Tag Archives: food

Interwebnet tradition …

Posted on by

Blogging about food!  We bought a bunch of Good Food magazine recipe books from Amazon, and we’re very pleased with them.  I actually bought them for two reasons, 1. size and 2. one-pot-cooking.

The books are small, sort of a sqaure shape, near A5 but shorter and fatter.  Which makes them easy to store in our tiny, cluttered and space-lite kitchen.  Secondly, they do a one-pot-cooking recipe book and I’m all about the one-pot-cooking.  Each of the recipe books has 101 recipes, some of them look a little, er, curious, and there’s some overlap.  For example, we got the one-pot-cooking one which shares some recipes with the noodle and pasta one, but it’s a small amount of overlap and the books really do seem useful.

We’ve already cooked a bunch of stuff from them, changing our diet in the last three weeks from ‘same old rubbish’ to ‘a bit scary but fresh stuff’ almost overnight.  We’ll probably settle down to a few recipes we really like, but the books have provided some much needed inspiration for us recently.  They don’t really work well with Grete’s diet because I’m terrible at serving single portions, but as we get more used to them we’ll either cook less, or just serve less and hopefully they’ll help.  For me, as long as I’m careful about which ones we pick and their carb content they should be perfect, if I can avoid eating three portions worth.

Tonight I’m making the Chilli from the one-pot-cooking one, which feeds eight, so there’s going to be plenty to freeze for lunches.  I love Chilli, and it’ll be great to learn a new recipe for cooking my own with fresh spices rather than packet mixes.  I’m blogging this during the ’30 minutes of simmering’.  I know that good chilli’s need to cook for ages, but we really don’t have ages unless I cook it days in advance and we didn’t.  But it’ll be awesome for lunch tomorrow at work, and fantastic for keeping in the freezer.

Yesterday we made Lemon Chicken and Broccoli, which was just superb (from the noodle book, or maybe the meals for two).  One of the things we’ll need to get used to is the difference between truly fresh sauces and ingredients and our half-way-house packets or jars.  The lemon sauce was light, fresh and tangy.  Takes quite a bit of preparation although I guess that’ll get quicker with practice, but very little time to cook.

Other dishes we’ve made,

  • Goulash – totally not what I was expecting, may have to play with this recipe a bit to get a dish we eat more often.  It was much more like a soup than I expected.  Was better a few days later for lunches.
  • Vegetable Paella – was ok, not really my cup of tea (what, no meat?) but I think Grete really enjoyed it.  May mix it up with some chicken.
  • Toad in the Hole (from the low fat book) – ruined this, although Grete managed to eat it.  Just didn’t get the oven hot enough and it was more gloop than yorkshire pudding.  May try again, liked the Mustard and Thyme mix in the batter.

We got the following books,

And may pick up a few of the others as well!

edit: And be thankful, because I almost starting taking pictures of the food, beginning with the goulash but decided against it!

The smell of bacon

Posted on by

All around me this morning is the smell of bacon cobs. Alluring, delicious, warm and comforting on a cold and damp September morning.

I am assailed on all sides by the elicit odour of that which I crave.

So far, I have remained strong, through a combination of not wanting to move because I have a stinking headache, and the last shreds of my willpower that I really would like to lose some weight sometime before the end of this year.

It remains to be seen how long those two factors protect me for the rest of the morning.

Worst. Flapjack. Ever.

Posted on by

I love flapjack, but as you can imagine it’s loaded with sugar, and even though oats are nice and friendly and low GI, on the whole, flapjack isn’t the kind of snack I should be seeking. It’s the one thing I truly miss that could be considered a sweet snack.

So, I bought some honey (low-medium GI) and some Maple Syrup (pure) which is low GI and I tried to make some flapjack without sugar.

Worst.
Flapjack.
Ever.

The top is crusty and nice but hardly sweet, and the base is like a thick gloop of stodgy gloop which tastes like raw oats, which suggests to me it’s raw oats!

So, maybe I’ll have another shot. I’ve got some options like including some Splenda[tm], more syrup, less honey, baking it for longer, etc. Neither syrup nor honey are that cheap, so either I’ll find a recipe which works soon or I’ll have to re-mortgate the house.

I’m trying not to think about the 125g of butter you’re supposed to use per batch.

Day 98

Posted on by

It’s day 98 of my new diet (huh? what do you mean it’s only 8 days in? feels like 100!) and it’s going about as well as can be expected when you have the willpower of a demented shrew. In case you’re new to this, I don’t have a sweet tooth really, I just have a huge fat stomach.

