Yes, for shame, I will need to admit defeat on this food blogging caper for now. At least until I get this stinking Dietgirl book written. No, I'm not one of them high-falutin' bloggers with bookdeals, this is a personal project I have undertaken purely to see if I can rise to the challenge. But I have been far too easily distracted from it lately. Thanks very much, bloody World Cup.

The thing is, I have cooked so many wonderful healthy dishes that I'm sure the lard busting crowd would be interested in hearing about. As I've said before, I'm not short of ideas and I love writing about food. But after wasting the first third of 2006, I came up with a timetabled writing plan in May and I am determined to stick to my deadlines. So this is it for now, unless I suddenly become ridiculously ahead of schedule :) Thank you for all humouring me as I made my ill-advised foray into the foodblogging arena.

I made this pavlova today and I could spend hours composing a witty post full of childhood pavlova anecdotes, but instead I will just link to the caption on Flickr which outlines my problems. If you have any handy hints on how to make my meringue taller, I'd love to hear from you!

A couple of weeks ago this strange and seemingly extra-terrestrial vegetable appeared in our organic box delivery. Thanks to the clever citizens of the internet, I quickly discovered it was kolhrabi.

Most people recommended I try it raw, and indeed the lovely and famous Clotilde once wrote about the joys of pressing slices of it into a wee pile of sea salt. And it sounds even more exotic in French: le chou-rave!

In the end I opted for this Kohlrabi Slaw. If you're trying to lose some blubber, SLAWS ARE YOUR FRIEND, people! Sick of lunchtime salads? Tired of grilled fish for dinner? Worrying about how to fit in your Five A Day? Just get out the grater, baby. It's easy to mow through a pile of vegetables when they're in slaw form. And you don't need barrells of mayo either! This recipe calls for just a few tablespoons, but I think it would taste fine if you left it out altogether and just used the lime juice and vinegar.

We had this with some tuna steaks and a oven-roasted potato wedges. The kohlrabi is zingy and fresh and makes a nice change from ol' fashioned cabbage-based slaws. Thanks for your help, Internet Detectives!

KOHLRABI SLAW

Serves:  4
Source:  Slashfood

1 large kohlrabi, peeled and grated
1/2 fuji apple, peeled and grated (I used a whole bog-standard Braeburn!)
1 carrot, peeled and grated
1/2 sweet yellow or red onion, thinly sliced
handful of chopped parsley (whoops, forgot this)
juice of half a lime
3 or 4 shakes of sherry wine vinegar (I subbed white wine vinegar)
mayonnaise, just enough to bind ingredients
sea salt and fresh ground pepper

Combine everything in a large bowl. Mix well. Chill 30 minutes to blend flavours. Serve. You cannae get easier than that!

Serving dish courtesy of New Blossom Chinese takeaway down the street. One day I will take a proper photo instead of hasty snaps of leftovers!

M&S have a new range called Eat Well, with over 1,000 products that are nutritionally balanced and contain no artificial flavourings, colours or sweeteners. In order to distinguish them from their delectable melting chocolate puddings and highly addictive caramel shortbreads, all Eat Well products are marked by a bold sunflower logo.

M&S seem keen to let us know they're flogging healthy stuff too, but are we really living in an age where we need a little sticker to tell us a potato doesn't contain any colours or sweeteners? Plus a wee note that you really shouldn't eat the sticker?

Next thing we'll see Suitable For Vegetarians or FAT FREE labels splashed across a bunch of celery.

But sometimes you don't feel holy and virtuous. Sometimes the body screams out for decadence, comfort and stodge!

Traditionally, comfort and stodge means a pound of butter and/or a pint of cream. But the best healthier recipes make the most of ingredients that add maximum richness and flavour without mega calories. This Weight Watchers mushroom risotto proved a great example - rich and creamy without actual cream or dodgy low-fat dairy. Just look at the main ingredients:

• arborio rice - inherently creamy and starchy
• white wine - just 150mL but it adds a bit of posh
• dried porcini mushrooms - soaked in boiling water, both shrooms and stock adding richness
• parmesan cheese - a scant 50g for four serves, but plenty to give creaminess

The beauty of most Weight Watchers recipes today (apart from the shitey ones with artificial sweetners) is that they cleverly reduce the amounts of the most calorific yet flavoursome ingredients, while adding bulk with low-cal or low-fat stuff like vegetables. The recipes taste a bit lighter than the Original versions, but not so "diet-y" that you feel you're being defrauded. It was nicely luxurious, with all those mushrooms making for a meaty and satisfying meal for this faux-vegetarian.

