Coconut Green

Today's Green Smoothie - quite nice if I do say so.

rainbow chard - stem removed
cavallo nero - stem removed
baby spinach
1 red gala apple
1 buerre bosc pear
2 celery sticks
1 nice fat Shepard avocado
juice of 1 lemon
a big whack of grated ginger
1 350ml bottle of Nudie Coconut water (currently mad about this stuff - Max loves it too!)
a splash more chilled water to make it pourable

The next 60 Days

Having completed my first ever 60 Day Challenge. I suppose that the next question is what to do with the next 60 days?

Well.... I have absolutely loved going to class 5 - 6 times a week, so I'm keeping it up. The only down side is that it cuts into the lunching I can do - but that does have it's own benefits. I love the green smoothies so they stay too. And the low carb diet is a winner too - I'm not sticking religiously to the PLAN but see no reason to return to my pre-60 Day Challenge carbohydrate consumption patterns which were, I think it fair to say, responsible for gluing those last few kilos of baby weight to my limp unresisting body.

Oh, in other news I've discovered this thing called SlimPasta from Woolworths in the health food section, you can also get it as konyakku noodles from the japanese section at Wing & Co. It has practically no carbs, bugger-all calories and is made out of food. We've been having it with chicken stir fry. I'll do an in depth post on it the next time I cook it. The main thing to remember is to rinse it well to start with and make sure you swoosh it around in your sauce for a while so it soaks up some flavour.

Ciao for now!

The Miao Strikes Back

Dear Reader,

I have to apologise for having dropped off the face of the planet. Unforseeable personal circumstances have until just now robbed me of the will to write. But I am back like the nineties so watch out. I have been inspired by Tori's bon mots about the end of her 60 Day Challenge - I feel that I too must report.

Without getting into the nitty gritty I am happy to confess that I am in pants that haven't seen my bum since I was 30. My sister, my hairdresser, and my facialist (all irritatingly honest people) have all commented favourably on the new svelter me. I feel fantastic. I went from being one of the people in the class who snorted at the suggestion that her legs would ever do "that" to twisting them around like nobody's business. I'm flexible! Unbelievable! I'm more flexible through the sides, legs and hips than when I was a teenager and my shoulder mobility has nearly returned to pre-office job factory settings - all the better for piggy-backing toddlers.

THANKYOU MISS C AND THE BARRECODE CREW! My husband owes you a debt of gratitude - if you see him on the door of a party or event somewhere, make him let you in for free. Tell him that he owes you for my bum!

xMM

Salsify!

At some point in the next day or two I am going to try a Plan-appropriate variation on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Salsify Fritters for breakfast (see here). I'm just giving you a bit of notice so you have time to look up salsify and avoid feeling as ignorant as me - Stephanie, for once, is silent on the topic. I bought some this morning at the Farmer's Market. I'd heard of it before (maybe from my chef cousin, I'm fairly sure it's not the sort of thing that comes up in polite conversation) and thought I'd give it a go. Although the oyster-flavour description and gosh-its-big-in-Belgium almost dissuaded me. So I promise recipe, pictures and reviews.

Confession time - I missed my Thursday 6am class. I forgot to set my alarm. I slept in until a glorious 7.15am and I didn't remember until about 5.30pm. Completely mortified. I would like to apologise to all the people I not-so-silently rubbished for cancelling late or failing to turn up to a class. I will serve my salsify fritters with humble pie. And I ate half a fried potato last night. It looked at me funny.

Ciao for now.

Kylie to the rescue!

Thanks Miss C for the Kylie. ;-)

From the beach to the Barre

I apologise, Dear Reader, for my delay in returning to my blog. I was a little afraid that after a week away from the Barre that I may have lost all that I had gained and, somewhat more ominously, regained all that I had lost. I am happy to report that neither in fact happened! Stretchy Friday did not find me as inelastic as a really inelastic thing. And I did not cry at all during or after my first Barre class proper on Saturday (regardless of Bonita's best intentions of punishing all who go on holidays). The scales did not groan or gasp despite the prodigious amount of carbohydrates I consumed (sourdough.... pasta.... icecream.... well anyway you get the picture).

So now I am officially back on track for the sprint through Paris. No more lapses! No more victim mentality towards lovely baked potatoes. I am stronger than baked potatoes. I am woman! Hear me Baaaaarrre! Oh wait that's a terrible slogan. Scratch that.

Lunch today - variation on tuna and white bean salad, I added some sicilian olives. Lovely!

Ciao for now!

Out of Office Reply

I am on holiday. We have retreated to the beach. It's best not to dwell on the things that I am eating. I'm sure it's all being balanced out by swimming in the sea and lugging a struggling toddler around small country towns.

101 reasons to love the Barre - 2

I've been adding songs to a Barre inspired playlist. It makes great dishwashing music. Iphone on, earphones in, Madonna up LOUD (but not so loud as to damage one's ears)... Dishes prepare to be intimidated by my butt wiggling and dishbrush wielding. ROAAARRRRR!

Zucchini babes

This morning for breakfast I modified the zucchini hashbrown recipe - I added an extra egg and made 4 hashbrowns instead of 2. 2 for now, 2 for later. YUM!

