Rain, rain go away.

...come back another day. Thank you for listening! Today they predicted showers, and we were given sunshine enough that I could go outside in the garden without a coat on, excellent weather! Thank you March! Highs of up to 19c in my area this month, though the highest we have seen is 16. I haven't seen any night frosts, but do not trust planting things out until mid-April at least. Juuust in case.

Lunch was Muller lite with Dorset Cereals honey granola. Delicious as always. So delicious I ate it, then remembered about the photo. Oops! Unfortunately this happened twice today, with breakfast and lunch. I remembered about lunch AFTER I had eaten my cheese toastie, but before I ate my banana and clementine, so a bad picture it is...

Cheesy!

I had a couple of slices of Danish bread with about 30g of the low fat cathedral city cheese. Once again this low fat cheese was a real winner for me, tasting just as good!

The rest of the afternoon was spent outside in the garden weeding in between paving slabs - oh joy. But it will look so much better when done. I've come to hate dandelions and their roots of doom. Which always break. And always leave JUST enough to grow again.

Weed death hands!

After the weeding, came the watering of my items under cover - under Victorian bells and cloches - the lettuces, radish and carrots. Then...this sort of happened...

A little soggy.

How? Well, um...

Yaaagggh!

Looks like he hates it, right? Total abuse! I think Wolfhounds are constantly hot, even in the winter in a heated house. So a douse down with the hose is a great game in Aragorn's eyes. He goes absolutely crazy, but it is much fun.

Dinner was tacos. For the first time...ever. I have honestly never had tacos before. They have only just started to become known over here, along with other Mexican foods like Burritos, Fajitas and the like. We aren't big, at all, on Mexican food in this country. Though Spanish, which can be similar, is more popular. they were pretty good! I loved the mixture of textures and flavours. But had to add lots of chilli to heat mine up a bit ;).

Serve 'em up.

Finally, the day was finished with a big fruit salad - consisting of honey dew melon, mango, strawberries, grapes, raspberries and banana. It was, of course, delicious.

Delicious, fruiti...ness.

That is the serving bowl, I ate half of it, not all :P. The day would have been perfect, but sadly D was rather ill, enough to keep her off work. She spent half the day in bed worrying about letting work down, poor thing.

Sunday, oh sunday.

I used to HATE Sundays. Sunday meant back to school the next day for the longest time for me, even after I was well done with school. I think it is only the past few years I've come to accept the fact I don't have to go to school on Monday morning! College was all fine for me, but school was rather cruddy, hence my fear of Sunday came about.

Thankfully, I have come to accept Sunday as a much better day as I've gotten older - sure it is the last day of the weekend, but you still have a whole day. I do love the relaxation that comes with a Sunday, in comparison to a busier Saturday. In the spring, summer and autumn this means gardening, fresh meals that take longer to prepare (the kitchen isn't freezing!), long walks somewhere different with the pup and relaxing.

A Sunday at home with my parents, for me, meant a roast dinner in the early afternoon, country music radio station (thanks mum!) and a supper of tea and toast, by the fire in winter as we watched Lovejoy (I watched and loved a show about an antique dealer when I was a kid, what does that tell you?).

Today was started with fruit, D demonstrates the correct (see: easier) way to peel a banana.

What is this contraption?!

I did NOT know you peeled it 'upside down' until I read about it recently. Apparently you will never see a primate attempt to peel a banana any other way, and it really is so much more simple. As silly as that may sound.

After that the morning was spent being rather lazy and not doing much at all, come lunch time I decided to make up a yummy tortilla pizza. Discovering I had no ripe pineapple or ham D kindly went out to get pineapple from the local shop, and I improvised with the ham, cutting a good chunk off of a gammon I had cooked for dinner. Of course, food attracts animals, and how could I resist this face?

I'll take it sooooo gently and slowly, you won't even NOTICE.

