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. 

Happy New Lockdown

We watched that all time classic film Groundhog Day on NYE; it seemed peculiarly appropriate as we prepared to say farewell to 2021. And, turns out, peculiarly prescient too, as last night England was plunged back into the lockdown that everyone (apart, perhaps, from the actual government) knew was coming. And even though it won't make an awful lot of difference to my life in the immediate future (we had more or less decided to hunker down for the next few months anyway - and are blessed enough that we can do so) still, I lay awake for hours last night feeling sad and anxious.

I am worried for the health of my friends and family. I am worried for the sanity of those of them who have to go back to trying to home school their children alongside everything else. I am worried for all those businesses, particularly those in the hospitality trade, who must be limping along in hope of a miracle: what will survive when we finally make it out? I also realised, extremely selfishly, that I am worried about the food shortages that happened last time (who could forget that dreadful few days where I COULDN'T BUY EGGS*) and then started worrying about the fact that it is somewhat morally dubious to have such concerns in the face of all the others. 

*(And we get eggs delivered every week now, by our friendly local milkman, so we are usually overrun with them).

Let's talk of happier things, shall we? Did everyone manage to have some sort of Christmas? We were lucky enough to see my parents briefly on Christmas Day - I don't know how lucky they felt given that I wept all over them - which was gorgeous. I baked Gougeres for the first time in ages which almost made me feel like a hostess again. Christmas Dinner was our standard fare - confit duck leg, duck and black pudding bonbon, mash, red cabbage, creamy mustard sprouts - which, as ever, was sublime. And, for the first time ever I made a Yule log! I'd share a picture but, dear Teapot, my food photography skills, lacking at the best of times, have not been kind to the poor beast and I wouldn't want to put anyone in mind of...well, you know. Suffice to say, the sponge was light, the filling flavoured with cherries and Kirsch was airy and boozy and the chocolate ganache was dark and slightly bitter to balance everything out. I declare it a positive triumph.

Amazingly, our waist lines escaped the whole festive period relatively unscathed. We'd already been making efforts in that direction before Christmas (of which maybe more in a future post) and I think we naturally managed to balance the more indulgent days with lighter ones. My last hurrah meal before work re-started yesterday? A poached egg on toast. And very nice it was too.

A couple of recipes to share with you (I'll add the links to the relevant page). I used several different recipes for the Yule log, but the basic chocolate Swiss roll was from the GBBO site and I was extremely pleased with the way in which it turned out. Some recipes call for beating the eggs and sugar up over a pan of warm water, but warming the eggs slightly first is so much easier! My sponge was perfect after 8 minutes of cooking, but my oven is a beast so the 10 minutes specified in the recipe is probably fine for most. 

And this carrot and sesame seed bread by Dan Lepard (I'm getting slightly obsessed with the man) was divine - although I found that my mixture needed a splash more liquid than specified to completely come together. Marvellous flavour and texture in the finished loaf though - and a crisp crust that particularly suits it for toasting.

2021 may not have got off to the greatest of starts, but I hope everyone out there is bearing up. (Sort of ) happy new year all!

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.

Recipe corner: a basic template for houmous

It's been an up and down few weeks since I last posted.  In reality, very little has changed.  Our household (me, D, the cat) remain much as before the lockdown in the UK started lifting.  Because we are in the very fortunate position that we can both work full time from home, and have pretty much been able to get all shopping delivered throughout, we have decided to keep more or less to ourselves for the foreseeable.  Although the world has become very small, some days - most days - that feels OK.  I miss my extended family and I miss my work colleagues and I miss sitting in a bar with a pint and a packet of Scampi Fries, but the longer this goes on, the more "life before" takes on a certain dream-like quality.