My tiny mods to this recipe: I used bog standard cheapo button mushies but added a pack of Tesco "Mixed Exotic" mushrooms for fun. I should have written down their names, but we're basically talking all the odd-shaped weird ones. They were mighty flavoursome. I probably twice the specified quantity too, that way I got to have more in my bowl!

I forgot to buy parsley so chucked in some baby spinach, which was noice. I also stirred in the parmesan in the saucepan, as opposed to sprinkling on top, so you get that nice creamy cheesiness in every bite.

WILD MUSHROOM RISOTTO

Source:  How To Cook The Weight Watchers Way
Serves:  4

20 g dried porcini mushrooms
150 ml boiling water
low fat cooking spray
1 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
350 g arborio rice
100 ml white wine
1.2 litres hot vegetable stock
200 g mushrooms, sliced
a small bunch of fresh parsley, chopped
salt and freshly ground pepper
50 g Parmesan cheese, finely grated, to serve

Place the dried mushrooms in a measuring jug and add the boiling water. Soak for 25 minutes.

Heat a large, heavy saucepan, spray with the cooking spray, and gently stir fry the onion and garlic until softened.

Add the rice and and stir to mix well, then add the wine. Drain the dried mushrooms, reserving the stock, chop into small pieces. Strain the soaking water through a fine mesh sieve or piece of muslin and add to the risotto (I did not strain it: too lazy/hungry), with the reconstituted and fresh mushrooms. (I actually stir-fried fresh mushies a wee bit before I added the porcini and liquid)

Add the vegetable stock in small quantities, cooking and stirring frequently until all of it has been absorbed.

Check the seasoning and stir in the parsley (or spinach til wilted). Serve with the parmesan cheese sprinkled over the top.

Per serve:  418 calories, or 6 WW Points

NB:  Photo is copyright of and unceremoniously nicked from the Weight Watchers UK website, as once again I forgot to photograph before eating! Oh dear.

UPDATE: Thanks to Pamela who cooked this recipe and pointed out there was no mention of stock! Oh dear. The ingredients list has been amended :)

I made a pilgrimage to the Edinburgh Farmers Market this morn and my eyes fell upon a most holy vision of loveliness. A giant, fragrant pyramid of fresh baked hot cross buns.

Only yesterday I'd received an email from Tesco offering me a free six-pack of their Finest Hot Cross Buns with my next order as thanks for my loyal custom. I know I'm supposed to trot around to local providores and cheesemongers in search of groceries, but I live out of town so we get a weekly delivery from the evil global conglomerate.

So I was going to add these Free Bunz to my shopping list tomorrow, but then I saw these lovely fresh ones in Edinburgh today, just 50p each. That's 50p more and five less than the free 6-pack, but that's when I had to ask myself, Do I need six free hot cross buns?

My mother used to have one of those flippy calendars beside the telephone, you know those Day To A Page ones with a daily quote from Confucious, Winston Churchill or some other approachable smart person. I was about ten years old when I read this quote:

Cheap is dear, because it tempts us to buy what we need not.

I can't remember who said it, but I do remember filing it away in my insufferable ten-year-old memory. On our next trip to the supermarket, I trailed behind my mother waiting for my moment. As soon as she started scavenging through the reduced-price yogurts and discounted mince, I intoned sagely and smart-arsedly, "Cheap is dear, Mother; because it tempts us to buy what we need not."

Pre-teen smugness aside, it's good advice in terms of weight loss. Six free hot cross buns may sound like a good deal on paper, but one good quality 50p hot cross bun, savoured slowly with a smidge of butter and a cup of tea, is much better for the size of my arse.

Happy Easter, groovers!

I am having to re-evaluate my Writing Goals at the moment, to phrase it in a wanky fashion. I started the year out with massive lists of ideas for all of my blogs, with the intention of ploughing through said lists like a MACHINE! But instead I seem to spend an average of six hours per blog entry on What's New Pussycat, faffing around and angsting over every word. Everything on Dietgirl is written in an awful, guilty rush, and poor Ginger falls by the wayside, and not helped by the fact I keep cooking lovely new dishes but bloody forgetting to take a picture before I scoff it all down!

