Conversations through the middle

October 28, 2012

https://conversationsthroughthemiddle.com/2012/10/171-2.html

Foodie Friday – quick, quick brownies

October 26, 2012

I found this recipe when I was browsing the internet looking for something I could bake for Dot mid week. I was after something quick, nothing complicated and something with a bit of a yum factor. After a few hours timewasting when I should have been working, and countless recipes later, I came across these brownies.

Last time I made brownies they were so rich (too chocalatey, yes there is such a thing, so overpowering they made you gag) and they took ages to make. This time I had none of that. I baked them today and they turned out, well, different, but nonetheless delicious with lots of yum factor – or so Dot tells me…

Chocolate brownie or Christmas pudding?

Ingredients

200g butter or margarine

165g cocoa powder

400g light brown soft sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

125g plain flour

2 eggs

100g chocolate chunks (or broken chocolate)

Method

1. Grease and line a 20 x 18cm tin. Preheat the oven to 180°C / gas mark 4.

2. Melt the butter and cocoa together in a saucepan. Add the sugar and vanilla. Mix thoroughly.

3. Remove from the heat and mix in the flour then the eggs. Mix and add the chocolate chunks (or broken chocolate). Pour into the baking tin.

4. Bake for 20 minutes. The brownies are cooked when the top is slightly springy.

5. Cool and cut into 15 slices.

See, it looks like mud!

Just a couple of things to add to this:

Nothing in the recipe tells you where to put the chocolate chunks (!) so I added them to the final mixture, just before putting the tin in the oven. I also used a 100g bar of chocolate instead of chocolate chunks – I used one with 70% cocoa and it also contained cocoa nibs (they are the little bits you can see in the photos). I have to say Dot had great fun bashing the **** out of the chocolate bar so we ended up with lots of little bits.

I’m not a great cook. Or a great baker. That much is obvious from the photographs. My brownies look like mud, and nothing like they look in the picture on the website. When they came out of the oven there were pools of liquid lying on top; the brownies looked more like Christmas pudding than brownies. When they had cooled and I cut them into squares, well they weren’t squares. Some of them resemble squares, the rest simply mashed up into bits. I left them in the oven longer than 20 minutes, just because of the liquid pooling on top. So when I tried to cut them they were rock hard on the edges but soft towards the middle.

Yet I think that worked and I have discovered something new. They are gooey but chewy, hard yet soft, they should be awful but they taste delicious. Not to blow my own trumpet, but both Dot and OH couldn’t get enough of them. And me, well I tasted a tiny bit, despite the diet, and I think they are wonderful!

A weighty matter – dieting with Jenny Craig

October 25, 2012

I have just made chocolate brownies, which perhaps wasn’t such a good idea as I’m trying to lose weight. For the past fortnight I have been sampling the Jenny Craig diet plan, complete with what seemed like an enormous amount of Jenny Craig food when it arrived.

I have had a weekly telephone consultation with a lady called Clare, during which we discussed my eating habits, how much weight I wished to lose, how I found the food, if I’d kept to the plan and any other issues I wanted to raise. These talks have been helpful, though of course I’ve only had two of them as part of this short-term introduction to the company.

Nonetheless, I have lost four pounds – one the first week and three the second week. A sensible amount to lose in two weeks I think. The food has been great – I’ve liked all of it, though a couple of the meals looked very unappetising to me before cooking.

Overall I had a good selection to try: a variety of breakfast cereals, soups and noodles for lunch, assorted main meals for the evening, and snacks – biscuits (yes, really), cereal bars and crisp-type things (the salted ones were yummy).

I would say if I’ve learned anything over this past fortnight it’s how to gauge portion sizes. When I saw my first Jenny Craig dinner I thought it would never be enough, but do you know, it was, especially when eaten with a selection of vegetables. This confirmed to me what I’ve been thinking for years – my OH cooks too much food and fills our plates too high (I can blame him as he is a superb cook).

Of course the guys at Jenny Craig worked out just right how much food to send and the diet meals delivered lasted the full two weeks. Now I’m on my own I hope to keep up the good work and shift more of those excess pounds in time for Christmas. And boy do I have loads of them to shift – now I’m in my 40s I find the weight goes on much quicker than it ever did before and I’ve put on about two stone in the past year.

And about those brownies – I made them for Dot, so no need to worry about me eating them…

Beauty – cleansing face mask

October 25, 2012

Today I applied a face mask. You should have seen me while I left it on for the specified five minutes – I looked like I was trick or treating a week early.

The mustard yellow goo did nothing for my looks, but I’m hoping it has done something for my pores, and those awful spots that lie just under the skin that I never had when I was younger, but now appear out of nowhere when I’m in my 40s. Bloody hell, doesn’t acne know it’s supposed to be targeting teenagers?

So I applied Masque Visage Purifiant L’Argile Jaune by Lovea (in English: purifying face mask with yellow clay) – hence the beautiful mustard complexion. It was easy to use – I smoothed a thick layer of the mask over my face and left it for five minutes, by which time it had started to dry, the mottled effect making me look even prettier. I then used cotton wool and warm water to remove the thick of it, finishing off with a warm water rinse.

I’m impressed. I could feel a slight tingle when the mask was working, which I took to mean something good was happening. I have a slight break out on my chin so in my mind I saw the clay beating the spots into submission, hence the tingling feeling. After rinsing and patting dry I thought those chin spots looked less red; my skin also feels softer. The hidden spots around my jaw line are still there, but that’s no surprise, I doubt even kryptonite could get rid of them in one blast. I’m hopeful though that with a few more applications they will disappear properly back under the skin from which they threaten to appear.

Here the product looks almost cream in colour, but believe me it was mustard yellow and went even darker when it began to dry

I waited a few minutes before applying a gentle moisturiser, though I didn’t use my usual serum first as I didn’t want to overload my newly cleansed face.

The face mask also comes in pink clay for sensitive skin, green clay for oily skin, and the one I used was yellow clay for dry skin. Lovea products contain 98% natural ingredients and are organic, and you can find more of them here.