But there are down moments.  I was broken by cake a couple of weeks ago.  It was good cake too - Nigella's Clementine Cake which is usually pretty foolproof but, on this occasion, because I was trying to deal with it alongside cooking something else, I rushed and it didn't come out of the tin properly; I ended up with half cake, half crumbs.  Such a small thing but I had a proper, screaming tantrum.  And then, for the next few days, found myself bursting into tears at random intervals.  To be clear, I don't think this was really about cake (and, in retrospect, it may have had a lot to do with hormones) but it made it obvious that I'm not 100% OK.  I don't think anyone in the world is 100% OK at the moment.  The fact that I'm OK an awful lot of the time puts me among the very, very luckiest of people.

Anyway, I post the below recipe more for my future reference than anything else - but if you are a houmous fan and have never made it yourself then I think it is well worth it if you happen to have a decent little food processor handy.  The secret to the perfectly whipped texture is, of course, the liquid that the chickpeas were cooked (or canned) in.  I came quite late to this realisation and had all but given up making it before I found out because I only ever produced an oily, claggy disappointment of a mess.  It's taken me a few goes to get the proportions quite right but I think that I'm there now - so I record it for posterity.  

This recipe produces, to my mind, the perfect basic houmous.  All the flavours are in harmony, nothing is too strident.  Once you have that you can play around with your flavours. I didn't weigh out exactly how much this produced, but in terms of volume was probably about the equivalent of the size of standard pot you buy in a supermarket.  Precise, eh?

Note: A true aficionado will probably:

a) remove the skin from the chickpeas before blitzing but, I'm going to be honest, I am not that person.  The results without removing the skin are perfect for my unrefined palate and

b) shudder in horror at the prospect of "flavoured" houmous.  But again, I am not that person.  Caramelised onion houmous is my particular favourite - and it goes beautifully with cheese.  So there.

Ingredients

50g dried chickpeas, soaked in cold water overnight

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 fat clove of garlic, finely grated or crushed

3 tsp lemon juice

2 tsp tahini

Tsp sea salt (or, a generous pinch if you don't tend to measure such things)

NB: if you are using tinned chickpeas, this amount dried equates to about half a drained tin.  Simmer them gently in the can liquid for 10 mins or so to soften slightly and then proceed per the recipe.  Then buy some dried chickpeas and try it that way next time - you'll never go back!

This is barely a recipe but...

Drain the soaked chickpeas and then put them in a large saucepan, add enough water to cover them by about a centimetre, add the bicarb and bring to a boil over a medium heat.

Boil until soft - by which I mean it will crush easily, with minimal pressure, between your thumb and index finger.  The timings will depend on your chickpeas - I gave my last lot just half an hour, but it can take longer.  Keep the water topped up to roughly a centimetre or so over the pulses throughout and skim off any of the grungy looking foam that rises to the top.

When cooked - drain RESERVING THE COOKING WATER.

Put the chickpeas in a little processor - nothing else initially - and blend to a coarse paste.  You then want to add enough of the cooking water to create a perfect texture - and should do this gradually, a tablespoon at a time.  I have found that my optimum texture comes from between 5 and 7 tablespoons of liquid.  What I would suggest is take it down to ever-so-slightly too thick (for me, I would check at 3 or

4 tablespoons).  Then add the other ingredients so you can gauge what effect these have.  And only then finish adding enough water to get it to where you need it to be. Remember, it may vary as it is partly dependent on how much liquid the chickpeas have absorbed during soaking and cooking.

Now you have your basic houmous you can go mad!  Drizzle with olive oil and strew with pomegranate seeds!  Whack up the garlic!  Throw something entirely incongruous (like, say, caramelised onion chutney that needs using up) in there.  Have fun.  And eat smeared on pitta, or toast, or just with a spoon.

With love to all of you out there who are not quite OK.  Rather like the weather today, things remain changeable and sometimes rather gloomy, but the sun, always, inevitably, indubitably, comes out in the end.

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.

Meal planning from the bunker

Well, first full week of working from home completed. At the moment, I have set up shop on the dining room table while D is up in the study. This has proved to be an ill thought out plan on my part since it means that I tend to get landed with all the tea-runs.