Meanwhile, the idea list keeps growing and growing out of control. I am not getting anything done and getting stressed, which is bloody hilarious when you consider blogging has no deadlines and noone is putting pressure on you and/or cares about your blogs as much as you (cf. brilliant Blog Depression article).

The real problem is that I am not doing any of my other, non-blogging writing projects. A quarter of 2006 is gone, dammit! It's time to stop pissfarting around.

In terms of my blogs, I am attempting to recapture the good ol days, where I blogged quickly and unselfconsciously and with a big middle finger to perfection. This was meant to be fun, dammit. So you may see more typos and clumsy language, but I am going to give myself a time limit and just churn it out and enjoy it. Blogging needs to be toned down so I can focus on my other tasks. So it will be more of a fun diversion instead of an outright Avoidance Tactic. Woohoo!

Here's a few links I've wolfed down while I was busy with my Blogging Paralysis:

• Matthew Baldwin unravels the mysteries of Cooking Light for the masses

• Simply Recipe Elise's Seared Tuna with Avocado - I skipped the avo and used less oil, but the lime-soy-chilli-coriander sauce was bloody amazing. I am not ashamed to say I licked my plate clean.

• Delicious Sarah's hilarious account of the Pharaoh's Pheast Buffet in Las Vegas.

The Pheast has the dubious honour of being the place where Gareth and I dined immediately following our wedding(s) at Graceland Chapel. We were going to splash out on an overrated overpriced "proper" restaurant, but I got my head ripped off by a condescending wench at the Bellagio when making a simple enquiry the day before our connubials, and I was bloody fragile and FREAKED OUT as it was, since we'd just been to the courthouse to get our marriage licence and there were convicted felons wandering round in orange overalls, and everyone seemed to have a GUN and Vegas was so overwhelming and the portions were so huge and I thought my dress wasn't going to fit plus there was just general wedding nerves THEREFORE I never got round to finding us somewhere nice to eat after our spectacular elopment.

So that's how we ended up spending our first married meal at the Pharaoh's Pheast. I'd desperately wanted a meal to remember, not only for romances sake but because I'd been so vigilantly healthy to get into that damn wedding frock and now I wanted to celebrate. I ended up with was salmonella salads, questionable meats and painfully sweet desserts. Yet sitting there surrounded by faux-Egyptian decor and surly waitresses with my brand new husband was somehow so bloody perfect and hilarious considering the how the wedding turned out.

We were so full of bloat and regret after the Pheast that all we could do was slump on our hotel bed and moan in pain, as opposed to moan in the midst of consumating lovin'. We watched Judge Judy reruns then waddled out to see Tom Jones perform at the MGM Grand. Happy, happy day :)

It is bloody exhausting, all these things we're supposed to worry about at dinnertime. Everytime you pick up a magazine or flick on the telly, there's a new report about something else we should or should not be eating.

We are all drowning in food information, scare stories and buzzwords. Antioxidants, superfoods, free range, fair trade, arrgh! A trip to the supermarket is now a stressful ordeal of label reading and moral dilemmas.

I dunno about you, but I'm conflicted and confused.

Not only do I need to eat healthy foods to lose weight, I need to eat the really healthy foods, the ones they say can ward off heart disease, diabetes, crappy livers, dry skin, bad breath and cancer.

I've banned the trans fat, cut down the sat fat, because I need to eat low fat, but I can't forget the good fat!

Such as omega-3s. As seen in salmon and tuna. As long as they're not farmed or full of mercury or over-fished. I don't want to eat endangered fishes. I love sushi but every bite gives me guilty nightmares.

I need more whole grains but they need to be real whole grains, not the Bullshit Whole Grains like Nestle are trying to convince me are contained in a box of Cheerios.

I've subtracted additives.

I'm avoiding corn syrup and all things partially inverted. Plus sucrose fructose maltrose dextrose pantyhose, anything ending with -ose.

I'm don't eat any animals that were cooped up in small places.

I avoid processed foods. Although I do eat Quorn sausages now and then. Is it more noble to eat a processed vegetarian sausage instead of a processed "meat" one consisting of ground-up snouts, trotters and rusk?

