Monday, day one-hundred and forty-eight, repair day Weigh-in at start of day wt. 112.0lbs (analogue scales corrected ~109.25lbs); 0.0lbs loss
... t.measures - ub. 28.8, w. 25.8, t. 31.0, h. 34.75 inches
Report at the end-of-week 21 of low-carb : total low-carb weight loss 25.8lbs, and last week 2.0lbs weight loss, and the tape measure shows a touch off the waist, double touch off the hips and a quarter of an inch off the stomach.
I should be doing cart-wheels, but the black dog has my ankles in its teeth. But I'm dead chuffed, in theory, with these results.
Starting the week with a deficit deficit again - 350 calories, similar to last week - but given last week's miracles this week can be a good one too (says FatDog, gritting her teeth and putting on her shiny, happy, smiley hat)!
RC's "Day 5" doesn't have any toning exercises, one is meant to do extra aerobics which, I'm afraid, I neglected to do - unless rushing out to the co-op for cream, last thing at night, counts?
Carbs blown (for a repair day they're meant to be no more than 19g), dear reader, because I was envious of the guys' dinner - they were getting freegan Yorkshire puddings and new potatoes to go with the veggies & brie-cheese (all bargains, the best being the brie for 28p) - and I was meant to do a linseed-minute-bread for me. Nah, FatDog couldn't resist the Yorkshires - ooooh, nothing to regret there - utterly worth every indulgent bite.
........ Calories 621.27 Carbs 40.17 Fat 37.37 Protein 28.84 Fibre 8.57
broccoli, cauliflower, and green bean brie-cheese, a FatDog bottom-of-the-fridge concoction
broccoli & cauliflower mix, sainsers, wee florets, 38c/C2.4/F0.9/P4.0/Fi2.2/100g
......... 314g 119.32 7.54 2.83 12.56 6.91
green beans, tesco, top, tail & ¼'d, 29c/C3.2/F0.5/P1.9/Fi2.2/100g
......... 175g 50.75 5.60 0.88 3.33 3.85
brie de meaux, tesco, 260c/C0.0/F20.0/P18.4/Fi1.0/100g
......... 170g 442.00 0.00 34.00 31.28 1.70
cream cheese, full-fat, co-op, 260c/C2.8/F25.0/P5.4/Fi0/100g
......... 72g 187.20 2.02 18.00 3.89 0.00
soya milk, coop org unsw, 30c/C0.1/F1.9/P3.4/Fi0.6/100ml
......... 25ml 7.50 0.03 0.48 0.85 0.15
sunflower, pumpkin and pine nuts, co-op, 665c/C13.7/F56.6/P22.6/Fi6.3/100g
......... 60g 399.00 8.22 33.96 13.56 3.78
cranberries, dried, 325c/C77.5/F0.3/P0.1/F4.7/100g
......... 30g 97.50 23.25 0.09 0.03 1.41
s&p 0.00
total for broccoli, cauliflower, and green bean brie-cheese 1303.27 46.65 90.23 65.49 17.80
FatDog's ¼ portion of broccoli, cauliflower, and green bean brie-cheese 325.82 11.66 22.56 16.37 4.45Method: 1. rinse the green beans in salted water, crudely drain, and ping in a lidded dish for 6 minutes (these took 9 minutes the other day!) then drain thoroughly and keep hot; 2. do likewise for the broccoli & cauliflower mix for 5 minutes; 3. reserve the crust of the brie to go on top, and melt the rest of the cheeses with the milk in a grill-proof dish (that's big enough to hold the veggies as well, or you'll lose half your cheese on the pot-sides) - I did this in the microwave for a minute; 4. mix the hot veggies, seeds and cranberries in with the cheese, season, and distribute the chopped brie crust over the top; 5. grill until the brie crust is melted and golden and the 'sauce' is bubbling; 6. this was heaven served with Yorkshire puddings, the carbivores had extra tatties.
On a non-repair day I'd be sore tempted to at least double the cranberries, and maybe dump the soya milk and up the quantity of the cream cheese - but it was delicious anyway...
