Overwhelmed! (and sweet chilli sauce)

Ben (my other half) read a book or article or something on psychology, and how men and women mean different things when they say the same words. It was pretty corny and I can't remember many examples, but one thing stuck with us both: often women are simply overwhelmed and need a hug! Cringe-worthy, but right now, it is exactly how I feel.

Yesterday was moving house day. When the removalists arrived, we were just realising that the rest of our stuff was not going to be just one car more and trailer load, and that we'd have to come back for a second load. When we got back for the second load, the cleaners arrives 3 hours earlier than arranged, and started cleaning around us while we were still packing. (They did do a fantastic job though!). Then there is the fact that the lounge room floor in the new house is still not finished. Oh, and I have a sinus infection.

So half our furniture is still in the garage, most of our other stuff is in the attic or in the garage, we can't use the toilet for the next 24 hours, have no showerscreen, or kitchen splashbacks, and have built in wardrobes with no doors.

But it's home. I love our new king size bed (mostly assembled, at least enough to sleep on) and latex mattress, and new bedlinen. And the gas cooktop is fantastic (at least the 3/5 of the gas rings that are working...). The tiling in the bathroom is beautiful, and I can't wait for it to be warm enough to go out in the garden.

For now, I'm exhausted and ready for bed, so a very token recipe. I've been missing that very fake sweet chilli sauce, you know the bright red one with lots of seeds in, for a while now, and the other day I had a stab at it, and it worked remarkably well.

Sweet Chilli Sauce

750mls apple cider vinegar
500gms honey
3 red capsicums
3 long red chillies

Add vinegar and honey to a large saucepan over a medium heat.

Cut the flesh from the capsicums and chillies and roughly chop. Put them into a food processor and puree.

Add them to the saucepan. If you like the look or texture of seeds in your sweet chilli sauce, add the capsicum seeds to the saucepan as well. (Use the chilli ones if you want it hotter).

Gently simmer for 30-45 minutes, or until the sauce darkens and thickens. Pour into a sterilised bottle.

Keeps in the fridge for at least 3 weeks.

Lazy weeknight curries

Towards the end of my 3 weeks free of dairy, eggs, nuts, fruit and honey, I ran out of in season vegetables to add to my diet, so I decided to start of spices. While I've gained a greater appreciation of cooking without herbs and spices, just letting the flavours of the ingredients speak for themselves with the aid of a good chicken stock, I also find I miss foods with a bit more punch. Cumin, coriander, ginger and turmeric were all successfully added, and I'd decided it was just about time to take a baby step in the direction of nuts, so I whipped up a quick batch of coconut milk, and decided to try something vaguely Thai styled.

I've recently started buying my meat from a local butcher, who does fantastic discounts on bulk purchases, and free delivery on orders over $80. He seems to be able to get in just about anything (for example, suet for my fruit mince and Christmas pudding last year, which I hadn't been able to find anywhere), and almost everything is grass fed and free range. Because of this, I've been eating a lot more pork than in the past. It's seems to be fairly easy to find free range chicken and beef, but pork has been much more difficult to get hold of, so I've tended not to eat it much.

So I had some pork mince (minus the little bit for the kitten, who tells me that pork is her favourite food! nom, nom, nom, purr), and could eat some spices and had a batch of coconut milk soaking (I don't use a recipe for this, just chuck dessicated coconut in with some boiling water - at a guess maybe a cup of dessicated coconut to 750mls water). Then is was just a matter of scouring the bottom of the fridge for the remnants of vegetables from last weeks shopping, before the arrival of the groceries for the new week. I found: 2 carrots, an onion, 5-6 mushrooms, 2 zucchini and some green beans.

So more a method than a recipe:

Pork green curry

Dice the vegetables, while preheating a wok or large frying pan, and start some coconut milk. 

Add a heaped teaspoon of cumin, coriander, ground ginger and turmeric (and chilli, if you feel so inclined) to the wok and toast for a few seconds before adding and browning the pork mince (about 600g). 

Once cooked, remove it from the pan, then added the longer cooking time veg

gies (onion, carrot and beans in this case) and cook until they were most of the way done, then added the shorter cooking veggies (here the zucchini and mushrooms).

Add the pork back to the pan together with some coconut milk and chicken stock, enough to make a good sauce for the curry. Add some salt before serving. Serve with fresh coriander, crushed nuts, and/or a wedge of lime.

