Summer eating plan

In just a few days it will be May and although we had a few cold days again a week or so ago, the sun is finally starting to look like it may be here to stay for a while. I'm not quite in sandals yet, but it feels like it won't be long. Outdoors aquajogging starts up again next week and I can't wait. I was hoping to attend a zen meditation session two weeks ago but couldn't make it and then forgot to even try last week. I've just sent an email to see if I can attend this evening and if not, I'll head to the general open session next Monday. The calendar is definitely starting to fill up again.

A blurry photo of the current view from my office window. The light is too bright to show the amazing colour of the wisteria and since we've no smell-o-vision either, you'll have to use your imagination.

 

Along with the change in weather comes a change in eating habits. The soups and stews I've eaten so much of over the past few months will be out, salads and sandwiches in. My cooking and keeping an eye on eating properly has been all over the place since I had COVID. My energy, too. And so I decided to take it easy on myself in April and spend what energy I had coming up with a decent meal plan/concept for warm weather eating. I'm just about there but need to still figure out calories and protein for a few of the dishes I've selected. And I've bought most of what I need, except for stocking up on fresh salad leaves or other vegetables every week. 

Keeping it as simple as possible, and because I still do have some Optifast pouches to use up, for May I'll be having quark and fruit for most breakfasts, with an occaisional Optifast chocolate or vanilla drink. Lunches for about three weeks of May will be soup as I do have some in the freezer to use up as well as some Optifast. I'll scatter some spur of the moment canteen/bakery/meeting friends lunches in there to get me through the month.

And dinners will essentially be salads of various kinds. What I plan to do is prepare a lot of Korean-style side-dishes and then each week or two prepare some kind of protein. The salads will then be made up every day depending on what I feel like from each of the following categories:

Salad: mostly salad leaves (oakleaf, lambs lettuce, chard, spinach etc.), sometimes lentils or chickpeas, very rarely maybe potatoes or pasta

Side-dishes: a small amount from two or three different ones

Protein: chicken, tofu, meatballs, eggs

Sprinkly toppings: seeds and/or nuts

Dressing: vinaigrette or yoghurt

To start me off, I've planned on the following:

Side-dishes

1. Kimchi (still need to buy this)
2. Spicy braised green beans with feta
   
3. Pickled red onions 
4. Spicy Korean coleslaw
5. Creme fraiche coleslaw (Found on instagram. I've always claimed to not like coleslaw but really, it's mayonnaise I don't like. Anyway, I figured if I'm going to chop cabbage up small, I might as well try more than one recipe. Will probably use cream cheese and/or yoghurt and/or quark rather than creme fraiche.)
   
6. Pineapple salsa (although I'll be using a tin)
   
7. Tomatoes (unplanned but they had local tomatoes in the supermarket yesterday and I couldn't resist - they must be from a heated greenhouse but I'll bet they're still very good for a salad - might mix with some onion or scallions)

Proteins

1. Korean pancake with scallions
2. Panfried tofu in garlic soy sesame sauce
3. Super crispy tofu (recipe from Little Lou Cooks on instagram - I can't manage to log in at the moment from this pc but I highly recommend checking her out. Also on tiktok and FB, I think)
   
4. Broccoli fritters (also from Little Lou Cooks)
   
5. Chopped omelette
   
6. Spicy chilli and honey pork (Pinch of Nom recipe but made with the veal I bought months ago)
7. Chicken and apple (another Little Lou Cooks recipe that I'm going to try in the slow cooker)
   
8. Lentil and chickpea salad with feta and tahini
   

Sprinkly toppings (I plan to just mix everything into a small jar to use for the week)

1. Pumpkin seeds
2. Sunflower seeds
3. Hazelnuts
4. Walnuts
5. Sesame seeds
   

Dressings

1. Standard olive oil and balsamic vinegar
2. Olive oil and lemon and garlic
3. Going to try a few different yoghurt dressing recipes - to start off easy, I've bought a packet of pre-mixed herbs that you just mix with yoghurt and vinegar
4. I also bought pomegrante molasses to make the dressing from a Plenty recipe I love
   

I think that's more than enough to keep me going. The aim is to prep everything on a weekend and then just be able to help myself during the week.

Almond, lime and chickpea curry with lots of veggies

Right, this whole A-Z thing is standing in the way of me blogging now, so I'm abandoning it for now. In the meantime, here's a recipe for a curry I made last week. I got the basic recipe from the Instagram stories of a guy called Bressie (musician and mental health advocate in Ireland, among other things) and then realised it had almost no vegetables in it. Since I am trying to increase the amount of veg I eat, I went ahead and added a load of them, only finding out during the week from my dietician that (for my weightloss purposes) sweet potatoes are considered to be carbs rather than veg. Same for chickpeas and lentils, although I knew that from having asked a couple of weeks ago. They are definitely "better" carbs, but nonetheless carbs. Oh well.

For most of the winter, I'm planning to cook and eat mostly soups and stews, and lentils and chickpeas will form the bulk of the carb part of my diet in that time. So, here's the recipe. It's very tasty and I will definitely be using it as the basis for more curries from now on. I doubled up on some ingredients to compensate for adding more veg.

Ingredients
2 tins chickpeas (I'll go back to using cooked dried ones at some stage but for now, tins are a big help)
1 tin chopped tomatoes (I used 1 tin and 1 carton of passata)
1 cup of whole, blanched almonds (1 just used most of a 150g packet - there's about 50g left)
Juice of 2 limes (I used a bottle of pure juice and threw in the equivalent of the juice of 4 limes)
1 onion (I used 1 large and 1 small)
3 cloves of garlic (I used minced garlic from a jar, 2 good heaped teaspoons)
1 red chilli
Coconut milk (the list of ingredients didn't actually list this so I just added a small tin)

Spices (I used 2 teaspoons each, the original recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of each)
Tumeric
Ground cumin
Ground coriander
Ground ginger
Paprika (I used a mild smoked one)

I also added in a large sweet potato (peeled and diced into big chunks), a large carrot (sliced), a leek (sliced) and a 100g packet of baby spinach leaves.

Instructions
Saute onion, garlic, chilli and spices. Add chickpeas. Add coconut milk. Add tomatoes. Then almonds and lime juice. Bring to boil and simmer for fifteen to twenty minutes.

I didn't do that. I just threw everything into the slow cooker, topped it up with enough water to cover everything and cooked the lot on low for about eight hours. Really tasty, really filling and just nicely spicy.

