That Friday feeling

It's Friday! And am frankly SHOCKED to see that it's been a month since I last posted. I have more stuff about Paris to share, and I never got around to talking properly about the gorgeous meal we had in Roots at the back end of last year. Poor little blog; it gets sadly neglected.

In exciting life news - I recently got a much longed for promotion at work and I couldn't be more pleased. I'm back working in an area that I love and where I think that I can make a real difference, plus early impressions are that I have a fabulously supportive and fun manager and team around me. I feel incredibly lucky at the moment - pinch-me lucky, that I have a well paid, secure job, a lovely home and can absorb the coming rises in the cost of living with very little pain. I know that there are people out there genuinely struggling at the moment and it's heart breaking. And let's not even start talking about the wider world situation. The fact that I don't necessarily discuss it or refer to it here does not mean that I am not very aware of my privilege.

So moving swiftly on...one thing I did want to share - if anyone out there was thinking of subscribing to a fruit and veg box, we've recently started using Oddbox and I wholeheartedly recommend it (to be clear, this is not a sponsored post, or a paid advertisement or anything like that - I just think they're lovely). We've had a couple of boxes now (we're signed up for a fortnightly subscription) and the quality of the produce is great, plus I absolutely adore the ethos that we're basically getting lovely fruit and veg that would be scrapped for no good reason other than it's a bit big / small / misshapen. Big thumbs up from us.

Hope all is well with everyone out in the bloggersphere and I PROMISE that I will be back with some posts soon; in the meantime, wishing everyone a very joyous weekend.

Back to skool

Well, we've just returned from a lovely couple of weeks in Scotland and the gloominess of the weather here this morning couldn't have matched my mood more if it had tried. I love a bit of pathetic fallacy. It's been an extremely chilled out fortnight - not doing loads, but pottering, eating (of course) and, er, book buying. When you come back from holiday with nine more books than you left with, you may well have a problem. But, in my defence, Bookcase in Carlisle was an absolute bibliophile's dream. And I was supporting the local economy in Tobermory by picking up a few there as well...(we won't mention the fact that D and I also made a little pre-holiday trip to Waterstone's the day before we left because that would just make me look like some sort of addict).

The highlight of the trip from a food perspective had to be another meal at the very wonderful Inver which I may well cover in a separate post. But after nearly a fortnight of no real cooking, it was glorious to be back in the kitchen yesterday and we had that homeliest of homecoming meals: roast chicken with various trimmings including a simple creamed spinach that I will share with you (and my future self for posterity).

September (I know it's nearly over, but let me claim it still) is always a good time for fresh starts and while we were away, D and I talked a bit about lifestyle changes that I feel I need to make. Long term readers of this blog will know that I have never, never been a fan of exercise but the sedentary lifestyle occasioned by near permanent working from home, not to mention the fact that I turned 40 at the end of last year, means that any meagre fitness I ever had seems to be slipping away and there is absolutely no excuse for it. The only time I've ever really enjoyed exercise was years ago when I was a member of a gym - I like classes and I love swimming - so I've screwed my courage to the sticking place and arranged for an introductory session at a local club this week. The chap on the phone asked me to describe my current fitness levels. I could only pause before laughing and saying "Pants". I hope they like a challenge. It won't be cheap but I can afford it and I should be investing money in this sort of thing - i.e. myself, my health, my future, rather than continuing to create the UK Book Mountain in my living room.

And as a further incentive, I have booked a personal styling consultation at the beginning of December as a little Christmas present to myself. I randomly saw an Instagram reel of this gorgeous, plus size woman extolling the virtue of tucking your top in (yes, really) and when I looked at her profile I saw that she worked as a stylist and personal shopper in the Leeds branch of John Lewis! So again, courage screwed, I booked a slot. I'm in desperate need of a little push to get me out of tracksuit bottoms and loungewear. And I should have a couple of months of gym-going under my belt by then - enough to make a bit of a difference in confidence if not in shape.

Thus - and let us come back to the pathetic fallacy - as the sun has appeared in the last hour, so am I feeling a wee bit better about the fact that the holidays are gone and winter is coming. Life plods on but there is still much to look forward to.

Waiting for Jab-ot

And the prize for most ridiculous, pretentious, doesn't-really-work-anyway blog post title goes to...

The UK is beginning to open up again which is fantastic news and I'm sure all of us are hoping and praying that all those businesses who have been so badly affected by the past year will be able to get back on track. 

Mind, I'm slightly hypocritical to say that given that I have not yet ventured out to sit in a pub garden (or, more importantly, to get my ridiculous hair sorted out) and have no intention of doing so until I have had my first jab. I am perfectly well aware that transmission rates outside are low, and am also aware of the fact that the chance of me having complications if I did catch COVID are also low. That's why I am still waiting for my first vaccination. But, but, but. I just sort of feel that, having got through this year physically unscathed I don't want to rush into anything now and blow it. Probably being overcautious. But one of the very few advantages of turning 40 is that I should be in the next tranche at which point, I'm good to go.

So what will be (or, indeed, what was) your first post-lockdown meal out or drink out or experience? What's the thing you've been missing above all else? We have a few treats booked in for the rest of the year and am getting slightly giddy at the prospect of some fayne dayning. D and I are decent enough cooks, and I flatter myself that we've eaten pretty well throughout lockdown, but we are domestic cooks rather than restaurant chefs and I can't WAIT to eat something beautiful and delicious and unsubstantial and frivolous. 

