Thursday night weigh in...

 

So, I put on 0.5lb this week. I think the weightwatchers people above thought "ok, she's eaten crap ALL WEEK, but we won't punish her too much, we'll give her one last chance to be good."

I ate SO MUCH rubbish! Indian takeaway, Chinese takeaway, Easter eggs, wine, chocolate, you name it I had it. I had NO idea how I only put on half a pound, but it's definitely made me want to be good for next week.

Dans

Bake off #4

Chocolate Hazelnut Cheesecake

DC's Mum had made this cheesecake when we went round for dinner a couple of weeks ago and it was so divine that I just had to steal the recipe and make it! It is taken from Nigella's latest Nigellissima book, and as always I was also drawn to it because it looked so easy to make, with no baking involved.

I was a little shocked when I was shopping for ingredients as I read that this recipe requires 500g of cream cheese - that's two huge tubs! I'm always skeptical about using so much soft cheese because it's so overpowering, but I gave it a go...

Recipe
250g digestive biscuits (I used sweetmeal digestives left over from my Easter rocky road bites)
75g unsalted butter (I always use marg)
1 x 400g tub of Nutella
100g chopped toasted hazelnuts
500g cream cheese - at room temperature
60g icing sugar, sifted

A whole jar of Nutella!! Obviously this recipe is the least Weightwatchers-friendly cheesecake I have ever made...........................

I broke the biscuits into small pieces and blitzed it in my blender along with the butter and 1 tbsp of Nutella. You're meant to keep blitzing it until it resembles a sandy mixture - it took a while due to the amount of biscuits. Also included in this mixture should have been 25g of the hazelnuts but I was so pressed for time that I didn't manage to find any in my local shops, so I had to omit it from the recipe entirely.

This biscuit mixture went into the bottom of a springform cake tin, which I popped into the fridge before I moved onto the rest.

The cream cheese and sugar was beaten until smooth (this was DC's job) before I added the Nutella bit by bit. I understand now why Nigella's recipe says to "patiently" scrape the Nutella out of its jar - it takes a while!

 

And then once the mixture was completely combined, it was simply poured into the cake tin and smoothed on top of the biscuit base.

 

The hazelnuts are again sprinkled on top of the cheesecake but I didn't do this. The recipe advises to refridgerate it for four hours or overnight as it's quite a soft mixture, and so I made this the night before I was due for a dinner date round my friend's house, and left it in the fridge overnight and through the day whilst I was at work.

I was really worried that it would be too soft cheese-y but it was perfect! If a little rich... my friends couldn't manage the big portions I served them however they insisted it was because they had demolished my rocky road bites first and were a bit full!

The good thing with this recipe is that it'll keep in the fridge for a few days - perfect for dipping in for a small slice from time to time!

It was absolutely delicious, and it did taste much better a couple of days after I made it. I'd definitely be making this again if I have a big party coming round, it was so simple to make and tasted completely divine.

Dans

My life in pictures #6

Whilst sorting through all of my old paperwork over the Bank Holiday, I came across this adorable kiddie photos that I thought would be perfect for today's post. I love looking at old photos, especially to see the late '80s / early '90s fashion that we were all rocking at the time!

 

Apparently I still make this face now...! I can remember this dress, it was one of my favourites.

 

How adorable are these Christmas day photos? I remember my brother being obsessed with his new punching bag! He looks so cheeky and my Grandad looks so young! I can't wait to show him at the weekend.

 

This is my favourite photo! Must have been taken at the end of 1988, I think I must have been pretty much a newborn. If you look closely you can see my sister rocking my mum's "Deidre Barlow" glasses. Nice hair cut mum!

 

 

 My brother was such a cutie-pie... what happened!

I don't think mum listened about purple and green never to be seen! I love how I'm nicely blending into both the wrapping paper and carpet in the second photo. 

 

I loved rediscovering these old gems!

 

Dans

Achievements & planning ahead

I can't quite believe it, but I was only 3.1km off running 100km in March!

I never would have expected two months ago that I would have been able to achieve such an accomplishment in such a short space of time. Eight weeks ago I was struggling to take control of my breathing, my pace and was also struggling to run for more than 2 minutes!

I had set myself a 30km monthly goal which I achieved at the end of February, and then moved on to 50km by the end of March and even though I achieved that early on 12 March, I never thought I'd be so close to 100km! I kind of wish that I had gone for an extra 3km run now just to round it off, but either way I can't be disappointed with what I've achieved.

It looks quite scary now seeing that I've done 0km in April - I skipped my extra runs on Sunday and Monday because I thought I deserved some time off seems as it was Bank Holiday - it won't be good for my weekly total but we have our actual 5k run on Saturday so I didn't want to overdo it. Now that we will be completing longer runs there's every chance I could hit 100km for April, but we will see!

 

Today my sister and I spent a couple of hours after a run setting up a training plan for our 10k Race for Life. The Runkeeper app has a 10k training plan but it is spread over 16 weeks and we only have 12 weeks to train from now until 30 June, so we thought it would be a good idea to incorporate their runs into our own plan.

