Ten years ago today…

Me and Mam ready for our meeting with the doc!

 

I WORE a suit. And I bullied my mother into wearing one too.

I don’t know why, but I figured if it was going to be bad news it wouldn’t hurt to look smart. To look confident. To look like the type of people the doctor could take seriously.

My mother was waiting in the lobby of the hospital when I went in, done up like a dog’s dinner at 10am, wearing her ‘good’ jewellery and hair spray. We looked like a pair of businesswomen about to pitch a new computer system to the hospital, instead of a terrified mother and daughter about to get a diagnosis. Praying it wouldn’t be bad news.

It was bad news.

“You have a narrowing in your small bowel, consistent with Crohn’s Disease.” The doctor was matter-of-fact.

Perversely, after worrying that it would be bad news,  I felt relieved. Shocked and sick and distraught at first, but when that wore off, I was relieved.

It was May 2002 and I had been ill for a soul-destroying nine months. I didn’t think I could take another minute of the pain and the sickness so when it came to it, a diagnosis, any diagnosis, was welcome.

I looked over at my mother – she was staring straight at the doctor, a handkerchief shredded between her fingers and I could see her almost physically pulling herself together.

“Right. So what’s next? What treatment is there, what drugs can you give her? We need something, today, before she leaves.”

It’s true what they say, never get between a mother and her cub. She was like a tigress that day.

I think the doctor was surprised that we were taking it so well, that we knew what questions to ask, but this wasn’t our family’s first brush with Crohn’s. My eldest sister had been diagnosed a decade earlier and now history was repeating itself.

Crohn’s is a chronic, life-long, auto-immune disorder of the digestive tract. It can affect anywhere from the mouth to the anus but generally affects the small and large bowel. Symptoms include chronic constant diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal pain, fever and weightloss and a whole host of other problems.

It generally affects young adults and at 23 I was the perfect age for it.

We left the hospital with anti-inflammatories, steroids and painkillers, with appointments for bloodtests and follow-up meetings with the consultant.

My memories of the next few days are a blur. I know I told friends and family the news. I know I was upset, yet glad to have a diagnosis and incredibly relieved that the steroids had started to work. But I don’t think I had really taken on board what that diagnosis meant, that didn’t sink in for a long time.

That diagnosis was ten years ago today. It has been a long ten years.

That sounds terribly maudlin and self-indulgent but it’s the reality. It hasn’t all been bad, of course, I am lucky to be blessed with a lovely life, but the Crohn’s part of it hasn’t always been easy. It is still not easy.

After the steroids, I got a lot better for a time, my symptoms abated quickly but Crohn’s is an unpredictable beast and in 2005 it flared up again and I had to have major surgery – a right hemi-colectomy.

A good couple of foot of my small bowel and the right side of my large bowel were cut out leaving me with a zipper scar from mid-abdomen to groin. It put paid to my future career as a bikini model (ha!) but it was necessary.

Those weeks and months before surgery were dark days. Long days. Hanging-on-by-my-fingertips days. The pain was crushing and unrelenting, I stopped eating, stopped going out, stopped living. I dragged myself to work everyday and slept around the clock when I was at home.

So the surgery was a lifesaver. It has left me with only a small portion of bowel and chances are by time I reach middle age I’ll have to have a colostomy bag, but it was a choice between a life with a bag or no life at all.

Looking back on the past ten years the memories come thick and fast – a horror trip to Strazburg in the grip of Crohn’s, truly believing I would die in an anonymous hotel room; struggling through my sister’s wedding day; having to get off the bus miles before my stop because someone was eating and I couldn’t stand the smell of food.

People asking me, concerned, was I on a crash diet because I had lost so much weight; other people wanting to know the ‘secret’ to my amazing weightloss; the constant need to know that there would be a toilet wherever I was going; dreading bus and train journeys with no toilets; throwing up constantly; crying constantly; trying to hide it, constantly.

Better memories then – remission; stretches of months at a time where I’d be symptom free, able to eat and drink freely, relax, feel better; my wedding day which was wonderfully, blissfully, Crohn’s free; blood tests which showed no sign of a flare; new drugs which gave hope; the realisation that Crohn’s isn’t a death sentence, that it can be controlled.

What I miss most about my life before Crohn’s however is spontaneity. Crohn’s has robbed me of that. I go nowhere without preparation. 24-hours of eating lightly before a long journey, a full box of Immodium, an itinerary so I know where there’ll be a loo, time to prepare myself mentally for being out of the house.

I can never simply get in the car and go off for the day, it’s too stressful. Crohn’s is too unpredictable, I need time to prepare. I don’t sleep the night before plane journeys, worrying that we’ll be stuck on the tarmac and I’ll need the loo and won’t be allowed to. I spend the first 24-hours in any foreign city scouting out clean, accessible public toilets, or calculating the distance between our hotel room and the tourist attractions.

I need to prepare for days before a wedding with medication and diet, to make sure I won’t need the loo in the middle of the ceremony, or won’t have to leave the table in the middle of the meal.

If I do decide to throw caution to the winds and simply go for a night out with no preparation, invariably I have to come home early, leave a meal half-eaten in a restaurant, cancel plans at the last minute, it rarely works out.

