Monday, April 09, 2007

Exercising does help weight loss!

I have of course known this but have been denying that it could be that effective. The accursed reality is that it is very effective! I got through the Easter Weekend... and lost weight in the process.

Drat! That means TBM was right all along!!!

The good news is that I have hit my target weight of 225lbs before the holiday, now I have set myself a new target 220! with just 4 days to go!!! Can I do it?

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Vegetable Garden Planted with 4 rows of Perpetual Spinach, 1 row of Beetroot and the Courgette seeds are in their pots. Not sure it will be sunny enough for the Courgettes... We will see.

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SWDNFT and HWWGTA flew off to see bade naked ladies in Dublin.... there's no accounting for taste!

Stop Press: SWDNFT does like the Guinness in Dublin, whereas she doesn't like the stuff served here.

So I did some Googling:
"Everybody knows that the Guinness in Ireland is better than anywhere else!
This is bullshit, an urban legend almost. When Guinness is brewed and ready for distribution, even the most acclaimed brewmasters cannot tell the difference between the "geography" of the product. Bear in mind that these guys can identify minute traces of chemicals in beverages and estimate their quantity... by taste alone.

The reason Guinness tastes better in Ireland, correctly pointed out by ryano, is the way the product is managed when it leaves the brewery or distributor. In Ireland, thousands of pints of Guinness are consumed every day, therefore the volume of Guinness coming though an Irish pub is much greater than an equivalent English pub. This means the kegs are changed more often and the lines are cleaned more often.

This equals fresher and better tasting Guinness.

Because less is sold in the equivalent English pub, the stout is lingering in the keg longer, becoming less fresh, giving it that distinctive bitter taste. The Guinness lines in the equivalent English pub would not be maintained as well as the Irish pub either. These factors, plus illiterate bar staff who don't know what they're doing, all contribute to the Guinness tasting bad in England sometimes."

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I also found this...
in the past, the draught Guinness served in Ireland was not pasteurised while the British was. Today, both are - albeit briefly, by a method usually applied only to draught beers. Pasteurisation is intended to stabilise beer, though it can also flatten flavours.

So much for my unpasteurised Guinness "Urban Legend"

Buy now it is till available in bottles.... but wait horror of horrors Guinness are ending, or maybe already have ended their unpasteurised bottled Guinness.

ASK FOR IT IN YOUR LOCAL SUPERMARKET!!
Let's use the power of the market to reverse this decision.

Sunday, April 08, 2007

I now have a FaceBook Badge!

Adrius FortyTwo's Facebook profile

Patchy Blogging... Aarghh!!!


I hate these sorts of bloggers and now I am one!

The garden has been taking my attention as well as giving me more aches and pains than are good for me!!! However I am pleased with the overall impact.

My key concern now is will I hit my target weight, I did not count on the temptations of Easter coming the week before we fly to Cayman!! I was 2.5lbs off the target before Easter hit!

I am feeling fitter though, the rowin' and bikin' seem to be helping....

Latest Culinary effort... a Rhubarb and Plum Cobbler
Warning the cleaning up will take longer than the prep!
900g Roughly chopped fruit into suitable oven proof dish (Rhubarb from the garden added 2 plums just becos' they came in the Green box this week)sprinkle with Muscovado sugar (110g) and 2 Tablespoons of Elderflower cordial and the juice of a Mandarin???!

Cobbler Topping
225g of Plain Flour
110g of Frozen Butter, cut into small cubes.
3 Teaspoons of Baking Powder
(I actually used 1 teaspoon Bicarbonate of Soda and 2 teaspoons of the other stuff (Cream of Tartar), shame that the flour I used was self raising!! There are no signs on any of our flour containers! Didn't seem to matter too much (Phew!))
1/2 Teaspoon of salt
175ml of milk
Zest of small Orange
(I didn't have this, as Gill had already been zestfully creating nude citrus fruit and I wanted to avoid creating even more nude fruit that would not get used. Plus the Mandarin did not create good zest, thus the juice got used above!)

Flour, Salt, Baking Powder, Butter into the Food Processor blitz until well mixed
Add Milk blitz until sticky dough is created.
Spoon dough in little sticky balls over the top of the fruit.

Sprinkle with heaped teaspoon of Demerara sugar, or six roughly crushed brown sugar cubes

Oven Gas Mark (200C) Place dish on tray as it tends to boil over!

Serve warm with a good vanilla ice cream. Calories?: Don't ask!!!
Darn there goes my target weight and I can't even blame Gill!!!
The FftN and the FftS all seemed to enjoy it.... :-)

Cocktail:
My latest weird cocktail involved blitzing a handfull of Mint M&M's, with an Ice Cube and a shot each of vodka and JD, (How was I supposed to know that Lent was yet too finish! Doh! Sorry Chris! At least you have the chocolate fountain to look forward to today!)