The tortilla pizzas were delicious as always. I decided to try switching to a lower fat cheese. I love, love, love cheese. Mature cheddar especially.  I always normally buy Cathedral City, I noticed while last shopping that they had a low fat version of their cheese, with 33% less fat. Now - I'm the first to admit it 'diet' cheese often tastes like rubber due to the loss of fat (even if it has the same amount of protein or calcium which is good!). Heck. I can't even switch from semi-skimmed milk to skimmed. But hey, it was on offer, I'll give it a go. Checking its info I also noticed it has more protein then the normal cheese, can't be a bad thing!

Deliciousness on a tortilla.

I was really, really pleasantly surprised! It was only half way through my tortilla pizza that I remembered I was eating low fat cheese - a win then! I tried a piece without cooking it too, and it tastes pretty much the same.

Tortilla pizzas are so simple to make, and you can mix them up however you like. I've managed to get both my sister and mum addicted to them too!

Tortilla Pizza

- One tortilla wrap, fajita sized unless you wish to share.

- Tomato puree (or any sort of pizza/tomato sauce - or anything else, BBQ, whatever you like!)

- 40g cheese - I use cheddar, but you could use mozzarella or anything you prefer.

- Fry light

- Toppings of your choice. I use onions, peppers, sweetcorn, ham and pineapple.

Preheat oven to 190C (375F). While waiting for oven to heat up, prepare all of your chosen veggies and fruits for the topping and grate your cheese. Spray a cookie sheet with a good mist of fry light. 

Once oven has heated, place tortilla on cookie sheet and place in oven for about four or five minutes. Take it out of the oven once the edges seem a little crispier (sometimes large bubbles of air appear in the tortilla, this is normal, just press them down), do keep an eye on it as you don't want it too crispy yet.

Remove from oven and flip on to its other side, you shouldn't need to add more fry light. Spread with your sauce of choice all over the top and add 2/3 of the cheese. Add your toppings and finish with the remaining cheese.

Allow to cook for about ten minutes.

And that is all there is to it. simple and pretty quick for a hot lunch or dinner. 

Sunday afternoon was spent chilling and playing with the dog, until he got tired and demanded sleep. Then it was house clean up time. Wolfhounds are such lazy dogs, he would rather sleep to be honest, heh.

I decided to make a dessert for after dinner. Rarely do we have desserts, but I guessed the odd dessert is no different from an evening snack, as long as it is a relatively healthy one, with the odd naughty one here and there. I followed a recipe I found in a Slimming World magazine (I get it just for the recipes). For a healthier version of an apple crumble.

So while prepping and making dinner, I had the crumble on the go too.  Forgive the flash in the following photos, it was late in the day due to having being busy with the sorting of the house.

Mm, apples.

The recipe was very simple. For two people I used three granny smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced. Two clementines, which I juiced in to a saucepan and added two thick peels to the juice. 4 tbsps of water, 2 tbsps splenda (or sugar or other sugar substitutes), one cinnamon stick, one tsp cinnamon (because I love it) and a couple of cloves. Add it all to the pan, simmer for 10-15 minutes till apples soften. Remove cloves, peel and cinnamon stick and place in a small over proof dish. Smash up or whizz in food processor four low fat digestive type biscuits (I used weight watchers oat cookies)  and sprinkle over top. Place in oven for about 20 minutes at 200c.

So sweet!

May not look like much, but it tasted lovely. When it comes to apple pie and apple crumble my favourite part is the soft, sweet apples - so I didn't miss the pastry topping.

Dinner was simple, gammon and pineapple. I had beetroot on the side with mine, and a couple of asparagus (my first time trying them) which D insisted I tried with butter (actually 'I Can't Believe its Not Butter Light'). I didn't enjoy the gammon sadly, but D mmmed the whole way through, so it must have just been not to my tastes. The asparagus was good, but the beetroot, as always, was utterly delicious. I could eat pounds of it, if I physically could anymore ;).

Spheres of delicious.

Nut Butters

A rather fun day today indeed! Ended up waking up very late due to a rather exhausting week, sadly missed breakfast. Having arranged to go in to town today with D the late morning was spent getting ready and working out exactly what we needed to get while in town. Deciding lunch was the first thing on the agenda, we decided to go for something rather old school and comforting for a treat as we hadn't been back in so long - Wimpy!