Anyway, got through the weekend (roast dinner yesterday, too much veg but better than too much of everything else), and remembered at the last minute to have breakfast this morning (low GI bread toast)! Ate the last of Saturday’s Chilli for lunch with a packet of Dorito Tortilla’s (could be worse). Managed to buy sandwich stuff for tomorrow, and ended up making a quick chicken stir fry for this evening, which considering how late we got to Tesco, how little I wanted to cook and how high the temptation was to get something even easier, I’m taking it as a victory.

Sunday

Posted on by

A week at work after a two week break and already I’m struggling to demonstrate any serious enthusiasm, ah well. Been a bit of a week, had various amounts of unexpected cash (Council Tax and a refund from British Gas) and ended up buying a surround sound system and a Nintendo Wii (obviously, it would have been more sensible to put the money away for the future, but then, who knows what the future will hold).

We’re late to the party with the Wii, but it doesn’t mean we can’t Rock Out! We got Guitar Hero III and it’s just really, really good fun! Despite the fact that I know it’s nothing like playing the guitar for real, it makes me want to play the guitar! I have to say, the Wii Fit surprised me, I hate exercise for the sake of it, but the Wii Fit certainly makes some parts of the process easier. Whether it’s the feedback, the tracking, the score system, the games, or something else I’m not sure yet, and I’m not sure how long the novelty will last and if we’ll use it once we’re past that stage, but it’s certainly been used more than any single piece of exercise equipment we’ve ever bought (which I admit, is a short list). I was firmly in the it’s a gimmick camp until I spoke to a few people and that was certainly fully dispelled when we got one. So fingers crossed.

It’s a long time since I sat down and played a computer game that wasn’t a MMOG of some kind, for 4 hours straight, which I did with Guitar Hero this morning. The Wii really is inclusive, it’s almost impossible to watch your spouse playing tennis without the urge to jump up and challenge them to a game. Hopefully we’ll be able to pick up a bunch of second hand games which are fun to play, I guess I need to start reading some reviews.

I still have to actually get the rear speakers for the surround sound stuff mounted, I’m taking it gradually because I don’t want to screw it up. Still not entirely certain what the best way to deal with the speaker cabling is, it’s not easy (possible) to lift our carpet and hide them, but we’re lucky with furniture placement. The main area of concern will be running the cable around the fireplace.

Cooking has been mostly successful, despite the mood issues that working for a living brings. Managed to cook more often than not this week rather than eating frozen pizza or (the admittedly better-than-they-used-to-be) ready meals. I need to find some more meals we can make in a single pan, like stews or rice/paste based dishes. We both really enjoy those kinds of meals, and they’re easy enough to make and freeze, and generally tend to be lower on fat than the other options. Also by making sure we choose the right accompaniment we can keep the GI low.

Made the entire week without eating bacon in the mornings, watched what I ate during the days. More of the same next week. Grete says it really does help her, which in turn gives me more incentive to keep it going. Fingers crossed there as well (running out of fingers).

My sister’s holiday caravan has been flooded somewhere in the North East of England (last night). They weren’t in it at the time (although they only didn’t go because the rain was bad, otherwise they might have been, but then it wouldn’t have flooded maybe). They’re checking insurance details today and the insurers are visiting the caravan park tomorrow so we’ll know more then about what is covered and how much they need to pay out. The kids love that place so I hope they get enough to cover any damage and repairs.

So, three days in

Posted on by

I’ve had breakfast at home before setting off for work 3 days in a row now. No bacon cobs at work, so far so good. Tuesday morning I actually forgot and only remembered as we were about to leave the house but I managed to resist and scarf some toast before rushing out, instead of just going for the easy option. This morning I had scrambled egg and toast (Burgen low GI bread). Made Chilli con Carne on Monday night (all pointed up so Grete knew how many points she was having) and had the remains of that for lunch at work on Tuesday, and had sandwiches today (Burgen bread again), so hopefully that’s all better for me than the shop bought sandwhiches at work (blood sugar and fat-wise).

And yeh, I am dieting after a few weeks of indulgence. There’s a difference between knowing you should lose weight and feeling like you’re prepared to put the effort in to lose some weight. I’ve got a goal in my head but I’m not telling you what it is.

I’m also doing this because it helps Grete, and she deserves all the help she can get because she’s been trying so hard for two or three years. So if me watching my food helps her then it’s all good. It means I’ll have to be cooking more often in the evening but hopefully my reduced EQ / MMORPG playing time will give me more energy / time to cook.