The cat remains delighted with the situation and divides her time between sunbathing and jumping up onto my keyboard to take part in the many, interminable calls that are taking place at the moment. I have learned to mute the microphone so other people are spared her contributions to the conversation or the inevitable commotion caused by me attempting to scoop her down.

And we, we are ok. Our families and friends remain ok and for that I am extremely grateful. I woke up from a dream early this morning with a song in my head and I realised that it was the one that Rosemary Clooney sings to Bing Crosby in “White Christmas” about counting blessings instead of sheep. So my subconscious is obviously trying to encourage me to focus on the positives. It is never easy, especially when one is naturally of an anxious, pessimistic frame of mind, but those of us who are not on the frontline at the moment should be doing our very tiny bit by keeping calm and carrying on.

Those of you who know this blog will know that I have always been a meal planner. In fact, meal planning is one of the highlights of the weekend, often taking place over an end of week pint. It has become a slightly different beast at the moment as we are trying, in accordance with guidelines, to avoid shopping as far as we can, so it is all about looking at what we have rather than what we want. We already had a shopping delivery slot booked in for early next week (it’s our practice to do one big shop at the start of the month) but it looks like we won’t be able to get one after that since neither of us (very thankfully) fall into the vulnerable category and it also looks like many of the items we order a matter of course are unavailable. We’ve got a fruit and veg box coming Monday from a local firm and I’m hoping to make that a weekly, or at least fortnightly thing, so that we are not entirely reliant on the small Sainsbury’s Local for fresh produce and can avoid venturing out as far as humanly possible.

Anyway, we’ve just done a full inventory of the garage freezer so meals for the next few days are done:

Sausages, mash and onion gravy - every time I have been forced to break cover and go to Sainsbury’s, there have been sausages in the otherwise denuded chilled produce section so I’ve grabbed a pack. We batch cooked some sausage and bean stew this week (also throwing in some chopped cherry toms that were on the way out, harissa for a touch of fire and a handful of red lentils to thicken the whole) and there are a few left to produce a comfort food classic for tea.

Chicken breast, sage and onion stuffing, roast potatoes, honey roast carrots, peas. We always have a stock of chicken breasts in the freezer so we’re going to have a Sunday lunch. I’ve got plenty of root veg with more coming in the veg box, so am prioritising using these before it turns. I’ll probably do more potatoes and carrots than we need and freeze at the parboiled stage.

Turkey curry with rice and flatbreads - the curry has been in the freezer since Christmas so needs using up. I’ve got a cauliflower stalk that I’ve set aside and will blitz up and combine with the rice to up the veg content here (but don’t tell D!)

Ottolenghi’s dirty rice - well, sort of. The original recipe is here and it is DELICIOUS. We had some chicken livers in the freezer that we had earmarked to make a batch. We don’t have any pork mince but I am going to experiment with using some red lentils cooked nice and soft (for bulk and texture) with some finely chopped, rehydrated Shittake mushrooms (for a meaty flavour).

Tortellini soup - chilled, filled pasta is one of my favourite things and we discovered half a pack of prosciutto cappelletti which is not enough for a meal for two but I’ll use some butternut squash and carrots to make a light, creamy soup then throw the cappelletti into that to stretch it out. Garlic bread on the side - if we’ve cracked and eaten the last remaining garlic baguette by then I can make garlic flatbreads easily enough.

So, that’s five days worth of nice meals out of a quick freezer trawl which is quite gratifying and means I have five days where I don’t have to venture out. Hurrah.

Thoughts and prayers to all of you - hope you and yours are staying safe, well and nourished in these trying times.

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.

A bad start to the week

Picture the scene. Six thirty in the morning, I was lying in bed pretending to be asleep when D comes in and says, in a voice teetering somewhere between incredulity and panic, "Where's the car? The car's gone."

