Cooking Mojo v Huge Butt

The sixth season of The Biggest Loser Australia started last night and, for the first time in its history, I'm planning to not sit on my butt and eat chocolate while I watch it. I want to lose eight kilograms. It was six but Christmas added one kilo and then last week's road trip/bakery run added another. So now it's eight.

Tonight the first episode of My Kitchen Rules is screening on a different channel and I can feel my cooking mojo coming back. So not fair. But I will use my cooking mojo for good not evil and channel it into healthy, weight loss-y type meals.

In an effort to up my activity level I've walked around the block every day for the past five days. The block is 3.3 km's so not too bad an effort. And I'm doing it with a neighbour who fairly bolts along so we're doing it in about 20 minutes. And sweating a bucketload. I think we're just about ready to start doing the block twice.

Now to reduce my meal sizes and get rid of the rubbish. You know, the cookies and cakes that I love. And coke. And chocolate. Always with the chocolate.

Cook, Cook, Cooking

Despite the absolutely revoltingly hot weather we've had over the past few days I've been busy in the kitchen gearing up for back to school and the need to fill lunch-boxes. My girl will be starting full time school this year so three days a week I'll be trying to get lunch boxes sorted for all four of us and the other two days I'll only have three lunches to organise. I know both the kids like variety so I'm trying to come up with a system where they can have sandwiches a couple of days a week and have different kinds of lunches to mix it up a bit.  Since I already bake most weekends I'm just planning to get a wee bit more organised and bake something savoury for the lunchboxes as well as something treat-like that can be popped into the lunchbox a couple of times a week. The biggest challenge will be making sure I can freeze it. The grand-plan is that I'll make sandwiches the days I don't work (and in theory am less rushed in the morning) and grab things from the freezer on the days I do work. That said, it'll still be me directing the lunchbox filling. It won't be a free-for-all choose-what-you-want kinda thing. For one, they're kids so they don't always cope well with lots of choices. For two, my head would explode.

So to get through the first week and give us a bit of surplus to fall back on I've made meatballs, cheese and bacon muffins and our very favourite choc-chip cookies.

I figure the kids will eat two or three meatballs and I'll pack a small container of vegie and cheese sticks to go with them. The muffins can be sliced and buttered - and since they're a bit dry due to a touch of overcooking I think they'll need it - and I'll send some sliced vegies or perhaps some dried fruit to go with them. Add in their drink bottle and a piece of fruit and they're all set.

I have some more ideas and a few recipes put aside but I'd love to hear what you do for school lunches. Got any ideas you want to share?

Gratituesday (a couple of days late!)

I didn't have access to the internet on Tuesday because I was traipsing 'round the countryside on the family road trip so this week's edition of Gratituesday should maybe be called Gratithursday instead.

The thing I'm most grateful for this week is being able to run away and spend time with my family. We had a ball on our short holiday - the kids enjoyed themselves (which was actually the main purpose) and Hubby and I relaxed and enjoyed just being with the kids. Here are a few playground pics of my lot having fun.

 

Road Trip

We just got back from a three day road trip. We (okay, I) decided that we all needed to get out of the house for a couple of day and do some fun stuff so I sweet-talked Hubby into a quick road-trip. We stopped at playgrounds, snacked at bakeries, walked through the forest and saw more dams and weirs than the kids ever wanted to see in their lives. We found camp-sites that we're planning to head back to, tourist-y things that we'll see next time and tried to make sure that we finished off the school holidays with lots of fun. Photos will follow! You've been warned. 

Lovin' The New Barbie

Barbecue that is! Hubby has been perfecting the art of pizza-making in the hooded barbie. I'm torn between telling him how fantastic they are and telling him they're not quite right so he'll keep experimenting and we can eat more yummy pizza.

My favourite - Moroccan Lamb

The kids' favourite - Hawaiian

And a pic I couldn't resist adding - Daddy's girl loving her cheesy pizza.