While my eating hasn’t been the greatest, the banana cake I baked yesterday has been calling my name, I have been on 2 walks both 2-3km long.

I should confess that I have indulged in some of the aforementioned cake, however when in a moment of weakness I reached for it to have for breakfast ( I know, shock horror), I am quite proud to say I resisted. Instead I had nothing, the better choice by a slim margin but by no means ideal. After all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, isn’t it?

I think I need to go back to writing down everything I’m eating. I really need to start tracking my points again but I’ll start with keeping a food diary to start with to get back in the habit of writing everything down and then start working out the points.

Have you noticed it’s getting colder over night? Brrr, winter is definitely on its way which isn’t going to help the whole exercise thing so I’ve got to get as much as I can in while the sun is still shining.

Updates on my other missions;

Organised Home – I was doing so well with keeping on top of the washing and dishes daily and then we had a manic weekend which threw everything out of whack so I’m back to square one. I did manage to do a deep clean and de-clutter of a corner of the lounge, that made me feel like I had accomplished something I cleared out the bookshelf, dusted and re-arranged, putting a stack of books into my “To Donate” pile. I threw out some rattan decorative balls that were old, faded and dusty and just really needed to go. So they’ve gone Some other bits and pieces have been moved to more appropriate homes as well.

Vege Garden – I  weeded the garden, again! This time however I actually dug in some Tui Organic Compost and watered it in. It then sat like that for about a week before I got out there again but then I (finally) transplanted my lettuce seedlings along with a rhubarb plant that I had been given at Christmas.

That’s it from me for today.

Keep well

C xx

I decided to do a bit of baking this morning to use up some of the frozen bananas I have in my freezer. Everything was going perfectly I defrosted and mashed the bananas and added them into the cake mix. As I was folding in the dry ingrediants though I noticed it had become really lumpy! And then I realised what had happened, when I mashed the bananas they weren’t completely thawed therefore still cold and the coldness caused the creamed butter to harden! Duh

So note to self (and any other novice bakers out there) – defrost your frozen bananas completely

I hope the cake still turns out okay despite of this.

I will let you know how it goes

Well, my big plans for Valentine’s Day have not gone to plan.

Hubby loves chocolate chip cookies, he’s the cookie monster around here that’s for sure. So I decided to put one of my Christmas presents to good use – 101 cookie cutters.

However….chocolate chip cookie dough just isn’t made for shapes I’m afraid :(. I chilled it in the fridge for about 30 mins but it was still to sticky, then I put it in the freezer. Ahem, yep not such a good idea, especially seeing as I got caught up doing something with DS and by the time I remembered to take it out it was almost frozen solid! So I let it rest on the counter for a little bit then tried to knead and roll it once it thawed a little. It wasn’t easy but I managed to cut a few heart shapes out before it became a sticky mess again. In the end I pressed the rest into a slice pan and popped them all in the oven.

Well, let me tell you what came out of the oven was not pretty. The heart shapes didn’t hold and just ended up as big blobs. The slice turned out fine though so I cut that up into squares. In order to try and salvage my Valentine’s Day present for hubby I cut the hearts out of the cooling blobs, some parts were quite crunchy, obviously the thinner parts but I still managed to crunch some shapes out of those parts

Here are the results….

Hubby loved them so I guess that’s all that matters isn’t it

Just tried a bit and it’s not too bad if I do say so myself

I am also pretty chuffed as it has come out perfectly! It’s not overcooked or undercooked, it cut really easily and came out of the silicone loaf tin beautifully

Pat on the back for me

What a horrible day weather wise it has been today! Not to mention the mugginess!

It must have been all the cake making and baking shows on the food channel this afternoon but I was overcome with a desire to do some baking Having organised a whole lot of  recipes I had pulled out of magazines (Yay for Mission: Organised Home)  I sat down and flicked through until I found a couple of recipes

that I had all the ingredients for.

So first up was a recipe for wholemeal banana & chocolate muffins and as an extra dose of yumminess I added a chunk of chocolate in the centre of each muffin. Hopefully when we eat the muffins we will get some gooey goodness

Wholemeal Banana & Chocolate Muffins

The 2nd thing I made, is actually still in the oven. It is a bit of a concoction so hopefully it turns out alright!

Apricot & Raisin Loaf

6 apricot halves, chopped (I used tinned apricots)

1 cup raisins

1/4 cup currants

1 cup of boiling water

1 tsp baking soda

1 tbsp butter/lite olive oil spread

1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed

1 egg, beaten

1/4 cup chopped nuts

1 tsp vanilla essence

2 cups wholemeal flour

1 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 180 deg C. Put apricots, raisins, currants, water, baking soda & butter into a bowl. Stir until butter has melted. Beat sugar, egg, nuts and vanilla into raisin mixture. Sift flour (add husks back in after sifting) and baking powder into mixture, stirring to combine. Pour into a greased 22cm loaf tin and bake for about 45 minutes.

Apricot & Raisin Loaf

It’s cooling at the moment so I’ll post a verdict a bit later

In other news; we have a crawler! DS started crawling on Monday night and luckily it was while both of us were at home so we saw our baby boy reach a major milestone. Yep, I had tears in my eyes as I watched him make his first fumbling movements towards independence from me *sigh*.

Rather than resolutions I have a list of goals I would like to achieve this year….

