Becca Jane St Clair

About a week or so ago, I posted to my Facebook page that MüllerLight Coconut with Chocolate Sprinkles yoghurt tasted like eating a Bounty (US: Mounds) bar and I was in heaven and my friend Paul commented with a recipe for chicken korma involving the yogurt. I was dubious as chocolate sounded like a strange ingredient, but tonight I decided to try it. I ran out of Korma powder, so mine was made with half Korma and half Garam Marsala, but it was still ridiculously creamy and “gooey”, as my husband called it. Definately going into regular rotation!

Slimming World Chicken Korma
You Will Need:

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
250g button mushrooms, halved (or bigger mushrooms cut into smaller pieces)
(2 large onions, diced – I omitted this as I am allergic to onion!)
3 TBSP Korma spice
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 MüllerLight Coconut with Chocolate Sprinkles yoghurt pots
1 container Quark
1/2 tsp tumeric (I had to borrow some from my mother-in-law!)
Fry Light
Rice

-Spray a griddle pan (or frying pan) with FryLight and add the chicken to the pan to brown the chicken (you will need to stir the chicken a few times to get all sides cooked)
-While the chicken is cooking, put a small frying pan over high heat and dry fry the Korma spice, then add the vanilla and almond (though I’m sure both of those are optional!)
-Transfer the spice to a large pot and stir in the yoghurts, Quark, and sweetener. Heat over low heat, making sure you don’t curdle the yogurt.
– Stir in the tumeric.
-Once the chicken is cooked, stir chicken into the sauce and keep on very low heat.
-add the mushrooms (and optional onions) to your griddle (or frying pan) and cook for 5-10 minutes or until soft.
-Add the mushrooms to your chicken and sauce

Divide into two portions and serve over rice. Yum!!

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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.

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* Today marks the end of my fourth week with Slimming World, and even though I gained a pound in there, I still managed to lose 11 and a half pounds. Not quite to the full stone (which would have been amazing), but 11.5 is nothing to sneeze at.

I have to admit, I was skeptical. I had lost two and a half stone (35lbs) on my own in 2012 by doing a modified Atkins style diet of extremely low carb, and surprisingly, high fat. The downside is that I managed to gain back nearly an entire stone from September 2012 until October 2013 when I stopped eating low carb, but kept some of the higher fat items in my diet. I gained about 1 pound per month…which doesn’t sound TOO bad, but when I worked so hard to get it off in the first place, it wasn’t too good, was it? But I was still skeptical. A friend of mine did Slimming World and she told me about it and it didn’t sound all that different from Weight Watchers, which friends in the US were doing and I kept thinking of joining, but I didn’t want to walk into meetings alone. Plus the whole point system at Weight Watchers confused me. Even though I had a voucher from my GP to do Weight Watchers, I put off joining.

Someone I know (I won’t say who to protect their own weight loss journey) asked me to join Slimming World with them and two others to do it as a small group. It’s been great having that type of encouragement and support so close, though I wonder if it’s hindering making friends at the weekly meetings. It probably doesn’t help that I’m still a newcomer to the village even after nearly 5 years, since a lot of the people the people I attended with knew because they both had children the same age, or both attended the local secondary school, etc. But friendships will come, I’m sure.

My first evening at Slimming World, I met my consultant, Rebecca Stone. Rebecca is amazing. She is VERY energetic and enthusuastic about Slimming World and about helping people. She even rang me during my first week to see how I was doing and it was a great chance to ask her some additional questions that had popped up. The two weeks she was ill and we had a “substitute” I wasn’t impressed with the sub, so I think a lot of Slimming World has to do with your consultant, too. When I joined, Slimming World was running a promotion, so we got 10 weeks for the price of 12, plus a Christmas cookbook. Not bad, plus by pre-paying for 12 weeks in advance it commits you to attending for at least those weeks. Slimming World also offers a money-back guarantee if you haven’t lost anything after your first four weeks but could prove (by keeping food diary pages) that you kept to the plan. To me, this was important. Not because I wanted to set myself up to fail, but because it was an extra incentive to keep track of everything on the food diary pages.

After that first meeting, I came home, told my husband how I thought this was going to be hard, and I read the books in my packet cover to cover. I also picked up the current Slimming World magazine and I loved the magazine. It focused more on recipes and “feel good stories” and there was very little fluff/filler. Every ad in the magazine was geared towards Slimming World and even listed the number of “syns” for the items advertised.