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Tuesday, low-carb day one-hundred and forty-nine, feed day Weigh-in at start of day wt. 111.6lbs (analogue scales corrected ~108.75lbs); 0.4lbs loss
... t.measures - ub. 28.8, w. 25.8, t. 31.0, h. 34.75 inches
First reading on the scales was 111.2 - I confess, that really had my heart racing - but then the readings stabilzed on 111.6lbs. Still, that'll do very nicely; and, as the analogues confirmed a decent loss it's not an eeeevil scales fairy prank; so, thank-you V&P vary-fairy, thank-you very much.
Restless sleep with near nightmares involving recipe concoction and cooking; all a bit vague now but in the bit before waking there was a dish of three parts that I was struggling to balance flavours in - apples, nuts and a lime sauce came into it - wish I could remember the rest as I can recall thinking that it was a jolly tasty combination! I'm blaming last night's brie for the dreams - its pong is still wafting 'fragrantly' around the flat now...
Back on track with RC's "Day 6". RC must live in a different time dimension - the five minutes for her "five-minute tone-up" is what a "Scottish mile" is to a mile (the former can be anything up to 2 or 3 miles!). See, there are five wee exercises, each of which involves (usually) two sets of between six to twelve repetitions, with a little rest between sets, and effort made when breathing out hard, and occasional 'holds' of two to three seconds. Short of hyperventilating, and doing the other bits way too fast for any benefit, one ain't going to get the exercises done in anything like "five-minutes"! Don't get me wrong - I'm actually loving the minimalist nature of this as a way of easing back into 'exercising' - but underestimating the time required is silly. In all fairness, it's not just RC that does this, methinks every exercise book / video I have encountered does the same - are they trying to get us to use 'bad form' and / or injure ourselves? I'm wondering how long my "15 minute home workout" will be
Think today needs to be dynamic - shifting my books would be a good thing to tackle and the dust apocalypse will have the black dog running to the nearest dog's home for sanctuary.
I'm going for minimalist cooking tonight. Resolved yesterday evening on 'pizza' but I'm thinking this morning of bread in some form; I might try a flat bread using a variation of the bread dough with onions, garlic and herbs baked into it (maybe another try with yeast is in order) to go with bargain cottage cheese, humous-that-must-be-used-before-it-walks, baby vine tomatoes and olives. The only messages needed is a bag of decent salad, which the OH *might* be persuaded to pick up.
Hmmm. So much for the dynamism - 14:30hrs and all I've done so far is take a couple of packages that were left with us around to neighbours. And that was hard when the postie knocked - I'm waiting on a couple of books that are now four days beyond estimated delivery date, but the postie had nothing for me (sniffle). And now OH is going off to the gym and then the library so I'll have to do the foraging myself - wonder if I'll manage to resist the charity stores?
Must get the yeast / bread starter going first. Phew, OH promises to multi-task and pick up the salad on the way home (we shall see; dog of little faith - he did).
Yeast looking very 'inactive' right now - it is baltic in here mind, and I've only just put it into a wee warm water bath to counter the cold, *and* I've had to feed it honey as we no longer have sugar in the house. Slack FatDog has probably cross-infected her honey pot too, as I used the same measuring spoon with only a dry wipe, rather than a thorough clean : sod's law the yeast will grow in my honey pot but not in my dough.
Yeast finally demonstrates that it might be alive and all together the "dough" seems rather lovely (I'm using HFW's magic dough flour to water ratio, 500g flour : 325ml water, this time). However, I'm never quite sure what they mean by smooth, but after 15 minutes of kneading, that'll have to do. Now to proof... Oh dear... Three hours later and the rise is risible (is that one a FatDog original? think I could trademark it?), okay it's increased about a couple of cm in diameter all round - but it's hardly "twice its size".
Not one to be defeated by a dough-ball, yet again I live in hope and roll the dough out - this time into two nice rectangular slabs that could, once cooked, conceivably be flat-breads and thus slathered in humus and cottage cheese for dinner. Mmmm. Hmmm. They quite definitely did *not* bear any relation to a flat bread. However, they did a darn good imitation of rye bread - *really* quite delicious, albeit not remotely what was wanted / hoped for.
