It’s been an up-and-down 24 hours – with me having to remember quite hard not to have refined sugars and little trickies like that – bad habits have taken over and it will take a while to retrain. I spent all night last night, once the kids were in bed, going to the kitchen, opening the cupboards and fridge and then wandering back to the lounge defeated. I blame it on my free right hand – no wine glass occupying it….

I woke up this morning wanting to make something for breakkie that wasn’t an omelette or smoothie – and not toast which is my fave – because of the ‘crunchy’ bits.

There has been this recipe floating round on various do-gooder-healthy-recipe sites that had piqued my interest and this morning I got the lads all excited and said ‘hey mama’s gonna make banana pancakes – yum!’ cue excitement and ‘when are they ready mum!?’ (I’m not even off the couch yet).

You see the beauty of these pancakes is that they ONLY take two ingredients – I KNOW amazeballs huh – and ‘taste just like normal pancakes!’. I looked them up (thank you Aunty google) and got started. So NOT hard. I literally had to break three eggs and one and a half bananas into the blender and pulse. Then fry.

    

Voila! You like my photo? they look good right? Except that they SUCKED.      They were terrible. Like the gross uncooked bit in the middle of french toast that you always slather in tomato sauce so you don’t have to feel the texture. Bleurgh. Master 7 took one bite, spat it out again (he’s not an egg fan and I may not have been very clear with him on the ingredients). Master 4 had two – liberally sprinkled with brown sugar – which by the way is the way the ‘healthy website’ recommended they be eaten because they know they suck too. I put four aside for the grumpy Dutchman figuring he’d eat anything and had to throw mine away because there wasn’t a single thing I could think of to add to them that I am allowed to eat. SO. Breakfast failure on day two. I ended up having the last two pieces of bread in the bag – waste not want not – and I just won’t buy anymore I promise. That crunchy tummy scratching peanut-butter toast never tasted so good. But I did miss the coffee I would have usually washed it down with…..

(Note – after reading this a few of my friends commented that they had made the pancakes and they liked them – major difference seems to be that they cooked them in butter and mashed instead of blended them – might try again later in the year if I pick dairy again 🙂 )

Last night for dinner I made a big roasted vege salad – this is my go-to if we go places and need to bring a contribution, it’s filling, jam packed full of veges and you can change it up, I also like to add things like salami, chicken, smoked salmon, avocado – depending on what’s around – if you weren’t avoiding dairy Feta is great in it too. And when there is only a few manky bits left in the bottom of the bowl I can throw them into the pan for breakfast with some eggs too – it’s an all-rounder!

I got the original recipe out of the ‘Allergy free cooking’ book by Dr Sue Shepherd, which specialise in recipes for folks who follow a low FODMAP diet, but I make alternate versions of it depending on who will be eating it because a lot of peeps don’t like Aubergine and I find garlic ‘infused’ olive oil weirdly hard to get at most stupidmarkets. Also I am not allowed nuts and seeds at the moment and my favourite used to be to throw some toasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds on it too. For last nights salad I roasted pumpkin, 3 colours of capsicum, courgette, sparrowgrass and green beans in olive oil and sea salt, then tossed up with baby spinach when done. I chopped some avocado into it as well – because YUM and it had the added bonus of pissing off the GD just that tiny bit more…. He hates avocado – it used to be something we bonded on – the only two people in the world who hated avocado but I have converted. He may never forgive me.

    

This morning I took the little lads to see my Nana, their Great Nana, in the hospital where she is for the moment. They were loud and ‘wrestly’ and playing with wholehearted abandon out in the grassy area – much to the conscious old folks delight – but not so much to some of the sicker folk and bedridden patients. In order to shut them up for fifteen minutes so I could hang with my favourite old grrl, I promised them Mad Mex for lunch. We have only tried this once as a fam in town and it was great – no sore tummy for me, lots of GF options and the kids were very excited. Today we went to the one in Ponsnobby because I knew I would get a carpark with everyone out of town.

Hmmm….. The realisation is dawning that the reason the boys loved it SOOO much the first time is because we let them have the ‘real authentic soda’ from Mexico. (Which btw all tastes the same – like SUGAR and masses of it – I had grapefruit and there was nothing sour about it). This time they had water. Not so great with spicy food. Also the sour faced queen who served us threw sour cream all over Sol’s kid nachos before anyone had time to blink so of course he refused to eat them. The girl who took over serving was better and she asked before she put anything on anything which was good – the good thing about Sol’s meal was that one kid eats free with grown up on Thursdays and Fridays so we chalked it up to experience (And when he was starving later he ate the whole congealed mess in the car).

I got the ‘Naked burrito’. which is naturally GF (and DF because I declined to have cheese and sour cream). I forgot about my raw food rule though and I think the DELICIOUS salsa combined with the medium heat chilli gave me a terrible tummy ache. Or maybe it was indigestion because it was so yummy I ate it pretty fast! Sad face. I came home and instead of taking the lads to the zoo as promised ended up sleeping and reading my book all afternoon. So. Note to self – take it easy on the Mexican for now – but later – might be a good option.

All in all, day two was pretty easy – as expected – having given up sugar and booze for 14 weeks at the start of 2014 I know what to expect really – headaches and body aches from the lack of sugar for the first two weeks but it’s the ‘bored eating’ that gets me. I was stricter last time and cut out fruit too – because it kicked off cravings – and the way I’ve been going through this bowl of plums today is pretty telling. No fruit tomorrow. And no I don’t count tomatoes in that restriction because how else would I make my delicious Avocado and Tomato salsa that goes with my breakfast omelette?!?

                              

No bootcamp this week – holiday for our instructor, and Yoga was shut today – although my aching legs probably need a days rest to be honest after yesterdays effort – we’ll take the lads (all three) down to the beach after dinner and let them all have a big run. It’s so great living in this city – never more than twenty minutes from a decent beach – and the one tonight is five minutes away!