Does my cake look fat in this?

Sport is hard.

I’m going somewhere with this, I promise.

It’s painful, it’s exhausting, it’s sweaty, it’s expensive…but some people aren’t satisfied with that. No, on top of the anti-social training hours, the missed trips to the pub, the injuries and the exhaustion, some people like to go a bit further.

Lightweight rowing isn’t something that many people know about; I certainly didn’t until I got involved in it at university (I coxed because, for those of you who don’t know, I’m a pretty tiny person). Not unlike boxing weight classes, lightweight rowers are only able to compete if they weigh a certain amount or less. In the case of the Oxford-Cambridge women’s lightweight boat race, this limit is 59kg per athlete. Just over 9 stone, or 130 pounds, if you prefer. A cap on weight means a cap on physical resources, so every kilojoule of energy, every gram of muscle has to be used in the most effective way possible to ensure the boat moves as fast as humanly possible. Therefore what you put into your body is fairly crucial.

This makes eating cake something of a challenge.

The annual race between the Oxford and Cambridge women’s lightweights , as well as races between lightweight men (who have a specified crew average of 70kg and an individual maximum weight of 72.5kg) and openweight women is taking place this Sunday at Henley-on-Thames, the day after the must more publicised men’s boat race on the Thames. And last weekend, to help the women’s lightweights prepare, several old girls from the club (including me) popped over to Henley to take part in a match race with this year’s boat race crew.

Needless to say, the current crew won. The really good bit came after the race, with the provision of the ‘match tea’ by the old girls. Normally, for a similar occasion, I’d get my butter hat on and produce something thoroughly unhealthy and delicious, but given that several of the girls were on restricted diets, this wasn’t an option.

So I went off-script.

I took a cue from Joy the Baker’s ‘Gnarley Muffins’ which replace butter with ground flaxseed, and use carrots and apples to give the mixture sweetness and moisture, and spent a few hours mucking around in my kitchen. All the while, the one question in the front of my mind was ‘how healthy can I make this?’ – this generally isn’t a thought which I entertain that much.

And you know what? The result was pretty damn healthy.

Credit for this image, as well as the featured one at the top of the post must go to Kasia, a member of this year’s squad whose camera is way more awesome than mine.

Cranberries Part II

It’s Sunday morning, and I wake up, not to the sound of Jon Humphrys interrogating a politician or James Naughtie insulting one, but because I am ready to wake up. My body is happy with the amount of sleep I have had, and is allowing me to open my eyes and face the world without being rudely forced into it by the Today Programme. (Incidentally, have you ever listened to the Today Programme whilst half asleep? I find it to be like drifting in and out of some bizarre alternate universe where all you’re allowed to talk about is politics. But maybe that’s just me…it probably is) Today, I can take as long as I want in the shower – or at least until my flatmates start getting irritated. I can savour a mug of tea, brewed for a decent amount of time and not [gingerly] slurped down as fast as my scalded mouth will allow. The sun is shining, the birds are singing (the railway next to my flat tends to drown them out, but I’m pretty sure they are), and the day stretches in front of me like a road waiting to be travelled. I can do anything, I can go anywhere… I am invincible.

 

Or at the very least, I’m going to bake some cookies.

And then I’m going to pile them up on a chopping board and take a picture of them. Because it’s a Sunday and I can.

Cranberries Pt I

Cranberries will always have something of an exotic, mysterious appeal to me. You know when you have an association of a particular place or memory which is connected with a seemingly innocuous object? I have that with cranberries. When I was about 9 or 10 years old we went on holiday to Cape Cod, MA (I can never spell the state in its full form) and the one foodstuff which will always stand out is cranberries. Ocean Spray had just begun selling cranberry juice in the UK, so I was dimly aware of these red, shiny, tart little beings, but being in New England, home of cranberry bogs, I suddenly saw cranberries everywhere I turned. And wait, you can eat these things? In cookies? Covered in chocolate? Mixed with nuts?

Blimey.

My favourite were ‘Bog Frogs‘ – cranberries, caramel and cashews enrobed in milk chocolate and shaped to look like frogs. Well, sort of like frogs. Did you ever play Frogger? Shaped like froggers.

So now, over ten years later, whenever I eat something containing cranberries part of me is 10 years old again. Part of me is reminded of how exciting it is to be exposed to something unfamiliar and delicious, and being able to relive that is a valuable thing.

Anyway. I’ve been baking with cranberries a lot this weekend. Part one: cranberry and almond muffins.