I used to work as a journalist and after surgery went freelance so that I could work from home. In the past couple of years I’ve changed career and am now a childminder, working from home. I can’t see myself ever working in an office or outside of my home again. Having to use a communal loo, be restricted as to when I can use the bathroom, have no control over my schedule, it would be too much.

Luckily, I have a wonderful family and fantastic friends who understand. They know what my life is like now and they adapt to that. They accept last minute changes of plan, my pathological obsession with public toilets, sudden illness, my aversion to spicy foods; they turn a blind eye when I bolt from the table mid-conversation.

They have been wonderful and their understanding has made all the difference.

Today has been a funny day. Remembering. Marvelling that ten years has passed so quickly and then in the same thought, looking at the next 40 or 50 years of my life and wondering if I’m going to be strong enough to endure it.

I hope so. Keep your fingers crossed for me, eh?

 

May is World IBD (Inflammatory Bowel Disease) Month so for more information on Crohn’s or Ulcerative Colitis visit http://www.iscc.ie

 

Pic via: http://youngwomenmisbehavin.com/2010/12/17/helping-women-veterans-become-entrepreneurs/

Mad for Cake

Saved by Cake by Marian Keyes

 

EVERYTHING I know about cooking, I learned at my mother’s knee.

Boiling, roasting, casseroles, pies, stews. How to handle and store raw meat, the necessity of fresh herbs and the most important rule of all – if something doesn’t work out, tell your guests it was supposed to taste like that.

We’d come home from school as children, eagerly running up the road, noses upturned sniffing to see what dinner she had on that day.

Liver and onions, stuffed lambs hearts, roast chicken, Shepherd’s Pie, steak and kidney pie, homemade burgers, beef stew, smoked cod poached in milk, roasted vegetables, new potatoes boiled in their jackets with country butter, we devoured it all.

Mammy Dunne in turn learned all her tricks from her mother, my grandmother, a woman I never met but who was renowned for her cooking skills.

“My mother could pull up a few vegetables from the garden, throw in a few herbs and produce a meal fit for the gentry. And she’d never let on that she wasn’t expecting you, you’d barely even realise she was cooking. She’d put the dinner up to you and you’d be stuffed after it,” she remembers.

As a young woman in the 1920s, my grandmother worked as a parlour maid in one of the Big Houses in Graignamanagh, Kilkenny, waiting on rich farmers and landowners. From time to time she helped out in the kitchen, watching the cook carefully, picking up hints and tips.

One evening she was put entirely on the spot – when the cook passed out drunk on cooking sherry – and singlehandedly put up a six-course meal for 12; the next day the rich landowner fired the cook and gave my grandmother the job.

This was unheard of at the time, she was untrained and so young, but her cooking had to be tasted to be believed so she was given the chance.

She thrived in the job, retaining her knowledge and then passing it on for when she had a family of her own.

So you’d think with all that wealth of experience and talent behind me, with the blood of two generations of cooks running through my veins that I’d be a dab hand in the kitchen, wouldn’t you?

Not exactly. And here comes the point of this long rambling post.

I can cook, but I can’t bake. Give me a lump of meat and a sack of potatoes and I’ll whip you up a meal. But faced with flour and sugar and eggs, I’m useless.

 

Hitherto only used for savoury dishes

 

My sponges are thick and heavy. My fruitcake sinks. My brownies are gritty and tasteless and my scones are flat and overly sweet.

It’s too precise, you see, baking. Too exact. Things have to be weighed and measured. 100 grams of sugar is NOT the same as ‘an oul handful’ no matter how much I wish it was, so I rarely bake. I try from time to time of course, but weighing is for wimps, so it rarely works out and the cake is always a disappointment.

Perversely I love a slice of cake so I do. I’m mad for cake. And there’s nothing like the smell of sweet vanilla sponge filling a house. So yesterday in a fit of madness I decided I was going to face my fear and bake. And do it properly this time. And yes, I was going to have a day off from Slimming World to eat cake. Sue me.

Yer Man had bought me Saved by Cake by Marian Keyes for our first wedding anniversary and for the past five weeks it’s sat on my kitchen counter looking pretty but unused. I’d read it, of course, and adored the pictures and recipes and Marian’s wonderful way with words, even when just talking about icing sugar. But I hadn’t used it.

So yesterday with great trepidation I cracked open the book, wrote a shopping list and got to work.

 

Weighing is NOT for wimps after all

 

I unearthed my weighing scales from where it was languishing at the back of the cupboard – still wrapped in plastic – bought some round sandwich tins and finally ran to ground a roll of baking paper in the supermarket. Harder than you’d think.

I picked two recipes which looked easy enough. Nothing had to be done in stages, there were no scary words like ‘knocked back’ or ‘clarified butter’ or ‘bake blind’, instead there were nice easy words like ‘mix’ and ‘pour’. I could definitely mix and pour.

First up Ultimate Chocolate Brownies – all my favourite things in one gooey cake. Butter, chocolate, brazil nuts, er, flour.

I melted, I sieved, I weighed and measured. I stirred and poured and when it was all ready to go into the oven, indeed’n I did lick the spatula.

