Most people choose food based on what they want to eat, and what they ‘feel’ like eating at the time. Personally, I choose food based on things that I ‘feel’ like eating AND things that will fit into my mouth with some measure of decorum! You see, as it turns out, in addition to having tiny feet, tiny hands and tiny ears… I also have a rather small mouth – enough with the tittering from you lot sitting in the cheap seats – something that my dentist reminds me of every time I front up for a check up and can’t go ‘Aaaah!’ enough for him.

As a result I tend to steer away from really large food… I despise the massive two hander burger, have a love hate relationship with kebabs and burritos, and even choose my sushi judiciously based, not so much on ingredients, but rather what I can eat without invariably dropping half of it down my shirt!  Now apparently, when I do attempt to eat large food, I am reliably informed that my eyebrows shoot up as I attempt to enclose the oversized victual with my small jaw… hence the term: Eyebrow Food.

Well, one such prolific vendor of Eyebrow Food is a chain of burger restaurants called Grill’d. They have a wide and varied menu and for the most part their food is very tasty and appears to be much healthier than your run of the mill burger joint.  Only problem is that their burgers are about three inches high!  And I haven’t got a hope in hell of picking up that thing and fitting it in my gob!  🙁  I have in the past actually been forced to whip out a pocket knife and hack a burger into quarters in order to make them more easily consumed.  Long and the short of it is, I rarely go to Grill’d for that reason and for that reason alone, cos basically the food is quite good.  Yeah, it’s a bit pathetic really.

Well, I was in there the other day and it seems I might not be alone… they’ve started providing serrated edged steak knives for those of us who can’t wrap their mouths around their ginormous burgers!  So kudos to Grill’d for providing some knives, I won’t be so reluctant to go back more often now, but thank a bunch for sticking the boot in while you’re at it and commenting that the small of mouth ‘can’t handle’ your wares.

I have one small harmless addiction (well only one, if you don’t count my other addictions, like prescription painkillers, sedatives and a compulsive need for order!).

FROZEN COKES!!!*

Which is one of the weirdest things for someone like me to crave.  Mostly because I don’t generally like sweet things… I do not like cake (mud cake is the worst – sticks to the roof of your mouth), I do not like most biscuits (especially chocolate or cream biscuits), I like very few types of lollies/candy (like Fruit Tingles or raspberry liquorice bullets) and I tend to easily steer clear of sweet ciders, riesling,  moscato and most dessert wines.   I watch people fight or do deals over who gets the last Tim Tam or see kids’ eyes light up over a bowl of Malteesers or look on in amusement at my sister in law’s eyes rolling into the back of her head in ecstasy over a  Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup!  But I just don’t get it.  If I have a bit of chocolate, I’m immediately looking for a glass of water to wash it down. Someone once gave me a box of chocolates for my birthday in January a few years back that stayed in the cupboard until August… sitting there taunting the rest of the family, because they were my ‘birthday chocolates’ and not to be opened by anyone but me!  Something to do with chocolate etiquette?  There’s also a ‘thing’ about eating the last bit of the block apparently…?  But I digress.

Additionally I don’t drink Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero or any of the Pepsi-Cola family.  I also don’t like chocolate, I don’t like coffee and I’ll only reluctantly have a V or similar if I’m in desperate need to wake myself up… so I’m not big on caffeine either.  But every summer or whenever I go on a road trip, I really want Frozen Coke.  Problem is of course, they’re nothing but a pure sugar hit which is something that a chick with PCOS and insulin resistance really should be avoiding where ever possible.

Anyway in an effort to control my abnormal urges, I went and looked up the ‘nutritional information’, and I use the term lightly in regards to these particular products, and was less then impressed at what I found…

McDonalds:
Hungry Jacks:

7 Eleven Cola Slurpee:

So, either way you look at it, it’s all bad.  Sugar, sugar and more sugar, and zero nutrition and I really shouldn’t go anywhere near them.  EVER.  But then I heard about the 7-11 Mango Zilched… which claims to have hardly any sugar in it at all!  And I thought, somewhat skeptically, ‘Awesome! Must try!’  And so we did.  And they weren’t bad but they weren’t great.  They were however, freezing cold and lasted for half an hour thus fulfilling the major requirements of the frozen slushie drink quite adequately.

But, since my Dad passed away from MND in 2007 and lots of studies indicate that excessive consumption of artificial sweetners (especially aspartame) can lead to the onset of diseases like MS and MND, there’s no way I will knowingly consume something that has aspartame in it given I may have a genetic predisposition to such things anyway.  Naturally, I went looking for the nutritional information on the Slurpee website and found nothing… nada… zilch (yeah bad pun, sorry).  Undeterred, I emailed the Slurpee ‘Contact Us’ people to ask them ‘hey what’s in your orangey slurry goo that tastes very little like mango and considerably more like excessively sweet citrusy stuff?’ and I got the following response.

