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You know how sometimes you realise something about yourself or your own capabilities, and you think “I didn’t know I could do that!”, and a big smile spawns on your face. Well, that’s how I’ve been feeling for the past week or so, because I didn’t know I could have this much energy, this much pure, unfabricated, wondedrful energy. (And I hardly drink any coffee at all any more.)

As you know, I started eating healthier when I got back from my Christmas holidays, just to try to recover from two weeks of over consumption of all things tasty. I’m not going to tell you it was easy, because cutting away all fast carbohydrates from my diet was hard, not eating any sweeties was hard, and eating smaller portions even though I was really hungry (or my eyes were anyway) was hard. It still is sometimes, but I think I’ve gotten the hang of it. I can still eat all the veg and fruit and meat and cheese and lots of other things I like – I just have to be a bit more innovative when coming up with something to complement them instead of potatoes, rice or pasta. But that’s not impossible at all. This week, for example, I’m craving pizza, and after a little bit of research I found this recipe for grain and gluten free pizza base with cheese and cauliflower!

But anyway, back on track. The point is, I feel absolutely marvellous. I’m energetic, I work out 5 days a week, I am full of life, and I’m really enjoying that feeling. I think it must be a combination of more exercise and a healthy diet. And I do think a heavy decrease in sugars and carbohydrates has a lot to do with it. I’m less bloated, I fart less (tee-hee), and I’m not as hungry or feeling as snacky all the time. I eat one small piece of chocolate every evening with my tea, and that’s it. No more. One small piece is enough.

I’ve also started eating breakfast. I never used to, and that’s still something that I find difficult to do on certain mornings. It’s just some natural yoghurt with nuts and raisins, but it’s much better than nothing, and it ties me over till lunch time. When I wasn’t eating breakfast, I was eating a lot more unhealthy snacks.

The effects of all this are, to me, astonishing. I’m alert and awake, and I want to do things. I’m doing translation assignments after work. I’m feeling creative, I draw and paint more, I follow through with my ideas and I still have time to just chill out and play video games in the evenings.

All this energy is making exercise a pleasure. Or well, I still hate it sometimes when I’m slaving on the treadmill or in the running tracks, but I love to see the change in my body, how I get stronger and leaner and how I can do more each time I come back to the gym. Even exercises that I used to hate with a passion, like the shoulder press, are getting easier and more enjoyable – until the next time it’s time to up the weights, of course. The point is, there’s progress, and it’s tangible, and I love it.

But I do have a goal with all this. Apart from living a long and healthy life, which is the long term aim, I have a few shorter term ones as well. I would like to lose weight. I’ve lost about 8kg so far, and I would like to loose a bit more, to reach the weight I was at when I was younger and more fit. Then I want some muscle definition. I want abs, and a killer back, nice shoulders and strong legs. I don’t want to be skinny, I want to be strong, and I want it to show.

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I’ll keep you posted!

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I’m so excited about this, I almost can’t believe it. I’ve only put three things up there so far, but you have to start somewhere, don’t you?

As a result, I’ll try to post more sketches and works in progress on here, so that you guys can see what I’m doing and what I’m working on. I always enjoy looking at other people’s process and sketches, so I’m hoping I can inject the same kind of enjoyment in someone else

But! Without further ado, go visit my shop!
Yarrkarping on Etsy!

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Since Christmas and New Year I’ve been feeling very insecure about the increasingly large number on the scales when I dare step up onto them. I am dealing with that now, and I’m doing all right, but before that – you know, that period before you start seeing any results, and your self confidence is at rock bottom – that’s when he really cheered me up. And he has a talent for doing this in many situations, but let me tell you about this one. He put his hands on my waist and then slid them down to my hips, and back up again, and then he said – “I like this shape”, with the biggest smile on his face. It was exactly what I needed to hear.

But that’s not all. When I’m upset, he calms me down. When I’m worried he reassures me and puts my feet back on the ground. When I’m creative, he’s encouraging.

And now, now that I’m trying really hard to eat healthy and snack less, he’s the person stopping me when I sneak toward the snack cupboard, and he quite happily eats all the new food that I cook as part of my new eating regime. He’s really the best person I could have around while doing this. 

But that’s only a fragment of all the things that makes him awesome. It would take too long to name them all, but I suppose I can say that nobody has ever made me laugh like he has.

So in short – I can’t believe my luck. 

Kev, if you’re reading, I love you!