 

Mmmmmm

 

Almost the second these babies hit the oven the smell of melty, oozey, chocolatey goodness filled the air and it was all I could do to get off my knees where I was salivating in front of the oven to wash up the mixing bowl.

I wanted to dive into them the minute they were cooked but Wise Marian warned against this as they would simply run all over the place as they still needed a few hours setting time.

Needless to say it was the longest three hours of my life but in the end well worth the wait. Eyes rolling back in our heads, myself and Yer Man hopped off the brownies, cramming ever more of the sweet, chocolate gooeyness into our gobs.

So rich, so decadent, so delicious. If I’ve one complaint it’s that they’re almost TOO rich. You can barely eat one before starting to feel sick and everyone knows one of anything is no use to man nor beast, you always have to have at least three.

 

*Yoink*

 

While waiting for the brownies to set I set about making a Victoria Sponge, reassured by Marian that it was ‘extremely easy’ to make.

Like a pro I lined sandwich tins with baking paper, weighed out sugar and butter, foraged for vanilla extract. It was only when I was attempting to cream the butter and sugar that I realised I really needed an electric mixer.

Too late at that stage obviously, but I’d advise any of you to get one. I’ve a right arm on me that’d make Popeye proud.

 

Buy an electric mixer for ‘creaming’ anything. Trust me.

 

Into the oven the layers went, their buttery smell wafting around the house, mingling with the chocolate from the earlier brownies. It was like Willy Wonka’s factory in my kitchen, neighbourhood children slowed down as they passed the house. Not that they were getting any, but still, they’re free to look, and smell.

Once the sponges were cooled, I slapped them together with strawberry jam and fresh whipped cream, then sprinkled with icing sugar.

 

Buttery, spongy cake

 

And it was only delicious. Light, spongy, buttery. Mouth thick with cake I mumbled  ‘Is g’d isnn eh?’ at Yer Man and was met with a garbled ‘Fnnarrghhglllhgghg’ in response which I took as a compliment.

Overall both recipes worked really well and I realised that if I follow a recipe closely and bother my arse to weigh out ingredients I can actually bake. Who knew?

Now that I’ve liberated my weighing scales and invested in three types of sugar (caster, soft brown and icing) I’ll definitely be baking again. And so should you. Give it a try.

If you want to try out Marian’s recipes, buy Saved by Cake here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Saved-Cake-Marian-Keyes/dp/071815889X or at all good book shops.

The Curious Incident of the Towel Rail in the Daytime

Little did it know, its days were numbered

 

“SO then I said to her, that’s all very well and good, but… actually Mam, can this wait until I come downstairs?”

“Grand yeah, I’ll just go down so,” her voice floated in, muffled, through the bathroom door.

I dropped my head into my hands, ears ringing with blessed silence, savouring the few minutes to myself.

My parents are staying with me for the week, while my brother decorates their house and I swear, it’s like having two kids to stay.

Two tea-drinking, newspaper reading, Silk Cut Purple smoking kids. No matter where I go in the house, they follow me, pulling at me, looking for entertainment.

“What’ll we do? Will we wash up?” they implore, all eager to be helpful, regardless of the fact that we’re still drinking out of the glasses they want to wash up.

“Where does this go, will I put it away?” Mammy Dunne asked, gesturing at the Pile of Death of bills and paperwork in the kitchen. I hadn’t the heart to tell her that that’s where it lives, permanently, so I let her put it away in a drawer. I’ll get it out when they leave.

They’ve only been here since this morning and already I’ve had to endure:

- A25 minute explanation as to how the TV “yoke” works. It’s a remote control Da, it really isn’t that hard. As I watched him struggling with the UPC menu guide I fantasised about beating him about the face with his own slipper.

- A 90 minute run down of how all the neighbours are doing, the gossip from home (all of which I already knew) and what number 40 put out in their bin on Wednesday night.

- A full hour of impressions of their grandkids. They’re my nieces and nephews, I know, and I love them but I didn’t need two 70-year-olds acting anything out for me.

So far my Da’s slopped tea on the wooden floor, thrown his cigarette butts in the bin, despite me leaving a big ashtray outside for him and broken the towel rail in the bathroom.

There was an almighty crash followed by a muttered ‘Moy Jaysis’ and he emerged, wrestling with the towel and the metal bit that used to stick in the wall.

“I barely touched it!” he said, outraged. “Lookit, the shaggin’ thing just came off.”

My mother has put every single dish and utensil I own back in the wrong place. She insisted, clawing at my arm feverishly, on doing the washing up, so eventually I relented. Only to walk in to find her putting the roasting dish away in the glasses cabinet.

And the saucepans in with the forks.

She did scrub my roasting tins to a shine they haven’t seen since the day they were bought, so I suppose I can’t complain.

When they’re not shadowing me, hovering and trying to help, they’re nervous and jumpy, like young gazelles.

“Where would I find the towels?” they ask fearfully, eyes darting around, oblivious to the fact that the towels are in the hot press, at the top of the stairs – the same place the towels are kept in their own house. The same place the towels are kept in MOST houses.

“This sugar here, is this the sugar I’ve to use in my tea?” they venture, terrified in case it was special sugar, not for the likes of them, and I was going to give out to them.

