one which I had been invited to, but had completely forgotten about) - and arrived just as the other attendees were diving into a yummy looking spread of club sandwiches, chocolate cake, more tropical fruit and cook meats.

But two lunches in a row was all I could handle. If I'd tried sample lunch number three, I would have done a Mr Creosote all over the nice conference room.

It's just as well, as I'm watching my figure.

Saving an egg from a pointless death

I have a problem with throwing away food, especially meat. As far as I'm concerned, some poor animal died so that someone could have steak/pie/meatloaf or whatever for dinner - so it seems wrong to discard perfectly edible meat (or let it go off and then have to discard it).

Plus, in good traditional Chinese fashion, I was raised to eat everything in my bowl (or on my plate) because there are starving people in the next village or whatever.

And that's why, when I bought a potato salad for lunch yesterday and then discovered it was dressed in eczema-exacerbating egg pieces, I ate it anyway. Though I did try to scrape off eggy-looking substances from my potato chunks first.

And then I spent the rest of the day being very very itchy.

Thankful for accidental protection

Last night the boy wanted to get some takeaways for dinner, so we had some lamb rogan josh delivered. But I'd had a couple of cream-filled brandy snaps (the boy does like to spoil me with yummy junk food), so I wasn't that hungry.

So I did the sensible thing, which was to eat half of my lamb rogan josh and pack the rest away for my lunch tomorrow. (Never mind that, an hour later, I was hungry again and munching on toast and leftover roti).

I put it in one of those sealable plastic boxes that takeaways come in, inside a supermarket bag for extra protection - so it wouldn't stain the inside of my nice work bag.

Only, when I took it out at lunchtime, I was horrified to discover that the oily brown sauce had leaked through the plastic bag. Oh no! I gingerly ran my hand over the lining of my bag, anticipating the slosh of grease on my fingers. But I didn't feel anything. So I shrugged, thanked the gods for small miracles and went to put my lunch in the microwave oven.

It wasn't until the end of the day, when I was reached into my bag for my spare packet of lozenges, that I noticed the discoloration on one side of the green Fisherman's Friend packet. It was slightly oily and golden brown colour.

Slime in, cake out

I made a banana cake today; it was my first attempt. The over-ripe bananas which had been put aside in the freezer for the big day were dug out, microwaved and peeled. They were slimy and surprisingly elastic, and mashing them was harder work than I'd expected. But the end result was still really yummy and moist.

It was also really, really easy to make (apart from the banana-mashing) - even for me. Here's the recipe, which I found on the Internet:

Quick egg-free Banana Cake

2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp egg replacer
½ cup melted dairy free margarine
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 cup mashed banana
1 cup milk (rice, soy etc)

1. Sift and mix dry ingredients.
2. Add wet ingredients and mix until smooth.
3. Bake 40 -50 minutes at 190°C.

TLM liked it too, but the boy is probably waiting to see whether I suffer any delayed stomach upset from the big wedge I ate a couple of hours ago.

It's a baking crisis

It'll be TLM's happy-last-day at her current daycare, in less than two weeks. In that time I have to think of a present to get for the daycare (perhaps one of those Babette Cole books?) and make a cake for them all to celebrate with.

One of the other kids there has a dairy intolerance, so I thought I'd use the vinegar cake recipe (it's also known as depression cake - hopefully not because there's not enough chocolate in it to make you feel good) because it's dairy-free and egg-free (so I can eat some too). I was planning to make cup cakes from the recipe, and decorate them with M and Ms.

There's a hitch though. TLM doesn't like the test cake I made advance. It might possibly be because she's got that gastro-enteritis that's currently making the rounds amongst the local young. But maybe not, because the runny tummy really did not put TLM off eating her chocolate flavoured Blue's Clues yoghurt (which isn't even really yoghurt, by the way).

I can't make a cake for TLM that she won't even eat, right?
So does anyone have a kiddie-friendly non-dairy cupcake recipe, that doesn't require exotic ingredients or an electric mixer?

Slow cooking

I reckon I'll get myself a slow cooker/crockpot. The idea of chucking a few ingredients into the pot in the morning and having a cooked meal by the time I return home, really appeals to me. There is the danger though, of ending up with a nightly stew that tastes the same regardless of what goes in, like the stew we used to make in the billy back in my tramping (hiking) days. But I'll arm myself with some recipes from the Internet and the library, and perhaps a truckload of Maggi Cook-in-the-pot sachets as well.

Because we are having way too many ready meals at the moment.

Quick food meme

Angela has tagged me for this one.

Rules:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them)
4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

1. I am allergic to chicken, eggs, the moulds in blue cheeses, and carrots. I really miss roast chicken and toast dipped in poached egg yolk (not all at the same time).