A bean massacre on D's plate!

D opted for 'chicken chunks' and chips with baked beans. I went for a bacon and cheese burger and chips. Only managing the burger. I ate the bacon on its own like a weirdo, hence the rejected fat in the background, delicious, heh. I picked at about 5 or 6 chips and realized I should have just got the burger and stole chips from D, ah well!

Naughtily refuelled, nonetheless refuelled we went about town and got what we needed, and a few extras. Popping in to Holland and Barrett where I bought some different Nut Butters to try - Almond, Cashew and Hazelnut, along with some fruit leathers, pistachios and Japanese rice crackers.

Totally nuts!

After a good five hours of shopping and browsing we finished the day with a drink and snack at Caffe Nero. D had never been to Nero's before and not realizing quite what it was ended up with a Caramel Latte Special. In which I explained to her when she came to sit down included REAL whipped cream (not the aerosol stuff) and syrups.

Always time for tea!

Needless to say she preferred it over Starbucks and loved the quality of the coffee. The whipped cream helped of course ;). Always a tea girl, despite liking a coffee now and then, I went for the tea. We both tried a small serving of one of their cakes. I tried the Sicilian Lemon Cheesecake, and D tried Tarte De Nero - a soft cheese, chocolate and nut tarte. Both were delicious!

I couldn't help myself buying a new pair of shoes too, after managing to loose one of my other pair of wedges in this style, someone I lost one shoe. This pair were cheap and eyeing me, so I had to have them.

Comfy and pretty shoes!

Along with that I managed to get SEVEN food magazines for £6! These are normally £3-£5 PER magazine! Due to them being on a market stall and 'out of date' by out of date they means February-March of this year. Craziness. I can't wait to read through them all for some new recipes I hope. I'm terrible, no respect for my magazines, I just yank out the recipes I like and toss the rest after reading it.

On returning home D took monster pup out for a walk while I dealt with the delivery from Sainsbury's. As neither of us drive yet we get our groceries delivered by the supermarket, which suits us perfectly as it means no being tempting by all the deals that you otherwise wouldn't even notice!

I had to laugh and take a photo of our rather small fridge trying to cope with all the fresh produce I tried to pile in to it. I had to give up and use a large mixing bowl as an impromptu fruit bowl, and this didn't even include the other three melons and potatoes. We also picked up two punnets of asparagus and a small bag of new potatoes for £1 in town!

Grooooan, squeak, crash!

Not quite cake batter.

I know fruit CAN be expensive, but it is so much more worth it then packaged snacks which can be just as expensive. I buy intelligently, buying more of the in-season fruits and veggies, taking advantage of offers and always buying loose fruit and vegetables where possible, often saving 20pence or more per item bought, just for the fact they aren't in a sealed bag. Suits me!

To finish the day, after remembering to set the clocks forward after being reminded by a website (oops!) D and I decided to try ones of the nut butters. Choosing the almond first as I had heard good things about it, we tried it on a piece of danish bread - Aragorn the pup kindly finished the rest of the slice for us - he has a thing for bread!

Very edible.

It was really good! A slight flavour difference, and not as salty as peanuts. I loved the tiny little chunks in it, and felt it had a really nice flavour. I can't wait to try the hazelnut butter, but will stick with the almond since it is open.

All in all, a great day!

New Life!

Started the day with a rather yummy yogurt and granola. I like these with fruit too, but was sadly lacking due to having run out of the fruit I like in it. Yay for a delivery from Sainsbury's tomorrow.

Mmm, pecan!

After lunch I remembered to fill my 2-litre bottle with Squash. I always try and keep a washed out, clean 2-litre bottle in the fridge with squash. Normally orange flavour or apple and blackcurrant. But always Robinson's no sugar added, I really think they make the best squash.

Not neat squash, promise!