Last night for dinner (I should say LATE last night for dinner, being after the husband came home, after I cleaned the kitchen which I couldn't do during the day because I'm just not that good at toddler juggling yet, and most definitely after the monkey was put to bed) we had zucchini spaghetti bolognese. Or should that be zucchetti bolognese? At any rate I found my inspiration here and went from there.

Zucchetti Bolognese

The Sauce

1 brown onion
2 sticks of celery

2 cloves of squahsed garlic (locally grown organic stinky purple garlic for preference)

500g pork & veal mince (you could use lean beef mince instead if you hate yourself and hate food)

1 small carrot - finely diced (I'm talking Masterchef fine dice)

1 yellow capsicum - finely diced

1 red capsicum - finely diced

1 small to medium zucchini - finely diced

3 tins of Annalisa cherry tomatoes (I never use anything else)

mushrooms - by this point I'm over the evenly finely diced, so less finely diced is fine enough for me

s&p (I'm a Murray River Salt fan I must confess)

heaped tsp of sweet smoked paprika (comes in tins from Wursthaus, Italian Pantry those sorts of places)

Method

I do the onion, celery and garlic together till softened and a little brown. Then everything in order, leaving time between ingredients to let the pan heat up again. Once the sauce is bubbling away I turn my attention to the mock spaghetti. This made enough sauce for: dinner for 2, 6 itty bitty dinners for Max with the addition of 200g or so of dinosaur pasta, and the rest I chucked in the freezer for instant food some time.

Mock Spaghetti

olive oil

bit of butter

1 grated garlic clove

1 largish medium zucchini (about 200g pick the longest one you can without purchasing a marrow) cut into fine strips by that tricky thing that looks like a cross between a vegetable peeler and a cheese slice (I have 2, they're fantastic, you need one)

s&p

Essentially just push it about on a medium heat until the zucchini softens and goes quite bright green. Arrange in a ring in the bowl. Plop some sauce in the centre. Serve with some delicious Italian hard cheese - if you haven't checked out the cheese room at the Italian Pantry you really must make the time. It was delicious, I loved the look and the texture of the zucchini. Al loved it too! And here's a picture!

The morning after the morning before...

Thanks to two Barre sessions and a Pilates session in a 24-hour period, I am achey. I have sore bits up and down my sides and in the deep pitted places in my glutes that I didn't know existed until Pilates and Barrecode and lets not talk about my poor hamstrings (shoulder bridges balanced on little squishy balls - indeed!). I think I've just twigged to why the Wednesday lunch session last week seemed such a mountain to climb. D'oh. Yesterday morning Miss C introduced us to what can only be described as a cross between eagle pose and the wee-wee dance. When you get to it, you'll know it, and so will your legs. My legs feel like what Beyoncé's must do after the Single Ladies video clip or maybe Madonna's after the Beautiful Stranger video clip... And I don't mean "feel" as in what they must feel like to a casual observer were he or she to run the risk of a slap in the face by running a hand up and down my legs (my legs are in truth much squishier than either of those rather more famous women) but how my legs in themselves as occasionally distinct entities must feel.

Thinking of legs - I think I would much rather the legs of Beyoncé rather than the skinny pins of Alexa Chung (British clothes horse famous for no other particular reason). I want So You Think You Can Dance? legs rather than So You Think You Can Hold Me Up? legs.

As I write this I am listening to Kylie Minogue - What Do I Have to Do (7" inch remix). More Kylie in Barrecode wouldn't be a bad thing. Hint. Hint.

Ciao for now!

Hitting the Barre before breakfast

As a lawyer (and former bar tender) the thought of hitting the bar before breakfast is not altogether unfamiliar to me (actually the concept of breakfast itself was probably more alien). But my second session of hitting the Bar-Double-R-And-An E before breakfast has me hooked,  I think. I like the quiet on the street. I like starting my day with a bit of the old sweaty stretchy rather than grumbly stumbling. I like being greeted at my door afterwards by a little monkey who's been wondering why his mummy wasn't in bed waiting for him - it's good to keep him guessing sometimes, don't want him taking me for granted. It's good to be able to get a class in on my at-home-mummy days rather than only being able to go on a work day or a Saturday morning. I think it's good for my brain to run my body through its paces first thing - gets the old grey matter neatly aligned for hard day's work singing nursery rhymes and translating insistent toddler gobbledygook into English.

So, thanks Miss C for getting up at sparrow's fart to put us through our paces. I really appreciate it!

Zucchini Hashbrowns

Zucchini Hashbrowns (modified from a recipe found here)

1 small to medium zucchini (about 150g), coarsely grated and pressed between sheets of kitchen paper
1 slice of free range bacon
1 extra large free range egg egg
s&p

Method
Finely chop the bacon, fry it in your pan till crispy! Put aside in a bowl to cool down a bit. Beat the egg and the s&p, mix in the grated zucchini. Now it's time to add the bacon. Spoon hashbrown mix onto your hot frying pan (use a small ladle so you get all the eggy goodness, I find it makes two nice sized hashbrowns). Turn down to low. Cook for 2 - 3 minutes each side.