A little further investigation revealed my purse lying in the middle of the drive and the back door lock hanging off the screws. Somebody or bodies had got into our house in the night, removed the car keys from D's jacket pocket, rifled through my handbag and made off with our car.

Now, there's an awful lot of shit going on in the world at the moment, as recent events in London and Manchester prove. And this incident, is, in the scheme of everything that is happening, tiny and incidental and means nothing to anyone except me and my husband and, possibly, our elderly neighbours. But it just serves as further proof to me that there are some complete and utter wankbadgers out there. People who actually think it is ok to break into someone's house while they are sleeping and just help themselves to a car and then, as if that is not cockwomblish enough, leave the back door open through which our cat could have escaped if she had any sort of nous.

I am trying quite hard to be angry because the alternative is to be frightened. I bet arsewipes like those who paid us a midnight visit, I bet that they get off on making people afraid. They probably find it amusing. Well, screw them and screw all the people like them that shake our faith in the basic goodness and decency of humanity. They are not worth our fear.

Anyway, I apologise for the rant and the fact that the only meal planning I will do today is working out which bits of these spineless lowlifes I would like to chop off and bake in a pie (with apologies to George R. R. Martin). Normal service to be resumed shortly.

Why I'm giving the 5:2 diet a whirl

There’s only so many times that you can make grand announcements about starting back on the dieting wagon and have people take you seriously.  I’ve been writing this blog for years and, look, still a porker!  An older and wiser porker, true, but still. 

So I’ve kept a bit quiet on that front lately, while I try and get it straight in my head what I actually want to do.  I’ve thought about it a lot and D and I talked about it while we were away because he wants to lose some weight too.  And for the last couple of weeks we have been doing intermittent fasts – commonly known as the 5:2 diet.

The premise is simple.  For 2 days a week you eat 500 calories or fewer (600 if you’re a bloke).  The rest of the time you eat normally.  Emphasis on the normal – you don’t gorge, because it defeats the point.  I’m probably teaching my grandmother to suck eggs here; there was a BBC documentary about it a few years ago and it has since become quite mainstream.  I think I even mentioned it in a blog post a couple of years back having done one fast day out of curiosity and given up in a fit of disgust.  So why come back to it now?

The answer is pretty simple.  I just cannot face accounting for every little thing that I stick in my mouth anymore.  I’ve successfully lost weight by counting calories, I’ve successfully lost weight by counting points but I seem to have used up every last little ounce of willpower to do these things again.  It is utterly, utterly tedious and utterly, utterly joyless and I don’t want my food to be tedious and joyless all the time. 

If this works it means that I only have to think about counting calories for two days a week.  And, don’t get me wrong, fasting is a bit blooming miserable.  But it’s only for two days a week.  Psychologically, it makes a massive difference to be able to say, “Oh, hello mince pie.  I can’t eat you today, but I will be wrapping myself all around you tomorrow.  Wait for me.” 

It helps a lot that D is doing it too.  We can be a bit hungry and a bit miserable together.  And, like I said, the fasting itself hasn’t actually been as difficult as I thought and I’ve successfully completed four fast days so far.  I eat a very light lunch at around one o clock – two oatcakes, two Laughing Cow triangles and some chopped salad or a couple of clementines.  I drink plenty of sugar free squash and a couple of black coffees during the day.  And then dinner is either a bowl of soup or something simple but high in protein like a piece of fish with vegetables or an omelette.  I hoard 10 calories for a splash of milk so I can have a cup of tea after supper.  At the moment, we’re relying on quite a lot of ready-made stuff simply because we don’t want to have to cook on fast days, but that’s OK.

And the results?  The results are as follows:

Week 1 weight loss / (gain)                         (0.4) lbs

Week 2 weight loss / (gain)                         3.0 lbs

Total loss / (gain)                                         2.6 lbs

Bit of a mixed bag there, but I’m going to give it a bit longer before I come to any firm conclusions.  I have no expectations that the losses will be quick – a pound a week is my modest ambition, and so far I have achieved over and above that, albeit not in a straight line.   Over those two weeks I have had fish and chips, wine, a roast dinner, cheese, chocolate, mince pies (clearly not all at once).  So although I’m conscious not to go absolutely mad nor have I been particularly abstemious.

