little gem
spring onion
Mejoul dates
green olives
sesame oil
lemon juice
mirin
rice wine vinegar
radicchio
smoked tofu
nigella seeds
black sesame seed
Japanese sushi seed mix
seaweed flakes
dried parsley
red pepper
all finely chopped or shredded –
go easy on the sesame oil –
and balance it well –
use your eye and your own taste to get this right –
Enjoy
Went to dinner for a birthday at Dikke Dirk – I had read reviews and looked at the menu. I thought I had some idea of what we were in for, However the experience was very different, the decor was overwhelming, I was enchanted by the haphazard magical maximalist style. The bustling charming atmosphere put an instant smile on my face. We were led up to our table and served by friendly efficient staff and we ate well and the wines were good. The portions are huge – so order sparingly. The music was a great contemporary mix and the noise level in the packed dining rooms and bars high and intoxicating. I recommend it for a gathering, party birthday or feast. There were many crowded tables of colleagues, sportclubs and large groups of friends. It’s been open since 2019 – and is now part of the best nightlife of Amersfoort.
Do book a table for dinner (probably also lunch) – or just visit the bar.
I had heard that the service was bad, somewhat rude and slow. This was not the case – service was fast and the staff were great.
Dikke Dirk is open every day of the week.
They do have vegetarian options.
The address is – Groenmarkt 8, 3811 CP Amersfoort The Netherlands
to book a a table phone 033-2003173
or mail – reserverenamersfoort@dikkedirck.nl
The third diet is the one that is going to work.
The third diet is the one that is right for you.
The third diet is the one that will last you the rest of your life.
Provided you have your head screwed on right, the third diet is the one you get to when you start thinking about diet, stop panicking, and start, finally, listening to your body.
Let me explain.
The first diet.
The first diet is the one you grew up with. It’s what you have always eaten. It is the diet you know, and what you have grown used to eating. This diet is what your family ate, or at least gave to you to eat as a baby, as a small child, though you may have thrown tantrums about what you were given, you will have eaten and liked most of it. Or you mistrusted all food given to you and developed absolute hatred for certain foods. As you grew up you started choosing within the allowable and available foods, if there was any choice at all, luckily for most people there is choice.
Since you started choosing your own food, your diet has shaped you. The first diet has two stages, the second stage is when you become capable of buying your own food, making your own food choices, cooking your own meals. Eating just exactly what you like all the time. now for most people, this leads to healthy sustainable food choices.
Or it used to.
Nowadays it doesn’t always lead to a good healthy diet, and we know it. We are led astray by food marketing, advertising and promotions. Whether we know, or care about it, or not – we choose from the food marketed to us, and this becomes our daily diet. This is the first diet – most of us do well, some of us do very badly, we develop illnesses caused by bad food choices, diabetes or heart problems, we become overweight or have deficiencies which lead to disease. The first diet may not be healthy, but it is what we know, what our families know, what our culture knows. If we are lucky, it is a great diet, most of us are not so lucky and most of us do not make good choices.
So now we get.
The second diet
The second diet is what happens when we become aware of what we are eating and start thinking about it. The second diet happens when we try to change our diet, when we discover how sick we are making ourselves, when we are unhappy with our appearance our health, our longevity.
This is the mad panic reaction, the shock reaction to our bodily state. We start dieting. The yo-yo dieting reaction starts up. The fad dieting, there are so many restrictive diets of all varieties, some good, some not so good, some so unhealthy they are downright dangerous. The GI diet, the keto diet, the south beach diet, the Aitken diet, the apple diet, the 5-8 diet, the fasting diet, I could go on and on there are so many. The restrictive and often unhealthy way we use the same food products and marketing and dieter restriction to try to change how we eat is truly concerning. We rapidly try to change how we look and how we feel about ourselves. This can lead to all kinds of other problems, bulimia, anorexia, diabetes, deficiencies of all kinds. So, we aren’t doing ourselves any good. The second diet takes us to the other extreme of trying to control every little thing about our food intake. The point is not to be extreme but look at yourself, your life, your lifetime habits, the diet of your family, your culture and your country. It is not to force change on the body and hate yourself while doing it. Most people live inside of the second diet all their lives without ever discovering there is another choice. But sooner or later we do start to think again.
