Christmas dinner!

I did all the prep for Christmas dinner the day before so I could lounge about, open prezzies, snuggle, drink champagne and tea etc. on the day with maximum ease. A little final bit and bob with help from MrTOTKat (chief sprout chopper) and the total intervention on the day was about 30 minutes including carving the turkey when it was cooked and rested.

From top left ring: sliced red cabbage and onion, sautéed in duck fat and with a dollop of cranberry sauce and cider vinegar; smoked bacon lardons, searing in salted butter, ready for the chopped brussels; finely diced red onion, fresh thyme, fresh rosemary and turkey giblets, fried in duck fat and topped up with water to then reduce for gravy.

Not an excessive amount of implements in use, even if you do count the glass of champagne.

And, hello turkey crown!  Basted in duck fat and sprinkled with sea salt, thyme and rosemary.

Hidden celeriac and turnip gratins bubbling away under the turkey.

Aaaand the turkey is done!  Rest for 30 minutes and carve.

Finish off the sprouts with a few walnuts...

And serve!

After a starter of salmon mousse, wrapped in smoked salmon slices and served with cherry tomatoes dressed in olive oil, black pepper and sea salt.

 The main course; sprouts with bacon and walnuts, celeriac and turnip gratin, red cabbage with cranberry sauce, roast turkey, turkey gravy, and horseradish cream.

Main course demolished!

Um. I got a bit squiffy at this point and missed the tiramisu dessert.  And we didn't have the cheese board and nut crackers in the end.  The tiramisu looked a bit like this...

But that's egg nog from Boxing Day, so, er...

Yes.

And then for supper there was a Heston delight - Hidden Clementine Christmas Pudding - with Abel and Cole custard.  We were doing pretty well until that point :o)  The whole 3 course dinner, including dessert, but without wine, was 33g carbs.  Heston's pudding, per portion, by itself, without custard, was 65g carbs!  But it was bloody lovely, so I don't care.  The whole day, including blow-out amounts of wine, scrambled eggs and smoked salmon parcels for brekkie, and a mince pie earlier in the day came to 175g carbs.  That's no more than a "normal" day earlier in the year (and we used to eat lower carb than most normal people anyway).

And 2 days later.  I have ketones back in my urine again, so I think that in the grand scheme of things, that was barely a "carb binge" (not to be had all the time, but we'll see in a few months about a VO2 or steady state gas analysis again and if there's a difference).

Bit busy...

It's been a busy week.  Tuesday at the conference thing and then on Thursday night a really fantastic night.  Dinner at James Martin's house, cooked by him, with a tour of some of his cars and other vehicles.  It was utterly amazing and we're still recovering from it really.  More detail on dinner when I've got less general catching up to do... piles of washing and paperwork beckon!

(ohgod, I just remembered the juke box...)

Oops!

So I set the Star Chef to make us a lovely sausage casserole for when we got home last night.  When I came through the front door at the end of the day... hm... no smell of yumminess.  *confused*  The thing was sitting there, still saying "06:00" and not cooking or counting down.  And that should have been my clue... Not. Counting. Down.  The 6 hour preset start time I'd put in was not, in fact, a 6 hour count down to the start of cooking but the time it would -finish- cooking.  6am today!

So.  Having checked the actual manual, I re-set it to finish cooking at 10am today and keep warm (for up to 24 hours after finishing) so it should start just before I left the house this morning.  And it did.  Phew!  So.  Yummy casserole will happen tonight instead. (and we went to the local Italian for dinner last night instead - I had 1/2 a thin and crisp tomato/garlic bread, canneloni and a couple of small glasses of Prosecco)

Deviation

I did have a sneaky run on Sunday and then yesterday cycled into work, had a weights session during the day and cycled home again.  So, after 8 consecutive days of exercise, I've decided it's a good idea to rest today rather than cycle in, do open water training and cycle home again.  My body is complaining at me.  It doesn't help that Mr TOTKat and I spontaneously went for dinner at our local Italian last night and the 1/2 bottle of wine (or less, I just didn't seem to be able to drink much of it) hit me quite hard again.  I really enjoyed the evening, but made a bad choice with my main course of lasagne.  Nothing wrong with lasagne per se, it was just mostly pasta and not a lot of filling so it was stodgy and heavy.  The scales have been surprisingly kind this morning!