Bits and pieces

I spent nearly two hours soaking in a cold bath yesterday evening and it was bliss. I didn't even read or anything, just dozed a little bit and felt the relief of cool seeping into my way to overheated body. And the temperatures cooled down enough to have the windows open and get a decent night's sleep, too. It has nearly reached 30 degrees again by now but I've gotten a few things done this morning before it got too hot.

I got one wash into the machine last night before going to bed and when a short summer storm (lasted about 10 minutes, rain and thunder and lightning and then it was gone) woke me at about six o'clock I had to get up to close over the window anyway and thought of it. So I just went ahead and hung up that washing and got the second lot into the machine. Glad now that I did because I wouldn't have felt like it later in the heat. Went back to bed after that and slept until nearly half-ten. A few nights of not great sleep catch up quickly. I got up then, hung up the second lot of washing to dry (half of the first lot was dry already) and then headed into the kitchen.

I've been cooking very little over the last couple of weeks so my veg delivery has been building up. And the fridge needed to be cleared out anyway, I knew there were two old jars of yoghurt sitting in the back that had been there for months so I had done part of it yesterday and wanted to do the rest today. I also wanted to make sure to wash the lettuce I got in my veg box last Thursday because otherwise I'd end up not using it at all. I ended up having to simply throw out one or two things that just were past saving. I hate doing that so will need to pull my socks up, so to speak, and just get better again at actually cooking and using up what I have.

I bought three punnets of strawberries yesterday (it's costing 2.50 for one, 6 for three at the moment) and was really looking forward to eating them over the weekend. I washed a large bowlful yesterday and sat down to enjoy them in the evening and was so disappointed. They just weren't terribly nice nor particularly sweet. Any strawberries I've had this year have been fabulous, which somehow made it even more disappointing. I sprinkled them with sugar and left them in the fridge overnight and will have them with some yoghurt today. And I'm going to just freeze the remainder I think. I can use them in smoothies then.

As for veg, once I'd gotten rid of most of what was past saving I have three kohlrabi, about half of a Chinese cabbage and half of another type of cabbage called Spitzkohl (like a pointy white cabbage), some young garlic and a few tomatoes. So I'm going to chop all of that now and saute it. I'll add in the rest of a jar of passata that I opened during the week and will use that during the week with some pasta. Might freeze half of it. Actually, I think I'll do the cabbage separately and freeze that. That'll work.

I also have a couple of aubergines, courgettes and some more tomatoes that I bought at the market yesterday. Will be using some of that in a sweet potato curry that I'm thinking of doing in the slow cooker. Have had two large sweet potatoes hanging around for the longest time and it's time to use them. The delicious curry I had at a Laotian restaurant last week reminded me how much I love it so might as well use what I have to make some, even if most of it goes into the freezer.

So, so far today has been fairly productive. I may treat myself to another cold bath when I'm finished in the kitchen.

The Table of Doom is dead...

...long live the, er, drawers of doom?

But before all that...I had a phone call on Thursday night from an old friend. One of those people you hear from a couple of times a year and it's just easier to chat and/or put them up for a night than try and convince them you're not really interested in keeping in touch. When I first moved here he would love coming to Dusseldorf to visit and maybe go and visit his mum in Holland for a day or so while he was here. I've managed to get things to the stage where he goes to visit his mum and at some stage rings me to tell me he's on the way back home and was thinking of stopping off to see me on the way. So he told me he'd be heading back on Saturday, I told him I would be at a concert for about an hour at six o'clock so he either had to come before that or after half-seven or so. He phoned on Friday to confirm that he'd be here (with brother in tow) at eight o'clock on Saturday evening. It's now after eleven and no sign of them. Yep, these are the type of friends you can really do without.

At any rate, knowing that something like that was a possibility I did struggle with myself a bit but I still decided to try and stay positive and use the threat of people coming to stay to tidy up a bit. Something I have been spectacularly failing at recently. So after being up early for therapy, having a quick wander around the christmas market (really quick because I thought they opened at 10 but they didn't actually open until 11 and so there were only two stalls to look at) and then a stop off to buy bread, I got home, put the mincemeat that I mixed up yesterday into the oven to cook (trying out Delia Smith's recipe), put a CD of christmas songs on and got stuck in. It might have taken me four hours, but I made good progress.

Some of it was just moving stuff around, to be perfectly honest, but I had to start somewhere and at least now I have cleared a decent space, which makes tackling the rest seem just that little bit easier. Here's a photo I took last week - still want to put up a proper before of the sitting room and bedroom but for now, here's some of the worst of the sitting room. And, drum roll please, I fully cleared off the Table of Doom.

Which is to say that I cleared off and tidied away all the big stuff and after moving things around a bit used the top of a chest of drawers to stack the last of the papers that need to be sorted. It's a very doable looking pile though (at the right-hand side of this photo) and I'm going to try the whole five-a-day procedure again to get it cleared as quickly as possible. The important thing now is to not add to it. And that the table is fully clear of stuff at least once a day.




So, with a much tidier (although still a long way to go to normal) sitting room, about two tonnes less dust in the place and clean sheets on the bed, I think it's just about time for me to call it a good day and head to bed. Tomorrow I'm singing with my choir in our advent concert and given that I might end up being woken in the middle of the night, depending on whether my "guests" actually do turn up or not, I'll need my sleep.

The table of doom - progress

Slow and steady wins the race so they say.  I'm happy to report that thus far, it's also helping me to make good progress on the Table of Doom.  Here's how it's looking today:

Not quite there yet but definitely getting there.  I have a massive amount of paper to bring down to the recycling bins and nearly as much to put through the shredder before dumping it.  I'm noticing when I come to piles which obviously built up during my semi-organised phases and have started making notes for a decent post on how to not let the paperwork get on top of you.  Those of you who are eagle-eyed might notice that there's also one box missing from the pile on top of the drawers.  I was fed up of the table (and fed up of looking at those boxes) one evening and decided that instead of something from the table, I'd tackle one of the boxes.  Opened the first one up to see...nothing.  I had forgotten that I went through these boxes last year something because I was sick of looking at them gathering dust on top of the cupboard I had them stored on.  Hadn't finished though when the repair guys had to come in to fix the heating last year so I just put them back up on top of the cupboard.  When I got the sitting room painted last year, I took them down and swore I was not putting anything else back up on that cupboard.