And this leads to
the third diet.
The third diet is when you start being sensible about it. The third diet is when you start asking and answering the right questions, without demanding that the answers be what you want. It is when you allow science to answer the questions accurately. We hope that we can rely on the media to provide independently researched good quality science with no money, backing, promotion or government subsidy to screw up the answers. Believe me the answers can be totally screwed.
It happens! It happens so much you wouldn’t believe it. Always check and double check that what you are reading or prepared to try out is accurate. On the diet front, follow the money, if it is not good independently funded research it’s probably promoting a diet that may make you seriously ill.
So, what do you seek in the third diet?
When you finally make your way to the third diet, you will be eating for you and your body at last. You will be taking care of your health and be alright with what you personally can and can’t achieve. You’ll ease up on things and have what is workable in your life, with, what is available in your area, your climate, your culture. You will be able to change any part of it for yourself, whenever you need to, so you’ll feel good about yourself at all times. You will be able to ignore the advertising, the lies, the sickening foods.
This is where health starts.
The third diet.
It’s what you choose to eat once you take stock of where you are and what you know. When you understand the food fads and advertising, when you are no longer swayed by programming even by your own government or culture. They may not have your health at heart but be more interested in, say, the meat marketing board, or the dairy industry than they are in your health.
The third diet is where you learn to make the choices best for you. So thought you are in the same environment you can, for instance, say no not the hamburger but I do want the side salad or say not the milkshake but I’ll have the juice – see for yourself, make the choices that are right for you.
The third diet is when you ask, how poisonous is this, exactly? And you are prepared to look it up. But you allow yourself, just sometimes that mouthful of chocolate, which is fine, a little bit of what you fancy does you good.
Just occasionally that is the right thing to do, not all the time.
The third diet is when you are prepared to teach your body what to eat, what to like. It’s when you teach it to metabolise foods that are better for it. It is when you listen to what your body really wants and likes, all the way to your microbiome. When you consider more than the mouthfeel or taste, the balance and texture of a food or dish. It is when you are prepared to look at what your food actually consists of, and what it does to your body.
The third diet isn’t just a change of perspective, it isn’t for ‘getting thin’ it isn’t even just for health.
The third diet is a personal revolution.
let’s start with cheese
Cheese is highly addictive due to the casein, salt and fat in it.
The producers of cheese products know this, they have known this for quite some time, they prepare the cheese they sell to you specially to make it as addictive as possible so you will be forced to buy and eat more and more of it
They do not care what it does to your health and your mind, except to condition you into buying and eating more cheesy things. The problem is, how do you stop eating something you like to eat which is in or on just about everything we eat?
Once you know it is addictive and is so very unhealthy, how do you stop?
Despite the fact that you believe you like it.
We’ll work on this together
I had some trouble stopping myself eating cheese, it was exactly the same trouble I had when I quit smoking. Not only is it fattening and unhealthy, it is also addictive, just like sugar and salt which are also added to just about everything we eat.
Cheese is everywhere, on your Pizza, in your sandwich, in lasagne, in your macaroni, on your spaghetti, It is really hard to think of a meal that does NOT have cheese in it when you first start out NOT eating cheese. It is also, so moreish, we all love to eat lots of it. The advertisers tell us we love it and we readily and happily agree with them.
Melting gooey sticky stringy oily yellow cheese
On everything
So it’s even harder to quit that smoking, because at least these days we are not bombarded with smoking messages saying how cool it is and great it is and good for us it is. The food marketing industry is now using the exact same strategies the tobacco industry used to make us eat more cheese, like more cheese and defend our sacred cheese.