More recently, I had put all of the ingredients for yummy lemon-thyme lamb shanks (which I'll post another time, I promise) into my slow cooker, but forgotten to turn it on before leaving for work. In arriving home, I noticed the absence of the smell of dinner as I walked in the door. Disappointment!

I had to come up with something, and quick, because I was starving. I remembered there were some little frozen prawns in the freezer, about the only thing there I could easily use from frozen. Next, the fridge turned up some zucchinis, carrots, a leek, a bunch of spinach, and some green beans. Again, you can throw this together with pretty much anything you've got.

Prawn Laksa

Chop your veggies (I sliced the leek in rounds, chopped the beans in half, washed and destemmed the spinach, and julienned the carrots and zucchini with my julienne peeler). In the mean time, preheat a wok or large saucepan, and get some coconut milk happening.


Add a heaped teaspoon of cumin, coriander, ground ginger and turmeric (and chilli, if you feel so inclined) to the wok and toast for a few seconds before adding some oil, and the veggies that need frying (I threw in the leek and beans). At the same time, put the julienne carrots in a steamer.


When the frying veggies are well on the way to being cooked, add a good amount of coconut milk and chicken stock (maybe 1.5 - 2 litres in total). Add the zucchini to the steamer, and the prawns to the wok. Stir through the spinach just before everything else is done. Add some salt before serving.


Serve noodles into deep preheated bowls, and top with the laksa. Serve with crushed nuts, coriander and/or a wedge of lime or lemon.


Enjoy! (Both were even better reheated for lunch the next day)

My life has been sugar (ie sucrose) free for almost 18 months, but more recently, I've also almost completely eliminated anything sweet. No fruit, no honey, the closest thing to dessert I had in 3 weeks was soup made from butternut pumpkin and carrots and seasoned with coconut oil and nutmeg. This was to get the healing from my latest flare into the fast lane. I also eliminated eggs, nuts and dairy, as per Jordan and Steve's four horsemen.

Two interesting observations arose from this experience. After a couple of days, I had no sugar cravings at all. And my sense of what is sweet has totally changed.

After 3 weeks and now feeling really good, I decided to have a play with some very low sugar confectionery  This fits in well with the theme of this months Go Ahead Honey, It's Gluten Free, It All Ends here (a la the final Harry Potter film), hosted by Diane of the Whole Gang.

My aim for my confectionery was to keep the fat content as high as possible (I'm still trying to regain a few more kilos), and the sugar as low as possible (as I'm still aiming to minimise the amounts of inflammatory foods in my diet).

My first port of call was coconut oil - I love the taste of the oil, and it combines well with other flavours. So my starting point was to melt coconut oil, a tiny amount of honey and some lemon oil. I have to say, I thought it was pretty good at the time, but now I realise I was just in a totally sugar deprived state and anything vaguely sweet tasted good. So I had to branch out a bit more for the next attempt. This brought to mind coconut concentrate. For those of you who haven't heard of it, it is basically finely ground coconut meat. It has a very high fat content (around 70% I think), and is also fairly grainy, kind of like coconut flour. It is solid a room temperature, and if you want to melt it, you have to do so on a really low heat, otherwise it burns.

I find it convenient to melt a lot of it at a time (I get in in 1kg bags) and pour it in to ice cube trays to have convenient little portions of it, which I throw into anything in which you might use coconut milk. (I do the same thing with coconut oil (in winter, when it is solid at room temperature) and cocoa butter too).

Anyway, back to the confectionary. I did go through a phase of just eating the ice cubes of coconut concentrate - I find there is something oddly appealing about the grainy thick texture, and the coconut flavour is really strong, and it has something candy-like about it, even though it isn't sweet. So, I figured it's 70% coconut oil, why not dilute it with more coconut oil to keep the coconutty flavour, but minimise the grainy texture (and the fibre content). I've concluded that a ratio of 2:1 oil to concentrate is my preferred ratio, and that it needs minimal honey - maybe a teaspoonful to a cup of coconut mixture. But I think the quantities are very much a matter of personal taste, so here's the method; play around with the ratios as you see fit

Coconut candy
Coconut oil
Coconut concentrate
Honey
Flavour oil (optional)

Melt the oil and the honey on a low heat. Remove from the heat and add the coconut concentrate. Cover and leave until it is all melted (if the concentrate does not melt, you can place the whole lot over a very low heat, but watch it carefully). At this stage add the flavouring if you want to. I have done lemon and orange oil, both if which are nice, but possibly a little subtle against the strong coconut flavour. I think mint might be good, but don't have any oil to try it out.

