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.

Debt, word of the year, and a motto

Time to take stock and admit to myself that I am in debt again. I haven't been denying it, just pushing it to the back of my head really. There are a couple of reasons but mostly just being careless and spending whatever I felt like over the past month or two, along with one or two bigger ticket items. €320 for an injection into my hip? Yay. Anyway, time to get back of track. I bought a budget calendar from PositiveReduceMyDebt (who I've been following on instagram for a couple of months now) and have filled out some goals for January. 

1. 15 no-spend days
2. Stick to €25/week for food (given I ended up spending just over €90 already, this will be very tight)
3. No-spend year - exceptions for January: step ladder and watercolours
   

I have taking some money out of savings to cover some of the bills and will work on getting the overdraft back down to zero over the year while building my savings back up. I do technically have enough in my investment account to cover all of it but I want to leave that where it is if possible. Head down and onwards. And the same applies to food and eating and meal planning. I let things go completely to pot in December and while I enjoyed it, I also badly need to get that under control again. 

So, over the Christmas break, I made a meal plan for January, wrote a shopping list and on Sunday I cooked. My aim is to mostly only have to cook every second week or perhaps twice a month. I think time will tell on that one. On Sunday I made a big pot of vegetable soup, lemon chicken with veg and potatoes, and a chicken and spinach curry. 

My meal plan is not one planning exactly what to have each day but rather a rough outline and then I can choose what I want to have on each day. 

Yikes!

• Butternut squash and ricotta frittata (6 servings)
• Chicken and spinach curry (4 servings)
• Oriental lentil stew (4 big servings - new recipe, depending on what it's actually like, this may make more servings than 4, I think)
• Cauliflower and broccoli gratin (4 servings)
  
• Lemon chicken with potatoes and veg (6 servings)
• Honey chilli pork (4 servings) - except they had no pork in the butchers so I took the suggested veal instead. Without checking the price first. Veal is expensive. How carelessness leads to yet another drop on the debt puddle!
  
  

 

So that's 28 dinners. For lunches, I planned for potato and leek soup, spicy lentil and carrot soup, pumpkin soup, and vegetable soup. Since I didn't even use half of the cabbage I got in the vegetable soup I made at the weekend and still ended up with 10 servings, I don't think I'll need to make all of the rest of those this month. I am also having a week or two of eating some of the meal replacement pouches that I should have, but didn't, use in December. Essentially starting over with a couple of weeks of the transition phase that was supposed to end just before Christmas. That will actually take care of some lunches, too.

The only word I could come up with for a word for the coming year was support. It made me kind of uncomfortable though, so I tried to think of something else. Before realising that I was feeling mostly uncomfortable with the idea of needing or asking for support. Probably a good indication that it really is the right word for me this year. Support it is. 

And then on Saturday I read something in a tweet that I am also adopting as a kind of a motto for a while. If the right words come along at the right time for me, I'll grab on to them: Discipline always trumps motivation. 




Don't wait until you're motivated to do something. Don't wait until you feel ready to start. It may never come. Discipline always trumps motivation.
Decide the kind of life you want to lead and say no to everything that isn't that.
#2022

— Cécile Chemin-Gordon (@MuayCe) December 29, 2021

Buying food

Today is the final day of the 'fasting' portion of the optifast programme. From tomorrow, we will eat four pouches/meal replacements per day and replace the fifth pouch with a meal that has 200 calories and 15-20g of protein. 

I kept to the fasting regime really well, far better than I expected. And then three weeks ago I went on holidays for two weeks and, well, I did not keep to the fasting regime. I mean, I didn't discard it entirely but I did decide to eat some things while I was in Ireland. Not large amounts of things, and I definitely felt it in having an uncomfortable tummy for the day if I did eat, but I probably ate something on more days than not. And in the last two days, I ate quite a bit of chocolate. Still, from the first day back, I was back to the pouches and have kept to it. I presumably lost less weight than I might otherwise have lost but I assume that the bloods I'll be having done tomorrow won't be as good as they might other have been. Most of all, it was good to feel out my boundaries a little bit and recognise a few of the situations and foods that are likely to be problematic. I'm trying to take a more pro-active approach and actually deal with that kind of thing. My therapist is going to work on it with me over the next while.   

