Saturday, day ninety-seven, weekend feed day Weigh-in at start of day wt. 118.8lbs (analogue scales corrected ~117.0lbs); 0.2lbs loss
... t.measures - ub. 29.10, w. 26.60, t. 32.40, h. 36.00 inches
Shhhhhh... still going down...
Report at the end-of-week 22 on 4:3 : 1.6lbs weight lost, no change in other measurements but, methinks, they're looser.
As others have said elsewhere - measuring consistently is *not* so easy as it involves subjective judgements of 'how tight / loose' and, I suspect, my judgement is very much coloured by my mood (however hard I try to be objective)!
Anyway, very, very waggy FatDog.
I'll endeavour not to spoil things by over-indulging this weekend and going into next week with a negative deficit (again). That said, I'm meant to be
belatedly celebrating my six-months-nicotine-quit - I'll need to work out how to do it low-carb and low-calorie!
Dinner: I've a fridge full of spinach, borlotti beans, bargain red peppers and baby carrots to use up, and my bargain basil plant on the window sill (which I miraculously managed to recover from neglect) - this is all ringing 'Italian soup' bells. Think a savoury muffin something might feature too. Oh, and I have ripe pears to use, somehow, for pudding. Now to find / create recipes.
Well, soup happened (made it up in the end) but, unexpectedly, for four not two... Had a devil of a time getting the skins off the peppers (took an age to char under the grill and still didn't want to shift; wondered whether to use the skins-off-tomatoes boiling water trick but didn't want to spoil the 'roasted' flavour: duh, they're going in a *soup*!) and so everything ran a wee bit late and fraught - OH had agreed, 'on the spur of the moment', to head out to a (free) concert with one of our guests and time was short... Not a hope of muffins to go with the soup. Only remembered to put the basil in at the last moment and forgot to re-check the seasoning. OH and bestest neighbour thought the soup good though and, if I'm honest, so did I - but it was nowhere near enough for 'dinner'. Didn't want to spend another hour and a half cooking (I am *very* slow in the kitchen) so it was linseed crackers, cream cheese and quorn ham to the rescue, with an immediate boost from some nuts!
Pear pudding wasn't to be for the FatDog either - the pears were heading for heaven and there was only enough salvagable for the OH, so FD had dried apricots instead - oh too willingly, oh the carbs!
Not quite the 'celebration evening' that I was planning / hoping for. Oh well, maybe tomorrow? VBF will be by, along with bestest neighbour (BN) to eat the bargain, but very beautiful, savoy cabbage (and possibly the cauliflower) that he brought around with him earlier (along with a copy of Sophie Grigson's Eat Your Greens!).
Now I simply have to work out a menu...
I'm tempted to stick with more Paul Gayler recipes: 'turnip, cabbage and mustard torte' (p74) with, perhaps, 'oven-fried celeriac chips' (p92) and 'charred french beans with red onion sambal' (p92). All very appetizing, but I'll need to start nearer midday if we are to eat before midnight. However, if I use sweet potatoes instead of turnip (BN is lobbying for potatoes in there rather than turnip - sweet potato is a compromise) then, balance wise, I think that the 'celeriac chips' could justifiably be abandoned - which would be one less thing to worry about. Hmmm. Wouldn't be a proper PG recipe, but I never seem to follow recipes anyway - just use what's to hand and in the fridge.
........ Calories 496.00 Carbs 25.33 Fat 27.70 Protein 30.93 Fibre 12.47
FatDog's red pepper, beans and spinach soup bell pepper, red, grill, skin, rough chop, 36c/C6.4/F0.4/P1.0/Fi1.6/100g
......... 426g 153.36 27.26 1.70 4.26 6.82
carrot, very rough chop, 35c/C7.7/F0.3/P0.6/Fi3.0/100g
......... 150g 52.50 11.55 0.45 0.90 4.50
borlotti beans, 85c/C12.9/F0.6/P6.9/Fi7.7/100g
......... 135g 114.75 17.42 0.81 9.32 10.40
tomatoes, chopped, 'cook Italian' brand, 25c/C4.0/F0.2/P1.4/Fi0.9/100g
......... 390g 97.50 15.60 0.78 5.46 3.51
spinach, baby leaf, co-op, 30c/C1.6/F0.8/P2.8/Fi2.1/100g
......... 55g 16.50 0.88 0.44 1.54 1.16
onion, red, very rough chop, 43cal/C9.3g/F0g/P0.71g/Fi2.1g/100g
......... 93g 39.99 8.65 0.00 0.66 1.95
chilli, green, very rough chop, 40c/C9.5/F0.2/P2.0/Fi1.5/100g
......... 15g 6.00 1.43 0.03 0.30 0.23
garlic, very rough chop, 149c/C33.06/F0.5/P6.36/Fi2.1/100g
......... 12g 17.88 3.97 0.06 0.76 0.25
bouillon, marigold, 243c/C29.4/F8.1/P10.5/Fi0.7/100g
......... 5g 12.15 1.47 0.41 0.53 0.04
sunflower oil, 125c/C0/F13.8/P0/Fi0/15ml
......... 25ml 208.33 0.00 23.00 0.00 0.00
basil, fresh, torn, 23c/C2.35/F0.64/P3.15/Fi1.6/100g
......... 10g 2.30 0.24 0.06 0.32 0.16
water, boiling
......... 500ml for bouillon 0.00
total red pepper, beans and spinach soup 721.26 88.46 27.74 24.03 29.00
FatDog's ¼ portion of red pepper, beans and spinach soup 180.32 22.11 6.94 6.01 7.25Think a little lemon juice would just have lifted this a little - that'll teach me to flap so much that I don't get to check the final seasoning.