These three boxes are the very first set of storage boxes I ever bought (from Argos, if I recall correctly) and I also had three large shopping bags of kids toys and books up there too, which are currently sitting on the floor waiting for attention.  When I lived it Ireland I often had visitors with kids and it was great to have a few bits and pieces to occupy them with.  Since I've moved here I haven't had any kids old enough and not too old to play with any of it.  A lot of my friends have had kids in the last couple of years though so I might get some use out of them again.  We'll see.

At any rate, one of the boxes is empty and is now being converted into storage for Karneval supplies.  Since I went and bought the funny yellow wig and the silly make-up I figured it was a good idea to keep them.  Yes, it's more stuff, but I now have somewhere to keep bits and pieces for making costumes and it's a small enough box to not encourage me to start buying elaborate costumes every year.  I even have a space planned for it but that won't be free until a few other things happen first.  Getting this place in order is like a giant game of dominoes sometimes.

Sunday night chit-chat

Another week has flown by.  I didn't take to my bed as planned yesterday afternoon for a rest - instead I decided to just try and hold out until the evening.  Glad I did as I got the washing down and hung up to dry as well as remembering to tackle a bit of the Table of Doom.  And then I slept through last night for ten and a half hours.  I do so love sleeping until I wake naturally.  Especially when I can follow it up with a couple of hours lazing in bed and reading.

The fixings for making spicy lentil and carrot soup - it turned out well.  Very more-ish but too filling to actually have a second bowl.  Will definitely make this again although I think I'll up the spices considerably as it was very mild.  But I'll wait until I've finished it later in the week as spicy things do often get spicier the longer they're left.

What are you...
Reading
The Vegetarian Myth (have I mentioned that this book is kind of blowing my mind?  I keep going back and re-reading bits, am accumulating a long list of books she references that I want to read as well - and I'm only on the fourth chapter).  I've also started The Princess Bride by William Goldman - love the film, which we watched over and over again when I was younger and have always intended to read the book so I'm happy I'm finally getting around to it.

Watching
I think there will be another episode or two of the Mentalist this evening.  One of the things I love the most about this show?  People smile a lot!

Listening to
The usual sounds of traffic outside and quiet inside.

Baking/cooking
I made the spicy lentil and carrot soup earlier as well as some leek and potato soup.  That's most of my meals for next week sorted.  And I have batter for ham and cheese pancakes ready and waiting.  I was going to try out this orange and olive oil cake as well but had no sooner measured out the flour and the sugar than I realised I have no baking powder.  So I've left the bowl waiting and will get some tomorrow on the way home from work and make it then.

Happy you accomplished this week
I posted two items that I should have sent to people in November but didn't get to before going away.  While I got nothing much done while I was home sick, sitting looking at that book and that calendar for ten days was more than enough push to get me to the post office on Monday.  Also happy to have started on the  Sealed Pot Challenge as well as having made some progress on clearing the Table of Doom.

Looking forward to next week
Half-day on Thursday because of Altweiber (the start of the Karneval weekend here).  I'm not much of a Karneval fan but my upstairs neighbour dropped by yesterday with an invitation to her annual party next Friday and I think I will go and am sort of looking forward to it (rather than dreading being kept awake until all hours).

Thankful for today
Managing to make two different soups without burning or ruining anything.  It sounds silly but I felt like I had completely lost the ability to cook well and am very grateful that it seems to be coming back.

Bonus question: What made you laugh today?
Talking to my nephew this morning when I called to wish him happy birthday (he's 12 today) - his English is coming along very well so that he doesn't drop the phone and run for his mum the minute I get past 'how are you?' and he was able to tell me how happy he was that it was his birthday.  The excitement in his voice (he was waiting for present opening time, which his mum and sisters were preparing in the kitchen) was just infectious.  Hearing someone say "I'm so happy" several times like that is definitely enough to make anyone laugh!  I also just got sent a link to some outtakes from Mrs. Brown's Boys and although I'm not much of a fan of it, I have to admit I had tears in my eyes watching these.

That's it from me.  If you fancy joining in on Sunday night chit-chat, post away and head over to Half-Dozen Daily to link up.

The Table of Doom

We'll pretend that this isn't something that I have struggled with for my entire adult life and just say that it started in April of 2011.  As you can see from this post, at the end of April last two years ago, I got lots of tidying up done and was left with what should have been two fairly manageable piles of sorting and filing left to do.  And then stuff starting piling up again, various things happened, I fell into a serious black hole of depression, which I am only properly emerging from in the last few months and, although I have made a few efforts and tackled quite a bit of stuff, I never seem to quite manage to get it all done.  I've done some rearranging of furniture in the meantime as well so that now I have a table where the yellow couch was (the yellow couch is now where the red one was, the red couch in now my bed and the day bed I mentioned using as my bed then is in four pieces, waiting to be brought down to the cellar, with the mattress stored behind the yellow couch and covered with a nice throw. Just in case you were wondering.)  So the piles of stuff are now on the table and, even if they're not exactly the same piles of stuff as there were two years ago, some of the stuff is definitely the same and enough is enough.

Knowing that I don't have the energy or sheer willpower to just sit down and get all of this done in one go, I decided instead to tackle it a little bit at a time.  So far this week, this has been working well and I'm going to keep it up until it's all done.  I don't care if it takes me four weeks to get this done.  It has essentially been waiting for two years for me to get around to it so four weeks really isn't such a big deal.  Since it's the start of a four-week month it feels like a good timeframe to aim for as well.

So I'm doing a variation of the five-a-day that is so important.  Normally that refers to the minimum number of servings of fruit or veg you should eat to stay healthy.  For now though, five-a-day is the minimum number of things that I am clearing from my Table of Doom each day.  I am also, however, limiting it to a maximum of one handful.  If I start to get stuck into it for a couple of hours there is a danger that I won't be able to hold out till it's finished and will end up just leaving it reduced but still unfinished.  Again.

I've gotten through a fair bit already and so far the small amounts do seem to be helping me to keep it up.  It's just what I needed, I think.  I need to think of it as long-distance rather than a sprint and just slowly keep plodding through it.  It's stamina, not so much as speed that I need to get it done. 

