Tag: Food

Disaster Chef

Renee BartonLeave a comment

I’m a big fan of food. But cooking, not so much. I don’t enjoy it, I’m generally not very good at it and it’s just not my thing (although I do have an award-winning spaghetti in my repertoire).

But I found myself with some overripe bananas today and decided to ‘whip up’ a banana bread. Normally, I would just pop them in the freezer with the intention that I will (eventually, maybe) make banana bread one day. But, given my freezer is already overflowing with said bananas, I decided to actually do it this time.

A homemade banana bread. Seems easy enough right?

I dig out the dry ingredients from the cupboard. Hmmm… Not sure how old this flour is. It’s not moving so must be fine. It’s gonna be sifted anyway. In it goes.

Crap. Recipe calls for brown sugar and I’ve started measuring out my raw sugar. It’s brown…ish. Google seems to think they can be substituted so I go with it. Okay, going well so far. Time for the wet ingredients.

I create the well as instructed and proceed to pour in the milk, eggs etc. Crap! I missed the bit where I was supposed to mix all the wet ingredients and bananas together before combining with dry ingredients.

Oh well, it all ends up in there together eventually. It will be fine.

Melted butter. Crap! I don’t have butter. Just some sort of margarine imposter spread. I really should read the recipe better! In it goes.

Now all that’s left to do is to hope my dodgy oven doesn’t burn it to smithereens.

Oh dear. Looks like disaster chef strikes again. Normally I would throw it out and hide all evidence of my failed endeavour but it’s just too hilarious not to share.

Surprisingly, it doesn’t taste too bad. Just looks ugly AF.

So now I’m left with really ugly food and a sink full of dirty dishes. And I’m reminded why I don’t cook!

A Terrible Case of the Post-Partum Body Blues

Renee Barton2 Comments

I get it. My body is amazing. It created, grew and gave birth to a human. Blah, blah, blah.

But am I a horrible, shallow person if I’m not totally wrapped about my post-miracle body? Nearly three months on and I really thought I’d at least be on track to getting back to how my body looked before. But the reflection staring back at me is still much different to what I’d like to see.

My clothes are bursting at the seams and having to ‘tuck’ my stomach into my waistband is not exactly doing wonders for my self esteem right now.

Don’t get me wrong, I really do think women’s bodies are amazing. Pregnancy and childbirth really are a miracle. But in order to be the best mum and wife I can be, I need to take care of myself and get back to liking what I see in the mirror.

I really loved being pregnant. When we were trying to have a baby I absolutely couldn’t wait for my belly to swell. I wanted to rock my baby bump and I was proud of it. I was also incredibly lucky in that I didn’t suffer from uncomfortable bloating or unsightly cankles. In fact, I actually lost weight in my first trimester. No, I wasn’t throwing up with morning sickness. I had just started a 12 week challenge before I knew I was pregnant as I had some unwanted kilos to shift following our Euro Trip where we ate and drank like kings for a month.

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But then into my second and third trimesters the kilos started to stack back on. And despite saying that I wanted to have a really clean pregnancy, I ended up addicted to carbs and sugar again. I didn’t over do it to a dangerous extent but I did probably enjoy myself a little too much. I was still relatively active and was still doing high intensity weights up until the week before I gave birth.

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I kind of thought that once I had the baby I would immediately drop five kilos, I’d get back to training as soon as possible and for the most part everything would return to how it was. I mean, with breastfeeding I should spring back into shape in no time right? Wrong. Breastfeeding has just made me starving ALL THE TIME!

I was eager to return to weight training but had to wait the obligatory six weeks. But as soon as I got the ok I started back again plus I have added KangaTraining and a post-partum Ultratone program to the mix.

I have slowly started to change my diet and get it back to what it was post pregnancy. But I still have a long way to go.

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I am trying not to be too hard on myself and have more realistic expectations but it is difficult not to get a bit down sometimes.

Looking at my beautiful little boy it is totally worth it. But it is time to get this Mama back into shape!

For my son, for my husband, but most of all for me.

I Like Food and I Also Like Food

Kaine BartonLeave a comment

You know what I like? Pizza.

You know what else I like? Beer.

You know what else I like? Chocolate.

You know what else I like? Cake.

You know what else I like? I think you get the picture. I like food.

If you saw my diet over the past couple of days, you’d swear I was living in an episode of Epic Meal Time. Needless to say, we have had a really, really, really good weekend. As you can probably see.

It started off relatively innocently. We had a few people over on Friday night for a few board games and dinner. Well, dinner was delicious. As was the chips, corn chips, salsa, steamed pudding and ice cream that followed.

Ok, that’s enough I thought. I have gym tomorrow morning, so let’s try and get that diet back on track after gym.

Well that failed, because Saturday night we decided to head to Eat Street Markets for date night. Jesse came with us, so technically it was date night for three.

For those who are unaware of Eat Street Markets, it’s basically food and drink stalls galore. Everything delicious. It’s the kind of place where you go from stall to stall trying all sorts of different things. And that we did.

We started with the obligatory BBQ pork buns, followed by a soft NYC style pretzel covered with mozerella cheese, pepperoni and pizza sauce. Then it was Langos, a Hungarian deep fried delicious looking flat bread covered with cheese, sour cream and sweet chilli sauce. A couple of beers definitely helped wash the food down.

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For dessert, well why not a Mars filled churros. And then just for good measure, I got a chocolate and tim tam covered cronut (half donut, half croissant) with a syringe full of Nutella to inject right into the middle of all that deliciousness.

Come 8pm that night, I felt pretty sick. I was started to think I might need to go on a sugar cleanse.

Then today happened. It was off to to catch up with some family for wood fired pizzas. Not too bad I thought. But then out came two cakes, cream and marshmallows. Well, I have to have cake and cream!

And even as I got home this afternoon I stumbled across an opened packet of chips that I had to finish off, but not before having a fist full of beef jerky.

Now I know what you’re thinking… That is a lot of food. And you’d be right. It is. But I will say this… I don’t regret a single thing!!!

I’ll start eating healthy on Monday!