What'll it be?

The other morning I had orange juice for the first time in ages! Y'know, when I'm 'on a diet' I don't drink juice at all. Why waste 'Points'/calories on non-alcoholic drinks?! I can have water or black coffee or tea with skimmed milk or diet coke. It must have been several years since I had orange juice. I'm not a really big juice fan or anything, but it was very nice! I only had one glass, a moderately small one. Then a few days later I met The Hubby after work, and really didn't want coffee, it was only a couple of hours since my last break, and I'd had coffee then. Normally I'd have diet coke (I resent what places charge for bottled water, and, well you can't just order a glass of tap water, that'd be really tight!), but that's caffeine too. Then I remembered I could have whatever I wanted! I toyed with the idea of a nice glass of red wine, but it was only 5pm and that seemed a little indecent, so I had a strawberry smoothie. We were going out to eat later, so it kept me full till then. I must try to remember I'm not limited anymore to either calorie free soft drinks/coffee, or alcohol.

What I did today...

....was mostly crawling around in a field!! Actually, it wasn't mostly, I only crawled around in a field for about an hour, but that's long enough!

The sun shone today, how wonderful. Isn't it funny how something as out of our control as the weather can have such a profound effect on our mood. It even changes the way we see ourselves in the mirror doesn't it? You know that stupid, stupid thing that happens, where you look in the mirror and you think you look OK, and then you look again a day, or half a day, or even half an hour, later, and suddenly you look hideous!! You KNOW you haven't changed, physically. Neither has your mirror. You aren't even necessarily wearing different clothes. It's not rational, is it? But it happens. And when the sun shines and you look in the mirror, you look a bit better, because you feel a bit better.

Anyway, after a lovely breakfast of scrambled eggs on gluten-free toast (with butter!) with The Hubby this morning I set off through town (called at the lingerie sale in M&S on the way, and also picked up some lunch) to catch a bus out to a place called Whirlow Hall Farm, which is on the outskirts, and where you can pick your own fruit. I made a £1 donation per punnet and headed off for the fields. I was a bit over-optimistic and paid for 4. I ate my lunch between the raspberry canes, in the sun. After my hour crawling around (never any midgets or willing toddlers around when you need 'em!) looking under bushes, I had 1 (ONE!) punnet of mixed fruit (gooseberries, blackcurrants, strawberries and raspberries). It's a charitable trust so I didn't bother to ask for my money back, they can't help the dreadful weather anyway, and I bought half a dozen eggs as well. It was 3pm when I set off, and the bus back to town (only one an hour on a Sunday) was due at 3.50 so I walked for about half an hour till I got to a place with more buses.

Back home, I set about the fruit with some apples and a nectarine and some sugar, and have just produced the most delicious crumble! I can't remember the last time I had crumble - being 'on a diet' rather precludes things like crumble, unless you are doing WW 'Core' and fancy making it from crushed All Bran - why would anyone ever want to do that?! I made MY topping with polenta, ground almonds and gluten-free plain flour, with real butter, and brown sugar. I think I ate rather too much, and am bemoaning the fact I haven't room for any more. It might be prudent to hide a portion, as The Boy and The Hubby both had 2 helpings at dinner and are likely to finish it off later after I've gone to bed.

First course was spaghetti with 'meatballs'. Sosmix (a dry packet mix you rehydrate with water and then shape as required, for those who don't know it) balls cooked in a sauce made from tinned cherry tomatoes (plum or chopped will do), an onion sauteed in oil, fresh thyme, green beans and sundried tomatoes. No need to fry the sosmix , it cooks like dumplings in the sauce. I had a couple of slices of yesterday's lentil bake with mine instead of spaghetti, because gluten-free pasta is a crime against humanity! We also had salad. I'm feeling a little bit stuffed now!

So, I didn't manage to be so mindful with that meal, it was just too, too delicious! But I did resist having seconds of pudding, which I REALLY wanted, because I was already feeling a bit uncomfortable. No point in being cross with myself, I went out and picked the bloody fruit, and walked miles into the bargain!

Lentil and Cheese Loaf

300g Red Lentils

1 medium onion

2 garlic cloves

2 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground cardamom

200g mature cheddar

1 egg, beaten

Oil

Salt and pepper

Rinse the lentils, place in a pan and cover with water. Bring to the boil, lower the heat and cook for about 15 minutes or until soft, adding a little more water if necessary.