And with eating the food comes the buying of the food. Far more than eating, my spending has gotten a bit out of control over the last month or two and I need to rein that in properly now. I've just bought what I needed to get started this week but from next week/the start of November I plan to switch to a cash envelope only for food. My plan is to allocate €150 per month. That gives me €30 per week in 'five-week' months, or, in a 'four-week' month, €30 per week plus another €30 to stock up on things or buy more expensive items, like olive oil or the good balsamic vinegar or meat.

 Meal planning will be the order of the day for sure. 

Last day of eating food for a while

Today is the last day I will be eating actual food for a while. More than a year after I actually signed up, and after Corona-related postponement after postponement, last Wednesday the 52-week Optifast weightloss programme at my local hospital finally started. This evening is the second meeting, which means this evening I get to collect my first order of meal replacements and starting tomorrow, for a period of 12 weeks, I will be be eating five of those every day. We did a taste-test last week and I have to admit I was underwhelmed by the soups on offer. I had had such high hopes for the leek and potato. And I had a cup-a-soup just a few weeks ago, so it's not like I have an incredibly high bar for comparison. Still, I will be glad to have something warm on occasion, I'm sure. 

Today, I told everyone in work about it to ask for their support, warn them/apologise in advance in case the next few weeks bring a very moody or easily distracted Moonwaves, and to let them know that there will be no more sweets/cakes/treats to be found in my office. It's somewhat traditional for the secretary to have a bowl of treat out, for example in the run-up to Christmas. And I asked them specifically to just not let me know if someone bakes a cake and brings it in to share. While ultimately my success will be up to me, I am fully embracing the attitude of make everybody else help, too.

Forgot to take a photo this morning,
this is after the pile has been raided.

 In return, anyone who wants has the opportunity today to take any of the remaining storecupboard stuff I had. Despite my efforts to eat the cupboards down, I still managed to fill two large shopping bags. And I have to admit I also threw out more than one packet of sooooo far past its best before date, I'd better not risk giving it to someone else, items. My boss is going to take a small basket of things into care (olive oil, the good balsamic vinegar and that kind of thing), hide it somewhere and give it back to me when I start to incorporate proper food again. That will start happening at the end of October. 

After the 12 weeks of just meal replacements are over, we begin a transition phase, in which we slowly start to replace the meal replacements with actual food again. And that will bring us up to Christmas. Possibly not the best timing for the first two weeks of the stabilisation phase to be over Christmas and New Year but I'm sure it'll be fine. 

Obviously food is not the only component to play a role when it comes to dealing with serious obesity and eating disorders and this programme also involves a 3-hour appointment every week. There's a talk on some aspect of nutrition and group therapy. I think at the beginning these two sort of blend into one another and the psychologist and the nutrition advisor are both there at the same time. We get weighed and have a check-up with the doctor. And at the end, there is an hour to an hour and a half of sport. Gentle stuff like walking at the start, moving on to pilates, yoga, nordic walking and so on in the later months. The idea being to try out a good few different things and hopefully find things you like to do. About five times throughout the year there are longer appointments where a full blood workup and body fat analysis and so on are done. 

From a financial point of view, at €3,400 for the year, it's not exactly cheap. You are supposed to pay in instalments but I asked to be allowed to pay the whole thing up front and have done that. I just don't want to have to remake the decision every month to keep going. That feels more like pressure to me than an opportunity to choose the commitment again and I am fully leaning into doing whatever it is that will make this work. I have now been very overweight for most of the past thirty years. I think for a few months in 1996/1997 I managed to maintain around 85kg (about 188lbs for any foreigners here, or a bit less than 13.5 stone) for a while and that is the lightest I have been since I was a child. Honestly, I would be thrilled if I were able to reach that again, but at this stage, I'll take any sustainable weightloss I can manage. 

So, it has been a strange couple of weeks as I haven't much felt up to cooking but kept buying things to make x one last time, and y just once more. I've ended up having some strange combinations and because I normally try to be aware of portion size, it has been really weird to be erring more on the side of "well, I'll have more since I need to use it up". I'm glad it has felt so weird though, as it kind of proves to me that I have learnt a lot over the years, especially during the time I spent seeing a nutritionist on a weekly basis a few years ago. For posterity's sake, here's what's on the menu for today: 

Breakfast was:
Scrambled eggs and tomato with toast (3 eggs, 1 tomato, 2 slices of toast, some butter)
Oh, I also finished the crisps (about one very large handful), had three chocolate digestive biscuits, and a large mug of milk 

Snacks on my desk for throughout the day:
The last of the mixed nuts and sultanas
1.5 bars of ritter sport with cornflakes
1 banana
1 apple 

Lunch will be:
The last of the fresh veg, which I chopped and sautéed in olive oil this morning, then mixed with the last of the cream cheese.
2 small courgettes, 4 scallions, 2 small leeks, 1 tiny carrot, cherry tomatoes. I'll have that with some leftover chicken.
Oh, and I have the last few pieces of kimchi from a tin I opened at the weekend. 

