Easy on the chilli!

I was lucky enough to visit the Oxfordshire Chilli Festival on Saturday 16th August and had a wonderful (if tearjerking) time sampling the best of the country's chilli sauces, pickles, extracts and sundries. As I like to walk on the spicy side, we came home laden with a bag of goodies including such smirk-inducing names as 'Dr Assburn's Habanero Sauce.'

One of the stalls I visited was from Grim Reaper Foods and I had a nice chat with the stallholder regarding the potential uses for his delicious oils, one of which (The Tempest chilli and garlic oil) I used in this stir-fry recipe. Just go easy on the chilli as the oil I used was extremely potent which resulted in a tasty but extremely firey dish! 

Ingredients (for two):

• 2 organic chicken breasts
• 2 nests of medium egg noodles
• Handful of beansprouts
• Handful of tenderstem broccoli
• Handful of baby asparagus
• 1 tbsp of whole-nut peanut butter
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 1 stick of lemongrass
• 1 red chilli
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 thumb sized piece of ginger
• A dash of soy sauce
• A drizzle of flavoured oil (I used The Tempest but you could use any that you like and think suitable!)

Method:

1. Put your nests of noodles in a pan of boiling water, boil for three to four minutes and then drain and set aside.
2. Slice the chicken, chilli, garlic, ginger and lemongrass (I like to keep the chicken in bite-sized chunks.)
3. Fry your chicken off in a searingly hot wok (a large saucepan will do) with a dash of sesame oil.
4. When the chicken is almost cooked, add the lemongrass, baby asparagus and tenderstem broccoli. Stir fry for a couple more minutes.
5. Add the chilli, garlic, ginger, beansprouts and peanut butter and cook until just browned (be careful not to burn as the garlic will go acrid.)
6. Toss through your noodles and drizzle with soy sauce and your flavoured oil.
7. Enjoy in all their slurpy, sizzling goodness.

A word of warning: PLEASE remember to wash your hands after handling chilli. I made the rookie mistake of rubbing my nose before I washed my hands and ended up bouncing round the kitchen with watery eyes for a good five minutes until it wore off. Thank goodness it wasn't my eyes (or, dread to think; a more delicate area!)

These things are sent to try us.

So, after being full of good intentions, Tuesday evening turned into a bit of a disaster! Don’t worry, I stuck to the plan but I did get irrationally upset over a cauliflower….The day hadn’t started well as I woke up with a stinking migraine and had to have the other half feed me ibuprofen and water before sleeping the worst of it off. I finally arose feeling like death warmed up but somehow managed to power through and do 30 minutes of an interval training video through Exercise TV (the overly perky and enthusiastic instructor didn’t improve my mood but I did refrain from lobbing the remote at the TV.) Anyway, I survived and the perky instructor lived to lunge another day.

So, feeling vaguely saintly and admittedly a little better, I planned a nice evening meal of cauliflower pizza  which is a new recipe that I hadn't tried. I'd fastidiously read through the recipe and bought the necessary ingredients so we were good to go. Or so I thought. After ages of grating, steaming, wringing, shaping and cooking what I ended up with was something that managed to be both burned and soggy at the same time (which would be impressive had it not been completely accidental) and tasted of cauliflower omelette; in other words, extremely nasty.

Bless my partner for powering through and eating it but I descended into tears (cue sniffling and repeatedly saying that everything was ruined.) In my defense, I did feel really ill and I was annoyed that the pizza disaster had wasted ingredients and therefore money. After having to go out to get some air and calm down and work out what the heck I was going to eat I ended up buying a prawn and spinach sandwich from the local supermarket so all in all it didn't end as badly as it could have done (at one point I swore blind that I was going to stuff this programme and get a proper pizza delivered!)

I suppose if anything it has taught me that things are not always going to go to plan, especially when trying out new recipes but to keep focused and not get thrown off course. With that in mind, last night's recipe was a beef and vegetable crumble and thank the lord - was actually tasty! It was comforting and homely and will definitely be a go-to recipe for the future - particularly because it's pretty easy! I fried off lean minced beef with chopped onion and carrot, mixed through herbs, spices and a tin of tomatoes and then poured into a casserole dish and topped with a flour and vegetable spread crumble topping and chopped cauliflower and courgette - then baked in the oven until crispy and delicious. I can't find an exact recipe for it but is similar to this one (with the cheese in the crumble topping substituted for vegetables): http://www.cookitsimply.com/recipe-0010-011h02.html

Last night also included a walk before dinner; we're really lucky that where we live is surrounded by lots of little cycle paths where you can pretty much be completely off road for as long as you like. The blackberries are starting to come out as well so cue purple fingers and getting entangled in hedges - lots of fun!

Day 1

So, despite my new regime for positive change I am also a realist, and I realise that I have never stuck to a diet in my life. Hence the reason that I am not going on a diet, I am changing my food and exercise habits. Nothing is going to stop me wanting a chinese takeaway and a beer at the weekend though and therefore I am including the flexibility to allow for treats such as these, as well as time to just slob around if I want to in my new regime. Therefore, Five Day Fitness is born and my guidelines are going to be as follows:

1. Healthy and nutritious eating five days per week with a focus on made-from-scratch meals with natural ingredients.
2. Exercising for 30 minutes, five days per week (or 2 hours and 30 minutes per week total) as per NHS guidelines: Physical Activity Guidelines For Adults
3. For two days a week I can have a break and include treats for myself if I want to. I see this as a necessary part of the plan in order to keep me on track and sane. After all, a Dominos pizza is a wonderful thing, as long as it kept as an occasional treat and not a regular habit!
4. To keep a record via this blog of my progress (not of weight, I have ditched the scales and will be focusing on health and wellbeing) but of my eating and exercise habits.

