This Shabbos is R’s 10th birthday. Happy birthday to him! 

I hadn’t made anything for Shabbos before today, I didn’t even clear up the kitchen particularly yesterday, plus I had half the cleaning help I usually have on a Friday. Considering all that, I think I’ve done fairly well. Yes, I’ve tried biscuit mixture and eaten children’s leftover chicken from their supper, and a kind neighbour just dropped in this (excess from their company who make these yummy chocolates, that is 24x30g chocolate peanuts. Hmm. Best before the end of this month.

You know what, maybe it isn’t as bad as I think, I’ll start writing my food diary and see what I’ve actually done.

Breakfast – Porridge with almond milk 

Snack – 2 freshly hard boiled eggs, irresistible.

“Lunch” 25g peanuts

A brief but brisk walk to the shops for eggs, sugar and wrapping paper – birthday essentials! – and back (5 mins each way)

Several blobs of shortbread mixture. A few crumbs of cooked shortbread. A few spoons of ice cream mixture. (For dessert tomorrow I’ve made a layered shortbread/ice cream/shortbread/ice cream thing. It’s in a round tin, so that makes it a birthday cake, right?

A few pieces of dried mango

Two chicken wings with skin on, half a chicken leg (skin off), maybe a third of a chicken thigh (skin off).

A bag of chocolate peanuts.

I’ve made the most amazing smelling challah this week, one of the children asked me where it was bought from! I take that as a compliment, but it will be hard to resist trying a piece and sticking to my matza.

Tonight’s supper plan – matza, roast chicken, carrots, butternut squash.

I just plucked up the courage to put this into the myFitnessPal app and it reckons that my calories are about 1900kcal for the day.

Oh and my weight this morning was 13st3lb (+1lb) blah.

Tomorrow’s plan –

Breakfast – grape juice, 2 weetabix with almond milk, an orange, I’m going to be realistic and know that I will eat some marshmallows when I give them to the children for Shabbos party. I allow myself 4. But no more and no other nosh.

Lunch – we’ve got guests coming so I’ve made more than I usually do.

Starter – matza (challah?) Gefilte fish, chrayne, salmon, aubergine dip, hummus, carrots (there will be cucumber and tomato out also for everyone else but I don’t like them) (that’s the veg not the people I don’t like!!)

Main – chicken, salad 1 (Spinach, other salad leaves that I don’t know what they are “feldsalat”, sweet potato wedges), salad 2 (beetroot and orange), salad 3 (cabbage, spring onion, cranberries, spritz of oil, sweetener), salad 4 (corn, pomegranate, pickles) Four salads! Blimey!

Dessert – Ice cream biscuit thing, frozen banana, mango and blueberries, mint chocolate

Shalosh seudos – matza, aubergine dip, eggs, salads

I have just been very brave and estimated the calories for tomorrow. I’ll be lucky to be under 2000kcal. That is with ice cream and marshmallows, a chicken leg only at lunch and matza not challah. 

We shall see.

Good Shabbos


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