And, the boring stuff
Now that I'm done my Ganache Day.

Today's weight: 129 pounds.

Meal one, 1/3 cup barley, protein shake, ground cloves, blueberries, one peach, coffee.

Meal two, 5 ounces sweet potato, can tuna, garden salsa, two teaspoons Parmesan.

Meal three, Romaine, grape tomatoes, cup of green beans, half cup chickpeas, jalapenos, three ounces chicken, capers, creamy tofu-mayo dressing.

Meal four, pumpkin ryecake, Jello pudding for the top.

Oh, and I must share my stupid moment. Remember my corn, which I discussed some moons ago? I bought corn plasters for it... was sticking them on... they seemed to relieve the pain but not much else. Well, I figured out why. I was going to throw out the plastic envelope they came in, when I noticed it seemed sort of stiff. There, inside, little black-rubber discs on another sheet of shiny paper! I'd been sticking just the adhesive thingies on my corn, without the Active Ingredient!

So I tried that. Well. The corn is giving way, distinctly. In fact, it looks almost like it might lift off like a little hat when it's ready. Yeck.

And I ran this morning, for 35 minutes, in the rain.

Cakewalk
Driving home from the picnic on Saturday, I happened to mention to A. (he came along too, and was a servant, holding gloves and mantles for the Hon. Gents.) that it was my mother's seventieth birthday this coming weekend.

"You should drive up for her birthday," he said, which struck me as a decent wheeze.

"I could," I said. "I could call my brother, and he could come too. You wouldn't come?"

"No, it's my mom's birthday too, remember, and who would look after the dog?" (His mother's birthday is the day before mine, and my parents' cat is too old and infirm to put up with a rambunctious dog.) "Plus, I could get some more work done on the bathroom." (Ah, the bathroom! Soldering and plumbing has been ongoing, and frustrating. First, the cold water pipe sprang a leak two days after A. and his friend installed it. Then, when the friend came over yesterday to try and fix the leak, the fixture broke. Yes, the expensive, Victorian-style faucet set purchased years ago (when we first knew we'd need to redo the bathroom one day) cracked irreparably, and it's much too late now to ask about warranties; they would laugh.)

I called my brother that very evening, and he thought it was a splendid idea. Then, knowing my mother, I thought it best not to spring it on her. I called her Saturday, brought her up to date on my lavatory woes, and then asked if she was doing anything special for her birthday.

"Special? No! Why would I want to do that?"

So she would not object if my brother and I showed up on the doorstep Friday night?

"What? But I was going to have a nice peaceful birthday, watch the American Open, order pizza -- now I have to clean the house, cook, make a cake --"

"No you don't. Order pizza, the house is fine, I'll bake a cake and bring it."

"What! You can't do that!"

"Course I can. I'll freeze it."

"What kind of cake?"

"I thought maybe an Opera, or a Prinzregententorte."

"That won't freeze! Anyway, you're not going to bring that all the way in the car."

"Course it'll freeze. All those fancy cakes they sell in stores, all frozen at some point. No problem. I'll pack it up frozen, it'll be fine."

"I hope it's going to be a real cake. With butter."

"I'll use my Dr. Oetker recipe. Same as yours."

"Well, it won't make as many layers as they say."

It did, though. In fact, it made nine. I called my mother again, to tell her that the cake had been successfully made and installed in the freezer to get solid, and she didn't believe me. She had to get her book, compare recipes... "I don't know how you got nine! I never get enough batter!" The recipes were identical.

Then I told her I'd decorated it with buttercream.

"What! That's not a real Prinzregententorte! It never has anything on the outside! Just the chocolate."

(I've found a multitude of recipes, just looking around, including one with apricot jam in it -- "They never have jam in them, either.") But I post a picture, herewith, from my Dr. Oetker cookbook, with buttercream decorations. Just to show that this wasn't purely my iconoclastic impulses ruining a traditional torte. Because there is only ever one right way of doing something, even something as susceptible to evolution and alteration as a cake recipe. Forsooth, even the famed Sachertorte is disputed.

