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/

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.]

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

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!

~~*~~
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 (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.

~~*~~
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.

—
*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

~~*~~
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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On a group that I’m part of, an American about to move to the UK asked “What are the top 5 things we should bring?” After some consideration, this is the list I came up with based on my own moving experience in 2009 and my current life here.

1 – US measuring cups, spoons, and a pyrex jug. While you’re still sorting out the Metric system in the kitchen, it’s nice to know you can use your old standby recipes. I got rid of most of my cookbooks before I moved and only kept the ones that were book tie-ins (I have the Anne of Green Gables cookbook and the Little House cookbook) and good old Betty. [I still use my US measuring cups. There are some recipes that I just can’t translate into Metric and they are old favourites!]

2 – a 9×13 cake pan. I finally gave up and my mom brought me a pan when she visited as the only place I could find one was Lakeland and they wanted £30 for it! Also things like Bundt pans are a bit pricey here. But if you’re not a baker, ignore this.

3 – Die hard favourite items. I spent money on shipping 20 boxes of things over and I do not regret it at all. I even shipped (in a box) a massive 4 foot by 3 foot rug I had in my bedroom in the US and I’m so happy I did. I also brought a few throw pillows and my Penn State stadium blankets. One word of advice: If you are bringing ANY family crystal or dishes put these in your carry-on. I had loads of stuff get smashed by the shipping company and that was with me carefully wrapping things and marking the box as “fragile keep on top”. But the things I put in my carry-on wheeled suitcase all arrived in one piece. I also had my husband take a few of my dolls back with him after we got married, so I have part of my massive doll collection in the living room (I got rid of the rest of them and only kept significant ones) I packed up quite a bit of my kitchen items, even though a lot are going to be available here because it’s nice to use things that are familiar. Along this same line: family heirlooms, even the odd things. For example, I brought along this set of metal bowls and cups from my Nanny’s house because they remind me of her, my pappy, my aunt and uncle. My mom gave me a few pieces of her Corningware before I moved so I have pieces that I remember being used when I grew up. I also packed a few favourite mugs. You’ll probably buy loads more, but there’s something familiar about using the big purple coffee mug I had in my college dorm room! I also brought along some of my knick-knacks (got rid of the rest!) since I was moving into my husband’s house and I wanted to be able to look around and see a bit of me.

4 – Medical records. I went to my doctor’s office about a month before I moved and for $10 they gave me my entire file. Usually they like to send these directly to the doctors, but when I explained that I was moving overseas, they were more than happy to give me a copy. It took a few days as they had to get it all photocopied, but it was worth it to turn it over to the GP here….and the GP here had everything typed into the system, so they can go back and look at records from before I lived here. Also, 2 month supply of any prescription you are currently on as it might take you that long to get settled with a GP and get sorted for UK equivalents. While we’re talking about records, it’s best to make sure you pack all your important family docs – expired passports, marriage certificates, birth certificates, diplomas, etc. I also have my US tax records going back to 1997, but that was probably overkill. [I really can’t stress this enough. Especially if you have an on-going medical condition. You also might want to write down family medical histories for your parents & grandparents just in case.]

5 – favourite clothing pieces. Bras & Knickers. Jeans. While fashion is a little different here, it’s still nice to have old favourites. Bras & Knickers simply because it might take you awhile to find brands you love and it will be trial and error to find ones that fit and ones you like. Jeans…..I still haven’t really found jeans here that I like the fit of so I tend to buy a few pairs when I’m in the US. Hoodies are always useful no matter what time of year it is, and I love wearing my “Jersey Girl” and Penn State hoodies. Comfortable shoes. Shoe sizes in the UK are different so again, just until you are more comfortable here it’s best to have plenty of shoe options. Also, you’re likely to do a lot more walking in the UK than in the US, so comfy shoes for walking are a must…as are waterproof shoes!

Now onto things you shouldn’t pack, don’t need to bring, or should bring in moderation:

1 – Books. No, don’t get up in arms with me over this. I love to read, but I managed to get my collection down to five boxes….and of the five, based on what books I still have I could have only taken two. I kept anything that was irreplaceable or special. Childhood series (Little House, Anne of Green Gables, Nancy Drew) came along. US editions of Harry Potter, antique books, and books that had sentimental value came along. Everything else can be replaced by visiting charity shops and used book stores.