Meanwhile, fry the chopped onion and the crushed garlic in the oil in another pan, and add the ground spices, stirring to prevent sticking.

Tip the onions and spices into the lentils, season well with salt and pepper and stir in the grated cheese and beaten egg and mix well.

Line a 2lb loaf tin with greaseproof paper, oil, and pour the lentil mixture in.

Bake at 200º for 30 minutes.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool until set.

Turn out onto a plate and serve sliced.

WHY?!

I'm 42 years old, and I think I've been on one diet or another for about 15 years. I've never been what anyone would describe as 'thin', but on the other hand, I'm not overweight either (not at the moment anyway, though I have been, but only slightly).


I never worried about my weight or size until after I had my second child (he's now nearly 16!), when I did get quite large, for me. It was at that point that I went on my 'first ever proper diet'. I did Rosemary Conley's Hip and Thigh diet, and cooked a lot of things with soya mince and no oils. I was a vegan at the time. I think I've pretty much either been on or 'off' a diet ever since, and we all know that being 'off' a diet is temporary, so you cram as much food enjoyment into that short window of opportunity as you possibly can! I gave up veganism when my son was about 7, so in came a whole host of new and extra things I could eat and feel bad about afterwards. Snickers bars were a favourite for a while! (I don't think I could eat one if you paid me these days!!).


Anyway, I've done Weight Watchers (on at least 3 separate occasions), and am proficient at both the Points and Core plans, and I've tried Slimmer Club UK (calorie counting) and Slimming World (how can a diet where you can eat Smash as a snack ever work?!), the South Beach and the Zone diets, the cabbage soup diet, Slimfast, and an online one called 'Sin and Slim' (!!). I had, until recently, one of the most comprehensive libraries of diet books in existence.


All this time I was nurturing a growing resentment. WHY? Why couldn't I eat normally? Why did I put on a pound a day whenever I came off my latest diet?! Food and all its aspects is one of my greatest pleasures! I love to cook, I love to shop for nice food, I love to read about food, I love to eat it! But I soooo wanted to be slim. The two things seemed totally incompatible. So if I wanted to be slim I would have to forgo my greatest pleasure. If I wanted to indulge that pleasure, I would have to put up with being fat!


Then I realised I was sick of dieting, really, really sick and fed up of it! I don’t need to lose weight for my health. I’m not overweight. It’s just vanity. I’m not stupid, I know I’ll never be skinny, no matter how much I diet. I’ll always have a well-padded bottom. And I don’t want to be skinny, anyway! I just want to be me, and have some fun, and maybe it would make more sense to try to change the way I feel about my body, than to try to change the body itself!


A couple of months ago I read an article in a magazine and saw a mention of Beyond Chocolate. It sparked an interest, so I had a look at the website. I'd never heard of intuitive eating before but what I was reading really struck a chord. I bought the book, and read it through, and I thought, “Yes!! This is what I’ve been groping for. I CAN do this!” And I gave away all my diet books and my Weight Watchers stuff, even the pretty little electronic Points calculator, because I’m never going to need those, ever again! I told everyone I know that I am never going to diet again. Now I feel so much happier and so free. And I HAVEN’T PUT ANY WEIGHT ON!



Sophie and Audrey, the ladies who wrote the Beyond Chocolate book, said that when you stop telling yourself that certain foods are forbidden, you free yourself from their power. YOU become in control. And it’s true! I keep chocolate in the same drawer where I used to hide it before, and mostly I don’t even eat it! Now I know I can have just a little square of proper cheese if I want, instead of extra low fat cream cheese, then if I really want, I’ll have just a little square. I can always have another later. NOT worrying about what I’m going to have for my lunch everyday is so wonderful. I can take something from home, or not. If not, then I can just go to M&S or wherever, and pick up something I fancy, and if that something is pudding, what the hell?!


This blog is going to be about my journey away from 15 years of serial dieting towards a normal, unfettered, relaxed relationship with food. It’s also going to be about my thoughts and feelings along the way. And it’s going to have my recipes in it, because making up recipes is my painting!

Old stuff

Here are some recipes I've pasted in from my Myspace blog (the Spanish style one is new). Apologies to anyone who's strayed here from there and is reading them for the second time.

This cake was effing gorgeous!!

Date, Walnut and Orange Flower Cake

150g brown and white sugar mixed, or just brown
150g butter
150g Glutano mix or flour or polenta
3 eggs
40g bashed walnuts
60g chopped dates
1tsp mixed spice
1tsp baking powder
1 tsp Orange Flower Water or more to taste.

