The fruit shop down the road from us was selling huge punnets of fresh figs for R10. I had some seriously yummy smoothies with apple, banana and fig!
It has been quite tricky with the rather brutal onset of Winter as it is very hard to keep my starch portions down with all the soup being made & eaten. I even made a batch of 'health' rusks (oats, cereal, nuts and seeds - probably not the best combined, but I MISS my rusks!!) ....so I thought I'd share the recipe:
Breakfast rusks
- 230 g margarine (I used butter)
- 400 g sugar (I used half molasses & half brown sugar)
- 3 extra-large eggs
- 50 ml peanut butter (I used cashew butter)
- 5 ml vanilla essence
- 10 ml bicarbonate of soda
- 250 ml milk (I used buttermilk)
- 240 g cake flour (I used half rice flour)
- 10 ml baking powder
- pinch of salt
- 160 g coconut
- 160 g oats
- 120 g breakfast cereal flakes (I used much more - muesli, AllBran & CornFlakes)
- 50 g peanuts, finely chopped (I used pecan nuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, linseeds, sesame seeds, and I also added dried cranberries)
- (and just about anything else you can find in your pantry - raisins - seeds -- nuts -- carob/chocolate -- GO WILD!!)
* Preheat the oven to 180 ºC (350 ºF). Grease one 37 x 13 x 10 cm loaf tin with margarine.
* Cream the margarine and sugar together. Add the eggs one by one, beating well after each addition.
* Add the peanut butter and vanilla essence and mix well.
* Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the milk and add
* Sift the cake flour, baking powder and salt together.
* Add the remaining ingredients, mix and add to the margarine mixture.
* Blend. (Add a little more milk if the dough is too dry.)
* Turn the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for about one hour or until a testing skewer comes out clean when inserted into the centre of the rusk mixture.
* Cool, slice into fingers and dry at 100 ºC (200 ºF).
* Makes about 40 rusks.
I have not lost any more weight.....but I have bought a couple of new pairs of jeans (smaller) and not put on any weight! :)
