Lurgy - free to a good (or even not so good) home...

23rd October 2016

I love sleep.  You forget about pain, problems, stress, everything for a while.

Well for the first time ever Night Nurse didn't keep me asleep the entire night, we went to bed before 7 I may add, but I woke up about 1ish absolutely lousy, in pain from head to foot, covered in sweat, pounding head and touching tonsils - YAY!  I decided to take a couple of ibuprofen and managed to dose back off, woke again and took a couple of paracetamol and finally when back to sleep.  Woke up at 8am and still not good but a damn sight better than I was in the middle of the night thankfully.  So today I shall mostly be resting, I'm not even dressing I don't think.

Lurgy is always worse at night time isn't it, I really enjoyed my meeting yesterday morning despite waking up not feeling great, they always lift me up.  We had a bit of fun, some great results on the scales, Bonnie helped me with my cooking demo and proved she actually can cook quite well, even with an audience, so I now expect her to be impressing me with the foods she's knocking up in her own kitchen.

Here's the recipe we've been making all week, please don't be put off by the amount of ingredients you'll need to buy, you'll make it again and the bags of spices are on offer in Sainsbury's for 50p this week;

Butter Chicken serves 3 sp per serving, 14sp each

180g dried rice 18sp - cook according to instruction

550g chicken breast diced 5sp
5Tbsp Tandoori spice 3sp
1 ½ tbsp can't believe it's not butter light 3sp
5 green cardamom pods lightly crushed
1” cinnamon stick
4 cloves
2 small onions finely chopped I used 3 shallots
1 heaped tbsp grated ginger
1-2 green chillies slit lengthwise
2 tsp paprika
2tsp curry powder (any)
2 tsp garam masala powder
3 tbsp tomato puree 1sp
120ml Elmlea light cream 7sp
5 teaspoons sweet freedom syrup 4sp
1/2 tsp fenugreek leaf powder (Sainsbury's)
Salt to taste
Chopped coriander for garnish

Marinade chopped chicken for few hours in the tandoori spice then oven cook till tender.

Heat a heavy bottom sauce pan and add the butter. Add green cardamom, cinnamon stick and cloves. Fry for 20 seconds, add the onions and sauté for 5-7 mins on medium heat until they take on a light brown colour.

Add the grated ginger and slit green chillies. Fry for a further minutes and add the curry powder, paprika, garam masala powder along with the tomato puree. Stir well and cook for a couple of minutes. Now gradually add the cream stirring continuously to mix all the spices with the cream. Simmer and cook for 2-3 minutes. At this stage add a splash of water if the curry is too thick. Stir in the syrup and the fenugreek powder. Season to taste. Now add the cooked chicken pieces and simmer the curry on a low heat for 8-10 minutes. Garnish with coriander and serve with rice.

It's the one curry I've cooked from scratch at home that I will continue to do regularly, I really like it and I didn't think I would because when I think 'butter chicken' I thought a korma style dish and it isn't at all, it's lush. 

I've not got much of an appetite the last few days with this lurgy and that's the one upside of being poorly, I don't mean the possible weight loss, I mean it makes me realise (as if I needed reminding) that I'm happy to have my love of food and incredible appetite, it makes me who I am and I love being me.  I love that I get passionate and excited about food, eating it, buying it, cooking it, thinking about it.  If a genie had appeared out of the smoke of my pan yesterday (you had to be there) and said one of my wishes could be to take away my weight gain and make me my perfect weight for every more, but this would mean I'd just 'eat' in future, no enjoyment from it, food would be fuel not fun, I'd have turned him down.  Eating is too big a part of my life to take away that pleasure.

On that note, I'm off to get me another mug of tea, plenty of fluids today I thinks.  Hope you've got something enjoyable planned for today, duvet day this end, mmm what's on tele....