Monday, March 21, 2011

Very belated health update (and cheesecake photo - no recipe though)

I've just discovered I've had this post sitting in draft since mid-Feb. I didn't post it straight away because I was waiting to upload a photo to go with it, and then it just got lost, and the cheesecake was not fantastic... so no recipe... anyway, excuses, excuses. I have been meaning to post a health update, and this sets some context, so I figured I'd post it now, and the cheesecake photo is pretty cool: 

Wow, it's been almost a month since I last posted. Life has been pretty hectic and I haven't had a Friday at home since... not sure... until today anyway. First there was Tora Week, a week of crazy amounts of karate, getting too little sleep and generally torturing ourselves. I was a bit stressed about being on SCD for the week (see my previous post) and went a bit overboard with the planning. I took good morning breakfast bars from the cccibs cookbook, magic lemon bars from Straight into Bed Cakefree and Dried, and my larabar themed energy bars.

I had been studiously avoid nuts in the leadup to the week, trying to get some post Christmas symptoms under control. But at the first sign of nuts, I started bleeding again. After a brief panic and then realising that there was no pain and no D, I figured I'd live. I needed the nuts and honey to make it through the week, so I wasn't giving them up unless there was no alternative. Fortunately, after a couple of days, my colon got over its initial shock and calmed down, and once I worked out that I needed 6-7 serves of vegies for dinner to keep my energy levels up, I coped pretty well.

All in all, the week was pretty good. I learned a lot, got a bit fitter and stronger, and our club now has another black belt. Since then, it has been work, lots and lots of work. I had to work one Friday for a sick day I took earlier in the year (yes, I'm a public servant and ran out of sick leave. But at least I have another years worth now - fingers crossed it lasts me a year. Do not want another one like 2010).

I did get to have today off though, which was good because I managed to capture the energy and enthusiasm of Tora Week before it wore off, and decided I'm going to go the the gym and do some karate every Friday morning, and actually did it too.

Then I came home to try out a cheesecake idea that I've been mulling over for a couple of days. White chocolate and raspberry. It's inspired by a cheesecake from what was my favourite patisserie in Canberra pre-SCD, which does a few really excellent chocolaty desserts. While most of them are far out of reach (chocolate ot being permitted on the diet), I have been considering that a white chocolate version using cocoa butter may be possible.

The risk with such things is that the flavour of the SCD yoghurt will overpower the more subtle flavours that one is trying to infuse into dishes, and all you can taste is yoghurt tang. So I started by adding some melted cocoa butter to some sweetened yoghurt to test whether it could pass a chocolaty, and it did, so I decided to give it a try. It's a mixture of a few recipes, some for SCD cheesecake and some for regular white chocolate cheesecake - I hope it has worked. It's still in the oven cooling down, so I can't give a verdict yet, but can verify that the batter was really tasty.

I leave you for now with a photograph from before it went in the oven.



I promise a recipe soon, all going to plan.

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