Twix Travesty

I'm all for companies trying to make "lighter" versions of things.

But this is just wrong.  A travesty along similar lines to the Mars Delight or the Kinder Bueno.  The only acceptable chocolate / wafer combination is the KitKat in my opinion (which is the only one that counts on my blog).

As for the confectionery versus biscuit debate...I used to work for the sweetie company that makes KitKats and they classified the 4 finger as a chocolate bar and the 2 finger as a biscuit.  So there.

Fusion or Confusion?

I’m just going to come out and say it. I love Masterchef.

I mean, I’m not known for my discerning taste in television – just ask poor D who has just spent the whole weekend trying to get away from an Australia’s Next Top Model marathon. And when it comes to food programmes I’ll watch pretty much anything and will often have the Good Food channel on just as background noise (absorbing recipes and techniques by osmosis perhaps).

But Masterchef – that is must see TV. Seriously. I draw the line at the Junior version – precocious children scare me. But standard, Professional and Celebrity – fantastic! It’s comedy gold! If they have such a thing as the gurning world championships, John Torode and Greg Wallace should enter, they’d be absolutely sure to win. The expressions that those two have come up with while wandering between the contestants – who would have thought that the human face was capable of such contortions? And, almost as amusing, some of the food combinations that the entrants come up with, particularly in the early stage invention test. I think my favourite from this current series was Christine Hamilton’s Thai mussels with…blue cheese.

Anyway, during the last series of Masterchef Proper (i.e. the contestants are not “famous” or professional chefs) John Torode coined the phrase that I’ve used as my title to express his uncertainty at a particularly odd amalgamation; someone attempting to marry, for example, sweet and sour sauce with bangers and mash. Now, whenever we see an unlikely combination of ingredients in a recipe or on a menu, we chorus (in a cod Australian accent, of course) “Is it fusion? Or confusion?” Yes, I know…but it makes us laugh.

I was a little bit surprised then, to see in the latest issue of Good Food magazine John Torode has supplied a recipe for a spicy butternut squash…curry, for want of a better word, to be served with spaghetti. He called it fusion – so you can guess what is coming. I cooked it for supper one night last week, with the intention of writing a very amusing blog piece about how it was confused rather than, um, fused. Trouble is, it actually tasted pretty nice - I thought the pasta worked well with the heat of the sauce. So, no amusing confusion jokes for me. It wasn't perfect by any means - both of us found the addition of lime pickle made it a little sour, so that needs to be balanced out, and I’ve got a few ideas that will pimp it up a little bit – I’m convinced that the addition of some fat prawns would work well with the squash – and then I’m going to post it here so you too can bellow quotes by rubber featured Australian chefs at your food. Or not.

On a roll...

Does two days count as a roll? 

Shhhh!  We have to be very quiet...we don't want to scare the mojo!!

Pastures (kind of) new

Currently D and I have relocated about 20 miles down the road to cat sit for my parents while they are living it up on a round the world trip. I could insert bitter comments about teachers and their long holidays here, but I won’t because I’ve never met two people more dedicated to their jobs than my parents and they deserve their time away. PLUS I get to spend quality time with my beloved Minerva McGonagall. (Gratuitous cute cat picture will probably follow).

Anyway, we quite fancied a lunch out on Sunday and decided to go and pay a visit to The Drum and Monkey in Harrogate. We had high hopes; not only had it been recommended to us on a couple of occasions, but also the website informed us that Tatler had proclaimed it “The best seafood restaurant in North Yorkshire”.

My verdict – sorry Tatler, but meh (and with language like that you may well ask what is standing between me and my dream of being the new, but far less grumpy, and a bit more female Giles Coren). The interior was dark and a bit old fashioned but not in a quirky, retro kind of way more in a needs-a-lick-of-paint-and-some-decent-lighting type way. And the menu was old fashioned too – and again, quite straight faced about it. The crayfish cocktail was…a crayfish cocktail. Crayfish, Marie rose sauce, lettuce. I think we’ve just got a bit used to the type of restaurants that like to shake up the old classics a bit – playing around with expectations. Being confronted with the real thing, in a room that looked like it belonged in a 1970s period piece was a bit…well, meh. My baked red snapper main course was drastically under seasoned, although the fish itself was cooked beautifully and D’s dressed crab salad was…odd. Tinned orange segments have no place in a salad. The radish rose was quite pretty though.

I suppose, on the plus side, we couldn’t be bothered with pudding, so the whole meal probably was fine with regards to points. But any restaurant which makes me write out the sentence “Couldn’t be bothered with pudding” and mean it, is not a restaurant that is worth going back to.

Detox Day 3 – whoopsadaisy!

At about half past seven last night (which is usually teatime in our household) I realised that I couldn’t be bothered to wait another hour for dinner, let alone engage in a vegetable chopathon. So I cooked pasta pesto (a long-term friend) instead. Er, this is not detox food, unless you are trying out some weird detox which involves wheat and cheese (and if you are, and it works then I want details!). I take a bit of comfort from the fact that most of the constituents in the pesto (oil, basil, garlic, pine nuts) are allowed.

