One of the reasons my diet has been so successful (54lb lost to date) is that it allows me to indulge in hearty breakfasts. I hate being hungry and the reason so many of my previous attempts to lose weight have failed is because I hadn’t been able to resist the impulse to stuff my face.

With this diet (ostensibly the Slimming World green day’s plan, but I don’t go to any meetings) I’m allowed to eat as much as I like, but only of certain things.

While I miss bread, crisps, and to a lesser extent meat, I certainly can’t complain about the results. And I am allowed to eat as much egg, baked beans, and mushrooms as I like: a perfect recipe for a faux full English breakfast.

So every morning, providing I have enough time, I cook myself a fry up. And to complement it I garnish it with liberal lashings of my own home made spicy tomato ketchup, the recipe for which I give you now. Be warned, it’s strong enough to remove the skin from the roof of your mouth.

Ingredients

1 finely chopped onion
2 crushed garlic cloves
2 x 400g cans of chopped tomatoes
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp celery salt
2 tsp English mustard powder
2 tsp ground white pepper
2 tsp paprika
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp oregano
2 tsp cayenne pepper
4 tbsp artificial sweetner
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce (leave this out if you want to go veggie)
9 fl oz red wine vinigar

Method

Bung it all in a big pan and simmer for about 40 minutes. Then stick it in a food processor and blend it until smooth. Transfer to a sealable bottle or jar and then Bob’s your uncle.

If you can’t find any of the ingredients (I’m thinking mainly of English mustard here as I know that can be scarce in the States) then just leave them out. But whatever you do don’t mistake tsp for tbsp. I did that the second time I made it and it didn’t taste too good.

Apparently you can keep it for three weeks in the fridge, but I personally think it’ll probably last a bit longer than that. I triple all the measurements and then stick bottles of it in the freezer as I’ve been getting through quite a bit of it recently.

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As I’ve mentioned previously, I recently dusted down my guitar and have started learning to play again. I am by no means any good at it, but I can give you a damn fine rendition of Home on the Range providing you don’t mind me stopping for five minutes between chord changes while I work out where my fingers go.

Evan regards the guitar as just another letterbox to slot random objects into. Therefore not only does it function as a stringed instrument, but I can also use it as a rattle.

Not that I get to play it that often when he’s around anyway. Every time I pick it up he rushes over and puts his hand flat on the strings.

“Stop please Daddy.” he implores me with tears in his eyes. “Stop.”

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Our council is currently offering to put in free roof insulation for every house in the district. Which on the face of it is a fantastic offer, and when we heard about it we signed up to it immediately. We have a bit of lagging up in the attic already, but the man from the council told us that they could bung a couple of inches on top of it if we liked.

Unfortunately he then pointed out that in order to do that then we would have to clear all the crap out of the attic first. Suddenly the whole prospect became much less appealing.

While we have recently made moves to render our house fit for human habitation, the attic remains a horrendously chaotic jumble of baby toys, dead electrical equipment, and piles of Kerry’s wedding photography. Occasionally the hatch is opened in order that we can hurl yet another peice of debris onto the pile, but generally the place is treated like a no-mans-land where no mortal dares to tread.

To Amy of course it is a secret repository of toys; where, if she pesters hard enough, she is allowed to venture in order to gather long forgotten teddies, rattles, and baby books which both she and Evan have theoretically grown out of.

I had cause to go up there this afternoon on a hunt for a desk spotlight that I could use to replicate Clair’s rather wonderful photography. Unfortunately I couldn’t find one, but I did take a few photo’s whilst I was up there. Most of which were rubbish, but i was relatively pleased with this one.

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The sun was casting a beautiful light on this tractor as I took Amy to school this morning. Unfortunately I completely failed to do it justice. Still, it’s all I’ve got at the moment so it’ll have to do.

I could of course have taken a photo of the big poo Evan did in his potty this morning – his first ever potty poo no less. But I thought those of you with more delicate sensibilities might not have appreciated it.

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This morning as I was scraping up Coco Pops from the living room carpet I heard a shriek from over near the window. Half expecting to see Evan hanging from Amy’s ear lobes or some other ingenious form of torture going on I went over to investigate. To my surprise the screaming wasn’t down to my children engaging in the age old tradition of fratricide; but was caused by the rather exciting spectacle of the ground outside being covered in snow.

It wasn’t entirely unexpected however as snow has been forecast for the past few days. Unfortunately the council must not have been watching the same weather reports as me as they hadn’t bothered gritting the roads. Consequently getting Amy and Evan to school and nursery was a bit of a nightmare, but I managed it eventually and then headed out the door with the camera to get some winter worderland shots of the area behind our house.

Looking at Yahoo weather it’s been snowing where our friends Greg and Deb live too. Cheer up Deb, just another five months until spring.

You can see the rest of my snow pictures here.

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