Bearing in mind that you have 3 substances, all with different melting points, the trick is to get everything thoroughly combined and then into moulds before it sets. If you have the time and the patience, I recommend allowing it to cool at room temperature as this give you a lot more time in which the mixture is at a temperature that it will thoroughly combine. If you cool it in the fridge or freezer, you might miss the moment and end up with a triple layer effect with sticky honey on the bottom, and not be able to spoon it into the moulds.

Either way, stir it regularly (more often the colder the temperature) and when it starts to turn into a paste, check whether the honey is settling out at the bottom. If it is, leave to cool a little longer. 

Once the ingredients are able to be thoroughly combined, spoon it into moulds (chocolate moulds, ice cubes, or just spread as a block onto greaseproof paper). Leave until thoroughly set, or refrigerate depending on the ambient temperature.

Serve after dinner with a good black coffee.

Vaguely chocolate like confectionary

(sorry for the long winded name, but I do get annoyed at the SCD thing of saying 'this is just like X' and then making it, and it isn't much like X at all. Particularly when what you've made is tasty in it's own right. So this is somewhat chocolately, but I'm not going to call it chocolate)

Cocoa butter
Ghee (you could probably use unsalted butter, but I'm not eating butter at the moment. If you want to make your own ghee, check out how here.

Honey

Again, the quantities are somewhat in your hands. I've found a ratio of 1:1 cocoa butter to ghee gives a fairly smooth buttery consistency. (My previous attempt of 1:2 resulted in something much too reminiscent of whipped butter for eating by itself). The honey ratio need to be a fair bit higher than the coconut one. Maybe a big tablespoonful to a cup of the butter mixture.

Follow the above method. You can certainly flavour it if you like, too, or add chopped dried fruit or nuts. I most recently used a vanilla bean which I split, scooping the seeds into the mixture, and leaving the pod in while I melted the fats too.

The cooling process for this one is even more temperamental than the coconut candy. Be very careful that the honey is not separating out, but don't stir too vigorously or you will end up with whipped butter.

Spoon into moulds, or use to coat other thing, like nuts, or balls made out of energy bars, or spread into a block.

Serve with dessert that would go with something chocolatey (like this), or on its own with after dinner coffee.

And this is where it ends (dinner... and the post)

Having UC

Okay, I’m finally going to write the story of my ulcerative colitis. It’s not something I’ve wanted to talk about, but I’m ready to start coming to terms with the fact that I have a chronic disease, and I think that a part of that is letting people know. A lot of my friends live interstate and I don’t see them often, and others that I see mostly at karate just know I disappeared for weeks at a time, had been in hospital and lost a lot of weight. So I’ll start from the very beginning.(Mum, please don't read this - you know the whole story and I don't think you need to go through it all again).

[The symptoms of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) are all a bit gross, and not really things people want to hear or talk about. If you’ve never heard of UC, here’s a rough explanation of the symptoms. I’ll use the common online UC abbreviations, explained here for those of you who don’t spend a lot of time reading about IBD: D = Diarrhea, B = Blood, BM = bowel motion.]

The colitis began pretty slowly. I started having symptoms in June 2009, but didn’t think much of it to start with. It was just a stomach ache every week or so and the occasional odd BM. But the frequency and intensity started to increase, and soon I was in the bathroom 5 or 6 times a day.

I saw my GP who sent me for blood tests (which were inconclusive), an ultrasound (which showed nothing) and a course of antibiotics (which I took, but didn’t want to because there was no reason to think it was an infection). I finally got referred to a gastroenterologist and a month or so later (Nov 2009) had a colonoscopy and a diagnosis of mild left sided ulcerative colitis.

At this stage, I was really optimistic: I knew what it was; there were drugs to treat it; sure it was chronic, but I was going to get into remission and everything was going to be fine. How wrong could I possibly be?

The first meds (salofalk enemas) caused me more pain than I was already in, and after 2 weeks I stopped taking them. My gastro was overseas and I stupidly didn’t go to see my GP. I just stopped the meds.

I went untreated for about 3 weeks, by which time I was in almost constant pain. I could hardly eat because of the nausea, and when I did, nothing stayed down. And I couldn’t sleep because of the pain. One evening in tears, Ben decided that I had to go to the doctor. I went to an after hours clinic and was put on prednisone. Man was that great – almost instant relief – I thought I was cured!