Method (-ish: I made this in the soup-maker, so this is how it would have been if I had made it in a saucepan, I suspect): 1. heat the oil and saute the onions until softened; 2. add the garlic and the chilli and saute briefly, stirring aplenty; 3. add the bouillon and then the carrots, bring to the boil and then simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring regularly; 4. add half the roasted peppers and then blend; 5. add the tomatoes, remaining pepper, spinach and beans - stir well and check seasoning; 6. heat for a minute or three then add in the basil, stir and serve with a dollop of yoghurt on the top.
Although the calories are nice and low it is very carborific (beans, red peppers, tomatoes, onions, garlic: love them all but full of carbs, albeit the 'right' sort) - would be good for repair days *only* if you're not aiming for under 20% carbs.
Had a late night shufti at
Grigson's Eat Your Greens (1993) - there was a copy in the shop the other day which I rather dismissed after a quick look at the intro and a couple of recipes - and I've somewhat changed my mind: it's not *quite* as useless as I'd first thought, but I still wouldn't buy it. If you can cope with the slightly patronising tone, rather a lot of meat / fish, and lots of 'baked xxx with parmesan' recipes, there are some useful 'how to prepare xxx' bits and the odd script that's interesting (usually someone else's). For example, "Matthew Fort's Ukranian Borshch" (p67) or "Medea Walker's Spinach with Apricots" (p215) - actually the spinach recipes are all quite good - and "Baked Aubergine with Tomato and Mozzarella" (p160). There's even a recipe for cabbage "Cabbage, Onion and Dolcelatte Tian" (p212) - essentially cabbage and cheese gratin, similar to PG's torte but with eggs and no flavourings (maybe the dolcelatte is meant to provide the flavour). Decisions, decisions, now I'm swithering...
==================================
Sunday, day ninety-eight, weekend feed day Weigh-in at start of day wt. 118.2lbs (analogue scales corrected ~116.75lbs); 0.6lbs loss
... t.measures - ub. 29.10, w. 26.60, t. 32.40, h. 36.00 inches
Crivvens! Perhaps it's Friday's repair loss delayed (I confess, I was hoping for a wee bit more off yesterday) but, whatever the cause, it's jolly welcome. This is how the weight was shifting before my August / September hiatus - maybe that was the dreaded 'six month plateau' just a bit early? Anyway...
Thank-you V&P vary-fairy, thank-you! Happy, happy FatDog.
Have just updated my tracker and it says that I should hit my target three days after my birthday - that would be a really nice belated birthday present. Except, I'll be shifting my target weight in the light of the 'New BMI' calculator thingy as that says that I am still overweight; it reckons that the normal range for someone of my height is between 84lbs (
six stone???) to 114lbs! So new target will be 114lbs, at the top of that range - anything less and I'll look emaciated.
Random aside: lignans (found in linseed) are thought to reduce IGF-1 levels (see Tuesday's pdf) - goody... But then I'm confused by this paper
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC156352/ which seems to say that
IF puts up IGF-1 levels and that this might have a neuroprotective effect. Most perplexed.
Right, orf to do the messages for tonight's dinner - here's hoping that I don't get too diverted!
Oops, I had a new-to-me frock accident (which entailed a new-to-me belt accident as well because the belt that went with the dress was waaaay too big); and that was *after* the new-to-me scarf accident (which genuinely became necessary because the dress that I was wearing was revealing far more than decent, let alone modest, due to my 'shrinkage'!). Still, jolly happy with a new outfit that fits for less than ten quid.
Thought that the far Asian grocer would be good for sweet potatoes (I could blame 'them' for my frock accident as that's the only reason I went up 'the high street' that far) but it transpired, for once, that the Co-op was (much) better value.
Somehow took an age to prep. and cook everything but, with exceedingly random and minimal 'help' from the VBF (bestest neighbour was here and they were bestest friends at one point - major distraction - so kitchen slavery out of the question), we eventually dined.
And, oh, did we *dine*. That was *so* seriously yummtious. Definitely heading for the 'fine dining' category. Despite my adulterations, I would still suggest that
Paul Gayler is a culinary genius.
A couple of "our diner's comments" from tonight should suffice: "it's not proper vegetarian food because it's got far too many flavours"; and, "that was fantastic, a most most memorable meal, a taste sensation - it incorporated nearly all my taste buds - it was incredible"; or, more simply, "that was so lovely". Happy FatDog, trying not to grin and look too smug (I suspect bestest neighbour was being 'slightly ironic'). But bl**dy good, in other words.
Will need to post the calories etc. report and recipes on Monday as I've not 'dissected' the recipe nutrients yet. I'm hoping that it was not all too carb/cal-iferous as it would be wonderful to keep with the downward trend. But I don't suppose my cab. sauv. consumption will have helped - did enjoy it though, and that was some celebration so, whatever happens, it was worth it
Sleep tight all xxx FatDog.