Well then...

Isn't it ironic that, the week we decide to start eating healthy, I end up in Emergency Department for a suspected heart attack... Go figure.
Oh and to top that off, I finally wander out to check the mail after being on bed rest for a few days, to find a pamphlet in the mailbox about private hospital cover...

My heart was fine, by the way. Turns out it was a muscular issue called Costochondritis, which is an inflammation of the cartilage in / between the rib cage, or something to that effect. Causes heart attack symptoms and given my cardio history, they had to do everything they would normally do until heart attack is ruled out.

Drugged up and off my chops from morphine. 

We haven't had much chance of trying the new diet as of yet.. although weetbix for brekky every day is going well. You'd be surprised at how much weight you can actually lose just from eating breakfast - and that bit of extra walking around at work.
I was going to make the ham and broccoli frittata, but instead I turned it into a ham, ricotta cheese and spinach frittata. VERY TASTY.

Since I have been confined to bed for most of the days following my hospital scare, I haven't been well enough to eat much either. Frosty has been cooking his own dinners of spaghetti (it's now 4 or 5 days following, so I am well enough to get back into the kitchen without overdoing it.), I was feeling a bit peckish the other evening and craving soup. When I'm not well I always want mums pea and ham soup, it's EPIC. Failing that, I decided to make my own veggie soup with what we had on hand:

1 diced onion
1 clove crushed garlic
some chillis
1 diced carrot
1 diced potato
handful of broccoli diced
some shredded spinach
500ml carton of veggie stock, and 500ml water
I threw it all into a pot and let it simmer until all veggies were nice and soft, then threw in a handful or 2 of macaroni (Because I knew I needed the nutrients of the veggies, as well as something wholesome.) and let it simmer away until the pasta was cooked. I did however add too much pasta... and now it's just a pot of pasta with veggies. That's what happens when you have leftovers sit for a day I guess.

Healthy eating

Frosty and I have been trying to eat healthier lately -  weight loss for him, general health for me, and in order to save money for the both of us. It's also a bit difficult when the price of healthy eating turns out more expensive than take-away.. and there's always the risk of not actually LIKING one or 2 of the new healthy recipes, thus basically wasting the money you just spent on buying the ingredients for (that you wouldn't normally have!)
It's a double-edged sword. And take-away is just sooo yummy... BUT, it's a habit we are really trying to break!

Burgers, fish & chips, creamy curries with mountains of rice and na'an bread, pizzas... oh god... then there's the sweets.. junk food binge from Coles, or a 2am servo run for overpriced chocolate..
We will continue to eat sweets, whether I make it or we buy it, but it will now be an occasional treat. Yes we've become "Swappers" - swapping 'Often for Occasional' - if that makes sense. We want and need to get out of debt, so we can't keep buying shit.

Due to my foot fucked to buggery, I am still unable to go to the gym to do my cardio (Sorry Mr Cardiologist who gave me strict orders to go!) So I cancelled my membership last month, and basically since November 2011, I have been sitting on my butt (School holidays from TAFE!). TAFE resumes next week so I'll be getting that little form of excersise from walking the block (10 minute) from home to class etc. To the best of my walking ability anyway! Ankle brace and just a whole lot of taking it easy really. But since I don't really have kilos to shed, the whole "watching my ass grow" hasn't really phased me.
Frosty is still signed up to the gym, but has been doing home exercises lately instead. And walking more at work (See, swapped Sitting for Walking!) AND actually eating breakfasts! It's surprising how much weight can be lost just by eating a decent brekky each day.

I devised a rough meal plan the other evening, I thought I'd post it here as well since I've had a few friends and family asking for a copy. It's not much, I'm still likely to add to it, change it around a bit. I grabbed a few recipes from The Biggest Loser Australia site and since I'm not one to stick to recipes (Unless it's baking) - I will be changing ingredients around to suit our tastes (While keeping it healthy!)

So here it is..  I've tried to add variety in there so it's not the same each day etc. Sometimes a lunch will become dinner, all depending on how I feel at the time. As I said, it's a rough plan, and will be changing here and there, tweaking it. I know most don't bother with meal plans, but we're budget conscious, so everything in the plan has to fit within our grocery budget. And just remember, go to butchers to get your meats, fishmongers to get your fresh seafood and fruit & veg barns/markets for fresh fruit and veg, and other fresh produce (eggs and whatnot.), it's really a lot cheaper than the supermarket.

