NELG

This is an aside and somewhat boring but I feel like I've been doing fairly well recently. I've always tried to eat healthily and last year often kept track of calories and protein and shazam! (more for nutritional reasons than anything else) but this last autumn term... I just ate barely anything at all. So I lost a lot of weight unintentionally - I weighed myself at Christmas and somehow was only about 45kg after 10 weeks away from home which is not great (I'm 5'5", so not too short). Recently I've given up on having a 'lose weight' mindset and just been trying to eat balanced meals and failing that, just eat enough food. And I have so much more energy, I'm really pleased, I think I needed a bit of a kick and buying lots of perishable food that needs to be used certainly does it...

Today was pretty standard- I had noodles with some salmon (on offer from the fish counter, woohoo) that I baked, plus some salad and chickpeas (just because I need to use them up). Didn't have any lemon juice like I normally do so instead I cut up an orange and mixed that in with soy sauce/onions/garlic/etc etc. was surprisingly nice - I'd really recommend salmon and orange, which is a combination I haven't done before. All done in 15 minutes.

Last night I made a delicious baked brie, topped with brown sugar, cinnamon, apricot, and chopped walnuts. I spread it on a baguette and had a glass of pinot noir with it. Now I have a headache because I had red wine before bed.

But I bet it was totally worth it. Sounds delicious.

My arteries hate me for it. My arteries can shut the smurf up.

And I'm frying dinner tonight. Fried pork cutlets with mushroom gravy, and kroketten (fried mashed potato dumpling things). But I'm steaming some carrots! (And smothering them in an herbed butter...)

I used to look forward to the weekend simply because that meant I didn't have to work. As of the last month or so, I now look forward to the weekends because I make breakfast skillets. I normally do eggs, potatoes, bacon, and BBQ pulled pork, but the last of my pork is currently frozen for a different upcoming meal. So this morning I used ham instead and added cheese. The bacon I use is a very thick maple bacon and it's so friggin' delicious!

Hey Shay! Remember all those times you said you couldn't cook? Yeah... when you come out next, you're making breakfast and I'm making dinner. (Unless Froot Loop takes over and makes dinner...)

I just made a huge batch of tortilla soup (enough for lunch all week!) and topped it with cheese, sour cream, avocado, and homemade tortilla chips. We had tostones and homemade guacamole on the side, and I sliced up a star fruit for the kids to try. I made too much food.

Hopefully my duck thaws out for tomorrow, because I have big plans.

I smurf love eating breakfast, but I can barely function enough to work my coffee maker most mornings.

Dinner tonight. Duck breast with a blackberry pinot sauce, carrots with butter and saffron, spinach with shallots, mushrooms, and toasted almonds.




Dessert. Vanilla bean ice cream with a homemade apricot orange and saffron topping.

It was my sister's birthday last week so I made her a cake for when she came back this weekend:

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I don't like the top, but I was having a Malteaser crisis and didn't have anything to put in the middle of the buttons.

That cake looks like a dream!

I never had them so I can't speak from experience, but in a commercial I once saw they put them in a bowl of milk and ate it like breakfast cereal. And that was the one thing that made me not even want to try it, milk disgusts me.

They are not great. Most people put sugar on to make the milky cardboard mush palatable, but then are they really doing you any good coated in sugar?

Still working on that damn duck. I'm almost there! Zot and I had duck breast with a blackberry and peach pinot reduction, spinach and shallots sauteed in duck fat, saffron buttered carrots, and potate sarladaise.