There have been many temptations along my road to being more healthy and recently I have experienced another one.  Fabrique!

This is a Swedish bakery, based in Stockholm and they recently opened a branch just over the road from the office.   Please move away because I am so weak and I keep being drawn in, like a moth to a bright light.  
    They sell a very limited range of products; sourdough bread a few cakes and biscuit things and ….
 Cinnamon and cardamom buns!!!  I love them ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ Sadly they have no nutritional value apart from squillions of calories as they are loaded with sugar and butter.  I have eaten far too many of these lately and they have added many pounds in extra weight I don’t want.   I don’t want to be eating any animal products either.  They are sweet and buttery, smell cinnamony and are completely irresistible and I dread to think how many I have had recently.  It is so hard to lose weight when you are surrounded by so many temptations and these totally tempt me.  I manage to stick to a vegan diet most of the time but the allure of these has defeated me and I must beat it!

 It hasn’t all been bad eating lately.  I made a chilli in the slow cooker which I thought would be lovely but it was just ok and I threw together a Thai curry I was not expecting much from and it was wonderful.  Life is full of surprises.

The chilli needs work.  I liked the balance of ingredients the flavour needs improving.  The good thing about a slow cooker is you can cook with no fat as you throw in the ingredients, add some liquid like a stock, turn the slow cooker on and then leave it.  We went to watch Spectre and when we came home supper was ready.  

 The best part of this meal was the damson gin which I mixed with soda water as I wanted a long drink, rather than a neat shot.  I made the damson gin 2 years ago and it is very drinkable.  

The cabbage and spinach in red Thai curry sauce was surprisingly tasty and I was only using up leftovers.  For the vegans amongst you, you have to track down a red Thai curry paste which does not contain shrimp or crustaceans of any kind which most brands do but it is possible.

I fried some onion and then added the chopped up Savoy cabbage. I lightly fried it and then added a very heaped tbsp of red Thai curry paste and a can of coconut milk.   Cooked it gently until the cabbage was as soft as I wanted it.

I added a bag of spinach.  
  I simmered it for a couple more minutes until the spinach was just wilted and served it over some quinoa.  I much prefer rice but am trying to eat a varied diet and that includes mixing up my grains.  
 

I cooked a large batch of the chilli and the Thai curry and a large batch of quinoa so I had plenty of easy ready meals in the fridge for us to have after work and school.   Yesterday I called out a heating engineer because occasionally my boiler went out.  Most of the time it worked well and provided heating and hot water but then it would go out and was quite hard to restart.  Unfortunately, the heating engineer broke a part he was cleaning so I was without heating as the temperature took a significant dip.  Fortunately I have a real fire in the lounge and I lit it for the first time this Autumn and enjoyed a simple supper and a glass of wine in front of it.  I had some oat cakes with seaweed and black pepper with humous and tomatoes.  It was actually rather pleasant.

 Have a happy weekend.