There was almost all out war at lunchtime when I brazenly put two slices of ham into Mammy Dunne’s ham and cheese sandwich.

I was trying to kill her, apparently. With a heart attack. She never eats that much ham, that much ham would feed a village so it would. Did nobody teach me how to make a ham sandwich, without resorting to gluttony?

At dinner they competed with one another to eat the least, to prove that they weren’t a bit hungry. Every time I asked them all day if they wanted something to eat they almost deafened me with shouts of “We’re FINE. Don’t be WORRYING. We’re FULL. Haven’t we had our LUNCH? Not hungry at ALL.” So when dinner rolled around seven hours later I knew they had to be starving, but they wouldn’t give in. They’re  made of sterner stuff.

Lips smacking, they nibbled on a single carrot and then professed themselves full and totally satisfied, no need to fuss.

I can feel them now, as I type, eyeing me, hungrily.

They’re starving, the pair of them. And they won’t take their shoes off. My mother’s clutching her handbag like a mugger’s going to leap in through the bay window and wrestle it out of her bony hands and my father’s still wearing his jacket.

It is going to be a long week.

Can’t live with them…

 

THEY say the first year is the hardest. All the irritating little things that annoy you about your wife or husband come to the fore, you learn new, sometimes surprising, things about your partner and from time to time you have a few tiffs or arguments. All pretty normal as you settle in to marriage.

Not so much for us though. It’s just under two weeks until our first wedding anniversary and up until last weekend we were having a blast. No arguments, no incidents, we were rubbing along very nicely, thanks. We seemed to have settled in beautifully and I was so looking forward to smugly telling people how absolutely perfect we are.

So close. So very, very close.

Last weekend we decided to clean the house, top to bottom. All the little jobs that you normally overlook such as dusting between every single slat on the blinds, scrubbing the grouting in the shower, stripping cupboards that sort of thing. It had been a LONG time since we did a huge clean-up like this, certainly the first since the wedding. We were going to get down and dirty and just do it.

So we did. The house is gleaming so it is, I’d defy anyone to find a speck of dust anywhere, on anything. Unfortunately however, I’m going to have to kill my husband.

It’s tragic, he’s only young, but sadly it must be so.

It’s not that he doesn’t do the housework. He does.

It’s not that he moans about having to do the housework. He doesn’t.

It’s not that he half-heartedly pushes a brush around while watching the football and leaves the rest to me. He doesn’t. Honestly, he doesn’t.

It’s that he does 95 per cent of a task and then moves on to the next one WITHOUT FINISHING THE FIRST ONE. And while he’s doing that 95 per cent of the task, he makes a meal out of it, spending hours at a simple task when ten minutes would do it.

So sadly, he must die.

Honestly, I can’t put up with 50 more years of this. I know, I KNOW I should be grateful he does any housework in the first place. I’m a bitch nag wife, I know. The chap does the work and it’s still not enough. What’s five per cent of a task between man and wife? What’s pernicketyness?

It’s everything. EVER.Y.THING.

We decided to split the work between us – I’d do upstairs – loos, our bedroom and the spare room – while he did the kitchen, the blinds and cleaned the downstairs windows.

Dusters, mops and buckets in hand we separated with a grin, cheerily shouting ‘See you in four hours’ at one another.

Four hours later our bedroom was dusted, polished, tidied and smartened up, the bed properly made, doors washed down – the works. Both bathrooms were sparkling, soap scum removed, toilets scrubbed, bath immaculate, our spare room was tidied and dusted and I was filthy and exhausted.

I looked around with pleasure at the sunlight streaming through the neat-as-a-pin rooms, happy with the job done. Done and dusted, if you will.

I went downstairs to find the washing up had been done and he had started on the blinds and back windows.

The counter tops were littered and uncleaned. The fridge wasn’t done. The cooker wasn’t done. The kitchen table was a mess.

He had done the washing up and then started the next task without finishing the first one!

It is beyond my comprehension how he could wash dishes yet leave countertops uncleaned, a filthy hob and a messy table and move on to cleaning blinds and windows.

‘I’ve finished these back windows now,’ sez he, blowing out his cheeks and moving busily through the kitchen ‘I’m going out the front now to start the front.’

Still not noticing the filthy countertops and cooker, still believing he had ‘done’ the kitchen.

He also had left filthy rags and soaked piles of kitchen roll all over the place from where he had been cleaning the windows, neglecting to pick them up, even when he was finished with each window.

Who does that? Who cleans a window, scrubs it, polishes it, buffs it, then wanders off leaving a sopping pile of kitchen roll on the ground thinking ‘That’s that job done!’ Who does that?! Pick up the kitchen roll, throw it in the bin, THEN the job is done! Don’t do it later, do it NOW!

I cleaned the countertops. I put away the bits and pieces that had accumulated on them. I cleaned the oven. I cleaned the fridge. I tidied the kitchen table. I took out the rubbish and the recycling. I picked up the sopping piles of kitchen roll.

Oh, then I went in and dusted and polished the sitting room and put out fresh candles.

My husband meanwhile sat at his work desk, with the lamp angled just so, feverishly cleaning one of the hooks off the blinds on the patio doors. With a cotton bud.

