Tag: cheese

A mixed bean salad

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

 

So lets go

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?

Fix it

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.

Getting better

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

 

 

 

Summer heat

As we head towards the end of August, we wait for the heat to stop, for coolness to arrive, morning early, evening late, to at last make the hot days manageable again.

Food is not really on our minds, coolness is, a perfect time for fruit, salads, ice creams.

And lots and lots of liquids, water being the best.

Drink enough water, cool, clear, crisp, clean. Chaudfontaine, Perrier, Spa, there are so many delicious waters to try. They all taste different, try some and find out.

 

I have been eating fruit, mostly.
It’s the best,
cool, sweet, simple.

Fruit requires no more work than a quick cut of the knife.
Eat raspberry, melon, watermelon, strawberries, grapes, apples, now apples are really crisp and cool.

Try something you don’t usually eat, passionfruit, papaya, dragon fruit or cactus fruit. I have, not just as they are, but chopped up and mixed in delicious bowls of fruit salad. They need nothing else.
Delicious new flavours, wonderful sweetness without the bane of refined sugars, which like cheese we know we shouldn’t really eat.

Fruit.

Quite possibly the healthiest food on the planet.

Adventures in food

All of my life I have been very interested in food. From wondering what was really on my spoon as it dripped into my bowl with a splash, and asking myself if I could feed my dolls with it, as mummy said. My dolls never ate, it dripped down their plastic faces, and I suspected her of lying to me when she said they were alive and ate just what I did. My sister never ate at all, I’m surprised she didn’t disappear into thin air. My brother would eat everything, including all my food if I didn’t watch it carefully. When I was older I fed my youngest brother and sister the same foods I was fed, it still dripped off the spoon into the bowl with a splash and now I lied about their teddies eating it and I made up all sorts of stories to get them to open their mouths. I loathed school dinners, It is possibly the worst food I have ever eaten in my entire life and I hope never to see it again. Once I was asked to come to the dining hall by a fearsome dinner lady, to see there, my little brother sitting all alone, shoulders stooped, miserably looking at a plate of cold lumpy custard and sour rhubarb. I was expected to make him eat it all up. Whispering like criminals we made a deal, he would eat two spoonful’s and I would ditch the rest for him and take the rap; which I did. Junk food was next, as a teenager I explored the full gamut of utter rubbish masquerading as food from all the most well advertised multi million junk establishments. ( I still refuse to call them restaurants. ) The only thing I remember liking was the coleslaw which was just a side dish, not the main feature at all, which was greasy deep fried meat, possibly chicken, and definitely not rat, skilfully advertised as the best dish available to all. Please! Although I had my own wages from my own little jobs, and could buy anything I liked, this rogue eating soon stopped. It really wasn’t worth it, despite the ceaseless blanket bombardment of advertising I wasn’t going to fall for it anymore. I ate so much better at home. I had already become a good cook by the age of 10. We were all taught to cook as soon as we were big enough to hold a spoon without dropping it. My siblings were and are all exceptional cooks. The youngest famous for her cakes, my brother for his Roasts. We each had our own secret recipes and favourite dishes. We took turns to cook and vied to produce the best dishes ever. My mother cooked huge meals to feed a large family. Plenty of bright and colourful salads tossed in a huge African bowl which we ate every day as a starter. We ate green stuff of all descriptions, peas sprouts, beans, we always had to eat some, and we did, we loved them, mostly. There was never junk food, processed food or deep fried food on the table. Not only was it all delicious but we learned to eat well too. Of course we would sneak food to each other under the table, and help ourselves to what was on each others plates without mum obviously noticing. This way we would all end up with clean plates, and we still ate just what we wanted. Our food preferences were apparent early. I would eat sprouts, spinach and peas, specially from my younger brother’s plate, he hated peas. My older brother would have the skin of my chicken which I never wanted, I was seriously picky about meat of any kind. He would also take the bones for me and slide his well gnawed ones onto my plate so it looked like I had eaten them. We all helped my sister empty her plate as she ate so little she would never have been able to finish what was piled onto hers. We got good at sleight of hand at the dinner table. We also learned to eat what we didn’t really like and try new things as we couldn’t always get away with it. However, we all adored baked macaroni which we gorged ourselves on whenever mum cooked it. She stuffed it with healthy chopped vegetables, ham and cheese chunks, and baked it with a cheesy crunchy topping. We all piled in to eat that, there was never a scrap of it left. Eating what was served was not a problem as what was served was worth eating. We all grew up loving all kinds of food including salads, vegetables and fruit. When our mother passed away we fought over who would get our mother’s and grandmother’s treasured cook books. My big brother won and got most of those, but we were all allowed to copy out all the recipes we wanted before they disappeared into his kitchen forever.

Welcome

Hello sweethearts, just wanted to welcome you to my blog.

Mostly about food.

I came by the title in my adventures as a health conscious foodie.
I found that I could be a perfect vegan for quite long periods of time; except for cheese.
It was very hard for me to stop eating cheese as I was addicted to it
Since being a perfect vegan required that I stop I found a way to do so.
However I have fallen from my perfect foodie pedestal often, because of cheese.

The thing is I really like my health, I also really love food.

All kinds of food.

I would prefer to be a perfect vegan at all times,
it’s not as if I could go straight for the carnivore diet, I don’t even like meat that much.
Mostly i’m really suspicious of meat (was that really run down on the road today?)

And I’m also a social coward so when someone dishes up platefulls of delicious traditional fodder they have spent hours preparing in hot steamy kitchens I feel obliged to try some before quietly mentioning I actually prefer vegetables.

Yes, vegetables.

The look of horror on their faces is sometimes quite surprising, then they always ask.
“Where do you get your protein from?”
They don’t even KNOW that proteins are made by plants, they really believe they all come from animals. How crazy is that! And they also can’t work out why I haven’t dropped dead yet from malnutrition and how come I am so strong? They find this all very suspicious. but that’s OK, the message gets across.

And yes, I still sometimes accidentally eat cheese and sometimes other bits of dead animals too.

It’s a big secret.

But please don’t tell, I wouldn’t want it to become a habit.

This site is mostly about my adventures with food, recipes, eating out, and general dieting.

Some nutritional science might be alluded to.

It is also about staying healthy and all the circumstantial evidence which might actually support how to do this.

I hope you enjoy!