2 – DVDs and Videos. Don’t even bother with VHS videos at all, they will not play here. As far as DVDs go… you will first need to hack a UK player, but that’s not hard. Only bring DVDs that have meaning to you or were limited editions and then mark the spines so you know they are R1. I bought little green stickers at Wilkinson’s. Just like books, you can pick up DVDs for pretty cheap at charity shops!

3 – Food. Unless it’s something you know you NEED nearly every day, don’t bother. Many items are available here either at the regular shops or specialty shops. Sure, you’ll pay out the nose for some of the things, but then you can treat them as “treats”. Part of the fun of living in a new country is discovering the food! I will admit to having peanut butter on subscription service through Amazon and getting a steady stream of ranch dressing and instant iced tea, though!

4 – Toiletries. With the exception of a month’s worth until you find new UK products or unless you have specific needs (allergies?), this is also something I wouldn’t bother with bringing along. A lot of the major brands (Dove, Pantene, Herbal Essence, Olay, Neutrogena, etc) are here and do you really want to be stuck in a situation where you are constantly filling your suitcases with face wash or shampoo when you go back to the US for a visit? There are some great UK products here, you just have to be patient while you look for them. You’ll get used to the spray deodorant. I promise.

I can’t think of a fifth.

What would be on your list?

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated below 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/

*

Tour our caravan here:

(just in case it hasn’t embedded, you can watch it here: http://youtu.be/cgqVuxAFtrg. I can’t see the video when I preview my blog post, so I have no idea if it’s me or wordpress or youtube that’s having the problem….)

My husband and I are about to be the proud owners of a 1995 touring caravan! Last Summer, we borrowed a caravan from Tim’s parents and over the weekend they offered to sell it to us as they don’t feel they will use it again, and they know we really liked using it. So as soon as we can find storage for it and take possession of it (and erm, pay them!) it’s ours!! This isn’t to say that we don’t like tent camping….I LOVED our holiday in Austria in our tent. Our two weeks in Wales in a tent? Not so much thanks to the rain. But last year having the caravan was fantastic. It was so nice to have a place that was dry to sit in/eat in/read in/sleep in, and a place where you could turn on HEAT when you were soaked through! It was also nice to have dedicated electricity for things like a kettle and fridge and oh yeah, we had a stove. The caravan even has a toilet with a shower, but neither one of us needed to use it (we were pitched up close enough to the toilet blocks we just walked over to those even in the middle of the night).

So, now that we have a caravan, I thought I would start looking at photos of caravans online to get some ideas for better ways to organize things (permanently) as well as give it a little personalization. Pinterest is full of great ideas and woah are there some amazing caravans out there! Check out this one**:

Now, that’s a little too busy for me. I also liked this one***:

But that one is probably a little too pink for Tim!

I think it will take awhile to actually do anything to the caravan, but if I can organize myself and get it done, it could become quite nice. A few things I think we need to consider for the future include painting the interior walls, making or getting new curtains made, and re-covering the cushions. I don’t have any ideas on what colours we’ll use yet, but I’m sure we will pick something we both like. I’m sort of leaning towards red, but the kitchen area is green and I wouldn’t want it to look like Christmas year-round! I can’t see us doing any of it until it’s absolutely needed, but there’s no reason we can’t do a little decorating in it now.

One thing I learned from all my browsing, is that a caravan needs cushions:

^

^^

Doesn’t that one look like it belongs in a Cath Kidston catalogue?

Cushions, I can do. We already (of course) have our pillows in the caravan, but it might be nice to be able to put the pillows away in the wardrobe during the day and have a few throw cushions on the two sofas. I know how to sew, so I could make my own out of fabric scraps, or I could buy pre-made covers or even whole cushions. I’m going to have to think about this and pick something neutral for now and then jazz things up later. Maybe I’ll buy some cheap cushions for now that can be recovered later.

I did, however, get some great ideas for what to do with the (very small) amount of wall space. Most of the caravan is made up of windows or cabinets, but there’s bits of wall here and there.