‘There’s a speck of paint here that I just. can’t. seem. to get off,’ he muttered as he scrubbed, finally emerging, pink-faced, 25 minutes later with a triumphant ‘GOT IT!’

You can see why I have to kill him, can’t you?

It’s a shame ‘n all that we didn’t even make it to the first year, but what can you do?

Husbands – can’t live with them, can’t legally shoot them. But I’ll find a way around that.

 

Photo: http://maryloudriedger2.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/housework/

Talking the talk

I can haz small talk?

 

I CAN’T do small talk.

It’s just beyond me.

I’m in awe of anyone who can do it for longer than two or three minutes.

You stand there at a party, glass of warm wine or flat 7up clutched in your sweaty paw, grinning awkwardly at complete strangers, mumbling about the weather or the latest about the recession.

I usually end up cursing. Not on purpose, just out of awkwardness.

“Fucking rain, eh? Yeah, Met Eireann said it was going to be pissing down today.”

It’s only when I see the widened eyes and pursed lips of the other party goers that I realise I’ve done it again.

It’s not only strangers I’m awkward with, I can’t do small talk with friends or family either.

I rarely ring anybody just for a chat, reserving the phone for when I actually have some news or need to ask a question.

Mammy Dunne on the other hand checks in regularly just to say hello or to see what’s new or what’s happening.

Nothing.

Nothing’s happening Mam. I don’t know what to say to you, I got up and worked, had my dinner, did some cleaning. My knickers are pink today, if that’s any use to you.

I’m the same with Yer Man. He’ll come in from work all questions.

How was your day? What did you do? Any news?

The day was grand, same as always, no news. I know he wants me to be one of those women from the ads on TV who never shut up, who talk at a mile a minute and who go into great detail about the minuate of their day, but I just can’t get it up for him.

I’m a monster. It’s terrible. I can’t even stir myself to talk to my husband.

It’s not that I don’t want to talk to him, or to my mother, or to the randomers at the party, that I think I’m above them or something – it’s just sometimes, I have nothing to say!

I’m equally as taciturn when the shoe is on the other foot – I can’t bear to LISTEN to small talk either. I try my hardest not to be rude about it, I nod and smile and try to engage. But inside I’m thinking ‘I don’t care, I really really don’t care.’ And I don’t. I can’t help it.

I had an online conversation today with two very lovely women who talk to their mothers between four and nine times a day. Plus a couple of emails and text messages.

They talk all the time, chatting about their day, plans for the evening and even more indepth stuff, everything and anything really. It’s no hardship to them, if they didn’t do it, they’d miss it.

These people are like aliens from another planet to me! (In the nicest possible way of course.) How do they do that? How do they have nine conversations a day with their mothers? Or anybody for that matter?

I’ve long since thought that I have no soul, that I’m an empty shell of a human being – I don’t listen to music, I have no passions, very little stirs me to any sort of reaction and I despise the sorts of TV show that everybody else raves about – and this small talk thing only confirms that for me.

A monster with no soul, that’s me.

How about you lot?

Are you a talker – or have you the blackest of black souls?

To sleep, perchance to dream

Yawn! Sleepy sleepy!

 

In the Land of Nod. But not for much longer!

 

I LOVE my bed.

Love it now.

It’s big and wide, King sized. Plenty of room for Yer Man and I to sleep without a millimetre of our bodies touching each other. I can’t sleep if someone is touching off me.

I need space, lots and lots of space. And my lovely comfy, firm, crisp, snuggly bed gives that to me in spades.

Lately though I think I’ve been loving my bed too much. Getting too much sleep if that’s even a thing. Particularly on weekends where my lie-ins hit noon or 1pm regularly.

I feel sluggish. Tired. Sick. Even after a shower and breakfast. The day never really gets started for me when I have a lie-in. I’ve started to realise I’m not even enjoying the lie-ins anymore, I feel guilty when I wake up, like I’ve wasted the day.

I’m always in awe of people who get up and get stuff done before noon on a weekend. I read their Facebook status updates jealously, hardly able to believe that they’ve been up hours, had breakfast, walked the dog and put a wash on, when I’ve barely brushed my teeth. They pack more into three hours than I do for a whole weekend. And it’s really starting to irritate me. I’M starting to irritate me.

It’s not like I even need a lie-in on weekends. I don’t have any children, I get plenty of sleep during the week. I suffer occasionally from insomnia, but very very occasionally. Generally, I sleep well and deeply from between midnight or 1am (depending on what I’m doing) and 8.30am when I get up for work.

I work from home and my day starts at about 9.30am so I only need to get up an hour beforehand. So on average I get between seven and a half hours and eight and a half hours of sleep a night. Plenty.

So why the need to sleep until 1pm every Saturday and Sunday? Truth is, I don’t need to. I just do.

And I think it’s time to stop. It’s time for an experiment!

For Lent, I am going to give up lie-ins. Just to see if I can and to see if it makes any difference. I’ve been struggling to think of things to give up for Lent as I’m already following a healthy eating plan with Slimming World and I don’t drink or smoke.