If you had it with a poached egg (recipe says fried egg over easy - for some reason whilst omelette and scrambled eggs are okay to me the thought of fried eggs just doesn't cut it when I'm not hung over), some spinach and some avocado like the recipe says, I reckon you could save one of the hashbrowns for tomorow. Or make a double batch and eat two now sans poached egg and have the rest later (seems a lot less messing around on day 2 when you're supposed to be freed from the tyranny of cooking your breakfast).

Dreaming of chocolate...

I'd really quite like to make this (astronomical carb warning). I was feeling a bit low today but a Stretchy Friday session with the incessantly smiling Deborah perked me up immensely. Thankyou! (Although I'm not totally convinced that a liberal serve of lovingly fried fruits des mer and an immoderate amount of white wine with my colleagues down at Fish Frenzy wouldn't have been a better idea. At any rate it was too late to cancel my booking. So I had to forgo the Elysian pleasures of Fish Frenzy for the somewhat dubious pleasure of performing nigh on physically impossible contortions on one of the slippery squishy mats at the Customs studio - namely "pigeon + quad stretch = oh my!") :D

This week for lunch I've been working variations of tuna and white bean salad. I think the capsicum variation was the better of the two.

Tuna & White Bean Salad
185g tin of Sirena Tuna in Chilli Oil - drained, reserve the oil
400g tin of organic cannelini beans - drained and rinsed well
2 or 3 big handfuls of torn baby spinach leaves

with
1/2 red capsicum, thinly sliced lengthways
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced

or
cherry tomatoes roughly chopped
a handful of pumpkin seeds for crunch

Dressing - throw it all together in a jar, shake and pour
a little of the reserved chilli oil
juice of 1/2 lemon
big tsp of dijon mustard
s&p

Loved the 6am class yesterday! It was so nice to come into the city when all is quiet, no cars or nosey pedestrians (or sneaky smokers down the side street!). Nobody in class looked polished or perfect. We did the dreaded pretzel, it hasn't come up in a class since I've first tried barre over the winter. I'm MUCH better at it now! It still kills. Speaking of pretzels, since I've been doing Barre five times a week I can now do the other pretzel, the Pilates pretzel, both ways with relative ease. I'm finding my weekly Pilates class is a great way of measuring the improvement in my flexibility as we work through the same start stretches every class.

The down side of being more flexible is that I can now get my myopic little eyes closer to my hairy scaly legs. Ughh! I am the missing link between apes and crocodiles. This week I have resolved to exfoliate, exfoliate, exfoliate, shave more frequently and moisturise obsessively. I may even try and squeeze in a pedicure to brighten up those toenails I can see - oh so much more - clearly now.

Ciao for now.

Summer in the little city

Saturday I laughed and groaned throught the 8am class and don't my calves know it! I've taken to doing my vegetable shopping at the market with my nanna trolley - sooo much easier. Saturday's foraging resulted in some pork, walnut & prune terrine from the Wursthaus (not as special as the duck terrine from last week but still very nice), some turkey waldorf salad and some green bean salad both from the Wursthaus and a few slices of saucission sec, again from the Wursthaus. I served it with the last of that Old Telegraph Rd washed rind cheese from last week, a loaf of the fig & walnut sourdough from the wonderful/evil Daci & Daci (I'm so conflicted), some tomatoes and some gerkhins. Yum! And here's a picture!

Saturday night we had porterhouse, chilli corn, bbqed mushrooms and silverbeet in a tomato sauce. Yum! It was fine until I noticed the next day that corn is on the NO list. Whoops.

The only thing I have to say about Sunday is that it was Sunday, it was a BBQ, I had a beer. But it was in honour of a friend's birthday and he happens to be a sports reporter so  that makes it practically exercise. We took a sumac coated lamb backstrap (I got a 500g one so there was enough for us and to pass around too). But I didn't have the second beer and I resisted the potato salad - I made do with watching my husband eat some.

Comparing notes

I've just looked back through my earlier posts. On this day I talked about how sore I was between classes. Well, I have to admit that the inbetween days are no longer marked with screaimng abs, tortured calves or spasming glutes. I'm not sure if it's from doing so many classes that my body doesn't get the space to complain or if my body has decided that there's no use whinging because I'm going to do it anyway. At any rate each class is now a distinct pain event rather than building and layering on the torment of the class before. I think that's probably a good thing. :D

Progress Report

Dear Reader, I'm feeling like I've dropped the ball a bit. Whilst my committment to classes has been excellent (I'm managing to attend 5 classes a week) my adherence to the PLAN has been poor this week. I ate cake on Monday (but it was to help interpret legislation so it was absolutely necessary and you saw the picture, I simply had to eat it). To be fair I did manage to resist potato salad at my mother's house (anyone who knows my mother knows that that is a Herculean task in itself). My boss forced a piece of chocolate cake on me on Wednesday (I was on the phone and was eating it before I realised what happened). Yesterday having baked for a family get-together, I ate 3 cheese scones (from Stephanie Alexander's basic recipe with some finely chopped spring onions, tasty cheddar and some shave parmesan on top) but resisted the raspberry & white chocolate muffins (also from Stephanie with finely chopped Whittaker's white chocolate and a double handful of frozen raspberries added)... And BREATHE!

