Creature From The Black Lagoon

Hello my lovelies! Tis I, back from the depths of blogging hiatus! Thank-you to those who have stuck around to see me blog another day and hello to any new readers!

Of course my absence, as always, can be blamed on none other than the No.1 culprit The Other Bowel Problems.
The weekend before last I was back in A&E again, clutching my poor tummy and babbling incoherently in my state of dehydrated delirium. Not how I'd usually like to spend my weekends, no matter how much morphine is involved. A nice nurse tried to conjure up a vein from the abyss of my arm and I was finally rehydrated and medicated up to the eyeballs.
It always seems that whenever I'm in hospital I'm only ever designated the young, good looking male doctors. Which on the face of it wouldn't be too bad, if my ailments were of the non embarrassing variety.
After reeling of every intimate detail of my bowels to a dishy A&E doctor I was then wheeled round to the Emergency Assessment Unit (EAU) where I then had to repeat the same conversation again with another handsome specimen, who I could hear outside at the nurses station snapping on a pair of sterile gloves while I lay on a sweat box of a hospital bed imagining what fresh hell could be about to occur that entailed the wearing of sterile gloves.
However I managed to side step the bum exam he intended for me by protesting I'd already been violated in A&E. Which I hadn't, but there was a flying bacon's chance I was got to let dishy doc numero deux anywhere near the junk on my trunk.
Anyone who has been in hospital will tell you its not the restful place it proclaims to be. When your not having your veins sized up, your being x-rayed, having your Ob's taken or being interrogated by all and sundry. Besides all this there is always plenty to keep you  awake, which was especially true of  my ward that night.
The lady in the bay next to mine, although perfectly able to walk seemed to enjoy punishing the nursing staff by being completely unco-operative and unhelpful every time she needed the commode 'I need a tinkle, NURRRRSEEE!', thus forcing the tiny Filipino staff nurse and equally dinky HCA to awkwardly maneuver her onto the bog on wheels.
Even after all this palaver she still manage to tiddle on the floor, which escaped the nurses notice up until the moment when putting the lady back in bed she waded through the puddle, booming in a voice that was surprisingly loud for someone the size of a Polly Pocket 'Oh darling, look! LOOK! You peed on the floor! Bed pan for you next time!'. 
I then forced myself to stay awake during ward rounds,which is my favourite part of the hospital day (after painkiller time) as you get to eavesdrop and find out whats wrong with everyone else on the ward. Not as if its hard really, since a peice of material pulled round a hospital bed hardly keeps people from being unable to hear whats going on behind it.
I was also pleased that I was awake to witness the effeminate cleaner mopping the floor with one hand on his hip humming 'I Want To Break Free' by Queen.

You couldn't make this stuff up.

Despite all this hospital high jinx, I managed to escape and have been moaning and bitching in the comfort of my own home ever since.
I've got to be honest and say that I've been finding my illness very hard to cope with recently, but I've devised a battle plan for my blog which will hopefully mean that I will be posting much more regularly and thus help to distract myself from feeling cruddy.
The Other Bowel Problems have dominated my life far too much recently and I've had to cancel some dates which have been really important to me, including one of my oldest friends Liz's wedding, which I was heartbroken to miss.
It annoys the crap out of me that my illness dictates so much of my life, and its all very well for people on the outside looking in to say 'well you shouldn't let it dictate your life' but with all the will in the world I cannot make my body behave just because I want it too.

Anyway. I have tonnes of recipes and interviews and all sorts of nice things in the the pipeline for you lovely lot.
Just starting uni? Head on over to Saara's blog The Gluten Free Student Cookbook for tips, advice and recipes on being a Coeliac student. Saara's lovely, and I've had a chance to get to know her a bit better through Twitter and she's a diamond so go check out her blog.
Skye posted an absolutely yummy looking cake recipe on her blog at the weekend, which I cannot wait to try. Skye has been an amazing friend to me over the past year and now that shes moved to Brighton I can't wait to spend some time with her.

Buckets of peppermint tea in my favourite mug have been keeping me going.

Filling in my pretty recipe file that Steve's mum bought me for my birthday this year.

My Dad and I are in love with Delicious mag at the moment

The super cute cupcake cross stitch that Skye sent me

Cosy new winter jammies.