I had a really pretty Cath Kidston blank book that I got when I was up in Edinburgh with my mom in April as a freebie for spending x amount. It’s in the London fabric, and I hadn’t started using it yet as I wanted to put it towards a really good purpose since it was such an attractive book. This book, as my cousin says, became my Bible. I had a Pinterest board of inspiration, and I downloaded and printed off some of the things I had pinned to it to paste into the front cover. I also set a page for “goals” where I listed all the things I hoped to accomplish with my weight loss, even the really silly ones like “stop feeling uncomfortable on amusement park rides”. I’ve left plenty of room to add more goals and inspiration, too. I started searching both Google and Pinterest for Slimming World links and I created my Slimming World board. I found a lot of graphics with syn values listed, so I printed all those out and started pasting them into the back of my book for easy reference, as well as started writing down the syn values for some of the foods I eat a lot. I also grabbed some Post-it tabs and am tabbing off each week as I go, using the pages for the week as a food diary, and a place to make notes, add more inspiration, etc. etc. Writing down what I eat helped a lot with creating the food diaries, and even though I’m past my four weeks I’m going to keep doing it for several more just because I’m finding it a useful tool. Writing down what I eat also helps me to realize how little I might have eaten one day, or to realize partway through the day that I hadn’t eaten any fruit.

The Syn thing has been interesting for me, too. I’m following the Extra Easy plan and without going into too much detail, each day I am allowed a dairy product off the A list, and a grain product off the B list. I can have unlimited fruit and vegetable, unlimited lean meat, and some other foods are marked as “free” – like baked beans, pasta, and potatoes. Everything else you put into your mouth counts as a syn, and you can eat 5-15 of them per day. With all the free food, sometimes it’s hard to eat many syns, but the beauty of the syn is that in the evening if I’m looking over my food diary and saying that I’ve only had a few syns, I can go make myself a hot chocolate (one of the reduced fat versions with water), and add a splash of milk to it for another half syn to make it creamier (and sometimes I make it all with milk if I still have my A choice for the day). Some of the syn values are shockers — I looked up McDonald’s just last night for Tim while he was on night shift we we discovered how many syns were in some of those foods (answer: a lot); while some of the syn values are reasonable, such as 1/2 syn per level Tablespoon of Reduced Salt & Sugar Heinz ketchup, or 1 syn per Tablespoon of single cream (so I can still have my creamy coffee!) Even chocolate, in moderation, isn’t too bad. A Cadbury’s Freddo is 5 syns, and a single Celebration candy from a Celebrations tin is 2.

I’m also learning about portion sizes, and about making food stretch. One day, I planned on grating some dark chocolate to put in my yogurt (BTW – certain yogurts are free!) and I carefully measured out 15g of Green and Black’s (4.5 syns) and started grating it….only to stop after I had only grated 9g because I had enough! And Cheese — while 40g of reduced fat cheddar doesn’t look like much, it sure does once you’ve grated it! I was absolutely surprised when I went to make a recipe that called for Parmesan cheese to discover that a Healthy A choice was 30g of it. 30g of grated parm is quite a bit and was more than enough for my bowl of pasta. My digital and analog scales, measuring jugs, and measuring spoons have become my new favourite kitchen tools. After I measure things out, I put them into regular every day dishes to try to remember for the future how much of something I can have. Your daily healthy A of semi skim milk is 250ml, which just happens to conveniently fit into a crystal creamer from Princess House, so I can fill up the creamer in the morning and use that milk in my tea all day and when it’s gone I just count the rest of my milk as 1/2 syn per splash (or I count it all as Syns and have cheese as my A instead). 100ml of orange juice (2 syns) goes as high as Strawberry Shortcake’s eyes on my juice glass. 35g of porridge oats can be measured to the third line on a small IKEA plastic bowl. 70g of extra light Philadelphia Cream Cheese is just enough to cover 6 Ryvita Crispbreads, having my A and B in one go.

Coming up with new meals and ways of cooking things is fun, too. Tim likes having sauces/gravy with his meals and the other day I combined greek yogurt (free), diced cucumbers (free), mint and dill (both free) to make a version of Tzatziki to serve with Salmon. Last night, I wanted to have a bit of a treat and I still had the syns to spend so I combined sliced banana (free) with a Toffee Muller Light yogurt (free) and topped it with 100g of reduced fat devon custard (4.5 syns) for what Tim dubbed “Banoffee mess”. Sometimes it doesn’t work out. Like my homemade taco seasoning mix that is heavy on the cumin tasted pretty bad when I stirred some into my scrambled eggs! But it’s all about experimenting and trying new things. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. Slimming World chips, on the other hand, are AMAZING. Slimming World chips can be cut to whatever size you want (so skinny fries, chunky chips, wedges, or even roastie size) and you just boil the potatoes, drain them and shake them (like making regular roast potatoes), but you spray the tray with Frylight instead of oil or meat drippings. Someone in our group suggested Marmite on top. Now, I do not like Marmite and I think it’s gross, but a tablespoon of Marmite warmed up and mixed with a little hot water made a very tasty glaze for the potatoes.