So I’m going after lie-ins. I’m going to get up at the same time every day, working or not, weekend or not, until Easter. If I feel it’s making a difference and I find I’m enjoying it, I’ll continue after Easter. If I’m crawling on my hands and knees desperate for sleep, I’ll go back to sleeping late.

It’ll be a challenge, albeit a tiny personal one, but I’m looking forward to it.

I don’t know how I’m going to break it to my bed though, he’ll likely feel abandoned and unwanted and like he did something wrong. I’ll have to tread very carefully around him or he’ll develop lumps and start annoying me at 4am.

I’ll keep you posted. Wish me luck!

Julie, Julia and me

Let's get cooking!

FOR Valentine’s Day my husband bought me a DVD of Julie & Julia, a gorgeous movie – adapted from two books – starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child, a well-known American cook, author and TV star.

In the movie, blogger Julie Powell (played by Amy Adams) sets herself a challenge to cook and blog about every one of the recipes in Julia’s renowned cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

One of the recipes that comes up again and again in the movie is Julia’s Boeuf Bourguignon – a stew so luxurious, so delicious, so decadent, so special that it brings grown men to their knees.

It’s the stuff of fairytales is this stew so when I found the recipe for it here – on cookbook publisher Knopf Doubleday’s website – I thought I’d give it a shot myself.  http://cooking.knopfdoubleday.com/2009/07/13/julia-childs-boeuf-bourguignon-recipe/

Sure why not? How hard could it be? And with the added bonus of blowing Yer Man’s knickers off, what could possibly go wrong?

Famous last words.

Ok, nothing actually went wrong, in that I didn’t burn anything or drop anything on the floor, but all knickers in this house remained very firmly on.

Boeuf Bourguignon is a lot of work. It’s not hard, but it’s a very lengthy process. There are several stages to complete and some of the stages are a little finicky.

I spent well over four hours cooking – including peeling and prepping vegetables – and I ended up with a tasty beef stew. It was rich, yes, and beefy, I could taste the wine and herbs. But frankly, I’ve had better. With much less fuss.

I can’t tell you how disappointed I am. I really had my heart set on this stew. I’ve been planning it for two weeks, researching the recipe, shopping, looking out pots and pans, setting aside a full day to make it. Giving myself a day off from Slimming World specifically for this dish. I’ve had day dreams where it became my signature dish and friends and family would clamour to come to dinner and beg me to make ‘my’ Boeuf Bourguignon. And after all that, it’s been a bit of a bust.

I could cry. But I won’t. Instead here are a few photos of how I spent my afternoon. If you’d like to try this recipe for yourself, click the link above and it explains everything.

At least the fresh herbs look pretty. They were worth the wait.

Sautee the bacon

Brown the beef

Fry off some onion and carrot, add to the beef and bacon and add some flour

Add red wine, stock, garlic, herbs, tomato puree and seasoning

Put the casserole dish into the oven for 2.5 hours. I look so hopeful there. *Bawls*

Next, brown some shallots in butter, then braise them in stock for 45 minutes

Fry some mushrooms in butter, in batches so as not to overcrowd the pan

When the 2.5 hours are up, mix through the onions and mushrooms and serve

Voila. Boeuf Bourguignon with roasties and peas. Four hours of work went into that one plate. *Bawls*

I Heart You

Heart shaped feckin' EVERYTHING!

PERSONALLY I blame the drugs.

There’s no other excuse really. Why else would a reasonably sane, grown, intelligent woman buy heart-shaped cookie cutters, with no intention of making cookies, for Valentines Day?

I must have been off my face.

It was supposed to be a simple trip to the supermarket, to pick up a Valentine’s Day card for Yer Man and some lamb for stew for tomorrow’s dinner.

But some madness, no doubt brought on by the painkillers I’m horsing into me to try to cure the laryngitis and tonsilitis I’ve been plagued with since last Wednesday, made me stop by the Valentine’s Day tat on special offer.

Heart-shaped candles. Heart-shaped fake petals. Heart-shaped boxes of chocolates. Heart-shaped poxy ramekins. (What IS a ramekin anyway, why isn’t it just a dish?)

Anyway, I should have just walked on by, as I usually do, rolling my eyes at the tat, wondering who on earth buys this sort of stuff.

But something made me stop. Something caught my eye. Sweet little heart-shaped cookie cutters. For €1.50. They were practically giving them away.

‘But you’re not making cookies,’ the rational part of my brain piped up, reminding me that cookies aren’t Slimming World friendly.

‘Yeah but, shut up, I could make heart-shaped something else’s,’ I wittily riposted, fighting my way through the throng of last-minute shoppers, and flinging them triumphantly into my basket.

Vegetables, I thought feverishly, wandering aimlessly up and down the aisles. I could cut out heart-shaped vegetables to go into the lamb stew!

Yes! Heart-shaped vegetables! I could even mould the meat into a heart shape as well! Heart-shaped EVERYTHINGS!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not against a little Valentine’s Day cheese, I always buy Yer Man a card and a box of chocolates is always welcome, but that’s generally where I draw the line.

Actively planning to spend hours chopping vegetables into the shape of a heart is just that one step to far. That way madness lies. It’s a thin line between that and calling my husband Bunny, in company.