So there we have it, sheer bloody laziness runs roughshod over weakling attempt at better health. It’s not all doom and gloom though. The pink Bircher muesli continues to go down well at breakfast (although this morning it didn’t seem to be as satisfying as previously: my arm had tooth marks in it at about quarter to nine) and lunch for today is the remains of a delicious roasted tomato and red pepper soup that we had for tea on Tuesday, plus I have been loading up on some rather gorgeous plums and nectarines. So, if the point of detoxing was to get my levels of fresh fruit and veggies up than it has succeeded on that one count.

Oh, and I have rediscovered my love for oatcakes (although every time I eat one I imagine what it would taste like topped with a wodge of cheese). I think these are going to be featuring in my lunchbox quite heavily in the next few weeks. Soooo good, and the Waitrose ones we have in at the moment are only half a point each.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to get my mouth round another plum (oooh, matron!)

Detox Day 2 - Reboot and Pink Muesli

Well. Day 1 did not go quite according to plan. Maybe the problem was that there was no particular plan to accord to (or something).

Fairly early on yesterday morning I started to get a thumping headache and felt distinctly nauseous – so much so that I couldn’t face the smoked mackerel salad that I had prepared for my lunch. I wondered if this was all the toxins leaving my body, until D pointed out that if I was so toxic that three hours without caffeine and alcohol could leave me feeling that rough I probably needed to be in some sort of drying out clinic. I suspect part of the problem was dehydration – at work, I generally fill my water bottle when I go to make tea or coffee. Anyway, I survived, albeit in a floppy, miserable kind of way.

I’d perked up by the evening (a sneaky can of Diet Coke may have been involved – bad). Our evening meal was lovely last night – griddled tuna steaks with sweet potato and coriander mash. I can never quite make up my mind whether I like sweet potato or not – I keep eating it, so I suppose I must. It is definitely improved by the addition of fresh coriander and a drizzle of sweet chilli sauce – these little tweaks make it far less sickly. Although I must confess that it wasn’t till I had drizzled said sauce over it that I realised that it might not strictly be detox suitable food. Ah well. The aim here is to try and eat cleaner – not necessarily get Carol-Vorderman-swimsuit-ready in five days and it definitely improved the overall taste of the dish.

And this morning I have eaten an incredibly worthy breakfast and so am sitting at my desk feeling ever so slightly smug. Oats, pumpkin seeds and dried cranberries soaked overnight in pomegranate juice and served with a handful of mixed summer fruits – my version of Bircher muesli coming in at 3.5 points a bowl. It was pink, which made me happy, and tart which also made me happy (I have something of a sour tooth). The portion looked a bit weeny when I prepared it last night but it was pretty substantial when I came to it today. Had I more time in the mornings I think the addition of a grated apple would be pretty good as well.

So, feeling far more groovy than this time yesterday, onwards!

Foodie on a detox

A good few years ago the great British public were being besieged with pictures of Countdown’s Carol Vorderman looking rather smug and svelte in a swimming costume. Anyone else remember this? Eventually, curiosity got the better of me and I purchased her “Summer Detox Plan”, not initially intending to follow it just to get an idea of what it involved. Such was her enthusiasm for the plan though, I decided to have a go at following it. And since I did most of the cooking and the meal preparation, D was told that he was going to be following it as well.

We didn’t do too badly – lasted nearly two weeks. It was a curry that broke us in the end I think. Anyway, the point is that after the initial shock to the system, we both felt very well on it, and (although I didn’t weigh myself back in those days so relied on instinct and tight jeans) lost a good few pounds in a relatively short space of time.

Recently, I’ve been a bit lackadaisical with the diet. Stress at work and one thing and another has led to quite a few greasy takeaways and more than a few pints of cider and bottles of wine. Things are improving, but even when I’m pointing, I’ve noticed that I’m not always making the best choices. I need something to give me a kick up the arse – mentally, even if not physically. The idea of a detox period – nothing too long, mind, has been playing on my mind for a little while and I had decided to go for it - if nothing else, to give myself a bit of a challenge.

The plan was to follow it for five days, starting yesterday, adopting the basic Vorderman principles of cutting out wheat, dairy, caffeine and, as far as possible, processed stuff but deviating slightly by including a small amount of white meat and fish alongside plenty of fruit, vegetables, water and peppermint tea. And keeping a tally of points to ensure reasonable portion sizes.

Unfortunately, I did such a good job of toxing on Saturday night (wine was involved) that I felt fairly deathlike yesterday and hot water with lemon juice was just not going to cut it – I think we’ll gloss over the actual contents of yesterday’s food diary, but it won’t take an awful lot of imagination for you to get the gist. So the detox was postponed briefly.

I’m on it today though, albeit with slightly less enthusiasm than when I was planning it last week. Currently, I’m enjoying an extremely juicy white nectarine, and there is a smoked mackerel salad sitting patiently in the fridge. Tea tonight may be a roasted red pepper and tomato soup, or possibly tuna steak with sweet potato and coriander mash. Hopefully, by the end of Thursday I’ll be glowing with health and all ready to start retoxing again.