I saw my mum for the first time in 6 weeks a couple of days later, and her mouth dropped open when she picked me up at the airport. I looked so sick! She bullied me onto the scales and I discovered I’d gone from weighing 63kg to 50kg in about 6 weeks. But the prednisone was great – I could eat again and I wasn’t in pain. I was really weak and tired all the time though. I just thought I needed to recover from the weight loss and everything would be okay.

The lack of sleep and constant pain really messed with my mind. I hadn’t seen that I had lost weight. I wasn’t weighing myself because I wasn’t well enough to go to the gym. I didn’t realise that I wasn’t eating enough, even though I was only eating a couple of scrambled eggs a day and maybe some potato chips. When mum finally made me look at myself in the mirror, I looked like the walking dead. Somehow it crept up on me and I didn’t see it happening.

About a week before Christmas 2009, I fainted on the escalator at work. I cracked the side of my head and scraped all up my back. Fortunately, someone stopped the escalator before my hair got caught in the moving parts… Someone called an ambulance and I was carted off to hospital.

I spent 5 days and 4 nights in hospital, and started on salofalk granules as well as methylprednisolone. It was good for the first few days, and made me acknowledge that I was really sick and had to start taking it all a bit more seriously. By day 3, I was feeling better and was so ready to go home. Hospitals are places to be when you are so sick you can’t move – home is the place to go to get well.

I missed Ben’s birthday, but at least I was out in time to fly home to Hobart to spend Christmas with family.

But I still wasn’t well, and whenever I started reducing the prednisone, things got worse. Also, the meds were making me sleep badly, and I was so hungry all the time (probably not a bad thing) and I started growing facial hair and felt dizzy and tired all the time. Fortunately the hair went away when I stopped the meds.

I started on the maximum dose of an immunosuppressant (Imuran/azathioprine) in mid January, which takes about 3 months to start being effective. In the first of many fortnightly blood tests, it was discovered that I was anaemic and started on iron supplements, which at least helped with the tiredness and dizziness.

I asked my doctor repeatedly whether there were foods I should or shouldn’t be eating, but he has persistently said that food has nothing to do with it. I found this a bit unconvincing – how can food have nothing to do with the inflammation of a good portion of my digestive system – but he’s the doctor, right?

I gradually came off the prednisone over January and February 2010, but was back on it by the start of March. When it became obvious I was going to have to be on cortisone for a while, I moved from taking prednisone to entocort (budesonide). At $200 for one month supply, it was pretty hefty, but was meant to be as good as prednisone but with less nasty side effects (like bone density loss and affecting thyroid function).

It did nothing for me. And I mean nothing at all.

On 1 April, I went to emergency at the hospital and was admitted for another 5 day stay, and then again on 14 April. (The second time, I discovered that the way to get a bed in emergency immediately is to say that your pain on a scale of 1 – 10 is 8). I did get to spend my birthday in between my two hospital visits with my family in Tasmania.

Over April and May I took most of my remaining 5 weeks of sick leave. One of the things the public service has going for it is generous and accruing sick leave entitlements. When I first started working almost 6 years ago, I remember wondering how you could possibly use 17 days of sick leave in a year…

At the same time, my gastro suggested that I start on infliximab, an IV immunosuppressant. It was the last thing he had to suggest that I hadn’t tried already. It also isn’t covered by the PBS for treating UC, so approx $7,000 for 3 doses. Fortunately, the Calvary Hospital was willing to cover the cost for me.

By this time, I was really over it. I’d always thought that I’d get sick, then get better. It is what had always happened before. That there was a pill to fix everything. But the doctors seemed to have no idea what to do for me. I’d been reading everything I could find on the internet about UC and I’d come across a lot of references to the specific carbohydrate diet – I’d even bought the book ‘Breaking the Vicious Cycle’ earlier in the year, but things were going so well on the prednisone that I hadn’t really looked at it. So I finally decided it was worth a try.

It’s a pretty big change, eliminating grains and sugar and milk were the really big things for me. But I figured I was willing to try anything that had a semblance of a grain of truth to it.

I decided I’d go ahead with the infliximab as well, a dose at the start of May, another 2 weeks later and another 4 weeks after that.

It was a pretty bizarre experience the first time. I turned up to the cancer clinic at Calvary Hospital in Canberra, where it is administered. The nurses were great: getting the cannular in first try (I was so over being stabbed with needles); keeping up the cheerful banter. I was amazed how happy a cancer clinic could be.