^^^

I think maybe a few framed postcards from where we travel would look cute on the wall. I read on an RV site that you can use sticky backed velcro to keep things attached to the walls while travelling, so I’ll have to do that with the pictures.

I also want to take a cookie sheet and make a backsplash for the wall between the cabinet and fridge, and then paint it with chalkboard paint. We collected a few magnets while we were away last year and I kept sticking them to the tea tin so we wouldn’t lose them. And having a little board where we could stick up important things (like tickets) or make notes on would be helpful.

I plan on purchasing a bunch of command hooks as well and will have a play to see where the hooks can go. I already purchased some over the caravan door hooks (ages ago!) so we can at least have some hooks on the inside of the bathroom door instead of tossing the towels on the toilet and the bathrobes in the bottom of the wardrobe.

And the outside! Some people go all out on the exteriors as well!

+

++

But something tells me Tim would not let me paint our caravan purple OR polka dots. So I’d settle for some decals. We could get a train, or some tracks, or even some music notes. But we need to do something to personalize it.

We have lots to do before we start thinking about that. We have to take possession of the caravan and clean out anything Tim’s parents want back/we don’t want and add in some of our own camping gear that will live in the caravan, plus make a list of things it needs. We need to practice hooking it up to the car, too. We’ve only hooked it up a handful of times, and we had help from Tim’s dad a few of those times! There’s loads of instructions for what to do when we get to a site from setting the brake, hooking up the electrics, getting the water pump working, hooking up the waste water receptacle, turning on the gas…..

Ah, I can’t wait. Time to research local storage facilities….and try to plan a weekend away!

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated below 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.

*Credit unknown, found it on Pinterest. If this is yours, let me know so I can credit you!
**Photo credit: PurpleFuzzyMittens
***Photo credit: Cornbread and Beans Quilting Co
^Photo credit: My Vintage Caravan
^^Credit unknown, found it on Pinterest. If this is yours, let me know so I can credit you!
^^^Credit unknown, found it on Pinterest. If this is yours, let me know so I can credit you!
+Photo credit: Shannon Christensen
++Credit unknown, found it on Pinterest. If this is yours, let me know so I can credit you!

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I can’t take credit for this recipe. Credit belongs to Peace, Love, and Low Carb, but I modified her recipe to fit to what’s available in the UK and to my personal preferences. This is a great low-carb dinner when paired with a salad!

You Will Need:

2 peppers per person (I used green and red. I think the yellow or orange ones would be too sweet)
8-10 slices of roast beef (I used Tesco Finest), cut into thin strips (kitchen scissors makes this easy)
shredded mozzarella
300g (aprox) mushrooms, diced (I used my hand held Tupperware dicer)
1 container tomato passata (I think they are 500g in a carton)
Oregano

1. Pre-heat oven to 175C
2. Slice off the tops of your peppers and remove the seeds as well as as much of the membrane as you can. If your peppers won’t stand up, you might want to prop them up in ramekins or in a casserole dish with sides.
3. Using your biggest frying pan (I use my wok), sauteé the mushrooms in a little olive oil until they are soft (about 10 minutes).
4. Add the strips of roast beef and cook an additional 10 minutes.
5. Add a sprinkle of Oregano to your passata and add the passata to the mixture. Cook until bubbly.
6. Sprinkle a little mozzarella in the bottom of each pepper cup and ladle in the meat/mushroom/sauce mixture. Top each pepper with some more cheese.
7. Bake 15-20 minutes until cheese is melted and golden brown.

YUM.

I made 2 peppers for myself and used half a baguette to make open-faced sandwiches for Tim (he doesn’t like peppers and isn’t eating low-carb) and there is still loads of mixture leftover to save for another day, so I bet this would easily fill 6-8 peppers. Each pepper has approximately two soup ladles of mixture in it.

~~*~~
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/

I needed a gift idea for my Mother-in-law. She’s hard to shop for because she will always tell us she doesn’t want anything! I decided to make her some peppermint foot soak. I would make some for my mom, too, but I don’t think a bag full of white powder would make it though customs, do you?