Recipe Corner – Mussel Paella

D and I are exceptionally fond of pretty much any foodstuff that comes out of the sea and a pretty large proportion of our meals feature fish or seafood of some kind. Recently, his father gave us a huge bag of frozen mussels which we’ve been eating our way through and the following recipe (adapted from one in an old WW cookbook) entered our meal rotation as a particularly delicious way to use them. I should say that it’s only a paella in the loosest sense of the word (I sense generations of Spaniards looking around for kitchen implements to hurl at me for accosting it). I should also say that it would probably be equally delicious made with one of those frozen seafood mixes that you can pick up in the supermarket, or with fat prawns. Some finely diced chorizo sausage added at the initial stages would be good too, although obviously would up the points.

Ingredients

Tsp olive oil
Onion, chopped
Clove of garlic, crushed
Red pepper, chopped
110g risotto rice
½ tsp smoked paprika
½ tsp dried thyme
¼ tsp cayenne pepper
Pinch of saffron
50ml dry sherry
450ml chicken or vegetable stock
200g frozen unshelled mussels (defrost before using)
60g peas

Serves 2, 8 Smart Points (WW Flex) per portion

Warm the oil and gently soften the onion for a couple of minutes. As it starts to sweat, chuck in the garlic and the pepper and continue to cook, gently. Meanwhile, add the saffron to the sherry to infuse.

Stir through the risotto rice and the spices and thoroughly combine.

Add the sherry (which should now be a lovely golden colour) and allow to bubble off. Then pour over the hot stock, bring to a gentle simmer and cook for 15 minutes.

Next in are the peas, which cook for about 5 minutes. Then finally, the defrosted mussles for another minute or so – they require very little cooking so really you’re just warming them through here.

Et voila! (or whatever the Spanish equivalent is).

Recipe corner - Linguine with broad beans, peas and goats' cheese

This is a lovely, summery dish - and it involves two of my favourite things - pasta and cheese! I've tweaked the original to cut down on the portion size slightly while still keeping the proportions roughly the same. I guess it is up to the individual whether they would rather compromise on quantity or quality, and sure, on hungry days when I want my points to go further I'd probably avoid something like this. But in the height of summer, when I naturally eat a bit less, this is exactly the kind of fresh, tasty dish that I want to enjoy.

Ingredients

100g fresh or frozen broad beans
100g fresh or frozen peas
250g linguine
1 clove of garlic, crushed
2 tbsp olive oil
80g mild, rindless soft goats' cheese
50g grated Parmesan
small handful of fresh mint leaves
1 lemon
salt and pepper

Serves 4, 8.5 points per person

Boil the beans for a couple of minutes then add the peas and cook for a further three minutes. Drain and refresh under the cold tap.

In another pan, cook the pasta in boiling, salted water. When it's nearly done, put the beans and the peas back in their original saucepan along with the garlic and the olive oil, and gently warm through. Stir in the goats' cheese and half of the Parmesan and remove from the heat.

Drain the pasta keeping back 4-5 tbsp of the cooking water. Stir the water through the cheese to loosen and then add the pasta, the mint, a squeeze of lemon juice and seasoning. Toss together and then serve sprinkled with the remaining Parmsean and plenty of black pepper.

Lunch with Jeff

Warning - non dieting entry (aka food porn) ahead.

So yesterday, D treated me to lunch at one of our absolute favourite restaurants.  I may have mentioned before that we live in York, which is beautiful with many lovely places to visit, but in terms of high end dining it is slightly lacking.  J Baker's Bistro Moderne, which opened up about five years ago, is the only place in the city that I would wholeheartedly recommend if you were after a really special meal.  And, amazingly when you consider the quality, the price is incredibly low.


We've been back many times both for quick lunches and more lingering dinners and never, ever been disappointed.  The food is always tasty and often shows not only the chef's skill with his raw ingredients but also a quirky sense of humour.  One of the hallmarks of the menu is the nods to British classics presented in a fresh, modern and sometimes unexpected way.


Yesterday we both opted for the lunchtime grazing menu, which consists of three light courses for £12, plus a complimentary pre-lunch nibble which on this occasion was a spiced aubergine dip with breadsticks and radishes for dunking.  I forgot to take a picture - both of this and of our first course, an Inca tomato salad.  I'm not quite sure what the Inca part of it was, but it was a good start - tomatoes, olives, lettuce and feta with a glistening scoop of cucumber sorbet that was both sweet and refreshing.


At this point, D remarked that I would never make a food blogger if I kept forgetting to take photos so I sat my camera on the table next to me.  Giles Coren, the Times restaurant critic, recently kicked up a bit of a fuss by complaining about food bloggers in restaurants who insist on taking pictures of their food.  I say, what's the harm?  A delicious dish can be just as valuable a memory as a visit to a beautiful landmark as far as I'm concerned - in fact, when we discuss past holidays, more often than not we find ourselves reminiscing about the food just as much if not more than the culture or the scenery.   Anyway, from here on in there are illustrations!

Beer battered salt cod with chips and chervil mayonnaise

The second course proper was the above pictured piece of salt cod.  The picture doesn't really do it justice because it doesn't convey just how crispy that batter was.  It shattered as you pressed your fork into it with the most satisfying crackle I've heard on a piece of fish this year.   I loved the creamy mayonnaise as well, and the salty pop of the samphire garnish.  The only disappointment here was the chips - a little oily tasting and, well, flabby.  I like a crisp chip.  But smothered in mayo with a sprinkle of sea salt, it was a minor complaint.