With all of that, and considering our meeting will go from five to eight o'clock, I don't think I'll have or need dinner. Although I am going to try and make an appearance at a colleague's retirement dinner after the meeting, so I may be tempted to have some falafel there. We'll see.

Getting back to the simple life

I am having lots of thoughts and feelings at the moment around depression, accepting how severe my depression has actually been over the years and trying to come to terms with how much of my life it has absorbed and the feeling that I have wasted years and years while trying to be kind to myself and accept that it wasn't all my fault, dealing with depression absorbed most of my energy, etc., etc. I have been taking anti-depressants for about a year and a half now and am slowly getting to a point where it feels like I have some energy to spare for just life in general. Very much an ongoing journey and it's going to be a long one. As always, accepting something logically is easier than accepting it emotionally.

In terms of energy, I wouldn't describe myself as full of beans but I am making an effort and managing to get something done every day. Mind you, being on holidays from work helps.

All of this led to me yesterday doing something that I have thought about doing every summer for the last few years but never quite getting around to. I bought two large punnets of strawberries. From a local shop that grows a lot of their own stuff on a small farm on the outskirts of town. And this morning, I washed, hulled and sliced them, and put them into the dehydrator.

Dehydrator trays on scales, 1 punnet worth of strawberries, preserving notebook

I dragged out my preserving notebook to add it in and see, somewhat to my amazement, that the last entry was 2014. Wow. Looking at it logically though, I knew I hadn't done anything since I moved here, and that was 2016. And in the summer and autumn of 2015, I was working my notice at my corporate job, then starting my translating on the side business and trying to recover from years and years of overwork and stress. I'm pretty sure when I moved here I told myself it was ok to not do anything the first summer - I was only working part-time and money was tight, I was trying to settle in and all that. The next summer, I feel like I was determined to do at least some dehydrating but it never happened. I'll have to read back and see if I posted anything in 2018, because I am really not sure why I didn't do anything then, although thinking about it, I was pretty miserable in work and depressed. And then at the start of last summer, I had just switched to my new job, was loving it and starting to really enjoy life when my boss killed himself. It seems hard to believe that that was almost a year ago. I still miss him and think about him, well, not quite every day but on many of them.  Strawberries were his favourite fruit, and remembering the conversation we had when he told me that is probably something that will always come to mind when strawberry season arrives.

When I look back and view it logically, there were almost always reasons why I wasn't getting around to doing some of the things that are important to me in terms of the simple life that I was searching for when I started this blog. It is very hard to accept that it wasn't all just me being lazy or worthless. I'm working on it. Today, at least, it felt good to switch on the dehydrator, and now the smell of strawberries is filling the room. Getting started is always the hardest part and that's done now. So here's to living the simple life I want.

Notes on a Sunday

Haven't the wherewithal to write a particularly cogent post today but had things I wanted to write about so perhaps a few notes will just do for now. Don't let the perfect (ha!) get in the way of the good and all that.

• Blogger is letting me post pictures again so I've added the two random ones I wanted to add ot my last post to this one. 
• I've never paid a huge amount of attention to the stats on this blog but used to look every once in a while (or every day for a while and then not at all for ages) and noticed that one search term that seem to lead people here a lot was "how not to get overwhelmed" - except they mostly landed on this post, in which I talk about how overwhelmed I am. I have thoughts about this and it's one of those things I have wanted to write about for years, ever since I noticed it. Maybe one day.
• Went to the doctor on Friday and got a referal note to go and see a psychologist again and even spent a half an hour searching for one in my area and sent one an email to see if they have a free spot. I'm very all over the place at the moment, possibly with some delayed shock from a minor car accident I had in December and had a bit of a breakdown the week before last related to that so I just need to go and get help. Feeling very alone, especially because my brother, when I have phoned him over the last few weeks, has not been answering. I know he finds January tough and is extremely busy at the momeny, especially helping a friend whose husband had to go into hospital but I have seen that he has been on social media so I'm not too worried about him. Just a bit hurt because this time around I needed to talk to him and he hasn't phoned back. But I haven't actually sent him any messages saying I need to talk either. Not sure why but just couldn't manage to type any messages. At any rate, I hope the doctor I contacted has a place free soon.
• In the meantime, I'm trying to keep going with all the stuff that I know is helpful and that I need to do.

