It’s Thursday already.  I feel like we’ve become strangers.  Apologies for my absence for the greater part of this week.  Various pregnancy ailments seem to have gotten the better of me (already) and writing for the blog has been beyond my brain cells this week.  But enough about my failing brain cells..

These are exciting times in the SSG Mobile.  I’ve added a new radio station to the car stereo system.  That I managed to do this without resorting the owner’s manual is a testament to my affinity with technology.

www.themusicnetwork.com

smoothfm is a new FM radio station in Sydney that plays a great deal of easy listening music.  There are quite a few ads if truth be told but I think they’re there to pay for the Voices lined up for the weekend.  Michael Buble will be hosting a Saturday morning show, Jason Donovon will be Sundays and Richard Wilkins is on the list as well.  I’m 36, I’m entitled to be as excited as I am by the prospect of listening to the three of them.

The only hitch is that I’ve not managed to tune the radio in the house to smoothfm.  Leaving me with only one option.  To turn on the car radio as loud as I can and open all the car doors.  The neighbours are going to love me.  Everyone will be out in their gardens too, preparing for the verge rubbish collection next week. I’m doing the street a service playing ABBA that loud.

The next most newsworthy event in my life this week was that I ate a raw vegetable for the first time in months.  It was a tomato sandwiched between full fat English Cheddar and sea salt but it was still a vegetable.  Cheese and tomato sandwiches on toasted Turkish (as opposed to toasted cheese and tomato sandwiched) are currently my favourite lunch.

Up until this week, the only vegetables I’ve been able to eat have been carefully hidden in pasta based dishes.

Stealth vegetable pasta and chicken bake.

To get in my complex carbohydrates, I’ve recruited crepes to my kitchen.  They count as complex, don’t they?  They are both difficult to make perfectly and to find ready made in the supermarket.

Next time I use these crepes, I’m going to have them sweet with a topping of sugar and lemon.

And I used them to make a chicken and mushroom bake.

Because somehow crepes topped with cream under melted cheese represented an exciting departure from pasta topped with melted cheese for my stodge centred palate.

The freezer is currently filled with home made ‘ready meals’ of pasta and crepe bakes.

But I think I might be brave next week and see if I’m up to a couple of sneaky salads.

Those of you who are already mothers will be laughing out loud about this one.  Lotions and potions for stretch marks.  It’s a very lucrative sub-section of the beauty industry from what I’ve seen online.  I’m starting local with Bio Oil and will probably have worked through the globe and several price points by the end of the 40 weeks.  Please tell me I’m not the only person who’s slathered on stretch mark oil in the blind hope it will turn those afternoon tea Tim Tams and hot chips into toned muscle…..