Slow cooked lamb with aubergine chutney and saffron oil

Next came this lamb which I thought was absolutely amazing.  It had been cooked for twelve whole hours with the result that it was incredibly sweet and tender - you only had to look at if for it to fall apart with a gentle sigh.  The aubergine chutney was fab as well - we identified aubergine, courgette, onion, garlic and tomato among the tiny little cubes; there was a slight vinegar kick, enough to set off the sweetness of the meat (which we think was seasoned with cumin and cinnamon) without becoming sour.  This is definitely a dish I'm going to try and recreate at home, and actually think it could be made pretty WW friendly.

Ivoire Chocolate Sandwich with cherries and lavender

Sticky chocolate cake with drunken cherries

At this point we were at a good stage of fullness.  But there is no way, unfortunately, that I can go to JB and not indulge in a pudding.  My sweet tooth has receded a little as I've got older, and I'm more likely to opt for a starter nowadays than a pudding, but here, all bets are off.  We both went for chocolatey options - D's sticky chocolate cake was excellent, but the sandwich...oh, my.  I'm not sure the picture does it justice; the white, gooey bit in the middle was a dense white chocolate and lavender mousse: sweet, thick and with a slight perfume, but the sharp cherries and the bitter dark chocolate ice cream prevented the whole thing from being overly cloying.  I would have licked the plate if I had been at home, as it was, I may well have been guilty of running my finger round to try and scoop up the last vestiges of mousse.

Now,  I have no idea how many points were in that lunch, and I'm not even going to hazard a guess.  As I said back here eating out is one of my greatest joys, and I have personally decided that, if WW is going to be a feasible plan for me, I don't intend to worry about the odd extravagant meal.  And for all that I can't wait for the day when I slip into a pair of size 10 jeans again, lunch with Jeff every now and then is an indulgence I don't plan to give up.

Pasta and me – a long term love affair

About eight years ago I decided to jump on the Atkins bandwagon. It was not during a particularly affluent period of my life, but I somehow persuaded my mother to take me shopping and stocked up on meat, eggs and cheese. And more cheese. And a little bit more.

I think I lasted two days before I admitted defeat and made toast (probably grating up the leftover cheese and piling it on top – I’m nothing if not predictable).

Low carb is just not for me. The Atkins of the early 2000s was, as I understand it, quite a different beast to the current version, and there are plenty of other low-carb plans out there which look doable when I read through the menu plans. But I just don’t think I have it in me to give up my beloved bread and my even more beloved pasta.

Pasta and me, we go way back. It was the first "proper" meal I ever cooked, if you can call combining some extremely undercooked penne (aiming for al dente I hit crunchy) with a jar of Ragu sauce, as cooking. I proudly served my offering up to my mother and my brother and they ate it, bless them. And the thing about cooking is that sometimes the best way to learn is to make a mistake – I don’t think I’ve undercooked pasta since.

Tuna pasta bake is a dish forever associated in my mind with my Dad. He loves it, the stodgier the better, preferably with a thick layer of melted cheese on top. It was in order to make his beloved tuna pasta that I learned at a tender age how to put together a proper white sauce from a roux, carefully adding the milk bit by bit, before flavouring it with Parmesan and herbs.

At university, the kitchen facilities were very limited. To encourage students to eat in hall the residential kitchens were equipped with a two pan hob and, if you were lucky, a microwave. This obviously meant that one was limited as to what one could cook and my go-to meal for that entire three year period was pasta pesto. Not homemade pesto (I’ve never made that, and I really should get around to it one day) but a jar of Sacla’s finest. I avoided it for a while after I graduated, but it has gradually returned to occupy a special place in my heart, although now, being the proud owner of an oven, I like to enjoy it with vegetables roasted with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. In fact, now I come to think of it, one of the first dinners that D cooked for me after we had moved in together in December 2004 was pasta pesto topped with a pan fried salmon fillet – a meal we still enjoy regularly. There are no doubt purists who would be shocked by the combination – I believe it is an edict of Italian Mamas that fish and cheese should never be eaten together – but we like it, and aesthetically the combination of grass green pesto and pale coral fish is gorgeous.

The main issue surrounding pasta and WW to my mind is portion size - or at least it was when I started. WW have deemed that a large portion of pasta is 60g (3 points worth) - believe me, when you first see that weighed out it does not look like a large portion and it is probably at least half the size of the amount I would eat in my student days. It is surprising, though, how quickly one gets used to that sort of amount - I very seldom cook more than 60g per portion of any carb nowadays. A small thing perhaps, but at least one of my bad habits seems to have changed for the better. It’s one of the reasons that I love WW – my affair with pasta is as passionate as ever, but now we’re (mostly) about quality over quantity.

As I write I'm already planning tonight's tea (of course) which is to be linguine with broad beans, peas and goats; cheese - sounds like a lovely summery dish for what is turning out be quite a miserable morning.  I'll post the recipe if it turns out well - and spread a bit of pasta love.

Getting some zeds

Apparently, lack of sleep has been linked to obesity. I don’t think that can possibly be true. If it were I would be a size 8 by now.