To avoid confusion, the following is a SELECTION of what to have, not a "Have all 5 items for breakfast etc). You pick one food item for the meal.

Breakfast - Yes I'll have to get up a bit earlier to cook it, but it's what a good wifey does, right? Since the hubby goes to work and all...

• Wholemeal toast with light peanut butter
• Wholemeal toast with egg
• Omelet filled with shallots, tomato and spinach (Oh boy, Iron helps us play!)
• Weetbix

 Lunches -

• Wholemeal wrap with turkey and salads 
• Wholemeal wrap with roast chicken and salads
• Ham, broccoli and sweet potato frittata
• Homemade pizza scrolls

Dinners - 

• Brown fried rice
• Baked fish parcels with steamed vegies and some form of non-buttery lemon sauce
• Roast chicken breast and vegies (chicken can be marinaded in something, herbs, spices etc)
• Prawn glass noodle with lime and coriander dressing
• Chicken, spinach and low fat ricotta cannelloni
• Sweet potato will be replacing all forms of normal potato (baked chips, mash, roasted etc)
• Crispy skin salmon and vegies
• Baked chicken burgers with wholemeal rolls and salads
• Syrian chicken with cous cous or brown rice
• Spanish seafood paella 
• Wholemeal spaghetti with prawns, chili, asparagus, lemon juice and garlic
• Marinaded chicken or beef skewers, baked, with vegies

Snacks (for throughout his work/uni day and my general lazy days in class) well.. he says he's happy with an apple. I give him a week before he starts bringing those apples back home!! As for MY snacks, well I eat just about anything, corn thins, crackerbreads, tinned tuna and whatnot. As long as it's healthy and minimal carbs.
Keeping in mind that if you drink plenty of water with your meals, you will actually feel fuller. It's just a matter of retraining the brain.

Prawn & vegie stir fry

Quite a filling dish, for a stir fry!
Half kilo peeled, de-veined prawns, tails off (You can leave the tails on for "presentation" if you want, I find it a complete and utter waste of time.)
1 large red capsicum sliced
1 onion sliced
1 bok choy roughly chopped
1 clove of crushed garlic
About a teaspoon of sliced fresh ginger
Handful fresh coriander sliced
4 sliced birds eye chillies
3 spring onions/shallots, sliced
1/4 cup sweet soy sauce, 1/4 cup  hoisen sauce, 1/4 cup cornflour + water mix
Any other sliced fresh stir fry vegies would go well. The above is all I had on hand. :P

Combine the onion, bok choy, garlic, ginger, capsicum and chillies in a hot pan/wok and stir fry until fragrant and lightly coloured. Add the prawns and stir/cook for 3 minutes. Stir in the sauces and corn flour, coriander and spring onion. Cook a further 2 minutes and the prawns should be nicely coloured and cooked.
Serve as is, or with noodles/rice!

Craving for comfort food..

No, I am not pregnant.
I love comfort food, and I tend to go through my phases of making various foods mum used to make when we were kids. Some of these include: Sausage, onion, gravy & mash potato; Soft boiled egg and soldier toast (Yes, I have this for dinner some times!), good old fashioned casserole and dumplings.. Corned beef and veg.. oh yum!
The one  comfort food I have been yearning for lately is Macaroni Cheese - not the rubbish you buy in packets, add milk & butter and nuke. Mum makes it differently, dry. But the good kind of dry. It was just cooked pasta, mixed with grated cheese, pepper and a beaten egg, into a baking dish and baked. And it came out like a slice.

So I had set out with the intentions of making this lastnight. Then as I always do, I got sidetracked. And ended up with something entirely different. Oh well!

I had cooked and drained some penne pasta, found some leftover roast chicken in the fridge, half a capsicum and a small onion. So I tossed all this together in my spring-form cake tin (As I don't own a casserole dish anymore!) I made a cheesy bechemael sauce (White cheesy lasagne sauce!) and beat 2 eggs into it, mixed it into the pasta mixture, added grated cheese to the top and baked it until it was golden!
Not quite what I was craving, definitely not what mum makes! But still quite tasty!

