Chocolate Temptation

As you might have seen in previous posts, my friends and I have a tradition of baking each other cakes for our birthday. It was Lynn’s birthday on Saturday so on Friday evening I dragged myself out of the house and went to Gabby’s house to bake the cake! We decided to go simple on the sponge and heavy on the decoration so I dug up an easy victoria sponge recipe I have made a million times before. Usually when I am baking I tend to eat the ingredients but this time I wasn’t allowed as they were all very sugar heavy! Gutted….

The cake rose well, but when it was time to take the sponge out of the tins we found that they were completely stuck to the tin. Disaster! We had greased them beforehand and they are apparently non-stick but we still ended up having to cut them free. What we were left with were two extremely crumbly sponges that had been hacked repeatedly with a knife – we had no choice but go VERY heavy with the decoration! Taking inspiration from this cake I made before, we set about covering every inch of the cake in different types of chocolate, and this was the end result!

I didn’t get to try it – but it got great reviews! My next challenge is to make a sugar-free version, so watch this space!

Oh and HAPPY BIRTHDAY LYNN!!

xxx

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Mushroom & Rosemary Quinoa Risotto

I’m finally getting over this bug I had last week – yay! I was absolutely miserable by Friday. I was feeling awful, couldn’t go to work, or exercise, my appetite was non existent, and even going outside for a walk left me really tired. Feeling much better now, and back at work. Still not 100% but I feel pretty great in comparison to last week.

One think I like to do to pass the time is cook and bake, but since I didn’t have much of an appetite I cooked for BF instead. On Tuesday evening I made him quinoa mushroom risotto with rocket. I had seen something online previously about how adding a parmesan to Quinoa can be eaten as a healthy alternative to Macaroni & cheese, which I love. I tried it and thought it just tasted like risotto, so while it didn’t stop my craving for mac & cheese, it gave me an idea for a recipe.

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Courgetti and Homemade Hummus

I really think I can do this sugar-free thing! I have been reading through the books I mentioned in yesterday’s post and finding out a lot more about sugar addiction and how to break it. It’s interesting to find out what sugar does to your body, and the benefits of living sugar free. For anyone thinking of giving up sugar I would recommend David Gillespie’s book ‘Sweet Poison..’. Although possibly in paperback rather than Kindle as it’s quite annoying flicking back and forth through the sections. It’s quite funny, factual, and his facts are backed up with references to the studies they are taken from.

I know it’s not going to be easy to break the bad habits I have and stay away from junk food but I figure if I gave up smoking, I can definitely give up sugar. There are comparisons made to quitting nicotine and quitting sugar in a lot of the books and blogs I have looked at, and I feel like this is positive news for me. Granted, I only managed to quit after reading Paul McKenna’s book ‘How to quit smoking’ but there must have been some willpower involved there too, right?

Last night I popped by my local health food shop to get some food for dinner. This was my first chance to see which of my favourite foods were secretly hoarding 50 teaspoons of sugar (I read far too many Daily Mail articles!).

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146..Blue Cheese Steak

I went home to Cork last weekend for a quick 25 hour trip to see my family and my dog/obsession Dexter. Was so good to see everyone! I barely had enough time to fit everyone in so I need to plan another longer trip home soon! If only Dexter could come to visit…

I still can’t quite believe how much alcohol I managed to fit into those 25 hours…when I got home, it was back to work and back to attempting a healthy diet. For breakfast I had porridge with agave nectar, banana and fruit for breakfast. I’m drinking Dr. Stuart’s ‘slim plus‘ tea which is really just fennel tea but tastes really good. I think you can buy it in most branches of Holland & Barrett.

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144..Homemade Guacamole

After a lovely 10 week absence I have started going back to the gym. The company I previously worked for had a gym in the building which made it very easy to pop down for classes or a quick run to break up the day. Since I moved to my new role I have being trying (albeit not very hard) to find a new gym to join, as well as trying to find the motivation to go. It’s funny how quickly you can get out of habits, I used to gym a lot and really enjoy it. On the run up to my Christmas holidays with BF I would happily go twice in one day. Now I honestly can’t think of anything worse than hopping on a treadmill. I have lost the will to gym. Still though, if I want to stay in my skinny jeans I’ll need to incorporate at least a few hours of exercise into my week.

After looking online and asking around work I decided to join Fitness First as it’s closeby and a co-worker recommended it to me which means I have a gym buddy. Unfortunately FF is not as swank as my old company gym but I couldn’t justify paying £100+ per month just to exercise. I eased myself in with a Body Pump class on Tuesday and then did a pretty hardcore Pilates class on Wednesday. It’s now Friday and I still can’t stand up without wincing! Not only have I lost the gym mentality, my body has become used to not really doing that much. I’m hoping that I won’t feel so sore tomorrow and can go to another Body Pump class but it’s not looking very likely.

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141…Caramelised Pear & Lentil Salad

Back in London, back to BF, to my house and I am finally getting back to the routine I had before Christmas. I ordered a big Ocado delivery on Sunday evening so that I could make dinners from the Honestly Healthy book. Yesterday I had planned to go home and make myself the sweet potato stew but ‘one’ drink with my cousin turned into a very tipsy Steph on the tube home at midnight. My healthy dinner idea was replaced by Rioja and cocktail sausages…worth it though!

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117…Leftovers

After the mammoth feast we had last night there were a LOT of leftovers this morning. BF will be eating roast for days! I decided to try make potato cakes out of the leftovers. I mixed up the roast potatoes and stuffing with a bit of thyme, salt and pepper. This was quite a task as the goose fat had made them quite crispy and hard to mash! Then I rolled them into balls and on a whim cut up small pieces of cheese and put this in the middle of the cake so there would be a lovely warm cheesy surprise when you ate them!

I pan fried them in a little butter – with this little guy watching me, hoping I dropped something…

I served them up to BF for lunch with the leftover turkey and toast veg – they got a thumbs up! But then he has to say that doesn’t he? I felt like eating a bit more healthily so I had a salad of spinach, baby tomatoes, spring onion and goats cheese. I also had a bowl of fruit on the side. Nom!

We went to Cork city in the evening to do some Christmas shopping, I didn’t manage to get anything – we ended up in the pub! Afterwards we went home and had leftover Camembert for dins!

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116….And it begins!!

The day finally arrived! After a crap nights sleep we were up at 5.45 am to start our travels! Tim’s parents dropped us off at Stansted and we grabbed some breakfast there. I had smoothie and green tea.

My sister Aoife and my mom met us at the airport, was so good to see them!! Of course I arrive at the gate looking like crap and they tell me there is a photographer there from one of the local papers and they told him he could take a pic of Tim and I arriving off the plane. I had to shut that sh*t down pretty quickly….

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