D and I are committed to doing this until the end of January – although I can’t see either of us managing even one fast day between Christmas and New Year (you never know but…you kind of do).  So whether it works or not, at least I’ll have given it a fair try.  I really, really hope it does.  The only alternatives that I can see at the moment really blow.  As ever, beloved readers, I will keep you posted.

Shame

I read a story this morning that Kirsty Allsopp, she of the C4 property series "Location x 3", had provoked ire among her Twitter followers by commenting on some random guy's breakfast.  Said person had consumed "A glass of coke, a cappuccino, a croissant and a ham and cheese sandwich," and, as a result, "Our NHS is toast".


I don't know about you, but I suspect that the person in question was attempting to assuage the mother of all hangovers - that lot is classic morning after fare.  But whether that is true or he was just getting off a night shift or he happens to like starting the day with caffeine and fat fuelled bang, it doesn't really matter. 


See, the first thing that occurred to me was, I bet the man was fat.  Ms Allsopp doesn't tell us (not enough characters left after listing out the gory details of the meal that insulted her so), but I have observed that in general, criticising the diet of fat people and pretending it is really a debate about the state of the country's health service, appears to be considered fair game.  It's why every time you see a news story about the rise in obesity rates it is accompanied by a picture of someone wearing jeans that are several sizes too small and chowing down on a cream bun. 


We all know being fat is unhealthy, and that discussions need to be had around what our poor, beleaguered health service can cope with (which is a far more complex point than "Let's not treat fat people and smokers!" whatever indignant commentators who lurk below the line on various news websites would like to think).  But people, let's not use the NHS as an excuse for being an old fashioned, common-or-garden bitch.

All change at Weight Watchers HQ

So those little monkeys over at Weight Watchers have decided to change the plan again, just a few years on from the “Pro Points” re-vamp.  Instead of being professional, points are now smart.  Smart points.  SPs (not to be confused with the other SP – Sneaky Peak).

I haven’t looked at the new plan in vast amounts of details, but here are the headlines:

The calculator now seems to require a lot more information.  The points are initially calculated on calorie content but then can vary one way or the other based on the nutritional profile.  High protein content will bring the points down while high sugar and high saturated fat will shoot them up.

The points allowance has been recalculated – and the majority of people seem to have ended up with fewer points overall.

Some of the foods that I looked at – i.e. the ones that were saved in my favourites, hadn’t changed very much.  The most noticeable differences were the fact that skimmed milk has increased in points (presumably because of the natural sugars) and items of confectionary have also become higher – a KitKat, for example, used to be 6pps but is 9sps.  Foods high in saturated fat have also increased – butter has doubled, and olive oil also appears higher.  Which makes such treats much harder to build in to the plan.

All in all, I’m feeling rather ambivalent.  Change can, of course, be a good thing when it is done for the right reasons but WW has always been about flexibility and moderation and this feels like a bit of a move away from that.  And I always found that the pro point system yielded good results for me without feeling overly punitive.   A bit of chocolate after dinner, a knob of butter stirred through the mashed potatoes – these are the things that help me stick to a plan long term.  My current thinking is to pick up again with pro points in the new year, using a homemade, Excel based tracker and see how that goes which will have the added bonus of not costing me £5 a month to be an online subscriber.

If anyone out there has started on SP I’d be intrigued to know how you are finding it!