This is by no means the only disaster area in my house but it's one that will make the biggest difference.  Just having the space to lay the table properly and sit down to eat, being able to feel free to invite people over, not always using my laptop set up on a chair in front of the couch...these are things that will greatly improve my quality of life.  This is as far as this slow and steady pace has gotten me this week:

Moving most of the non-paper larger bits and pieces at the front made a big difference but I've left the plastic bag there as a visual clue to remind me that the piles of paper, although still intimidating, are definitely going down.  A small pile of stuff has moved onto the windowsill but that's some envelopes and other plastic covers and things that can be re-used.  The drawers they go into are behind the table so until it's cleared, I can't put them away.

No-spend day

I read a few finances-based blogs a while back and one of them was using a particular method for organising your finances and getting out of debt. I did click through to the link but to get the information and join the discusssion forums you had a pay a subscription so I didn't bother. What she did mention often on her blog was no-spend days. Without reading what the 'official' idea behind this was it seemed to me to be a good idea. In fact it's amazing how easy it is to feel like there's something wrong if I don't take my purse out at all during the day. Even if it's just to buy something in the bakery for breakfast on my way to work (which happens more often than not).

Today was a proper no-spend day. Despite staying up much later than planned last night (I didn't finish the filing but did cut up three of the t-shirts while watching 2012 - a film which wasn't really worth staying up late for at all) I got up in time this morning to hoover up all the glass from the dish that fell off a cupboard last night, have a nice long shower to wake myself up and cook myself breakfast. I bought a goose egg at the market at the weekend and scrambled that. It was HUGE! With two slices of sunflower seed bread toasted and slathered with butter I was definitely full before leaving the house so absolutely no excuses to stop in the bakery. I also washed the pots from last night and took the recycling stuff down to the bins.

I have deliberately not gone to the bank again as I have definitely already spent as much as I had budgeted for this week but I know if there is cash in my purse I will find something to spend it on. So I have 1.83 in small change and that's it. Mid-morning I was contemplating whether or not I would use some of that to get some chocolate from the machine in work (which definintely isn't the kind of nice dark chocolate which would best satisfy any chocolate cravings) when I remembered that I hadn't finished a bar of chocolate last week. There were still two squares left in my desk drawer so I had them instead and then a short while later an apple.

It helped that it was fairly busy in work as well. I had nothing else (except for some water, I usually get through 1.5 litre bottle during the day) until lunchtime, when I walked to a nearby park and ate some of the pasta and veg that I made yesterday. For a snack in the afternoon I had brought some yoghurt (I still have half a jar of dried redcurrant and blackcurrants left from last summer so I'd put a good handful of them into it as well) and I also had a few brazil nuts and a cup of hot chocolate (healthwise no better if not worse than eating chocolate I suppose, but moneywise, much better since it's free). I walked home from work and ate another apple while doing that and am feeling very good about myself for having eaten everything I set out for myself this morning withouth leaving something out because I'd replaced it with an unplanned something else. Have some leek soup heated up and waiting for me now. I think I have definitely achieved my 5-a-day today!

Monday 28th after a bad weekend

Lunch was home made veg soup with a bit of chicken thrown in and some homemade bread. I've also had an apple (which I brought in) and a pear and a banana from the fruit platter in work.

Dinner will be something with chicken. I bought a chicken from Coolanowle yesterday, slightly smaller than usual but still a good size. It, plus three (very tasty) rashers and a half-dozen organic, free range eggs cost €18.19. I got some onions and a few leeks from Denis Healy as well, who for once actually had marked up what was Irish organic produce which cost €2.15. I allowed myself to be persuaded to go to the cinema on Saturday, bought popcorn there (definitely not a frugal thing to do but as filling a lunch as any other) and after the film we went for a couple, well, three drinks. That plus the takeaway I felt I needed on the way home left me not much of my budget for the rest of the week. I do have €20 left from last week which will have to do me for going out to lunch later in the week. Still, I'm glad I went out on Saturday - I rarely do anything spontaneous like that and I had a good time. Mind you, deciding to get off the bus early and stroll down Grafton Street on the way to the cinema wasn't such a great idea - I couldn't believe the amount of people and then remembered why I don't go into town much anymore.

Yesterday, after spending what felt like the whole day (but was really only a couple of hours) giving a driving lesson to a panicky friend who was having her driving test today (she passed, thank goodness) I was in no mood for doing anything in the house so I spent the last hour of glorious sunshine tidying up the shed a bit and cutting the grass, turning the compost a little and generally tidying up the garden, including chatting to the neighbour over the front garden fence for twenty minutes. I really needed to get out in the fresh air. Still didn't feel like cooking or expending any effort when I came in so I just shoved the chicken into the oven to roast. By the time it was cooked though I at least felt enthusiastic enough to strip the carcass and put several portions of meat into the freezer for next week plus some into the fridge for today. And then I also made stock straightaway.

While doing all this I managed to keep the washing up under control so this evening when I go home I just have to clean the bathrooms, the cooker and do the floors. A last quick tidy up before I go to bed (for which read, bringing everything that's lying around upstairs and dumping it in my bedroom instead!) and the house will be good enough to show people tomorrow - the landlord will be over and showing the other room to prospective new tenants. I spent a few hours knitting yesterday instead of cleaning the house and I really want to get back to it so it's an added incentive to not dally while cleaning and just get it done.

I made a new hat for my youngest niece and started and am halfway through a scarf for her older sister. This is really their Christmas box I'm making stuff for as I couldn't summon up the energy in December to make and send things. It's my nephew and brother-in-law's birthdays this weekend so I'm aiming to post stuff over by Wednesday for both the birthdays and Christmas pressies for everyone.

Dinner 24 January

I realise these types of posts will be pretty boring for anyone who may be reading and isn't possessed of any voyeuristic traits but this is a handy way for me to track my eating and cooking as well as my spending so I'm going to keep it up for as long as it's working for me with an aim of getting back to a proper tracking of my food by the end of February assisting me in losing weight.

Last night I didn't get home until just after eight and, despite the mars and crisps at six I was very hungry. I needed to make soup as I had the stock out of the freezer and in a way that was good as it forced me to cook and since I was chopping veg for soup it didn't seem too much to contemplate chopping a little bit extra to make a dinner. This is exactly the kind of evening that in November and December ended in me phoning a takeaway while walking home from the busstop so that I'd have a (very unhealthy but very filling) meal delivered not long after I got in the door.