Prince Regent Cake
Oetker German Home Baking, p. 25
Cake mixture
250g butter or margarine
250g sugar
1 packet Oetker Vanillin Sugar
4 eggs
a pinch of salt
200g plain flour
50g Oetker Gustin (corn starch powder)
1 level tsp. (3g) Oetker Baking Powder Backin

Butter Cream Filling:
1 packet Oetker Gala Chocolate Pudding Powder
1 level tsp. cocoa
100g sugar
5 tbsp cold milk
50g coconut butter (optional)
3/4 pt/ 425ccm milk
250g butter or margarine

Icing:
150g icing sugar
3 level tbsp cocoa
2-3 tbsp hot water
20g butter or coconut butter, melted

For the cake mixture, cream the fat and add to it the sugar, vanillin sugar, eggs and salt. Mix and sieve together the flour, Gustin and Backin and add to the creamed ingredients, a tablespoon at a time. Bake 8 separate layers out of the mixture. Spread almost 2 tbsp of mixture each time on the base of a well greased round cake tin (with removable rim and of 10? in. diameter). Take care that the mixture is not too thin near the edge as it might become brown. Bake each layer without the cake tin rim until golden. Cool each layer on a cake wire after baking.
Oven: moderately hot.
Baking time: about 8-10 minutes.
For the filling, blend the pudding powder, cocoa, and the sugar with the 5 tbsp. milk. Bring the 3/4 pt. milk to the boil, remove from heat, stir in the pudding powder mixture and bring to the boil once more, stirring all the time. If coconut butter is used, add this to the hot pudding. Set aside to cool, stirring frequently to prevent a skin forming.
Cream the fat and beat in the cold pudding gradually (take care that neither pudding nor fat are too cool or the butter cream may curdle). Spread each layer with the filling and place on top of one another to build the cake, the top layer being without filling.
For the icing, sieve the icing sugar with the cocoa and add sufficient hot water to give a good coating consistency. Add the hot fat and ice the cake.

Notes: I used 2 tablespoons vanilla sugar, since I don't have packets, but a jar of sugar and vanilla beans, and that sounded good to me. I also used arrowroot in place of the cornstarch, since I had used all my cornstarch making the pudding for the filling mere moments before. (And a good thing too. Labour Day, no place to buy cornstarch, and while you can interchange one for the other pretty freely in a cake or cookie, an arrowroot custard is quite a different -- and worse -- thing from a cornstarch one.

The instructions are, to my mind, a little sparse. I creamed the butter, added the sugar, and creamed all together for three minutes. Then the eggs, one at a time, creaming between each addition, and the flour as noted, a tablespoon at a time. There was lots of batter.

Their instructions to use 2 tablespoons of mixture at a time are cracked; I used not quite a quarter cup. Spread it out just like peanut butter right across the base of my 10" springform. Once I got the hang of it, it was easy, and after the first couple, I figured how to release them, too, so that I could flip the thing, plop it down on waxed paper on the cake rack, and the disk of cake would fall right out. What they call a "moderately hot" oven, by the way, is "340?-390?F", which of course is the standard 350?.

I didn't use the filling or frosting instructions at all; I used the custard buttercream recipe out of The Village Baker's Wife, by Gayle and Joe Ortiz. Only I added 3 tablespoons Valrhona cocoa and 4 ounces grated chocolate to the custard. For the icing, a simple chocolate ganache: 8 ounces of semi-sweet Lindt, 3/4 of a cup of heavy cream, and 2 tablespoons of corn syrup because I intended to freeze the stuff.

It went together like anything, very pretty. I sprinkled the top with gold-leaf dust, piped on my sacreligious buttercream curls, and wedged an extra-thin Lindt chocolate square into each one -- so it's quite like the picture. I hope it doesn't get squished in the wrapping! I'll buy a cake-box for it tonight.

I hope my mother likes it. Well, I hope she enjoys it. It's quite conceivable that the more things she can find wrong with it, the more she will enjoy it, in a way...

Officially canning it
No show in November. I decided Saturday.

Saying "this isn't fun any more" doesn't even begin to convey the degree of not-funness this project had achieved. There I was, putting all of my time, energy and life into something that was accomplishing very few results, feeling like a horrible, lousy failure every single morning, doing mostly everything right and getting jack-all for it -- it was an exercise in frustration and futility.