Am I getting enough protein?

I try to buy organic produce, but if it's organic and shipped from Peru, is the organic smugness cancelled out by all the air it pollutes en route to the UK?

But if I don't buy the Peruvian organics, will the poor Peruvian economy suffer? Then again, what about my poor local farmer? Does one Buy Organic or Buy Local?!

And chocolate. I know I should choose the antioxidantal 70% Organic Dark made from fairly-traded cocoa beans, but what if my body is screaming out for a shitey old Mars Bar? Will I be struck down by a bus in punishment?

Sometimes I feel like I can't even just simply unpeel a freaking banana these days before I've sent it a lab for nutritional analysis, traced its lineage for seven generations, then personally met the farmer who planted it.

It's almost enough to put me off my food. Almost.

We only ate what had once roamed the fields. Our freezer was brimming with home grown roasts and mince and little plastic bags of lamb chops. And in the springtime my sister and I bottle-fed the abandoned baby lambs, fattening them up for market then pocketing the profits.

Our beef was chopped up by a proper butcher, but if we needed lamb my stepfather did the slaughtering himself. I don't think he enjoyed the task one bit, and was always as kind and merciful to the sheep as one can be in these situations. But I liked to imagine things were more ghoulish. He'd always tell us stay in the house, but I listened out for the telltale sound of the chosen sheep doing its final woolly twitch. It would always be at sunset and my stepdad would turn on the headlights of the truck to see better. I'd peer through the trees at this silhouetted scene, finding it all quite macabre and dramatic. The red sky, the dogs barking and straining against their chains, the unmistakable scratch scratch of the knife separating wool from flesh.

Today I would love to have access to what was essentially an endless bounty of free-roaming organic meat. But as a surly teen I resented the homegrown stuff. I envied my friends and their cheap Woolworths sausages on styrofoam trays. "Lamb chops AGAIN!?", I'd bitch at the dinner table, rolling my eyes in anticipation of the reminder that meat was our livelihood.

There was just no escaping meat. I even had a meaty weekend job, selling the Colonel's finest goods at KFC. I'd come home on a Saturday night reeking of chicken grease and secret herbs and spices, only to be greeted by a sheep carcass hanging on a hook in the laundry. On Sunday morning my precious slumber was disturbed by the sound of said sheep being buzzed to pieces with my stepfathers meat saw.

So it amuses me somewhat that after all that, I ended up marrying a vegetarian.

I asked Gareth why he chose to abandon the flesh ten years ago, expecting it would be about economics, taste, or sympathy for the poor little lambies. But his main reason was because it makes a mess!

"Too many dishes," he said.

While the lad likes good food, he hates cleaning, and vegetarian fare generally means less scrubbing afterwards.

When we got married and moved in together, he was adamant that I should cook and eat meat as much as I wanted. He is not one of those militant vegetarians. But I think perhaps I'd had my fill of red meat as a child. Since I moved to the UK I'd gone semi-vegetarian anyway, mostly due to budget restrictions. I've also found weight loss easier when I go meatless, although I still eat fish.

But above all, I am a lazy bastard, and I don't miss the flesh enough to cook two different dishes. So the past year has been an interesting challenge, coming up with repertoire of healthy vegetarian meals that are quick and easy, and address the following criteria:

1. Not be too reliant on butter, eggs or cheese
2. Not be too reliant on meat substitutes such as Quorn
3. Not make you fart all freaking night.

Number three is often the biggest challenge.

I cooked this Pumpkin and Spinach Frittata last night and there were no ill-effects. While it is heavy on the eggs, I am not one of those Egg Whites Only nutters. Divided by six is only an egg and a half each! It also has a smidgen of cheese, and I used Marks and Spencer Half Fat Mature Cheddar. Unlike super low fat cheeses, it doesn't taste like a monkey's rubbery armpit, but is far less calorific than the original.

I scrawled this one down from my sister's copy of the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet in a godawful hurry, so excuse the sloppy instructions. And furthermore, please excuse the extremely ordinary photos here. I cooked this after a gruelling Spinning class, and I just needed to EAT, dammit!

As with everything I make, tastes better than it looks.

