Tails’ Blography

I know I havent posted in a while. Truth is, stuff happens and I’m just lazy! Even being able to blog from my phone as per this post didnt change anything. Ah well, I’ll try make at least one post a week…try get back into the routine.

Before I get started on the main topic of this post, I would like to mention that myself and my bestie were featured (again) on the morning TV show Expresso again two weeks ago! It was awesome fun, and of course, our rats went along too (we were talking about rats as pets)!

Anyway…so at work last week I won a voucher to Woolworths for R1000! I also won another voucher for Woolies for R50, as well as a Camelot Spa voucher for R500 (it was a good day!). Today my mother and I went to see what we could find to purchase with this small fortune.

For the past few weeks, I’ve also being doing a lot of reading up on fondant (the icing that usually is seen on wedding cakes -not the marzipan icing though!) and I wanted to try my hand at making some for a cake. And I wanted to attempt my first two layer cake…maybe even my first two tier cake! So I went out today with my mom and bought some baking utensils (stainless steel measuring cups and spoons to replace my plastic ones, a stainless steel mini whisk and a stainless steeel sieve – all dishwasher safe! Score!) with my voucher as well as the ingredients for Marshmallow Fondant (‘mallows, icing sugar), vanilla buttercream (butter, cream, van essence and icing sugar), and of course, the cake (yea yea, it was box mix!)!

I went to @Home and was seaching around their sale items when I noticed a really nice scraper (for scraping the sides of cakes) for R55! So I bought it and when I was at the til paying for it, they told me it was marked down from (an insane) R230! What a bargain!! I think I was most excited about this purchase haha.

We spent the entire day looking for a simple offset spatula, which we didnt end up finding, so we ended the evening off at Qing Sushi for a nice mixe platter to share.

I got home and promptly started on the fondant process (after I cleaned the kitchen haha). I melted the marshmallows, poured out the icing sugar onto the table and started kneading! Half way through kneading, I realised I didnt add the 4 tablespoons of water to the melted mallows, so I added 1 tablespoon to the mix on the table…not sure how it affected the fondant, but only time will tell I guess. Kneading the fondant was tough! My back is still aching!

Then I made the buttercream, using the Kenwood Chef this time (wasnt sure it could handle the fondant consistancy), which went easier, but still made a bit of a mess (the joys of baking, eh). The buttercream went well and came out quite nice. Will give it another whip tomorrow before using, to make sure its extra creamy.

I’ll post an update tomorrow after the cake is done – hopefully with pics!

So as the title says, I’ve lost weight (thanks to WeightWatchers). 1kg to be specific! Yes, sure, some will be water loss, but it still counts! I weighed in at 54.8.

Although I’m excited at having climbed on the scale and seen that I was down by exactly one kilogram, I still realise a few factors could have contributed to make it inaccurate, so I’ll only truly get excited when I’m closer to 53 or 52kgs.

The diet thus far hasnt been very difficult to stick to, and I was a little worried because not much of my eating habits had changed, mainly the portion sizes. I even managed to remove sugar from my coffee without much fuss (I thought I’d hate it more than I did, but it’s actually not bad).

But this just goes to show how important portion sizes are! And in case anyone is wondering, no I didnt go on a diet of just carrots and lettuce or something extreme. In fact, I managed to fit in calamari, a cocktail, a hot cross bun, and even pizza into this week.

For those who are interested, I’ll list my week’s intake here:

Day One:
Breakfast: Nothing
Lunch: White bread x 3, margerine x 3, turkey slices x 6, lettuce and tomato (basically, one closed and one open sandwich): 9pts
Dinner: Chicken leg (medium sized), chicken wing, 1/2 cup of rice, peas and corn (just less than a cup): 7pts
Snacks: Coffee, full cream milk, 2 x sugar, 1 x apple: 3 pts
Total: 19/18 pts

Day Two:
Breakfast: Oasto Easy (Strawberry & Yoghurt flavour): 3.5 pts
Lunch: Nothing.
Dinner: Chicken thigh (with skin), gem squash, 1/2 cup of rice: 6 pts
Snacks: Coffee, full cream milk, 2 x sugar: 2 pts
Total: 11.5/18 pts

Day Three:
Breakfast: 45g All Bran Flakes, 1 cup of full cream milk: 6 pts
Lunch: White bread x 2, ham slice, lettuce and tomato: 3 pts
Dinner: I & J Chunky (crumbed fish), 1/2 cup of rice, peas and corn (about 1 cup): 6 pts
Snacks: Coffee, full cream milk, 2 x sugar: 2 pts
Total: 17/18 pts

Day Four:)
Breakfast: Oasto Easy (Strawberry & Yoghurt flavour): 3.5 pts
Lunch: Hot dog bun, mayo (approx 1.5 tsp), 2 tsp tomato sauce, vienna: 4.5 pts
Dinner: Pizza slice (Roman’s margerita with extra tomato, medium) x 3: 7.5 pts
Snacks: Just Juice can, 100ml wine, Coffee, full cream milk, 2 x sugar: 4 pts
Total: 19.5/18 pts