• Lose weight – a bit of a cliche I know but after watching the video of Christmas I literally feel sick to my stomach of how big I’ve let myself get. I’ve set lots of mini goals to break up the embarrassingly large number of kgs I need to lose to
• De-clutter the house & be more organised – trying to tidy this house would be so much easier if i didn’t have so much stuff. Whatever can be sold will be listed on Trade Me. Anything in good but non-saleable condition will be going to the Sallies.
• Take better care of my skin – I’m not getting any younger and any day now I’m going to wake up to wrinkles. While I can’t undo the damage that has been done hopefully I can reduce any more damage. Proper moisturising and cleansing routines will need to be put in place.
• Drink more water – this comes in hand with lose weight and taking better care of my skin. It will help me with both, to some it might seem like a bit of an odd goal but it is something I am terrible at.
• Run for 5 mins – this is a starting point. I’m terribly unfit and this is going to be a big challenge for me.
• Paint my nails & toe-nails more often – this is a bit of a light-hearted “to do” item but having painted nails always makes me feel a bit more together. Sort of a look good-feel good thing.
• Plant & maintain a vege garden. I started with a hiss and roar in October, weeded the plot and saved some peas and spring onions that my sister had planted in April. And that was it..and surprise, surprise the weeds grew back.
• Bake and decorate an awesome birthday cake for my little boy’s 1st birthday in May. At the moment I’m thinking ball/round theme – bouncy balls, beach balls, bubbles, balloons etc
• Start photo albums – I’ve got honeymoon photos and lots of souvenirs like ticket stubs and postcards that I want to include in a kind of photo album/scrapbook type thing. I also need to start a photo album of DS’s first year before I get too far behind..again I want it to be a book of mementos as well.
• Use my arts & crafts supplies. I have a whole cupboard full of canvases, beading supplies, card-making/scrap-booking supplies and more. I want to make homemade cards for friends and family, make some new jewellery out of pieces I don’t wear so much anymore and do some paintings for DS’s room.
• Pay off the credit card. Nothing more to say about this one really.
• Put our wedding enlargements into frames. It’s coming up 2 years now and 3/4 have been sitting in the cupboard.
• Make more baby food. I started off when DS was on Stage 1 with pureed fruit and veges but haven’t done anything with meat and vege combinations. I want to be able to use veges from my garden for this too.

That’s all I can think of for now. I may come back to this post from time to time to update and hopefully check off some of the items!

What is on your to do list this year?

Well I don’t think I’m cut out for making gingerbread men people somehow. Or at least not while trying to entertain a baby as well.

The ones on the top shelf are, shall we say, a very dark golden brown and the ones that were on the second shelf were the first ones I cut out and were therefore thicker than the rest so I don’t know if they’re going to harden up. *sigh*

So much for my dreams of a plate of gingerbread people to adorn the Christmas table.

Will post pics later

xx

I don’t want to be too PC here but there will be Gingerbread Ladies as well

The recipe I’m using is as follows;

125g butter, at room temp

100g / 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar

125ml/1/2 cup golden syrup

1 egg yolk

375g/ 2 1/2 cups plain flour

1 tbs ground ginger

1 tsp mixed spice

1 tsp baking soda

• Preheat oven to 180 deg C
• Use beater to beat butter & brown sugar until creamy
• Add golden syrup & egg yolk. Beat until combined
• Stir in sifted dry ingredients
• Put on floured work surface and knead until smooth
• Wrap in glad wrap & rest in fridge for 30min
• Roll out to desired thickness. Cut out shapes.
• Continue rolling  & cutting until dough is used up.
• Bake for 10-12 mins or until brown
• Place on rack to cool.

I doubled the recipe as I want a lot of cookies and I don’t know if that’s why it turned out so crumbly but I had to add another egg yolk and about a tablespoon more golden syrup. If I hadn’t added the extra ‘wet’ ingredients I think I would have had a hard time kneading and rolling.

The dough is now resting in the fridge. It’s in cling wrap & tinfoil as there was a pitiful amount of wrap left on the roll. I hope the tinfoil doesn’t effect anything!

I’ll let you know how I get on.

Well, what an afternoon this has been! I’ve finally sat down after…

• Filling the baby food jars I had sterilised with the pretty orangey-red jam
• Putting an over-tired baby to bed ( while I was in the middle of filling the jars I realised DS was due to go down for a nap but I didn’t want the jam to set too much so I carried on and he got way over-tired )
• Cleaning up the sticky mess from when the pot boiled over. This was NOT a nice job. I hate cleaning the stove at the best of times let alone when it’s covered in rapidly hardening sticky goop!

So now I’m resting and making the most of the peace and quiet. While writing this post I have been googling other bloggers attempts at making this jam and I really wish I had done that first! Apparently it’s quite common for the pot to boil over…wish I knew that pearl of wisdom so I could have borrowed a bigger pot.

The other thing that I’ve seen come up time and again in the other blogger’s attempts is that the boiling time recommended in the recipe isn’t really long enough for it to set properly so the chilli jam is more like chilli sauce. Some of them put the jam back in a pot and boiled it for longer but I really can’t be a*sed doing that so chilli sauce it will have to be!

Okay well I don’t know how this is going to turn out but here is what has happened so far…

• I think the sugar caught on the bottom of the pot
• The pot wasn’t big enough so when it started boiling it overflowed and has made a horrible sticky mess in the tray under the stove top
• My kitchen and adjoining living areas now smell of cider vinegar

The jam is now cooling for 40 minutes.