On the plus side I have been drinking magical green goo and we haven't eaten take out since this thing started.

Dinner last night was Roast Chicken with baked carrots, sweet potato, zucchini and steamed green beans. I spatchcocked the chicken and slashed its thighs so that it would cook faster/more evenly and just popped it on a rack over the sweet potato and the carrots. Carrots on the outside, surrounding the sweet potato as the carrots need a little more cooking. Chicken was rubbed with olive oil, then lemon juice and sprinkled with s&p. I cooked the zucchini on the rack after the chicken was removed to rest. Lunch today is a leftover vegetable salad with pumpkin seeds and a dressing of olive oil, apple cider vinegar, a clove of roast garlic from last night's dinner and 2 tsp of dijon, s&p, topped with sliced chicken breast (also left over from dinner).

Hope you all had a wonderful Australia Day - my friend Emma had her first Fusion class and NOW she understands what everyone else has been going on about. Thankyou Deborah for introducing me (and my new to Fusion friend) to the painful delights of the "drunken sailor" and the "sumo". Oh my! The glute stretch after was possibly worse than actually doing the exercises. Apologies to anyone else in that class - the groaning, gasping, sobbing and hysterical laughing was me. Sorry.

Ciao for now.

Editing notes

Please note that I edited the cevapcici recipe. I had forgotten about the chilli. You can't forget the chilli. It's not negotiable. Unless you wanted to add more than one; you can if you like.

The evils of cake

My boss made me eat cake. I managed to refuse him this morning but this afternoon I was on the phone, I was not paying attention, he waved the cake under my nose and before I knew what happened I was eating it. It is now sitting in my stomach, heavy like Judas cake. At least I denied some potatoes last week. To make up for the cake lapse I have signed up for the Tuesday Sparrow's Fart class.

Lunching like my life depended on it

Yesterday I had some mummy buddies over for a spot of lunch. I can officially confirm that Max loves hommus. I served a Nicholls Roast Chicken from Augusta Rd Foodstore, a baby cos, lebanese cucumber, kumato, feta, avocado salad, a rocket & parmesan salad, a selection of cheese, some hommus, stuffed peppadews, pickled octopus (which Max also likes but it's a bit chewy so he usually gives it back after a while), gherkins, some dolmades (Max declined), one of the girls brought some little lentil cakes (which went very well with the hommus - I'll get the recipe and post it) and another brought along bread (which I didn't touch!) and some ham to round out the meal. The girls were all terribly impressed with my new found dedication to exercise and healthy eating, my shrinking butt and the last of that terrible, wicked cheesecake from the other day.

For dinner I had some mince in the fridge to use so decided to make something approximating the cevapcici my uncle's father used to make  when I was a child (or it might have been my uncle's step-mother, I'm a little hazy on the details of who exactly made the cevapcici. I was, I confess, more interested in eating them).

My take on cevapcici (see here for a more traditional recipe)

Ingredients
500g pork & veal mince (Woolies has this)
1/2 finely diced red onion
3 cloves of garlic, grated (bless the microplane)
1 birdseye chilli, seeds removed, finely sliced
s&p

Method
Heat oven to 220C. Mix ingredients together well with hands. It's important to give it a really good go, I think it has something to do wtih the proteins otherwise you end up with crumbly blah cevaps/meatballs/siu mai/whatever it is you're making. Roll into little sausage shapes - I make mine the length of the width of my palm - they end up looking quite hideous, but carry on. Place on an oven tray lined with baking paper. I brushed mine with a little olive oil but considering the fat that poured out of the little suckers I might forego the oil next time. If you're using beef mince or lamb mince I'd definitely use some oil though. Crank the oven up to 250, bake until browned about 20 mins or so, check to make sure they're cooked all the way through. I think mine were a little over done so I recommend being vigilant and playing it by ear. YOU KNOW YOUR OVEN BETTER THAN I DO! Serve with salad. I had salad left over from lunch so there was no more work to be done.

Ciao for now!

101 Reasons to love the barre - 1

I discovered another reason to love the barre. On Saturday night I was out at MONA FOMA seeing the inestimable PJ Harvey. I was, unfortunately, stuck behind a ridiculously tall man.  (What person that tall stands that close to the front, I ask you?) But because of all the high heels and kitten heels workouts I've been doing it was really a breeze to spend most of the gig standing on Posh Spice height imaginary heels. Hurrah for Barrecode!

Saving all my car-arbs for youuuuu!

Coconut & lime cheesecake w candied coconut, brown sugar pineapple and pineapple & lime syrup! The recipe's in this month's Gourmet Traveller. I only had a very little slice (oh... you can see the picture... well it was a very little slice compared to the one I cut my boss) and I'm sending the rest to my husband - he works in the Lands Building if you want want to mug him - so that I'm not tempted to crack it open for afternoon tea as well.

Blessed is the rest day!