It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas

We bought a turkey this year. We never usually buy a whole turkey - just a crown or a breast joint. Regular readers may remember (indeed, why wouldn't you) that chez Seren, we do not eat turkey on Christmas day, but enjoy a traditional Turkey Curry on Boxing Day, for which a small crown is perfectly adequate. But this year we found ourselves (suitably be-masked and socially distanced) in Kirkgate Market and we saw what looked like a fairly modest bird for a definitely modest price. 

Well, apparently even modest birds produce great big piles of meat - we have OODLES (a technical term). But, perhaps even more pleasingly, we also ended up with a slow cooker full of delicious overnight turkey stock. Which is what got me to thinking about Christmas smells. For 12 hours, our home was filled with a mild turkey fug which scent, weirdly, took me straight back to childhood - Christmas Day, watching Top of the Pops and waiting for the grandparents to arrive for lunch. 

I also baked a banana and mincemeat loaf earlier this month (recipe in this month's Good Food magazine - providential indeed since I had a couple of bananas that were preventing the freezer door from closing properly and a rogue jar of mincemeat that appeared in a store cupboard audit and needed using before the 2020 batch arrives). And, again, the smell was incredible - that combination of spice and sweetness that just screams Christmas, even though I don't recall my mother ever baking mince pies when we were young. (She may well have done, in which case I am an ungrateful creature because my abiding memory is of puff pastry mince pies from the bakery, served warm with cream for lunch on Christmas Eve. We also used to have sausage rolls for lunch on Christmas Eve - it was a total pastry fest which was quite unusual for our household and regarded as a huge treat.)

I feel terribly nostalgic at the moment. It's probably to be expected, what with most of us having been shut away from family and friends for nearly nine months. And our family, like many others, has experienced loss this year that means that, even on those precious few days when we come together, there will be an empty chair in the corner.

But if there is one time of the year when nostalgia is OK, it is Christmas. And the smells and tastes of all those beloved Christmas foods, some traditions that span decades, and others more recent but no less precious, have been wonderful prompts. 

I hope to write again before the big day - I have an exciting pizza to share and I'd love to record the recipe for the aforementioned banana loaf - but, since promises are like (mince) pie crusts, I will avoid any guarantee. So I'll take the opportunity now to say to anyone reading - MERRY CHRISTMAS. I hope you all find some joy in this most joyful time of year, even if things are a little bit strange. Next year will be better. And, in the meantime, may all your beloved Christmas treats bring you comfort and remind you that there is always light in the dark. 

Recent Eats - the lockdown 2.0 edition

This post has been sitting in my drafts for a while. I started on it a couple of weeks ago, but kept losing heart. I would start a sentence and then drift off, only to find myself staring blankly at the screen.

It's been so long that the title now only just applies. We are, apparently, approaching the end of Lockdown 2.0 in England, although given that my area (along with many others) lurches straight into Tier 3, we probably won't really notice. 

Gah, I don't want to moan. I really don't want to moan when I am safe, my family are safe, I am gainfully employed, able to work from home and, delighted that someone (either the supermarket supply chain managers or the Great British Public, who knows?) seem to have learned the lessons of Lockdown 1. We have been able to get supermarket delivery slots throughout and last week, the shopping contained flour! Two types! So, you know, what's to complain about?

Still, (because it is my blog and if I can't be self indulgent here...) my mood has really plummeted this week. One of the first signs is when I struggle to read and I haven't (until last night) managed to pick up a book in days. I've watched quite a lot of Christmas films - and even a Christmas sitcom - on Netflix, which has been nice. But I've still found myself sitting in floods of tears for no reason whatsoever. It feels terribly selfish and not a little pathetic when so many people are experiencing real problems and real heartache but I think all of us have taken a bit of an emotional bashing recently. I'm missing my family and my friends terribly - I've seen my Mum and Dad once since March and my father in law once and, other than that, it's been D and the cat. 

Sorry - this all turned into a bit of a pity party. It was my original intention to write about what we've been cooking lately, not snivel into the ether. When I flicked back through my most recent photos, all I managed to find were pita breads and stew and dumplings, which makes for rather beige pictures (not that anyone is here for the food photography!)

Pita or pitta?

The pita breads are by Dan Lepard, and the recipe can be found online here as well as in his book "Short and Sweet". I am finding, more and more, that I turn to Lepard for baking queries and this book is an absolute godsend. His brief-knead-and-leave method of bread making is unconventional but works very well - I would certainly urge you to forever eschew the store bought pita and go for these instead. They are a leetle labour intensive, but well worth it (and, I can confirm, they freeze beautifully).

Stew and, more importantly, dumplings

The stew in question is my late mother in law's panacalty. Or, rather, our take on it. Corned beef, and chunks of root veg in oxtail soup (!) with suet dumplings on top. I make it slightly faffier than just bunging everything in a single pan - roasting off the veg for a bit of extra flavour, caramelising onions for sweetness, finishing with a little mustard. We also use D's homemade corned beef rather than the tinned stuff...altogether, it's a lovely, lovely thing. And very much of the North East. 