I decided to toast two small slices of bread to eat while I was preparing the food to stave off the hunger for a little while longer. First up I made some pastry and then put that into the fridge. At this stage I'd totally forgotten about the mince I'd also taken out of the freezer the night before and had decided to make a quiche. Pastry went into the fridge to cool while I chopped onions, garlic, shallots and leeks, doing enough onions and garlic for the soup as well. I also took out some carrots, potatoes and celery for the soup and a large scallion I'd completely forgotten about. I sauteed onion, garlic, shallot and leek for a few minutes and took the pastry out to roll out. Placed pastry into a dish, spread the onions etc. on that (would normally spread a bit of mustard onto the pastry first but wasn't in the mood for mustard this time), added a few sun-dried tomatoes and three or four slices of goats cheese. I used duck eggs mixed with a little milk, seasoning and herbs and the whole lot went into the oven while I made the soup.

Washed and chopped potatoes and carrots, sauteed them plus the remaining onions, garlic and scallion for a couple of minutes and then added the stock and left to cook. As I was trying to do everything so fast I'd managed to spread out over the whole counter so next I spent a few minutes tidying up, washing the dishes I'd used and wiping down the counter. Had no sooner finished this than I remembered the mince. So, back off the draining board came the chopping board and I chopped another onion and a couple of carrots while the mince was browning a bit. This mince had a huge amount of fat in it (so I was very glad the farmer had thrown in some extra without charging me for it!) so I poured most of it off into a bowl and then added the onion. Finally the carrots and some stock and seasoning and left the whole lot to simmer while I tidied up again and took the quiche out of the oven. All of that, plus changing out of my work clothes, opening my bedroom windows to air the room, bringing the compost out and lighting some incense and candles in the living room took me just over an hour and then I was able to sit down and relax while eating my dinner. Which was delicious by the way. I've just finished the rest of the quiche for lunch today - can't believe I've finished the whole thing in two meals but I was really, really hungry last night and did go back for seconds.

I added a few frozen peas to the mince and that mix is now waiting in the fridge to be made into shepherds pie, which I'll probably do tomorrow. I had the last two tiny slices of bread as toast for breakfast this morning so will need to make more bread this evening or tomorrow. One loaf is plenty for a week and of course, the joy of homemade bread is that it keeps very well for that long. I have buttermilk though so will make soda bread again this week. I got the River Cottage Family Cookbook a while back and am dying to try my hand at sourdough bread too.

I'm trying to clear out my cupboard, fridge and freezer so will be going through them this evening or early tomorrow to decide what I can make over the next couple of weeks with what I have, adding the minimal amount of shopping to it. I've a lunch with colleages next week, a work night away plus a hen night away next weekend, am due to go back to the dentist on Thursday to have two old fillings replaced and the landlord is showing the other room to prospective new tenants on Tuesday evening so need to take all that into account as well.

Food and spending 24 January

Yesterday's dinner was scrambled eggs and toast - quick, delicious and filling, just what I needed.

Up late this morning and no time to even think of breakfast.

Sausage sandwich from work canteen: €1.90

Lunch was leftover pasta from Monday. I thought I'd taken soup out of the freezer but it turns out I had no soup left and took out a big container of stock instead. So I grabbed the last of the pasta from Monday and that did with an apple during the afternoon and am now having a packet of crisps and a mars.

Crisps and mars from machine: €1.40 (because I didn't have exact change got charged 10c more, oh well).

Shouldn't need to spend any more today. Looks like I'm making soup this evening, since I have stock out of the freezer. Also took out the lamb mince to make shepherd's pie - will see if I feel up to all that work, if not will just brown the mince and do the pie tomorrow. Actually I think that is what I'll do - it's supposed to be made with leftovers anyway.

Total: €3.30

Tired and dizzy feeling again in the last couple of hours - need to get home to bed I think.

Spending 21 January

From local shop (which recently became a Centra):

Glenisk creme fraiche - €1.65
Glenish cream - €1.51
Hula hoops - €0.85

Total: €4.01

Lunch on Monday was leftover roast lamb with some homemade bread and chutney (from McNally's). Snack was an apple and some more of the dried fruit & nut mix. Dinner was the leftover potatoes and carrots from Sunday layered with some onion and garlic and creme fraiche then cooked in the oven for half an hour. The hula hoops were my appetiser, eaten on the way home as I got delayed in work and was very hungry by the time I got to the shop, never mind by the time I got home. Had two Lindor sweets for dessert.

Was sick yesterday, thought it was a migraine coming on, I was feeling really dizzy when I got up so stayed home and slept for a good part of the day - any time I got up I still felt dizzy. It was very disconcerting as I'd feel fine while I was in bed but then woozy just from getting up. Was somewhat better by evening so got up and ate the soup from the freezer which I'd taken out for lunch with some more homemade bread. I also cooked a simple pasta sauce as I'd taken tomato sauce out of the freezer the night before as well. A couple of hours after eating the soup I was hungry again so I threw some pasta into the cooked sauce and reheated it, cooking the pasta at the same time. I ate some of that and will have more of it for lunch today.

The fact that not only was I able to eat, I was actually hungry suggests to me that it wasn't a migraine at all, or else an extremely mild one that only a few hours sleep was able to take care of (unlikely but not impossible). I still have the remnants of a cold and chest infection since before Christmas and I think it may be related to that. Am in work today but did feel a bit dizzy again when I got up this morning. Will see how I feel after work before deciding if I should head to the doctor or not. I'm waiting to see a neurologist about my left foot (since October, my appointment is for the first week of March), which has been numb for unexplained reasons so that makes me very nervous about any other strange symptoms. At least it's Wednesday so we're halfway through the week.

Market shopping - Saturday 19 January

From Down to Earth health food shop:

Honey (Wexford) - €6.20
Chocolate - €2.50

Total: €8.70

From McNally's (organic, local) at market (I didn't write down the individual prices of what I bought but rather the kilo prices):


Potatoes: €1.75/kg
Carrots: €2.20/kg (€2.50/kg for washed carrots, didn't bother with them!)
Yellowstone carrots: €2.50/kg
Leeks €5.00/kg

I also bought 6 duck eggs, a small jar of goose fat (€5) and a pint of buttermilk (75c).

