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.