On Saturday, I went to the annual Trevelyan Memorial Picnic hosted by The Company of Cavalier Gentlemen, a seventeenth century Royalist recreation society. I was a gypsy (I absolutely must make myself a seventeenth century gown; I've been to a few of these events now, and I'm embarrassed by my anyhow conglomerations of vaguely-romantic non-period clothing). My food, of course, was much better than my clothing; I made a nice authentic seed-cake and a batch of mince-tarts -- mincemeat, that is. I used vegetarian ground round, though (mostly because the picnic is outside, and I don't like the thought of genuine meat products sitting about for any longer than necessary in the hot sun -- authentic food-poisoning is taking things a bit too far, I think).

Having made my momentous decision, I ate of the authentic food, too. And yesterday, I had a healthy breakfast, and then lived most of the rest of the day on chocolate buttercream, cake trimmings and ganache.

But that will not be the lasting pattern. I'll carry on with the workout routine, since it seems to be effective, and try to eat pretty much within decent parameters of healthy proteins and carbs, and a dash of John Berardi's Massive Eating. I'd still like to get my bodyfat down a bit more, and muscle up, but enough with this killing contest goal.

For future reference
How to Write a Best-Selling Fantasy Novel.

Because I will, one day, you know.

And this will remind me of what not to do so that I don't annoy my own self pissless.

"Note: All fantasy worlds are roughly square. i.e. the shape of the double page of a paperback."

Jeudi
Eaten yesterday:
four, 3 ounces chicken cooked up fajita-style with onion, garlic, frozen bell pepper bits and cumin, over Romaine, with some green salsa; 4 tablespoons 8-grain cereal with English Toffee sugar-free syrup and vanilla s-f pudding mix with soymilk on top (very good!). Green tea.

five, 6 ounces broccoli with garlic juice and sundried tomato sprinkles; 2 ounces soy pasta done up faux carbonara style, with some tofu cream diluted with soymilk, some nutritional yeast, parsley flakes, and a tablespoon veggie bacon bits. Also 2 teaspoons real Parmesan. Swoon. One-quarter cup pumpkin mixed with butterscotch sugar-free pudding, cinnamon, nutmeg and hot water for sweet. Green tea.

six (post-run), one cup Kashi Crunch with protein shake mixed thick with a quarter-cup of soymilk and some almond extract.

Also a small mid-afternoon cheat of a half-cup of Fibre One, an Ontario plum (A. bought a box of these, and they've been taunting me in the fridge for two days. Worth it!), and several tablespoons salsa eaten straight from the jar. Sigh, but certainly not anything to cry over.

I did an ab workout (pretty much the same as the one two days ago, but with more weight and a superset).

Superset:
Weighted Swiss ball crunch
45lb DB 3x15

Twisting Swiss ball crunch
b/w 3x12/side

Single set:
V-ups on bench
b/w x10
(I saw these in a magazine, and thought I'd try 'em. They don't seem to hit the abs at all, and my hip flexors get enough strain, thank you.)

Reverse crunches, on bench
b/w 3x10

At 8 o'clock, I went out for a nice long run (52 minutes). It was a lovely night for it -- probably one of the last few we'll get this year, judging by the rest of this so-called summer. Clear dark blue air, full of cricketsong; the gentle evening breeze carrying the smells of balsam of Peru, late flowers, cedar mulch and the occasional whiff of scorching steak; mellow temperature, neither hot nor unpleasantly cool.

I didn't see much of any human activity going out. Starting into the return half of the loop, I passed, going the other way:
4 pedestrians,
3 in-line skaters,
1 cyclist,
all of them busily yattering on their cellphones. Now, it is possible that they were sharing the beauties of the evening with unfortunate housebound friends, but somehow I doubt it.

Then, in the park, I ran past a couple holding hands. The girl? On her cellphone.

I should give up my job, and take up wandering the streets with a sign, "The End of the World is at Hand." I can hardly miss, can I? At the very least, our "civilisation" has clearly just about run its course. Ancient Rome? A model of clearheaded reasonable living by comparison.

Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Stayin' alive!
Oo, yes. I've got the worst sort of earworm in my head this morning. Why is it that when this happens, it's always some stupid song that you only know about five lines to, rather than, say, a Kate Bush or Ani song you could take all the way through? The same five dreadful lines playing an endless loop through the audio.