I'm sure that there are more things to share but I have bored on quite enough for one Friday afternoon. Sending huge love and virtual hugs out into Tinternet to everyone out there who is struggling, be it a little bit or a whole lot. I wish you all a weekend of good food, cat cuddles and Strictly (or whatever it is that makes your world feel a little less crap). 

Sad Times

This blog is packed full of accounts of many wonderful meals that I have had over the years, at establishments both in the UK and abroad. The hospitality industry has been devastated by the impact of the current global pandemic and, if news reports are to be believed, its tribulations are very far from over.

From a bystander's point of view it is heart breaking, so I can only imagine how those restaurant and bar owners, chefs and front of house staff are feeling at the moment. And it is frustrating as well, since a lot of these places have introduced measures since the UK's first lockdown has eased, to try and ensure the safety of their customers at the cost of revenue. 

We haven't been out all that much, but those places we have visited, we both agreed that, despite us being on the nervous end of the spectrum, we felt pretty safe and were able to relax and enjoy good food that we hadn't cooked and good wine that we hadn't poured. Last Friday particularly stands out as we went to The Reliance, pretty much our favourite place to eat and drink out in Leeds, for the first time since March.  We ate well (the poached pear with chocolate ganache pictured below was a particular highlight,) and drank a bit too much wine sitting at a familiar window seat watching the (somewhat diminished) hustle and bustle of North Street outside and pretending it was 2019 again.  Which, at the time, certainly didn't feel like a particularly stellar year but now is bloody Shangri La.

My understanding (and I hold my hands up that I deliberately try not to pay any more than cursory attention to the news these days) is that there appears to be quite limited evidence that any rise in cases is being caused, specifically, by people eating out and that transmission is unlikely to occur in a restaurant setting. Whether that is right or wrong, it feels harsh that certain industries such as hospitality are bearing a rather large brunt at the moment. Especially when you see people flout basic rules like wearing a face mask (properly! Over you nose and your mouth, twatbadger, not just scraping your chin!) or, in some areas like our particular Northern city, not mixing households. I get that everybody is frustrated or bored or fed up, but if we all stepped up a bit day to day, then maybe all these businesses could be saved. 

I don't even know that this post has a point beyond to just...be quite sad. And also, to acknowledge the very great debt that I personally owe to so many people in the hospitality industry, who have supplied me and D with some of our very favourite memories. I have fingers, toes, eyes and whiskers crossed that things start looking up soon.

A journal of the plague year

Greetings from what feels like day 10,367 of lockdown.  Here in the UK, we are supposed to be in phase 2 or level 3 or something but since I (in common with much of the population) didn't actually understand an awful lot of the government guidance issued earlier this week (I mean, I understood some of the individual words themselves just not what they were supposed to convey when squished together in a sentence) I am just staying exactly where I am. 

The world is very small right now.  There is the house, the little garden, the occasional foray to the Sainsburys Local on the corner and, on one memorable occasion, a jaunt ten minutes down the road to the pharmacist.  That is it.  Certain things, occasionally, will come to mind and I will realise that I miss them and long for them so strongly that I experience a momentary flash almost akin to physical pain.  But then it passes, and I sink back into my little life, not contented exactly, but certainly not unhappy. 

Work is busy and that helps a lot.  D and I are both able to work full time from home so we have two stations set up - one in a little study at the front of a house (with a proper desk and a view of the street), one at the end of the dining room table (colder, feels less "professional", but closer to the kettle).  We alternate between them.  We have our little routine; whoever is based downstairs makes the first cup of tea of the day, we always stop for Popmaster (and the second cup of tea) at half ten, lunch is twelve on the dot.  As I said, a little life.

We've been eating well though, I'll say that for us.  I'm going to try and publish some recipes on here in the next few weeks to make sure some dishes get saved for posterity.  Quite a lot of baking (our flour stocks remain healthy for now), some random combinations (food waste, always something of an anathema has now become an absolute no no.  D baked up potato peelings the other week - NB: good, but probably needed slightly less time in our beast of an oven) and lots of comfort food type dishes.  This weekend a glorious treat; The Black Swan at Oldstead (of Michelin star and Tommy Banks fame) are doing food box deliveries and this week have extended to Leeds.  Two three course meals for two people (so four meals in all) for seventy of your English pounds.  I will share pictures.  And if you happen to live in the vicinity (they're delivering to Oldstead, York, Harrogate and North Leeds) then check out the website (not an ad.  Not sponsored, although if they'd like to, I am shameless, shameless.  I will extol their virtues to all 5 of my readers all day in return for some nice food.)

I hope that all of you out there are staying safe and well; and to all on the frontline - not just the doctors and nurses but the people who man the checkouts in the supermarkets, the delivery drivers, the posties, everyone, thank you very much.  I am acutely conscious that the only reason I am able to whiffle on from the safety of my own home is because you are out there facilitating that.

Molehills in the time of COVID-19

We continue to adjust to life in lockdown.  It’s not the staying indoors that bothers me at all – I am, by nature, a hibernator and quite happy to spend my days pottering around the house.  As long as I have my cat, my books, Netflix et al, I can be quite content.  But this has made me realise how incredibly, desperately spoiled I was with regards to food and shopping.

