We had  our graduation ceremony this week at School. It was held in our Restaurant at School and we were all in our chefs uniforms and the hospitality and hospitality business management students were in Grad gowns

We were all given numbers and had to enter and exit the restaurant in numerical order I was number 34, It was quite emotional for me ….. coming to the end of this chapter of all my hard work over the past year. As we walked in to the Restaurant, everybody was standing, all the staff, family and freinds, VIPS which included the Mayor and they were clapping us in, that made me just want to cry.

We had speeches  and a power point display was shown about the school which also made me bubble up a wee bit. There was a picture of our class in the display, then a picture of a freind of mine competing in a competition and then there on the screen was a great shot of myself with my medal and a blurb about winning big at the competitions.

We then proceeded out the way we came  in and through another entrance to receive our certificates, and Justin the announcer was just calling out each persons name, when it came to me  he made a little speech about me, saying i was one of the celebrities of the school and a great student etc, which just took my breath away and made my very big grin on my face even bigger.

When all the formal stuff was done we had some great entertainment, with  one of the students and her freind playing the most beautiful music on a piano and a cello  and one of our tutors dressing up in all different kinds of things which were very funny.

We finished off with a wonderful lunch prepared by all the cooking tutors  and plenty of wine which was just lovely

Bruce snapped lots of pictures  which I just have to download and will post very soon

A few weeks ago I went to  the Doctors for a general check up and He checked my blood pressure

It was a bit high oooppsss  scary, In my family on my Dads side there is a genetic predisposition to bad things happening from high blood  pressure, this scared the bejeebies out of me big time and I have changed my eating habits and lifestyle.

Getting out and doing regular exercise , using a low sodium alternative to salt , not that I ate much salt anyway,Eating foods that are low in fat, I have reduced down the amount of red meat I was eating before, increased my fish intake , and my vegetable/fruit/pulses intake and cut out things that I was eating before, bad bad things that tasted so good and indulged my sweet tooth. Im feeling so much better and have so much more energy now. The NZ heart foundation has endorsed a huge range of products with the heart tick on them  which means that they are low in saturated fats, low in sodium and sugar and designed for the entire family to be good for them and a really great way to get a good balance in the diets of New Zealanders.

I have been experimenting with lots of different ideas that I have had about making low fat foods and have been able to try some of these out on others , things like heart healthy savoury muffins, heart healthy low fat lasagne,pasta dishes, etc and am currently in the process of making some recipes for low fat low sugar fruity muffins, they just need tweaking a wee bit before they are perfect. I will keep you informed as to how they are going. I have a great group of volunteers willing to be guinea pigs errrr taste testers,  people from the gym (instructors), chef freinds and of course Bruce my champion supporter.

High Blood Pressure is the silent disease , it creeps up on you with out you being aware of it , and Im too young to go off this planet just yet….. I want to grow old disgracefully and besides only the good die young so I will be around forever. So let me just say get yourselves checked regularly even if you think your as fit and healthy as a thoroughbred horse on speed injected carrots because its better to find out if theres a problem and be able to fix it early than to not find out about it and pop off before your ready.