What you’ll need:

Breadmaker
300g strong white bread flour
1/2tspn fast action dried yeast
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tspn salt
170mls water
Several cloves of garlic
Rather a lot of butter
Jar of pizza sauce
Grated mozzarella

What to do:

1) Put the yeast, flour, olive oil, salt and water (yeast first) into the breadmaker and choose the pizza dough setting

2) While the breadmaker is doing it’s thing, crush the garlic gloves into a dish of slightly softened butter and squish together (or use a fork, it’s really up to you!) until you have garlic butter

3) Transfer dough onto a floured surface, knead for a bit, and the roll out to make a pizza shape – transfer this to a lightly greased baking tray

4) Spread the garlic butter over the pizza dough, spread pizza sauce over that, and then sprinkle the grated mozzarella over that.

5) Bake in a pre-heated oven for about 15 mins at 200°C (180°C fan), or until the cheese is melted and golden and the dough is just starting to brown at the edges

6) Serve with whatever you feel like

I can see clearly now my specs are on

I can see clearly now my specs are on,
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone is the blurriness of being blind
It’s gonna be alright (right), alright (right) -
I see the way!

I think I can make it now, the headache’s gone
All of the missing things have reappeared
It’s the prescription I’ve been prayin’ for
It’s gonna be alright (right), alright (right) -
I see the way!

Looked all around, was nothin’ but fuzzy lines
Looked straight ahead, nothin’ but fuzzy lines

I can see clearly now my specs are on,
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone is the blurriness of being blind
It’s gonna be alright (right), alright (right) -
I see the way!

© Catherine Smith

To be fair, I coped pretty well with the punchy and kicky bits – what got me was the evilness of tacking the plank followed by something called the Iron Cross (easily the most hellish variation on the situp concept I’ve ever experienced) onto the end of them, although I did experience a very brief moment of joy at the thought that situps would at least mean sitting down for a bit.

I should probably clarify at this juncture that I do quite enjoy Body Combat, albeit not as much as Zumba which has more Cath-compatible music, more dancing and less situp-ing. I just find I often enjoy it a lot more once I’ve done it!

I have to say, I like the usual instructor lady; I like her routines and the pace of the class, and I like the mix of songs she uses, not to mention the fact that she prefers to keep the lights on. Having said that, I did enjoy having a different instructor for a change this evening – it made for a refreshing, not to mention fun, change having some new routines to try, some new songs to listen to, and a different Zumba style to try and adapt to. I was also rather pleased to see how quickly I was able to pick up some of the routines compared to the me of about five months ago going to her first session – it’s almost as if doing something often enough makes you better at it…!

Anywho, this evening I found myself in the, of late, rare position of having energy upon finishing work so thought I’d take advantage and head to Zumba. Functioning me? Check. Functioning Zumba class? Not so much check. Grrr.

This year, I thought I’d enter this to see if it fared any better…. it beat a field of roughly a dozen entries in a competition held where I work after all; why not an American, internationally acclaimed contest for people who do this sort of thing a lot better than I do and enter in their thousands from all over the world? Stranger things have happened – I now look forward to Mondays, for example… I’d just rather they followed somewhat longer weekends

I love singing – I sing everywhere: in the shower, in the car, in the kitchen, you name it. I was in my school choir, then I was in my university’s gospel choir and then, apart from a brief spell in my local community choir, I was bereft of choir-iness, specifically of the funky,  fun, upbeat kind. Now, thanks to an amazing company called Sing and Inspire and the lovely people who work there and come into our office every Monday lunchtime, I have the afore-mentioned funky, fun, upbeat choir I was after! I was listening to Radio 2 the other day and two songs from our set list came on in a row – now that’s what I’m talking about!

Seriously, any bosses or office managers reading this, if you haven’t got one, get one – they make employees like me very happy indeed

What you’ll need to make two whopping burgers:

500g decent steak mince (I did say they were whopping)
Some salt and black pepper
Two cloves crushed garlic
Some olive oil
Some mild chilli powder (for a bit of added flavour)

How to make them:

Put all the ingredients into a bowl and mix them together for a bit.

Use your hands to squidge roughly half of the mixture into a rough burger shape and place onto a grill pan. Repeat for the other half. They’ll now look a bit like this:

Grill for 15-20 minutes and serve in your bread product of choice with whatever you like to have with burgers – we went for crusty rolls from the Co-op and chunky chips from McCain  :D

It really is that easy, and it took less time to make them than it would have taken to rummage through the five drawers in our freezer looking for ready made ones, or pop out to the shops to buy fresh ones. I call that a win

Turns out that Body Combat is a much, much harder workout than Zumba – I was ready for the cool down about 10 minutes in and I can already feel my arms, legs and abs planning their payback assault on me for when I wake up tomorrow. Enjoyed it though so have booked up for next week – assuming I can move again by then.

*If you can refer to ‘went once’ as ‘usual’, which you probably can’t.