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!)

I have my domain back

After months of fiddling with ISPs, fighting black-listing and getting stuff to update in the right way and in the right order to work properly with Google Apps; I have my domain name back for web stuff now (it never went away for mail, so no worries there).  So.  Here I am back again.  Redirects should be magical for those using the old blogspot URLs.

Kitteh and cake

I had more cake:-

And then, the excitement of the day was a neighbourhood cat whining at being stuck on a roof:-

The Fire Brigade turning up and the cat panicking and buggering off over the roof to safety (of course):-

Muscle loss

2 weeks of no weight training; 1 week of no exercise at all and my weight is dropping despite being around maintenance kcals all week.  The worry is I may be losing muscle mass.  So, tomorrow morning I'll be taking a body fat measurement to see if I've lost measurable amounts of fat or that it really is muscle dropping off.

Had a little gymmage today though; 65 minutes - 1km warm up on the rower, 3x10 assisted pull-ups at 32kg assist, 12 minutes on the Wave machine; super-set 3x 60s planks with 3x 10 tricep dips; 3x 15 double reverse crunches and then 20 minutes on the cross-trainer.  612kcals and feeling really quite good apart from a real awareness of my coccyx area (probably from the double reverse crunches as I do lean on my coccyx quite a bit at the bottom of the movement).  Still have to call the physio tomorrow for a consultation though, as I really don't want to cause a long term problem by doing the wrong kind of exercise now.

Time for a nice hot bath and a domestic chore or two before tea and cake!

Cake!

Here it is... (1/8th of the cake is 180kcals :o) )

Recipe from BBC Good Food:-

Ingredients

• 85g Sugar, Caster
• 15g Cornflour
• 40g Chocolate, Dark
• 100g Yoghurt, Greek, 0% Fat
• 70g Flour, Plain, Average
• ½ Tsp/ Baking Powder, Average
• 1 Tbsp Cocoa Powder
• 100g Cheese, Soft,  Extra Light
• 3 Large Eggs
• 2 Tbsps Sugar, Icing, Average
• 1 Tbsp Strong Coffee, Black

Method

1.  Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Lightly grease and line the bases of 2 x 18cm sandwich tins with baking paper. Whisk the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy, about 5 mins with a tabletop mixer or 10 mins using an electric hand whisk. The mixture will have increased greatly in volume and be thick enough to leave a trail on the surface when the whisk blades are lifted.
2. Sift the flour, cornflour, cocoa and baking powder over the surface and fold in gently using a large metal spoon. Divide between the tins, gently spreading the mixture to the edges, then bake for 15-20 mins until the cakes are well risen, have begun to shrink away from the sides of the tins and spring back when gently pressed. Leave to cool in the tins for 5 mins, then turn out onto a rack.
3. To decorate, microwave the chocolate and coffee together on Medium for 20-30 secs until the chocolate has melted. Gently stir until smooth, then cool slightly. Beat the soft cheese with the yogurt and icing sugar until smooth, then spoon half the mixture into a small bowl stir in the melted chocolate and set aside. Place one cake on a serving plate and spread with the yogurt mixture. Cover with the other cake, then spread the chocolate yogurt mixture over the top.
4. To finish, microwave the 15g chocolate on Medium for about 20 secs until melted. Stir gently until smooth, then drizzle all over the cake.