Becca Jane St Clair

Firstly, I need to apologize for my photo. Once again, I took a really bad photo of the meal, and as the meal has now been eaten, I don’t have anything else to take a replacement photo of. So, crappy photo it is!

Anyway.

If you are familiar at all with dieting and have used any of the “programs”, you probably have come across a recipe for Diet Coke Chicken. If you haven’t, you basically turn the Diet Coke into a marinade and it’s supposed to taste similar to barbecue sauce. I’ve never tried it, but I’m willing to give it a go sometime after today’s recipe turned out so great!

I’m on a few groups online for support in this whole Slimming World thing, and one of the ladies, Stephanie, posted that she made a sweet and sour version using Fanta Zero, so I had to give it a try tonight! I had some diced pork in the freezer, so tonight’s dinner became Sweet and Sour Pork.

You will need:

Fry Light
1 can of Fanta Zero (US friends, Fanta is orange soda, so use a diet orange)
4 TBS passata (Tomato Sauce)
Worcester sauce
Red pepper flakes
2 TBS vinegar (any flavour)
1/2 C diced cherry tomatoes
1 TBS soy sauce
Stir-fry vegetables (use whatever you like!)
500g diced pork (cut off all fat)
2 eggs, whisked (optional)
Rice
Fresh pineapple, diced

-Cook rice according to package directions.
-Combine Fanta Zero, passata, a dash of Worcester, a pinch of red pepper flakes, and vinegar into a saucepan and bring to a boil. As it starts to boil, add your diced tomatoes. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes.
-Spray a wok or large frying pan with Fry Light and cook the pork until it is no longer pink. Add 1TBS Soy Sauce and your vegetables and stir-fry for 5 minutes, depending on how crunchy you like your vegetables.
-(optional) pour the two eggs into the wok and stir until scrambled (I do this because we like egg fried rice. It takes about 5 minutes).
-Check sauce. If it hasn’t reduced, take the lid off and turn up the heat. If it looks thick enough for your liking, pour over the mixture in the wok and stir, cooking an additional 5 minutes.
-Serve with rice (optional) and garnish the top with some fresh pineapple.
-This should serve 3-4 people.

I ate mine without rice because I don’t eat a lot of carbs, but rice is a free food, so this recipe would still be totally free on the Extra Easy Slimming World plan. If you modify any of the ingredients (other than the vegetables used or swapping the meat for chicken), you will need to look up the Syn values for those ingredients.

Like I said, my photo isn’t pretty, but I’ll include it anyway:

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, Networked Blogs, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

[LJ readers reading this on the LJ RSS feed: Please click on the link at the top of the entry to go directly to my blog to leave a comment, as comments left on the LJ RSS do not get seen by me. Facebook users reading this from my Networked Blogs link can either comment on facebook or on my blog. If you are reading this through an e-mail subscription, you might need to go directly to my blog to view videos and images.]

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I’m at it again. Changing and modifying other people’s recipes. This time, it’s a recipe for Turkey Pumpkin Chili.

I’ve just started Slimming World with a few other people and this recipe is perfect as it contains all FREE FOOD on the EXTRA EASY plan.

You will need:

Fry Light
200g button mushrooms (finely chopped)
500g lean turkey mince (it has to have less than 5% to be free. I got my pack at Waitrose and it was 3% fat)
2 tins of tomatoes or diced tomatoes
1 pint of pumpkin puree*
3 teaspoons mild chili powder
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon ground pepper
salt
500g corn (fresh, frozen, or tinned)

-Spray the inside of your dutch oven or large pot with fry light and saute the mushrooms for a few minutes until they start to get a little mushy.
-Break up the turkey mince and add it to the pot and let turkey fully cook (about 10-15 minutes)
-Add the tins of tomatoes (and the juice) and use a wooden spoon to break them up if you used whole tomatoes. Give it a stir
-Carefully add the pumpkin. This filled my pot to the brim so I had to sort of fold it in instead of stir.
-Add your spices minus the salt (you’ll salt it later)
-Cook until the it boils, about 15 minutes. Turn down the heat and give it a taste. Adjust your spices if you don’t think it is spicy enough and add salt if necessary.
-Stir in the corn and heat corn thoroughly (maybe another 5-10 minutes)

As I said, according to checking all the Syn information on the Slimming World website, this meal as-is is entirely FREE. If you make any additions yourself, please check your ingredients against the Slimming World website first. This might taste really good with a dollop of cream fraiche on it, but that would add I think 2 Syns.

Want a really bad photo of the dish?

There’s a much prettier photo on Garnish With Lemon with the original recipe.