It’s really easy to make, too! I ordered all my supplies off eBay, and I have more than enough for several more batches. Buying the baking soda/bicarbonate of soda in bulk online will save you a bundle. I think I spent around £10 for the supplies, but that included essential oils for other projects, too.

You will need:

1 Cup Epsom Salts
1 Cup Baking Soda or Bicarbonate
Essentail Oil (I used peppermint and eucalyptus, but you can use whatever you want)

Mix together the Salt and Soda and add however many drops of oil you’d like (I probably used about a dozen of each). Stir or shake t distribute the oil. If you can’t smell the oil, add a few more drops.

Store in a clean jar. For gift giving, you could make a label for the jar and some instructions (sprinkle in a footbath or tub). I also included a list of ingredients so the receiver would know if they were intolerant of any of the items. I used a jar that some Stevia came in because I liked the shape of the jar and the colour of the lid.

The Eucalyptus is also great if you’ve got a cold. I just added a few drops to my bath and it helped to clear my nose!

~~*~~
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/

The last Christmas recipe I have to share with you all uses Carbquik. I did not make this cake for Christmas, but I made it for New Year’s Day when Tim and I ate our Christmas dinner (since we had dinner on Christmas Day with his parents). I found this recipe for Low-Carb Pound Cake on the Low Carb Friends website, where it says this contains 1g of carbs per serving. I don’t like the taste of Carbquik by itself, so I replaced part of the Carbquik. If you wanted to make this with just Carbquik, you would need 3 and a half cups of it. The way I made it has a few more carbs than that per serving, but I don’t know exact amounts.

Low Carb Pound Cake

You will need:
1 1/2 Cup Carbquik
1 Cup Wholegrain Flour
1/2 Cup Ground Almonds (or Almond Meal/Almond Flour)
1/2 Cup Coconut Flour
3/4 Cup Splenda for Baking
3/4 Cup Butter (softened)
200g Cream Cheese (one pack/8 oz)
6 eggs
1 tsp Vanilla
Pinch of Salt

-Pre-heat the oven to 175C.
-Butter the sides of a Bundt pan (I’m sure other cake pans work just as well!)
-Combine Carbquik, Flour, Ground Almonds, Coconut Flour, and salt in a small bowl
-In a larger bowl cream together Splenda for Baking, butter, and cream cheese.
-Add eggs one at a time to liquid mixture. Add vanilla.
-Slowly add dry mix to the wet until it is well blended.
-Pour the mix into the cake pan and bake for 45-60 minute or until a toothpick comes out clean.

We had this for Strawberry Shortcake with some fresh berries and cream. It’s so tasty and low-carb that you don’t feel guilty sneaking a piece for breakfast the next morning!

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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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Another big part of Christmas dinner is of course, the dessert. I had already made the Christmas Pudding full of sugar and booze, so I wanted to try to make something with less sugar. I really wanted to make a cheesecake, so I searched for several sugar free versions to create mine. Unfortunately, the topping is NOT sugar free as I could not find any sugar free pie filling, but I DO have a recipe for making your own sugar free cherry topping I will try out some other time. I can justify the sugar in the topping only because you really don’t eat that much topping anyway.

For the Crust —
2 Cups Ground Almonds (sometimes called almond flour or almond meal)
4 TBS Butter, melted
2 TBS Splenda for Baking

For the Filling —
600g Cream Cheese (3 packages) – room temperature
3 Eggs
1/2 TBS Vanilla
1/2 TBS lemon juice
1 Cup Splenda for Baking

For the Topping —
1 Can pie filling, any flavour. Sugar Free if you can find it

-Preheat the oven to 200C.
-Combine the ingredients for the crust and press into bottoms and side of your pie dish.
-Bake crust for 12-15 minutes until it is firm and golden.
-Remove from oven and set crust to one side.
-Cream together cream cheese and Splenda for baking.
-Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each.
-Add lemon juice and vanilla.
-Pour filling into cooked crust and place in the oven (still at 200C)
-As soon as you shut the oven door, immediately reduce temperature to 125C. DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN WHILE BAKING THIS. Alternatively, you can use a water bath.
-Bake for 60-90 minutes. If your oven has a glass door, check by sight. The cheesecake should form a mound and look firm. You can open the door after an hour to check on the cake. A cake tester inserted should come out fairly clean, with bits of firm cheesecake clinging to it. If the cheesecake is still runny, leave it in the oven for additional time.
-Let the cheesecake cool completely before adding the topping.

