The Splat Cooking Blog

After a week of no sleep (puppy) following on from 2 weeks of no sleep (flu) I at last ventured out on my bike for what feels like the first time this year and I now feel fat and desperately unfit.

I thought I was doing OK until this bloke came belting past me going twice as fast (on a bike), then about a mile further on two old geezers (yes, even older than me) did the same, and it just got worse after that with a whole bunch of them (not sure what the collective noun is for a bunch of roadies is, think it’s probably a ‘mud’ of mountain bikers, so maybe it’s a ‘razor’ of roadies as they all shave their legs).  Anyway, felt very demoralised and also very depressed at the sight of my legs in my cycling shorts – deeply unpleasant.

So there’s nothing for it – have to shift 7 pounds and really tone up before I can get these pegs out in the air, haven’t done very well today, cooked roast beef and all the trimmings and ate 3 roasties and a yorkshire pudding instead of JUST veg and beef, then had Eve’s pudding and ice cream – very, very bad. So from tomorrow my aim is:

2 x swim sessions (starting with 40 lengths, building up to 62+ over the next few weeks) Mon and Tues

3 x early morning gym sessions (groan)

2 x 1 hour bike rides

Pilates on Tuesday

Yoga on Wed

Turbo trainer for at least 30 mins 3-4 times per week

No chocolate, biscuits, cakes, roasties, toast, other carbs, hoo hah –  have to get into bloody minded determination mode and figured that if I blog it I’ll have to keep to it as you’ll be reading it and it will be just too embarassing. So here goes, let’s see what happens,

Did an hour on  my bike this morning so that counts and 60 crunches (yes, I know that’s pathetic, need to do at least 100)

I WILL BE LEAN AND TONED……I DO NOT NEED CHOCOLATE AND BISCUITS…..MY BODY IS A TEMPLE THAT ONLY ACCEPTS HEALTHY FOOD AND FRESH FRUIT AND VEG……OM!

Saturday lunch today was different, trying to cut costs I decided to buy a pack of puff pastry, caramelise some onions in butter and olive oil and make a caramelised onion tart with salad and leftover roast veg for lunch, made onion tart surprise for the children aka puff pastry pizza with passata, ham and mozzarella.  Served this up to yelps of joy from husband and small children and everyone raved about how wonderful it was and begged me to cook  it again.  Makes a nice change, I’m so used to ‘yuk,I’m not eating that, what’s in it, don’t like the look of that, can I just have some bread, etc, etc, ‘ it was wonderful and now on the list.

Very Excited – just been commissioned to write 20 recipes for the new BBC Lifestyle recipe site.

Ran my first Cupcake Bouquet Workshop today and it went really, really well, the finished bouquets were wonderful and I think that the ladies felt very proud, if a little nervous about transporting them home in one piece.

They mistakenly anticipated that the hard part was decorating the ‘rose’ icing when in fact it’s the flower arranging bit at the end, had to keep reminding them to ‘breathe’ it’s only a cupcake, if it falls apart just eat it.   We all decided that we preferred cake decorating to flower arranging as it’s just too hard.

Debbie Norie who helps run guides was a total star last night, she was daft enough to attempt to make chocolate roses with 30 odd guides last  night.  I helped out at the end just as the white chocolate paste was melting everywhere in hot hands in a hot kitchen, couldn’t help adding that that the reason I preferred sugarpaste!  Anyway, Debbie did a grand job and ended up with very proud guides and gorgeous roses for Mother’s Day.

I am totally in awe of Debbie as she worked as a Pastry Chef at the Connaught and then worked with Mich Turner at the Little Venice Cake Company, Debbie came along to my Cupcake Coffee Morning on Wednesday and I was sooo nervous but she’s so nice it was fine.  Well done mate!