Shaming Myself Into Dieting

I’ve been eating far too much rubbish recently – cheese, chocolate and way too much sugar. It’s giving me the jitters and a few spots, and I need to get myself into a healthier eating regime, especially before the Christmas over-eating season starts.

I struggle with dieting because I seem to have no self-control whatsoever, so I figured I could shame myself into dieting by publishing everything I eat. I realize that nobody will be in the slightest bit interested in this, but the fact that I’m committing to do it might make me think twice about hitting the biscuit-tin constantly in between meals!

I’m not planning on eating an overload of lettuce and no sweet treats whatsoever, but I am going to try and stick to 3 meals a day and cut down on my snacking.

So today, I’ve been pretty virtuous, I’ve had a bowl of unsweetened muesli for breakfast and pita bread stuffed with Greek salad stuff for lunch. Now all I have to do is get through to dinner without whipping up a quick batch of biscuits…

Wish me luck!

*UPDATE*
I made it through to dinner time, had a healthy home-cooked Szechuan Chicken with rice and broccoli for dinner followed with a mini pot of chocolate mousse just because my sugar cravings were SO bad (to anyone who says sugar isn’t addictive try being me right now). The chocolate mousse didn’t touch the cravings so I won’t bother with that again, lesson learned. I did snack a little in the evening, but only on olives with a small glass of wine, so at least that’s a step in the right direction… Day one complete, and with no emergency biscuits made 😉

Making Our Own (Monster) Teddy

My son’s school has got a really sensible policy of not letting you send your child back to school until 48 hours after any sickness bug. I love this rule, it means that we have an extra day at home during term time when Theo doesn’t feel poorly any more, but he’s not allowed back to school. We had one of those today and he had the great idea of making a teddy.

He carefully designed his teddy and cut it out and went through my bag of scrap material to decide which body parts would be in which materials. The result is a slightly Frankenstein-esque teddy, but he’s certainly unique and Theo adores him. I have to say I’m quite surprised with how nice he turned out too, and it’s great to use that sewing machine that I went mad to have about 10 years ago and have only used once to make bunting last summer. 

Dinovember Shenanigans

Watching Harry Potter, complete with popcorn

DINOvember has been in full swing in our house since we discovered it a few weeks ago. It must be getting tough for the Dinosaurs to keep coming up with new ideas, but our 7 year old’s reaction has been more than worth it. Only a few more days to go! Here are some of our favourites so far…

Orange Chocolate Chip Cookies

I’m beginning to see a bit of a trend with my food posts, they all seem to be biscuits, cakes or puddings!I like to think that’s because they are the most appealing recipes rather than I eat more sugar than health-food but I’m beginning to wonder.

It doesn’t help having children of course. I’d rather bake and give my 7-year-old home-baked biscuits than rubbish stuffed full of aspartame and trans-fats. Still, it isn’t doing my waistline any favours, especially when the biscuits are THIS delicious!

Ingredients:

• 250g/9oz butter
• 150g/5.5oz caster sugar
• 300g/10oz self-raising flour
• 2 tbsp milk
• Grated zest of 1 orange
• 50g chocolate chips

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees/Gas 4/fan oven 160 degrees.
• Beat sugar and butter until light and fluffy
• Stir in flour, orange zest and milk and mix well
• Add the chocolate chips and mix gently
• Divide the mixture into 18 portions and put flattened balls of cookie dough on your baking sheets, leaving room for the biscuits to ‘spread’ in the oven
• Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden.
• Cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheets then remove to a wire rack to cool and crisp up.

Win a £50 voucher to spend on vinyl wall stickers

THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED. THE WINNER IS Sharon Williams, CONGRATULATIONS SHARON, SPINCOLLECTIVE WILL GET IN TOUCH WITH YOU ABOUT YOUR PRIZE.

I’m delighted to announce that I’ve got a £50 voucher to giveaway to spend on amazing wall stickers at www.spincollective.co.uk.