Total: €14.50

I was also delighted to see the apple guy there again so from Llewellyns (non-organic but Irish grown. These are the Elstars and Jonagolds):

2 kg Louth bramleys: €5
1 kg Elstar: €3
1 kg Red Jonagold: €3
Special offer of €1 off 2 kgs of Elstar/Jonagold

Total: €10

Grand total (including €3 bus into town and home): €36.20

Soup

Dinner yesterday evening: pancakes, a couple of plain ones and a couple with cheese which finished off a tiny piece of Comte which was hiding under someting else in the fridge (it would never have lasted that long if I'd realised it was still there) and started a goats cheese I got from Corleggy recently. I quite like the taste of goats cheese but am not mad about the texture and this is a hard cheese I thought I'd try. Turns out when it's cooked in something to melt into the same consistency as most goats cheese so I think I'll need to use a much thinner slice next time. I made enough pancake batter to have a couple of sweets ones after dinner this evening.

Lunch today was vegetable soup from the freezer with some of the bread I made last weekend. I need to finish that bread off so am going to try a variation of the savoury bread and butter pudding recipe on the Beansprouts blog - I'm not sure how well it will work with soda bread but we'll see. I have eggs I need to use up as well so it seems like a good plan. I think I have some garlic cheese in the fridge as well that I can use - it's been there for a while but was very thick so some of it should be salvageable. I really need to clean out the fridge - it's one of those tasks I'm sure I don't do half often enough.

My housemate is moving out at the end of February as she has decided to try and buy this year and will move home unti she has found somewhere. I've enjoyed sharing with her and will be sorry to see her go but I think 2008 is one of those years where a lot of people will be doing big things. And since I hope to be moving to Germany I'm one of them. Have made a start on translating my CV and want to spend an hour or so on that this weekend. It's not so much the translation as all the conventions which are stalling me e.g. that it's normal to include a passport size photo with a German CV and it's expected to be a professional job, not popping into the machine in the local train station on the way home. Of course there is now legislation (part of the equality legislation) preventing companies from asking for a photo but I've been trying to get advice from a secretaries' forum in Germany and the word is you should still send one. I'll get there in the end I'm sure. I need to be doing something positive for my life this year before I start to get paranoid about my multiple-of-elevens years. My mum died when I was 11, my dad when I was 22 so now that I'm 33 I need to try and make sure any big life events are of my choosing!

It's the Saturday market for me this week to stock up on veg - I hope to keep a better record of my spending this week. I'm sticking to my budget but want to get a better idea of where my money is going within that budget.

Lunching on leftovers

Well, I made far too much rice the other night and so I am having the last small portion for lunch today. I used a bigger cup than I normally would to measure the rice out. Normally I use a small mug to give two large portions of rice but since it's a while since I've cooked rice I couldn't remember which mug I used to use and obviously used a bigger one. Portion size control is something I need to work at, one of my problem areas when it comes to food.

I've a history of issues with eating since I was about 13, some of which I'd admitted to myself years ago and some I didn't even realise were there until the last couple of years. One I have been aware of and working on for a few years now is knowing when to stop eating. At home, we had to eat whatever was put in front of us, not so unusual I think, it happens to most people. The problem started when my dad remarried (I was 12, it was just over a year after my mum dying) and my stepmother wasn't too nice. She definitely had some control issues and one of the things which was imposed on us was a no exceptions to the eat everything on your plate. She also forced us to eat vegetables (I didn't eat any vegetables at the time and being forced to eat them at that stage put me off anyting to do with veg for a long, long time) and, something I only realised in later years, gave me far bigger portions than I needed. We did not have a house where you argued with the grown-ups or went against them in any way (and of all the ways of dealing with that kind of situation, mine was always to be as good as I could be, I was always terrified of being bold and was never the rebel) and so it never occurred to me to say I didn't want so much or was full and didn't want any more. I went through a stage of frequently needing to throw up after dinner, not because I was forcing myself to or wanted to, but simply because I had had too much to eat and couldn't keep it down. Of course, if you eat large amounts of food you will eventually get used to eating way more than you need and you become unable to know when or if you are hungry so it is a long process to educate yourself in both mind and body to knowing when you are hungry and when you are satisfied. Only making a certain amount of something, for example taking 30g dried pasta as a small portion, and eating only that helped a lot when I was trying to teach myself portion control. Also, finding out that it takes 20 minutes for your stomach to register food was a revelation. Following the example of my sister (who is married to a Frenchman and living in France), helped a lot with this so I always try to have a small bit of something as an appetiser about half an hour before eating dinner - often that means just munching on something as I start cooking. It means that by the time I sit down to eat properly my system is working and ready to let me know when I've had enough. In conjunction with this I try to make sure I take my time eating - it's possible to get a huge amount of food into your gob in 20 minutes, possibly far more than you need if you're not paying attention. If you have family or friends around for mealtimes I think having an appertiser also helps with making the meal a real meal and not just a food-shovelling exercise.

I also try to have at least two courses because it means you're not trying to fill up on one thing, just eating enough (what my mind knows is enough even if my eyes/stomach want more) because there's still more coming. And of course I have to remind myself that even if I have finished dinner and I'm still not satisfied I can just wait for an hour and then eat something else - this is another hang-up from my teenage years as we weren't allowed to eat anything without asking first so there was no just opening the fridge and helping yourself if you felt peckish in the evening. Only, now I'm all grown up and living on my own and if I feel like having a slice of toast or an apple, I can do it. It never ceases to amaze me how deeply ingrained some things from those those eight years living with someone like my stepmother are - but 12 to 20 is a very impressionable age I suppose.

Wow, that was more than I intended to write today. It does help to write it down though sometimes. And now, back to the rice. It gets a bit boring to eat the same thing every day but it's not something that would freeze well and I prefer not to waste it so it's leftovers for lunch. I finished all the bits with meat in yesterday so it's rice, peas and broccoli today. I also have a slice of lemony cake in with me which will fill me up nicely if I'm feeling peckish in the afternoon. As well as a packet of fruit & nut mix which I started yesterday and will probably have on my desk for a week.

This evening will be something made with eggs - I'm thinking of doing pancakes, it's a miserable gray day today and pancakes are a great food for that type of weather. Actually pancakes go with almost any kind of weather - love them, love them, love them.

More leftovers

Dinner on Tuesday evening: Starter was the last small bowl of vegetable soup accompanied by a slice of homemade bread and followed by rice cooked in beef stock with some frozen peas, a small amount of corned beef and leftover broccoli thrown in for the last few minutes. Nearly a risotto but not. Delicious and very filling. Could have had more cake for dessert but was way too full for that. Had two squares of dark chocolate a while later and a cup of herbal tea before bed.