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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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When my family bakes Christmas cookies, we always made more than one kind, so of course I wanted some variety. I am a big fan of the Scottish Shortbread you can get in the tins from Marks and Spencers, so I decided that would be my second type of cookie. I scoured the web, and I found a recipe posted by someone who calls themselves “mrsnorris”. Now, whether they intended to be a Harry Potter reference or their name really *is* Mrs Norris, the fact that it could be HP related instantly caught my attention to base my recipe off of.

You will need:
160g Butter, softened (I used Stork)
4 TBS Splenda for Baking (the original recipe calls for regular Splenda, but I find the Splenda for Baking doesn’t leave an after taste the way regular Splenda does, but feel free to use the sweetener of your choice)
100g White flour
100g Wholegrain flour (my wholegrain was also self-raising, but I don’t think this matters)
1/8 tsp Salt

-Preheat the oven to 180C and line your baking trays with parchment paper.
-Cream together butter and Splenda for Baking until fluffy.
-Slowly add flour and salt.
-Work dough into a ball.
-Flour your worktop and gently press (or roll) the dough out until it is about a half inch thick.
-Use a biscuit cutter (or shapes) to cut out the biscuits, re-rolling in between. You should be able to fit a dozen per cookie sheet. If you don’t have any cutters you could use a glass dipped in flour or just cut them into fingers with a knife. You will need to re-flour your worktop each time you re-roll the dough.
-Optional: you could brush the tops of each cookie with some egg and sprinkle a tiny bit of dyed* Splenda for Baking to imitate sprinkles, but they are just as good plain.
-Refrigerate each baking tray for 15 minutes before baking (I did this by putting the first sheet in and setting the timer. When the timer went off, they went into the oven and the next tray went into the fridge)
-Bake for 15 minutes or until golden. Keep an eye on them as if they overbake they get very crumbly (as we discovered!)

Once again, these were a big hit and no one could tell they were sugar free! Just makes sure you tell people ahead of time as some people are intolerant to artificial sweeteners.

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

My first Christmas dealing with my diabetes, and I think I did okay. I had some mince pies ( but never more than one in a single day), I had a few glasses of wine (again, never more than one), Ate a few small pieces of chocolate (Tim bought me an advent calendar, but I only ate the chocolate on a few days), and I indulged in a small piece of the Christmas Pudding I had made (just to taste it as I had never even had it!). But I also only drank sugar free fizzy drinks or slim tonic water, ate low-carb, and avoided the starchy foods – no potatoes, parsnips, carrots, etc. So overall, I did pretty good.

Making Christmas Cookies are a HUGE deal to me as it’s been a family tradition since forever. Fortunately, my mom sent me some Splenda Blend for Baking and some Splenda Brown. Both these products I have been unable to locate in the UK, but you can order them through importers on eBay (though it will be pricey, it’s worth it!)

The first thing I needed to do was bake some chocolate chip cookies as those are my favourite cookie of all-time and Mom also got me some sugar free chocolate chips! However, don’t go crazy looking for them. I compared the bag of SF chips to a bag of Toll House, a container of dark chocolate chunks from Waitrose, and to some plain chocolate chips from Asda and they all contained around the same amount of sugar per 100g. After I added the bag of SF chips I decided it needed more chips anyway, so my cookies wound up with a combination of Hershey Sugar Free, Toll House Semi-Sweet, and Waitrose dark chocolate chunks. They were amazing and no one could tell they were sugar free!