Meal planning Mog Day

Are we allowed to talk about Christmas yet?  Are we?  It's practically December so I think that's OK.  In the last week or so I've had my first (few) mince pies, attended a Christmas fayre and bought this:

Combining cats, Christmas and a hefty dose of childhood nostalgia, this is an amalgam of some of my absolute favourite things.  Have you seen the television advert?  I know that it has been conceived by some heartless marketing man who has calculated the exact level of tug required on heartstrings to make a purchase, but I DON'T CARE.  All profits from the sale of the book go towards improving child literacy in the UK.  And if Christmas is all about gift giving, then giving a child the gift of literacy, the gift of books for goodness sake, is probably up there with the best of them.

Sorry, got a bit carried away there.  And D, being a stalwart Waitrose man, would not approve of me banging the drum for Sainsbury's.  Thus, onwards.

There's not much by way of meal planning this week because I'm only home for dinner on two out of the seven evenings.  Yes, this week I am quite the social butterfly - and quite frankly it sounds exhausting.  Yesterday, D made his famous (and delicious) rabbit pie so he has plenty of leftovers to be getting along with (although he may end up suffering from pie fatigue around Thursday).  As for the meals we are having:

Lobster Caesar salad (this is going to be our starter on Christmas Day and we are just making it one more time to perfect the presentation)
Pulled pork cheeks with sherry, saffron and olives served with Spanish tomato rice

Next week's episode will probably be brought to you courtesy of Caffeine.  Good eating in the meantime everyone!

MPM: 16th November 2015

It goes without saying that thoughts and prayers are with the people of Paris today.  Maybe it is trite to continue blogging about “What I’m going to eat for dinner” this week, when there is such sadness and turmoil in the world.  But, maybe again, we overcome the sadness and the turmoil by turning our gaze to all the small pleasures that quietly fill our days; those small freedoms and joys that make our way of life so worth fighting for.

Solidarité.

World news apart, wasn’t it a miserable weekend, weather wise?  Yesterday we hibernated with books and made soup and baked cake because that was the only way to deal with the unrelenting greyness and wind and rain and general gloominess. 

Talking of reading, I’ve recently become obsessed with this site, Goodreads which is kind of like social networking for bookworms.  If you’re on there then please do seek me out via this link.  Seeing what other people are reading is almost as compelling as seeing what they eat (so there is a vague link to meal planning).  The casual observer may note that my current rate of adding books to my “to-read” shelf I will soon have more than I can ever get through in one lifetime.  To which I respond by shrugging helplessly.

So, meal planning.  I can’t tell you what we’re cooking next weekend because we’re trialing some of our Christmas Day dishes and I don’t want to spoil the surprise for those relatives who will hopefully be joining us.  And we’re out one night at a local event (on which more to follow).  And a colleague’s retirement do falls on Friday so we’ll likely be freezer diving.  Elsewhere:

Salmon with curried mussels

Ottolenghi’s ultimate winter couscous (all kinds of root veg and chickpea deliciousness)

Butternut squash soup, cheese and biscuits

I’m not sure that Mrs M is able to run the linky at the moment but if she has made it online this week, then more meal plans are available for perusal here.

World Mental Health Day 2015

Saturday was World Mental Health Day. 

It seems that there is a day for everything now.  Which is not necessarily a bad thing, although there is increasing danger of Day Fatigue.  Still, mental health is an extraordinarily important issue and one that is not always easy to talk about or to understand.

Depression is not glamorous.  It is not even, usually, dramatic.  It is invidious and draining and unrelenting, like a thick, pale fog.  And it is incredibly hard for those who suffer from it to explain it to other people. 

This is probably one of the loveliest, truest and best things that I have ever seen written about mental health and how it affects not only the sufferer but all those around them.  It popped up on my Twitter feed at the weekend and the original can be found here.  There is nothing else that I need to add.

Sugar tax - really?

I like Jamie Oliver, and I like the fact that he is keen to use his celebrity status to make a difference to peoples’ lives.  But some of the aspects of his latest campaign (to add a “sugar tax” to fizzy drinks and to ring fence the proceeds for use in tackling childhood obesity) niggle at me a little bit.

