Making a cake with no ingredients

Regular readers of this blog (ha!) will already know that I am a big devotee of store cupboard cooking. By this I mean not running out to stock up whenever you run out of your exotic ingredient (or boring everyday staple) of choice. No, instead I choose to think outside the (blimmin’) box, to be inventive, to scour my freezer, fridge and cupboards until I come up with something tasty – or at least edible – from the ingredients I already have at hand.

By this I don’t mean that I never ever go food shopping. Of course this is something that one can only take so far. (Although I can personally take it pretty damned far.) But only when I need to, that’s the point, only when I need to. And if there’s food of some description in the house, then I rarely really need to.

So what am I leading up to? Well, the other day I had a hankering for a slice of homemade cake. Sweet, doughy, warm out of the oven, yummy home-made cake. I had a scout around the ingredients of my cupboards and fridge. Then I had a scout around the interwebs for some cake recipes. Given that I had neither eggs nor milk in, I stuck the search term ‘vegan’ in there as shorthand for egg-free, milk-free cakiness.

This is what I finally settled on: a vegan chocolate cake.

Did I follow the recipe? Er no. No marg in the house, nor oil… Not enough cocoa or drinking chocolate either, so I stewed some elderly pears I found in the salad box and threw them in as substitute for both. I did have flour, sugar, baking powder, bicarb, vanilla extract and even cider vinegar. So I felt quite pleased with myself: a virtually identical match between demand and supply! (Yes, I’m smirking here.)

Did it work? Here’s the thing. It smelled fabulous while in the oven. Cakey bakey perfume wafted throughout the whole house.

It looked pretty damn good in the oven too. It looked even better when I got it out. (Check out the photos – hot sexy cakey action!) But looks can be very deceiving. Was it edible? Yes it was – just about. But it was also heavy, doughy and solid, with the beautiful crust a lightly attached deceiver. It tasted like pudding without enough sugar or general naughtiness – healthy pudding. Faugh! How are such abominations allowed to exist?

Kidding folks. It wasn’t so bad – better than no cake at all. But if you have more discerning tastebuds than me – or my other half – then perhaps you’d better follow the recipe a bit more closely the next time you make cake. Store cupboard cookery’s not for the faint of heart, or delicate of palate.

What Would a Thin Person Do II

In my last post 'What Would a Thin Person Do', I ran through various reasons why it might make more sense to go to naturally thin people for diet advice, rather than the formerly obese. So I intend to give you a few tips from personal experience as a long-term thin person! Disclaimer: I did have a short period in my youth when I became slightly chubby due to bingeing (although not purging - maybe that was the key!). This was due to following a (very unhealthy) 'super-healthy' diet and eating what I thought I 'ought' to eat, rather than a more natural approach. This was a brief period and I've been a normal weight ever since for many years (and was prior to this episode). Youngsters, eh?

1 LIMIT HOW MUCH OF YOUR BUDGET IS ALLOCATED TO FOOD
Let me make it clear, I do not mean to suggest you should live on tinned beans and dry bread, or finish the week sucking wanly on a damp rag, staring into an empty larder. There's nothing wrong with pleasure, and enjoyment from food is very important to me.

What I do mean is that if your budget for food does not have a top limit, and your shopping trolley every week is a tottering tower of goodies, then with so many luxury foods rather than staples, then you're eating the diet of a rich person, not the 'plain' food of a simple peasant. In centuries past, the rich were fatter than hoi polloi, because they could afford to be. I think we can draw a few conclusion, there. Oh, and by 'luxury' food, I mean anything highly packaged, with added sugar, or high fat other than nuts, avocados and olives. You have common sense. You can work it out.

2 THIN PEOPLE ARE GREEDY TOO
I have been friends with and worked with many, many overweight people in my time, and I feel that, in the course of the many conversations I have had with them, one dominant idea seemed to crop up again and again in relation to diet and food. This was the notion that, in relation to food – however delicious, luxurious and tempting – all thin people either possessed an almost superhuman level of control or didn't really care about food. I suppose this is based on the idea that, if thin people truly enjoyed and relished their meals, or did not rigidly police their diets, then the entire population would be significantly overweight. This is not the case!

There are more factors feeding in to the amount of food someone eats than just appetite and enjoyment of food and perfect self-control. Point (1) above is just one of these. I cannot speak for every thin person out there, and perhaps there are exceptions – but I know that personally, if you confront me with an unlimited amount of one of my truly favourite foods – turron durro (Spanish nougat) perhaps, or plain madeira cake, or pizza – then it is truly mind-boggling just how much of it I can put away. (To the extent I wind up looking rather like a snake – or thin person – who has swallowed a whole pig). Given the right circumstances, I'm greedy – I will admit it – and I think everyone is greedy. Thin, fat and the whole continuum inbetween!

Therefore...