Dinner last night was barbequed lobster (caught by my lovely husband), we sliced them in half lengthways, removed the yucky bits, smeared on some garlic butter and cooked them on the flat grill on the bbq, cut side down, then shell side to cook the rest of the way through. Served with a beetroot, beetroot leaves, grapefruit and feta salad and a mixed salad of lettuce, carrot, cucumber, fresh herbs from the garden and red onion. YUM!

Yesterday's carryover omelette was 3 cheese (tasty, a little lump of that washed rind from Saturday's ploughman's lunch, and a little shaving of parmesan), bacon (free range from Scottsdale Pork) and a couple of big handfuls of baby spinach.  Thankyou Miss C for this idea of cook enough eggs for two meals, it's saving me so much time!

As well as making that offensive (and delicious) cheesecake yesterday I made sweet potato, (heavy on the) baby spinach, feta and pine nut salad. And some hummus for the week - following the taste.com recipe recommended by the good and great PLAN (see here). Obviously I had to add half again to the ingredients as chickpeas commonly come in 400g cans not 600g cans  - I don't know where that writer is getting her chickpeas from but it's not Woolies. I went with slightly more garlic than recommended as 3 cloves plus half again is 4 1/2 and I figured I might as well use 5, but I use quite strong organic purple garlic so that might have been overkill. I'll hold off till afternoon tea to try any so I don't accidentally fumigate my fellow barre-babes at lunch. (It's my first class with Collette; I don't want her to think of me as Garlic Woman.).

Ciao for now!

So far so good

Dear Reader,

So far so good. I think I'm about 17 days in and I've done about 12 classes in that time! I'm feeling great, heaps of energy, my clothes are already loosening and my flexibility has increased noticeably. I'm enjoying the challenge of eating to a regime and despite buying more vegetables than an average family of ten, because I'm eating out for lunch less I think I'm still ahead!

Ciao for now!

Foraging...

A sort of ploughman's lunch.

Clockwise from the top left: Pear Chutney from Daci & Daci, fresh pears, gherkins, fig & walnut bread from Daci & Daci, roast vegetable salad from Wursthaus sexed up with some baby spinach leaves and toasted pinenuts, King Island Dairy - Surprise Bay cheddar, Old Telegraph Road washed rind cheese, duck & pistachio terrine from the Wursthaus.

Mmm... Chinese food

Thankyou Bonita for the lovely neck stretch at the end of Wednesday's lunchtime class - I feel as right as rain now!
For dinner on Wednesday night I was inspired by the suggestion of beef and blackbean to spruce up a regular dish of my own and make it more PLAN-friendly.

Blackbean Chicken Combination
approx 500g free range chicken thighs
bok choy (left over from the blue eye and green nam jim the other night)
bean sprouts (ditto)
green beans (left over from Sunday night)
asparagus (left over from the soft boiled eggs and asparagus)
spring onions
grated (unpeeled) carrot
red capsicum
rice bran oil (rice bran oil has a very high smoke point and no flavour)
light soy (I don't know how much... not more than a Tbs? A sploosh?)
dark soy (only a tsp of this as it is quite high in sugar)
2 heaped tsp of chilli bean sauce
sesame oil (a few drops, 1/2 tsp max)
japanese rice wine vinegar
chinese rice wine (a sploosh in the sauce and a double sploosh to deglaze)
grated ginger
sliced ginger
grated garlic clove
heaped tsp of cornflour (cornflour maintains its characteristics at a higher heat than plain flour)

Method
I roughly chopped the bok choy, halved the asparagus, just tipped the green beans cut the capsicum into long, thin lengthwise strips
Slice the chicken thighs and throw in the sauces, wine, vinegar, grated ginger and garlic, mix and set aside
You want the wok HOT then add the oil.
I first fry the sliced ginger to flavour the oil.
Then add in order, letting the wok heat back up in between vegetables - asparagus, green beans, grated carrot (if carrot is sliced, it goes in first), capsicum, bok choy. Remeber to vigorously swoosh it about with your wok chun (aka wok shovel or Neil Perry uses a ladle; I'm not convinced by the ladle)
Add a pinch of salt, a pinch of sugar if you want, 1/2 c. of water, slam on the lid, shake a bit, leave to steam for a minute or two. (The salt and the sugar help keep the vegetables brightly coloured and shiny. Remember stir-fried vegetables should still have CRUNCH!)
Stir through your beansprouts then empty the whole lot onto your plate and return wok to heat.
Get it HOT!
Throw in the chicken. Put the cornflour in the dirty chicken bowl, add about 1/2 of COLD water, stir to dissolve the cornflour. Return the mind and hands to the chicken. Just push it around until you can't see anymore pinkbits. Add the cornflour water. Allow the sauce to thicken, toss the vegetables back in, mix chicken into veg then return to plate.
I like to deglaze (it also helps clean the pan) with some additional rice wine, pour that over the dish. (I served it with rice for the husband). Ta da!
And here's a picture!

hot lemon tip

Dear Reader, if like me you are doing the 60 Day Challenge you are currently consuming a job lot of lemons. I've noticed that Coles and Woolies only seem to have American lemons at the moment. Salamanca Fruit Market, on the other hand, has Australian lemons. No need to sour your morning drink with the guilt of excess food miles! It would be even better if those bloody lemon trees at my house started putting out. The Eureka in the backyard is getting there and the Myer in the front yard is still too new and Peter Cundall, the patron saint of productive gardens, says that you shouldn't let them produce for 2 - 3 years. And there is no way I am arguing with Peter Cundall.

