Personal goals

I have been remiss in my blooging, for which I apologise. I even have several posts, particularly the ones about my pastry experiments, written and almost ready to go. I blame work, it gets in between.

So, this is unrelated to any recipes, but not unrelated to nutrition. I have set myself some goals, that are weight and exercise related.

My 8-weeks goals are:
Gain 3 kg (there's 2.2 pounds to a kg, you do the maths)
Exercise a minimum of 4 days per week
Do at least 1 day yoga per week
Do some exercise every weekend

These goals are fairly low set. The one I might struggle with is the weight gain. And I have a week off from work during which I'll do no yoga, and during which my exercise regime may slip a bit. But it shall be very interesting to see where I am at on October 16th.

Over the last 8 weeks I have achieved the following.
Gained 5 kg (actually, I gained 6 but lost 1)
Almost doubled the weights I use in the gym.
Worked out a minimum 3 days per week.

A good indication of how much stronger I am getting is my ability to do proper push-ups. 8 weeks ago I couldn't do even 1 without having my knees in the ground. Yesterday I managed 5! It may not sound like much but for me it's really an achievement after the loss of muscle I suffered when I got ill. Let's see how many I can do in October!

I have to be very careful with what I eat in order to make sure I consume enough to have a steady weight gain whilst working out that much. And with that in mind, it's time to have some rice cakes with peanut butter.

In preparation for pastry experiments

I have been asked to give tips on gluten free pastry. My current favourite pastry recipe is one that contains mashed potatoes. I have used it before. So yesterday I made mashed potatoes for dinner and deliberately made too much.

As I don't eat dairy my mashed potatoes have neither milk, cream nor butter in them. I peel potatoes and cut them in pieces, then boil in lightly salted water until soft. I then pour off most of the water, but not all, add more salt, pepper, some grated nutmeg and a lot of olive oil. I then ask the tolerant one to help me mash.

[Help. You ask me to HELP you mash? Not the way I see it. What you get me to do is all the work.]

I get you to do all the work? Yes of course, the mashing is the main part of making a dinner, of course it is.

Anyway... I always make way too much mashed potato so the leftovers were not just used for pastry but also for lunch. We have a family recipe for potato patties, that originated with my grandmother who apparently refused to eat anything else at Christmas. The original recipe calls for breadcrumbs, which isn't any good for the gluten intolerants amongst us. So for lunch today I mixed the following.

1 cup cold mashed potatoes
2 eggs
4 tbsp gram flour
salt and pepper.
Warm oil in a frying pan and spoon in the potato mixture. Fry on both sides until golden brown.

I also made almond milk. Recipes for nutmilk can be found in this post. However for ease of refence, I soaked 1 cup of almonds over night and then strained. The next day I added 3 cups of water, 3 dates and a pinch of salt and let it run in the food processor for quite some time. I strained it through a muslin cloth and ended up with about 125 grams of almond paste afterwards. This I kept for a pastry to be used in a dessert.

Reader comment

My friend commented on intolerant wife:

"hey Tova great website. can you give us some tips on how to make your own pastry with gluten free flour? when i try it becomes all chewy and not edible. i find it much harder than working with spelt flour whcih reacts well with heat."

Marie - your wish is my command. I will be trying a recipe I've used before here except this time I will properly follow the recipe instead of throwing random amounts of the ingerdients together.
I also thought I'd try to make a dessert as I believe we want slightly different things out of sweet pastry as opposed to savoury.

This means that this weekend has been spent preparing for food experiments, as well as conducting said experiments.

On a different note, I really need to work out how to make a searchable recipe index.

Zuchini blin-ish

As you may be familiar with, Mother is on a similarly restricted diet and we share ideas and recipes regularly. This is a lovely summer dish.

Zucchini blin-ish, incredibly simple and surprisingly tasty. Just ask anyone who's been to Mother's recently.

1 zucchini, coarsly grated.
4-5 spring onions, chopped
1 egg
Seasoning
3-4 tbsp corn flour

Mix everything together and fry blinis or small pancakes on both sides in a nice vegetable oil until golden brown.

Serve with meat or fish, particularly good with smoked salmon or gravlax, or can be eaten as a light lunch with salad.

I have plenty more ideas of alternative pancakes and will be sharing a few more later.