 

 

We kind of made it up as we went along but we're confident that it'll help us to complete the distance. We are hoping for a 60 minute run on 30 June so in two or three weeks' time we'll have more of an idea about where we are and whether it's achievable!

Dans

Bank Holiday

Finally - five days off work! Bliss.

On Friday DC and I ventured out for lunch and didn't really do much else apart from slob in front of the TV catching up on Boardwalk Empire and relishing in the short working week. Well DC is off school on half term so he had already had a non existent working week!

On Friday night, DC's mum dropped round his family dog Jack for us to look after whilst they were away in London watching a show.

On Saturday we had DC's brother and sister over for breakfast - we were going to go out to eat but figured it would be cheaper (and warmer) to cook at home. But when DC was taking Jack for a walk round to the Co-op to buy some breakfast bits, whilst they were walking by a dog suddenly attacked Jack, pulling out a clump of his fur and pulling over the elderly lady who was holding onto the lead. Jack didn't retaliate and the other dog ran up the road whilst DC picked up the lady from the pavement. Her son (the dog owner) was in the paper shop and he definitely shouldn't have left a frail lady holding onto a dog that could obviously be so suddenly vicious.

DC said he was quite shocked by what had happened so he didn't take any numbers or anything (or yell at them as I would have) but another lady who had seen everything came over and told the couple that they needed to put a muzzle on their dog if this was how they it was going to behave in public.

Poor Jack! The dog didn't get to his flesh and Jack seemed quite unfazed but I was so angry when DC called me on the walk home to tell me what had happened. Imagine if it was a child???

After breakfast DC and I did the usual grandparents visit a bit earlier than usual before driving to Lincoln to stay with DC's brother & his girlfriend for the evening.



It was better than great. We walked for a few drinks in the Bailgate before ordering an Indian takeaway which we demolished as soon as we got in. It was divine - much nicer than the one we usually order from at home.

We had a few glasses of wine but it wasn't too much of a late night as we were all tired from eating too much food. In the morning we took the dogs for a walk around and finally the sun was out and it looked like Spring was in the air.

 

 

 

We came home yesterday mid-afternoon and were disappointed that the weather wasn't as nice here as it was in Lincoln!

 

I went for a meal with my friend last night, and have spent so far today sorting through some old paperwork from boxes that we shoved into our spare bedroom wardrobe when we moved in - eight months later we still haven't sorted through them! Hopefully we should be able to afford some carpets soon for the bedrooms so when that times comes the fitted wardrobes will be ripped out and replaced with freestanding ones - we are getting closer to having our house finished!

 

I also have tomorrow booked off work so I don't go back until Wednesday - I still feel as though I need a complete rest day before I go back, so hopefully that day will be tomorrow.

 

Dans

Pick of the week #5

I'm still on the search for the perfect dress for DC's friend's wedding on 4 May. But in the mean time, I could really do with some more tops for the office. I get bored of my tops so quickly, and when I bought the house I ended up making some wrong decisions, buying some cheap Primark tops that now I've come to hate. Even one of my Directors asked me why I had a top on with Yorkie dogs all over it... I couldn't really give him an answer.

So I'm after something that's perfect for Spring, with short sleeves seems as I'm constantly rushing around the office getting hot and bothered.

These are my pick of the week:


Floral Peter Pan
£32 Miss Selfridge

Geometric
£25 River Island

Embroidered Mesh
£45 Topshop

Red Chevron
£25 River Island

Crochet Vest
£34 Topshop

Pansy Print
£32 Topshop

Bake off #3

Mini egg rocky road bites

Anything that combines white chocolate, marshmallows, mini eggs and biscuit is right up my street! Especially when it only takes 5 minutes to make.

I found this recipe when I was having a nosey through the new issue of the free Sainsburys magazine that was lounging on my colleague's office desk in the week, and I couldn't wait to try it.

 

All of the ingredients were pretty cheap and easy to find!

 

 

 

The recipe tells you to buy sweetmeal digestive biscuits, which I had never heard of before, and it also says to buy mini marshmallows although they were expensive so I just bought regular marshmallows and had a great sticky time cutting them up.

 

 

It was just case of melting the 400g of white chocolate, bashing the biscuits into small pieces, and then mixing all of the yummy ingredients together into a dish before leaving it to set in the fridge for a few hours.

 

 

And here we go! The perfect Easter dessert rocky road mix. It went down perfectly with my friends, well it must have done because they insisted on taking extra pieces home to devour for breakfast the morning after.

 



The only problem was that this was meant to make 25 pieces (!!) and I only made about 8 at most - it was so hard to cut up that I just ended up breaking it with my hands, and we all dived in.

The recipe also said to line the tin with clingfilm before tipping the mixture in, but I found that because my clingfilm wasn't perfectly straight in the tin, the mixture ended up moulding around the clingfilm in parts at the bottom so we had to be careful to pick out little bits of clingfilm before we started eating - I'm sure normal parchment paper will do the trick to make sure the set mixture comes out of the tin.

Recipe:
2 x 200g bars smooth white chocolate by Sainsburys, broken into pieces (I used their basics range)
100g sweetmeal digestives by Sainsburys, broken into small pieces
150g bag mini marshmallows
100g bar mini eggs

Enjoy!

Dans