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Station break....

Just struggling at the moment. Have not been counting food points, going to the gym OR losing weight since we started this house-move. I've hit a self-imposed plan-departure..but I still go to WW meetings. Week 1 gain = 100gm Week 2 gain = 400gm Week 3 gain = 400gm --This after losing 2.7g's in my 1st four weeks at WW.

I look forward to more upbeat (and less boring) entries in the near future. I made my girl some nacho's yesterday and I look forward to the day when we get a dog and cat. How's that for some disjointed thoughts? I'm also reading Gordon Ramsay's autobiography "Humble Pie" at the moment.. it's like my only escapism and I'm about three quarters of the way through. I know what Gordon's reputation is like (he has in the past come across to me as a no-mannered potty mouth uber-chef) - but if you're a diehard foodie and you enjoy windows into other people's lives, you'll enjoy it.

I don't know if I'm in the best frame of mind to do any movie reviews, but I will say this: 'Wild Hog's' wasn't as funny as I'd hoped (and I never enjoy Ray Liotta). Look it was ok and it did have some chuckle-offerings. Like the mobile phone scene and the physical slap-stick comedy. Since writing this post some girls have got back to me to say they loved this movie -and that's great. But for my tastes, it wasn't hilarious. My not-overly-thrilled attitude might have sprouted from seeing 'the guys' on Oprah. The guys being John Travolta, Martin Lawrence, William H. Macey and Tim Allen (speaking of which Tim has definitely had 'some work' done). A whole show was devoted to the movie, which for me, put it on a stratospheric pedestal. Like Oprah's audience I probably would have felt high-as-a-kite too seeing it in Oprah's screening room followed by the actors up-close. They were all caught up in the moment... and how can any moment not be enhanced when Travolta is in the builiding?
As for 'Razzle Dazzle'.. again, it didn't live up to my expectations. (Since finishing this review I stumbled across David and Margaret's [Stratton and Pomeranz] review of this and breathed a sigh of relief...phew.. it wasn't just me). I have enjoyed other Aussie offerings a bit more.. like 'Look Both Ways' and 'Kenny'. "Razzle Dazzle" was a documentary-style flick -ok it was a 'mockumentary' about young girls in dancing classes and competitions. Kudos to Kerry Armstrong though for a brilliant 'dancing school mum' performance. Same goes to Jane Hall as 'Miss Elizabeth' (a dancing teacher), she's brilliant.. but the movie... not so. Please take my reviews with a grain of salt (Maldon of course) .. 'tis after all.. my opinions. Thanks for tuning-in. I really enjoy this blog so it's my secret highlight of the day. I'm being forced to do computer things 'on the quiet' these days otherwise hubby says I'm not 'prioritising my time' correctly so it's no wonder I feel the way I do. A measure of happiness and good health is my priority... not unpacking boxes to a deadline at whatever cost.

Moving Sucks!

THANK YOU girls (the one's who commented in the previous post) for the birthday wishes, VERY sweet and I needed the kind sentiments (Big Sigh!). It wasn't a good day (the 17th) and it hasn't been a good week (since Wednesday the 14th I mean). Has anyone ever seen the movie 'The Money Pit'? A Tom Hanks film about a couple who buy a lovely house and one thing after another goes wrong? Imagine a racoon jumping out from a cupboard, latching onto my neck and me running around with my arms out in front of me screaming from room to room! Yes, that happened in the movie.. no it didn't happen to me.. but the whole thing has been like one collective racoon around my neck. There is a locksmith at our front door right now.. and that's just one of the doors he'll be attending to. There will be a plumber coming soon and attending to pipes in the laundry..then our gas heater (needs a new fan and a service). The list goes on. And I mean... ON. Hubby and I had a big meltdown yesterday and if I could have, I would have run away and left him to this house. Instead, I ran away to the movies with my girl and saw 'Razzle Dazzle'. Then hubby sent a text message with words to the effect of "Hope you're having fun while I'm working to make this house OUR home". GrrrrrryoumiserableGrraaauagh!!!!

My birthday felt like a big imposition to hubby's "go-go-go lets get this house up and happening" attitude. I could not enjoy the 17th with the house and its maladies (and the maladies bitches) stealing my birthday thunder. Yet I have heard from two people recently that they love moving. What are they drinking and can I have some?

Now.. since this post is predominantly a mild vent, I'm now not in the right frame of mind to do some movie reviews. We saw 'Wild Hogs' on Saturday night also so there are two flicks to review.

As a postscript, during this last week also (needed like a hole in the head)... I adversely reacted to medication that was supposed to help me with my hormone imbalances. I was unwell.. and then came off the med's..and became a different kind of 'unwell' because I really needed the medication. Doctors orders are; have a one week 'rest' and then try them again.. so that's what I'll be doing.