The hardest thing for me is that a reasonable amount of what is considered low GI food is sometimes low GI because of the higher than average fat content (fat slows down carb absorption). So balancing low GI and low fat leads to boring food if you’re not careful. The chilli worked out pretty well, used the lowest GI rice I could find and added some corn chips (which are low GI because of the fat) and plenty of protein in the chilli itself helps as well.

So there, yeh, I am ‘on a diet’, but since I’ve been ‘on a diet’ since I was diagnosed as being type 2 diabetic, I guess it’s no change, the only thing that’s changed is I’m trying to reduce portion sizes and eat even less processed food to reduce my calorie intake as well as control my blood sugar.

Two balls in the air now, we’ll see how my juggling can cope.

Funny Food!

Posted on by

When you tell people about an event or situation from your past, maybe as if you’re telling them a story, you sometimes may find yourself adding embellishments or exaggerating certain aspects for dramatic or comic effect. If you do this enough, if you tell the same story enough times, you may find the story is a stronger memory than the reality, in fact, the story becomes the reality.

I’m fully aware of this phenomenon, as I’m sure are most people. I also, it’s sad to say, sometimes play to an audience if something has some humour value. I went to Egypt in 1995 with a couple of friends and I had a really good time, and have some really good memories of that trip. One or two of those memories have become stories I tell my friends and one of them in particular is about the food on the boat. The chef liked to dress the food up (after it was cooked) to either look how it had before it was cooked, or to just make it look more cheery.

I reminisced about how he had dressed chicken up with happy faces, and about the time he served up mutton dressed so we knew it had been a sheep. I was pretty sure about the chickens, but sometimes I doubted my memory about the sheep.

Well, as you know I’ve been scanning my Egypt photos and it looks like I didn’t make this up, which is pleasing. So here for your delectation and delight are chickens with heads and happy faces, and mutton with a tinfoil head and horns, in case there was any doubt about what it might have been.

Enjoy (click them for full size images).

BBQ!

Posted on by

Someone within smellshot[1] is BBQ’ing and it’s making me very very hungry.

[1] yeh, well it should be.

Food Weirdness

Posted on by

Do you have any weird food habits? I do. Many of them revolve around even and odd numbers, some of them revolve around an almost supernatural fear of not serving enough food and one of them relates to cutlery. I guess this post is not going to paint me in a good light.

I think, looking hard at them, that it may be mild OCD. Although (and this is without any disrespect what-so-ever to true sufferers of OCD which is a terrible illness) I think many of us think we’re ‘a bit OCD’ because people are more aware of the symptoms in recent times. Maybe I’m just plain crazy and it doesn’t have a name.

Do you find that you can’t just toast one piece of bread, and that you must in fact toast an even number of slices? Maybe because toasters have two or four slots (a quick search on google didn’t find any with odd slot counts). Certainly when I was young you had to put single bread slices into specific slots in our toaster, otherwise the universe exploded (or something). I mean, I don’t fall over if I have to eat an odd number of toasted products, but I certainly have pause to think ‘this isn’t right’. Our Tesco sells crumpets in packets of 6. There’s two of us in this house. That’s 3 each. Distressing.

I hate mismatched cutlery. We have a range of cutlery in our draw and I really don’t like having a mismatched knife and fork. Usually of course I only use a fork and don’t bother with a knife, I am after all a man and I can eat my food with only a fork thank you very much. But on the occasions where I do use a knife it has to be the same model as the fork (and if I bring cutlery in for other people, I make sure they’re matched as well). This isn’t even really different types of cutlery, we have two sets of stainless steel, one plain and one patterned and I don’t mix them.

Then there’s the deep psychological issue of not serving enough food. I really have no idea where this came from but I have no doubt it contributes to my weight issue. It goes hand-in-hand with serving up everything that gets cooked, and not being able to leave it or throw it away if I cook too much (and since I fear not serving enough, I always cook too much).

Lastly (for this far too revealing blog post) is the habit of eating the stuff you like least first and leaving the stuff you like most to last. I first remember doing that at school during school dinners, getting rid of the stuff I didn’t really like in the meal and leaving the nicest bits to the end.

Temptation

Posted on by

The temptation to have a second bacon cob is high today, but so far I’m holding back. I know you were all waiting for this post with bated breath.

By the way, bated breath is the correct spelling, not baited (despite British newspapers getting it wrong more often than right). After doing some reading, bated is an abbreviated form of abated, and hence bated breath (abated breath) means almost not breathing or holding your breath.

Reference: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bai1.htm