Day Five:
Breakfast: coffee, 2% milk: 1 pt
Lunch: Burger bun, chicken fillets, sauce (basically a chicken prego roll): 5.5 pts
Dinner: 80g cooked calamari, 1/2 cup of rice, gem squash, 1 tsp Grape Seed Oil (chilli flavour!): 3.5 pts
Snacks: Wine, cocktail, oils and bread pieces: 6 pts
Total: 16/18 pts

Day Six:
Breakfast: coffee, 2% milk, extra milk: 1.5 pts
Lunch: Burger bun, ham, 1tsp Dijonnaise, tomato and lettuce: 4 pts
Dinner: 350g cooked pasta, tomatos, 3 olives, herbs and spices, 1 tsp Grape Seed Oil (chilli flavour!): 5 pts
Snacks: None.
Total: 10.5/18 pts

Day Seven:
Breakfast: Oasto Easy (Strawberry & Yoghurt flavour): 3.5 pts
Lunch: Hot cross bun: 3 pts
Dinner: 125g cooked spaghetti, 100g bolognaise, 2 tsp Grape Seed Oil (chilli flavour!): 7 pts
Snacks: 100ml wine: 1.5 pts
Total: 15/18 pts

I dont reach my 18 points every day, but the times where I normally would take a huge portion (*cough*spaghetti bolognaise*cough*), I’ve cut back which is a big thing. Plus the decrease in sugar intake (eg no sugar on All Bran breakfast or Oasto Easy) is clearing working. Also if you’re more aware at how much a teaspoon of margerine is, you tend not to waste points on it. 1 teaspoon of marg is worth 1 whole point! Eek!

Yay! Here’s to the next kilogram!

I made these yesterday for our Halloween Gym party I wanted plaastic fake spiders, but couldnt find any, but luckily with a bit of digging and help from my sister, we found these gummy bugs. They were actually chcolate muffins, but I passed them off as cupcakes hehe

Today I happily got busy in the kitchen with my new set of muffin trays. I mixed up a batch of Snowflake’s Easy Mix Choc-Mint Muffin mix (sorry they didnt have a pic of the choc-mint packet) and eagerly spooned it out into the freshly washed silicone trays. One batch made 12 medium muffins and 12 mini muffins.

I put the individual cups onto a baking tray along with the tray of minis, and popped that into the oven. I set the timer for 10 minutes as I was unsure of how long the minis should bake for. When the timer beeped, I breezed through to the kitchen to have a peek through the glass and they were rising nicely! At this point I squealed the words, “Awwww they’re sooo cute!!!” and promptly called the oh-so-patient bf to come and see the minis rising. He came to look and thoroughly agreed they were cute (and whilst walking back to his PC, laughed and said that only I would be so excited about half-baked muffins, mini or otherwise…and he’s probably right!). I set the timer for another 5 min, then another 5 min, and after those went off I took them out to cool and put in the next batch of six from the big tray. Set the timer for 20 min now that I knew my precious goods would be fine.

While the second batch was baking, of course we had to try a mini while it was still warm – and it was so light and fluffy and cute! It tasted really good (and they even had little mint chips in them!). Of course, the rats got one mini muffin each, and they were so pleased about that, almost melting themselves through the bars of their cage to get to me when I brought them near.

And of course, I took some photos. Let me know what you think!

The large muffins

Large and mini muffins galore!

Isn’t that the CUTEST muffin you’ve ever seen!

And of course I simply had to post pics of the rats enjoying their treats!

“We want! We want! We want!”

Ramoth doing an impression of an alligator (wish this was in focus haha)

Orlith eagerly clinging on

Wirenth looking ominous that I’m taking a photo of her eating

So yesterday the bf and I went grocery shopping, and we were discussing warm winter treats and desserts.

Flapjacks came up, as did muffins and hot chocolate. So, making our way through the baking aisle, we came across some muffin trays. Now, I’ve always wanted a silicone muffin tray (I have muffin mix at home already, as seen in picture) but they always seem too expensive or I see them when I have no money and so on and so forth. You know the story.

Anyway, so we’re debating buying a 6-cup muffin tray (R60), when just above the muffin trays, I spot a whole silicone baking set (R99)! {cue angel choir} It has everything I wanted and more: 12-cup muffin tray (light blue), 6 medium individual cupcake cups (red, neon yellow, & neon green), and (eeeek! *excited squeal*) a 12-cup MINI MUFFIN TRAY (darker blue. F.R.I.E.N.D.S made me fall in love with them! Episode clip below)!

So, I look over to the bf with a huge smile on my face, and say with glee how much of a better bargain the set is (it already wins the bargin-debate by having double the amount of cups than the original tray for less than half the price more) when he replies, with a smile, a simple, “ok.” Ok!?! Yay! He then informs me I better make him some muffins soon…how ominous! Hehe.

So we came home with the cutest, most cheerful looking baking set ever! I cant wait to use em…of course, that will be this weekend! Yay! Its been making me smile all day thinking about them, so I figured I had to blog about it.

The F.R.I.E.N.D.S clip is really funny, and features the mini-muffins (you even get to see one briefly! It’s cute!!):