Chocolate filled chocolate cupcakes CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE!

Chocolate x3? Chocolate 3 cubed? C3??
Anyway enough of that because 1. I'm confused already, and 2. I no longer lay claim to knowledge of mathematical things like I used to once upon a time.


Frosty wanted chocolate cupcakes. Not just any old chocolate cupcakes - chocolate cupcakes with chocolate cream in the middles and chocolate cream on top. Okay. Simple enough. I made it with mockcream/buttercream out of simplicity. Although it was a challenge in this heat at the moment! 35 degrees C out there!

I am happy with the result.

Hollowed out

Buttercream filling

om nom nom

Buttery short crust pastry

Being on a tight budget lately, I've been doing more home baking and trying to stretch things out, food-wise. Always keeping a well stocked pantry of SR and Plain flour. I've even managed to dig out my old (OLD!) work apron (Ahh back in the days of kitchen handery.)... I truely am a housewife.

I made a beef mince pie (the recipe is much like this, only replace steak with mince.) the other night and had to have a(nother) crack at making pastry - I've only made pastry once or twice prior to this and it was a bit of a failure.. not too much mind you, but still.
So I used the following recipe, and it was enough to make both base AND lid of a 9 inch pie dish.

2.5cups plain flour
1 cup cubed COLD butter
Pinch of salt
A few tablespoons of ice cold water

In a large bowl dump the flour, salt and butter in, and using your fingers, crumble the butter and flour together - it should resemble a crumb-like texture.
Add the water in, start with 3-4 table spoons - you will need to knead it to bring it together. Add more water by the tablespoon as needed - you'll know you have enough when you're able to pinch a small ball of it and it stays together. Not too wet and not too crumby. Turn it out onto a floured board and lightly knead it into one big ball - then divide it into 2. Shape them both into a ball each then flatten out to a thick disc shape.

Wrap in plastic wrap then pop them into the fridge for about 20 minutes.

Once you've made and cooled your pie filling - take one of the pastry discs out of the fridge, and turn it out onto a floured board, roll it out to fit the base of your LIGHTLY GREASED pie dish. I think mine rolled out to about 3 or 5mm thick. Mine wasn't a perfect circle, but hey I like it rough anyway. ;)  (Tip - Lifting rolled pastry is a pain the arse, so once you're done rolling it, use your rolling pin to help lift it into the pie dish. Put the rolling pin at the edge of the pastry, and gently with your fingers help roll it onto and over the pin. Then it's just a matter of unrolling it all once on the pie dish. )

Lay your filling in, and do the same for the lid of the pie. Seal the edges with a fork, trim it if you want it to look neat, I prefer the rustic look. Brush a beaten egg over the top and cut a V to allow steam to escape.

Bake at around 180C for around 40-60 minutes or until lightly golden!

Ultimate Chocolate Mousse of Doom

This is a RAW egg based recipe.. so..... if you can't eat that, don't eat this.

200g GOOD dark chocolate (don't use cooking chocolate!)
20g butter

Thickened cream (600ml)
3 eggs separated (one bowl for yolks, one bowl for whites!)

Break the chocolate up into more manageable pieces, without eating it.. or some...  and set it with the butter in a heatproof bowl over a pot of lightly simmering water, to melt it. Stir occasionally as it melts and make sure the water doesn't touch the bottom of the bowl.

As that's left to it's own devices, melting, as it does.. in a large mixing bowl whip up 1 cup (ok so I may have used 2 cups?) of Thickened cream. Set that aside into the fridge.

Chocolate melted yet? Remove from the heat and let it cool to BLOOD temperature then beat the egg yolks into it.
Gently fold the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture, then whip up the egg whites in another bowl, until soft peaks form.. Then gently fold into the chocolate mixture until all combined.

If you want to be fancy, divvy it up into pretty martini glasses, or if you're lazy leave it in the mixing bowl. Allow it to set in the fridge for a few hours. Serve with whipped cream, cherries, raspberries.. whatever!

Ok it may look like a pile of poo, but trust me, it's delicious choccie mousse!