The world has gone mad for green smoothies. Wherever I look I find health food blogs proclaiming the fountain of eternal youth spouts whizzed up celery and spirulina, perhaps with a few chia seeds thrown in for good measure. And there’s always the photo of course: the jar, the rustic background, the recycled straw. Can you hear my scepticism? (Ironic, I know, given the intentions of this blog … ) Continue reading
I had gone to the supermarket to buy milk but soon found myself far from the dairy aisle, staring bewildered at the tubs, tubes, tins, packets, and bottles stacked meticulously – a visual stampede of farm workers, factory packers and carbon footprints.
Living in Berlin and mostly going to our nearby organic shop or local supermarket (much smaller than its UK counterpart), I hadn’t been in a really big UK supermarket for a while, possibly a year or more. Perhaps this meant I was more attuned not only to the scale of the operation but also to how little of the food in there I wanted to buy. In amongst those garish packets, schools voucher schemes, traffic light systems, and special discount offers, the real food was lost. My intense love of food shopping – that endless daydreaming of possible meals – vanished. This wasn’t fun, it was grotesque. Continue reading
Tempting as it may be after a long day in the office, it is not acceptable to throw tantrums as an adult. With age, most of us somehow manage to control our tempers and defuse anger in more mature ways. If we don’t, our professional and romantic luck will be rather limited – tough but true. But when it comes to what and when we eat, we remain rather childlike. Let me explain why. Continue reading
Mastering self-control is much harder when you’re tired (and hungover to boot). Somehow indulging the body feels very justified, rather like when you’re a little bit ill or sad. And therein lies the fallacy of indulgence. That stodgy breakfast, milky coffee, late afternoon slab of chocolate may gratify your desires but won’t make you feel in better; indeed, it will almost certainly make you feel worse.
Pleasure is your goal, not indulgence. A tired day needs careful management right up to the point at which you can take pleasure in it again (especially in dark and chilly January). This longer term view should provide the discipline to carry you through those bleak hours of fatigue, which can rear up and tempt you throughout a day after a night before. Continue reading
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
My three-and-a-half year old daughter has a penchant for sweet treats. Hard as this may be to believe, she appears not yet to recognise the benefits of her sage mother’s ascetic approach to food – perhaps because she is growing as fast as a bean-shoot and constantly darts between her two favourite activities of bouncing on the settee and jumping on our bed, or possibly just because she’s three-and-a-half. Anyway – I digress.
This results in a persistent clamouring for “something sweet – no, something really sweet,” said in that typically three-and-a-half year old, utterly resolute voice. And because she eats a (reasonably) balanced diet the rest of the time – with plenty of protein, healthy fats and wholegrains – I give her craving some credit and usually try to find something acceptable both to her and me; though not always an easy task. Continue reading
Poor dark, cold January has become a time for rather miserably hiding away and cutting back on life’s excesses – almost like an entire month of hangover – following a lavish Christmas. But I find it hard to advocate the practice of such punishing abstinence.
This excessive detoxing seems too short-term and painful to me. What if your best friend’s birthday in January, or indeed your wedding anniversary? What if you get to February so fed up of your steak-for-dinner diet that you go on a three-day baguette-feeding frenzy? Or you celebrate your month of dryness with a whisky drinking night out on the town? Surely, anything so far removed from your normal life is almost doomed to failure, or, at best, only very fleeting success. Continue reading
I’m off sugar – white sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup, maple syrup, honey, the lot – and have been for quite a while. In doing so, I have become that awkward person at the dinner party, pitied by the other guests, who tuck in with relish and think why miss a delicious pud for the sake of a few calories, but I couldn’t feel better for it.
It hasn’t always been this way. A definite pudding instead of starter devotee until age 25, homemade brownies and pavlovas were two of my sweet party pieces and I was often seen replacing lunch with a bar of chocolate in the office. And though my desire for intensely sweet food lessened with age and increasing culinary sophistication (I stopped considering chocolate as a complete meal), I still enjoyed pudding and cake on occasion. Continue reading
When I first started working in London for a company which openly celebrated slenderness (a recognised and disturbing theme in many organisations), I found myself skipping lunch most days and dining on a small bar of Galaxy chocolate and a packet of crisps whilst walking down Tottenham Court Road on the way to meet friends in the pub. I was short of money and trying to lose weight. The pressures of work and socialising didn’t leave me with time to exercise with any intensity, so deprivation it would have to be. Continue reading
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