B - MP Total Breakfast with skimmed milk and blueberries
*cycle*
S - greek yogurt with mango and Dorset Cereals fruity muesli
*gym*
S - 1 scoop MP Max in skimmed milk
L - lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, celery and chicken breast
S - cottage cheese on 2 oat cakes
S - banana and strawberries
S - fruit, nut and seed bar
*cycle*
D - calamari, lasagne, white wine and a latte

Calories (kcal) [kcals to maintain weight (inc. exercise)	2890 2999]
Protein (g)	169.0 (24.4%)
Carbohydrate (g)	291.4 (39.5%)
Fat (g)	88.8 (28.8%)
Fibre (g)	22.5
Fruit & Veg	9.7

Easter dinner

And here's the lamb saddle dinner (with apricots, prunes, potato, sweet potato, carrot, parsnip and broccoli):-

That lamb was extremely succulent and soft.  De-heee-licious!

Accidental dinner out

My office is in an area of the city which is undergoing lots of redevelopment; scaffolding and dug up road everywhere!  Anyway, this is resulting in lots of nice eateries and cafes popping up around the office; most recently a Brasserie Blanc which I can see from my desk.  It officially opened last night so we decided at about 5pm to go for dinner :o)

We both had the starter from the specials menu; a sausage salad with tiny poached egg and potatoes:-

Which was pretty delicious.  The tiny piles of crisped wisps of onion were gorgeous!  The potatoes were just perfectly cooked and really tasted of potato, like the Castle Potatoes (a single, smallish potato still in its skin, sliced along the fat axis into 1/8" slices and, I think, roasted with no oil) I had with my slow cooked veal for main course.


Mr TOTKat (below) had steak for a main course and it was delicious!  Much better than the ones at Relais de Venise, L'Entrecote over the alley.

And it all went a bit pear-shaped after that and we ended up having loads of bread before the meal and at the end with cheese and dessert wine.  Oops!  Still!  It was a lovely night out and the food and drink was really rather good (though the cheese wasn't all that exciting, which was a tiny bit of a shame).  I don't think I'm going to be losing any more weight over the next couple of days :o)  (which is a good thing as I don't want to lose any more thanks very much!)

Yeah, so I've been bad

And I've been eating and drinking for England since Friday evening. I could have reined it in today; and more of today has been quite good, but I just really did not want to cook, so we're having takeaway for dinner. Almost a week of no exercise, due to my iffy leg, and for some reason that's resulted in eating and drinking too much. It's been at least 7 cheats of my 7 allowed for this week, if not a couple more. Not the best three days ever, but sometimes it just happens and I'm not going to beat myself up about it.

Yesterday's "family Christmas Dinner" (this is the first time we've got together to do Christmas present exchange etc.) was really good. I bought a buffalo roasting joint from Alternative Meats and pot roasted it for 6 hours.



And served it with boiled potatoes, cauliflower, carrots, parsnips and sugar snap peas. It was deeeelicious!


There was so much liquid from the meat juices and the marinade it was roasted in (vegetable stock, port, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper and a teaspoon of honey on top) that it just needed a little thickening to make into a gravy which was -heavenly-. At 1kcal per g and fantastically tasty, I vote for more buffalo! (and there's most of the potatoes still left, so I'll probably mash them up with some sweet potato tomorrow)

Tomorrow, I'll be getting a deep tissue massage on that strained thigh muscle and then we'll see how it goes with a bit of cardio on Tuesday. I'll have a go on the cross trainer and if it starts off well, I'll do an intervals session.

Need to rein it in

It's been a touch silly the last week; champagne teas, lunches out, dinner out, lots of wine etc., very little gym attendance (partly due to being made to feel guilty about it at work, but that will get fixed soon) and it's no surprise I'm back over 68kg consistently.

I've been over maintenance kcals about 3 of the last 7 days but some of that is due to lack of exercise kcals as well as special occasions. It should be a lot easier to "keep it real" for a few weeks and get back into at least 2 weights and 3 cardio sessions in a week (including 1 outdoor run) now the birthday season is over. My current weights routine is so much fun so I am keen to get more of it in and hopefully the nearest gym to my office will get back to HR about corporate membership discounts soon so I can move to that gym and go more often during the week.

I'm not crushingly down about any of this excess, just a bit annoyed that I let it get a tiny bit out of hand. A tiny bit more self-discipline is all that's needed. I think I'm most peeved about how much I'll weigh when I go for my next PT session (which could be my last with that trainer if I get to move to the more local gym to work) and thus how little fat % I will have lost, if any!