Cuts, cars and cakes!

Well Onslow is probably knocked out right about now.. probably getting sliced open! We are just fixing his knee at this point and seeing how he goes. As he was not limping prior to doing his knee we saw no reason to operate on the hips. The vet was happy to do whatever we decided... hips, OR knee, OR get a 2nd opinion. I couldnt bear the thought of him hobbling on his ruptured knee any longer than necessary. I figure we can get that fixed and then look into the hip issue a bit more after he has recovered.

{Everything from Crazy Love - Dani Mogstad}

And today my new car was delivered to work!! woo hoo!! :) It is a lot bigger than I thought and so roomy inside.. full of all kinds of fun nooks and crannys to poke around in :) Seeing as Onslow has to stay overnight at the vet, we are going to bundle Belle in the back and take her out for a spin tonight. Maybe go to Windsor and have some grilled fish on the bank of the river or something.

I have been all into cooking lately! I found Calorie King which is a great Aussie weight loss / nutrtional site. I put in all my food into the calorie tracker to see how much fat / calories / fibre etc i was getting each day. I love things like this! Anyway I relaised I have a lot of white carbs and little fibre and protein in my diet, and as weird as it seems I am not eating enough fats or enough calories! So i have gotten all into beans and checkpeas and lentils and low GI stuff and things with "good fats" like avocados and nuts and things. And I am feeling soo much better for it. Much more energy to exercise with each day and already I have lost about 700g in 2 weeks. Ok that doesnt sound like much, but i only have 4kg to loose and I have been trying for 6 months and it hasnt been budging!

Anyway they also have a great recipie section! I made this Sticky Date cake for Travs birthday last week and it went down a treat! Actually pretty tasty and delicious warmed up with a smidge of butter. I made it exactly to the recipie (rare for me! LOL i always like to add my own 'touch' to things)

I also found a tasty-sounding Banana, Apricot and Date muffin recipie but didnt like the fact that it contained 1/2 cup of oil!! Nor did I have low fat vanilla yogurt on hand, or rolled oats, and I didnt like the apricots either LOL :)

SO here is my variation. When made like this, each muffin only has 164 calories; 4.4g of fat; and 1.8g of fibre!

1 cup Self-Raising flour
1/2 cup plain flour
1/2 cup Ground Hazel Meal (Its been sitting in the cupboard for a year so I thought I better finish it off!! This was the rolled oats substitute)
1 3/4 teaspoon Baking Powder
1 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
2 tablespoon Honey
1 egg
1 cup Skim Milk (full cream milk takes the fat content up to about 5g/muffin)
2 medium bananas - Mashed
A handful of pitted dates - chopped

I chucked everything in the bowl all at once and mixed it up. Whacked it in the oven at about 180 degrees for about 15 minutes and thats it. Deeeeelicious!!!!

While I was baking and calorie counting, I whipped up a batch of home made biscuits from my Donna Hay book to take for morning tea at work. I loooove Donna Hay recipies. Anyway I had no real butter so I had to use my reduced fat margarine... and when I entered all the ingredients into calorie king, it only have 1g of fat! LOL I admit the biscuits werent very big, but I didnt feel guilty having one with my morning cuppa :)

Hope everyone has a great weekend!