What have I become?

I actually like Valentine’s Day – I know it’s commercialised, blah de blah, I know. But a day to celebrate love can’t be all that bad. It’s not all that bad. It needn’t cost anything and in today’s busy world, often couples forget to stop and smell the (heart-shaped) roses. So a reminder every February 14th isn’t the worst thing in the world.

But heart-shaped vegetables?

I’ve gone over to the dark side. And it is heart-shaped.

 

Pic: http://www.wallpaperfreehd.com/love/big-red-heart–371.html

Sunday Night Blues

Brush teeth, fall into bed.

Kiss husband goodnight.

Settle back smugly against pillows and close eyes.

Open eyes in panic, check alarm has been set.

It has. Relax.

Cast eye over clock. Great. Seven hours sleep.

Close eyes again. Rub feet together to warm up. Muse on coldness of bathroom floor.

Turn over into more comfortable position.

Try to empty mind.

Emptying of mind disturbed by snoring husband.

Open one eye, annoyed. How does he sleep so quickly?

Dig husband with knee, shifting him on to his side. Snoring abates.

Close eye, satisfied.

Become aware of dead arm from lying on side. Turn over on to back.

Wriggle around, trying to get comfortable. Wonder why can’t.

Ah. Feet. Feet now far too warm. How is anybody supposed to sleep with feet on fire?

Throw blankets off feet. Better. Much better.

Scratch nose.

Scratch arm.

Scratch nose again.

Realise sleeping position giving self whiplash. Turn over onto other side.

Better. Much better.

Try to drift off. Feel sleep creep up on self, but can’t quite catch…

Fuck it.

Itchy nipple.

Scratch nipple. Squirm at horrible scratchy nipple feeling.

Turn onto back. Cast eye at clock.

Great. Six hours sleep.

Settle down on to pillows.

Become aware of blocks of ice at bottom of bed. Ah. Feet.

Feet freezing now, pull blankets back onto feet.

Better. Much better.

Doze, intermittently, waking when enormous bang from back garden wakes self.

Burglars!

Definitely burglars!

What’s that noise?!

Burglars!

Oh. Neighbour’s garden shed door banging. Cats mating.

Not burglars after all.

Scratch nose.

Scratch arm.

Ooof, itchy shoulderblade.

Cast eye over clock. Five hours sleep. Respectable.

Turn over, snuggle up to husband’s strong back. Bliss.

Warm though.

Bit too warm maybe.

Can’t breathe now. Am suffocating self in husband’s back.

Peel self away from husband. Ah. Feet.

Feet ablaze. Throw blankets off feet.

Better. Much better.

Turn onto back.

Count sheep. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…

Scratch nose.

Scratch eye.

Scratch forehead.

Where was I? 6, 7, 8, 9…

Narrow eyes as husband shifts and starts snoring again.

Try to block out. 10, 11, 12, 13…

Cast eye over clock. Four hours sleep. Doable.

Turn over onto side.

Wonder how one supposed to sleep when feet in so much pain from cold.

Shuffle feet back under blankets. Better. Much better.

Squeeze eyes shut. Stop it! Go to sleep!

Drift off and have disturbing dream about virtual pals on Twitter competing on The Voice with lizard Kian Egan.

Start awake, heart pounding from Kian Egan debacle. Make mental note to lay off Twitter.

Cast eye over clock. Two hours sleep. Laughable.

Scratch nose.

Scratch arm.

Scratch nipple. Urgh.

Ponder possibility of scabies.

Notice light under curtains getting brighter.

Turn over.

Become aware of feet being boiled alive. Skin surely flayed off feet.

Kick blankets off feet. Better. Much better.

Notice husband breathing funny. Breathing out but unable to get breath in.

Panic!

What’s wrong with him?

Husband manages to gasp breath. Mumbles ‘toothpaste on the breadroll’ and snorts loudly, settling down to rumbling snore.

Huh. Well for him. Fucker.

Cast eye over clock. One hour sleep. Disaster.

Turn onto back. Pull feet under blankets one last time. Better. Much better.

Scratch nose.

Give self stern talking to. Go. To. Sleep.

Wonder if there’s any point in…

FUUUUCCKKK….??

Alarm clock. Drag self from bed. Sunday night over for another week.

Hungry like the Wolf

Spaghetti and meatballs, the Slimming World way

I THOUGHT about changing the name of this blog now that I’m married and no longer have to worry about the wedding dress, but then I thought, meh, I’m fat, I’m always beating myself into SOME sort of dress.

So I’m leaving it. And on that note:

When I was 25 I lasted four days on the Atkins Diet before flinging myself, wild eyed, into the door of an Italian restaurant and begging them to bring me a plate of pasta. Stat.

I think I probably wasn’t the first desperate, fat, slightly sweaty, carb-deprived Irish woman to come through their door because they seated me with a smile and brought me complimentary garlic bread while I was waiting.

When I was 26 I bought slimming tablets from an infomercial on late night TV. The tablets were made, I found out later, from fish guts, which they claimed bound fat together leaving you lean and serene, while you sat on your hole eating cakes and watching, well, infomercials.

