Woody Harrelson explains how to lose weight and succeed in this rather tongue in cheek snippet from “Friends With Benefits”
Hey, everybody wants a short cut in life.
My guide book is very simple:
You wanna lose weight?
Stop eating, fatty!
You wanna make money?
Work your ass off, lazy!
You wanna be happy?
Find someone you like and never let him go. Or her, if you’re into that kinda of creepy sh*t
A few months ago I replaced my bed and mattress. The new one is fantastic and I sleep much better on it – the fact that I can use “on” instead of “in” is important. The old bed was in a bad state, so I’d been more “in” it than “on” it for quite some time..
While I love the new bed it’s made me aware of a couple of things:
But it’s post-Christmas, which means a lot of retailers are running special offers, discounts and sales.
While I didn’t go into Homestore + More to buy pillows it was rather hard to pass up their discounted offer on memory foam pillows.
I’ve had memory foam pillows in the past, but when I last used them they weren’t the traditional “pillow shape” which took quite a bit of getting used to and in the end I stopped using them.
The new ones I picked up look like a normal pillow but you can feel their density and firmness.
If it helps my sleep then it’s a good thing 🙂
Now all I need to do is get some more sheets!
As I mentioned the other day, I now have a pasta machine, so I really wanted to get started making my own pasta.
The one “blocker” I’d run up against, apart from my complete lack of experience, was sourcing the right kind of flour.
Fortunately my local SuperQuinn stocks it, so I picked up some Roma “Pizza and Pasta Flour” (Farina tipo ‘OO’) this afternoon. (Even if it’s not listed on the SuperQuinn site .. or if it is I couldn’t find it!)
Roma’s pizza and pasta flour is farina tipo ‘OO’
I did find a few recipes for basic pasta dough (thanks George!) so I got to work
I sieved the flour and put it on the counter (which I’m finding increasingly to be too small to work on comfortably 🙁 )
Then I mixed the egg and olive oil in a bowl and poured it into the well I’d made in the centre. It was at this point that things started going wrong. I hadn’t made the well in the flour big enough to hold the egg and oil mix and it overflowed. After frantically trying to get the mess back under control I realised that the dough wasn’t exactly “spot on”, but was still usable (to an extent).
I then tried my best to run it all through the pasta machine (after letting the dough rest for about 30 minutes).
The end result was edible, but far from perfect:
So I’ll hopefully have better luck next time!
The Reboot with Joe Juice Diet
Joe Cross of “Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead” fame is bringing out a new book next week.
The book, “The Reboot with Joe Juice Diet“, draws on his experiences as portrayed in the film to put together this book which has a number of “reboot” plans from 3 day ones all the way through to the 30 day+ one.
Here’s a video of Joe talking about the book:
After seeing his film, which I found inspiring, I’ve pre-ordered the book! Now I’m not saying that I’d do a 30 day juice only plan, but I’d be interested in trying one of the shorter plans.
As I mentioned yesterday, I now have a pasta machine. Yay!
To make “proper” pasta you’re supposed to use OO flour, but from what I can gather it’s not readily available in most Irish supermarkets. If anyone knows of suppliers please let me know!
In the interim I’ll probably use “strong flour” or another variant which I can get in an Irish supermarket such as SuperQuinn, Dunnes Stores or Tesco.
But the real question for me is in relation to making the pasta itself.
I love cooking, but I get rather frustrated with recipes, as so many of them assume you’re preparing food for a minimum of four people.
The number of recipes for anything that have been scaled down to one person portions is slim and when you get into something like making your own pasta I haven’t had any success at all.
So if you know of any recipes either online or in physical recipe books that can help please please let me know!
I love pasta and, as I’ve mentioned before, I really like fresh pasta. It’s so much nicer than the dry variety and seems to taste better, even if the stuff I normally buy is mass produced.
However I’ve been intrigued with the idea of making my own pasta for some time.
For Christmas this year my mother gave me a pasta machine, which is exactly what I wanted, so I’m delighted
The model I got was the Kitchen Craft “World of Flavours Italian Deluxe Double Cutter Pasta Machine”. Bit of a mouthful, but it should be able to do pretty much everything I want to do.
I probably won’t get to experiment with it properly until I get home in a few days time, but so far I’ve been checking the device’s instructions and also scouring the web for suitable recipes.
What I’m particularly interested in trying, once I get the hang of things, is flavoured pasta, as it’s usually harder to come by.
The machine itself looks very business like and sturdy:
But cleaning it is going to be a bit different. I’m used to washing things. With the pasta machine you’re expressly told NOT to wash it, but instead to “clean after each use with a brush or dry cloth”. I guess they know best 🙂
I’ve mentioned Jason Vale in the past. This coming January as in previous year’s he’s organising a January detox. However it’s slightly later in the month than in previous years. He’s also giving away over £10000 in prizes, so if you’re looking for some extra motivation he’s got you covered.
This is partially due to the publication of his new book “5LBs in 5 Days: The Juice Detox Diet” which comes out on January 2nd, but it’s also down to something quite logical. Human behaviour.
If you’ve been over-eating during Christmas it’ll probably take a few days for your body to adjust to normal quantities of food. So switching from eating huge quantities down to eating tiny quantities probably wouldn’t work too well. So by delaying the detox by a few days you’d hopefully be in a better position..
Full details on the site, where you can also signup if you want to take part.
While I’d love to do it I won’t be able to, as I’ll be travelling that week which means I’ll be lucky if I can keep my food consumption under control!