Tasty Tempura Prawns with Mango Yogurt Dipping Sauce

I always use sparkling water for batters because you get a much lighter,less greasy batter. Feel free to use beer for the batter if you want, although with this recipe a beer batter will probably overpower the taste of the prawns.


Ingredients

• 200g King prawns (uncooked)
• 100g Plain gluten-free flour (Doves Farm,Glutafin)
• 250ml Sparkling water
• 25g Cornflour (or you could use potato flour)
• 1 Egg
• 2 Pinches of salt
• 200g Plain yogurt (I used Greek)
• 2-3 Tbsp's of mango chutney (Sharwood's is g/f. If anyone has a recipe for mango chutney send it over)
• 1 Lemon
• Vegetable or sunflower oil

If you omit the dip

Serves 4

Extras

• Wok
• Slotted spoon
• A few sheets of kitchen paper

Method

• In a bowl beat your egg and add in the sparkling water, giving it all a good stir. Add the flours and a few pinches of salt and give it a gentle whisk until everything is well mixed in. Don't worry if its still lumpy at this stage.
• Stir your prawns through the tempura mix making sure they are coated all over with the batter.
• Half fill your wok with the oil over a fairly high heat. It's hot enough when a tiny blob of the tempura batter (a bit without a prawn in!) bubbles and browns when dropped into the mixture.
• Cook a few of the prawns in the oil at a time. They should only take as long as 2-3 minutes to cook and for the batter to go golden. Be careful not to overcook them, prawns can get chewy easily and can be like chewing on a Michelin tyre if they're overdone.
• Using your slotted spoon (or something similar that will help drain the fat away when you remove the prawns from the pan) take your prawns out of the wok and pop on a plate covered with kitchen paper to absorb some of the excess oil.
• To make the mango yogurt dipping sauce, plop your yogurt and mango chutney into a small bowl and give them both a thorough stir until they're well combined.
• Dip away from my friends, dip away!

 Adapted from a recipe from Delicious magazine

Fabulously Spicy Fish Steaks

As I said before this was adapted from a Delicious recipe. It's actually gluten-free, but I nearly took the roof of my mouth off with the spices so I have tweaked it a wee bit in order to make it not so spicey, but I'll also list the ingriedents if you like a bit of spice in your life and aren't a total wuss like me.


Ingredients

• 4 Cod steaks (or any other white fish)
• Sunflower oil
• A couple of limes to squeeze over your fish or for making your plate look fancy!
• 2 Tsp cumin seeds (halve this amount if your a wuss like me)
• 2 Tsp coriander seeds (halve this amount if your a wuss like me)
• 3 Tsp fennel seeds
• 1 Tsp Cayenne pepper
• 1 Tsp ground turmeric
• 1 Lemon
• 75g Plain yogurt (I used greek natural yogurt and 100g of it to mellow the spices)
• 1 Small red onion
• 2 Tbsp fresh coriander
• 4 Tsp fresh ginger 
• 2 Cloves of garlic
• 1/2 Tsp salt

Serves 4

Extra's 

• Spice grinder or a pestle&mortar

Method 

• First you need to get on with making the spice mix for the fish to marinade in for a few hours. So get all your spices to hand, and fry up the cumin, coriander and fennel seeds in a frying pan until they start to give off a scent then pop in your grinder or pestle and mortor and give them a good old grind under they're powder.
• Next toast off the cayenne and turmeric in the pan in the same way and add to the other spices.
• Pop in a bowl with the juice of the lemon, yogurt, 4 tsp of grated ginger, onion, garlic, salt and fresh corinander finely chopped (I use scissors, it's so much easier then fannying around chopping with a knife) and give it all a good old stir.
• Smother the fish steaks in the mix and then place in a bowl/tray in the fridge covered with clingfilm and marinade for a few hours.
• When your ready to cook the fish up, preheat the grill to a medium heat and brush a small amount of oil on a baking tray that you can pop in the grill. 
• Pop the fish on the tray and under the grill for about 10minutes. you shouldnt need to turn them over and 10 minutes should be pleanty for the fish to cook through.
• Take them out of the grill, and serve up with the limes, rice or any other accompanyment you might like.
• At 192 calories and only 0.7g of saturated fats its a lovely nice healthy din dins for the summer, so get stuck into the tucker!