(This recipe was modified off the back of the Hershey Sugar Free Chocolate Chips, so is measured using US measurements)

You will Need:
1 Cup white flour
1 Cup wholegrain flour
1 tsp baking soda (or 2 tsp Bicarb of Soda if you don’t have access to American baking soda)
1/2 tsp Salt
1 Cup butter (Soft – I used stork out of a tub)
1/3 Cup Splenda for Baking
1/3 Cup packed Splenda Brown Sugar Blend
2 tsp Vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 1/2 Cups chocolate chips or chunks (sugar free, semi-sweet, dark, or plain. Using milk chocolate will add more sugar)

-Preheat the oven to 200C and line your baking trays with parchment paper.
-Mix together the flours, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl.
-In a larger bowl, beat butter, the two Splendas, eggs, and vanilla.
-Slowly mix in the flour.
-using a wooden spoon, stir in the chocolate chips/chunks.
-Drop by teaspoons onto your baking sheets. You should be able to get 12 on a sheet.
-Bake each sheet for 9-12 minutes until cookies are golden.
-Cool on the sheet for a few minutes, then continue to cool on a baking tray.

Makes about 3 and a half dozen soft cookies, depending on how big you make them. I went through THREE batches of them this season because everyone loved them so 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.]

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2012 Reading Challenge

Rebecca has
completed her goal of reading 144 books in 2012!

hide

227 of 144 (157%)

view books

I’ve always been a big reader, ever since I was a child. In fact, I tried to convince my parents I knew how to read when I was three or four by reciting my favourite bedtime story. And I might have convinced my mom I could read if I hadn’t forgotten to turn the page! Before I could read on my own and my parents would tell me to pick a bedtime story, I would hand them a stack. Once I learned to read, I hit the ground running. I was a fast reader, and I was reading well above my grade level. I can still remember a March of Dimes campaign when I was 8 or 9 and one of the adults at my church offered to sponsor me. Most people had sponsored me for 10 cents/book and he thought that wasn’t high enough so he pledged $1/book…..by the end of the month, he owed me $100! When we went to Florida for a family vacation (by car!) when I was turning 10, I was set up in the backseat with one of our American Tourister duffel bags filled to the brim with books. I finished all of them before we got to Florida (and from New Jersey, it was a long trip!). I used to get in trouble with my English teachers (anyone remember when it was called Language Arts?) for doing reports on grade-level appropriate books because they knew I could read at a higher level….but it was hard for my parents and teachers to find me age appropriate books. Once I finished Little Women, Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables, and the Jane Austen collection I moved on to reading Gone with the Wind when I was 11, and I started the Flowers in the Attic series when I was 12. I had read the complete Longfellow, Blake, and Tennyson by the time I was 15. I was and always will be a readaholic.

A trip to the bookstore always made my mom shudder. Stacks and Stacks of books – the latest Babysitters Club book, Sweet Valley Twins or High, Friends 4-ever, Sleepover Club….I read them all in lightning speed.

As I got older, my reading tapered off largely because I couldn’t afford to keep myself in new books. I re-read my favourites over and over and relied on finding books at the library or from friends.

…and then I met Tim, and he introduced me to the town of Hay-on-Wye, a small Welsh village FULL of used bookstores. I was in HEAVEN.

The biggest problem with books though is that you have to have a place to store them. Anyone who has been to our house knows that we are getting short on space. The other problem is that some larger books get really heavy as I hold them, like any of the Harry Potter books after book 3!

Enter the Kindle.

Tim and I decided for our second anniversary last year that we would buy Kindles and we purchased Kindle Keyboards with 3G. The 3G meant that we would be able to access Amazon from anywhere to download new books.

I decided to set myself a goal to read 12 books a month in 2012. As you can see from the graph above, I read nearly 100 more than that. Because my Kindle goes everywhere with me as it’s lighter than a paperback. Waiting at the bus stop, riding the bus, waiting for food to arrive at a cafe, while drinking a cup of coffee….I was reading. And the nice thing is Amazon has loads of Kindle books for less than £1 or free!

And with the free books, I have enjoyed books I wouldn’t have read otherwise, and everyone has a built-in birthday and christmas present for me with getting me Amazon gift cards!

This year, I received the Kindle Fire for Christmas. The downside is the Fire doesn’t have 3G service, but it is basically a mini tablet. I’m in love with it. I’ll still keep my Kindle Keyboard though, particularly to take camping with us — and that’s another thing. The year before we had the Kindles, I read 7 books while we were camping and we had to go out and buy more books. This past year with my Kindle, I read over 20!

Having the Kindle has changed my reading habits back to the way they were when I was younger, and I love it!