The only thing that got leaner on that diet was my wallet. And I started to smell like fish, too.

Over the years I’ve tried the Cabbage Soup Diet (yes, it gave me the scutters), the Slimfast Diet (gank), the Special K Diet (well, it’s cardboard really, isn’t it?) calorie-counting, even group diets like WeightWatchers and I never stuck to any of them.

They bored me rigid. You thought about food, constantly. I started to obsess about food and I’m sure I drove my family and friends to distraction going on about the new one and veering between crazily counting out exactly 19 grains of rice, and stuffing eclairs down my throat like they were about to put a levy on them.

Call it laziness, call it lack of will-power, call it whatever you want, me and diets just do not work.

Actually, now that I’m older and wiser, I know for sure it was laziness. It still is.

I can’t tell you how many psychological profiles I’ve filled in online and in nutritionists’ offices, searching for the why, trying to find out how I got to be the size I am.

I’m a comfort eater, I eat when I’m distracted thus not realising what or how much I’m eating, like all fat people, I eat to hide the tears. I’ve heard it all. Blah blah blah.

Here’s the truth – I love to eat, and I hate to exercise. I love all food. Good nutritious food, fruit, vegetables, salad and also the bad stuff, the tip of the pyramid stuff. Chocolate. Cakes. Butter. All of it. I love it all. Too much in, not enough out equals thunder thighs. And Sumo belly. And bingo wings. You get the idea.

There is no mystery with me. No deep psychological scar. No childhood trauma. No glandular problem. No secret binge eating, or throwing up, nothing like that.

I simply love to eat, and hate to exercise. And despite envying slim women for their fashion sense and their ability to wear heels, in general I’m happy with myself.

Always have been.

The medical profession however, is not. Bet you thought this was going to be a ‘love yourself, have another cupcake’ post didn’t you?

‘Fraid not.

I might be, truly, happy with myself and how I look. I might hate diets. I might not care that my thighs meet, that I have back fat, that I have to buy plus-sized clothes. I might feel a pang when I read a fashion magazine and see the gorgeousness but I always shrug it off easily. I’m not slim, so what?

But my doctor doesn’t agree. And sadly, he’s right. I have to lose weight, I have to diet for my health, it really is as simple as that. Boring, but simple. It’s been going on too long and I have to make a change.

‘What am I going to do?’ I asked, teary eyed, logging on to the online wedding forum I can’t seem to give up even though I’m nine months married at this stage.

And then, like an angel, she appeared. An online pal, with two magic words. Slimming World.

‘I’ve tried all that before,’ I protested. ‘Counting points, obsessing over Extra Light or Extra Extra Light mayo, wearing cling-film for 24-hours before weigh-in, I’ve done it all.’

‘You haven’t tried this,’ she said and emailed me the information.

The difference between Slimming World and, well, every other diet in the world, is that on Slimming World – you’re actually allowed to eat. You’re positively encouraged to eat.

It has been a revelation. There are some rules, of course. The unlimited eating doesn’t apply to the top of the pyramid stuff. But if it’s real, tasty, filling dinners you’re after? Then Slimming World is your man.

It relies on three basic principals – superfree food (your fruits and vegetables) free foods (lean meat, potatoes, pasta and rice) and synned food (your cakes, chocolate and oils).

You eat all you want of superfree and free foods, ensuring that 1/3 of your plate is filled with superfree, and then you count your syns. And that’s it.

No, really. That’s it.

You weigh nothing. Well, very little. Your bread and dairy is controlled along with the treats. But apart from those, you weigh nothing. You count nothing. You find the calorie content of nothing.

How many calories are there in an egg? I couldn’t tell you, I don’t need to know.

Once you trim the visible layer of fat off a steak, you can eat it. Without guilt. Once you cook your food without fat or oil, you can eat it. Roast beef dinner? Yes you can. Spaghetti Bolognese? Yes, you can. Chicken curry? I had that this evening!

You do have to cook almost everything from scratch, you spend a lot of your time chopping vegetables and dinner can take an hour most evenings to cook, so there is a downside. Very little pre-packaged or processed food is allowed. But once you’ve finished the chopping and cooking, you can eat the results. And eat until you’re full. Really full. Not ‘I’d eat my own arm but I’m powering through’ full, but really, satisfyingly full.

And the weight comes off. It won’t fall off you overnight, it averages about 1lb a week, but it comes off. It comes off and you can eat. What more do you want?

I did fall off the wagon over Christmas – alright then, if you’re being like that about it, for the whole month of December – as my inner lazy hoor surfaced and I had a break from all the chopping and cooking. But getting back on the wagon has been incredibly easy. I fell back into it on day one, chopping and cooking up a storm, without a backward glance to the tin of Roses.

I think this time I might be able to stick to this thing. I think this time it will work and I will lose weight. For good. Although Slimming World is not an exercise programme, I am exercising as well, walking and using my stationary bike, to improve my fitness levels. Being able to eat and enjoy food helps with the motivation.

Of course it could all end in tears. It has before. And it may again. I’ve already fallen off the wagon. But getting back on is becoming easier and easier and I’m losing weight.

So now, how do you like them apples?

 

Check out http://www.slimmingworld.com for more details.