By the end of the 3 doses, I had also weened off the prednisone altogether and was feeling great. No more B or D or pain.

I was sticking to the SCD as well, but rushed into eating advanced foods like nuts and dried fruit and tasty baked things because they are convenient to take to work, and yummy, and filled the gap left by losing home made biscuits and breakfast cereal and bread.

It seemed like everything was fantastic and I was cured. When am I going to stop thinking that?!?

About 6 weeks ago, everything started falling apart again. It started around the time of a lunch out with work colleagues. Mediterranean looked pretty promising as a cuisine choice for a restaurant – just pick a dish with meat and vegies. Well, every grain free dish had their homemade tomato sauce, which contained ‘just a tiny bit of sugar’. So I bit the bullet and had the roasted eggplant, capsicum and red onions in tomato sauce, which was really, really good. 

I don’t know if it was related – it was also about 12 weeks since my last dose of infliximab – but I started having stomach pain again, and then D and occasional B.

I waited a week and it just got worse.

In the meantime, I was reading more about SCD. It sounds like it is pretty common to have flares around the 6-month mark, and this was almost 6 months to the day since I started the diet. But I also came across a lot more information on starting the diet, and how to introduce foods gradually to give the lining of the intestine time to heal and to work out what your trigger foods are. Just because they are legal on the diet, does not mean everyone can tolerate them.

So I restarted the diet, and decided I’d wait a week, and if there was no improvement, I’d make an appointment with my gastro.

But here I am, 37 days later: no visit to the doctor, no new drugs. The symptoms mostly cleared up in a couple of days, and after a solid week of a massive headache, I’ve been feeling pretty good. I found some great new resources like scdlifestylebook.com (their free chapter and podcasts are fantastic) and wrote a post on ihaveuc.com, and realised that I am finally ready to talk about what I’ve been through.

That said, I started writing this post well over a week ago. I’ve played around with it a lot: it’s difficult to work out what to put in and what to leave out, and even once I was pretty happy with the content, I had a hard time hitting the post button. I’ve told bits and pieces of this story to different people, but haven’t put it all together in one go before.

It sounds really depressing, and I guess it has been. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone and I understand why UC used to be thought to be a psychological condition – I have thought I was going mad at times. But I’m getting used to the idea that this is something I am going to have to live with. I’m not going to let it be depressing. Most days, I feel pretty good.

37 days and counting…

Starting a blog

I've always thought of blogging as somewhat self indulgent. Sure it can keep your family and friends up to date with your lives when you aren't nearby, but that struck me are rather too much like those Christmas letters that some people send to everyone they know that are an excuse to brag about their wonderful children and perfect lives (surely everyone is irked by these, not just me… right?). Also, I'm not really someone who seeks to be the centre of attention - anyone who knows me will know that this the understatement of the century. But I've recently written a couple of posts on ihaveuc.com (excellent website - if you've found this site because you are searching for stuff about ulcerative colitis, I highly recommend you check it out), and found it to be very cathartic. 

I've also found it really helpful to read some other the blogs of other people with chronic inflammatory diseases, to know I'm not alone, that not going insane and that other people out there feel the same way. If I can do this for just one person, I can justify the self indulgence! (I also adore recipe blogs, so I'll throw some recipes out there as I go too - some of my own creation/adaptation and links to particular favourites from around the place).

Anyway, I guess I'd better say a bit about me (assuming that someone other than my mum is reads this). I'm starting writing this blog because I have ulcerative colitis (UC), and the title is because I am up to my 23rd day on the specific carbohydrate diet (SCD). I'll get back to this a bit later.

I was diagnosed with UC just over a year ago, and had been having symptoms for about 6 months before that. For a while, it defined my whole existence - it's difficult for it not to, when you are in constant pain, going to the bathroom 8-10 times a night, sleeping 3 hours a night (in 20 minute blocks) if you are lucky. I've spent almost 3 weeks in hospital (6-7 days at a time). I lost 12 kilos before getting things under control, and have gain back 7. Thankfully I'm past the worst of it and ,determined not to get back there again, and I'm working towards the point where my life does not revolve around my health. 

Besides UC, I have a pretty full life. I work at the Tax Office as a legal adviser - it's not something I ever saw myself doing, but after getting into tax policy at Treasury when I first started working, tax somehow just seems to click with my rather analytical mind. I've been working 4 days a week since I got sick, and it is the best decision I have ever made. To start with, having Fridays off was to give me more time to attend the many medical appointments and to sleep (having used up all my generous public service, 17 days a year, sick leave in 3 visits to hospital and recovering) but it has more recently turned into a day to shop for food, and prepare food, and just generally enjoy myself. I highly recommend a 4 day week and 3 day weekend to anyone and everyone who can manage it!

