One for the Road

I am starting to feel that this blog is very dull reading - what has Sara done today? Oh, she's eaten some spinach and drunk too much wine again. Yada yada yada, next! For this I apologise. :-)

Appropriately enough, today is the first day of alcohol free week here in the UK. As well as the first day of Lent, of course. Now, I am not going to say I am going to abstain from wine because I know full well I will not, and then will have the extra guilt and embarrassment of confession to deal with. (Confession to CRONies, not to the Church, I hasten to add). But, apart from the horrific delivery charge making me hesitate, I am considering purchasing alcohol free wine, because it's not the effects of alcohol that I enjoy; it's the taste. I hate diet soda, and drinking fizzy water in a bar quickly becomes tedious and uncomfortable. It would be so much easier all round if decent alcohol free drinks were more readily available in bars and restaurants and stores.

I won't be drinking today or tomorrow though, which has nothing to do with Alcohol Free Week and all to do with no planned socialising or temptation. I met a friend in Paddington before I got my train home last night and while we had planned to drink coffee, it was so disgusting that we ended up on the Shiraz instead - 1 250ml and 1 175ml glass each. The calorific equivalent of a couple of doughnuts apparently. Needless to say, I did not have pancakes when I got home - if only because there was no one to cook them for me! -, but my calorie level was a lot higher than I'd want it to be, almost not CR at all. Bad bad bad. And then more bad.

So, in other news,I am planning to bake this week, adapting this recipe for CR.

100g soya flour
100g wholewheat flour
100g porridge oats
100g Barlean's Forti-Flax
50g linseeds
25g sunflower seeds
25g pumpkin seeds
10g sesame seeds
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
2 pieces stem ginger, chopped
200g raisins
2 free-range organic eggs
150ml semi-skimmed milk
150ml soya milk
1 tbs malt extract
50g flaked almonds

Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/gas mark 5. Line a loaf tin or round tin with greaseproof paper.

Put all the dry ingredients except the almonds into a large bowl and mix thoroughly. Stir in the ginger and raisins. Add the eggs, milk and malt extract. Mix well and leave to soak for 30 minutes. If the mixture is too stiff, add more soya milk. Spoon into a loaf tin and press the almonds into the top. Bake in the oven for about 1 1/4 hours. Turn out and leave to cool.

It came from The Observer Food Monthly supplement in an article about essential fatty acids. I haven't put the ingredients into CoM yet and I am wondering about substitutions, esp for the wholemeal flour. I am wondering if rice bran and wheat bran might work instead, and I am also wondering if I can get brewer's yeast in there somewhere. Maybe replace the malt extract with blackstrap molasses. I will just use one whole egg and make up the difference with eggwhite, and I will probably replace the milk with my lite soya milk. So we shall see. It could be one sticky bowl of expensive mess.

And look, there's a post that's not *all* about spinach and booze! :-)

I could ramble on about how underoccupied I am at work, and how it really is getting embarrassingly beyond a joke now, and how quite concerning it is that I seem unable to get myself out of this situation without wrecking a whole lot else... But that has little - ok, nothing! - to do with CR, so... another time, when I am safely back in the CR groove.