I am a champion sleeper. Really, if it were an Olympic event I’d be taking home gold. I may be on the verge of turning thirty, but I still have the sleeping habits of a very, very tired sixteen year old. I frequently sleep until past noon at the weekend, and almost as frequently don’t bother to change out of my pyjamas when I get up. Last night I went to bed at half past eight people! Admittedly, my weekday routine generally involves getting up a few minutes before six o clock, but still, half past eight is not just verging on the ridiculous but is slap bang in the middle of it.

I don’t know if the current extreme tiredness is down to the (fairly intense) training course I’m doing at work, but one thing is for sure, it is not doing my eating habits any favours. When I’m tired, I tend to make poor decisions. I’m less organised and get a bit lax in the old planning department. I also feel less and less inclined to exercise – which is counter intuitive as exercise always tends to give you a big shot of energy.

At least things have improved in the last week – more homecooked food for a start. We’ve had some delicious dinners recently; last night D cooked fantastic chicken fajitas which we had with refried beans, salsa and a quickly cobbled together sour cream substitute (low fat soft cheese, low fat mayo, a little finely grated mature cheddar and some coriander puree – don’t laugh, actually it was very good!)

I guess until my routine gets back to normal I have to accept that I might not be losing any weight – but I’d like to be in a holding position. Getting back into a regular gym routine is key to this so, that’s my challenge to myself this week - three visits minimum.

Comfort Blogging

I feel so much better since writing yesterday’s post, thank you for your kind words. During my recent shrink appointment (and as an aside on that, I was very disappointed to not get to recline on a couch and look at ink blots. But then, I was also quite disappointed that the psychologist didn’t look, or sound, anything like Frasier) we talked a lot about patterns learned in childhood. It takes a lot to unlearn those. I did a lot of secret eating as a child, took a lot of comfort in the mouth feel of chocolate and melted cheese. Those habits are not going to disappear overnight, I just have to try and check myself when I start to revert to them.

Risotto update: absolutely gorgeous! I reduced the amount of lime and ginger in there, so as not to overpower the crab, and the flavours worked beautifully. It was incredibly rich, but all the richness came from the crab meat rather than the usual additions of butter and cheese. According to the nutritional info on the website it worked out at 6.5 points a portion and very well worth it.

Gym update: epic fail. But, I am not going to feel too guilty about it because my swimming kit is in the boot of the car as I speak (well, write) and tonight the plan is to go straight there. However much I whinge on the way.

Comfort Eating?

Well, this last week my eating has been beyond bad. Seriously. How a self confessed foodie can justify barely setting foot in the kitchen for seven whole days is entirely beyond me. There was one evening when, through a combined effort with my live in sous chef, I managed to turn a yellowing head of broccoli into some delicious broccoli and blue cheese soup but other than that it has been takeaway central in our flat this week and it has to stop.

I could come up with all sorts of excuses. The training course I’m on is stressful and rather tiring. I deserve a treat at the end of a long day. But what I want to know is when did the concept of treat get all tangled up with subjecting my poor body to an onslaught of grease washed down with wine?

What could be more of a treat than a home cooked meal? A perfectly seared tuna steak or a bowl of pasta and roasted vegetables glistening with pesto? A fluffy pile of mashed potato? A handful of sweet-sour cherries or juicy strawberries? I struggle to understand the thought processes that bypass all these in favour of Dominos.

Tonight, it is going to be different. I am going to cook this delicious looking crab risotto. I might even fit in a gym visit and treat myself to a rush of endorphins followed by a cool shower. My body deserves better than I am giving it at the moment, so things ARE going to change – one meal at a time.

Buffet Lunch

What is it about those two words that strikes fear into the heart of this particular dieter?

I’m on a four week training course at the moment (pauses for a minute to revel in deep, deep joy) and a buffet lunch is being provided. Every day. For four weeks.

I think I’ve mentioned my tendency towards points blindness in certain situations before, but never is it so pronounced as when I’m faced with a table full of dinky little sandwiches and mini pizzas and cocktail sausages (although I must say that I was quite disappointed yesterday at the lack of cheese and pineapple sticks). Do I somehow convince myself that if it is miniature it doesn’t count?

Yesterday I managed to confine myself to a single plateful. Three quarter sandwiches – chicken (good), tuna mayo (less good – there was a lot of mayo and I bet it wasn’t low fat) and cheese (awful), a chicken finger type thing (like a fish finger but, er, chicken. And cold) and yes, a mini pizza. By no means disastrous but I was sorely tempted by all the other bits and pieces – especially the cake table. Bakewell tarts! Battenberg!

I think as of tomorrow I’m going to bring a pack up in with me. It’s not the frugal way, but for the sake of my waistline I need to eschew the buffet table altogether. The day the cheese and pineapple sticks turn up it could get messy.

Worrywart

To say I am a bit of a worrier is like saying….the Queen is a little bit posh. I worry so much, that I have an actual, official diagnosed Disorder. Yep, my medical records show me as a sufferer of Anxiety Disorder (with a bit of depression thrown in for good measure).

If you break a leg, or your appendix explodes, you have an actual, tangible thing wrong with you. It’s something you can point to (actually, I wouldn’t know where to point for my appendix. My leg is, obviously, less of a problem). To say you have an Anxiety Disorder…well, it makes me feel a bit silly frankly.