It’s such clever brainwashing we don’t even know we are brainwashed
Just look at advertising
Or rather, don’t
We have come a long way from the delightful brie made by Mr. local farmer, or the real traditional stilton. The cheese being sold to us now is not really cheese at all, certainly not in the traditional artisan sense. What we get now is a poor reflection of the old local cheese makers varieties, so much so it’s impossible to name any but the most well known mass produced ones. Think about it, what locally produced cheese can you name, or better yet, do you eat?
If we can get ourselves to the point that we stop eating this mass produced muck and go back to occasionally treating ourselves to a local handmade speciality, we are already ahead.
Try not to eat anything with cheese on it for a few days at a time. Say ‘hold the cheese’ and find out how dishes taste without it. It worked for me, it can work for you. Try it and think about how you feel.
As you start paying attention to how you feel and what you think it will become easier to stop eating cheese altogether.
Only when you have reached this stage will you realise how prevalent cheese is in your life and your diet. You will also notice you feel a lot lighter and have less trouble with your knees.
I love to forage.
today I found morels, some of the most delicious mushrooms on the planet, they are really hard to find.
They grow in April and May and love sandy soil
Today I shall eat them lightly fried in a little olive oil. Chefs also sauté them in butter, they can also be preserved by canning, bottling or drying. But this is just a nice little portion for one person, laid across a slice of home baked whole grain bread, with the tiniest smattering of salt.
Always check all your mushrooms for worms and bugs and brush them clean with a small soft mushroom brush. Some mushrooms will be covered in sand or other debris. What I do if it is really bad is wash them under cold running water and then leave them to dry separately for several hours or even overnight so they do not become soggy.
Please never ever pick any wild mushrooms unless you have learned personally from an expert in the field.
There are, for instance, mushrooms that are often mistaken for morelles which are poisonous and will make you really quite ill, so unless there is someone with you who is an expert in the field, do not pick.
If you are not sure of what it is, do not pick, if it is not in the best condition, do not pick, if it has been half eaten by slugs or is very damaged, do not pick.
Do not pick if it is very young and do not pick if it is very old.
If you are serious about learning to forage mushrooms, learn when they are not in the right condition to pick.
This is not something you can learn from a book or a few videos. You need to learn from an expert in the field, personally. Some experts run workshops during the relative mushroom seasons and it is possible to apply for these where you are.
I was lucky, my mother picked and so did my grandmother and my aunts and great aunts, so I learned from childhood which mushroom is which, what is edible, what will make me ill, what is medicine and what will give me (bad) dreams, and, of course which ones are delicious and where to find them, which trees they prefer to be near or grow on, as well as all the places they knew where their favourite mushrooms grew.
I never tell anyone where these mushroom patches are, some are very rare, some are very common, some are very hard to spot, others are extremely easy. I know over fifty varieties, but I only pick some of them. I pick depending on seasonal availability, which can vary greatly from year to year.
If you do come across a mushroom patch never ever pick them all, leave one third – always, – don’t be greedy.
Let some grow up and spore, if you see someone else also knows this mushroom patch and has already picked them, leave what is left. and go your way.
I will not pass my expertise on to anyone, I have no one I want to pass it on to and do not give workshops. We have so little forest left and it is still being cut down at an astonishing rate. There are few wild meadows left and little duneland. Many of the varieties I used to pick are now rare or even endangered. If I do come across a patch of rare mushrooms I leave them alone, even hiding the patches of the rarest ones so no one else can stumble across them.
Morelles can be bought already dried, or in jars or tins, preserved for your recipes and dishes if you really want to try them, very rarely you can get them fresh. There are now growers who specialize in morles too, that would be the best bet.
Better yet find a restaurant where the chef has them on the menu and try them cooked by an expert.
Vegan, oil free, gluten free, delicious.
This oil free recipe gets its creaminess from the Violife ‘white’ and the borlotti beans. red beans will also work. Carrot adds sweetness and cucumber a delicious coolness. The rucola is used as a herb as it is strong and peppery in flavour, all offsetting the slight bitterness from the chicory. Thus giving a wonderful easy to eat oil free salad containing all the nutrients needed.