PUMPKIN AND SPINACH FRITTATA

Source: CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet
Serves: 6 (or 4 gluttons)

400g pumpkin, cut into 2cm cubes (I used 600g of butternut squash)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp soy sauce
2 leeks, washed and sliced
2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
300g baby spinach (I only had a wee 180g bag)
8 eggs
400g low fat yogurt (I used 3 x 150g pots Total 0% Fat Greek Yogurt)
50g mature cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 170'C. Place pumpkin cubes on oven tray, toss with half the olive oil and soy sauce. Bake for 25 mins (I did 230'C because our oven is crap and I was impatient and hungry).

While this is happening, sautee leeks for five minutes in remaining olive oil, then add garlic and spinach, cook until wilted. Tip mixture onto work surface and chop roughly (I didn't do that because I was lazy and hungry).

Whisk eggs, yogurt and cheese. Tip in pumpkin and spinach mixture, stir to combine.

Pour into a greased baking dish. Bake 20 minutes until set. (I turned down the oven to 180'C and it took 20 minutes to set with a nice pale golden top)

The Ultra-Classy Sloppy Leftovers In A Chinese Takeaway Dish shot.

. . .

Oooh lordy, this frittata was deliciously creamy and subtly cheesy. Creamy and cheesy are two things you don't get much on a diet, but it's all happening here, thanks to the magic of Total 0% Greek Yogurt! The spinach and pumpkin are fantastic together, but I can't wait to try it again with different vegies. Or with feta cheese.

Or bacon.

I happened to be leafing though the latest copy of Good Food magazine, which I'd purchased in spite of my New Year's resolve to buy less food magazines. D'oh! They had a great Mother's Day feature in which readers sent in favourite recipes handed down from their mums. I pounced on these Simple Jammy Biscuits, because the title says it all! Simple, jammy, biscuit - how can you go wrong?

The blokes usually tear into packets of nasty supermarket-brand Custard Creams, Rich Tea and Bourbons. How can I put this nicely? These biscuits are shite. They cost about 59p for a huge pack and they're full of hydrogenated vegetable oil, partially inverted glucose syrups and a rainbow of colourings and flavours. I usually sit frowning into my tea, watching the boys demolish them by the handful and thinking, that ain't good for you!

Butter, sugar and jam are hardly have a place in the temple of health foods but at least you know what you're dealing with there. So I had an attack of the 50s Housewife, disappeared into the kitchen and had these babies in the oven within ten minutes.

The biscuits in the magazine picture were golden discs of perfection. Mine were lumpy and sprawling but they were happily scoffed by Gareth and friends. I'm still being a Sugar Martyr so I only stole one bite. They were beautifully buttery, simple, soft and Mumsy - ideal for mindless dunking into tea.

I'll scan the magazine picture later so you can see the more appetising, non-deformed version!

SIMPLE JAMMY BISCUITS

Source: Good Food, March 2006
Makes: 12

200g/8oz self-raising flour
100g/4oz caster sugar
100g/4oz butter
1 egg, lightly beaten
4 tbsp strawberry jam (I used Bonne Maman Raspberry. Choice!)

Heat oven to 190°C, Rub the flour, sugar and butter together until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Alternatively, you can do this in the food processor (Yeah right. I did it by hand, less washing up that way!) Add enough egg to bring the mixture together to form a stiff dough.

Flour your hands and shape the dough into a tube, about 5cm in diameter. Cut into 2cm-thick slices and place on a large baking sheet. Space them out as the mixture will spread while baking.

Make a small indentation in the middle of each slice with the end of a wooden spoon, and drop a teaspoon of jam in the centre. Bake for 10-15 minutes until slightly risen and just golden. Cool on a wire rack.

Note: Next time I'd probably make 24 wee ones instead of the recommended 12, so you'd get more jam per bite!

Per Biscuit: 170 calories, 5g saturated fat. WW Points: 3.5 (ouch!)

As I approach the business end of my Fat Busting adventure, I'm having to fight for every tiny wee ounce I lose. My body seems reluctant to surrender any more lard. All it takes is a stray slice of toast, one skipped gym class or merely breathing in some Lamington Fumes and I'll wind up with a nasty result on my Wednesday Weigh Days. So lately I've been scouring my food journal, looking for things to cut out or modify in order to get some results.

This week I focused on milk.