Today's weight: 127 pounds. Temperature: 97.1?F.

Ran this morning for 27 minutes. It hurt a lot, and there were many rabbits on the rail trail.

I also noted that our twin cities appear to be trying to perform some sort of Siamese twin separation operation. Most of the main roads right round the boundary have been blocked for most of the summer due to various sorts of construction, but there was one that was open (after being closed all winter as they rebuilt the railway bridge and the section of road under it). I ran up it this morning. It's closed again, and mostly a large gravel pit -- within spitting distance of the part they rebuilt not months ago. Yeah. Someone in the City "planning" department is certainly on the job...

Food o' the day thus far:
one, 1/3 cup barley, almond extract, sugar-free apricot jam, bit of butter sprinkles; cup egg substitute with That Sauce; green tea.

two, 2 cups green beans, ounce grape tomatoes, 3 ounces chicken, teaspoon Dijon, splash balsamic vinegar, thyme, hot sauce, teaspoon Udo's.

three, Romaine, red bell pepper, more balsamic vinegar with some capers in it; pumpkin ryecake, Jello fudge pudding powder with 2 tablespoons tofu cream.

And coffee, very shortly.

Not Wednesday
It seems I told everyone via my phone message that yesterday was Tuesday.

This is the fault of my sophisticated European Dubout cat calendar. In which the week starts on Monday, in French, rather than on Sunday. I know, of course, the French names for the days of the week, but not in the automatic fashion in which I recognise the English ones. So the "third day over" still always looks like Tuesday to me.

But today is Thursday. Ingrid's day (St. Ingrid?) according to the calendar. Good. That means tomorrow is Friday.

Today's weight: 127.5 pounds. Temperature: 97.4?F.

A. and I did a brisk walk of thirty minutes or so; he didn't want to run because he felt dyspeptic. There's been a water warning for the area just immediately south and east of us (where they're doing a great deal of road construction, which has stirred up bacteria) so we've been boiling our drinking water (we're out of bottled, and can't at the moment afford more). He, of course, blames the water. He drank a lot before I told him about the news article. I suspect it may have more to do with the fact that he's been hard at work on the bathroom, and has, therefore, eaten nothing but crap for the past three or four days -- large amounts of it.

Today is a higher-carb day for me. Eaten, or planned, thus far:
one, 3 oz chicken with bacony flavour goodness; 1/3 cup buckwheat pancake mix with 2 tablespoons egg sub, 1/4 cup soymilk, eaten with 2 tablespoons sugar-free jam, 2 tablespoons (or so) tofu cream, a bit of sugar-free pancake syrup on the ones with no jam. Coffee (tsk!) with just a small spoonful sugar-free vanilla coffee mix in it (tsk! tsk!).

two, pumpkin ryecake with chocolate Jello pudding mix (mixed up with more tofu cream).

three, 1.5 cups green beans, 1 ounce grape tomatoes, with balsamic vinegar, savoury, garlic; 2 slices Ezekiel bread, can of tuna, 2 tablespoons Pindjur.

Heigh-ho.

Better than it threatened
Yesterday, that is. I dragged myself to the dungeon after work full of fear and trepidation, but as it turned out, it was not so bad.

Back and Triceps
Still Rep Range week; tempo 212, rest 90 seconds.

CG Pulldown
WU 25lbs x8
Work 77.5lbs x8, 8
Notes: Boosted the weight 2.5lbs from last time, but it seems I could've been bolder.

WG Cable Row
WU 25lbs x8
Work 72.5lbs x10, 10
Notes: Made the 10, but only just. Again, weight boost.

DB Row on Incline Bench
WU 15lb DB x8
Work 37.5lb DB x12, sort of 12
Notes: Yep, last rep or two a bit pushed.

Weighted Bench Dip
WU b/w x8
Work 37.5lb DB in lap x8, 8
Notes: These really hurt my left wrist today for some reason.

Cable Pushdown w/rope attachment
WU 10lb x8
Work 25lb x9, 9
Notes: Oof.