For gallbladder and liver health it is also possible to add dandelion leaf finely chopped, it goes well in this dish adding it’s own flavour in-between the chicory and rucola. It is possible to forage dandelion almost anywhere, be careful to choose clean plants not near busy roads but in meadows or parks where the air is cleaner. Or like I do simply grow it in your garden as it is a healthy nutritious plant.
The lemon juice and salt bring out all the natural flavours of the fresh ingredients and with the rucola and the dandelion leaf you don’t need pepper.
red chicory, finely chopped
spring onion thinly sliced
grated carrot
dandelion leaf finely chopped
a small tin of green borlotti beans (red kidney beans are also good)
greek white ‘goats cheese’ Violife, in small chunks
rucola, very finely chopped (arugula)
red cayenne chilli very finely chopped
cucumber in small chunks
paprika, orange, sliced and chopped (bell pepper)
lemon juice to taste
salt to taste
Let’s take a good long look at how and what and when and especially why we eat.
Because we all know it’s not just about hunger and nutrition.
If you are or ever have been ‘serious’ about dieting you have this picture in your mind of what your preferred ‘thin’ is like. You have this idea that somewhere in the future you can be different. You want to change into that perfect person you think you are not.
You want to be this other person, this thin person.
You want to be this totally different being who is slim and energetic, beautiful and healthy and loved
Loved even by you yourself.
So who is this person you can see in the future? This person who is all these things you want to be and feel you are not right now?
We don’t really need to take a long look in the mirror to see what we really look like now, as we know what we look like now, and don’t like what we look like now, this is why we avoid looking at ourselves.
We carefully avoid the mirror, sometimes we won’t even have mirrors in the house and some of us wince when we catch sight of ourselves accidentally.
How bad is that as a body image? Is this how you really feel about yourself? I’ve noticed it about me, my body image is very negative. Do you never wear anything tight or fitted, do you also buy those roomy clothes that cover your body and hide all the lumps and bumps and fat bits? Are you afraid to be seen in public, in the gym? Will everyone who sees you notice all the fat bits wobbling on the fatter bits which you are so unhappy about? I never go to the beach in a bikini anymore because I’m afraid someone might see that I have fat bits.
It’s no way to live. I feel sad and I am angry and puzzled and by my own reactions to what my body looks like now. I do not have a good relationship with my body.
Instead I have a deep meaningful relationship with my fridge, my cookie jar, this bag of crisps and the bar of chocolate, specially the bar of chocolate.
And it is all funny, It’s hilarious, I laugh, we laugh we are all funny, because if it wasn’t funny we would be crying, so I’m snarky and sarky instead and that makes me angry too because it’s not really a joke, mainly because I have begun to worry about my health.
And still I eat
Specially the very things I know I should not be eating at all.
Let’s face it we are unhappy, have a terrible body image and don’t like who we are.
What we need to do is engage our brains, we need to think about this carefully, we need to use the mirror in a completely different way
We need to look at ourselves from the inside out, use our internal mirror
We need to look at our feelings instead of eating something
Avoiding how we feel is what got us here in the first place, we need to look at ourselves inside out, honestly
It’s just us in here, so it’s safe here, as for everyone else – it’s none of their business, they can stop judging us right now – if they ever did.
We have to let the internal judge sail too and stop judging ourselves, look at ourselves dispassionately, calmly and kindly, without judgment.
Let’s get real inside our own heads, inside our own feelings first. Take look at what moves us to eat the way we eat, so we get to the point where we can do something about it for good, for the long term.
We need to take control.
It’s like finally quitting smoking, at first it’s impossible to do, we can’t even think about it so we don’t. Then it’s maybe something that might happen in the distant future, then it becomes possible to cut down, after that the idea of quitting becomes something that could happen someday, then one day it is possible and you find you can stop.