3 DON'T KEEP TEMPTING FOODS IN THE HOUSE
Not all the time, anyway! I don't mean don't buy them: I just mean don't treat cookies or pizza – or even more workaday staples, such as your favourite nutty seeded granary bread or yummy stuffed olives – as if they were necessities of life like water or Vitamin C. Word up, they're not. No bread in the house? Eat rice. No rice? Eat potatoes. No potatoes?... Okay, I think we all get the general gist here. Bottom line, if you have food in the house of some kind, you're not going to starve anytime soon and it's not, underline not, a shopping emergency if you run out of pistachios.

If you keep going shopping to replenish your store of favourite foods when you run out, then you have a problem. The problem is that your favourite foods are continually available, which is not something that could be replicated if you were, say, a peasant farmer, or a hunter-gatherer tribeswoman. Do you think that you are likely to eat more if your favourite foods are continually available? Speaking from experience, I certainly know that I do! Which leads me on to my second point.

4 TAKE SOME EXERCISE
I've seen them, you've seen them, we've all seen them. What am I talking about? The weight-loss reality show type programs where the subject is willing to do just about anything to get some weight off. Anything, that is, except for getting up off the couch and getting some exercise.

Note, as a thin person, I'm not talking about joining a gym or running twelve miles a day. I dislike exercise as much as any sane, rational person. I love a walk around a beautiful area of designated natural beauty, though. Even then, I don't always feel like it when the suggestion arises – but forcing myself to get up and put my boots on gets me moving. And once I'm out there and enjoying the wildlife and scenery, I'm loving it.

What I mean to say is, physical activity is important for health. And if that's how you approach it – rather than as a mad-dash rush to lose weight – then it can be enjoyable. What you need to do is to find the type of exercise you can enjoy – swimming, yoga, whatever feels right.

5 THROW SOME VEGETABLES IN.
Now this one may seem just a little too much like basic common sense to include. But I think it's worth pointing out, just in case. I'd just like to make this point: food quality is important, just as much as calories. And so is caloric density. Am I contradicting myself? Not really. High quality, nutritious food – real food – like vegetables, whole grains, pulses, fish – is often of lower calorie density than, say, doughnuts and pizza. Depending on the specific item added to a meal, it can increase the volume you can eat for the same calories, while improving the nutritional quality of the meal. (This said, I never consider the caloric content of anything I eat – merely whether it tastes good and if I want more. Improving food quality takes care of the rest.)

How much frozen veg, pulses and brown rice do I add to a chilli? Well, how much ya got?

6. I DON'T EAT DIET FOOD.
I guess this one is up to you. What can I say? If I'm any example, long-term thin people (rather than chronic dieters) don't eat diet food. They eat real food, mostly high quality, with a few naughty treats. End of.

If it has more 'E' numbers than you could find in a bag of Scrabble tiles, and some type of artifical sugar-substitute is high on the list of ingredients, then – well, I'm not going to say I won't eat it. Not if you offer me some. I will – I'm the least picky person about food! But will I spend a couple of pounds on it, when I could get half a chicken, or a pack of frozen spinach, or some brown rice and peanuts for the same money? Ahem – not likely.

Food is real food, not diet food. Anything else is fake food.

7. DON'T SUFFER. ENJOY FOOD.
Is this the most important point of all? I tend to think so. Should food make us miserable? Should we agonise over every mouthful? I dare to say, no. I think not. Enjoy food. Let it take its proportionate and reasonable place in your life. Free up all that energy used on calorie counting and worrying about fat grams, and use it on something creative or generally awesome. Crazy?

Maybe I am. But you could try it.

Photo credit: Kpalion, 2005, public domain image.

What would a thin person do?

Have you got a friend who's on another diet? (The latest one in a long series). Or perhaps you yourself have been through every diet known to man – high-protein, high carb, raw, fruit only, fruit only before meals, etc. etc. etc. I am continually puzzled by the success of diet books – one diet book after another, with a never-ending appetite for them from the general public. Surely if they worked then the market would eventually dry up?

Another thing that puzzles me is that, reading most of these books, a very large percentage of them seem to have been written by an ex-fat person. Now maybe it's just me, but I seem to have read at least half a dozen or so articles suggesting that the success rate for diets is pretty darn low. They tend to give statistics (however reliable) that are frequently startling on this subject. That seems to suggest a high likelihood that even if you are overweight, go on a diet you researched or invented, lose tons of weight and write a million-selling book about it – you're statistically quite likely to put the weight right back on again.

Now one of those diets out there might be an exception to this phenomenon. Perhaps all of its adherents, without fail and without exception, lose tons of weight following it – and keep it off. If so, though, wouldn't the market for diet books be decreasing? Yet there always seems to be another super-hyped one coming around the corner, and frequently selling extremely well.

So in essence, when you buy a diet book from an ex-fat person, you're buying it from someone quite like yourself in one respect. That is, someone statistically likely to put the weight right back on at some point.