In my entire adult life, there has pretty much never been a time that I have not been able to get something I want to eat.  All those meal plans where we said: “I fancy aubergine this week!  Dover sole!  Chicken thighs!  Taramsalata!  Scrambled eggs!”  And then, boom.  COVID-19 happens, and food shopping becomes a thing to be feared rather than a quick ten minute sojourn before you get on with the business of whipping up a meal.

I don’t like the modern phrase of “Check your privilege” but it is so applicable here.  I am definitely checking mine.  I took so much for granted and with it, all those people toiling away in the supply chain, probably for minimum wage, to ensure that my every whim was met.

And the privilege continues to a certain extent, because it is a privilege at the moment to be even fretting about something like this but I do think that my anxiety has hooked on the issue of food availability and supply rather than dealing with the bigger, more frightening things happening outside these four walls.

It was eggs that I fixated on at first.  Eggs were in short supply.  We are genuinely trying to go out as little as possible, and certainly avoiding large supermarkets. But the little Sainsbury’s Local that I ventured out to, in that first week, was stripped.  Suddenly, all I could think about was – what if we can’t get any eggs?  What will we do?  I never realised that I was so very fond of eggs or that they formed such a staple part of my diet. We’ve now signed up for a weekly delivery of milk, eggs and butter (from The Modern Milkman if anyone is interested and in the supply area – only two deliveries in but have been extremely impressed with the whole process and the quality of the produce.)

Less pressing, but stll, niggling at me like an itchy cardigan, I began to worry about our supply of beloved Maldon Sea Salt, and the sriracha chilli sauce that we tend to strew with abandon over half our meals.  Ebay, and an online Asian supermarket, have solved these problems for now, although the fact that I have three boxes of salt in my pantry probably means that I am turning into one of those stockpilers that I so despised at the outset of all of this.

Flour and yeast were then the next obsession and I became frankly Gollum-esque protecting my precious jars.  I’ve just been able to order a few bags of plain and bread flour and some fresh yeast (which I can freeze) at Shipton Mill who are, very sensibly, releasing a limited number of delivery slots on a daily basis as and when they become available so that has solved that immediate problem.  I await, resigned, to see what will strike next.

I am genuinely curious to see if this has a long term impact on shopping and eating habits when things revert to normal.  Will we revert away from the current culture of little-and-often-as-whim-dictates more towards a weekly “Big Shop”?  Will we continue to use these small suppliers who have been there for us when we needed them or will we abandon them in favour of supermarket convenience and competetive pricing?

If nothing else, I just hope that I remember to be a little bit more aware of how lucky I am.  And never, not never, take eggs (or salt, condiments and flour) for granted.

Hell in a handcart

So I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve decided that I’ve had enough of all the ridiculousness going on at the moment. Anyone else fancy a return to the mid 90s? I seem to remember that my main issue back in those days was whether I would be able to pass for 15 and thus manage to watch “Speed” at the cinema at Lakeside shopping centre. Kids, this was back before the Internet when we used to check cinema times using Ceefax which could take up to half an hour. But in these simpler, happier days, when we were not subjected to a constant, 24 hour barrage of global misery via our phones, we didn’t mind being a little bit bored. Whole summers would pass and we would just sit around in the park, passing round a single copy of Just Seventeen magazine and drinking Calypsos.

Yes, I’m probably guilty of a bit of rose tinted remembering but can you blame me? It’s bad enough that we are in the throes of a pandemic which WOULD occur during the Premiership of a man who can’t manage to grasp the very basic concept of hair brushing, let alone anything more complicated. But we also appear to dwell amongst the very worst kind of selfish, self-serving, overly entitled crap weasels who think as long as THEY have enough pasta and loo roll to see them through until 2030, everything is ok. To the worst offenders out there I would say: I don’t personally believe in karma. But if I did, I wouldn’t love your chances against COVID-19 you selfish pieces of plankton.

Anyway, D and I are fine for the moment. Minx is fine. I am ignoring the news as far as I possibly can and concentrating on my first true love, books with some cooking as well. I can see me becoming almost obsessive over the next few months about eking out what produce I can buy as far as possible and am thankful for all those years of experimenting in the kitchen, not to mention the well stocked pantry that will facilitate this.

Keep safe and well dear reader; be thoughtful and kind to those around you, reclaim that Blitz spirit and hopefully in a few months time this will all seem as odd and implausible as a bus rigged to blow up if the speedometer drops below 50.

Into the twenties

Towards the end of last year I was pondering the future of this blog.

When I first started, I had a vague USP - or at least an SP, as it was hardly U. I was someone who enjoyed good food who was following the Weight Watchers diet. It was supposed to be a record of losing weight while cooking nice meals. It was also a nice way of interacting with other people in the diet blog community.

Well, times have changed. I may still be Weeble shaped but I no longer follow Weight Watchers and have come to believe that, for me at least, anything which involves endless counting and measuring of food is not really a good idea. And many of the blogs I followed back then have disappeared, their authors with them.

I still wanted somewhere, though, to act as a virtual recipe repository and a record of special meals. So I toyed with the idea of a new blog and even went so far as to investigate domain names. But, nah.  There might be stuff on here that makes me squirm a little bit (encouraging the use of half fat butter and cheese to make macaroni cheese springs to mind) and I wish that it didn’t have WW in the title (would anyone believe me if I pretended that it stood for something else? World Wide? Whimsical, Wobbly?) But it’s mine, dammit. And I am very fond of it, crappy food photography and all.

