Even healthier Moussaka

You know it's going to be a good day when your fake dog poo arrives through the post.

I'm very lucky to have a really nice group of friends who accept me for me, despite all of my quirkiness and odd ways. One of my friends lives in Wales - we met at work, when I was an I.T. Consultant and she was a contractor working in the same place as me. We hit it off as she's got the same dirty sense of humour and 7 years later, we're still good friends, despite the 180 miles between us. She moved house in December and has had problems with her cat weeing inside - presumably due to the fact her cat is 19 years old and stressed over the house move. I suggested it was also due to her wanting to mark her territory? I'm heading over to Wales to see her in a couple of weeks and she said 'Oh! your room is nearly ready' (she's decorating her spare room with peacock wallpaper and she knows how much I like peacocks).

I thanked her, said I couldn't wait to see her and her new house and that I'd also want to 'mark my territory' in some random way. She said 'If you pee or crap anywhere, there will be trouble' ... I don't think she thought I was serious, so I'm sure she'll laugh when she sees the present I've left her on my pillow :-) (along with a thank you card and some chocolates for putting up with me for the weekend!).

This morning I woke up and lazed in bed for ages, which was bliss - I didn't feel tired for once and listening to the birds outside the window was just so nice. Breakfast was a very tasty kipper with 2 scrambled eggs and some dry-fried tomatoes with no extra oil in the pan. After breakfast, I went food shopping and bought some ingredients to compliment the vegetables I had delivered in my vegetable box yesterday - The main one being... Aubergine.

Aubergine - The Devils food, or so I have thought my entire life. It's along the same vein as marrows and courgettes: neither of which I have ever particularly liked. However, as it was in my kitchen, I decided I may as well try it for the first time in 20 years, so decided to make a healthy moussaka for dinner. As my friend was arriving at my house just after lunch, I also bought some 'low fat treats' and headed home to make a start on dinner. As I hadn't eaten breakfast until 10:00am, I thought I'd forgo lunch and just eat an early dinner as I was stuffed after my kipper, eggs and tomato.

It was lovely seeing my friend - She's my 'drama' friend. So many things seem to happen to her, most of them being dating / relationship issues. At the moment, she seems to be having issues with yet another man she's met off a dating site who she's slept with, but he announced he just wanted to be friends with her. So she's 'just being friends', (although holding hands and cuddling him apparently) however he's now being quite unresponsive and she recently found out he's dating someone else - Rather than let him go, she seems to be harassing him on text messages and doesn't seem to want to leave him alone :-S

We had a number of cups of tea and I offered her one of the Tescos chocolate and caramel bars I bought - Only 68 calories. I have to say, I was slightly underwhelmed. The actual bar is a good 1.5 inches shorted than the wrapper it's in, and so the box they all come in, is quite deceiving in size. They were... OK, however certainly nothing to write home about. Whilst we were chatting, talking and watching crazy documentaries, I got on with making my dinner and working out how to cut aubergine (which is surprisingly simple and even I was able to do it :-)).

We headed into town for an hour or so for a bit of a mooch - It was an interesting experience, I usually hate catching site of myself in clothing shop mirrors, however when I took a cursory glance, I thought 'OK, not bad... ' and I felt quite proud of the progress I've made over the last 6 weeks. However when we were sat in a show shop, I looked in the mirror and saw massive tyres of fat around my stomach and felt really self concious, immediately sitting up and trying to improve my appearance. Despite feeling self concious, I know that the only way to change what I see in the mirror is to keep focussed on my healthy eating and that's exactly what I plan to do.

My friend headed off just after 6pm and I tried my moussaka - I have to say, it was actually really quite tasty. As I've never cooked it before, I followed the BBC Good Food recipe for a lighter moussaka pretty closely, however I only used 2 aubergine, rather than 3 (and there was still lots left over) and also used fat free Greek yoghurt, rather than 2%. I think I had a pretty average sized portion as there was a lot left over and I've got two portions in the fridge (one for tomorrow and Monday) and I've frozen the others. 

I'm now sat on my sofa, looking forward to a nice long bath and a really nice lie in tomorrow as well - My other friend isn't arriving until 11:00am, so I'm thinking I'll have a shower, wash my hair and enjoy a quiet and peaceful morning :-)