I also learn and teach karate. I had been learning karate for about 5 years when my husband (Ben) and I moved away from our home town (Hobart, Tasmania) to Canberra for work. Our Sensei encouraged us to start a karate club, which we have been running for a bit over 5 years. We teach 3 times a week, and train with a couple of fellow black belts once a week, and every visit home is a marathon of karate classes and private lessons, to try to keep up to date and maybe even improve a bit.

I also have a rather severe love/hate relationship with online poker; a crazy little foundling kitten who was excellent company at 4am through the worst of my illness; and an obsession with food. 

Which brings me full circle to what I wanted to be the subject of this post. I have been told by several doctors that diet is not a factor in UC, but quite frankly, I don't believe them. I started on the SCD over 6 months ago (if you want to know more about it, check out breakingtheviciouscycle.info) but because I was symptom-free due to massive doses of prednisone, I didn't do the introductory diet properly and when my symptoms started up again about 4 weeks ago, I decided to start again and do it properly.

This involves a chicken soup, beef mince, carrot and egg (and yoghurt, if you don't have a problem with dairy) diet for between 2 and 5 days, followed by the gradual reintroduction of other foods, one at a time, at intervals of 2-4 days to observe possible negative reactions (there is a chart of the food stages at pecanbread.com). Did I mention I am obsessed with food? This has been really difficult, and I have to admit to cheating a bit, adding more than one food at a time and occasional cheating of having advanced foods. 

I'm currently allowed to eat:
Meat and fish
Eggs (lots and lots of eggs)
Cooked: carrot, zucchini (peeled until a couple of days ago), spinach, green beans, pumpkin, tomato, asparagus, apple, pear, sultanas and currants
Raw: avocado, ripe banana
Honey
Almond milk, almond butter (and trying almond meal tomorrow)
Yoghurt (lots and lots of yoghurt, homemade, fermented for 24 hours to get rid of the lactose)
Cheddar cheese, parmesan cheese (real stuff made from milk and cultures, not synthetic chemicals)
Sugar-free dijon mustard
Homemade tomato sauce
Oil (olive, grapeseed, macadamia, coconut)
Butter
Vinegar
 
I'm trying really hard not to become obsessive about all bad things in foods, but there are a number of reasons it is difficult. SCD categorises foods as 'legal' and 'illegal' which is a really useful mindset to have. Not just allowed/not allowed but illegal gets you thinking about it in the right way. I also visualise things I can't eat, like sugar and flour, as poison - this is particularly useful to stop me licking my fingers when I'm making biscuits for Ben and have gooey ginger and cinnamon-scented dough all over my hands. And the more I read about sugar substitutes and the various chemicals put into foods (either directly, or feeding/injecting the animals we ultimately eat) the more scary it all seems.

Being on a really restricted diet has made me appreciate food in an extremely intense way. I've always liked food - cooking really tasty things and then savouring eating them in good company. I was the kid that ate the cupcake from the bottom up, to leave the best bit with all the icing til last (okay, I admit it, I still do). But this is something different. I made hollandaise sauce on the weekend, to go with runny poached eggs, rissoles (bacon for Ben) and spinach. I've made it before, and it was good, but this was just divine. A bite of egg, hollandaise, and rissole was one flavour. Runny yolk on rissole another. Spinach, egg white and hollandaise…. I've better stop before I drown in my own saliva.

Then I started work on the cupcakes I'm taking to work for morning tea tomorrow. Lemon meringue - almond based lemony cake, more dense than flour based cupcakes, lemon butter sweetened with honey, and the meringue icing (to be made later this evening). I had to make almond butter in the process and had a bit leftover and just ate a bit off the spoon - kind of like peanut butter, but with a much more subtle flavour. Then I thought, this would go with a dried apricot (one of my occasional cheats - I've had 4 in total since restarting the diet, and they are really moist and gooey and oh so good), so I carefully spread a dried apricot with a teaspoonful of almond butter, and ate it in five little bites, carefully chewing eat one until it disappeared. Soooo good.

It really is the simple little things in life that make it all worthwhile.
 
Anyhoo, the recipe for the cakes can be found here (milk for the morning cake is not only my current favourite blog, but also a favourite book as a child). Time to go make that icing...