For those of you who have never seen, used or even heard of vinyl wall stickers. In a nutshell, they are an alternative to wallpaper except removable and extremely easy to apply. Made from high quality matt vinyl, wall decals are cost effective in adding a touch of glamour, a bit of chic or just a cool statement to any smooth surface. Use the removable wall art to create some stunning low cost decoration in any room. www.spincollective.co.uk have lots of designs available for your living room, bedroom, office, children and kid’s wall stickers and even designs for your kitchen and bathroom tiles. With free applicator and simple instructions with every purchase (and free Crayola coloured chalk with all chalkboards stickers)!

About the Prize:

£50 voucher to spend on vinly wall stickers at www.spincollective.co.uk.

Working clock wall sticker complete with clock mechanism

So, how do you enter?

Simple! For your chance to win the vouchers take a look at www.spincollective.co.uk and post a comment below telling me what your favourite item is.

It would also be lovely if you could like the Nice Like Nigella Facebook page. You don’t have to, but I sure would appreciate it!

Personalised chalkboard wall stickers – come complete with chalk

Competition rules:

• I’ll randomly pick a winner after entries close at midnight Wednesday 28th November 2013
• This competition is open to UK residents aged 18 or over
• I won’t share, give away or sell ANY of your contact details, I will only pass the winners details onto www.spincollective.co.uk who will send out the prize directly.
• Nice Like Nigella do not take any responsibility for the delivery of the prize which will be sent out directly by www.spincollective.co.uk.
• The winner will be contacted about their prize, if they have not claimed their prize within 3 months of it being announced www.spincollective.co.uk are under no obligation to still offer the prize.
• If you would like to offer a competition prize or run a give away on Nice Like Nigella please get in touch, I’d love to hear from you.

This competition is also listed on: ThePrizeFinder – UK Competitions and Loquax Competitions

Dinovember has started in our house…

Naughty naughty dinosaurs were on the rampage for food last night while we were sleeping. We found the evidence when we woke up this morning.

Are you SURE you didn’t do it mummy?

Do you think they’ll do something ELSE tonight or do you think they just do it on a Friday?

*excited face*

*Thank you so much* to Refe Tuma who invented Dinovember “A month-long imagination invasion” throught the month of November. I bow to your awesome childhood-enhancing skills.

Spectacular Slow Cooking: Moroccan Lamb with Apricots and Almonds

I’m not sure the photo really does this one justice, but WOW this dish is packed with flavour. It was one of those slow-cooked dishes which I really struggled NOT to eat before dinner time, it just smelled so GOOD!

It’s really simple to make but the flavours are fantastic, I really can’t recommend this enough.

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 550g lean cubed lamb
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
  

Making Brandy Snap Baskets

I love those occasional weekend days you get when there’s nothing to do. The boys are entertaining themselves watching football/watching motorsport/playing cars/doing boy stuff (delete as appropriate) and I’m free to just potter in the kitchen for an hour or two.

What I really fancied making was a cake, but I’d run out of eggs and couldn’t be bothered to trek to the shop, so I searched for something else instead. And what I settled on was Brandy Snap Baskets.  Just because I’d always meant to try them but had never got around to it.

The mixture is easy to make, but the rest of it takes a little more patience and a bit of trial and error.  The spoonfuls of mixture spread ENORMOUSLY when they cook (a tablespoon spreads to be approx 6 inches across) so you have to leave MUCH more room than I did in the picture below. Also, watch the oven like a hawk for the last 2 minutes of cooking, they go from underdone to burned very quickly.  They’re well worth the effort though, they make a scoop of vanilla ice cream into something really special!

Ingredients:

• 50g butter
• 50g brown sugar

The joy of jelly

Sometimes it’s nice to just stop and remember the simple pleasures in life. Like eating wobbly jelly with a spoon: something which gives you huge pleasure when you’re 7, but which I haven’t done in years! I was making this spectacularly retro-pudding and hand some jelly left over which my little boy wolfed down amid much concentrating and giggling.

Ah, the joy of jelly. Not to be underestimated.

Toffee Apple Fail

I never stopped to consider how hard it would be to eat a toffee apple when your front teeth haven’t come through yet. This wasn’t even a toffee apple, it was a chocolate-dipped apple which has to be easier. As you can see my 7-year-old gave it a valiant try but truly struggled to get into the darn thing. Thank goodness I didn’t bother making a batch of toffee apples at home! Maybe next year…