Here's a birthday present list to-date with a couple of things still coming from what I'm told: Coconut Milk Candle and Vanilla fragrance sachet from 'T', White 'shabby chic' wrought iron cake plate stand from 'H', a small, white sandwich platter from 'H' as well as 'Gary Rhodes The Complete Cookery Year' book and 'With Nails' (The Film Diaries of Richard E. Grant), $10 cash from IL's (need to use that for some slippers), Card from 'N&G', Card from 'D', Fluffy pen and 'M' initial charm from 'L' (?!! Too many initials), Card from 'Le'. A lovely homemade card from my gal which was made with Autumn leaves from our yard. Plus I went to the movies and had a sushi lunch and a turkish bread/dips and pizza tea inbetween tradespeople.. so they were the hightlights! I think not being 100% on the ball physically.. with the 'Money Pit' similarities in the house, with tradespeople here as often as we are.. it didn't help. But I do recognise that hey.... I wasn't completely abandoned.. a few bunnies out there still wuv me :-P

Cartons, cartons everywhere...and not a Swede in sight.

The day is almost here... tomorrow morning we head over to our new place with the first trailer-load of things to drop off. We are *moving*! The 1st trailer-load contains everything we purchased from IKEA yesterday and a new single bed for my girl. My girl and I have been at our current address one month short of three years. It is somehow not computing that this is the last time I'll be sitting here, in the evening, typing away.. in this particular space. I'll be looking at different curtains and different carpet tomorrow night. The new place is freshly painted and unfortunately I hate that smell! I like the concept & aesthetics of a fresh lick o' paint, but not that hang-about groupie-esque paint smell. It just brings back bad memories for me of being in freshly painted places which I didn't like. I hope the smell goes away soon!

I loved IKEA yesterday. It was the 1st time I'd ever been.. actually the first time any of us had ever been. We had about 3 to 4 hours to spare only (it was an hours drive from home on top of that), but it still wasn't enough time! There were two levels of homewares/furnishings/lighting etc to look at. All mostly set-up like 'concept rooms' with everything in the rooms for sale. It was fun! There were a lot of nice things..and a lot of bargains to be had. When we finished writing down the product descriptions of the things we wanted on our IKEA notepad, including the Aisle No. and Location.. we headed to the warehouse area with a trolley like the one you see above and we set about collecting things from our list. But we were desperately running out of time because hubby had agreed to take a short work shift at 2.30pm. He arrived there at 4pm! He is never late and is often early. He rang them twice on the journey home to notify them of our exact location. Unfortunately there was bumper-to-bumper traffic on the West Gate Bridge as the police, paramedics and the fire brigade were trying to talk someone out of jumping off the bridge from what we could see. The man was over the rail.. on the *wrong side*.. It took half an hour for us to get over the bridge.. normally a 2 minute trip. The radio reported it as a 'police incident'. Anyway, we have about 15 boxes of IKEA things to assemble (gasp!).. which we will do bit by bit over the coming weeks as hubby's work schedule allows.

We ate at IKEA's own canteen/food court. We had Swedish meatballs and chips for $7.50 (that was the 15 meatballs plate that hubby and I shared). I had a bread plate of 'Gravlax' salmon. I wouldn't have called it that..it was just smoked salmon with some coral lettuce, lemon and dressing $4.95. Standard-ish. The mini-salad bar was $3.00 - I grabbed a bowl and over-filled it. Only mixed-nuts sized bowls were offered.. not that big.. it was begging to be overfilled! What else? A small rye dinner roll with butter, 60 cents. Hubby had a spinach and ricotta Involtini $4.95 I think? Our girl had pumpkin soup and a chocolate Big M. It was nice to break the shopping up with a food break and to eat Swedish style (?) food on IKEA crockery, using IKEA cutlery. It was very busy and the meatballs were popular! I'd say they were the highlight of our meal. IKEA advertises a $2 bacon and egg breakfast which is available for an hour in the mornings. Kids meals are $2.50 or they can get a half size adult meal for half price. They have some Swedish desserts too like 'Princess Cake', 'Almond Cake'.. I also saw Pecan Pie (like a tart). The picture above is a file photo of the IKEA meatballs so obviously in some countries they serve them with boiled potatoes. In Melbourne, they're served with chips. The gravy was nice..and there is a Swedish ruby-red sauce that looks and tastes like cranberry sauce.