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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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Testing posting from my kindle fire.

This year, to make things easier on my mother-in-law, the family is doing Christmas pot luck style. On Tuesday, my Sister-in-law asked if we knew what the plans were and when we said no, she explained and then asked me if I could be assigned the desserts/pudding. I agreed, and so the brain started to churn…

When we got home, I asked Tim what he thought I should make and after a few suggestions got thrown out, Christmas Pudding was brought up. Now, it’s not really a “family favourite”, but it is Tim’s favourite. Most years we’ll pick up a few minis for Tim to have throughout the season and his mum will indulge him and get a pre-made one to go alongside whatever other dessert she’s made. Since the only thing I am responsible for this year is dessert, I have decided to make Christmas pud from scratch….with a little help from my friends.

I posted to Facebook, and my friend Vicky responded with some suggestions and answered all my questions. Some people make their puddings up to a YEAR before Christmas, and some only do theirs a few days in advance. I have decided to make mine this weekend, giving it plenty of time to ferment.

First, I needed a recipe. I have one from Jamie Oliver but no one I know has made it and I wanted a tried-and-true recipe. My friend Nicky linked me to recipes from the BBC and Delia, but she hadn’t tested those, either. Vicky came through for me again, and suggested a recipe by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I’ve never heard of him, but Vicky’s used his recipes in the past, so I was off to Google.

The next day I had Tim drop me off at Waitrose, armed with my grocery list. The most puzzling thing to find? the Brandy and Ale. There are LOADS of options. Again, I heeded Vicky’s advice and grabbed a hobgoblin to use.

Once home, I began measuring out the fruit — all 900g of it. It wouldn’t fit in my bowl by itself, let alone once I mix in everythng else! A check of the recipe shows that it makes two puds, so I’m going to half the recipe (I will post it below) where appropriate. Oh, and I may have just dumped 200ml of Brandy on the fruit even though the 2 pud recipe calls for only HALF the brandy (100ml)….I hope it’s not swimming in extra brandy!

As it turns out, I didn’t have to worry about extra brandy. A family emergency meant that my fruit soaked for 36 hours and they soaked up nearly all the brandy in the bowl.

I dutifully halved the recipe (that leaves a LOT left in a pint bottle of ale!) and the resulting mix was hideous. I wrapped the top in clingfilm and am leaving it alone for overnight…

The next morning, I peeled back the cling film and the mixture looked decidedly dry, so I gave it a quick stir and topped it up with a glug from the ale bottle.

I packed it into my buttered basin and I was shocked to discover I have LOADS of pudding mix leftover. I might wind up with two after all, or maybe I can do a mini pud for a taste test.

I prepped the crock pot for steaming, and made a single size pupping to cook on the stovetop.

the mini pud was a FLOP. I only steamed it for about an hour/hour and a half because the instructions on one of the mini puddings from M&S say to steam for 1/2 hour, so I thought as those are pre-cooked and the instruction for re-heating a full-size pud are to steam it for half the time you originally steamed it for that I would do it for an hour. Probably more like an hour and a bit. Tim didn’t like it. He made faces when he tasted it….and I made a face when I tasted it as I could taste the raisins and suet. Ew. So my conclusion is that I didn’t steam it for long enough so as there is LOADS of mix leftover, I’m going to try another mini pudding tomorrow. But the big one is still in the crock pot (been cooking since 4PM, so now about 6 hours). The water level is fine and apparently you can’t oversteam, so I think I might leave it go overnight or at least until I wake up in the middle of the night to use the loo.

I set my alarm for 7, but I woke up around 5, and then again at 6, so I decided to get up and check it. The downstairs smells “like Christmas” as some of the other blogs suggest and peeking through the small gap of the foil I can see a dark colour – much darker than the mini pud I turned out yesterday. The water level has barely moved (though I did top it up last night a little higher than the original instructions say to), so I flipped the crock to high for the last hour, and got to work making another tester mini pud.

And after 15 hours of steaming….I declare it done. you know how you’re supposed to make a handle out of string? Yeah, my string got wet and HOT. Owwwww. The pudding is now cooling in it’s basin. I noticed some water has gotten in through the foil around the bottom, and the foil that was submerged in the water has gone black. Mini pudding is still steaming away.

