Cheese biscuits

My dad has some health issues and needs to go into surgery soon. Nothing serious, don't worry, but serious enough to warrant some treats!

The only problem is... He doesn't have a sweet tooth. How he and I are related, I still don't understand, but he does not like sweets. Candy, cookies, biscuits, cake, ice cream, pie.. Doesn't like it. So what would you make a man that does not like sweet stuff?!

Savoury things, of course! Cheese biscuits! These are delicious little morsels and are great on their own, but could go great with some cream cheese-esque substance or garlic butter, or a mustard dipping sauce, some bacon or other salty meat... Or anything, really, because these are delicious!

I found a recipe for home-made goldfish crackers on Smitten Kitchen but they are made with cheddar and my dad happens to not really like cheddar. Thankfully, I live in the land of cheese, so I made these with regular Gouda cheese. The cheese itself is relatively sharp and salty, but creamy enough to make the dough hold up. The rest of the dough? Easy as pie! Some butter, some flour, and some salt and onion powder!

While the recipe calls for only 12 to 15 minutes in the oven, these were in for 25. Not only are mine bigger than the goldfish, but my test subject, the BF, likes his cheese biscuits really nice and crispy so I flipped them over after 20 minutes and baked them for another 5. The result? Delicious, crispy, crunchy biscuits, with a nice, salty, onion-y flavour.

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Cheese biscuits
(makes +/- 25)
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

1 1/2 cup coarsely grated cheese (I used Gouda 48+)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon onion powder (keep in mind that this is most likely a concentrate so be careful with adding more! I used 1/4 teaspoon and it was very overpowering.)
A pinch of salt, depending on how salty the cheese you are using is.
A pinch of pepper, depending on taste.

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and mix until it forms a ball. It will be slightly crumbly, but keep mixing, it'll come together quick enough!
When the dough is formed into a ball, wrap it in foil and stick it in the fridge for half an hour. In the mean time, prepare a clean surface by dusting it with flour and preheat your oven to 175 degrees Celcius.
When your dough is sufficiently chilled, carefully start rolling it out until it is about 1/2 cm thick and cut out your biscuits with a cookie cutter! Mine was about 3 cm in diameter and yielded me 25 biscuits. Place your biscuits on a clean cookie sheet and bake for 15-20 minutes until they are turning golden around the edges, then flip them over and bake for another 5-10 minutes. Take the sheet out and let cool on a rack before transferring the biscuits to a bowl, bag... or your stomach, I won't judge.

Lunchtime: turkey salad

I have some serious salad issues. As in, I really, really love salads. It's becoming an issue.

Nah, who am I kidding, there is no such thing as too much salad! I have been on a bit of a salad kick recently and have been eating salad for lunch a lot. Normally, I hide it by wrapping it in a tortilla, but tortillas aren't exactly the healthiest of foods. So I left out the wrap and put it in a bowl! Then put a bird on it. That's how I roll. (and apparently I'm a poet and I don't even know it.)

This salad is the easiest of salads because it requires just 5 minutes of your time to throw together and requires only a tiny amount of cutting and chopping. You could even do it without the cutting and chopping. And with a total of 300 calories a bowl (give or take a few, my calculations say 308) it's a perfect lunch that'll keep you going for a while. For dinner, I want to make this with grilled chicken breast, maybe marinate it first, and more tomatoes, maybe some peppers, maybe a decent dressing... Maybe even some grains to bulk it up.. The possibilities are endless, people, endless!

 I know this is so easy it doesn't require a recipe, but here is one anyway.

What you need:
1-2 cups of rocket lettuce
3-4 cherry tomatoes (I think I used 4 here)
2 slices of turkey lunch meat
50 gr. light feta cheese (This is Arla Apetina)
1/2 tablespoon olive oil (0,075 ml)
salt
pepper
dried Italian herbs
(optional) 20 gr. pine nuts (leave these out to cut calories. I would, but I love these so so so much..)

What you do:
If you are adding pine-nuts, they're best slightly toasted. Grab a pan, pop it on the stove with the burner on low, wait until your pan is relatively hot, throw in the pine nuts and toast them lightly, stirring or shaking occasionally, until they turn more golden and fragrant and are luring your boyfriend into the kitchen with their enticing scent to come see what you're cooking. Turn off the heat, shake occasionally until you're ready to use them. (And be mean like me and waft some of that enticing scent down the hall to the study where he's sitting.)

Grab a small bowl, add your oil and add a dash of salt (don't overdo it, there's plenty in the cheese and turkey!) and some pepper and Italian herbs to taste. Stir well and set aside.
Slice your turkey slices into squares. Quarter the cherry tomatoes.

Fill your bowl with your lettuce. Then start topping up! Add your turkey, tomatoes and feta cheese, top with the toasted pine nuts if you have them, and drizzle the dressing over the top. Done! Enjoy your tasty, tasty lunch!

Crunch time, in more ways than one

Today was my first day back at work. I only worked for half an hour, mind you, because I only attend the weekly meeting and then bugger off again, but still. Back to work is back to work. I followed it up by going back to the gym. That took longer than half an hour. An hour longer, in fact. I jumped back into it, cautious at first, because I was afraid that running might be a problem after two weeks of nothing, but it went well! So good, in fact, that while I started at a 5-5-5 schedule, I quickly boosted up the running part to 6, and then 7 minutes. Back to where I left it before my holiday! Not too shabby, if I say so myself.
I may have overdone it a bit on the weight training, though. Might end up being magnificently sore tomorrow. But that's okay, I'm working all day tomorrow anyway!

