FAT

I am not skinny. Never have been. Never will be. I like food too much (right now, in fact, I am eating cake). I refuse to deprive myself of something that makes me happy just to conform with the mainstream perception of beautiful.

I am a bit of a social media junkie. I regularly check Facebook throughout the day. And day in, day out I am face with images and articles about 'the newest way to lose weight fast' or 'get your beach ready body' or 'fit into that Little Black Dress'. I'm not saying people who want to lose weight shouldn't, I just don't like the way that people are being told 'you're not good enough, this is how you will be better'.

I myself do the 5:2 diet. Does this make me a hypocrite? I don't think so, no. I wanted to be healthier. Not skinnier. Not more beautiful. Healthy. So I decided to make a change. I did not base my desicion on how others perceive my body. This diet works for me as I don't have to give up all the foods I love. It just means that two days a week I massively cut down my calorie intake and usually eat A LOT of vegetables. And my body likes it, it clears itself out and makes me feel amlot healthier. But I don't bang on about it. I don't suggest that other people should be doing it. If someone was to ask, I would share my experience, I'm all for encouraging those who want to do something to change (but again, my point is that change should come from within us, not from others and how they view us).

Now, I'm lucky, my mum was always a fantastic role model when it came to body confidence. I was never made to feel fat and ugly and we never had scales in the house ( I still don't... I have no idea what I way and I have no intention of finding out any time soon). That's not to say I never had any body issues. Nothing serious, just the usual when you see yourself surrounded by thin, beautiful people and start to think that's how you should look too. But that passed.

The other day at work I heard myself say "I wish I was that skinny". But then I stopped and thought and retracted my statement. Because, truth be told, I've never been more body confident. I can honestly say I can stand naked in front of a mirror and be comfortable with what I see. There are bits of me that aren't perfect, but they don't bother me enough to change them. And I think that that is a feeling everyone should be entitled to, not just those the media say are beautiful. So maybe instead of promoting the latest weight loss craze, we should be promoting body confidence and encouraging self love.

To start, try this as a new life motto:

" I'm aware of my flaws and have accepted them. And anyone who doesn't can fuck off!"

- Sarah Millican

Apologies for the long, serious entry today...it's been on my mind a lot the last few days.

On a lighter note, look at this beauty:

It is a rich chocolate sponge with a gorgeous light fudge frosting.

Also, my friend Vera made a lemon meringue pie. And she gave me a slice. It was beautiful...really beautiful. And she promised to make a whole one just for me. I have never been more excited!

Road trips, fast food and home baking

Today was technically a day off, but I had to go up to Fort William to collect some things for work. So Idecided to make a trip of it; I took Verity and Leanne and we had a wander and went to McDonalds (yes, yes, I know, it's awful...but their fries and milkshakes are so good!). Nipped into W H Smiths and found a number of books I want (jotted down the names so I can download them on my Kindle). I also picked up a couple of new cook books. One was a one-pot meal recipe book. I'm a big fan of on-pot meals, less washing up! The other was 150 cupcakes and muffins. There is a recipe for salted caramel cupcakes. Need I say more?! I'm looking forward to trying it. Was going to do so today, but was short on time so just stuck toan old faithful recipe and made these beauties:

These are a basic rich chocolate sponge, with a Maleaser flavoured icing (make a standard butter cream, and add 2 sachets of Horlicks and around 4tbsp good cocoa powder) wih a Malteaser perched on top. I have quite a few Malteasers left over...I will have to find a way to get rid...hmmm, I'm sure I can think of something ;)

I hope you all have a lovely Bank Holiday weekend...I will be working :(

Curry!

On Wednesday, I decided to try a recipe from the BBC Good Food site for chicken tikka massala. It was really easy to make, and really good. One of the ingredients was tikka paste; you can buy it from the supermarket, but I really wanted to do the whole thing from scratch. So I made my own tikka paste. One of the easiest things ever...
put the following into a small food processor with a little water and blend until smooth:
4 garlic gloves, a lump of fresh ginger, 2 tsp cumin, 2 tsp corrianidor, 1sp garam massala, 1 tsp turmeric and seeds for 4-5 cardamon pods.
That's it, it's that easy. And makes a really tasty curry!

Now the recipe didn't say nything about marinading the chicken before cooking buy I opted to marinade it in garam massala, paprika, cumin, lemon juice and natural yogurt before cooking. It worked nicely with the sauce.