Red pepper humous (again, when will I learn?), merlot and an extra dose of 85% Ghanaian chocolate were my downfall. And half of a banana that the OH had rescued from the depths of the fridge (nearly forgot it, could have saved so many calories & carbs had I done so:) ).
Rather a big "oops" for a Tuesday really.
I could blame it on my disasterous attempts to recover a friend's computer from multiple viruses - she knew *exactly* what daft sh*te she'd downloaded that invited them in (a pretty fish-bowl screen saver, you have been warned). Avast (virus checker) went into kill mode but unfortunately clobbered chunks of the operating system so the laptop will no longer boot. I now need to do silly stuff like booting from an ubuntu USB stick to have a vague chance of recovering her precious photos. And then I'll need to do a factory restore (again). It's no wonder I needed a drink (though I'll be doing all the work tomorrow - "serious pro tip": never try to fix a computer after a glass of wine).
On the other hand such over indulgence could just be rather self-destructive and reckless behaviour engendered by being dogged by a black dog.
........ Calories 2038.27 Carbs 71.22 Fat 111.01 Protein 65.64 Fibre 28.24
oat bran, linseed & soya 'magic' dough, no. 1 soya flour, 424c/C16.0/F20.0/P39.0/Fi12.0/100g
......... 60g 254.40 9.60 12.00 23.40 7.20
linseed, golden, fresh ground, 534c/C1.5/F42.16/P18.29/Fi27.3/100g
......... 45g 240.30 0.68 18.97 8.23 12.29
oat bran, Holland & Barrett, 389.2c/C59.1/F6.5/P12.6/Fi9.3/100g
......... 45g 175.14 26.60 2.93 5.67 4.19
yeast, dried active
......... 2.0ml 0.00
honey
......... 2.5ml (½ tsp) 9.00 2.30 0.00 0.00 0.00
xanthan gum
......... 3ml 0.00
water, warm
......... 100ml = 10ml to grow yeast + 90ml 0.00
sunflower oil, 125c/C0/F13.8/P0/Fi0/15ml
......... 11ml = 10ml + 1ml for oiling the bowl 91.67 0.00 10.12 0.00 0.00
salt
......... small pinch sprinkled on board and kneaded in! 0.00
basil, dried leaf
......... half a dozen good pinches 0.00
oregano, dried leaf
......... two or three good pinches 0.00
garlic flakes
......... couple of good grindings 0.00
black pepper, fresh ground
......... several good grindings 0.00
total for oat bran, linseed & soya 'magic' dough, no. 1 770.51 39.17 44.02 37.30 23.67
FatDog's ½ portion of oat bran, linseed & soya 'magic' dough, no. 1 385.25 19.59 22.01 18.65 11.84Method: 1. proof your yeast first: put warm water and honey and the yeast in a wee pot in a warm place - it should be nice and frothy within about 10 minutes (mine was never convincingly frothy, and it took over 40 minutes to show much evidence of life at all - rather desperately I went for it anyway); 2. mix the dry stuff together, make a well, add the oil and the yeasty water and mix (I used a wide flat knife) then gradually add the rest of the water until you've something akin to a dough; 3. knead the dough for "up to 10 minutes" until it's "smooth" (FatDog waves hands about at this point - never noticed any real difference after 15 minutes, so just went ahead); 4. make a ball, lightly oil it and bung it in a clean bowl, cover with a damp tea towel and put it somewhere warm to rise (apparently this can take up to 2 hours, mine had minimal growth after about 3 hours, at which point the hungry FatDog gave up and, again, went ahead); 5. shape your dough into rolls, single loaf, whatever and bung into a pre-heated oven at 190C for 30 minutes, covered for the first 20.
So, if yours fails at the same three points as mine, you'll have a rather delicious rye-style bread; and, if it doesn't, you might have some lovely bread, who knows?