Lunch for Wednesday was pasta in a tomato sauce in a local restaurant with a colleague (lunchtime happy hour €9.90 special). Dinner this evening will be last night's leftovers as I need something very quick to eat before heading out to choir.

I'm reading Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson - have just finished the first chapter and started onto the second and am really enjoying it so far. If the practical sections live up to the beginning this is a book I'll be buying in the future.

Can I afford to eat well?

It has been a very interesting week or so reading some of the discussions which have arisen around the issue of cheap, intensively reared chicken. A major issue which some people don't seem to want to let go of is that they can't afford to buy free-range or organic. I've come more and more around to the point of view over the last year or so that (a) you need to have your priorities right about where you spend your money and food should be a big part of your budget and (b) that might mean that you don't get to eat meat every day and there's nothing wrong with that. A lot of people have been saying things like "tell me how I can afford it when I only have £50 to feed a family of four a week". I decided to write down what I'm eating for lunch and dinner this week, including the cost of the meat.

Obviously I'm only feeding myself (and occasionally my brother or a friend) but I'm not on a very lavish and have been getting back into micromanaging my money a bit more again as I was getting a bit lax about the whole thing and need to get it under control again. Not least because I've just had to go to the dentist and need to get about €1,000 worth of work done (crown) in the next month or two and have just had to get a new car battery, not to mention paying the car tax and knowing I need to get the timing belt looked at soon. My budget for January after paying for rent and bills is €10 per day. That's quite a lot but is not just for food, it's to cover bus (2.80 per weekday), petrol (about 30 for the month I hope am trying not to use the car so much) and any going out I might do. I'm aiming for going to the Saturday market to buy veg every second week (also buy butter, buttermilk, eggs, chutney from farmer) and the Sunday market for meat every other week (farmer sells his own lamb, pork and beef products and poultry from a neighbouring farm) and not spending more than €20. I'm also using up whatever I have in my cupboard i.e. pasta, rice, barley, tinned tomatoes, nuts/seeds, flour etc. - I stocked up on a bit of this stuff (mostly organic and fair trade) as my winter present to myself in December. And finally I've started baking my own bread - alternating between brown soda bread and a multi-seed loaf, one per week is more than enough. Another €10 per week should be more than enough to cover milk, yohgurt and any other bits I need.

This week I went to the market on Sunday to buy meat. I also stopped at the vegetable stall and bought a few lemons and a small head of broccoli - cost just under €5. From the farmer I bought a small piece of shoulder of lamb (about half a kilo), some lamb mince (250g approx.) and a piece of corned beef (435g, €16/killo = €7.44) plus 6 eggs (free range but not organic as he had already sold out the day before) - total cost was just over €19. The eggs were €1.70 so the meat came in at €17.60 or so (I've lost the receipt). I felt like I had bought a huge amount of meat but it's going to take me a while to get to know how much is enough for two weeks.

It's entirely possible that I could have bought the same meat for far less in the supermarket (although lamb tends to be horrendously expensive in the supermarket I think) but I don't really think like that. I just think "this is how much it costs" rather than "wonder if I could have gotten it cheaper" as I've never been disappointed buying from Coolanowle (the quality is excellent) and am prepared to pay to support an independent farm.

The shoulder of lamb and mince went into the freezer as my brother cancelled on my for dinner - I'll take it out next weekend when he can come over. I expect to feed both of us and have enough leftovers for at least two or three meals. I'll use the mince to make shepherds pie which will do for a couple of dinners and lunches next week or into the freezer as back up for future weeks.

I cooked the corned beef on Sunday evening and ate probably a little over a quarter of it with some mashed potatoes and broccoli as well as some tomato ketchup from the cupboard which I made during the summer (on a side note I'm very pleased that my canning effort seems to have worked so well - I really expected a film of mould and a foul smell when I opened the jar!). For dessert I had some stewed apple, again which I had processed a month or so ago and had in the cupboard. I was absolutely stuffed and had to wait a while before I could eat my dessert.

I also made a lemony cake on Sunday and some soda bread, which I had had for lunch, just plain bread and butter and a slice of cake. A basic meal but oh so satisfying when it's all hot out of the oven.

Yesterday I had some vegetable soup (homemade and leftover from last week) for lunch with a couple of slices of bread. I had stewed apple and yoghurt with me for an afternoon snack but had a hectic afternoon ending in a dentist appointment so didn't eat that during the day. When I went home I was really hungry (and since the dentist had been working on the tooth which had a root canal done a couple of years ago it hadn't needed to be numbed) but needed to go to the library. I grabbed a big slice of cake and ate that while walking to the library to keep me going. I then ate half the stewed apple while preparing my dinner. I get heartburn/indigestion if I go too long without eating something and find apple is a good filler-in that calms my stomach (so long as it's a sweet rather than sour apple) so it was perfect as an appetiser.

Dinner was potato cakes made with the leftover mash from the day before mixed with a small amount of corned beef, half a large red onion, two eggs and a small amount of gouda cheese all chopped up small and mixed together. I fried circles of the potato cakes until golden brown, flipped to the other side and did the same. And this time I managed to be patient enough to actually allow them to brown rather than having them fall apart because I try to take them out too soon. It was, if I do say so myself, absolutely delicious and there were four left which I've had for lunch today. I finished the rest of the stewed apple with some yoghurt for dessert.

I still have enough corned beef for at least two meals and have the broccoli to finish as well - either pasta or an omelette or quiche for this evening maybe.

My aim for this month is to get back into the habit of cooking and eating properly. I'm not going to obsess too much about whether I've had my 5-a-day fruit and veg or not or worry about whether I'm using too much butter or oil. If I can get back on track with cooking proper meals (I had a very, very bad November in this respect and was sick for much of December and not much better then) this month then next month I will start to pay more attention again to the healthiness of my food.

Seeds

Thanks to a link from somewhere (I'll be very good and update things like this soon I promise) I found the Organic Centre in Co. Leitrim. Had to wait for January payday but carried the seed catalogue around with me for about two weeks beforehand trying to decide what to buy without completely breaking the bank (which is, as always, very fragile). Great excitement this morning as I went to the post office to pick up a parcel and realised it was from the Organic Centre. One packet of seeds was quite big and wouldn't fit through my letterbox so I had to go and pick it up. I was so curious about what it was that I opened it in the sorting office, realised what it was, let a little squeak and a very Bill-and-Ted-like "Excellent!" out of me. Oh well, at least I made a postal worker smile at seven o'clock this morning!