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*The original recipe calls for 2 15oz tins of pumpkin puree. I don’t have tins of it, I have fresh pumpkin I pureed**, so I took my pint sized glass measuring jug and filled that with puree. a pint falls a little short of 30oz, but I wasn’t going to fiddle with it and the amount I used worked fine as you could definitely taste the pumpkin.

**Every October I buy several pumpkins and roast them to make my own puree since tins of it are hard to find in the UK and it’s not a year-round food here. You never know when you’ll want to make a pumpkin pie in the middle of February!

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, Networked Blogs, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

[LJ readers reading this on the LJ RSS feed: Please click on the link at the top of the entry to go directly to my blog to leave a comment, as comments left on the LJ RSS do not get seen by me. Facebook users reading this from my Networked Blogs link can either comment on facebook or on my blog. If you are reading this through an e-mail subscription, you might need to go directly to my blog to view videos and images.]

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Today (er, yesterday) was a friend’s birthday. A few weeks ago, she told me she was going to purchase a cake to celebrate with, and I said “no, I’m making you a cake”. And then I went on holiday to the US and promptly forgot until I looked at the calendar over the weekend where I had written “make Helen a cake” on Thursday!

So what to make? Like me, my friend is diabetic, so I sent her a text and asked her if she wanted a “good for us” cake or something gooey and naughty and gooey and naughty won out. She had no flavour preferences, so I started racking my brain for something interesting and I kept coming back to the Black Forest Gateau I made for a different friend’s birthday several years ago. The problem was, I really wasn’t in the mood to make a full on Gateau with layers of biscuit and cream, so I settled on somehow combining chocolate and cherries.

Well, this is a hard combination to find recipes for. Either the recipes called for loads of crazy ingredients (one recipe had both buttermilk and sour cream in it!) or they weren’t for a layer cake. I specifically had the idea in my head that there would be cherries IN the cake, between the layers, and on top. I also thought it would involve cherry pie filling and/or cherry jam as opposed to fresh cherries. I was right.

Scouring Pinterest, I came across a Betty Crocker recipe that I am almost ashamed to say is the recipe I settled on!

You Will Need:
1 box Betty Crocker Devil’s Food Cake Mix (they sell them now at Waitrose and probably a few other places)
21 oz cherry pie filling (in the US, this is one large can. In the UK, it took me about 1 2/3 tins. My kitchen scale had ounces on it as well as grams, or you can just eyeball it. 21 oz is approximately 600 grams)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 jar cherry jam or conserve
1 container glace or maraschino cherries
Chocolate frosting of your choice (store bought or homemade!)

-Preheat your oven to 175C and line the bottom of two 8″ round cake tins with parchment paper
-Ignore instructions on the back of the box
-Combine dry cake mix, eggs, pie filling, and vanilla. As you stir, the cherries will start to break up. This is fine.
-Divide batter between cake tins
-Bake for 20-30 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean (unless you stab a cherry!)
-Cool cakes for about 15 minutes in the tin, remove from tins and cool for at least an additional hour. You don’t want the cakes to be warm when you put them together (unless you want runny jam in the middle)

-Place the first cake upside down on your serving plate and spread with cherry jam. I used about a half of the jar, you can use more or less. I also added the extra cherries leftover from the pie filling.
-Put the second cake on top of the jam.
-Scrape out the cherry pie filling tins and spread the leftover “jelly” on the top and sides of the cake.
-Spread your frosting all over the top and sides of the cake
-Decorate with glace cherries however you like.

I was told this cake was amazing, and the taste I had was really good. The cherry and chocolate flavours both really come through nicely.

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, Networked Blogs, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

[LJ readers reading this on the LJ RSS feed: Please click on the link at the top of the entry to go directly to my blog to leave a comment, as comments left on the LJ RSS do not get seen by me. Facebook users reading this from my Networked Blogs link can either comment on facebook or on my blog. If you are reading this through an e-mail subscription, you might need to go directly to my blog to view videos and images.]

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I know I haven’t updated in a while, and I’m hoping NaBloPoMo in November will jump start me, but in the meantime I thought I would write a post to expand on what I’ve been posting on Facebook.

Last night around 2 in the morning I had to go to A&E for my knee, but let me backtrack and tell you what happened….

My knee had been hurting for the past few days. I was chalking it up to the change in the weather (quite literally we went from the upper teens/lower 20s to single digits overnight) or maybe I was developing arthritis (I joked on FB that I was too young for arthritis), but while we were in the US we went to a train museum and when I was getting down off one of the engines it had a particularly high step and I remember telling Tim after I climbed down that my knee hurt and I wasn’t going to climb on any more trains. It might have hurt the following day and on-and-off for the rest of the trip, but it was never anything really horrible that a hot shower or regular pain relievers didn’t take care of.

