August 26 - Planning Ahead

  I woke up and finished yesterday's blog while Mr Smart slept on and then got ready for the day ahead.  I didn't have breakfast straight away because I felt like something a bit different.  I showered, dressed and drove Mr Smart home.  On the way back home I stopped in at the Glen and went to the restaurant in David Jones.  I sat down, ordered myself a cooked breakfast and enjoyed the liberating feeling of eating out by myself.  I've only really done it once before, it was less daunting the second time around.

  I enjoyed the Vegetarian Breakfast which includes scrambled eggs on buttered sourdough toast, a grilled half tomato, rosemary fried mushrooms, wilted spinach and onion jam.  Also, I added bacon because everything is better with bacon.  I also had a big calcium fix, an iced coffee.  I remembered to say "no icecream, no cream" this time so it was just 600ml (approx) of delicious cold milky coffee.  Yummy!
  After breakfast I pootled down to the other end of the shopping centre to Woolies and got some ingredients for making soup and some supplies for the week ahead.  I did pretty well budget-wise and got out my remaining weekly self-allowance for the week.  This month, for once, knock on wood (tap tap tap) I am running on budget!  I was slightly annoyed that they didn't have any Kent pumpkin, I had to resort to Butternut which I generally find a bit bland but never mind.
  It was a really lovely day today so when I go home I opened all the windows and gave the house a good airing.  I left everything open until it started to get cool again later on.  I got a load of dishes underway, swept the bathroom and put out new bath mats then started my soup making!  Today's Soup: Pumpkin & Carrot
  I took 1.65kg of peeled Butternut pumpkin, chopped it into medium-large chunks and put them on oven trays lined with baking paper.  I added two small quartered onions and two smashed cloves of garlic.  That all went into the oven at 170°C for an hour.  While that was roasting away I put 500ml of chicken stock into my big non-stick pasta pot and added four finely sliced carrots and a little big of grated ginger (maybe a teaspoonful).  I slowly cooked that until the carrot was disintegrating then took it off the heat.  I had a medium mostly unripe banana around this time for afternoon tea/lunch.
  My dishes were done by this time so I dried and laid them away and got some laundry underway.  Woohoo.. the thrilling life I lead when I'm on my own!  Actually, I don't mind having a day set aside to do chores and pre-cooking etc. and the thought occurred that I need to do better planning out of my eating.  So I created a weekly planner!  I will try to follow it as best I can and refer to it each night so that I don't forget what things I need to do or buy the following day.  Any suggestions for improvement would be appreciated.

For August 27th to September 2nd

It's not a hard and fast plan, just a guide to help keep me on track.  Hopefully it will help me to eliminate those nights where I don't know what to make for dinner, and remind me to be good when I know I have something 'naughty' coming up later in the week.  It will also hopefully help me plan not to try to do too much in any one week.
Now, back to soup making!
  After one hour of cooking I checked the pumpkin and turned it.  I removed the onions and added them to the stock/carrot mixture then put the pumpkin back in the oven for another hour.  More laundry, more working on my planner and thinking about buying a kindle.
  Once the pumpkin was finished cooking it went into the pot with the carrots etc. and my stick mixer got a work out!  Another reason I don't like Butternut pumpkin so much is that when you roast it, it seems to get a kind of skin on it like sweet potato does.  Just as I'd finished giving it the first round of whizzing, I got a call from Gub.  She was giving me her flight details for December!  Can't wait to see her!  But back to whizzing.  I put the pot back on the heat and gradually added another litre of chicken stock and brought it almost to the boil before serving.  This still made a pretty thick soup and a lot of serves, eight to be exact (one of the containers has two serves in it)!

  So dinner was one bowl of homemade Pumpkin and Carrot soup with two slices of toasted Bürgen Wholemeal & Seeds bread thinly spread with butter.  I had also prepared 500g strawberries sprinkled with one level dessertspoonful of white sugar but I've decided to save them until Tuesday night so that I could share them with Bertie and my nephew.
  So that's it for today, I'm going to weigh myself tomorrow morning so I'm hoping that will be evidence of the mostly good week I've had.  I will let you all know tomorrow.
  Jess