Another thing that’s become really important to me is eating breakfast. I am not a big cereal person, so some mornings I have scrambled eggs with beans (both free) or a yogurt and an apple (also both free). Some mornings if Tim is up and we’re both hungry, I’ll do a “grill up” — the Slimming World equivalent to a fry up with eggs, bacon (with the fat off!), grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, and beans. Is this having an impact on my weight loss? Probably! It’s now 1030 and I’ve been up for a few hours and the first thing I did as I sat down at the computer was grab a yogurt out of the fridge. It’s become habit to me in the past 28 days.

Another easy swap for me that I totally credit with this week’s amazing 5.5lb loss is Tetley’s “best of both” blended teabags. It comes in a bright pink bag and it is half regular tea, half green tea. And we all know about the multiple health benefits of green tea, don’t we? And honestly, because it’s half and half, you can hardly taste the difference. And as Rebecca pointed out, it also weans you off more slowly from caffeine instead of going straight to pure green tea. Though, it will be a while before you can pry my coffee away from me, I will admit.

I started measuring myself again, too. In the past 28 days, 16.75 inches are GONE from my body overall. I measure EVERYWHERE — around my belly (can it really be called a waist?), my hips, below and above my boobs, upper and lower thigh, calves, ankles, neck, around the top of my arm, and around my feet. I used to not measure as many places, but I find it’s important to look at all the places I collect extra fat. If I could figure out a way to measure my face, I would. My foot width went down by an inch, and I even noticed that when I went to wear a pair of shoes from a few years ago that are now too big. And a pair of shoes I had bought online that were barely wide enough without socks now fit comfortably with socks. Obviously, the measurements are subject to bloating and other changes — like my upper arm sometimes swells due to the Hidradenitis, but by keeping track I can also monitor that condition. My hips will bloat a little at that time of the month. My knee is currently injured, so my lower thigh has been a bit bigger. But there’s a definite downwards trend.

Can I get another amazing 5.5lbs off this week? Maybe. Who knows? But if I can get off 2.5, I will have the first stone gone. Would it have been amazing to do it within the first four weeks? Yes. But being 2.5lbs away from it is nothing to sneeze at, and I won’t beat myself up for it, either.

**

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*image from Someecards via Pinterest.
** Unknown via Pinterest. (is this your creation? Let me know so I can credit you!)

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/

This post is inspired by It All Comes Together in the End AKA How I Met Your Father. The post was a list of the series of events that happened in her life that led towards her meeting her husband. Her events started when she was in college, but looking back, I think the events that led me to meeting Tim actually started all the way back in high school…..

When I was 14, I had a crush on a boy named Harlan. Yes, I can admit it now, and let’s be honest – who didn’t know I had a crush on him back then? He probably knew, too (or at least now he does. Hi Harlan! LOL) The internet was slowly becoming popular, but before there was the internet, there were BBSes. And Harlan just happened to run one. I managed to convince my mom that we needed a modem and somehow roped Harlan into coming over one day to install it and show me how to use it. So, thanks Harlan, for installing my modem!

Through BBSing I met a lot of people I probably wouldn’t have met otherwise. A lot of these people are some of my closest friends, but that’s a story for another time. The important thing to remember is that I met people and started talking with a kid I used to know when I was younger, named Dave. Years later, Dave decided to go by his first name, Malcolm, and he and I dated for about a year. Through Malcolm, I reconnected with some of the old BBSing crowd I hadn’t seen in ages. Thanks, Malcolm.

Flash forward another few years. I was hanging out with one of my old BBSing friends, Mike, when he started to tell me about a new IRC network he and some friends had started. He asked me if I would be interested in checking it out, and suggested I join #schlock_mercenary, a channel for fans of the web comic of the same name. Through this channel, I made friends with even more people. Thanks, Mike.

One of the people I met was a guy named Brent. Brent and I would privately chat about everything and anything and one day he suggested I check out this other channel, #crfh, because he thought I would fit in with the crowd of people there. #crfh was a channel for fans of the webcomic, College Roommies From Hell!!!. As it turned out, he was right. I fit in quite well there. Thanks, Wulfy.

If you’re a girl in a male-dominated geeky world, you tend to wind up dating quite a few of the guys you’ve met. I’ll be honest. I probably “dated” about a half a dozen boys I met through #crfh. Some of them I actually met in person, some of them were online relationships only as they never reached the meeting each other point. At one point, I wound up talking to a kid named Charlie who happened to live not-so-far away from me and he asked me out. We started dating, and at the same time the channel was planning a big meet (BoardieCon) in Seattle. Because I was dating Charlie and wanted to meet some of the people I knew through these channels, I decided to go. While there, I met one of the men I had been talking to for around a year. His name was Tim, and he was British. We hit it off immediately when we chatted online because of my love for the UK and my hope to someday live there. We spent a little bit of time together at BoardieCon, but I was also there with my boyfriend (the above mentioned Charlie), so it’s not like we could have gone off together if we wanted. I do remember getting mad at him and another man from our group for ditching us all to go ride trains for a day while I was stuck making swords out of foam with my boyfriend, though.