So, this year, as challenged by D, I am going to blog more regularly and make sure all our favourite recipes and meals are recorded. I might even go back and revise some of those earlier abominations dishes.

Happy New Year to all, may your 2020 be a good one (and may your shadows never grow less).

Meal planning and catching up

*Slinks back in with a new post.  Torn between starting with abject apology for absence (which always feels slightly self-aggrandising since it pre-supposes that anyone actually missed self in the first place) and just acting like it never happened.  Wrestles with dilemma.  Deletes and rewrites and deletes same chunk of text multiple times.*

Anyway (in lieu of any excuses, I’ll opt for an aggressive stance), in this day and age how many people still read blogs?  Especially little backwater blogs like this one where the writer still uses their original Blogger template and eschews any sort of decent photography preferring to stick with everything look like primordial sludge.  The blogging scene ain’t what it was all those years ago. Feel free to shoot me down if I’m being an unreasonable cowbag but I reckon that it used to be about sharing personal experiences with like-minded people in a nice, low-key manner and creating a little virtual community of kindred spirits.  Now, you get people who actually put the career of Influencer on their passport (or would do if you still had to list your career on your passport).  So everyone who has a blog wants it to be the biggest, shiniest, shoutiest blog in the world in order to attract attention and, thus, money.  Oh, not to mention the bloggers have to have a presence all across social meeeeeja.  Which kind of puts paid to the fact of anonymity.

I think that it’s a little bit sad.  But then, I suppose if someone had Discovered me and offered me ludicrous sums of money / amounts of free stuff to write about what I love, thus saving me from a life of Desk Bound Drudgery, I would probably have taken them up on it.  So maybe it’s just envy talking.

ANYWAY.  What’s going on with me?  Work – busy, busy, busy.  But good.  Food – we’ve cooked some really lovely stuff lately that I hope to get round to posting, but there may not be pictures because I think I have to really give up on the whole pictures thing.  I’ll just illustrate everything with a photo of my cat.  Weight – well, still there.  At this stage of the game I think it’s going to take a serious bout of novo virus to kick-start things on a downwards trajectory again. 

And as for meal planning this week…

Monday: as long term friends will know, we often have ready-made soup on a Monday night.  This is partly a hangover from our 5:2 days, ensuring a relatively low calorie start to the week.  It also means that after getting through Monday we don’t have to worry about any elaborate cooking.  But D finally cracked and said what we were both thinking – soup can be a bit dull.  So now, Monday is going to be soup-and-bread-and-cheese night. We’ve got some chicken and vegetable broth along with a lovely looking piece of Caerphilly to enjoy.  I’ve had some baguette dough defrosting in the fridge since this morning – I’ve not tried freezing it before, so not sure how it will turn out but am hopeful it will work well.

Tuesday: currently, spiced monkfish with chutney and flatbreads, but this may end up bumped to the weekend.

Wednesday: spaghetti carbonara – D is out for a couple of pints after work but I should be able to whip this up quickly when he comes home starving.

Thursday: roasted vegetables with couscous and feta.  We used to cook a stove-top version of this on a regular basis when I was a student.  It was the go-to “We’ve been eating rubbish for several days and require some proper nutrients” meal. 

Friday: we’re both out for a leaving do, so no current plans in place.

Saturday: might end up being the monkfish.  Otherwise, we have steak in the freezer all ready to be turned into steak sandwiches.

Sunday: D has a yen for chicken Kiev.  So he’s going to make that.  He has done a homemade version before and it worked out very well, so I have high hopes for this.  What could be nicer than crispy chicken drenched in garlic butter?

And that takes us nicely back round to Monday.  Quite a meaty weekend, so might need to balance that out with a few more veggie based meals next week (never a major hardship).  Hope whatever you find yourself cooking and eating is lovely. A bientot! 

Hunger Directed Eating: Deja Vu or Deja Woo-hoo?

I apologise for the appalling title.  It is Friday and it is the end of the week and I am ready for the weekend.  A four day weekend, no less, since we have tacked an extra leave day on after the Bank Holiday.  We are off to London, but not to see the Queen - to see my brother, D2, my sister in law and my gorgeous nephew and nieces.  So, much to look forward to.

In the meantime, Hunger Directed Eating, or HDE, has been popping up a lot as a tag on my Instagram feed recently so obviously I clicked on it for a nosy around.  I might be missing something, but it seems to be VERY similar to the kind of thing that Paul McKenna was pushing years ago with his "I Can Make You Slim" programme, minus the slightly spooky hypnosis CD.

The gist is that if you eat like a slim person, you will get slim.  Which makes sense to a certain extent.  You have to listen to your body, eat what you want, when you want and stop when you are satisfied.  For dieters, this sounds like the Holy Grail - no restrictions, no counting, no nothing.

I must admit, while I think it sounds pretty great, I am slightly sceptical.

One: learning to eat instinctively is a VERY GOOD THING.  If someone is suffering from a binge eating disorder then reprogramming yourself that you no longer categorise food as "good" and "bad" is excellent.  And if you can crack it, it's the most natural way to maintain weight loss in the world.  But...