I have received the following but won't be starting seedlings yet. I need to give my new housemate time to move in (first weekend of March) before breaking the news to her that for the first month or so she's living with me, the kitchen will have a lot of seed trays and pots around it.

Phacelia tanacetifolia - this is a green manure which I'll plant straight out into the two beds I'm trying to create to grow salads in. They were cardboarded and had topsoil and some compost added around October and I hope to have this growing and dug in in plenty of time to plant out seedlings towards the beginning of summer. It's described as "a feast for bees. The bright blue flowers have an amazing sweet fragrance. Green manure plant, weed suppressor. Annual. Suitable as cut flowers." Sounds even better than I thought and I really hope it lives up to expectations.

Pea - Ambassador - "excellent semi leafless variety for easy picking. Largely self supporting, tasty and tolerant of bad weather. Resistance to mildew and fusarium".

Tomato - Tumbler - "Bush tomato which is the most popular for hanging baskets and containers. Up to 2 kg of small tasty fruits per plant".

Tomato - yellow brandywine (I ordered just brandywine but got this substituted) - "yellow version of this famous tomato regarded by many as the best flavoured. For use in the greenhosue or outdoors. Very tasty fruits and high yielding crops from vigourous plants."

Tomato - St. Pierre (who could choose just one type of anything?) - "traditional and tasty large French heirloom variety. For use outside or under glass".

Herb - borage - "beautiful blue flowered bee plant with edible flowers. Young leaves can also be used chopped in salads. Harvest leaves any time, flowers when fully open."

Perpetual spinach - "high quality tasty leaf beet spinach which can provide valuable greens throughout the winter. Does not readily run to seed."

Lettuce - baby leaf mix - "excellent mix of specially developed varieties for baby leaf production".

Courgette - Nero di Milano - "dark green lightly mottled fruits up to 20cm in length with fine taste. Originates from Italy."

Courgette - Yellow Straightneck - "early maturing yellow courgette widely grown around the world. Bush habit and yellow, slightly knobbly fruits which are easy to see for picking."

Scallion - Guardsman - "very strong growing spring onion especially suitable for autumn crops, but useful all year. Erect stiff leaves and well blanched for a lovely mild flavour."

Am looking forward to recording my progress with this lot as the year progresses.

Ecological footprint

Am very, very, very busy (along with lots of other people I suppose). What little time I've found to get online over the last week or so I've spent reading other blogs and discussion forums. Two more choir performances this week, a birthday party on Saturday night and gift wrapping for charity on Sunday afternoon and Wednesday evening next week are the only things left on my hectic list of appointments for December. Otherwise I just need to pack for Florida - yay!

I did my ecological footprint score before but don't think I wrote down the score I got. Have done it again today and my total footprint is 3.7 hectares. That's 1.2 for food, 0.3 for mobility (this seems low to me, maybe I got the litres petrol/100 km wrong - it was my best guess, will keep a diary for the next few months to check it), 1.1 for shelter and 1.1 for goods/services. The average in Ireland is apparently 5.3 per person so I'm doing pretty well. This makes me think I need to check my answers rather than feel like giving myself a slap on the back though! So, if everyone lived like me we would need 2.1 planets - and that's if everything I answered is definitely correct! I've set a reminder in my diary to retake this quiz in three months and will concentrate on having the correct date to hand then.

In other news my 3 little things and 5-a-day have fallen compeltely by the wayside over the last week but I hope by this Sunday I'll feel a bit more like time is my own and to catch up then. I've admittedly not been eating well at all so I also need a couple of hours in the kitchen to stock the freezer again. However I think I'll leave this until I return from Florida. I still have quite a lot of cereal left over from summer so I think I'll just eat lots of that over the next week to get rid of it as well. I got my sister those lovely GAA bowls from Kellogg's Cornflakes as a small wedding pressie (one for Dublin where she's from, one for Cork where he's from and one for Galway where they got married and plan to live - well I thought it was a cute idea) but since I was only able to get a couple of tokens from other people I ended up buying a gianourmous box of cornflakes which I'm still not even halfway through. To make up for all that processed food I'm going to make sure to buy some organic milk at the weekend!

Down the country

Have had a lovely couple of days out of Dublin although it's just like me to choose to go west during some of the worst storms for years. At least I now know what it's like to have to drive through a flood so it was a learning experience which is always good. Isn't it?

Unfortunately the storms also meant that the internet access in the hotel I was in got knocked out so all of the catching up on blogs I intended to do didn't happen. I have been keeping up with the 3 little things although I need to do enough this evening to make up for the last few days. 5-a-day hasn't gone so well although I did bring a bag of apples away with me to make sure that I had at least some fruit.

I brought some knitting with me and got the hat for my brother done. I have loads of wool left and am planning on doing hats for my nieces and nephew in France for Christmas. I also brought my music and choir rehearsal tape and did loads of practice so am feeling much more confident for the concert on Sunday.

From a money point of view I didn't do too badly. I had the money for the hotel and feeding myself while I was away put aside and overtime money from last month to pay for my massage and facial. Which were lovely. I bought a small milk jug as my souvenir but I only have one small jug so it is something I will use. I also took the opportunity, since I was down that way to stop into Fabrics Direct in Rooskey. Lovely shop and now that I've seen it I think I'd be more inclined to order stuff online from them. Ann, the owner, took ages to talk to me when I explained that I was only starting out and I decided to get a pattern and bought the material to make it as well. She went through loads of stuff on the pattern giving me hints and tips so I feel much more confident that I'll be able to do it now. And on the way home I stopped at Liffey Valley, a big shopping centre not too far away, and bought a top for my work Christmas party this Friday (am wearing the same skirt I wore last year) and one new shirt for work which was on sale. That's it though, will be on strict budget for the rest of the month as I want to have some money to bring to the States with me. I asked my sister how much I should bring and she said about $400 would probably be enough. Her husband said I'd need $800. I was hoping to only need about $200! At least the exchange rate is good at the moment and after talking to her I think I've convinced her that I really don't want to spend the day in Disneyland or any of those kind of places (I hate rollercoasters and rides like that anyway) and just want to chill out and hang around doing more or less nothing. I'm going over to visit her more than to visit Florida really.