2. I don't cook well, which surprises people who know my mum but don't know me well, because my mum is famous for her fabulous cooking, in the Chinese community.

3. Some things just smell better than they taste. This is why I stopped bothering with fruity teas and pizza (again, not at the same time).

4. Eating an apple actually makes me hungrier. So I tend to only eat them just before a meal.

5. I don't get why people feel that cooked rice grains should be separated. What's wrong with rice that sticks together a bit?

I tag:
1. the lovely Nigel Patel at Handmade Luck,
2. Daddy L, who makes fun of his wee son in The Jasper Chronicles,
3. the intellectually impressive Make Tea Not War,
4. Satsumasalad/cathi, who tells it like it is via The View From My Window,
5. and the ever-clever Elizaf , from whom I hope to one day get an IT job if we ever have to relocate to London.

ants in my lunch

Just now, as I was making my Nutella sandwich, I noticed tiny little ants crawling around the inside of the jar top. Then I peered into the jar itself, and sure enough, there were tiny little ants crawling around on the Nutella. How the hell did they sneak in? I always, always keep the jar firmly lidded.

So anyway, I put the jar aside for disposal. But I couldn't see any ants in my sandwich, so I decided to eat it anyway. Is that really yucky?

Strange tastes

I was accidentally watching Survivor: China the other night (as you do), when the unfortunate contestants were doing a Fear Factor with the local food. Chicken hearts.

Many of those people looked as though they shouldn't be quite so unfamiliar with the idea of eating those li'l blood pumps, because they looked Asian and surely their own parents had tried to force such delicacies down their throats at some stage in their lives. And boy, do I know how that feels.

I've been forced to eat lambs brains in soup. I've been fed sheeps' tongues (voluntarily, I'll admit - at least until I saw the picture on the tin). I've even had to dine on pet pigeons (at least, my brother and I thought they were our pets). I've eaten fish eyes, chicken's necks and chicken's gizzards.

But I still can't bring myself to enjoy mouldy blue cheese.

In which I show myself to be an utter piggy wiggy

To celebrate the boy's birthday, we went out for a nice dinner last night. I'd actually tried to book a table at his favourite restaurant, The Great India, but apparently they won't take bookings for twosomes for Saturday nights. It must be all the large groups of Give-me-yer-hottest-curry folk who, having drunk the pubs dry, need to fill their stomachs with something challenging.

So we went to The Recovery Room, which used to be the hardly-missed Malo, and before that the very-much-missed John Street Grill.

When I eat out, dessert is pretty much compulsory, so I told the boy I intended to skip the starters and just order a mains and a dessert. But the boy insisted that we both get starters, because he had his eye on the scallops with the black pudding pancakes.

So, against my better judgement, I ordered the selection of warm breads - 6 thick slabs! - with olive oil and a nutty dip.

(FYI, the boy's main was an excitingly-described lamb rump with roast potatoes. Both it and the scallops caused him to roll his eyes back in ecstasy. I had the intriguing chocolate pasta with grilled haloumi bits, a very "meaty" vegetarian dish which I couldn't finish 'cos it was too rich.)

And after all that, I still wanted dessert. This wasn't anything to do with physical hunger, oh no. It was the call of the creme brulee accompanied by almond biscotti and raspberry sorbet.

Yummy as it was though, I was too full to do it justice. I really didn't want our romantic dinner to be marred by digestive failure (again).

The boy playfully admonished me for not cleaning my plate.

"I knew I should've just ordered main and dessert", I retorted. "It's your fault for making me order a starter".

"Yeah but you only ate half of it" he replied.

"It was a starter for two!". (Okay, maybe you had to be there.)

All in all, it was a lovely evening out, despite the icy winds and the unexpected rain (possibly because I'd had the foresight to wear my hooded sheepskin coat - the boy however, got a little wet and cold around the ears). The boy can be difficult to please when it comes to eateries, so it was nice when he announced it as being "pricey but really good". My own opinion would be "Good, but pricey".

Grocery revelations

While I wondered around the supermarket with two packets of incontinence pads in my basket (they weren't for me, and anyone who implies otherwise will get one of my withering looks), I wondered what people would assume if they saw me with those items.

Do people still check each other out at supermarkets? 'Cos I bet they'd check out what's in other people's shopping baskets, for indications of desirability.

If I were a single woman looking for love in the aisles, would I be turned off if the handsome man in up ahead picked up a six-pack of pre-made meat pies to go with his ready-made pizzas? Would I have been more willing to smile flirtatiously at him if I'd seen him loading up with gourmet delicacies instead? Or would that mean he's probably gay?

I think I'd feel more confident reading someone's bookshelf.