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the one where you are what you eat.

Posted on October 27, 2009

Yes­ter­day I watched Dis­patches on Chan­nel 4.  The pro­gram was about what is in your break­fast, but it also went into prod­uct label­ing and how mis­lead­ing they are.  To say that I was shocked by the pro­gram would be an under­state­ment.  As a stay at home mom we live a very 1950’s life, or so I like to think!  I cook all our meals from scratch (or almost from scratch), I clean *cough­bull­shit* and take care of Squidge. Wal works and brings home the bacon.  I would like to say he always  has a freshly laun­dered and iron shirt each morn­ing but that would be a total lie! I’m work­ing out again after 4 yrs and hope­fully set­ting a good exam­ple for Squidge.  I try to make healthy food choices and try to limit the amount of sugar we all con­sume.  I do give Squidge treats but I like to believe that the only sugar she is get­ting is from the choco­late but­ton I’m giv­ing her and not from her Chee­rios! Yes­ter­days pro­gram just brought home to me the need to be vig­i­lant.  I don’t want to set Squidge up to make bad choices. We eat a lot of fruit and veg and I want to keep it that way.  I think the part of the pro­gram that con­cerned me the most was the Heart UK label­ing and the Omega 3 label­ing.  I didn’t know that the omega 3 in mar­garine is from plants and not fish.  Did you know that it is only Omega 3 from fish that is ben­e­fi­cial to your brain?!?!  Are you swayed by the Omega 3 label on the pack­age when you pur­chase your mar­garine?  We’re a split fam­ily here, I use but­ter and Wal uses mar­garine as he feels it is bet­ter than but­ter.  I have always main­tained that but­ter is a more nat­ural and there­for health­ier option.  After find­ing out that the healthy claims on the pack­ag­ing may or may not be total and com­plete fab­ri­ca­tions, £25k and I can get one of those labels stuck on my fat ass,  I am even more cer­tain of my choice.  I will no longer be buy­ing mar­garine for Wal he’s just going to have to suck it up and use butter!

Now let me switch to cakes.  I was born and raised in the US.  I think I men­tioned before that I never baked a cake from scratch until I moved here.  I LOVED Betty Crocker and  didn’t know what to do when I moved here.  Bak­ing here is soo dif­fer­ent, every­thing needs to be weighed on a scale and I had never done that before.  In the US but­ter comes in sticks and recipes that use but­ter use sticks not grams.  I didn’t know how many grams in a stick and I had to turn to the inter­webz for help.  Imag­ine my sur­prise and joy when I went into a Wait­rose and found Betty Crocker on the shelves!  Oh i could go back to adding oil and an egg and call­ing it home­made!  I didn’t buy any BC mix as I didn’t need any, but let me tell you the first time I did I high­tailed it back to Wait­rose and clutched my box of cake mix lov­ingly in my arms.  I got home, made my cake and wait­ing impa­tiently for it to bake and cool.  I frosted it with some Betty Crocker frost­ing and took a big fork­ful– nom nom BLECH!!! Oh inter­webz I have been cor­rupted!!  Betty Crocker cake mixes are awful!!  Ooooh the hor­ror!  LOL, I have found that I much pre­fer my from scratch choco­late cake. How could this have hap­pened?!?!?  After 4+ years of liv­ing in a Betty Crock­er­less soci­ety and sur­viv­ing nicely, thank you very much,  I’ve noticed that I can now find Betty Crocker mixes in more and more shops, this makes me sad. I also heard that all you can eat buf­fet restau­rants are tak­ing hold here.  Ooooh of the one thing to be exported from the US to my adopted coun­try why all you can eat buf­fets?!?!  Noth­ing good can come of it.  They’re nasty vile dis­gust­ing plac­ing, troughs to over­feed the masses!

I think that being a SAHM I have more time and free­dom to cook from scratch but also think that with a  lit­tle fore­sight and plan­ning any­one can have a nice home cooked meal.  Spend a few hours and cook and freeze for the com­ing week.  We need to spend a lit­tle less time in from of the tv/computer/xbox and take care of our­selves, the Betty Crock­ers of the world are not going to do it for us. If we don’t the future will not be pretty.

Cookies!

Posted on May 28, 2008

Betty Crocker I luvre you! Since mov­ing to Eng­land I usu­ally make all my baked goods from scratch. The lack of an aisle ded­i­cated to all things Betty was a bit of a shock when I first arrived. They do have a cou­ple of pack­aged baked goods here but noth­ing that’s famil­iar. The other day I noticed a pack­age of BC choco­late chip cook­ies– WOO HOO!! Yes­ter­day Squidge and I tried it out.

As you can see a pretty suc­cess­ful foray into bak­ing cookies.

This after­noon we had some friends by for lunch and a bit of a play.  Squidge had a fantab­u­lous time!

Busy busy bee

Posted on March 4, 2008

I’m still here. I’m just a bit busy. Wal and I spent the last cou­ple of days mak­ing sure we have every­thing we need for out trip on Sat­ur­day. Wal’s away until Fri­day night and we fly out EARLY Sat­ur­day morn­ing. So lets do a quick recap.

On Thurs­day Squidge and I went swim­ming. She’s been bumped up a level and is now learn­ing how to swim prop­erly. It’s all very excit­ing and I’m happy to report she still LOVES swimming.

On Fri­day I decided I wanted to make banana bread. I had some bananas that were get­ting very soft.

It was DISGUSTINGLY bad. It was too moist and raw in the mid­dle– even after I baked it for about 30 min­utes longer than sug­gested.
  
Although Squidge didn’t appear to mind and ate a slice– yuck. If any­one has a tried and true banana bread recipe feel free to email it to me!!
  

Fri­day was also last Fri­day of the month– I had a good time and it was sooo needed. On Sat­ur­day we went to Mid­dlewich to spend time with a new friend.  We had a great time– one day I’ll invite peo­ple over.  When I have the space.  I also played Wii for the first time.  Man I can see how peo­ple get addicted to this game. 

 

On the way home we got stuck in traf­fic–

for over an hour we were dead stopped on the motor­way.  A motor­cy­clist hit the divider was thrown over and was hit by a cou­ple of cars.  We didn’t know this at the time all we knew was that the motor­way was closed both directions.

On Sun­day I finally found some snow boots.  Squidge LOVES hers.  She’s been run­ning around the house wear­ing just her nappy for days now. 

Doesn’t she have the best grin ever?!??!!

The real rea­son I’ve been MIA these last few days is that rightmove.co.uk is suck­ing all my time. I’ve spent hours look­ing at amaz­ing houses we can’t afford. Now all I have to do is con­vince Wal that we need to move and not remodel!!

Oh and I finally used my apple peeler.  Man oh man was it fun to use!  It slices the apples in a long curly string.  I just cut the apple in half and you end up with per­fect half moons.  The pie was a lit­tle too sweet but that didn’t stop me from eat­ing it!

And I made jerk chicken and coconut rice– can we say YUMMY?!!!?  I used this recipe.

 (sorry for the bad pic­ture but I was halfway through it when I decided I NEEDED to take a photo)

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