 A rather normal morning for me, working and wishing I could be out in the lovely sun we have been having these past few days. Typically it is meant to turn cooler tomorrow, the weekend of course. I was so hoping for a couple more lovely warm days to get out in the garden and get some weeding done, but there you go. Weekend luck!

Lunch was a rather delicious, but simple event. Toast, no added salt/sugar baked beans and a delicious poached egg. I'm still getting used to the 'photos of everything!' and remembered to take a photo after I had already started to eat, oops!

Yes, they do taste delicious together!

For the best and easiest poached eggs, I boil just enough water to cover the eggs. Cracking them in to a bowl before I add to the pot. Right before adding once the water is at a rolling boil (the eggs cool the water back to a simmer) I add a tablespoon of vinegar (any kind!) to the water and swirl it round vigourously, before adding the eggs. The vinegar and swirling water results in neat eggs which keep their yolks and don't spread out a lot. Delicious.

After lunch it was time to check on the veggies growing in my kitchen, peas;

Petit pous!

and peppers;

Growth spurt!

They've had a growth spurt since the sun appeared, and it was time to pot them on. They are a mixture of sweet peppers (yolo wonder and Californian) and hot (bird eye, cayenne and Tabasco). Also time to get my sweetcorn planted in time for planting out in mid-spring. 

Organized of course

Rising Sun and Headstart are the corn varieties I picked. As you can see I use peat pots, which are bio-degradable pots which break down when added to the earth outside, which means no root disturbance. I use a heated, windowsill propagator for things that need a headstart indoors. I do not have a greenhouse, but would love one!

There is a problem when it comes to my windowsill propagator and my kitchen being south facing and the only place in the house to put the plants though...

Of course I'm allowed up here, why do you ask?

That thing. Cat red-pawed on the counter top! Meet Mozart, D's infamous choice of cat. He is...fun. Mozart is a Sphynx, a naturally hairless cat, also known as Canadian Hairless cat. He is the naughtiest, and dumbest cat I have ever known or met. His naughtiness has no boundaries. He breaks things for fun and then waits for your reaction, staring at you. His most recent thing, was eating all my onion and pea plants, killing them all. That I had been growing since early January and were growing so well.  A headache of a cat! The reason doors must ALWAYS be closed in my house.

On to dinner, I decided to make a curry from scratch. I generally will use a Patak paste to save time but today I had the time to make the curry from scratch. Knowing it would be too dark to get a good photograph of dinner complete (and curry being hard to photograph)I thought a photo of the prep with all ingredients would be nice instead.

A photo after the onion-induced tears stopped!

I decided to make a Madras as it happens to be my favourite curry. The little cubes you can see behind the onion are frozen chilli, garlic and ginger cubes. So very convenient!

The problem with curry is it smells so delicious so early on. Really, really delicious. My stomach was rumbling after an early lunch and a late dinner taking ages to cook, so decided to finally try the new flavour of Mikado I bought several weeks ago to try.

I want them again, please?

I ended up eating the whole box while cooking dinner! Ooops! But at 11 calories a stick it wasn't too bad. These were DELICIOUS. They are basically repackaged 'Pocky'. Biscuit sticks dipped in chocolate or other flavours. These were dipped in chocolate with chopped hazelnuts. So good, so moreish!

Dinner was complete later at night, forgive the flash and the badly presented plate, I was hungry and couldn't be bothered to get the daylight lamps!

ARGH, flash!

It was a success, really, very delicious!

Gotta love vouchers!

I started today with breakfast. Breakfast of CHAMPIONS, but a breakfast at least. Better to have something, then nothing at all, right?

Sprinkled!

I had one doughnut left, it was sitting there, looking at me. So I ate it before it could start to judge me ;).

Today has been a marginally more relaxed day, catching up with work bits mainly, along with helping D by taking photos of each page of her comic (in rough) as we do not have a scanner, so she can put them on to the computer and work her magic with them.

Lunch was relatively uneventful, but full of delicious.

Never enough cheese, sadly.

