A few simple changes

FoodLast week I suggested that improving the way you eat is about making tiny changes day by day until you arrive at a place where you feel good and happy; drastic changes, by contrast, being costly and almost impossible to adhere to over more than a few weeks.

At the risk of repeating myself – I’ve written about such ideas elsewhere on this blog – and of doing too much dogmatic finger-wagging, I thought a convenient seven-point summary might provide a useful, gentle and not overtly corrective prod. Continue reading

Spoiling

Peaches 2When a child throws himself on the floor and wails because he cannot have what he wishes for, we wrinkle up our noses and mutter to ourselves disapprovingly, “spoilt brat”. This is no compliment; look up “to spoil” in the dictionary and you’ll find “to diminish or impair the quality or character by excessive indulgence.” But why the lesson in language?

Cast your eye over your Facebook feed until you find that frequently used post-birthday refrain, “Thanks everyone, I had a lovely day and feel well and truly spoilt”. In being spoilt, it seems, we feel loved and cherished. The act of spoiling is something to be celebrated – and it’s this new, positive use of the word, which I believe is so revealing about our relationship with food. Continue reading

Chia and me

Solitary woman

When I started this blog at the beginning of the year, I was full of ardent intent to create a simple and sensible guide to eating and living well. It started off as planned: alongside the blogging, I ate three sensible and delicious meals a day with the odd nutritious snack (almonds, an apple, a couple of dried apricots) thrown in for good measure. Generally, I felt light and happy.

But at some point between then and now, I became seduced, and utterly so, by the roguish promises of health food blogs. Admittedly, this fate is hard to avoid if you spend your evenings scouring the internet for interesting and nutritious recipes because most of these are on health blogs promoting (probably paid to promote) all sorts of faddish ingredients. Both my ongoing penchant for ‘clean’ foods and hard-to-shake-off habit of looking for magic-bullet foods had weakened my resistance. Continue reading

Quinoa with apple – the unexpected breakfast

Quinoa breakfast

When the richness of yoghurt does not appeal early in the morning, I use a couple of big spoonfuls of unsweetened apple puree to moisten some sort of cereal instead. Recently, tired of oats, I’ve been using cold quinoa, leftover from lunch the day before, or buckwheat flakes I buy from our local health food shop. Both are delicious.

But yesterday, in an untypical moment of self sacrifice, I finished the jar of apple puree on the children’s porridge. And so it was left to my culinary creativity to find a suitable replacement. As so very often the self sacrifice paid off, leading me to discover this gem of a breakfast. Continue reading