Ciao for now.

Thunder! Lightning!

I was thankful that I missed out on a spot in yesterday's lunchtime class, Miss C said that there were 17 (!!!) people in the class and it would have been somewhere near the hottest part of the day. Sweaty! I imagine the after work class was quite pleasant by comparison. There was rain and the odd cooling breeze sneaking through the door. Lovely!

As I wasn't pulsing, beating and squeezing at lunchtime and I'd cancelled my lunch date due to the heat I thought I would investigate Wursthaus for PLAN-appropriate comestibles. I think the small salad - I had half italian bean and half beetroot & red cabbage - would get the dynamic tick of approval. The zucchini slice was delicious but I guarantee you it had way to much flour in it. Next time I might grab a smoked chicken drumstick or two instead of the slice of forbidden delights.

Dinner was Al's favourite so far I think. We had the sumac spiced lamb with tomato salad (as recommended by the PLAN. There were no radishes at Salamanca Fruit Market. As per Miss C's suggestion I added chickpeas but went for a couple of handfuls of baby spinach instead of green beans, I also added some fried haloumi because I love it. I used lamb backstrap and brushed the sumac coated lamb lightly with olive oil before cooking them on the grill for about 3 minutes per side and left to rest whilst I cooked the haloumi. I've never used sumac before (I got mine from the Wursthaus although I assume it's readily available). We'll definitely be doing this one again. Loved it.

And here's a picture of this morning's omelette of (leftover) steamed asparagus, torn baby spinach leaves, feta and (leftover because I shaved too much off the block yesterday) parmesan.

Nam nam jin

First Pilates session of the year. Oh my lord have I gotten bendy! 12 days into the 60 Day Challenge and I am definitely getting results in my flexibility. Hurrah!

Tonight for dinner I cooked blue eye with green nam jin. I added some ginger to the nam jin because I can't help myself and some carrots to the bok choy and beansprouts. Blue eye is $3 cheaper per kg at the Fishman punt than it is at Mure's. If, like me, you want it and forget to ask for it skinned. Skinning blue eye is not, as I discovered, that difficult. I skinned my beautiful whole fillet by putting it skin down on the board, tail end facing me, gripping the tail end, I eased the knife between the skin and the flesh and just pushed the knife against the skin and away from my body and voila! Easy as that. :D Or better yet, get your fish guy to do it.

In the interests of keeping my interest in eggs I am forgoing the PLAN's frittata tomorrow and having asparagus with soft boiled eggs and parmasen, Cook and the Chef style. Yum! I love you Maggie. I love you Simon. I figure if I cook enough asparagus I can use the leftovers for a frittata or omelette tomorrow.

Oh and my hot tip for those wanting to make the hommus do not despair! It is perfectly normal not to have tahini in your cupboard - you can do it without tahini, see Stephanie Alexander's recipe from Cook's Companion. Don't tell me you don't have Cook's Companion it is not normal to not have that knocking about your kitchen.

Ciao for now!

Food! Glorious food!

I just had my first class with Hannah. I am wobbly. 'Nuff said.

Today for lunch I am having leftovers from last night. I had things to be used in my refrigerator so I veered off the the PLAN and into the wilds of experimentation.

Cajun chicken (from here) with steamed green beans, cauliflower couscous (like cous cous but made out of cauliflower. I know! Genius!) and salsa verde (loosely based on Stephanie Alexander's recipe).

2 large free-range chicken breasts
paprika (I used smoked paprika, which I get from the Italian Pantry - lovely)
cayenne (I may have been slightly enthusiastic about how much of this I used)
1/2 bag of green beans from the Hmong

Cauliflower Cous Cous
1 small cauliflower (the fresher the better, which is why you want some leaves on a cauli to give you some idea of how fresh it is)
1 tsp of olive oil
2 tsp of butter
some cheese (I used wasabi... I did say that this was a fridge special, didn't I?)
s&p

Salsa Verde
handful of baby spinach (ie what was left in the bag)
some parsley
1 small gherkin (not as small as a cornichon but not as big as a dill pickle, if you're using cornichon I'd go 2)
some pinenuts
3tsp of olive oil

I processed the cauliflower (florets only, you can use the stems but I don't think the texture is as good) till it resembled couscous. I gently fried it in a tsp of olive oil and 2 tsp of butter and some s&p (google tells me that you can also do this by steaming (looks annoying) or baking (perhaps if I were turning on the oven anyway). It takes about 7 - 10 minutes depending on how you like it. At the same time I had the chicken (see the link for instructions on that) on the go in the George and the beans steaming. The salsa verde I blitzed with the little bowl thingy for the trusty bamix.

It all came together quite well. (I'll add a picture later.) Husband like it. There was enough for us both to have leftovers for lunch. Hurrah!