The reason I’m writing about this (believe me, it is not something of which I am particularly proud) is because I was looking back at my first entry. You know, the one where I say that I got fat because I loved food. That’s partly true, but it isn’t the whole story. Plenty of people love food and don’t get fat. It’s the starting point, perhaps. Food for me has always been a source of comfort and joy and comfort is the operative word here. In times when my anxiety was at its absolute worst – the weekends when I was, literally, scared to get out of bed, I needed comfort, I needed something to smother me like a blanket. I think that’s where the food came in. And the wine. The world seemed better when viewed from the bottom of a wine bottle. It made the fear recede a little.

Anyway, tackling these issues is as much a part of this lifestyle change as changing how and what I eat. Tomorrow, I am going for my first appointment with a Clinical Psychologist. She’ll ask me what’s wrong and my instinct will be to say something self deprecating like, “Oh, I’m just a bit worried. It’s nothing much.” But I hope I can resist that instinct, I hope I can let her help me. I need to retrain myself, to find alternative ways of coping that are not actively harming my body.

Maybe I should print out this entry and take it with me.

Recipe corner - curry night

As per my last post here are some of my current favourite curry recipes. They're dead easy, quick to cook and seriously tasty.

First up - Creamy spiced dahl. Granted, it's a bit high on points for a side dish but it is really good (promise!) and the lentils are so filling that you can cut down on your rice portion.

Ingredients

1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp olive oil
1 small onion, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1cm fresh root ginger, grated
4 cardamon pods
pinch of dried chilli flakes
200g red lentils, rinsed and drained
200ml reduced fat coconut milk

Serves 4, 5 points per person, 7 pro points per person

Toast the seeds over a low heat until fragrant, and transfer to a pestle and mortar. Add the cardamon pods and the chilli flakes to the seeds and give a good pounding.

In the same pan, eat the oil and soften the onion, garlic and ginger.

Tip the lentils and seeds into the pan and stir well before adding the coconut milk and water to cover. Bring to the boil, then cover and simmer over a low heat until the lentils are soft - probably about 20 mins.

And now for the Cumin-spiced chicken one of my all time favourite WW recipes. In our household, the ultimate mark of recipe appreciation is cooking it on a regular basis (because we try so many new recipes and many don't make it into regular rotation).

Ingredients

Large onion sliced,
2 skinless and boneless chicken breasts, cut into 8 pieces
2 garlic cloves, crushed
tsp cumin seeds
tsp ground coriander
tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp tumeric
2 medium green chillies, de-seeded and chopped
300ml chicken stock
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp 0% fat Greek yoghurt

Heat a non stick frying pan and stir fry the onion for about 4 mins until soft.

Add the chicken pieces and continue to cook until browned on all sides.

Add all the other ingredients except the lemon juice and the yoghurt. Heat gently until simmering, and then cover the pan and cook for 15 mins.

Remove the lid and cook for a further 2-3 mins until the sauce has reduced and thickened.

Stir through the lemon juice and yoghurt, season to taste and serve.

Serves 2, 2.5 points per person, 4 pro points per person

Curry(ge) in defeat

In common with many of my countrymen, I watched the football on Sunday.

Now, I don't like football. I just don't understand the appeal of watching grown men running around in knee socks (convent school flashback!) and lurid trainers kicking a ball at each other. What I can get on board with though, is the excuse to drink beer and eat Kettle Chips at three o clock in the afternoon (and no, I've no idea how those things fit into a supposedly WW friendly foodplan either. Rather like birthdays, Christmas and days of the week ending in "y", the points don't count when you're tapping into the national zeitgeist.)

Anyway, after beer, crisps and football, there is only one type of meal to end the day with - and that is curry. Some might argue that a kebab would be suitable as well but I say why would you want to eat meat that looks like it has been carved off a human limb? Sorry, but kebabs creep me out.

I LOVE curry - all types. I'm making up for lost time you see, when I was little I decided I didn't like spicy food and didn't touch anything more daring than tandoori chicken for years. Now, we tend to eat curry at least once a week. Unfortunately for me, my wallet and my hips, we have a fantastic Indian takeaway just across the road from us - literally, spitting distance! But I do enjoy making it as well - there is something incredibly satisfying about pounding up spices in my beloved pestle and mortar. And I have found that most curry recipes I've come across are easily adaptable for a "diet" (or, permanent lifestyle change - diet is just so much easier to say). Just reduce the amount of oil and/or butter.

I'll share the recipes I made on Sunday night in a later post...they're both seriously yummy. Had I been concerned at the football result, it would have been like spicy balm for the soul. As it was it still made a nice tea.

Recipe corner - Steak with blue cheese sauce

I suppose I should preface this post by saying if you don't think it is worth using half of your daily points on one meal, you may want to skip this.

Me, I like a bit of luxury at dinner time, and am prepared to scrimp earlier in the day if I've got something really yummy to look forward to in the evening. And the following is seriously good...so good that it is even worth hitting the gym for an hour and sweating out a few extra points.

In my last post I mentioned that I wanted to try and incorporate cheese into my meals a bit more in a kind of look-the-devil-in-the-eye type way and here is my first attempt.

Ingredients

2 x 200g medallion steak - trimmed of fat
100g strong blue cheese
2 garlic cloves, crushed
Shallot, finely chopped
Tbsp white wine
Tbsp butter
2 tbsp water
200g oven chips (I like McCains)

Serves 2, 13 points per person

Over a low heat, soften the shallot and garlic. A pinch of salt at this stage will help the veg to sweat rather than brown.