I normally drink semi-skimmed, which contains about 1.5% fat. That's the bottle with the green lid. Here in Britain the milk is colour coded and it all makes perfect sense to me. Full fat milk is blue, which makes one think rich, lush, indulgent - fat jersey cows ambling over pastures. Green is wholesome, inoffensive, natural - a happy compromise. Red means pain, suffering, deprivation - the mournful moo of a malnourished bovine. Red is evil. Red is for skimmed milk. So that's what I drank last week.

Here's where I need to insert the disclaimer. I hate Skimmed Milk. I hate Non Fat milk too, which is the American equivalent. I even hate Skim Milk, as it's called in Australia with our fine traditional of abbreviation.

I hate skimmed milk as I was forced to drink it as a child. Well, I wasn't forced very forcefully, it was just often all we had left in the fridge. The Mothership liked to stock healthy foods such as brown bread, green vegetables and sensible cereals like Weetbix. The typical parent/child conversation went thus:

"Muuum I'm hungry."
"Have an apple."
"I don't want an apple."
"Well you're not really hungry then, are you?"

The Mothership's milk of choice was Shape, which was allegedly not as evil as Skim as it contains half a percent or so of fat. But I couldn't taste a difference. It was still pale and watery. Even if you added Home Brand Chocolate Topping and blasted it for ten minutes in the milkshake maker, it was still pale and watery. Just BROWN, pale, watery. I used gag and screw up my face and clutch my stomach most melodramatically, counting down the days til the weekend where I could guzzle full cream milk and sugary cornflakes at my dad's house. And I always thought the design of the Shape carton somehow made it taste worse. It was white with gold stripes, the word SHAPE zapped across it in a neon 80s font. There may also have been a silhouette of a lady in a leotard and legwarmers, because that's how we all dressed back then.

Despite this troubled history I decided to give it another try. I'm all for revisiting the Food Foes of ones childhood - I used to say I hated avocados because they seemed pale and nasty to my ten-year-old self. But now? Mmm, avocado. I pity the fool I was back then.

ANYWAY, in my quest to save calories and fat, skimmed milk seemed a good place to start. Plus they tell me that low fat dairy is higher in calcium. How can you go wrong?

I subjected the brew to a number of different taste tests.

First test:   The Smoothie
Hidden amongst frozen berries, yogurt and orange juice, the half cup of Skimmed Milk wasn't a dominant enough player to really make an impact. I sniffed and sipped, looking for the tell-tale notes of water and evil, but it was indetectable. So score one for the Skimmed Milk. But then again I used full fat Yeo Valley yogurt. I guess that cancels out the benefits. D'oh!

Second Test:   The Porridge
After trudging to work on a winters morn, there's nothing better than zapping ones oats in the microwave for a hearty breakfast. I usually make my porridge with a 2:1 ratio of semi-skimmed milk and water, but this time it was pure Skimmed. I thought there wouldn't be much difference between 0% skim and 1.5% semi + water. But there was! It was rotten, ROTTEN I tells ya! Usually the oats are burbling after two minutes, white and creamy and begging for a pinch of brown sugar. But in their insipid Skimmed Milk bath, they just sort of blinked up at my, grey and sludgy. They hadn't melted at all, and the addition of sugar just made it murky and sickly sweet. Never again!

Third Test:   The Glass
One of my favourite snacks is grainy toast with almond butter. But it has to be accompanied by a glass of cold milk, so you can swirl it round your mouth and hose all the sticky bits off your teeth. So I made the toast and poured the glass and sat down in front of Ready, Steady, Cook.

All I can say is, BLARRRRGH! On its own, the Skimmed Milk tasted like not just all the fat but the SOUL had been drained right out of it. And when gnashed around with a bite of toast it just got lost completely, instead of being part of the overall flavoursome mess as the Semi-Skimmed does.

Conclusion: Definitely the taste of evil.

I shall stay loyal to the green cap. While I envy and applaud those healthy folk who manage to chug this stuff down, for me the 1.5% fat I'd save is not worth sacrificing 100% of the taste.

Just when the body has recovered from the guts-and-starch-orama that is Burns Night, along comes Australia Day on January 26.

If I was Down Under I 'd have celebrated traditionally beneath relentless sunshine -- pavlova, snags on the barbie and the Triple J Hottest 100 Countdown blaring on the radio. But I was in Scotland, so I trudged off to work in the darkness. On the way home I bought a can of Fosters Lager for 67p, presented it to Gareth and said, "Happy Australia Day!".

