The Cabbage Soup Diet & Chocolate Bread Pudding

Not two things you could eat in the same week... The cabbage soup diet, also known as the Mayo Clinic Diet, or the Sacred Heart Memorial hospital diet... No institute wants to take claim of this diet. It is a fad and it works because your calorie intake is so greatly reduced you'd have to be really in touch with your inner sloth not to lose weight on it.

Basically a homemade vegetable soup that you make vast quantities of and eat every day for a week. On top of this, day one you eat fruit, day two you eat veg but no fruit, day three you eat fruit and veg, day four you eat bananas and drink skimmed milk but no fruit or veg and only the soup, day five you introduce chicken or beef and veg, day six you have chicken or beef and veg, day seven you eat brown rice, veg and drink unsweetened fruit juice...

It's a ball I tell you. By day four I was ready to pass out when I woke in the morning. A few bananas later and I resolved to stick with it. I lost 10lbs by the end of the week. Great.... whoopdeeedooo, I was overjoyed but now I'm p'd off with myself for feeling the need to take such drastic measures and why can't I just show some restraint and eat sensibly... Or why can't I be happy with my curves, I go in and out in the right places, a boob job might put me in proportion more being pear shaped but I'm not going there. I mean do the likes of Julia from A Slice of Cherry Pie actually eat all the gorgeous things they make? Julia you're so thin, how do you do it? Actually I don't want to know because I'll feel like a failure if the answer is it's your genes or that you're sensible for 5 days out of 7. I don't really agree with slimming diets and yet there I found myself feeling mighty fine as the weight fell off me. Like most teenagers I succumbed to a little eating disorder for a few years, until I got a life that is. So I do know how dangerously addictive the whole weight loss thing can be, to fall into the trap of thinking that skinny = sexy.

So for a really low fat and healthy recipe here's one for chocolate bread pudding. Not the milky bread pudding that you eat warm, the cold bread pudding that is heavy and you eat slices of it like cake.

Chocolate Bread Pudding (or how to gain back the 10lbs you lost quickly pudding...)

12 thick slices of stale bread, white, brown, a mixture of the two, you choose.
a large handful of raisins
a large handful of sultanas (if you like them or up the raisins)
75-100g light brown sugar, or white if that's all you've got
350ml milk
1 egg - beaten
one bar of good quality dark chocolate (70% cocoa), broken into pieces
Optional half a teaspoon of cinnamon or mixed spice

Break the bread into small pieces and place in a large bowl
Cover with half of the milk and mix until the bread is coated
Leave to stand for 15 mins.
Pre-heat the oven to approx 175C
In the meantime melt the chocolate, then add to the rest of the milk and add the beaten egg
Mix this chocolate, milk, egg mix to the bread and milk
Add the sugar and dried fruit and mix well, sprinkle in a teaspoon of mixed spice or cinnamon if you like.
Place in an ovenproof bowl and cook in the oven for about 50 mins
If it is set after this time, take it out and sprinkle with a small handful of sugar

Sorry I can't be more specific but it's done to taste really. Sometimes I add more sugar, sometimes more fruit. I don't usually add more milk and if I do then it takes longer to cook. This is really good but it doesn't beat traditional bread pudding, though it might if you didn't grow up eating thick slices of bread pudding. I think it still knocks spots off bread and butter pudding which I'm not that keen on.