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I’ve been doing some translation recently, some of which included translating an app that does palmistry (palm reading) for the iPhone from English into Swedish. It was a good assignment, good pay, good pace – an all round decent experience as far as work goes. However, as I translated, proofread and made sure everything was looking presentable, I got more and more upset by the actual content of the text I was working on, rather than the grammar, which is usually the case. That said though, I did my best with grammar, spelling and syntax, and hopefully the app will be great – language wise.

Those of you that know me, know that I’m not very superstitious – at all. I’ve never really been, and I’ve considered myself an atheist for a long time now. I’m a strong believer in science, demonstrable results, and you know, things that can be proven with scientific means, like gravity or cell division. “Because it’s written in the stars”, is not a good enough answer. Who wrote it? For whom? Why? What the hell does giant balls of smouldering gas and minerals several thousands of light years away have to do with the state of my relationship? And how does the shape of the second bone in my thumb affect my outlook on life, if I may ask? How can it?

I would like to see an empirical study proving that it might, but then how would such a study be performed? Surely there are as many outlooks as there are thumbs? And if you really want to know what kind of person you are, why don’t you go to a psychologist, someone that can perform scientifically viable interviews and tests to determine your personality type? There are even tons of free ones you can do online. Or, here’s a shocker, why don’t you look back on your life and remember how you’ve acted previously – that will probably tell you a great deal. You don’t need some bint in a scarf to look at your fingertips to tell that you’re bad with money, just look at your bank account!

What saddens me the most though, it that there’s so many people that buy in to this crap. Vulnerable people that are looking for affirmation or guidance, blindly following advice that would be applicable to any of us purely because of how vaguely its worded. “You might go on a journey in the near future”. Might? Where? To the shops, to Spain, or maybe it’s a journey of self discovery? Or to Nigeria to collect a great treasure left to me by a distant relative in the Nigerian royal family? And you say all they need is my bank details? I’ll be right there!

And I suppose that’s what pushes my buttons – the amount of money made in this industry, simply because the customer wants to, or really does believe that someone other than themselves, someone invisible, is governing their lives. I don’t believe for a minute that it’s about anything but the money.

It always is, isn’t it?

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My boyfriend’s dad makes a wonderful butternut squash soup, that doesn’t seem too tricky to make, so I looked up some recipes for guidance and got going. Somewhat to my surprise, a lot of them contained apple, but I thought who am I to decide that’s not tasty, and went and got 2 apples.

I have used plain water and stock cubes for this recipe as I didn’t have any stock at home, and had no intention of making any. I was really hungry! The soup tasted wonderful anyway, so I don’t think it matters too much in this case. One batch of this soup would serve about 5-6 people, unless they are as hungry as I was.

Ingredients

1 medium-sized butternut squash

2 medium-sized red apples

1 leek

A knob of butter

2.5 cups of water

1 cup of white wine

2 stock cubes of you liking (I used one chicken and one vegetable)

1 teaspoon of fennel seeds

1 teaspoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon of ground black pepper

1/3 teaspoon of cayenne pepper (I may have used a little more, but be careful if you’re sensitive to hot spices)

2 table spoons of créme fraiche

Garnish

Step one

Peel, core and cube the apples, rinse and chop the leek roughly. It doesn’t matter what your chunks of veg look like since they’re going in the blender later anyway. Cut the butternut squash in half, lengthwise, and remove all the seeds. This is done quite easily with the help of a table-spoon. To remove the meat of the squash from the peel, you can use two different methods. I chose to just slice it, and then cut the peel off with a sharp knife, making sure to let as little of the meat as possible go to waste. Roughly chop your squash when you’re done. The other method of doing this is to roast the de-seeded halves of the butternut squash in the oven until the meat is soft and can be removed from the peel with a spoon. Both are absolutely fine for this recipe.

Step two

Melt your knob of butter in a large pot, let it melt and start bubbling, then put all of your chopped veg in. Let them saute for about 5 minutes, while stirring to make sure they don’t stick or burn, until they are a bit mushy. Now pour in your water and wine, crumble in your stock cubes, and add all the spices. Bring to a boil and leave to simmer for about 20 minutes.

Step three

The content of the pot should now be soft, and mushy. It’s time for blending! If you have a hand-held mixer you can have a go at the soup while it’s still in the pot, mixing until it has a smooth texture. I don’t have one of these, so I used my blender. You have to be very careful when blending hot things as they tend to splash, even if you have a lid on your blender (which you should!). Blend the soup in batches, only filling the blender jug about halfway each time. Pulse the soup until it’s completely smooth, and pour into a second pot. Repeat until you have blended all of it. When doing this you can pour the blended soup through a sieve, just to make sure there are no bits. I was in a hurry, so I didn’t do this, and ended up with little bits of fennel seed in my soup. Not game-breaking, but a little annoying.