Buns of steel, thighs of pain

Thanks to Bonita on Saturday morning I now know what quadriceps do. Quadriceps are the muscles that prevent you from falling down the hill at the Botanical Gardens after the pram. So whilst it is the buns that push your baby up the hill, it is the quadriceps that ensure that he goes down the hill at an appropriate and safe speed. Quadriceps also assist in the clinging on to imitation horses on alarmingly fast antique steam-driven carousels (see here).

Killing two birds with one smoothie

Dear Reader,

I've had a fabulous idea. Emma (a colleague and fellow 60 Day Challenger) and I are teaming up for the mystical pond slime challenge. You see the problem is that a blender makes around 4 serves but those serves only keep for around 2 1/2 days. I'm not so keen on drinking homemade algal blooms that I'm prepared to try it defrosted. And I have some storage issues in my freezer that we needn't go into right now. So... Emma and I are taking it in turns to blend the living daylights out of innocent vegetables. This morning I made 2 serves each (bottled in Decor 1l plastic food/drink bottles - currently about $4 at Woolies!) and stashed them in the work fridge. Which means I'm done until Thursday night! Wooohooo! The bonus is that by working together we're keeping each other on track to make the most of the remaining 6 weeks or so of the challenge. :D

Today's special (which I have yet to have a serious swig of, I'll get back to you in an hour or so)

1 3/4 c. chilled water
1 bunch of spinach (from the Hmong)
1/2 bunch of rocket (also from the Hmong)
1/2 a smallish iceberg lettuce
1 Haas avocado
2 sticks celery
1 granny smith apple
1 pink lady apple
an inch cube or thereabouts of ginger
a small handful of parsley leaves
juice of 1/2 lemon

It only made about 1.4l - it was only a small iceberg so maybe a whole small one or half a large one and an extra stick of celery would be a good idea - I'm aiming for about 1.6l which is about the most I can squeeze into old faithful (my kenwood food processor and blender).

Ciao for now!

A life of leftovers

First things first. The leftover greek bean and silverbeet stew I made the other night (see here) made a great pasta sauce (once blitzed with the beloved bamix) for my 17 month old son, Max. Max, you'll be somewhat astonished to know, also polished off the last of batch 1 of the magic green goo. I wouldn't have given him any but he asked in his emphatic wordless way, so I complied and he ate the lot. One spoon would go in and 'lo and behold!' the little bird mouth would promptly open demanding another. Unbelievable!

Saturday, oh my! I trotted along to the 8am class with the lovely, Bonita. Then, for some unfathomable reason, I drove to Fahan for an informal boxing session with the Booty crew.
There was actually a reason to put myself through a barre session and then a boxing session and that was to test out this idea of doing cardio straight after a barre session (see the Barrecode FAQ page!). I think I liked it? I'll try it again next week. We'll call it research.

I ate a roast potato Friday night and half a roast potato on Saturday night. I can resist cooking potatoes. I can resist any second potato worth the name. But if someone else cooked the delicious precious thing it would be just plain rude if I didn't eat at least one. I had to know if it was as good as it looked. It was. And so was that other one. And I loved every minute of wicked starchy goodness. I did not, however, eat a custard bombaloni from Daci and Daci. I bought one for my husband and made him eat it instead.

And there endeth Saturday.

Confessions

Dear Reader, I have a confession to make... Today I succumbed to the barest sliver of my evil workmate's delightful pastry from Daci & Daci. It was delicious. I loved it. You can't make me feel bad about it. I loved every little flakey, sugary, fruity moment of it. I washed it down magic greeen goo so I think that makes it okay.

Grunted and sweated (and laughed) through my second Fusion class with Deborah after work (I think I'm going to make it a regular thing. It's a great class). The incessant smiling makes it kind of better, kind of worse. :D My calves are still sore from yesterday's class and now my abs are stinging right up around my ribcage. I live in the hope that by the end of this 60 Days it won't hurt so much. I might miss it a little bit though... At least you know you've done exercise when your disgruntled body reminds you of it constantly. Many balls were dropped today - I'm just thankful I didn't fall over as well as losing control of my ball.

Al (the husband) has remarked that I already seem brighter and straighter, more energetic . I know I certainly feel it. I must say that the workplace benefits of increased concentration and energy is probably balanced out by the increased number of toilet visits - all that water I'm drinking has to go somewhere.

Dinner tonight (as recommended by the Great and Marvellous PLAN) was thai beef salad. Bloody bugs have eaten my mint and I failed to notice the chillis when I read the recipe so didn't get any, and I used iceberg instead of butter lettuce and probably made only half the dressing but it was delicious nonetheless and we'd definitely do it again. Al has enjoyed all of the food so far and has been impressed with how quick and simple everything is and how little washing up there is compared with the food I usually cook. Hahaha!

Ciao for now!

Little Every Day Challenges

As part of the 60 Day Challenge I have also swapped my daily double shot medium soy latte at Harbour Lights for a single shot long black - saving myself $1 a day and who knows how many extraneous calories (here's an article about how caffe lattes are making us all fat). Woohoo! 8 weeks of the Challenge, 4 working days a week, that's about $32 I will have saved myself. Excellent. Not to mention the savings I'm making by taking my lunch in more regularly.