The serving suggestion was to serve with plain basmati rice, but I was in the mood for something with a bit more flavour. SoI decided o make my own pilau rice. If I'd known it was so simple I would have done it ages ago!

Easy Pilau rice:
melt around 1 oz of butter in a pan
add a up of rice and stir so it is all coated in the butter
add 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp turmeric, 1 bay leaf, 4 cardamon pods, 4 cloves, 1/2 tsp fennel seeds and 1 1/2 cups boiling water to the rice.
give it  quick stir and put  lid on it.
leave it on a low heat for around 15 mins. do not stir again.
may need a bit of fluffing with a fork before serving.

The whole thing was pretty easy (apart from when I was making the tikka paste and managed to get spices in my eye - that stung like a bitch!) and the end product was fantastic...served with naan bread, poppadoms and mango chutney!

A Sunday off

Today has been the first Sunday I've had off work since the end of January. It was so nice not having to get up at 4:45am just once!
Me and Anthony took the weekend off as it was his brothers wedding and he was the best man. He wore a kilt, and look gorgeous (who doesn't love a man in a kilt?!)

It was a lovely day and everyone looked fan. Good food too...fantastic slow roasted venison...drool!
Being the dazzling social creatures we are, we stationed ourselves near the buffet in the evening...a very good move!

So, having a Sunday off, I decided I was going to do a roast dinner. We had beef. I love roast beef so much. I slow roasted it with red wine, onions and garlic...fantastic flavour. Left it in the oven a bit long though and it was a little dry (good job there was plenty of proper gravy to going with it). We had mash and roasties (obviously), I'm not usually that good at roasties, but these were really good: crispy outside, fluffy inside. And I made Yorkshire puddings. What's a roast dimmer without Yorkshire puddings?! They were huge!

It's been lovely having a full weekend off work, but back to reality tomorrow. Ah well, four weeks until me and my man have a night in Glasgow, then three weeks after that I get to see my family.

Hope you have all had a good weekend!

Birthday cake and Chinese curry

Monday was Anthony's birthday, so obviously it was his choice for Birthday Tea. He chose lasagne. As always. He is a human Garfield. So I made a lasagne for him. From scratch. It was really good...haven't quite perfected my lasagne yet though!
With it being his birthday, I made a fuss. He wasn't expecting a fuss...he was happy to let his birthday slip past virtually unmarked. No chance! I blew up balloons, I wrapped presents and I put up banners. And what's a birthday without cake? I made a triple layer chocolate cake...then iced it. As Deadpool. He loved it. And I was pretty proud of myself.

So on to the curry. I've been looking for more chinese recipes and found a fantastic on for chicken curry. I love a chinese curry, but I'm not impressed with the majority of the Chinese restaurants here. So I was really glad when I found this recipe:

http://chinese.food.com/recipe/lily-kwoks-chinese-chicken-curry-330708

It's gorgeous. And pretty authentic. I served it with boiled rice and prawn crackers. But I did leave out the extra onions when cooking the chicken...never been a big fan of big chunks of onion in my food!

Well, I'm very full of curry now, so I'm going to relax with a cheeky Caorunn and tonic!

Death by Chocolate Cupcakes

My dad hates the word cupcakes. He says they're not cupcakes, they're buns. But I like 'cupcake', it sounds cute, dainty. However, mine are not dainty. They are big and chocolatey and beautiful.
I've got a cottage pie in the oven. We had mince and tatties for tea yesterday and I had left-overs. So I layered them and added some cheese for tonight's tea.
And since I've bad a day off and a few hours to myself, I made 'death by chocolare cupcakes'

Recipe (makes 20)
9oz self raising flour
6 tablespoons cocoa powder
6oz caster sugar
2 tablespoons black treacle
7 fl oz milk
7 fl oz sunflower oil
3 large eggs

Preheat oven to 160°c/gas mark 3
Throw everything in a bowl and mix it all together.
Divide between cupcake cases.
Bake for around 20mins.
Cool on wire rack.
To decorate, cover with a standard chocolate buttercream icing then dip in grated chocolate (I mixed white and milk chcolate, but the choice is yours!)

Enjoy!

Cookie!!!

Just a very quick post tonight to share my cookies. I haven't made chocolate chip cookies for a long time, so today I decided I would. I love this recipe, it was given to me by my mother when she wrote me a recipe book when I first left home :)

And now it's time to get started on Go Set A Watchman, Harper Lee's sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird (one of my all time favourite books)

Y'all have a good weekend!