This Saturday, March 17 is my birthday. On March 21st it's my hubby's birthday and it's also Betty's birthday. She is an elderly neighbour (we are No.2, she is No.4). Betty is moving hopefully soon too as her unit is up for sale. Though she thinks she'll never sell (It's been on the market 3 weeks). This Saturday.. by way of default I'm having breakfast at the Four Points Sheraton hotel which is located at our Waterfront precinct. One of hubby's female work colleagues received an invitation to listen to some 'spiel'.. some kind of business thing which takes place at the Sheraton, followed by the complimentary breakfast. I'm the "+1". I hope it's a full buffet breakfast (which is what they do normally). I wouldn't like to mess around with cereal and toast and things on my birthday (I don't care how 'lush' that sounds...!) which is what I never eat in the mornings anyway. I'm hoping hubby, my girl and I will see a movie in the afternoon and go out for dinner.. wood oven pizza or Nando's Portuguese chicken.. something like that. I really want to see the Australian film 'Razzle Dazzle' but I'm curious about 'Wild Hogs' I think it is.. about the old motorcyclers.. one of whom is John Travolta. Should be a lovely day! We will still be side-stepping boxes and cartons at the new place. A big thanks to my neighbour (who at the time of writing.. still is our neighbour).. thanks for the boxes from work.. you got us the 'works' from work (wink!). Thanks 'T'!

This house move will be made easier for me personally because of the IKEA trip. Instead of fretting about the change and thinking about the things I don't like about the new place.. my mind is on those IKEA boxes and what everything will look like once assembled. We haven't bought a houseful of things, but we did buy what we needed.

Once out of IKEA with your trolley-load/s of things and before you head to the 'loading/departure' gate (forgive my airport-isms).. they have another IKEA foodie outlet. This time $1 hotdogs and 40 cent icecream cones. 60 cents if you want a waffle cone. Swedish must be latin for 'suggestive sellers'.

If you feel like dancing around your house to some music..I have some music for you:

Enjoy Bananarama!

"Look on the floor" (Angel City Remix) Thanks to Curt344 at YouTube for using it on his (funny) dance tag vlog.

The New Lemon, 7 Years Without Pump & A Sausage By Any Other Name

No.. this ocean trout isn't the new lemon, nor is the sweet chilli mayo and hommus on the plate =) Though I purposely left off the lemon as too many of my earlier pictures were garnished with it.. and that equates to 'parsley decorations'!

Thing is, I have lemon alongside many of my meals .. it's a regular in my fruit bowl. I'm a lemon-head!

Before I go onto the 'new lemon' (ie. the ingredient I seem to be putting on everything) - I will mention that the above ocean trout meal was my (our) lunch the other day.

I noticed in our local paper last Friday ocean trout from Coles Deli was going for $19.99 a kilo (Save $8.. or something). I had been craving a piece of fish like this so I bought one piece ($5.50). I also bought some gourmet mushrooms going out for half price ($2.50 a little punnet) which included Shimeji, Brown and Oyster... delicious!

I started this dish with a bed of rocket (yes I'm beginning to think that's my new lemon), baby spinach, sliced capsicum, tomato and red onion. On top of this I put the mushrooms that had been sauteed with thinly sliced zucchini, crushed garlic, soy and balsamic glaze. I rubbed a dried herb mix into the trout and seared/cooked it in an almost dry pan (it had the slightest smear of monounsaturated peanut oil.. I like this oil as it can take high temperatures). The photo is actually of hubby's plate (he only asked for a sample..he woke up prematurely after sleeping-off a night shift). He had about one third of my fish -but in this picture it all looks bigger than it actually was. So this was.. in effect.. hubby's breakfast. I told him that Japanese people eat fish for breakfast. Just go on a cruise with them and you'll see that the brekky-buffet's cater for their palate's (so I've been told)! Some people would cringe but I wouldn't mind at all ! I have such a funny tummy and fish.. bless its omega-three's, is so kind to it.

THIS ---> is the new lemon (it seems... for me....). Have you ever eaten at an Indian restaurant and found these 'black sprinkles' on your steamed rice? They are found in Japanese food too.. sushi included and I've always planned on getting them for my pantry. Finally... my 'friend' Herbie came to the rescue (see earlier posts.. I like the range). I'm yet to sprinkle these on rice at home but I am putting them atop dollops of hommus. Hubby and my girl are playing Monopoly today and asked for some snacks... so out came these seeds of ebony.. trailing behind the store-bought hommus.

I CAN make hommus and I really like the homemade version... but it falls into the 'to do' basket alongside my jelly snacks. The recipe I normally use is from Dr Sandra Cabot's "Liver Cleansing Diet".