I had to pick up my bicycle at the BF's parents' house afterwards so I walked there. On the way, I realised that it really is Autumn now. Beautiful colours everywhere, leaves falling, crackling underfoot... Don't you love that sound? I do. Plus, I like to kick them around when there's a whole pile of them. Yes, I'm five years old.

I can't wait for the first chance I get to head out to the woods and go for a long walk with my parents. My dad always manages to find the weirdest trees and the best walking trails. Plus, the mandatory tea and apple cake afterwards is something to look forward too, as well!

Merged, relaxed, and ready for October

Just a quick note to say that:

1) I'm aliiiive! I've survived the Vintage barbecue, have sort of survived September, and am now enjoying the last few days of my two weeks off in which I have done absolutely nothing. Nothing. Haven't even gone to the gym. Only went out to get groceries or because I had to. Other than that? Sat on my bum, played the new WoW expansion, played with the birds, slept in, took naps during the day... I haven't even crocheted a single stitch so far! Only two days to go though, so I'm slowly preparing myself mentally for the whole going-back-to-work thing, combined with the whole going-back-to-the-gym thing, and let's not forget the going-outside-of-the-house thing, either.

That's not my house, by the way. Before you ask. That, my friends, was the house we rented for the weekend in the south of Holland (Limburg), where we spent 3 glorious days in the garden, soaking up some late-summer/early-autumn sunshine and made fun of our neighbours the cows, chickens and Tony the Pony (who was probably not called Tony), drank too much alcohol, and grilled lots and lots of tasty food. We lounged, watched some dvds, went for a walk or two into town or drove to the nearest town for a saunter and some shopping... I had a great time. Thanks guildies, for being so unbelievably awesome! (also, if you're Dutch and looking for a great and cheap place to accommodate a group: It's part of De Vinkenhof. I can really recommend it!)

2) I have merged Tecrin gets Fit with Tecrin Tries. I no longer saw the point of using two separate blogs since they got mixed up quite a bit already. I'm still fiddling with stuff though, and am on the fence about some earlier decisions I made about my blogs, so don't be surprised if posts go missing or appear twice. You're not nuts, and you're not seeing double, it may be that I posted it on both blogs and haven't removed it yet.

3) I may change my whole blogging thing entirely, but more on that later, since I haven't made up my mind yet as to what I want to do with it. It might become something more.. *gasp* organised than it is now *gasp*. But before that can happen, I need to do some serious thinking. And jotting down of ideas. Which means I have a reason to buy more notepads! Yay!

4) It appears my camera is well and truly buggered. Did someone drop it while I wasn't looking, or something? Because really now, the sudden switch in quality is just absurd! The picture of the house was the only one looking decent out of the whole set I took while we were away for the weekend. In the end I just started taking pictures on my phone because the quality was so shoddy! It also randomly resets all my settings when I put in new batteries, which means I keep having to remember how I turn off the sound effects... Maybe I can bribe my sister into letting me borrow hers for a while.

Quick update, end-of-September-edition

Right, so it has been a while since I posted. This has two causes: One, because I have been toying with the idea of merging both Tecrin-blogs into one self-hosted blog (maybe under a new name, but I haven't decided yet, that's why it's still two separate blogs!), two, because I was afraid I'd jinx something. I am hovering right around the 100 kg mark, sometimes over, sometimes under, and haven't really lost anything in two weeks. Now, September is a dramatic month for anyone in my family that's on a diet, because half my family has their birthday in September, not to mention a ton of friends. I haven't had a weekend without birthdays since the start of the month. All that cake... And snacks... Oh, man, it's been hard! I think managing to survive this month without gaining 2 kg is a feat on its own, so I just aim to maintain and hope to get things back on track come October.

I managed to keep to my running schedule and am slowly seeing progress, though I haven't gone to the gym as much as I would have liked this past month because I was so damned tired all the time. I've been sleeping terribly lately, because of work-related stress (new job, urge to prove myself combined with a fear of failure, which is not a great combination), and I have noticed that I am reaching for sweets and snacks more and more often. As it turns out, though, these two are related! I stumbled upon an article that links a lack of sleep to an increase of appetite and a lack of satisfaction while eating, meaning you will want to eat more and won't know when to stop. It's science, people! So now I know I need to get my sleep pattern back on track, as well as make more effort to keep my cravings in check!


This coming week will be a struggle as well, but for slightly different reasons: World of Warcraft's new expansion Mists of Pandaria is coming out tomorrow! And on a related note, we've got our annual guild barbecue this upcoming weekend! So I'm facing a week of gaming excessively followed by a weekend of booze and barbecue. I'm determined to keep things under control, though. I've got a batch of curried chickpeas roasting in the oven right now (and if they're tasty, I'll post a recipe), which is a snack not unlike peanuts in their crunchiness but much less hard on the tummy because they're veggies, so only about 150 calories a portion (of about 1/3 cup). I've also got two big bottles of water in the fridge, a ton of apples and grapes stocked up, and a big box of trail mix and some crackers in the pantry. So that's the gaming snacks taken care of!

That barbecue though... I guess I'll just have to be really careful with what I eat. Plenty of veggies and salad and less meat, and careful with the crisps and alcohol. Pfft... It's going to be a challenge! Wish me luck?