Beige food and I

Beige shades

As a child I had an aversion to brown wallpaper – the result, I think, of moving aged 4 1/2 into a new house previously owned by an elderly couple. It was the mid-eighties and everything was brown – some lighter, some darker, but still brown and to my mind oppressive and stuffy. As an adult, I have a similar aversion, but this time it’s beige not brown and food not furnishings. Loyal readers may recall my casual reference to this in last week’s post about Christmas parties. When my other half, loyally reading it, enquired, ‘What’s so wrong with beige food?”, I realised that to save this point – potentially central to my “food philosophy” – from the bottomless pit of obscure blog references, it required elaboration.

Let’s be clear. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with beige food. Indeed, some beige foods are entirely necessary: brown rice, quinoa, potatoes, oats, buckwheat, millet, and for the carnivorously inclined, chicken and turkey … all nutritious and useful.  So with what am I taking issue? Two things.  Continue reading

In all seriousness (and beetroot)

Beetroot

Browse the internet or a bookshop and you’ll find a slew of advice on how to be taken more seriously – by your partner, your colleagues, or even by your own children. Lower your voice, hold someone’s gaze, focus on the things most important to you, and so on. It’s important too, because it’s how you get people to listen to your ideas – and even a three-year-old knows that not being listened to is one of the most frustrating things in the world. (I am writing on the eve of International Women’s Day.)

Whether these methods work is another matter, but to be taken seriously must be something we want, or we wouldn’t be so open to all that lecturing on the subject. Strange that, because I don’t see much evidence of us putting these ideas into practice. Open your eyes and ears to it: in the office sentences trail off into self-conscious laughter (of both the boisterous and meek kind); at the playground parents absent-mindedly chide small children with one eye still on their Facebook-covered iPhone screens; and lovers on the tube quarrel in mock baby voices. Mostly, it seems, we’re busy trying to be liked (whether by our new boyfriend or on social media) instead. Continue reading

Pancakes (of course)

Pancakes

I had resolved yesterday not to post about pancakes. Too predictable, I thought, every other health blogger and their vegetarian pet poodle will be writing about pancakes. But then reading all of the inevitable pancake posts, holding back became harder and harder (pancake competitiveness perhaps), until finally, the ladle overflowed into the frying pan, for want of a better analogy … But I’ll be brief, and promise not to lecture. Continue reading

Returning to the straight and narrow

Victorian Supper Table

I was at a birthday party a few weeks ago, and, after a couple of civilised hours chatting, sipping wine and swaying elegantly (or so I liked to think) on the dance floor, I found myself alone beside the buffet table. Despite having eaten a balanced evening meal only a few hours before, I was inexplicably and irresistibly drawn, in my two-glasses-of-wine haze, to what seemed to me to be a resplendent cheese board and accompanying tapenade. I started modestly – just two small slithers of cheese, one thin slice of baguette and a spoonful of tapenade. So far so good.

But with no-one there to observe my greed, I soon returned to the table and re-filled my plate more generously. The food was tasty, but far too rich for a midnight snack. It was on my third and greediest trip, as I plugged a large chunk of bread slathered with cheese and tapenade into my mouth without even putting it on my plate that I had a moment of clarity: no longer an interested taste, this had become a fully fledged gorge. I wiped my lips and stopped there. Continue reading