Day 1

• I got up this morning and did a 10k cycle on the exercise bike, which took me 20 minutes. I also did 10 minutes of leg pilates and went on a 30 minute walk. 
• I made a week's meal plan and went to the supermarket to buy the ingredients.
• Dinner tonight will be shredded chicken salad in a wholemeal wrap.

It's not a perfect start; I'm not at work at the moment so lunch today was a tin of macaroni cheese. For what it's worth, it made me feel awful anyway and tasted like creamed crap so if anything, it has given me even more of a kick up the bum to start my new way of life. The exercise and shopping for fresh fruit and vegetables made me feel really good today, and I'm genuinely excited about the new recipes I am going to try out. I've also bought myself a kick-ass new lunch box with loads of compartments for fresh fruit, veggies, nuts and other healthy goodies to take to work and keep me away from the staff canteen! 

Paleo shredded chicken recipe for dinner tonight (it will be served with lettuce, avocado and wholemeal tortillas.) Unfortunately I've taken my photo halfway through cooking so it doesn't look great at the moment but it smells awesome!

In the beginning....

So, here we are. The start of a new chapter and a new blog to signify what I hope will be a positive change in my life. I haven't written a blog since I was about 17 (for the record it was full of self-serving bitching, bragging and bullshitting as most teenage 'diaries' presumably are.) I hope things will be different this time!

In a nutshell, I have my own reasons for starting a blog again (and for it being focused on the subject of my health); which are as follows:

1. I've reached a stage where I realise that for much of my adult life (not all, and we'll come onto that), I have been unhappy with the way my body looks.
2. I've now come to realise that although being slim is still a goal for me, that it would be much more sensible to focus on being healthy, rather than just being thin.
3. I'm hoping that by writing this down I will (a) create a space where I am able to write regularly; something that I enjoy but have not done for a long time; and (b) be more likely to stick to my goals if I am putting them out there on the web for public viewing!

So, how at the age of 26 have I reached this point? Well, quite honestly I've got a happy life with a great boyfriend, good job, close family and a lovely house and I'm sick and tired of my own feelings of self-worth (or lack of!) dragging me down. I'd really like to nail that last area and truly feel happy and healthy in my own skin. I do realise that I am not defined by my weight but I also realise that it is making me unhappy and that therefore this is a positive change for me, to feel better about myself and to take control of my own happiness.

For the sake of tracking my journey up until this point, my last ten years have been pretty much as follows:

• Aged 16 - 19: I didn't consider myself a 'fat' teenager but I definitely wasn't healthy! Smoking, drinking with friends and eating a lot of crap. My mum made a comment when I hit size 14 clothes (having previously been between a size 10 and 12). I snapped back at her and pretended that I didn't care but inside, I knew that I should make a change.

• Aged 19 - 20: The year that I started University and dropped weight back to a size 10/12. Definitely not through being healthy as I still was smoking, drinking and eating junk but I was probably choosing sleep over meals and walking a lot more as I was living away from home and didn't drive. Still, people telling me that I had lost weight made me feel pretty good.

• Aged 21 - 23: I was in a relationship and the weight crept back (back firmly into a size 12). I felt relatively happy but wasn't toned in any way so wanted to make a change there.

• Aged 23 - 24: Probably the happiest that I have been in my own skin during my adult life. This was the year that I was doing my teacher training and dropped weight back down to a size 10. I still was smoking and letting my hair down at the weekends but I was walking everywhere, stressed out of my mind, on my feet all day and hardly eating anything until the evenings. So, not a healthy lifestyle at all (apart from the walking) but people telling me that I had lost weight again made me feel good.

• Aged 24 - 25: During this time I finished my studies, moved 200 miles to start my first 'grown-up' job, met a guy and settled down. I exercised semi regularly (the gym and swimmimg) but my eating habits were rubbish and my weight crept back up to a size 14 at which point I spent six months doing the 5:2 diet and went back down to a 12. I also quit smoking during this time.

• Aged 26: I stopped doing the 5:2 as we were in the process of buying our first house and I was changing job so everything else kind of went on the back burner, plus I kept telling myself that as I had stopped smoking I was being much healthier (I neglected to remind myself that I'd also stopped swimming or doing any kind of exercise.) Eating habits had become terrible due to constantly socialising with new workmates (lunches down the pub) and being too tired to bother cooking (frozen pizzas and takeaways a staple in the evenings.) At this point I am firmly back in a size 14 and if I'm 100% honest with myself, had to buy a pair of size 16 work trousers yesterday. 

So, although I am aware that my yo-yo journey is not as drastic as other people's, I am also aware that I have come to the realisation that I both want and need to make a change for the sake of my own health and happiness. Yes, having a job, home, loving relationship and quitting the cigarettes is all brilliant stuff - but it is tainted when I am crying to my boyfriend that I can't go out as my clothes are too tight and I feel uncomfortable, or when I look at pictures of my three beautiful sisters and think to myself that I am quite definitely the chubby, uglier one. Who wants to feel like that?

Not me. Not anymore.