Sourdough Pizza, Sourdough Biscuits, Diet and Exercise

On a roll today. Rather than use the remaining sourdough material leftover from the pasta making for more  pasta we decided to give pizza a go. And it worked fine. The topping on one of the two pizzas was the leftover Marinara from the pasta dish plus onions, mushrooms, olives, preserved capsicum and cheese i.e. leftover pieces of Havarti, Cheddar and Provolone were grated over the top. The base of sourdough was rolled out very thin and fitted to a pizza tray and baked for 15 minutes to harden it a little then the topping was added. The crust tastes a little different from the traditional pizza base but it is after all sourdough.

There was a little bit of dough still remaining which was rolled out very thinly and had some Caraway seeds added then cut into strips about 30 mm wide and baked until crisp. A perfect base for some Camembert or Colby that was in the fridge.

The morning started with a punishing round of Aquarobics. It was cold out and it was cold in and we remained cold all day. Probably the combination of fasting and exercise. Anyway the pizza and wine warmed us. As long as you have something to look forward to each day all is well.

There was a recent podcast from the ABC's The Health Report covering aspects of diet and exercise. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/healthreport/the-lifestyle-challenge/4953496

It was extremely interesting. Our take on it was that it is irrelevant which diet you undertake be it Paleo, Atkins, CSIRO, Low Glycaemic, 5:2 Fast etc. It is more important to adhere to one that works for you and that you are happy to stick with because that is the secret. You need to stay with it indefinitely. There are no easy solutions. Calories are calories and the only way to lose weight or prevent long term weight gain is to restrict/reduce your calories. Making sure your food is fresh and balanced is a must. None of the faddy stuff like eating only Apples for weeks on end. The goal is to keep the body healthy as well as keep the weight down. A balanced diet of fresh unprocessed food with good variety and not too much of it.

Exercise will not help you lose weight unless you get into training of Olympic proportions. Exercise is to keep you fit and healthy. A balance of Aerobic activity and muscle building activity. Some exercise is better than none of course. BUT... be aware that to really obtain and maintain fitness you must improve on your performance all the time. If you walk around the block each day you will have to walk around faster next week or go around twice or something else. And that was the good news.

The Mulberry tree is producing masses of fruit and we are having some with yogurt each night. A few years ago we made a batch of jam using just the fruit and no sugar and we still have some left. We are not fans of making jam with sugar preferring to eat the fresh fruit. Because of the variety of fruit trees, vines etc we are rarely without some form of fresh fruit. The Citrus are still hanging there and we have some of those each day as well.

The new baby chickens are doing well.

One little baby peeking out

Two braver babies feeding