Peanut butter (I use whole earth organic - just peanuts and a little oil), seedless raspberry jam sandwich. Alongside a little cheddar cheese and a granny smith apple (tiny apple, and not from my tree, that's for sure!). Satisfying and with a small punch of protein and there is the fruit, at lunch time again, making up for lack of veg this lunch time.

I brushed up the monster dog for his walk. D takes him each day, and I join them more days then not. Generally missing out on days where I am making a more complicated dinner that needs watching - hoping to do that tomorrow with a fresh curry. On the weekdays, he enjoys a walk around a local park - a small one nearby and he spends his entire time sniff, sniff, sniffing - he is a typical male hound. On weekends we like to mix it up a bit as the weather begins to become nicer - the moors and woods, or on fine days a trip to a village through a very lovely scenic route. Or down to the castle which has a good park. I'm looking forward to D learning to drive, so we can get him in the car for visits to the beach and other larger woods. Can't wait!

Hurrrryyyy uuuuppp!

He uses a 'halti, as he never recognizes his strength, he is perfect off the lead but needs encouraging to heel on the lead, and this works very well for him, even if he thinks it sucks. Once we get to the park though, so much to sniff and investigate! He generally is less interested in other dogs, and avoids people unless he knows them, a different story to in the house, where he mauls people with LOVE.

Gonna get yoooou

After we took Aragorn for a walk we decided to use a 50% off voucher at a local Harvester restaurant.I wasn't expecting to go out again today, but I did appreciate it after the busy day. D had 'firecracker prawns' to start. I've never liked prawns, but once again I tried them in hopes of liking them this time? No such luck! The Harvester has a salad bar which you can go up to as many times as you like. I only went up once, but had a heck of a lot of beetroot, yum!

Ew, prawns.

D on the other hand loved them. Whiiiich suited me to be honest. For your main, you pick a grill (such as chicken, fish, steak etc), then you pick a sauce (things to choose from like piripiri, garlic and chilli, gravy etc) and a side. D chose steak, no sauce and seasoned chips for her side. I went with chicken, explosive piripiri sauce and the seasoned chips too.

Not Nandos!

 The chips were...sweet tasting? Not very nice, and I generally only have a couple, so they were left. The corn was nicely grilled, as was the chicken. The sauce wasn't 'explosive' spice wise, but was ok, if a little sweet. I think I ate about three quarters of it. To the side you can see a sneaky bowl of beer battered onion rings. I let D have one, and ate the remaining four - they were pretty good, nice not to have the horrible frozen ones with mushed up onion inside that so many resturants serve these days.

Finally, I couldn't resist a last little shot of the butter pat we were provided with...

Incase you forget.

Just in case there was any doubt in your mind. Real dairy butter contains milk of all things!

What a mix up.

Not the best of days, my wonderful grandma is very ill. I've been helping my parents out by looking after her since last year so they can go out now and again, even if it is just for some grocery shopping. Today was going to be one of those days, so my parents could grocery shop and what not. On arriving just before 11, they were waiting for a district nurse, to cut a long story short no one turned up until nearly 5, my mum missed her appointment, but I hung around so they could do the grocery shop.

I missed breakfast again, but did get to have a quick check about in the garden while the cleaning of monster presents happened. Checking on my little Sparkler Radishes I'm rather happy, they seem to be growing happily too, having only being planted a few days ago. What with the lettuce growing too, I'll soon have a salad ready for early summer/late spring, yum!

Tiny!

I also couldn't help but snap a quick photograph of the quintessential spring bulb, the great big, yellow daffodil. Mid spring really has arrived when the huge trumpet flowers open. Sometimes their sunny colour makes up for the overcast day. Love them.

Sunshine flower.

While at my parents my mum made sandwiches. Wiltshire ham and Branston Pickle on a seeded wholemeal for me. Not much to look at perhaps, but so good to eat, and so simple.

Nom.