Cream together butter and sugar. Beat together eggs.
Add eggs to butter/sugar, and whisk.
Add flour/polenta, walnuts, dates, spice and baking powder and mix well.
Add Orange Flower water and mix well.
Line 8" tin with greaseproof, and oil or butter.
Pour in mix.
Bake at about 180 for about 30 – 40 minutes. Cover with foil if necessary to prevent the top burning.
Test with a skewer to see if it's done.
Turn out onto a cooling rack, remove the greaseproof, turn the right way up and cool.

Scraping the Bottom of the Tagine

Today (this was originally posted on myspace about a year ago) I made Chickpea and Veg tagine for dinner. One with apricots and almonds for me and one without for the philistines. In proper tagines too. Had it with rice baked in the oven with bits of old sticks and stuff in (spices!). T'was very nice indeed. Followed this with baked peaches with clotted cream, or as the Daughter thought I was offering, baked beans and cottage cheese. Mmm hmm! That would be a pudding to remember. A glass of port finished it off rather nicely....

Another soup (I know this is backwards!).

1. Buy a butternut squash from Aldi for 39p (nb. this will NOT be organic). You may need to do this a few days beforehand, depending on how far Aldi is from your work.
2. Phone your daughter from work at 4pm and tell her to put the oven on, cut the squash into 4, rub it with some olive oil and roast it in the oven for approx 45 mins.
3. Buy some onions and nice bread from M&S (after all, the squash was 39p!).
4. Remember to go straight home from work. Do not go to a bar for cocktails first. IT'S ONLY TUESDAY FOR GOODNESS SAKE!
5. Fry the onions in some olive oil, add a diced big potato (that's a big potato, not big dice) and some floppy bits of veg from the bottom of the fridge.
6. Add about a litre of stock. Cook till the potato is soft.
7. Meanwhile scrape the squash flesh from the skin - your daughter can eat the skin, it's nice.
8. Put the nice M&S bread in the oven to warm up so you can pretend you've made it yourself.
9. Add the squash to the rest of the soup stuff and liquidise it. Put a tea towel over the blender or you will be spending the night in casualty and the rest of 2007 having plastic surgery to your face. Taste it (the soup, not the tea towel) and see if it needs anything, like some marmite, or paprika, or whatever.
10. Serve. If you don't eat bread (like me) and are too disorganised (like me) to have any gluten-free in (because M&S don't sell that!) you can dip slices of cheese in, that's very nice!
11. Follow with an M&S toffee mousse but make your children eat kiwi fruit because you've got 7 as they just keep coming in the organic veg delivery!
Next week - what to do with all those non-ripening Avocados you've collected from your organic veg deliveries!

NB. If you don't have a blender, you can use a potato masher, or so I was told by the colleague I sat next to on the bus home. If you don't have a daughter, you can borrow mine. She will bring her own knife, but will need supervising with gas ovens.

M&S New Potatoes and some Soup.

I bought some Organic New Potoatoes in M&S the other day. They were quite expensive (but cheaper than a Mojito, which is what happens if I go left when I leave work) but they had kindly washed them ready for me to use. Anyway, on (once again) to soup. Because it's easy and I'm lazy.

To make Celeriac and Potato Soup you will need:
1 large Celeriac
A few potatoes (I used 6 small M&S ready washed New Potatoes, you can use dirty common ones if you must)
A medium onion, or 2 small ones, or even a large one, it makes little odds.
Some sort of stock flavouring (cube or powder, unless you're really fussy and want to use real stock, in which case you need to get out more).
Salt and pepper
Some oil (Extra virgin Olive oil is not, obviously, necessary!)
A machete.

Chop the onion, fry it till it's see through in the oil. Meanwhile, imagine that the celeriac is the head of the person you loathe most in the world and run at it with the machete and give it a thorough killing. Chop it into cubes about the size of a cube. There is no other way to get into a celeriac. Add the celeriac cubes and the potato (also cubed - and washed, if you're common) to the onions in the pan. Fry them for a bit then cover them with water. Put the lid on the pan and turn the heat down and cook it all till the celeriac and potatoes are soft. Put the soup in the blender (not all at once, unless you want it on the ceiling - remember the teatowel protection against facial scarring!). Whizz till smooth. Taste the soup and add stuff till it tastes the way you'd like it to taste. I added some salt, some pepper and a smidge of powdered cumin.