Wouldn't it be better to take advice from someone who hasn't 'succeeded' in losing weight – because they were never fat in the first place? What I mean is, to study the habits and diets of people who never think about their weight, or special diets, or obesity – because they just don't have to? It seems to me that you could learn more this way about what will produce the results you want, i.e. long-term weight loss and a healthy attitude towards food, rather than suffering and self-denial.

And that's why my next article will be about my own views of and approach to food and diet, as a long-term thin person. Read it and pick up a few tips!

12 Clove Chicken Garlic Soup – How to Make It

Picture credit: Matt Frederick (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 licence).

This is my own recipe, developed over several years of trial and error, for garlic chicken soup with dumplings. Be warned – as you might expect, this is one for the truly dedicated garlic lovers only. Of course you may prefer to dial down the number of cloves you throw into this delicious broth. But really, that simply misses the whole powerful, pungent point of the recipe. Start crushing those cloves, and get the full effect! Remember that garlic has been suggested to have some health benefits.

Now, to begin:

INGREDIENTS (for two people).
4-6 chicken drumsticks (preferably free range and organic).
12 garlic cloves
400g mixed frozen vegetables (broad beans and string beans are good).
25g flour (white wheat flour).
Splash of light soy sauce.
Generous amounts of black pepper.
Large pinch of salt.
Fresh chopped parsley or puree from tube (2 tsps).
Small knob fresh ginger.
200g chopped fresh field mushrooms (optional).
1 tbsp tomato puree (optional).

DUMPLINGS
You can use pre-mixed packet herb dumplings (my usual choice) or the following:

50g suet.
150g-200g white wheat flour
Pinch of suet
1 tsp mixed herbs.

INSTRUCTIONS
1 Take a large, stout pan and place the chicken and frozen vegetables in it, along with enough cold water to almost cover them.
2 Bring to a fast boil and keep at a fast boil for at least ten minutes.
3 Reduce temperature, apply a well-fitting lid to the saucepan and bring to a slightly bubbling simmer for another 40 minutes. Check liquid levels periodically and top up if getting low.

PREPARE THE FOLLOWING TO ADD AT THE END OF 40 MINUTES
4 Mix the 25g of flour with a little water.
5 Crush the garlic cloves finely.
6 Grate the fresh ginger finely.
7 Chop the mushrooms (if used) and microwave on high for two-three minutes. (Two if enough 'liquor' is produced, three if still slightly uncooked).
8 Prepare the packet dumpling mix as instructed, or alternately use the prescribed ingredients as follows:

Combine the 150g-200g of flour, pinch of salt and mixed herbs in a small bowl. Mix in the suet and stir in half a cup of water. This should result in a loose, slightly wet mixture. If it is still dry then add some more water. Prepare this just before the end of the 40 minutes the soup has spent simmering.

9 At the end of the 40 minutes you may wish to fish out the drumsticks and remove the skins as some people dislike having them floating in the soup. (This still leaves extra fat content in the soup, however: if this is a concern to you you may prefer to remove the skins prior ot cooking. This is a disagreeable job, however and I don't do this myself. You could always use skinless chicken breasts instead).
10 Add the garlic, flour and water, soy sauce, pepper, salt, parsley, ginger, mushrooms and tomato puree to the soup. Stir well.
11 Take the dumpling mix, portion it out into approximately dessert spoon size portions, and put the portions into the soup. Apply the well-fitting lid and leave to simmer for 20-25 minutes (or as per the packet if using packet mix). The end result should be aerated like a crumpet, savoury, fluffy and light.
12 At the end of cooking, serve with perhaps a few extra twists of black pepper, and crusty bread if you fancy a little extra starch!

Enjoy your garlic-laden soup, remember all the health benefits being explored by researchers, and take some breath mints around with you the next day!

birthdays are bad

birthdays are bad, christmas is bad, any excuse to eat crap and drink is bad.

since the OH and myself both had birthdays recently, i've had no opportunity to recover from christmas. What have I learned?

That home-made White Russians are delicious. But don't overdue the Kahlua.

We have deep-fried chips instead of oven ones about twice a year. We've had them three days running now. I'm just about ready to puke.

But I must finish up the chocolates first.

coffee coffee coffee jibber jibber jibber

I am in no position to criticise someone else for lack of self-control. I am unable to have coffee in the house and not chain-drink it. I had three cups this morning on an empty stomach while writing my new Ellora's Cave masterpiece. And more since lunch.

Maybe manic people just drink too much coffee. Judging by my feelings and activities now (manic writing and crafting) I think it may be at least a partial explanation.

(There is an old comedy sketch show which had a running gag about a has-been Swedish rock-star doing a confessional reality show regarding his caffeine habit. I realise this doesn't exactly make me Lizzy Wurtzel).

Pizza and crisps for a late Saturday lunch

Who are these size zero nutjobs anyhow?

Food is better than cocaine. You can score it for years without your nose dropping off to start with.