"Ah, thanks!" he said and wrinkled up his nose. "How about some lamingtons?"

Crikey. Lamingtons.

Baking and diets are incompatible. Sure, one may experiment with applesauce and low-fat margarine and artificial sweeteners. But for me, if it's not the real deal I'd rather not eat it at all. And since I can't seem to bake without licking the bowl, spoon and kitchen bench clean, my tactic has been to completely avoid baking altogether while trying to lose weight. Unless, of course, it's a Special Occasion™. Recently I surveyed the year ahead and declared the following 2006 Official Special Occasions:

• Australia Day
• Wedding Anniversary - March 3
• Anzac Day - April 25 - the mandatory Anzac Biscuits
• Easter - It's about time I learned to make Hot Cross Buns
• Gareth's Birthday - August 12
• My Birthday - November 1
• Christmas Day - an inevitable trifle

Now that sounded all well and good, until I added a few Supplementary Occasions. Such as the Anniversary of the Day I Moved To Scotland, the Anniversary of the Day I Met Gareth, the Anniversary of Our First Date and the Anniverary of the Day I Discovered Green and Blacks Chocolate.

Then there's the birthdays of my mum, sister, best friend and grandmother. They don't live anywhere near me but it would be rude not to have cake in their honour. And while I'm at it, I should pay respect to Halloween, the summer solstice and the National Days of a few obscure African nations.

It is all too easy to find a flimsy premise for a baking frenzy, and before you know it your healthy habits have been derailed. But there is something so fundamentally peaceful and satisfying about smushing butter and sugar together; of cracking eggs and waiting impatiently by the oven door, that I can't imagine limiting that pleasure to a few times a year. So here are a few more tactics I've employed:

• Bake smaller quantities. I love fruit scones, and once had a craving that would not shut up. So I got a trusty recipe and divided the quantities until it yielded just four scones. Yes, it's not very energy efficient to fire up the oven for such a small batch, but two for me and two for Gareth meant I could answer the Call of the Scone without the Baker's Remorse for weeks afterward.
• Go through your favourite recipes and enter the ingredients into a calorie counter/recipe builder/Points©™® Calculator such as Weight Loss Resources. How many calories per serve? How much saturated fat? How small can you make the servings to reduce the damage but still be satisfying? Some results will be so shocking it will put you off them for life, but others will surprise and be a managable treat.
• Bake stuff you don't like. For me the kick comes from the stirring, creaming and messing up the kitchen just as much from eating the results. So make something you don't fancy then give it someone who does.
• Freeze half of the batch. But this only works if you can be trusted not to eat frozen cookie dough in a weak moment. Not that I've done that that or anything.
• Bake for a crowd. I like to make a batch of brownies, allocate myself a piece or two, then take the rest to work where it's guaranteed to be snarfed up in minutes. This Bake-and-Dispose method means you are popular AND your house stinks deliciously of chocolate without affecting the size of your arse.

Anyway, back to the lamingtons. Lamingtons are a great Australian tradition, and defined as "a small square of sponge cake... coated all over in softish chocolate icing and then in desiccated coconut". An exhaustive history can be found here. I like my lamingtons after a day or two in the fridge, when chocolate icing has seeped into the sponge, making each bite a coconutty chocolately mess. It goes down like a charm with a cup of tea.

My grandmother is the master Lamington Maker. Her sponge is always light and airy. Her lammos are always uniform cubes, with just the right balance of icing and coconut. Back in the Farm Days she'd whip up a batch at Shearing Time. We'd carry them down to the shearing shed for morning tea, along with cheese and tomato sandwiches and Billy Tea. The shearers held the dainty cakes in their thick greasy hands, coconut flying in all directions. The dogs snuffled around on the wooden floors, searching for stray crumbs amongst the tufts of wool. My eyes would be glued to the Tupperware container, counting and calculating, hoping there'd be one left over for me.

I was discussing lamingtons with my grandmother when I was back in Oz last October, whining that mine were always a deformed, lumpy mess. The kitchen floor and my shirt inevitably wore more icing than the cakes. But she said the problem was my technique. I'd been cutting the cake into cubes then dunking them in the icing, fondue stylee, then throwing them into the dish and pelting them with coconut. She said it was far easier to divide the cake mixture into two loaf tins, then simply ice a WHOLE cake and roll it in the coconut, one side at a time. Then once it's set you cut it into smaller pieces and then carefully ice the remaining sides. Much tidier and far quicker.