Roman Army Bread

This is sooo easy..... The instructions are on the packet, but my way is EVEN easier!Buy a bag of Doves Farm Spelt Flour (that's spelt Spelt). It doesn't have to be Doves Farm, that's just the one I've got. Chuck half of it in a big bowl. Add half a teaspoon of salt. In a jug or somesuch, put 14floz of warm water (that's 400ml for all you under 35's) and add a good squirt/a teaspoon of honey and a little packet of instant yeast. Add 3 tablespoons of olive oil (or other oil if your Daughter has used all the Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil on her supernoodles). I just used a tiny trickle of Olive Oil and some Grapeseed oil. Mix it all for about 1 minute with a wooden spoon. Forget what it says on the packet about 15 minutes vigorous mixing - take it from the laziest cook in the world, it's NOT necessary! Slop the whole lot out onto a greased baking tray, poke it into a vague roundness, and cover it with a (clean) teatowel. Leave it alone for about half an hour. Go and play on the computer. Put it in the oven on 180/370/Gas 4 (not all of them at once, that would be too hot) and bake it for about 30 minutes. Take the teatowel off first, they do burn so! Take it out, put it on a cooling rack and put the cooling rack on the table because there's no point in waiting any longer, now is there? Have it with some soup. I am doing Celeriac and Potato (cos I got a huge Celeriac in my veg delivery this week) and Lentil and Tomato cos The Husband HATES celery so I figured he probably won't like celeriac either. If they turn out OK I'll tell you about them later.This bread is, of course, not gluten-free (no bread worth eating ever is) but it's a bit easier to manage than ordinary wheat bread and worth a little farting if you're not going out!

Mmmm Tofu!

In a big frying pan, heat some olive oil. Fry a leek, sliced, then add a courgette, a pepper, some mushrooms and some baby corn cut into strips. Or whatever, it doesn't really matter – not raw potatoes obviously! Then add some shredded cabbage and some rocket or something. Then mix some soy sauce and some balsamic vinegar with a bit of stock powder and a pinch of ginger and a splash of water, and chuck it over the veg. Cook it for about 6 minutes.
Meanwhile, in another frying pan, heat some more olive oil and fry a block of smoked tofu cut into thinnish slices till it's brown on both sides. Sprinkle it with salt and pepper and lemon juice and serve it on top of the veg. You can have some bread and butter with it if like – hell you can have a bucket of lard with it if you want. But don't.
It takes about 20 minutes from start to finish and it's yummy!

Spanish style supper.

Here's the first recipe.

I really fancied fried potatoes tonight, so I had to nip into M&S, as I knew there weren't any spuds at home. Of course, I had to buy a 3 pack of organic creme fraiche desserts and a big jar of olives and some double cream as well, seeing as I was there and it'd be silly not to, but I managed to resist a new bikini!

Anyway, on the bus on the way home I mentally searched the fridge and found some courgettes and 2 halves of peppers, which, when I got in, were still there in actuality as The Daughter is away and The Hubby and The Boy won't cook a vegetable that doesn't come out of a tin. So, here's what I made:

First I chopped the potatoes (there were 8 middle-sized ones, no reason) into cubes and boiled them till they were done. Then I drained them.

I heated some olive oil in my big stainless steel frying pan (because you shouldn't put tomatoey things in your non-sticks, they take the coating off!) and cooked half a chili in it for a while, quite low. Then I added a small chopped onion and 2 chopped cloves of garlic and whooshed it all around for a bit till the onion was nice and soft. Then I added half a bag of quorn pieces, cos that's what I'd got, but you could add chickpeas, or even chicken, if you must. Then I removed the chili half, and put in the peppers and courgettes, chopped. I added maybe 3 or 4 oily sun dried tomatoes (the tomatoey element of which I spoke), chopped up, and a sprinkle of veg stock powder and about half a tsp of smoky paprika, oh, and a sploosh of water. No idea how much, but not a right lot.

After that I did get the big nonstick frying pan out, and I heated some more olive oil and some butter in it, and chucked in the leaves from a couple of stalks of fresh rosemary, then the drained potatoes, and some sea salt. Then I fried them till they were nice and crispy and brown.

Then I chucked the fried potatoes in the pan with the veg and quorn and mixed it around. Me and The Boy had some rinsed capers and a few of the big fat olives in ours, but I didn't put any in The Hubby's as he is a philistine and doesn't like em! Delicious!