Month: January 2016

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Padded Pudding with Mock Cream – Recipe No. 143

So I did my first ever proper video recipe. Lets just say it was challenging. Much harder than it looks and then you spend hours putting it together and then hiding your face behind pillows as you witness your lumpy bits rhythmically jiggling as you get serious with a wooden spoon…

The recipe was taken from Marguerite Patten’s book ‘Feeding the Nation’ which is a nice thick paperback book jammed with hundreds of authentic wartime recipes. You can buy it off Amazon used for just a few £’s. Click image below for further information..

The recipe I re-created was

Padded Pudding with Mock Cream

Make 1 pint custard sauce using 1 pint milk, 2 tablespoons of custard powder and 1 tablespoon of sugar. Leave in the saucepan. Add 1 mug full of fine stale breadcrumbs, 2 tablespoons of jam and a teaspoon of vanilla essence and continue to simmer for 5 minutes.

Spoon into 4-6 dishes, allow to cool then top with mock cream and grated chocolate.

Mock cream

Mix 1oz of margarine with 1oz of caster sugar. Then beat in 1-2 tablespoons of dried milk powder and a tablespoon of milk until light and fluffy. Cool then use.

 

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Video Diary 1 – Weigh-in and resolutions

My resolution for 2016 is to keep a regular video diary, persevere and achieve an 88 lbs weight loss to get below 200 lbs (about 14 stone 2 lbs).

I’m committing myself to be successful, to become healthier and to work hard at making better food choices and taking responsibility for my health.

Ultimately my future, my fate, is in my own hands. I will no longer be a victim to complacency….

C xxxx

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Potatoes in Curry Sauce – Recipe No. 142

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Potatoes in Curry Sauce

Here is a good and honest stick to the ribs kinda winter dish.

It serves 4 served with other vegetables or something else or 2 if you just share the whole dish between you.

It’s actually not bad, quite sweet and filling and economical too. I worked it out to cost me about £1.00 to make the whole dish.

I found this recipe in a really great wartime recipe book called ‘Eating for Victory’ which contains over 150 pages of reproductions of official second world war instruction and recipe leaflets and I use this book a lot!

CLICK HERE to look at this book on Amazon!

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Ingredients
2 lbs potatoes
1/2 oz fat
1 onion or 1 leek
1 apple chopped
1 tomato chopped
1 rounded dessertspoon of curry powder
2 rounded dessertspoon of plain flour
1/2 pint of stock (veggie or meat)
1/2 teaspoon mixed herbs
1 or 2 cloves (optional)
Pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg (optional)
1 teaspoon sweet pickle or 1 oz sultanas
1 teaspoon malt vinegar
1 teaspoon sugar
Add salt and pepper to your own taste

Method
Boil the potatoes and keep warm. Make the fat hot in a pan, put in the chopped onion and fruit and fry lightly without browning. Add the curry powder and flour, mix well then add the stock gradually and the rest of the ingredients. Simmer for 5-10 minutes stirring frequently and adding a little more water if needed. Pour over the potatoes and serve at once.

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CLICK HERE to look at this book on Amazon!

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My doctor said ….

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Today my doctor said to me….

“Use this opportunity to get yourself strong and healthy…..look after yourself”

I’m not sure where to start the story.

After the Marathon last October (which I’d trained for several months for and lost 40 lbs so I could complete it to raise money for Cancer Research) I rested up. The sheer physical effort, the loss of toe-nails and my foot injury ensured I couldn’t do anything for weeks and after all the hard work it was easy to let things slip.

Coming up to Christmas I was gorging chocolate and high fat foods again (in addition to all the healthier veggie wartime dishes I love) and a couple of days after Christmas I was back up to 296 lbs (having put 26 lbs on since the Marathon). I felt really tired and my back pain had returned.

Richard and I had booked a holiday to the USA leaving two days after Christmas. We were excited. We both love the vastness of America. We had plans for Las Vegas, The Grand Canyon, Monument Valley and some National Parks.

Despite the weight gain I managed to fit into my seat on Virgin Atlantic Airlines without an extender belt (the same cannot be said for RyanAir) which was a huge relief because though I laugh it off and pretend to be brave, it makes me feel like a freak…

But this is all self-pitying codswallop. I can do something about this. For some reason though it never seems important enough, what does it take? WHAT actually does it take to realize that our time on this planet is not infinite, that If I’m really lucky I’ll have another 30 years to dream, travel, love, giggle, run, cry, challenge convention, challenge myself.

Suddenly that doesn’t seem like a lot of time anymore.

And then a couple of days after we landed in the USA we got ill. Both of us had the shivers, coughs, awful headaches, no appetite, we felt terrible. It felt like a flu.

And then the headaches and chills disappeared and at a small garden centre in Sedona I treated us to a Klondike Bar ice-cream and thought YES things are getting better.

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It was short lived. The next day I was in hospital with hypoxia and pneumonia. Couldn’t walk, couldn’t breathe. It just came on so quickly. The medical professionals at Flagstaff Hospital in Arizona were really helpful and treatment was rapid and after two days and nights on IV anti-biotics and saline drips, steroids, inhalers and oxygen therapy things quickly started to improve. Richard slept in a chair for 2 days.

It was a viral pneumonia and it was in both my lungs but it could have been much worse. The x-rays showed several small patches in each lung – that’s all. No bacteria, no horrible lurgy. Nothing much really but enough to make me think and be scared enough to question myself…

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING…..?”

Obesity lowers immunity, if I’d been taking care of myself better and actually cared what I was putting in my mouth this probably wouldn’t have happened.

“WHAT AN IDIOT….”

After a few days interlude in hospital it was time to continue forward on our journey which essentially was us biding our time and getting stronger before our plane left to return to the UK.

We travelled home on my 50th birthday.

It’s made me realize that I DO want the next 30 years of my life to be wonderful, to be healthy. I want Richard and I to both be strong. Taking responsibility for that is the ONLY way forward.

I jumped on the scales, I’d lost 15 lbs in 10 days. Not the best way to lose weight but it’s a kick-start.

“Use this opportunity to get yourself strong and healthy…..look after yourself” my doctor advised me this afternoon as she wrote a sick note.

And I truly will….

Happy New Year

C xxxx