Two:  if you have a significant amount of weight to lose, I am unconvinced that you will manage to do it with a programme that sells itself on the notion that there is no restriction whatsoever.  I am no biologist, but I am fairly sure that the human body is instinctively (key word here) more likely to want to maintain the status quo (including fat stores which are a useful defence against future famine) than it is to get smaller.  Obviously, if you go from bingeing seven days a week to eating a normal diet, you will create an initial calorie deficit and you will lose some weight.  But to lose four stone (say) you would have to create an overall calorie deficit of (roughly) 196,000 calories.  Over the course of a year, to do this you would need to instinctively undereat by 536 calories a day.  For a woman that's a quarter of their daily maintenance requirements.

Three:  again, if you are someone with a significant amount of weight to lose, you have likely been ignoring your instincts and your body for a very long time.  You are likely to be very, very good at it.  So to expect to completely reprogramme yourself and lose weight at the same time seems a tough ask.  It's a bit like...well, say you are a really terrible driver and you take a driving test and end up mounting the pavement and ploughing into a load of pedestrians before ending up in a duck pond.  You have utterly failed at something which is a very natural and instinctive skill for other people.  HDE strikes me a bit like you've climbed out of the pond and are wondering what to do next and the driving instructor hands you the keys, rips up the L plates and says, "Yep, you've proved to be really bad at this driving but the instincts are probably there somewhere so just trust yourself in the future and you'll be fine."  It just doesn't make logical sense.

Four: almost without fail, every photograph I saw with an HDE tag was of high calorie, high fat food.  Now, it might well be that the user is eating a Full English for breakfast and then is so full afterwards that they pick on fruit and carrot sticks for the rest of the day.  That's kind of the point.  But when you see pictures like that, all captioned: "I can eat this and still lose weight!" you being to wonder if we've got a bit of a case of the Emperor's New Diet here. 

Anyway, I would love to be proved wrong here - so if anyone has come across a genuine, long-term success story then please share.  I'm going to see if I've still got that Paul McKenna book kicking around somewhere; aside from anything else, that CD was one of the best insomnia aids that I have ever yet encountered for all that it didn't help to make me thin...

What's up, doc?

It’s somewhat customary, when one has been absent a long time from one’s corner of T’Internet, to apologise and offer an explanation.  So, lovely readers, the primary reason that I have not been posting recently is because it is hard to work up any enthusiasm for writing about food when you seem to spend half your life dealing with it at the other end.  I am sorry to be coarse, unladylike and to be offering what is undoubtedly I of the TM sort.  But there you have it. 

Finally, at the end of last week the problem was diagnosed as Bile Acid Malabsorption (BAM) or, as it is sometimes called, Bile Acid Diarrhoea (BAD), almost certainly caused by the removal of my gallbladder around eighteen months ago (I wrote a post about my experience with that so will link the two together in case it should prove useful to anyone).

I won’t pretend to understand the ins and outs of it, but basically BAM means that your guts are not absorbing as much bile acid as they should be so you end up with bile swilling around that your body tries to flush out by releasing more water – the result being that you end up with pretty much permanent tummy trouble.  A normal reasbsorption rate is about 20%.  Anything under 15% and you get your BAM diagnosis.  Anything under 5% is considered severe.  My rate was 1.8% so –well.  Winning. 

I have now started taking medication which should mean that the problem is sorted out and very shortly I will be looking back and laughing at all this.  Because, believe me.  I am not labouring under any sort of delusion that this is a Big Problem in the grand scheme of things.  I am perfectly well aware that there are many people out there who are dealing with far worse and I am a little ashamed that even at my ripe old age I have not got any better at pulling on Big Girl Pants and being stoic in the face of such annoyances. 

New year, new you?

What is it about January 1st that makes us all think we will suddenly ditch our every bad habit and arise from the ashes of our previous failures like a glorious, slender, beautiful, healthy, mindful, balanced pheonix?  I've lived through enough Januaries now to know that it NEVER happens and, also, that the darkest, wettest, coldest more miserable time of you is probably the period in which you are least likely to succeed in instituting lasting changes.

With regards to weight loss, I long ago tried to ditch the "I want to weigh xxx by yyy" because, well, that way certain madness lies.  And it most definitely has improved my general relationship with food such that I have managed to end the last two years lighter than when I began them, which is progress in the right direction. 

My experience trying WW Flex last year was a really positive one.  I lost weight and felt like I was eating really well.  But after a couple of months, the old itchiness started creeping back in.  I started resenting the constant measuring and tracking and starting yearning for all those things that just didn't fit naturally into the programme.

Previous to that, I managed to lose weight successfully, and keep it off, using intermittent fasting and here, too, I see many benefits.  You get all the unpleasantness out of the way across two days and the rest of the time you learn to practice moderation.  And you really do - no longer are you stuffing in a full size pizza because "diet starts tomorrow".  But the fast days were really, really hard - I'm horrible to be around when my blood sugar gets too low - and increasingly I was making excuses to skip one or both fasts a week.  Which means you're then just eating normally all the time - which is fine if you're maintaining but not if you have weight to lose.

It strikes me that by combining the two I might be on to a winner.  One fast day a week - not fun, sure, but doable.  To counter: one "day off" built into the week: a day to cook that roast pork belly recipe that won't fit in to your daily points, or get that takeaway or eat that doughnut.  Five days a week of counting.  Maybe four - if I can get away with a day and a half "off" (generally Friday evening and Saturday) and still lose a pound a week, I'd be perfectly happy.