Hey Borys,
Thanks for your question.
The sweeteners contained in the Slurpee Zilched are: 968 – Erythritol; and 955 – Sucralose.  Both sweeteners are commonly found in many diet soft drinks, gums and ice creams available in Australia. Both are approved as safe by Australia’s Food Standards authority.
Hope this helps!
Cheers
Team Slurpee

Why yes, Team Slurpee. Yes it does.  So while no artificial nonsense in your food is best, sucralose and erythiritol are way lesser evils when compared to aspartame and shit like that.  Still, with the bright orange 110 and 102, I wouldn’t go giving it to a kid with known food colouring issues.  So now I feel like I can have my bi-weekly Frozen Slurpee guilt free knowing I’m not going to be assisting the early onset type two diabetes that most PCOS sufferers have to look forward to anyway!  🙂  And with plenty of time to slurp away over the rest of this summer too!

*For the record, I’m still not entirely convinced any Cokes are harmed in the making of said Frozen Cokes and have yet to see any evidence to support actual Coke content.

I really felt like sushi for lunch today.  Mostly because a good deal of it is served cold – salmon, tuna, prawns, avocado, rice – and it’s so damn hot here today.  But usually when I find myself at the sushi train, I find myself ordering the Takoyaki (octopus balls) because they’re really tasty.

But almost as soon as I’m delivered my Takoyaki balls I find myself wondering if they’re like the Japanese equivalent of meat pies. Now, meat pies are a great Aussie tradition, some might even consider them integral to our national cuisine, but unless you’re going to some fancy bakery with a reputation for excellent steak pies… they’re often made up of beef mince consisting of cow left overs – ears, nose, testicles, tail and lord knows what else.

Well, what if Takoyaki balls are the same thing?  Made up from all the left over bits of squid and octopus that the rest of Japanese cuisine has no use for?  Scary thought indeed when you consider the stuff they do have a use for!  When I think of it like that – squid testicles, octopus nose (beak?), tentacle bits, whatever – well, then they don’t sound so appetizing any more.  Most of the time these days it feels like we don’t know what’s in our food, let alone something like this that seems to be made to deliberate obscure of the contents by the time it’s covered in mayo and flavourings.  So I went hunting for some Takoyaki recipes and most of them look something like this:

TAKOYAKI 

Batter
300gms all-purpose flour
3 eggs
1 litre of cold water
3 grams of salt
1/2 teaspoon kombu dashi stock granules
1/2 teaspoon katsuo  dashi stock granules
2 teaspoons soy sauce

Fillings:
cubes of boiled octopus, or your choice of cooked, cubed protein*
sliced green onions
tempura bits or rice krispies
shredded cheese

Toppings:
Japanese mayonaise
Takoyaki sauce (available at Asian grocers)
bonito flakes
aonori powdered seaweed or seaweed strips

Beat eggs and add water and stock granules. Add egg-water mixture to flour and salt. Mix well. Heat up takoyaki pan and oil individual compartments.  Pour batter into compartments, add green onions, protein, tempura bits, or rice krispies and shredded cheese.  When bottom of takoyakis are cook through use a skewer to turn them over. Continue to turn until golden brown.  Serve on plate drizzled with Japanese mayonnaise, takoyaki sauce and generously sprinkle with bonito flakes and aonori.  Be careful, they’ll be hot inside.

You know, I think it’s the ‘your choice of cooked, cubed protein’ that makes my scalp crawl.  Because while they probably mean octopus, shrimp, prawn, chicken etc… what actually ends up in them is a complete mystery!

“…For me it was cheese , slices, wedges, cubes, logs. It was like playing a game of grief tetris that no shape of cheese could fill!”

Some girlfriends of mine came over to do some baking on the weekend… yes I know.  When people think of me they immediately think of the culinary arts (*scoff*) but Girl’s Baking Day it was and we had a ball.  Started out with champagne before breakfast which kinda set the tone for the day.

We made a few things that I’ll get round to posting up over the next few weeks.  But my favourite recipe from the marathon bake off was the Strawberry and Rekorderlig Cider Cupcakes.  And can I just say they were absolutely delicious.  Not too sweet, just a touch of tang from the cider and the lime in the frosting and light and fluffy as all shit.  Highly recommended, big thumbs up from our house!  I am not sure where my friend got the recipe from but I have a copy so I’m going to copy it out here for safe keeping….

Cupcake Mixture
4 eggs
200 gms butter (softened)
600 gms caster sugar
750 gms self-raising flour
250 mls Rekorderlig strawberry-lime cider, about 1/2 a bottle
24 cupcake liners

Cream Frosting
500 gms cream cheese
500 gms icing sugar
1 punnet strawberries for decoration
2 limes

Cupcake mixture method:
Preheat fan-forced oven to 180C
Place butter and caster sugar into mixing bowl and mix on high speed.
Turn down to low speed and add eggs one at a time, until combined – don’t over mix.
Add flour and cider and mix on low then high speed (using spatula is needed).
Put mixture in liners and bake for 15 mins or until cupcakes are “springy” to touch.
Remove cupcakes and let cool.

Cream cheese Icing mixture method:
Place cream cheese and icing sugar into clean, dry mixing bowl.
Mix on low and then max speed until combined.
Add lime juice to taste.
Add some green food dye to get a desired colour.
Pipe onto cold cupcakes and decorate with half a strawberry.

They were absolutely delicious and I bet I’ll be making it them again before too long.  🙂