Tricep Kickback
WU 5lb DB R8/L8
Work 17.5lb DB xL12/R12, R12/L12
Notes: Barely made the reps -- NOT time for more weight.

I followed this with 20 minutes on the rowing machine (to make matters perfectly clear to the back -- yuk). Later in the evening, I did 30 minutes on the stepper.

Food:
four, zucchini pancakes -- 7 oz zucchini, 2 tablespoons soy protein; 3 oz chicken; 2 tablespoons Pindjur; 2 servings lime Jello.

five, salad with Romaine, 3 oz red pepper, tablespoon water chestnuts, 3 oz shrimp, dressing of garlic-black bean paste, ginger juice and rice vinegar; goo of 2 tablespoons protein powder, Jello pudding mix, flax fibre, tablespoon almond butter, dusting slivered almonds. Herb tea.

"Goin' down! Mayday! Mayday!"
Today's weight: 128.5 pounds. Temperature: 96.8?F.

Yep, that's how I'm feeling. Lousy, in pain, and horrid, all the way through.

'Course, I was bemoaning my fate this morning, thinking I was being unjustly punished, starving, feeling dreadful, and still fat -- but I'd forgotten Sunday, hadn't I? Nothing unjust about it. Consequences of fuckup.

Apparently I slept through no less than three snooze alarms this morning, as I found out when I indignantly asked A. why he turned the alarm off instead of turning on the snooze as I'd asked. Then slept some more -- no cardio for me. I was late as it was, just preparing my three meals.

one, 4 tablespoons 8-grain cereal, vanilla s/f syrup, tablespoon black raspberry s/f jam; cup egg sub with green salsa; green tea.

two, frittata with cup egg sub, cup spaghetti squash, the usual seasonings and tablespoon flax seed, two tablespoons tofu cream, s/f pancake syrup.

three, salad with Romaine, handful grape tomatoes, a roasted pepper, balsamic vinegar-mustard dressing; other pumpkin ryecake with pumpkin-Jello goo to put on top.

I feel like hell. Somehow, I must kick myself into a back and tricep workout tonight, plus a nice, long, painful cardio session. Yek. I've also got to clean the cat litter -- it's revolting.

All I want to do is go to bed, for a couple of days if possible. I'm tired of everything, including life, at the moment.

And our laptop is still dead. The tech at Radio Shack has been trying to get it, sort of, running enough to save some of our data -- I don't think he believed me, that the hard drive was truly farked, thought it was just a Silly Person software problem. Now, two days of frustration later, I think he's convinced.

Tuesday, flushed
Yesterday, I did not do my arm workout. All day long, my body felt progressively more like crap, until by the time I got home from work I was so stiff, and in so much pain all over, that I was moving like Marvin the Paranoid Android on a bad day, and just about as bitchy.

I did do forty minutes on the stepper, though. A. had rented The Enemy at the Gates, and I watched that -- though it did not grip me sufficiently to keep me for the rest of it.

What I ate:
four, pumpkin rye-and-whites cake (like the oatcake, but with flakes of rye) with pumpkin-Jello pudding goo; cup of green beans with dill and butter sprinkles;

five, 7 oz zucchini grated, mixed with 2 tablespoons soy protein, cooked into cakes; 2.75 oz chicken with a tablespoon That Sauce; Jello pudding powder, flax fibre, a tablespoon almond butter mixed to goo with soymilk, topped with a dusting of slivered almonds. Tea.

Then I went to bed, quite early, and read for a while, Brenda Ueland's If You Want to Write. I've had this book for a few years, and sort of forgotten about it (been prowling through all of my writercraft books lately, which I hope means I'm due for a Burst of Creative Energy). It's much lauded, most places, as being terribly inspiring and motivating and all those wonderful things.

Unfortunately, she simply pisses me off. "Everyone can write. Everyone has an authentic voice." Bla-de-bla. Her anecdotes about her little working-class students finding their true inner voices, all simple and honestly perceived, seem horridly patronising to me (or would that be matronising?). All the way through, I kept finding myself asking, "and just who are you, Brenda, to be confidently assuring me of this, with your smug little affirmations?" Besides a friend of Carl Sandburg of course, which she tells us several times.

I stuck it on top of the Books to Sell pile this morning. Bleah.