So that's the long term plan.  But, for now, I'm using January to lay the groundwork.  I'm not back to pointing yet but I have instituted the one day a week fasting.  For the rest, I'm concentrating on getting back to eating in a regular, moderate way after the madness that is the latter half of December.  Snacks are out, midweek drinkies are definitely out (alcohol reserved for weekends only).  Plenty of vegetable based meals.  A proper routine at bedtime and in the morning to get my sleep sorted out.  More steps daily, even if it just means getting of the bus a stop early.  Little, healthy habits.  It's not dramatic or exciting but I think, from now, on I'm treating January as less of a fresh start and more of a gentle transition.

Post Christmas blue(berry scone)s

Seasons greetings to all! We are now in the period of the year where, if your household is anything like ours, you will be barely moving apart from the well trodden path between the sofa and the kitchen. Secretly, you will already be planning the health kick to end all health kicks on which you plan to embark at one minute past midnight on January 1st. And then you remember that you’ll have a fridge full of NYE leftovers at that point so best hold off until you return to work.

Today is my birthday. Most of the year, I dislike having a birthday so close to Christmas but, I must admit, there is something nice about having an event to look forward to post Boxing Day if only to punctuate the naps. I woke to the smell of blueberry scones in the oven - there are few better smells than home baking and, I might almost suggest that it beats the more commonly evoked scent of bacon frying into second place. But I digress. Behold these beauties which were sweet and buttery and perfect with a cup of tea. They were an almost exact replica of the old Starbucks berry scones that I used to adore back in the day and which the bastards saw fit to stop producing (in the U.K. at least).

Hopefully everyone had a wonderful Christmas dinner? Our duck legs were as delicious as ever (I don’t really understand why we only tend to cook them once a year). And D’s last minute brainwave of making shredded duck and black pudding bonbons, very lightly flavoured with Chinese five spice, was a genius addition.

We were due to spend Boxing Day eating a Christmas dinner proper with my parents. And, indeed, D managed it. But I took to bed mid afternoon with a stomach like a washing machine - a potent combo of my gnarly digestive system in uproar about the surfeit of rich food and drink that I had dared to subject it to, and that wonderful monthly visitor that makes it such a pleasure to be female. I am rather sad about this, although 24 hours of barely eating seems to have calmed things down slightly and my Mum did package up some turkey and sausage-meat for me to enjoy a traditional post-Christmas sandwich. Hopefully, it will be sorted out early in the New Year (the gnarly digestive system rather than the being female bit) at which point I might buy a turkey breast and offer to cook them a not-Christmas dinner in recompense.

That aside, it has been a lovely festive season and I have once again been reminded of how lucky and blessed I am. A blog is a funny thing - even one which is ostensibly about dieting and food will often come to be treated as a sort of confessional and that means the focus here might be skewed towards the less positive aspects of my life. This year, like all years, has brought its issues and struggles but also its gifts and it will be the memory of these latter that will endure.

A pre-Christmas catch up

I cannot believe that Christmas is almost upon us and I, for one, am nowhere near prepared.  How goes it for you, dearest readers?

Most of our Christmas dinner preparation is underway, thanks to D.  The duck legs are sitting quietly in a box of fat in the fridge, the braised red cabbage and clementine ice cream are in the outdoor freezer alongside a couple of pots of turkey curry to enjoy in the fuggy period between Boxing Day and New Year.  And this weekend, I will be turning my attention to Christmas crumble: there will be a layer of apple, a layer of mincemeat and then a crumble topping flavoured with orange zest, cinnamon and chopped nuts. 

Dieting quietly fell off the agenda a good while ago so at the moment I'm all about the damage control which is not easy in an office when there is a permanent supply of Christmas snack foods.  My team actually held a mince pie bake off last week.  I went off piste and submitted a batch of mince pie brownies, which I thought were fairly epic, but they were proved a gamble too far and failed to win on the basis that they were not mince pie-ey enough.  My genius is clearly not appreciated.

Burgeoning waistline aside, I must admit that I have struggled to get into the spirit of things so far this year.  I always used to adore Christmas but now wonder if I'm just getting a little bit too old to buy in to the magic in the same way that I always used to.  Maybe not having children means that you just lose that sense of wonder.  Or maybe the fact that Bella Italia have seen fit to put Christmas Dinner lasagne on their set menu this year (I don't like to swear on this blog but WTAF?) has just made me feel that everything has gone a little bit too far.

Anyway, I hope to be on again at some point to run through my dishes of the year (I'll bet that'll have everyone on the edge of their seats for the forseeable) but in the meantime, I leave you with a picture of my beloved Minx being long suffering in a Christmas scrunchie - looking at which makes me think that perhaps I can still muster a little bit of festive wonder...

Radio silence is never a good sign

At least in diet blog land. It generally means that someone has fallen off the wagon and is sitting by the side of the road with chocolate round their mouth.

Yep, that me. Not so much with the chocolate, actually, I tend to have more of a savoury tooth these days. But things have gone rather horribly wrong.