Light dusting of snow near work

• Went to third aquajogging session yesterday - I am really enjoying it. I did a full hour on the bike at the gym on Friday evening, too, and then walked home (it's about 25-30 minutes to walk at my speed). I had two heavy bags with me though and between that and the aquajogging yesterday, I was really feeling it in my arms yesterday - especially my lower arms. 
• Yesterday I made cabbage soup using a recipe from a Jane Grigson book I bought a few years ago on the strength of a recommendation from a blog I read. A book I have only glanced at before. But a recipe for cabbage soup that consisted of cabbage, onions, apples, garlic and ginger seemed like a good idea. It's nice, although more watery/liquidy than I was expecting. 
• Read about Zuckerberg deciding to integrate Whatsapp and Instagram into FB - not impressed. I suppose I'll replace insta with more blogging again. And I've now installed telegram, too - now to just get everyone I know to do the same so we can telegram instead of whatsapping.

 

• I took the pork that I bought last July and never got around to using out of the freezer yesterday and even mixed up the spice mix so that I could give it a few hours with the rub before putting it into the slow cooker today. As soon as I got up this morning I checked and it had finally defrosted so I did the spice rub immediately. 
• Also made "fake" tomato ketchup last night to use as the basis of the braising sauce for the pork today. By fake I mean that I mostly used my recipe for tomato ketchup but used a tin of tomatoes rather than fresh and not bothering with the whole sieving and reducing aspect. This comes from my first adventures in pulled pork where I used up jars of runny tomato ketchup I had made and it was so good, I was disappointed when I had no more of those jars left.
• Got the pulled pork into the slow cooker about two hours ago. Instead of making another soup, which I had bought other veg for, I just decided to add that veg to the pulled pork. So I sauteed two leeks, three onions, five cloves of garlic and a kohlrabi. Put most of that into the bottom of the slow cooker but held back a couple of spoonfuls to use in my breakfast (which I ended up not actually eating until about  half-three - it has just been that kind of day). Added the meat with it's lovely spice rub. Made up the brasing sauce using about a litre of water, a couple of spoonfuls of veg stock powder, two teaspoons of honey, a big glub of white wine vinegar (the last of the bottlw) and the ketchup I prepared last night. 
• Brought washing down to the cellar to get it into the machine. Someone got there before me so I came back upstairs and when I went back down I brought down the rubbish and the recycling. That's a win. I've even put a new bag into the bin already. Going to go down to collect my washing now and it just occurred to me that I never emptied the bins in the bathroom and sitting room. So I'll do that and feel like I'm one step closer to a clean home. 
• Breakfast was leek/onion/garlic/kohlrabi mix with the chopped up leaves of the kohlrabi, the last slice of ham and last two slices of cheese, all scrambled with two eggs and eaten along with a slice of toast. It was very tasty, even if I do say so myself.
• I even did most of the washing-up while the eggs were cooking.
• My two-euro coin to use in the lockers at the swimming pool is stored in the little case I have for my business cards. Forgot about that yesterday until I was nearly ready to leave the pool and was trying to think of where I could store my coin so that I wouldn't have to ask them for change every single week.

Found dolphins on my ukulele!

• I cleared off the top of the chest of drawers in the sitting room to put the slow cooker on top off. It has been a landing ground for junk ever since I moved here. I put away the things that do already have a place to live and the rest is in a big shopping bag. Need to start doing small amounts of sorting every day. I put clear off writing desk and file stuff from table on my to-do list for January and haven't done either of those things yet. Although I have cleared up the table a bit and tided up the non-paper stuff that had gathered. 
• I bought a special flat-plug extension lead to plug the slow cooker into. Most of the sockets in this place have ended up behind pieces of furniture so I was glad I thought to check if such a thing as a flat-plug exists. Now I won't have to have multiple pieces of furniture with a two or three inch gap to the wall. Need to get one or two more for other spots but this was definitely a purchase that sparks joy!