After that on the day you quit, not smoking is hard as it nails you down twenty times a day as you slog through the force of habit, but it is possible to continue quitting twenty times a day and not reach for that cigarette twenty times a day. Then you notice you can breathe deeply again, this is it’s own reward, your sense of smell returns, this has it’s own reward too. The smokers cough finally goes away and that feels really good, then movement, walking, running becomes easier, you’re not so knackered all the time and that is really great.
So bit by bit, not smoking becomes normal and easier till you cannot even imagine how you mindlessly smoked all those years.
But it was difficult to put that last one down, and it was very tricky to avoid the next one.
That takes control.
(if you never started smoking, really well done! That’s the best way, never start)
The point is that we can also do this with food. We can be in control of ourselves here too.
It becomes easier, and easier for us to do the right thing as we go along. In a years time, two years time – when you look back at yourself you will smile. You will have become the person you can only dream about now. The healthy active one.
The one you know you are.
So the exercise today is look at your body image clearly and kindly, notice the difference between the one you think you are and the one you think you want to be, that’s it, that’s all there is to it, get these images right in you mind. What are you now? What do you imagine yourself to be? How far apart are these two images, how different do they look to you? Remember though, neither of these images is real – neither of them.
Now, how do you feel?
So how do you fix your diet, fix your life, get healthy and be your ideal weight?
Tall order for any diet
But this is it
The thing you gotta do is get your head round it, once you have your head in the right place anything is possible. Like not eating cheese.
Even if you like cheese, I can hear you saying, ‘but I like cheese!’
I know
I used to like cheese, at least I used to think I liked cheese.
There’s the rub
But let’s take a good look at all of it as it’s not just about the cheese
I like to eat, I have to eat
We all have to eat.
And the trouble with most of us is we like, no we love to eat a lot, and mostly we love to eat a lot of unhealthy things, let’s face it food is beautiful, and delicious and filling and good for us.
Most of the time anyway.
It’s when we lose control of our eating that the trouble starts and this is true for most of us, at least it’s true for me. I lost track of where in the distance past my dietary habits and eating patterns changed from normal to this serious weight and health problem. I don’t know what happened and I can’t see when. There seems to be no point in time, when I look back; where I can then pinpoint a moment and say ‘here is where it all went wrong’ – ‘here is where eating became a problem.’
We all look at our weight in Puzzlement and confusion ask ‘What the fuck happened?’
Where did I go wrong? I blame cheese.
So what in the hell did happen? It’s like the very thing we need to do to stay alive was hijacked somewhere along the way and turned into something that’s killing us. Laugh all you like, but that is exactly what happened. We all became addicts to the very thing that sustains our lives.
The cruellest addiction is food addiction because we really cannot live without food
We can’t just drop it forever and do a detox and never look back
If we don’t eat, we die.
So we cannot break out of it, we have to eat to live.
Like breathing,
Which is why smoking was and remains so popular despite what we know about smoking now, people still smoke, it is intricately involved in our breathing and we can’t just stop breathing and say fine see I’m all better
If we don’t breathe, we die
Alcohol and soda addiction or even energy drink addiction is just as hard to stop, we need to drink
We cannot say see I don’t drink anymore, We cannot not drink
If we don’t drink, we die
The thing about nicotine and alcohol is we can stop smoking and drinking that particular thing and still breathe air and still drink water. Can this also be done with food? These addictions and choices we make are intimately and intricately interwoven with the very impulses that keep us alive.
We need to do something, but we can’t not eat at all we can’t stop drinking altogether, we can’t not breathe the air, and we can’t not move. (I’ll get into that last one later.)
Like with drinking and smoking you have to break your addiction to the foods that are killing you.
Specially cheese,
But not only cheese, this is a challenge we need to take, a race we need to win as it is ‘win or die’. And since I aim to live long and prosper I need to win this challenge. I do not want to die, not yet anyway, I want to live to a ripe old age, laughing all the way and a bloody good diet is what’s going to get me there,
This sluggish poisonous unhealthy body I am now living in will become a healthy sleek one, and I will become more energetic and happier. I will become less grumpy less aggressive, less neurotic and less depressed as I fix all the food problems I have. I’m taking you with me, whether you like it or not.