Firstly, I work in tax.  Tax is complicated.  Logistically, the tax department is not set up to be able to “ring fence” profits.  And, really, can you imagine if it was?  The public pay tax and they have to be able to trust the authorities to use the pot of money in the best possible way – that’s the way that our current democratic system works.  We don’t ring fence cigarette tax to treat smoking related diseases, nor the tax on alcohol to provide support for alcoholics, and I don’t think that we should.  It sounds to me (and maybe I am scaremongering) like a step down the road to where we only offer health services to those who have “paid” for them.  

The second point about tax is that it is very difficult to draft legislation that will do exactly what you want it to do.  So, in order to tax fizzy drinks, we have to define fizzy drinks in law.  And then, the fizzy drink manufacturers will no doubt try to find ways to ensure that their products do not meet the legal definition.  Will it be done on proportion of sugar?  Level of carbonation?  Fruit flavour?  If recipes can be tweaked so that they fall outside the definition, you can bet your life that they will be in order to be more competitively priced on the shelves.

And tax issues aside, this feels like the thin end of a very unwieldy wedge.  First fizzy drinks, then will we target sweets, chocolate, cakes, biscuits…any foodstuff with a proportion of sugar that someone (Jamie?) has deemed too high?   Will this include sliced bread and bottled sauces and soups and baked beans?   

Look, obesity is a serious problem.  We all know that.  And we also know that dieting is not the answer – the dieting industry is worth billions and more of us are fat than ever before.  Prevention is way, way better than a cure – and prevention at an early age is paramount.  We, as a nation, should be protecting our children from all of the health issues associated with obesity.  But punitive taxes don’t feel like the answer to me.  It’s one thing to tax cigarettes and alcohol – and I say that as someone who has been known to indulge in both.  As an adult, if I choose to exercise my right to engage in a habit that impacts detrimentally on my health, than I pay for it.  Tax on sugar though?  What about all the people who are not obese, who exercise sufficient control over their calorie intake, who exercise, who live a balanced lifestyle and want to indulge in some confectionery as part of that balanced lifestyle?  Why punish them?  And, actually, is it the state's job to dissuade children from drinking cola?  I mean, I hate to be one of those people, but when I was a child I simply wasn't allowed to have fizzy drinks unless it was the weekend - and even then, it was to be regarded as a treat rather than an everyday staple.

Education must be a big part of the answer.  The more people cook from scratch, the more people understand what they are eating and what the impact of that will be on their waistline, and, quite frankly, the more emphasis placed on the many and varied health issues that are caused by obesity, hopefully, the more everyone will rethink their approach to food and nutrition.   We also need to be looking at the mental side of the coin – some people are overweight as a result of (at least in part) mental health issues.   Food and drink are coping mechanisms for a lot of people.  I don’t think that anyone would actively choose to be fat – so surely that begs the question why are so many of getting fatter?  And if the answer is that we are a nation of stressed, time poor people who rely on convenience foods and sugar rushes to get us through the day, then I don’t think that having to pay an additional 20p for a can of lemonade is going to make a discernible difference.

Time to Talk Day 2015

Today, some of the UK's leading mental health organisations are asking people up and down the country to take five minutes to talk about mental health.  The good news is that by reading this blog post you are doing just that - so have a gold star from me...

  

I've made no secret on this blog that I have had wobbly patches over the years and I have been blessed by great GPs and people around me who were willing to hold my hand when I needed them.  So I thought it important to acknowledge this campaign.

The thing about suffering from depression, or anxiety, or similar disorders, is that they are intangible.  You break a leg, you wear a plaster cast.  You catch a cold, you cough and sneeze.  Even something less immediately obvious, like diabetes - you have a blood test and then you are in possession of a piece of paper that says that there is something wrong.  When I was first diagnosed, quite a long time ago now, I requested a full gamut of tests because I was desperate to find a physical cause for the fact that my mental faculties were all over the place.  I remember almost crying when they all came back normal - a dicky thyroid, low iron levels, these were medical problems.  Being too anxious to function properly - that was not.  Which meant on top of feeling god-bloody-awful I felt incredibly guilty as well.