Yesterday, the pain seemed to increase throughout the day and I actually wound up in bed with the bedwarmer as a heating pad earlier in the evening. I had plans that included getting up and showering before Tim got home from his overnight shift (because our boiler is in a closet in the same room as the bed is currently if I use the hot water while Tim is sleeping the noise of the boiler wakes him), then going back to sleep for an hour or two before being picked up for my chorus’ open workshop that took place today. That didn’t happen. Instead, when I went up the stairs to go to bed, my left knee completely gave way from underneath me after I turned the corner (we have a tight spiral staircase that turns back on itself on a landing 3/4 of the way up). I managed to pull myself up on the banister, and limped down the hallway and managed to get onto the bed, where I texted Tim and told him what happened.

Tim wrote back and asked me if I was in pain and I told him that the pain was making me cry, so he suggested ringing 111* to ask them for advice. The first guy I got was a call centre person with no medical training and he asked me all sorts of weird questions that had no relevance and in the end told me that since I wasn’t bleeding or feverish that I should wait and go see my GP on Monday. I asked him what I should do about the pain because it was making me cry and he transferred me to a nurse. The nurse advised going to A&E as soon as I was able because she suspected a torn ligament and said I would need an X-ray and strapping up. I rang Tim back and told him what was suggested and he said he would get home to take me as soon as he was able to get someone to take over where he was.

I think we got to A&E around 2AM. Surprisingly, the waiting area was pretty empty and I was told there were three people ahead of me after I went through triage and it wouldn’t be a long wait. But then we started hearing screaming coming from behind the door and a nurse came out and asked the receptionist if the police were at the hospital and then three carloads of police showed up! Yikes. Still don’t know what that was about, but when I was finally called back two police officers were stationed right near the entrance to the examining area.

The doctor I saw was an intern and he admitted to me that he had no experience with orthopedics. He bent my knee this way and that way and sideways and based on the crunch and crackle (seriously, my knee sounded like walking on gravel does) he determined that it probably wasn’t a ligament, but was a meniscus tear (cartilage) and that an x-ray wouldn’t help since cartilage doesn’t show up on an x-ray. So he told me to make an appointment with my GP on Monday because I would need physio and to stay off it for about a week….but he didn’t give me a brace or anything to keep it immobile. He also gave me a prescription for Diclofenac but told me the hospital pharmacy was closed for the night and I would have to take it to an after hours.

We left and headed for the Boots at the Carleton center only to find it completely dark and no afterhours window open. Puzzled, I fired up google to find out that at that particular time (nearly 5AM) there was not a single pharmacy open in Lincoln. Nice. So we headed home and I took some Naproxen I brought back from the US.

I tried to get comfortable in bed and immediately put myself in pain when I tried to get into my usual sleeping position (knees slightly bent). I still had my knee brace from 1998 when I had surgery on my right knee, so I had Tim get it out for me and I stuck in on my left knee. I was asleep, finally, by 7AM. I woke up around 10 to go to the loo and with the knee brace the steps were a piece of cake. When I woke up again around 3PM I took off the brace (since the hospital told me I did’t need one) and I was in a ton of pain going down the steps. I think I will be asking my GP for a brace on Monday. While the one I had worked, it wasn’t designed for the left side so all the fastenings are on the wrong side.

So I’m pretty immobile for the weekend until I can get in with my GP on Monday. I’m going to go back upstairs now and get into bed. I have my laptop and my kindle, both with BBC iPlayer and LoveFilm to keep me company.

Oh, and PS to my American friends – My trip to A&E didn’t cost me a cent. I’ll only have to pay for my prescription, but I pre-pay for those (unlimited prescriptions for about £12/mo) so I won’t even have to hand over any cash when I pick it up, either.

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*111 is a service in the UK that replaced NHS Direct. Basically, you can ring 111 when your GP office is closed for advice and they will help you determine if you need to go to A&E, an after hours GP, or wait until the morning when your GP office is open. For more information: http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/AboutNHSservices/Emergencyandurgentcareservices/Pages/NHS-111.aspx

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, Networked Blogs, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

[LJ readers reading this on the LJ RSS feed: Please click on the link at the top of the entry to go directly to my blog to leave a comment, as comments left on the LJ RSS do not get seen by me. Facebook users reading this from my Networked Blogs link can either comment on facebook or on my blog. If you are reading this through an e-mail subscription, you might need to go directly to my blog to view videos and images.]

For full Copyright and Disclaimer, please read http://www.blog.beccajanestclair.com/copyright/