Step four

Let the blended soup simmer for a few minutes, then it’s time to plate up. Add a table-spoon of créme fraiche to each serving, and garnish with something green – perhaps some parsley, or a basil leaf. Eat and enjoy!

The result is a wonderful, smooth, and warming soup with a kick. I think the heat of the cayenne pepper complements the rich smoothness of the butternut squash really well, and the taste is only heightened by the fresh taste of the créme fraiche. I was very pleasantly surprised by this soup, especially since I improvised the recipe, and it was the first time I made it. All in all it was easy, tasty, and didn’t take too much time.

If you try this recipe, please let me know what you think. I know I loved it, and so did Kev.

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Those of you that know Foamy, will know what I’m talking about. Carbs carbs carbs! It’s a couple of weeks into the new year and everyone’s hysterical about their New Year’s resolutions – most of them being about weight loss. So is mine. Why? Because I ate too much. It’s very simple. I have a sitting down job, most of the things I enjoy doing at evenings and weekends involve sitting down for long periods of time (including having dinner), so I have to think about what I eat – or more crucially, not eat all the things I think about.

Things I think about that I may not eat:

• Potatoes
• Cake
• Pasta
• Candy
• Chips
• Crisps
• Rice
• Chocolate
• Bread
• Anything containing processed sugar
• Anything containing white flour

Boo.

Basically, this means I can’t eat any of the food on offer here in Scotland. Badum-Tish! No, that’s not true, there’s plenty of nice things I can eat, and lots of things I can eat lots of. Here are those things:

• Green vegetables – lots of those
• Meat
• Chicken
• Fish
• Anything veg growing above ground
• Dairy – mmmm, cheese…

Now, I know what you’re thinking. That second list is way shorter! But wait, what If I list every vegetable I can eat, or even just divide them into groups based on colour? The list would be much longer. And think about all the different types of dairy. Anyway, the idea is that the lack of carbohydrates with force the body to use up fat reserves for energy instead, inducing weight loss. And obviously, cutting out processed sugar and fatty foods such as crisps and chips and other deep fried things also goes a long way toward healthier eating, leading to weight loss. So that’s basically what I’m doing. If I feel snacky, I have a glass of water (Hunger may actually be thirst in disguise. I know I’m not drinking enough water, so this is often the case with me) and if that doesn’t work, I’ll have some fruit or veg.

Don’t think I’m not eating though, because I am! I have 2 nice, hot meals a day, breakfast, and a snack in the afternoon. At first I had a bit of trouble figuring out what to use instead of pasta/rice/potatoes to fill out my plate, but I’ve found some nice recipes that solves that problem. Some of them aren’t even recipes. They’re just things. Broccoli is one. Cauliflower is the other. Both are super-healthy, and can be prepared in a number of different ways. Yesterday, for example, I had cauliflower mash. Yep. Just boil ye old cauliflower until it’s a bit mushy, drain it of water and stick it back in the pot along with some butter or oil. Season to your liking. (I like salt, nutmeg and white pepper, just like in regular mash). The cauliflower is wetter than potatoes and won’t hold together as well, so it will only need a little – if any – milk. Mash it all together until it resembles, well, mash. If you want you can add things to it at this stage. I had green peas in mine, but I bet sweetcorn or little bits of broccoli would go really well as well.

And of course, a nice salad can’t go wrong with your fish, or burger or whatever, as long as you subtract the croutons and any root vegetables.

Note, though, that this diet isn’t for life, but with some minor changes it will be. When I’ve dropped all my winter-kilos, I’ll be adding whole grain pasta and brown rice, as well as bulgur and qinoa to my diet, making cooking a bit less of a challenge, but keeping it healthy.

There are two reasons as to why I’m doing this.

1. Self esteem – I feel like shit when I can’t fit into my clothes without generating muffin tops and spawning love handles. Feels good to look good.
2. Health – There’s both diabetes and heart problems in my family. I don’t want to risk it.

I’ll be combining the diet with reluctant exercise, and a healthy sleep every night. Oh, and no alcohol. I’ll keep you posted.

Now, would you like my next post to be about something more interesting? Comment below.

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