Add the wine, let it reduce down. Then add the blue cheese, and, over a low heat, melt it down to a gorgeous, oozy sauce. Check the seasoning - I'd add pepper but it probably won't need any salt.

Heat the butter in a frying pan, and when frothing, season the meat, add the steaks and cook to your own preference. I like the cow to basically still be alive on the plate, so a minute or so each side is perfectly good for me.

Remove the steak to a warmed plate and allow it to rest (you should never eat meat straight out of the pan - it needs time to recover from the trauma!)

Add the water to the steak pan and use it to deglaze - i.e. scrape off all the lovely, steaky burny bits in the pan. Pour the meaty juices into the blue cheese sauce to loosen it slightly.

Bake the chips according to the packet instructions to serve on the side. You could make your own from scratch if you were so inclined...

***

If you are NOT keen on the idea of blowing so many points on one meal, I reckon it would be fairly easy to bring the total down. Ditch the butter for a start, and cook the steaks in a dry pan (maybe add a little spray oil first). This saves you 2 points per portion. Also, you could make the sauce using 50g blue cheese and 50g extra low fat soft cheese which would save you another 2 points. Oh, and it has just occurred to me that you could make butternut squash chips to serve on the side which would save you ANOTHER 2 points - making all of these changes turns this into a 7 point supper, which is probably much more reasonable. I might try it that way next time and see if D notices the difference (he's a good gauge - he tends to pull a face if he thinks that I am trying to serve him "diet" food.)

The good, the bad and the cheesy

I would guess that one of the biggest mistakes that I make is that I have a tendency to get into “diet” mode. That is, when I start to deny myself certain foodstuffs because they do not fit into the traditional idea of “being on a diet”. When you’ve been worrying about your weight pretty much your entire adult life – actually, throughout much of your pre-adult life as well – you do get trapped into a certain way of thinking.

There are no good foods and bad foods. There are foods that are have more nutritional value than others. There are foods that should only be consumed in moderation. But to call a food “good” or “bad” is to somehow make a moral issue out of it. It’s a hard habit to break. Foods for me have been labelled “good” or “bad” for ooooh…probably going on fifteen years. And this is why, I guess, that certain, perfectly innocuous items – a lump of cheese, for example, becomes imbued with all this daft meaning.

(In loud booming voice) “I am CHEESE! I am EVIL! I will break your diet and make you FAT!”

So, as a result you avoid cheese like the plague and then you start craving it. But you can’t eat it, because it is evil and will make you fat. But you really, really want some. So you end up eating an entire block, probably on top of some well buttered bread for good measure (if you’re going to “break your diet” you may as well really smash it to pieces).

So one of my challenges for myself is to find ways of incorporating these foods into my meals without making a massive issue out of it. Cheese is the biggie for me. I adore it. Really, really love it, all of it, from soapy fake cheddar to full on, smells-like-socks blue cheese. I need to search out some recipes that deliver on cheesy taste without too much of a points hit. Stay tuned!

Recipe corner - Lemon Couscous

I mentioned here that during asparagus season one of our favourite simple meals is a chicken breast from the local farm shop accompanied by asparagus and couscous.

Well, yesterday I returned home after a weekend away and was in need of something delicious after a painfully long bus journey, so this was dinner. D tinkered slightly with the couscous and it was absolutely delicious so I though I would post his method here – it’s simple to do but worked fantastically with just the plain chicken and asparagus that was tossed in olive oil and then griddled. I suspect it would be equally lovely with other meats or fish or even some sort of tagine as it has a bit of a Moroccan feel to it.

Ingredients

100g couscous
Chicken stock cube
4 cardamom pods
Tsp ground coriander
25g raisins
Zest and juice of half a small lemon
Tsp butter

Serves 2, 3.5 points per person

Lightly crush the cardamom pods in a pestle and mortar.

Add the cardamom to the couscous, along with the chicken stock cube (D actually used a Knur chicken stock pot but a cube would probably do just as well), the coriander and the raisins. Add boiling water to just submerge the couscous and cover (a clean tea towel will do for this – or you could use clingfilm).

After about five minutes the couscous should have absorbed all the water. Fluff with a fork and then stir through the lemon zest and juice and the butter. Check the seasoning before serving – you shouldn’t need to add salt because of the stock.

You could add some fresh coriander to this just before serving.

Stop press!

From the BBC website:

Tea is "healthier" drink than water!

Now that kind of thing makes this true-blue Brit tea drinking obsessive very happy.

Every dieter knows…

…That Monday morning is a magical time.

No, really. Something strange happens between going to bed on Sunday evening and waking up on Monday morning. Something resets. All past sins are forgiven (with regards to food and drink in any case), all mistakes forgotten. A page is turned in a (metaphorical or otherwise) diary and the new week stretches ahead, all clean and white, just waiting to be filled with details of delicious, yet healthy, food and plenty of exercise. It is a mini version of what happens every New Year’s Eve.

