Birthday night out...

On the first of my birthday weekends (I do like to stretch my birthday out for as long as possible - this year will involve five birthday events, some in London and some in Somerset) there was a night out in Soho, lice not included!

Weekword: Temptation

This week's Weekword was chosen by Mandyland - and it's a good one! In June I decided I was just too heavy - I wasn't overweight, but I was heavier than I'm comfortable with. I knew I'd been 'treating myself' to things like cake and cheese and pizza and wine far too often, and I'd been using running as an excuse to fill my face with pasta at every opportunity. The upshot being that I was 11 stone 3 and Something Had To Be Done. I'm not one for denying myself and I'm not one for obsessive calorie counting, so I signed up to a website called Food Focus which does all the hard work for you. It gives you a daily net calorie goal based on your height, your starting weight, your activity level and how much you want to lose per week. Then you log the food you eat (there's a huge database of foods and you can add new foods to your own personal list of favourites) and the exercise you do, and you can keep track of whether you're meeting your calorie goal. Since I started I've lost around a pound and a half a week and am now at 10 stone 1 1/2, just a pound and a half off my ultimate target of 10 stone!

Obviously, while I'm not denying myself the odd treat, I am being more careful than I used to be - which means resisting temptation! Most of the time my willpower is pretty strong - but then every now and then something like someone bringing amazing raspberry macarons to work happens, and I can resist no more...! Luckily everything's good for you in moderation, especially macarons.

More adventures in SF baking...

As you may have gathered, my sister can't eat gluten or dairy. So every time she comes to stay with me, I try a new experiment in SF (that's Suze-friendly) cookery. This time it was a spiced pumpkin and walnut bread adapted from this recipe on Joy the Baker's blog. I used half Doves Farm plain flour and half cornmeal, and as the recipe was vegan anyway I didn't have to worry about butter substitutes. It's gorgeous and the recipe makes two loaves so I've got plenty left over!

Squishy squash...

I had the end bit of a butternut squash in the fridge, so I roasted it, stuffed it with a mix of brown rice, onion, red pepper, mushrooms, courgette, toasted pine nuts, mint and feta and popped it back in the oven to brown. It was gorgeous - perfectly autumnal!

Eightiestastic!

My friend Jess had an 80s birthday party...complete with Thatcher cake!

Weekword: Senses

I've been so busy this week that it was really difficult trying to come up with something for this week's Weekword, which was suggested by Christine at Silver Linings 4 Me. In the end, I decided to use my night out in Piccadilly as inspiration, because going to one of the touristy bits of London certainly is an assault on the senses! So we have a delicious apple and melon martini to represent taste, me in a phone box (geek alert: it's actually the prototype of the original K2 phone box, which stands just inside the entrance to the Royal Academy) to represent sound, the interestingly textured panelled wall of the Royal Institution's Time and Space Bar to represent touch, and Piccadilly Circus in all its glory to represent sight. Trying to represent smell in a photo proved slightly too challenging!

The next Weekword will be chosen by Mandyland, so pop over there if you want to join in!

The Lucozade E

As part of the Story of London month, Ealing Civic Society organised a talk on Iconic Factories of West London. Geek alert! It was really interesting, though, and was mainly about the massive Art Deco factories that were built along the Great West Road and Western Avenue. Gunnersbury Park Museum had lent the society a couple of artefacts for the talk, and one of them was a letter E from the famous Lucozade sign that used to adorn the Great West Road.