Depression can be triggered by a traumatic event, by grief or by stress but it is separate and distinct from all of these things.  And while everyone, sufferers most of all, want to hang on to a straightforward idea of cause and effect I don't think that ultimately it is helpful to focus on that to the detriment of coming up with coping strategies.

I don't really know what the point of this post is.  Just, I suppose, to encourage anyone who may stumble across it to take a moment to look at the Time To Change website, or to think about someone in their circle who may be struggling with some of these issues.  There is a wealth of information and help out there - and a good GP should be your first port of call if you or anyone you love is not waving but drowning.

And thank you, dearest reader, for taking five minutes from your day to read this post.  Normal service (whatever that may be) will be resumed shortly.

Weightwatchers on the NHS?

I write a blog which is, very loosely, about trying to lose weight with Weight Watchers.  So a story in the news about GPs being advised to send obese patients to a local slimming club is, of course, going to attract my attention.  But having dipped my toe into the hornets nest (talk about your mixed metaphors...) of British journalism, I almost wish I’d stuck to my usual lunchtime routine of celebrity gossip and blogs about lipstick.

My oh my but people love to fatty bash, don’t they?  Some of the vitriol spewed out in the comments section of these articles is quite, quite remarkable.  “Just put the cake down, fatty” is, I think, almost a direct quote from someone on the Guardian website.  Wow.  If only someone had told me that years ago I would have been saved a lot of time and trouble.

It saddens me.  It saddens me to think that people whom I have never met are making judgements – that I am lazy and stupid and that I might not even deserve access to the free healthcare that is my right as a UK citizen and taxpayer.  It saddens me that instead of having an open dialogue about what can be done to help people solve the problem of their obesity, a swathe of the population just want to have a go.  It saddens me that it doesn’t even surprise me all that much.  Fat people are easy targets.  We are programmed to be repulsed by flesh – nearly every article in the UK press on this topic was accompanied by a stock picture of rolls of fat hanging over the top of a pair of elasticised trousers, as if that added any weight (pardon the pun) to the debate.

I have said it before but it bears repeating; the reasons that people are overweight are varied and complex and include, although are not limited to, lack of education, chronic poverty and debilitating mental health issues.  The majority of people who are overweight do not actively choose to be so.  They do not sit at home, mainlining cream cakes, smugly congratulating themselves on their lifestyle choices.  Many of us with weight issues will battle our entire lives, and may ultimately be unsuccessful.  Some of us may, at some point, just stop fighting because it is exhausting – it is exhausting to be constantly monitoring what you put in your mouth, to bargain with yourself for every indulgence.  Food issues, unlike other substance abuse issues (and yes, I think that I am using the phrase advisedly) can not be overcome by complete abstinence. 

Personally, I am unsure that referring patients to slimming clubs is the best answer – certainly it is not the only one – but if it helps even a small percentage of the obese population to learn about how to lose weight, then what harm?  Yes, I hear those of you in the corner screaming in outrage that your tax pounds are going on aiding the tubtubs (another lovely phrase picked up from The Guardian's comments section), but where do we draw the line?  Do we refuse treatment to those addicted to drugs and alcohol?  To the smokers?  What about the people who injure themselves running marathons, or break a leg skiing?  The plethora of injured people who flood into our A&E departments every Saturday night after a few too many?  Are we basically saying that unless your illness or injury is entirely genetic then sod the hell off?  No, we are not.  We help our own.  We help them even when we know that for many, it might be hopeless.  We continue to talk about alternative solutions.  We don’t give up on an entire sector of society because they have made the wrong choices, even if they make them again and again and again.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to go and jump into a pool of full sugar Coca Cola.  I have a BMI of over 25 so that must be how I spend my evenings, right?