This platter consisted of roast beef with lettuce in mountain bread (some had horseradish cream, others had gourmet bbq sauce). The hommus-on-crackers with black sprinkles is obvious. I used Morrocan Spice Sakata crackers (they don't have dairy.. hubby can eat them..and they contain more potato flour than rice flour.. an interesting twist). Since I photographed the snacks platter, I have to plug the store-bought hommus as it is worthy of mentioning. It's from 'Aldi' (supermarket). It really tastes close to something homemade (minus the garlic if you're used to Dr Cabot's version). It's not watery or vinegary like other hommus dips. Give it a go if you have an Aldi nearby. It's only $1.99 a tub. Oh.. before I forget.. there are a couple of skinnier roll-up's on the platter.. they have vegemite in them! The thicker one's without lettuce are for my 11 year old who has a phobia of anything crunchy that doesn't come in a packet.

It probably would have made a nicer photograph had I taken a picture when the tub was full, however I didn't know it'd get daily 'thumbs-up' until now.. so this tub represents "time to go to Aldi for more hommus" (or time for me to use those chickpea's and tahini in my pantry.. whichever comes first)!

While I have my food-reviewer hat on, I thought I'd mention some bbq sauce that I finally got around to buying. I noticed the actor Jack Thompson, along with the Byron Bay Chilli Company have joined forces and produced some sauces! I was watching Kerry Ann Kennerly while on the Tread Climber at the gym the other day and Jack appeared on her show, demonstrating the sauces. Of course it looked delicious, he had several (what looked like) scotch fillet steaks, sizzling on a BBQ.. I could almost smell them. He said that the sauces can be used to put on top of things or you can marinade things in them. Ok.. versatile product.. and I'm a sucker for new food products, so I bought some! This sauce has no heat in it whatsoever but it still packs a punch! If you're going to use it like ordinary sauce.. use sparingly as it's very full bodied and I'd say this is what probably makes it a good marinade. I will do some chicken tenders in it soon.. I'm sure it will be tasty. Another plus is that a lot of bbq sauces have flavourings that are derived from dairy and this is dairy free and free from artificial gunk. There is no wheat in it either (just a little cornstarch). It was $4.95 in a gourmet grocery/deli I go to. I forgot to mention the black sesame seeds were $3.95 for a pouch. The other two varieties of sauces I saw for sale were a 'smokey' version of the bbq sauce (this one does have 'smoke' added also). And there's a honey mustard bbq sauce.

Now.. back to the title of this post and "7 years without Pump". BODY PUMP classes I mean. I started going to the gym the same time I started at WW (26th and 25th of January '07 respectively).. speaking of which I clocked-in at WW on Thursday (5 weeks on the program) and I've lost 2.7kg's in that time! Averaging 540 grams a week.

What made me take a Body Pump class yesterday? I've been doing fine with my 3 workouts each week at one hour 'a pop' (cardio and resistance training).

On Thursday my usual Auslan (sign language) evening class was at "Pizzaland". The aim was to put ourselves in a dining situation where we could only communicate with sign language.. even with the staff (!!). We were allowed to point to our menu's and even write things down if the waiter/waitress was still confused but talking was off-limits. The following night we had 'Family Fun Night' at my girl's school which included a free BBQ (read: white bread with sausages and a 10-minute-window when hamburger patties were offered). I knew I'd be eating out two nights in a row.. so I decided to give the class a go. I had already worked up a sweat before the class.. and by the end of 'Pump', my face was a deep pink with scarlett hues.. a mean ensemble with the wet, stringy hair. I had to pause briefly a quarter of the way through when my heart rate became too high. I put my weights down and shook my hands and feet until I could catch my breath again. The weights I had were too heavy for what I was doing. (Natalie-legs-up-to-my-boobs instructor suggested 2 x 2.5kg on my bar). I managed the one hour class pretty well.. but it was definitely high intensity for me. The time I've spent at the gym since January 26 has most certainly conditioned me well for such a class. I never would have managed 'til the end otherwise.

The school bbq offered fluffy white bread and sausages (as I mentioned before).. so why can't I resist char + grease + snow-white feather-light 99cent-a-loaf bread with dollops of a brand of sauce I don't buy? It's like trying to justify the nutritional content of a deep-fried dagwood dog on a stick, dunked in sauce from a van that fries things for a living... you don't ask questions, you just eat!

The wood-oven pizza at Pizzaland was wonderful. My girl and I shared a medium half and half pizza. It had a thin, crispy crust, prosciutto, lots of plump prawns.. not king size, but not tiny shrimp either..they were delightful moist things that burst in your mouth (oops, vegetarians block your ears). There was also cheese, avocado and garlic. The other half was a marinara (seafood). It was a nice night except for our hair and clothes being 'smokey' from the wood oven and our deaf instructor slamming her hands down on the table every time she caught our lips moving. The Orange Pekoe tea's and Aranciatta Rosso's went flying in the air when her palms slammed the table.. and she did the universal sign for "zip your lips" (Index finger and thumb together... run across your lips in a finite... 'shut it..and zip it' action).