Charlie and I broke up, and through a series of miscommunications (to put it nicely), a lot of the people from the chat channel started disliking me and saying nasty things about me. But not Tim. He remained a steadfast friend. I started seeing another guy from the channel, Alex. Alex lived in Michigan, so it was a long drive to see him, but we got along well and for around two years, Alex and I had some sort of pseudo-relationship. When Alex moved out to Seattle for a job, we “broke up” for lack of a better way to describe it. The break up happened right before I was going down to Florida to visit my cousin, Missy, and to go on Ships and Dip III. This Tim fellow told me that he would be there for me and anytime I needed to talk I only had to call (long distance across an ocean, but still!). My cousin told me she thought he was sweet for offering. Thanks Alex.

After I got back from the cruise, Tim and I got closer and closer. His village finally had high speed internet and we started talking more and more over Skype…having real conversations not just typing to one another. Over the course of six months or so, I fell in love.

To be honest, everything that happened after that moment seems to have passed in a blur. I came out to visit for 6 months, thanks to my friend Linz for being able to organize my flight after my first flight got cancelled. I went home. Tim visited me. My mom and I visited him. We got engaged and got married on Bonfire Night. We filled out visa paperwork and I moved to the UK 10 weeks after we got married. Today we celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary, but we constantly say that it feels like we’ve been together longer than that because we just fit.

So looking back, I have to thank a little girl (me) for having a crush on a boy she met through drama club. Isn’t it funny when you look back on things?

(There are also probably several other previous relationships to thank for where I am now, but if I start listing everyone we could be here for a while…..Greg, Dave H, Dave S, Dave G, Dave McN, Dave who’s last name I forgot, Tom, He-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named, That kid who was in jail, That one I don’t want to admit to having been with, that other one who’s name I’ve actually forgotten, the first boy I dated when I was 14…was that Stephen?….John, Jason, James, at least one guy named Mike…Uhm, did I mention this would get to be a long list?)

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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/

ObamaCare has been in the news a lot lately because it’s finally starting to go into effect in January (I think). As an American who resides abroad for more than 335 days per year, I don’t need to sign up for a plan. From what I understand, this isn’t trying to restrict Americans abroad to only visiting the US for 25 days each year, but it is restricting us to calling a visit to the US a visit. As in, we can’t call an address in the US our “home address”. Which sounds a bit odd since they use your last lived at address in the US as your “home address” for voting purposes, but at least I don’t have to sign up for a healthcare plan in the US I’d only be able to use occasionally. Instead, I have traveler’s insurance. But this isn’t the point of my daily post today. It’s just an a way of explaining where my train of thought wandered to today.

The point of my post is to tell you all that I love the NHS and their pre-pay certificates. No, really. I live in England, where we still pay for our prescriptions (Scotland and Wales get freebies), but we have a pre-pay scheme where you can pre-pay for 3 or 12 months in one go if you are on long-term prescriptions but don’t yet qualify for free ones. I recently switched from a 3-month certificate to a 12 month one for a little over £100 (single prescriptions cost £7.85) as I refill my Metformin every 28 days, my Zineryt every 5 weeks, and my Hibiscrub usually every other month. I switched because recently, after visiting a Dermatologist, I was given two new creams and a wash and I also have been on prescription pain relievers for my knee. Those 7 prescriptions would have cost me £54.95, or more than HALF of what my pre-pay certificate cost. I pay for my pre-pay certificate in monthly installments of £10, so it’s slightly more than the cost of one prescription.

Again, this isn’t an option for everyone, in fact it only becomes valid if you know you will be on at least 14 prescriptions in the year. Since no one can predict if they will need 14 in a year, I would say go with if you need 2 or more per month. The three-month pre-pay certificate costs just under £30, so that is a good option if you will be on more than 4 prescriptions in a 3-month period…and here’s the beauty of it. You can BACK DATE your pre-pay by up to 30 days. So let’s say you visit your GP and find out that you have a skin infection. You get handed a prescription for antibiotic pills, a cream, a daily scrub, and some sticky pads to cover it with. You can walk into your chemist and request a “blue” reciept when you pay, go home, apply for a three-month pre-pay certificate, have it valid as of yesterday, and then once it comes in the mail go back to the chemist with your card and blue receipt and get your money back. Brilliant.

It’s just one more reason why I love the NHS….

[Please note I do not get compensated for talking about the NHS. I just honestly love it that much!]

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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/

Ah, it’s November again and NaBloPoMo is upon us (along with NaNoWriMo). While I won’t promise to write a post every single day, I will do my best to keep up my blog. Or at least, start to keep up my blog, since I’ve gone for months on end without posting anything interesting.

But we’ll see.

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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/