You can find the original recipe I followed here and the original crock pot instructions here, but here’s my modified recipe (remember: I cut the original in half and still have enough filling for 2 puddings and 2 mini puddings. It’s possible I have a small basin, but it looks like a normal one….)

Hugh calls his recipe Grandma Jane’s, so here is Rebecca Jane’s

You will need:

450g dried vine fruits (Waitrose sells a bag labeled vine fruits, otherwise a combination of raisins and sultanas will do. I also tossed in a handful of mixed peel and some craisins)
200ml brandy
55g flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
85g suet (I used 30% less fat veggie suet)
85g dark muscovado sugar (aka brown sugar)
20g flaked almonds
Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 Tbsp marmalade
110g fresh white breadcrumbs (This equaled about 4 white finger rolls. I blitzed them with my stick blender to get a fine crumb)
2 eggs, whisked
150ml ale or stout (I used Hobgoblins). (You mght need extra, so don’t go drinking the rest yet)
Butter

Other things you need:
Pudding basin
Parchment Paper
Aluminum to me, Aluminium to some foil
string
2 mixing bowls
crock pot
boiled water
heat-resistant cereal bowl or saucer

Step One: Put the fruit in a bowl and cover with 200ml of brandy. Cover with clingfilm and leave overnight. Mine wound up soaking for 36 hours due to a family emergency.

The Next Day

Step Two: Sift together the flour, baking powder, spices, and salt. It’s a good idea to tick off the ingredients as you add them so you don’t get confused as the list is long. Mix in the rest of the items in this order: suet, fruit (add any dregs of brandy not absorbed), almonds, lemon zest & juice, marmalade, breadcrumbs, beaten eggs, ale. cover with clingfilm and let the mixture rest overnight.

Day Three

Check your mix. Give it a stir. If it looks too dry, add a splash more of ale.

Step Three: Butter your pudding basin. Cut a round out of parchment paper that fits the bottom of the basin, put that on top of the butter and then butter the paper, too. Fill basin with mix (I filled mine as high as a half inch from the top).

Step Four: Now, here’s where it gets tricky. You have to prepare the pudding for it’s steam bath. Take some parchment paper and make a pleat in it (fold it like a Z). Put the pleated paper on top of your pudding basin, and use string to tie the paper down. Trim off the excess paper. Next, you will need to use your Aluminum foil and if you are cooking this in the crock pot, you will want to completely wrap your pudding basin (save for a very small gap at the top) in foil. To make it easier to lift, you can make a handle by tying string package-style around the basin and leaving a loop on the top to lift with.

Step Five: Boil the kettle. Place your cereal bowl or saucer upside down in the crock pot and put the pudding on top of it. Check to make sure the lid will fit securely and that the pudding is not touching the walls of the crock pot. Add boiling water to the crock pot until it reaches 3/4 of the way up the pudding basin. Cover and cook on HIGH heat for 4 hours, LOW heat for 10, and switch it back to HIGH for the last hour. you should check the water levels about halfway through, but as I steamed mine on low overnight I topped up the water before I went to bed and it was fine.

Step Six: Carefully lift the pudding out of the crock pot by the string and set to one side. Be careful as water may have accumulated between the foil and basin. Allow to cool, then carefully unwrap the pudding. Poke holes in the top with a fork and pour on a few more tablespoons of brandy or ale. Tightly wrap in clingfilm and store in a cool, dry place (NOT the fridge) until Christmas day. I wrapped mine in two layers of clingfilm, a layer of foil, and put the whole thing in a Zipper-topped bag.

If you want to follow tradition, you can place foil-wrapped coins into the pudding before re-heating.

To re-heat on Christmas day you can re-wrap your pudding in an additional layer of clingfilm and then foil and steam in the crockpot for two and a half hours on high or you can microwave it to warm it up.

To serve: heat a ladle of brandy over a gas stove top (or heat in a pan). Carefully light the brandy on fire and tip over the pudding once at the dinner table.

Christmas Pudding is best served with brandy butter or creame. I bought mine pre-made at Waitrose, so I don’t have a recipe to share.

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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/