The cake in loaf form.

Well that all sounded very good in theory but my lamingtons turned out just as sloppy as ever. First I realised after 25 minutes that I'd set the oven ten degrees too low, so I turned it up to 180 then promptly forgot about it. So the cakes were a little bronzed and dry. It was somewhat easier to ice a whole cake in loaf form, but I still had my usual problems of dripping excess icing into the coconut dish, and spraying excess coconut into the icing dish. Oh, and excessive manhandling of the cakes, resulting in huge thumb dents and smudges that you can only fill in with so much coconut.

So: lamingtons! Very Australian, very tasty, but very messy. By the time I'd made the bastards I was so cranky that I didn't want to eat them. Now there's another Diet Baking Tip: Bake something so convoluted and frustrating that you'd rather throw it at a wall than eat it!

FAIR-DINKUM AUSSIE LAMINGTONS

Source:  The Grandmothership
Makes:  24  (or 12 bigguns if you are greedy, or just too lazy to go on)

For the cake
125 g butter
125 g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
3 eggs
250 g self-raising flour
1/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F). Grease and line a rectangular tin (30 x 22 cm approx) or two loaf tins. Cream butter, sugar and vanilla together until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well. Add flour and milk alternately, beat well. Pour into tin(s), smooth surface with a spatula. Bake for 30 minutes or until risen and firm. Allow to stand for a few minutes then turn out onto a rack. Once cooled, refrigerate cake at least 30 minutes before icing.

For the icing
125 ml boiling water
3 heaped tablespoons cocoa powder
2 tablespoons softened butter
1 tsp vanilla
500 g pure icing sugar, sifted
250 g dessicated coconut

Mix water, cocoa, butter and vanilla togeter in a bowl over a saucepan of hot water. Gradually beat in icing sugar to form a smooth mixture. Trim cake edges and cut into 24 cubes, or less if you want bigger lamingtons. Place coconut onto a tray or dish ready for rolling. Using a fork, dip cake into icing then toss in the coconut. Leave on a cake rack to dry for a wee while.

NB: I tend to use slightly less water so the icing is thicker if doing the whole cake method, as opposed to the fondue-esque technique.

I've never been to a proper Burns Supper but it does sound good, particularly The Entrance of the Haggis. Everyone stands up and gazes in awe as the mighty bag o' guts and spices is carried into the room on a platter, complete with bagpipe fanfare. Then the host recites the Address To A Haggis:

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o' a grace
As lang's my arm.

Which roughly translates as: Oh haggis, you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind, hey haggis!

After the poem goes on a few more verses, the haggis is STABBED repeatedly with a juicy big knife and everyone cheers. Hail to the haggis! Then someone proposes a whisky toast to the haggis and finally everyone tucks into a nice plateful of it, accompanied by neeps (turnips) and tatties (mashed potatoes). After that there's more speeches, toasts, poetry and whisky. Sounds like a great night out.

For foreigners living in Scotland, eating haggis is right up there on your To Do list with Edinburgh Castle and the Highlands. I was surprised to find I enjoyed it - sure it's offal but the spices and oatmeal give it a beautiful flavour and texture. I'm not sure if I'd ever want to make it myself though:

You have to love any recipe that contains the phrases, "wash the paunch", "boil the heart", "hang the windpipe" and "grate the liver".

I was fresh out of lungs tonight, so we had the ever-tasty Macsweens Vegetarian Haggis. It has the same yummy spices as the traditional version, but the offal is replaced by lentils and nuts. You simply wrap it in foil, place in a water bath then whack it in the oven for an hour or so.

Next you prepare the traditional neeps and tatties. And if you're immature, do take time to snigger at your neep if it looks particularly nippy!

Then take the haggis oot of the oven and stab it. KILL KILL KILL!

This is the part in food blogs where ones posts a photo of the plated meal. But since this is my first food blog entry and I am a food blog amateur, I forgot to do that and just scoffed it straight up. After that starch-and-lentil fest, all we can do is slump on the couch and toast Mr Burns with almighty belches.