For the love of goo

Breakfast this morning was leftover frittata from yesterday. The PLAN called for making a vegetable frittata but I had leftover sweet potato, spinach, feta and pinenut salad from Tuesday so used that as the base for my frittata instead. I added a little more baby spinach which I fried up with some rice bran oil spray, poured in 4 eggs mixed with a little pure cream, s&p, then tossed the leftover salad in on top. I popped a lid on jsut to help it set a little bit before sticking it under the grill to cook the whole way through. It was quick to make and delicious.

I've taken the plunge and blended the living heck out of a metric tonne of leafy greens to make the dreaded green goo, I mean smoothie, that nobody I know has been game enough to try yet. I used the following amounts

1 bunch of spinach from the Hmong (which makes about 7 loosely packed cups when chopped)
half an iceberg lettuce
3 big leaves of silverbeet left over from last night's dinner
1 avocado
1 granny smith apple (skin on, core cut out)
1 crunchy green pear (skin on, core cut out)
2 sticks of celery
about 1 1/2 c. of chilled water
2 inch cubed sized lumps of ginger grated (bless the microplane)
juice of most of a lemon (some went in my morning lemony water drink)

I wasn't sure if it would all fit in my trusty blender but it did! It was a little bland until I put the lemon juice in. It smelled like grass clippings. It made about 1.5l I've stored the remainder in the fridge in a glass jug with plastic wrap smoothed over the surface like you would homemade mayonnaise. I'll let you know how it goes. Heaven knows what my workmates will think of the electric green slime in the work fridge!

Ciao for now!

Ladies who do lunch

I did some lady lunching today with a gf at knoppies. In the interests of dynamically eating I ordered the poached salmon and vegetables with lemon buerre blanc and had a glass of water with a slice of lemon instead of my usual glass of vin rouge. I recommend asking for the lemony buttery goodness on the side though, the poor fish was delicious but positively drenched.

Because I was lunching at lunch I went to the after work class at the Customs studio. It was my first class with Maggie. She looks so nice but my thighs are not friends with her. I got the most amazing case of wobbly legs during the clam - wobbliest ever. Go Maggie! Even with the same instructors there seems to be something new every class, seeing a few different instructors through the week is certainly spicing up my barre experience. ;)

Dinner... All that talk of exercise has me thinking food again. I followed the link for balsamic chicken and white bean salad and ended up quite accidentally at a recipe for greek bean and silverbeet stew which I can't seem to make a link to... Damn technology. But here's a picture of the one I made. I added chicken thighs to the recipe as it didn't seem to have enough protein to pass muster otherwise.

I have put off making the green goo for another night. If you don't know what I'm talking about google "green smoothie".

Why 120bpm?

Why 120bpm? Because that's the speed of Hung Up by Madonna which got me through barre class on Monday and a vigorous walk around the block with the pram on Tuesday and inspired me to write a blog! I suppose I should actually tell someone I'm doing a blog otherwise it's merely a diary... Mmmmm... I'll think about it.

Yesterday - no exercise other than doing the shopping with a toddler in tow and a vigorous walk around the block with the pram to encourage said toddler to succumb to a morning nap.

Had a soy latte in the morning with husband before he went to work. Oomph on Macquarie St do an excellent babycino - Max seemed impressed with the density of foam and smiley face scribbled on the top.

For lunch I had some mummy buddies over. With the barest nod to the "dynamic eating plan" plan I prepared a sweet potato, spinach, bulgarian feta and pine nut salad and a salad of beetroot, beetroot leaves, ruby red grapefruit and bulgarian feta (Max loved the beetroot). I also served pate, gerkhins, triple cream brie with garlic-rubbed toast (16 hour white from Jackman & McRoss).

For dinner made cajun chicken with avocado salsa on steamed green beans from this recipe. Instead of frying the chicken I grilled it in the George Foreman and I used spring onions instead of chives. Quick, delicious and filling. I'd go it again.

First things

Once upon a time there were lots of things that I didn't "do". I didn't "do" blue jeans. I didn't "do" exercise. I didn't "do" blogs. Welcome to my blog about being a mother (who frequently wears blue jeans) and is a new convert to the barre method and is doing a Barrecode 60 day challenge in an attempt to get her sagging baby body back in shape before having another baby. I thought I'd share some exercise stories and recipes (I'm doing the eating plan that goes with the challenge) and hopefully a little success. Here goes...

Today is probably Day 6 of 60 days, I started on Thursday. Since then, I've done a class on Thursday after work (Fusion with Deborah at Customs - oh my!), the Saturday morning class (very painful thanks to Deborah on Thursday), Sunday I pushed my son Max around the golf course for the 5k event for the Cadbury Marathon, and yesterday I did a barre class at lunchtime at Customs which left me with wobbly legs when I went back to work.

Yesterday I also got my first look at Christie's (the Barrecode Guru) Dynamic Eating Plan. I also don't "do" diets but I thought given that I don't do exercise either I might as well give it a go, you never know, I might like it!