More soups and stews

My efforts to keep cooking and eating healthily continue and I haven’t had a bad episode of backsliding yet. I’m not eating perfectly, could definitely do with cutting some more chocolate out but I have plenty of days now where the only chocolate (or sweets of any kind) that I eat is one or two squares of dark chocolate. Compared to days of yore, where I could easily down five or ten bars, this is a huge improvement. I did allow myself a “cheat day” last Friday (it was a very carb-heavy day) – it was good to do it because it staved off the beginnings of feeling cravings but half a cheat-day would have done, to be honest. 

I signed up for aqua jogging through the local community college, classes are held in my local swimming pool and I paid €56.80 for eight weeks. The first class was last Saturday and I really enjoyed it. Above all because I was able to do it! In November, I also signed up for a local gym so that I’d be able to compensate a bit for not cycling to and from work a couple of times a week. I went once and then we had a couple of weeks of good weather so I was cycling to and from work anyway. Then I hurt my back and wasn’t allowed to do any sport, including cycling. Then I got a cold. And then it was already halfway through December and, well, let’s just say I’ve ended up being one of those people who starts using the gym in January. Sigh. My plan is to go on Monday evenings after work and I did that last week. I thought maybe Wednesdays might be a good day to add as my second day but that didn’t work out last week. And then I checked my calendar and saw that not only do I have an extra choir rehearsal today (Monday), I also have an appointment with my dietician on Wednesday after work. I may bring my swimsuit with me as the dietician has a room in the physio practice that is attached to the local swimming pool (benefits of small-town living) and then I could go swimming for a while after my appointment. I may just bring my stuff with me and then see how I’m feeling on the day. Somehow at the moment the more “outs” I give myself from having to do something, the more likely I am to do it. I even ended up going to the gym yesterday afternoon, to make up for missing this evening. Although that was partially a procrastination effort, too, as I just couldn’t get in the mood to cook yesterday.

I even, despite my boast of healthy cooking and eating, got myself a “doner box” (doner kebab meat and chips with the garlicky sauce) on the way home from the gym, more procrastination. My sister rang just as I was finishing eating that and while I was on the phone to her I started gathering the stuff I needed to make what I had planned so that when we were finished talking, I could just start chopping veg immediately. So, this week I made a pumpkin soup and a lentil and chicken stew. The pumpkin soup is a bit watery looking but that happens to me with pumpkin soup a lot and will be fine, I’m sure. I used a smallish Hokkaido pumpkin (625g) and a medium size onion (125g) with a spoonful of coconut oil (thinking it might give a bit of the flavour of pumpkin curry made with coconut milk without actually using an entire tin of coconut milk). 750g of veg which will give me four portions of soup – according to Australian guidelines (there’s a discussion over at MMM on getting your full five a day of veg and two of fruit that was started by an Australian, hence the Australian guidelines) that about 10 servings of veg, or 2.5 servings per portion. 

For lunch today I had the last portion of beetroot soup from last week – had the last few portions of that with feta crumbled over the top so that I had some protein in the meal. Soooo good. And for dinner this evening, I brought a portion of the lentil stew I made yesterday. It is really good, even if I do say so myself and so I’m going to make a note here of what I put in it so that I can hopefully reproduce it in future. 

I used 300g (dry weight) of lentils, 400g of chicken breast chopped into small pieces, 250g carrots (2 chopped, 1 grated), 100g onion, 170g mushrooms (a small tin that I chopped into smaller bits – still don’t like mushrooms but it’s a cheap way of adding veg), 2 cloves of garlic (all I had left), a tin of tomatoes (240g drained weight) and 500g passata. I used olive oil to sauté the onions and chicken and added just enough water to cover everything (then cooked with the lid off to allow it to thicken somewhat). For spices, I used 3 generous spoonfuls of smoked paprika, 3 of cumin, 1 of turmeric, and 1 of coriander, with about half a teaspoon of salt and half of pepper. But the main thing is the smoked paprika, which gives such a lovely flavour. It’s very good with the chicken. The whole thing gives me 1,260g of veg and I reckon I’m going to get about six portions out of it, which will be 2.8 servings of veg per portion. I’m interested to see what my dietician thinks of it though – I feel like there’s way too much in it between the lentils and the chicken but I think I kept to the recommended portion sizes alright. 