Excuse number 1: work related stress levels have been rather high in our household recently and neither of us have been taking care of ourselves very well. I even (oh, the shame!) bought an M&S ready meal on the way home the other week for us to have for dinner.

Excuse number 2: it is D’s birthday next week. It is a Big Birthday, ending in a zero, and every week there have been celebratory events arranged. Yes, he has contrived a month long birthday and he’s been working so hard lately that I can’t begrudge him. I could have made sensible choices, I did not.

Ach, it’s annoying but...there you go. As I write this, I’m also realising that somewhere, at the back of my mind, I wrote off October ages ago because we’ve got a holiday at the end of it (we fly to Venice on Monday for a few nights). How’s that for crooked thinking (to steal Lesley’s very useful phrase)?

Anyway, fresh start after the holiday and who cares if it the billionty first fresh start - each time I get a little bit closer. And hopefully I’ll get around to some fun Venice food posts next week while we’re away. Potential food porn alert!

Birthday wishes

Today is my brother’s birthday. Happy birthday D2! Fun fact - not only do my brother and my husband share the same first name, but I have exactly the same first AND middle name combo as my husband’s sister. Oh, and D’s mother and my maternal grandmother shared not only a first name but a birthday. I like these sorts of coincidences, they allow me to sort of believe in the notion of a cosmic pattern. Of course, it could just be that Irish Catholic families tend to be slightly predictable in their name choices.

But anyway, happy birthday brother! I hope that you have a wonderful day. I’m trying to think of another fun fact that is rather more sibling centric but failing (it is still quite early and this bus is making a horrendous droning sound that is really quite distracting). All I can offer is that my brother has many admirable attributes and is a far more sensible and balanced person than his sister so it’s probably for the best that he produced the grandchildren ;-).

It’s yet possible that I may be exhibiting some personal growth since I managed to drag myself along to my WW meeting last night despite the fact I suspected bad news. My digestion is absolutely all over the place at the moment which is making my eating habits slightly (very) erratic. I’m due to see a consultant at the end of November, so that’s good news. Although the scales were slightly (1.5lbs) up this week, I’m still hopeful of getting another stone off by Christmas; D and I have already agreed that November needs to be a quiet and calm month once we get back from Venice, so that will help a lot.

Right, my stop is coming up so I will bid you adieu for now but I will be back at some point to post the saag paneer pizza recipe because it is entirely necessary that you all have that in your lives this year.

Weight loss diary: September 2018

It’s been a while since we had an update so let’s get straight to it:

Weeks 1-4: -8.5lbs
Week 5: -2lbs
Week 6: -1lb
Week 7: -1.5lbs
Weeks 8-10: +2.5lbs
Week 11: -3.5lbs

Total: -15lbs

Not bad at all. Even with a three week blip I’m still averaging at just under 1.5lbs a week. Excellent. It’s not the fastest, sexiest tale of weight loss ever but it is a very sensible, sustainable one.

There will be many more blips but I need to make sure that I arrest them before they turn into three weekers. That’s too long to be off plan and (I always say this but it always bears repeating) I feel SO much better when I’m in the zone. It is hard work to plan and track but the benefits are myriad: better digestion, better sleep, better mental health...it makes you wonder what kind of moron wouldn’t make the effort...

I am not a butterfly

Did you know that butterflies don't eat?  Basically, a caterpillar spends its entire time scoffing itself silly, then it goes into a chrysalis and then, when it emerges as a butterfly, it has so much fuel in reserve from its earlier indulgences that it doesn't need to eat at all and can just focus on the business of procreation. 

One wonders why it doesn't work the same way with fat humans.  I mean, if you've eaten an excess of fuel such that it is stored on your arse or your thighs or wherever, surely you should be able to just stop eating and make use of your stores without any detriment to your health.

There is a point to this, honest.  And the point is - I really hit a wall this weekend, and, for the first time since the last of my latest WW campaign, found things tough going.  It wasn't an issue with hunger or food, more that I just felt absolutely drained of any energy whatsoever.  We set off for a walk first thing on Saturday morning and every step felt like an effort, where the previous weekend it had been easy.  I had a nap on Saturday afternoon.  Then I had an early night.  Then I had a nap on Sunday afternoon followed by another early night.  I was the Incredible Sleeping Woman.

Because worrying is one of my favourite hobbies, I immediately started worrying that I was coming down with some sort of terrible sleeping sickness.  But then I actually decided to use my brain a little bit and considered that:

 a) I am eating a calorie restricted diet at the moment, thereby reducing the amount of fuel that I am taking in and
b)  I am upping my activity and thus increasing the amount of fuel that I burn and
c)  I am not a butterfly.

Clearly, I do not wish to spend every weekend in bed.  Well, I sort of do - not for nothing is the sloth my spirit animal.  But it is sort of nice to go out and do stuff.  So I'm going to monitor the situation.  If things don't improve then obviously something needs tweaking - either I need to eat more or I need to eat differently or maybe scale back on the general steps and concentrate my energy on finishing the Couch to 5k programme.  That may, of course, mean that my weight loss slows down, which is absolutely fine - I'd rather half a pound a week* but sustainable in the long term than get to goal by Christmas** and pile it all back on again by Easter.

*Feel free to remind of this when I lose half a pound at my next weigh in and moan about it.
**Not going to happen unless I literally lop off several limbs, but you get my point.