So it was for me yesterday. Monday morning I was full of optimism (insofar as I can ever be optimistic on a Monday morning when a new week of work is ahead of me). I enjoyed my current favourite on-plan breakfast: low fat fromage frais, blueberries and a sprinkling of pumpkin seeds, and snacked virtuously on fruit. Up until about twelve o clock it was all going swimmingly.

And then it happened. A well meaning friend took me for a lunch time coffee and bought me a….brownie.

There it sat, in the middle of the table, and I swear the little bugger was laughing at me. I entered DPM (Diet Panic Mode) and started mentally weighing up the excuses to get out of eating the brownie versus the excuses to allow myself to eat it (no easy task when you’re trying to carry out a conversation at the same time). At the forefront of my mind I could see that diary page, radiant with newness. And then I saw it - that great, big, chocolatey smudge across the middle of Monday, ruining everything.

I ate the brownie.

It was good.

But do you know what? The day wasn’t ruined, let alone the week. One poor decision, one bad meal – they won’t undo all my other efforts throughout the next six and a half days. I can choose to smear that brownie all over my diary, and maybe leave a red wine stain and a couple of crumbs of cheese on there for good measure, or I can move on.

For the record, that brownie was 7.5 points. Yep, I looked up the nutritional info as soon as I got back to my desk. Rather than veering off course I stuck to my preordained plan and had a delicious mussel paella for tea, and went to bed reminding myself that what every dieter thinks they know is actually rubbish. A new day, a new week, a new year – they would all come round again tomorrow.

And they did.

Memories of Barcelona

Last night, I was looking at some old photos. Well, I say old, they were taken nearly six years ago. Back in August 2004, D and I had been together about four months. Things were going well, so well that we decided to take our first holiday together. We went to Barcelona. I can’t remember why we picked that particular destination now, and I don’t suppose it matters.

It was a lovely city – no doubt, it still is. We had a wonderful time. Over lunch one day we overheard a conversation where a woman was saying, with a sorrowful shake of her head, that “Holidays are stressful times for couples.” D caught my eye and we started to laugh. There was nothing stressful about our holiday. We walked for miles in the heat of a Spanish August, we ate tapas and drank bottles of cool beer in pavement cafes, everything was perfect. I think that holiday was the time I realised that I was in an actual, serious relationship. It was certainly the time when I decided that I wanted to live with this man (and indeed, we moved in together less than six months after returning from Spain, a mere ten months after first meeting).

The point is that the memories of this holiday are very precious to me. But looking at the photos I felt sad.

The girl in the pictures was so pretty. And she had a gorgeous figure – slim without being skinny, curves in the right places.

I am not that girl now. I am about three stone away from being that girl. At my biggest I was nearly six stone away from her. Six stone. That’s….a ridiculous amount of weight. That’s a small person. A small person that I was carrying around on my back.

I would never, ever want to subscribe to the view that an aesthetic of beauty is dependant on conforming to a certain weight or a certain size or a certain colour. But looking at the girl in the pictures, I remember that she felt beautiful. She knew she was never going to be a supermodel, but she didn’t care because she was young and she was happy and she was perfectly healthy and she had the kind of glow that you get when you are in love for the first time in your life. And, (and I realise this sentence damns me as a superficial cow, but this is my aesthetic of beauty) she was a size ten.

I haven’t felt beautiful for a long time. And that makes me sad. But I have stuck one of those Barcelona pictures up in the kitchen to remind me, on the days when it seems tedious to count points, on the days when my chocolate cravings feel all-consuming, that I want to be that girl again.

Sticking to a budget

When I’m in a bad mood and feeling resentful of the Weight Watchers treadmill, the main stick-to-beat-it-with that I can come up with is that it tends to deprive your eating life of spontaneity. I mean, obviously you could choose to approach the day with a laissez-faire attitude, and hope that intuitively your food choices fall within your points allowance. Me, I tend to develop a condition known as “points-blindness” when I do that. The only way for me to succeed is to plan out meals and snacks to within an inch of my life.

This seems to take an inordinate amount of time and I sometimes wonder if I make the whole process too difficult for myself. For instance, I read somewhere recently that the majority of people have a standard repertoire of no more than twelve dishes that they eat in rotation. That would make meal planning very easy, but I suspect I might keel over with boredom. Of course, there are dishes that I cook regularly but I don’t think, in all the four and a bit years that I have lived with D, that a week has ever gone by where I haven’t tried out at least one new recipe. I may well be a little obsessed. As well as subscribing to three food magazines a month (well, one of them is the Weight Watchers magazine which would perhaps best be described as…lifestyle. But it has recipes in it) I am frequently to be found surfing the net and bookmarking recipe sites as well. Oh, and I adore recipe books. I can sit and read them cover to cover like a novel. With all those choices out there, how could I ever restrict myself to twelve – or even a hundred and twelve – dishes for the rest of my lifetime??!

And hey, meal planning has perks other than point related ones. I find I actually spend a lot less money at the supermarket now because I have a plan and a subsequent shopping list and I tend not to deviate. So I’m learning to budget my points as well as my pounds. Hence the post title. Yes, cheesy.

In other news – I took my first Body Combat class in aaaaages last night and survived! Of all the Les Mills classes this is my absolute favourite – it’s basically a cross between aerobics and martial arts all set to very loud, thumpy music. Nothing better for stress relief than punching at empty air to a persistent drum beat.