Indie, my parents cat, was rather obsessed with a hairclip I had that day, alternatively trying to steal it from my head (I wouldn't notice, right?) and pretending to totally not be interested and be adorable by treading the table in front of me and demanding strokes and cuddles. Indie is actually the mother of one of my lovely kitties, and much to my mums happiness has come first in each contest she has been entered in to. She is a beautiful cat - one of her sons is a grand champion at barely a year old.

You can't resist my powers of cute! Gimme your clip now!

 After that me entire day was spent at my mums. I was relieved and pleasantly surprised and happy when D suggested we eat in town to save me from making dinner very late in the day. Also surprising me with tickets for a film (Limitless - pretty good! Better then I expected anyway). We decided China Blue was on the cards, sharing Dim Sum, Spring rolls, crispy duck and a noodle dish. It was delicious as always. I've only been there four times and never been let down.

Went home and craaashed. What a day.

More sun please!

Well, I never thought I'd be saying this, but more sun would be absolutely gorgeous! Something I've learnt to enjoy now that I've lost so much extra weight is to enjoy every season. Winter and Autumn will probably still be my favourite months (even if getting cold is a big deal for me now!) but I do enjoy the sun more and enjoy the fact that there is more to do around and about outside.

Spring is most definitely here in the South East of England, which I'm glad of. These past couple of years growing my own fruit and vegetables is something I've wanted to do, and with some trial and error I've grown some very nice autumn carrots, radishes, spring onions, normal onions and garlic. Ok, so the garlic totally failed. I also have two apple trees, both are very young (4 and 5). The four year old is doing perfectly, giving me 12 huge apples last year, the five year old is tiny and has had no fruit yet. I'm hoping a more gentle prune last autumn will help it this year. One apple would be fine! I know they are within the same pollunation groups - that is why I chose it. A Discovery to pollinate the very happy Granny Smith.

This morning I checked on the garden as usual while clearing up after monster dogs presents.

Me? Pffft.

I'm rather glad I did to, as the lettuce seeds I planted a few days ago (Paris Island Cos) had decided to explode in to life underneath my very cheap indeed Victorian bell style cloches. Not much to see yet, but still rather exciting. I haven't grown lettuce before, and was surprised to learn that they are very hardy, though less surprised to see direct sunlight, all day, makes them unhappy.

Surprise!

I've also learnt lettuce is really easy to overseed, due to the size of the seeds. Oh well, I'll prick the wekeast ones out early as, as I cannot help feeling sad for the little ones having to be pulled out. Yes, I'm rather sentimental. Can't help it though! I almost cried when one of my cats ate all my pea plants. Thanks Mozart!

I have three cloches seeded with lettuce, so I'm hoping to maybe get six good sized lettuces. The cloches will stay on till they are bigger, then I will be using cut off 2-litre bottles to protect them, as my garden seems to attract every slug in the south east of England. I wish I had toads or hedgehogs, but my garden is much too small for a pond and has no natural features hedgehogs might like - even if the slug buffet would suit them!

Breakfast was missed due to waking too late today, what a fail. But lunch was quick and easy, aaaand from a can. Delicious. Mulligatawny soup (literally translated as 'pepper water', a curried beef and rice style of brothy soup) and a couple of slices of 50/50 (white wholemeal) bread.

Not quite Balti.

Distinct lack of fruit and vegetables unless you count the tomato based soup. I made up for with edamame and onion with my dinner and fruit throughout the day. Dinner had no photograph, but it was a rather delicious homemade lasagne with homemade oven chips (my first made with potato!) and thr edamame. D has got me in to using low fat cottage cheese as the white sauce of the lasagne, and not only is it yummy and cheesy, but not so many wasted nutrients, plus a small protein punch - can't complain!

Other then that, it was just work as usual today, smile for the camera, Pups!

Cheeeeeese!

Time to start again.

Third times a charm hmm? I guess this will be basically for myself, to keep a track of what I am making and eating, what I'm doing and gardening fun along with being able to take photos. Sounds good to me!

No attempts of taking photos of all, just taking photos of interesting things instead, and why not?

Got to keep up my healthy habits and not fall in to any bad ones, which would be so easy!