Me & Kitty Still Hanging In There

I’ve been feeling a lot more energetic lately. So far I’ve lost 29 pounds and last week I was even able to complete an entire tae bo workout without stopping or skimping or anything twice in one week, after working a whole day even. I was horribly sore for days afterward, but I did it. I’m probably lucky I’ve lost anything this month, but my weight loss has been going really, exceptionally well. That’s in spite of there being about a morning tea (work party for my American friends) nearly every week of the month for which I’ve made chocolate gelato, coffee almond crunch cake, cheese cake, ice cream cake, and pumpkin pie, thank God the people I work with eat it all up . It’s actually nice to be able to enjoy a good home made dessert, without having a bunch of it sitting around to tempt you into having too much. Plus I REALLY enjoy making desserts so it’s been quite fun. The crunch cake was based on a Gordon Ramsay recipe & it was really delicious, so was the cheese cake. Really, so far I’ve been very pleased with the quality of the recipes in his books. I’ve made quite a few things from “Healthy Appetite” and “Cooking for Friends” and I’ll have to write a review of them because they’ve been quite satisfying; easy to prepare, and yet quite flavorsome.

The ice cream cake was one of those experimental type desserts; I only remember ice cream cake very vaguely from my youth, my favorite cake was and is pineapple upside down cake so I haven’t had ice cream cake in awhile, but my husband hates cake & likes ice cream so I figured why not give it a go. It ended up great though. I made it in two 9×3 loaf pans and made two types of ice cream to go in it, vanilla & mocha almond. The base was made of crushed Oreos, and I made an inner layer of almond meringue hoping it would give it a bit of crunch, which it did nicely. I also made a chocolate fudge sauce and a raspberry sauce (which was amazing) to put between the layers. It really turned out pretty good. Once they were all set in their cake pan molds, I eased them out and coated one in meringue and toasted it with a torch, the other I coated in whipping cream which I piped into little stars all around it and then sprinkled with slivered almonds. My husband still wasn’t too interested, though he had a bite or two, and I couldn’t get his family to give any a try, but his best friend devoured nearly a whole one by himself, and the folks at work really enjoyed the other.

The pumpkin pie was actually a special order for a friend who’d never had pumpkin pie before. It’s not really common at all here in Australia, no one at work had ever had one, and a lot of people couldn’t really conceive of it. Everyone really seemed to like it though. I sweeten mine with a bit of maple syrup and add a bit of sweet potato to the mix, so it’s kind of a combo sweet potato, pumpkin pie, but it was really yummy. I was a bit disappointed to see it go .

Well that’s it here. I’ve just been cooking, exercising and working of late, haven’t felt the urge to write much though. Hopefully that’ll change soon now that I’m feeling more energetic.