And it is not JUST about the food, it’s a bout me and you, and our personal long term survival.
I will repeat a lot of stuff, it’ll get it into your head, so you remember, so you know. So I remember, so I know.
Also we will try to drown out the advertisers and the government propaganda. Some of you will be able to listen, some will not due to the weight of subliminal messaging and life long bombardment with misinformation, but my hope is once this thought is in your head it will stay there a and help you do something long term about the terrible eating habits and unhealthy food addictions that got you and me here I the first place.
L’Amandine
Salon de Thé – Restaurant
chef. Myriam Cadet
host. Hugo Eenhoorn
This little place in Bussum, The Netherlands is worth a visit
If you are ever in the area visit this a charming little tea house where lunch is as pleasant as it is in France.
Stop by if you are parched and just need a cup of tea or linger longer for lunch or dinner.
They have a sound menu where even the vegan is catered for, order a sandwich, a full hot meal or a delightful plate of grilled vegetables at any time of day.
We sampled them all and they are all delightful.
The food is of a high standard, the dishes are all cooked to order. The Chef, Myriam Cadet knows what she is doing in her little kitchen. No fast food here, just French dishes done well.
We will be returning whenever we are in Bussum. I highly recommend this little gem.
the details
L’Amandine
Salon du Thé -restaurant
Havenstraat 134 B
1404EM Bussum
http://www.lamandine.nl
+31 642133755
Why would ‘better’ be something we have to go out and get?
Surely it should be with us all the time, but the same wording is used for ‘getting’ ill – as if it is something we shop for at the supermarket
Well
Perhaps it is something we get.
Most of us spend most of our lives living with some kind of low grade inflammation all over
This is what we consider normal and it gets worse with age
We have gotten so used to it we think it’s normal
We eat junk, we know it’s junk, we eat rubbish, we know it’s rubbish, we turn our noses up at fruit, we refuse to eat vegetables and we have phobias about eating salads.
We are all addicted to sugar, fat and refined carbs, and wonder why we feel vaguely sick all the time.
Stop messing about, you know why you feel sick all the time. You eat crap! You pay no attention whatsoever to the quality of the food you put in your mouth, half the time you don’t even know what it is!
You just shove the fastest, easiest, nearest crap into your mouth and assume all will be well, just like everybody else, till, when you are fifty you find yourself on a gurney being rushed into surgery for a bypass.
Welcome to the western world where your diet will kill you.
Having just reached a similar point myself I know where that place is, being hospitalised is scary.
Going out and ‘getting’ better is where it’s at.
Get yourself a better diet, get yourself healthy, get yourself fit, get that feel good factor into your life now – start now by eating your veggies before you die.
Get your head round it, get rid of your junk addiction and start eating real food.
I thought I had a fairly healthy diet, mostly vegan mostly plant based, I loathe meats anyway so I don’t eat them. I hate milk, I’m not keen on greasy stuff or sweet things I don’t eat sweets as such, but I slip often enough to make my diet pretty damn useless anyway, so I need to clean up my act.
Recently I was eating bars of chocolate, white buns with jam and clotted cream, tiramisu, mayonnaise, prawns and fish slathered in oils and even some meats like roast beef. I was completely off the rails.
Then came the easter celebrations and plates full of filled eggs and devilled eggs and other dishes made with eggs, french cheeses, white bread, jams and clotted cream and serious overdoses of chocolate.
I ate everything. I overate.
No wonder I ended up in hospital with stabbing pains in my guts the day after, the DAY after!
I did it all to myself,
I know what to do now. You know what to do too, you do, you have always known, but you don’t listen to it, you only listen to your food addiction and every day you make the easy wrong choice, and you know you do. Even in the face of your own addictions, your own habits, your own routines, as well as advertising, the misinformation, propaganda and the immense social pressure we are all under, change anyway.
Start anyway.
Just like me you need to change your diet before it kills you.
get better
get healthy
How to stop eating cheese 