The sample plans she gave me are great in a way as they are built around combining elements from three building blocks: veg, carbs, and protein. If you’re leaving out carbs then you can choose two proteins. Not eating enough protein, or not eating protein with every meal (better for keeping your digestive system on an even keel throughout the day) is still a bit of an issue for me but I’m sure I’ll get there eventually. Where I’m currently trying to find my way is because eating lots of one-pot meals in winter is not as straightforward as choosing something from each section for each meal as the stuff is all combined in advance for several meals. So, I’m bringing details of what I’ve been making to my appointment to see what she thinks. For now, I have 11 portions of food in the fridge (still have two of last week’s veg soup), which means that even for a ridiculously busy week like this week, there are no excuses for not eating properly. And I’ll be doing my best to keep up with washing the various Tupperware containers every evening, even if I’m home late, because more than anything else, keeping on top of the washing-up is very important if I’m going to keep actually going into the kitchen to cook!

P.S. Had two cute, random photos to share but blogger is not cooperating so it's just another wall of text this evening. :)

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.

Think I'll need to keep searching

For a good solution to regional eating, that is. I met the guy from the CSA-style program this morning and I left feeling, well, underwhelmed. I went all ready to sign up straightaway and now I don't think I will at all. I did appreciate that he was honest about the shortcomings of the program at least. Opinions welcome on this one.

Cost per month (with a commitment of a year, renewed every year for another full year): €130, which works out to €30 per week.

All of the produce comes from the same farm. Basically, the people in the association (about 180) get together and tell the farmer that they'll pay x amount of money. They also meet every six weeks (not mandatory but it sounded like most people do attend) to decide things like what's to be grown. From what I understood, the farmer who owns the farm also participates in those discussions, which makes sense. As well as "employing" that farmer, there are three other full-time farmers employed to work with him. The six-weekly meeting decided last year, for example, to increase the wages from €12 to €15 per hour, slightly higher than average for work on an organic farm apparently.

The place I would have gone to collect my stuff from is close to work. About 15 people also collect from there. It's basically just a cellar at the back of a communal/alternative student collective of some kind. And honestly, the building entrance was not very well kept and, well, kind of smelly.

Once a week someone from each depot drives to the farm to collect the stuff. I would also be expected to do that at least a few times a year (using a car-sharing car they could make available). Then everyone just brings their own bags to take their portion of stuff. This week, for example, one share was 1kg potatoes, 2 small pumpkins (each slightly bigger than a handful), 1kg onions and 500g black kale (which was totally infested with white cabbage moths).

You also get 1.5 litres raw milk every week but you have to provide your own bottles and they just fill them up. Then, every two weeks there is also meat or cheese. You more or less end up with about 1kg of meat and 300g of cheese per month, from what I understood. Various cuts, mince or salami/sausage (all beef). And finally, a loaf of bread every week, too. Oh, you can pay an extra 1.30 a month to get herbs, as well.

But while I would have assumed that a share looks very different in the summer/autumn peak season, apparently not all that much. They grow no tomoatoes, cucumbers or peppers (ok, no peppers or cucumbers wouldn't bother me). The only fruit seems to be gooseberries and blackcurrants, with a couple of litres of apple juice once or twice a year. So apart from salad, it seems like summer tends to be early potatoes, early carrots, leeks and, well, he wasn't sure what else. From photos on their website I can see beets and kohlrabi, too. And, of course, as they don't keep chickens, there are no eggs included either.

So, all in all, I'd probably end up buying a good bit on top of what I'd get from them. And given that I want to concentrate on eating to lose weight this year, such a big proportion of every week being potatoes and bread, even in summer, isn't ideal. Lots of thinking to do now.

Fresh start

Carolyn over at The 1940's Experiment is starting afresh this week with both weight loss and budgeting. And so am I. I'd already been thinking about doing something like this for a while and just don't seem to get anywhere with it. I went to the doctor a few weeks ago and asked about getting help with losing weight and will hopefully have an appointment with a dietician early in the new year. It's not that I feel like they will be able to actually help me much in terms of teaching me about food (let's face it, I probably at least as much as they do on the subject of food and how to lose weight) but I need outside support to actually do something. I'm just not getting anywhere on my own. The place I'll be working with seems to be quite holistic as well, so hopefully the health insurance will also cover the cost of some basic exercise programms. I've also signed up for a new program my health insurance are offering which is a kind of mental health support scheme. Not sure exactly how that will work out but it's kind of like a step before therapy (there's a severe shortage of places with psychologists here and people can end up waiting for a long time before they can get an appointment). From what I understand it involves a weekly phone call with one of their counsellors to talk about whatever is going on and try and find ways for me to deal with everything that's going on. It was sheer coincidence that I got the leaflet for this program at the same time I was trying to get the cover for a dietician set up but I grabbed at the chance immediately. I am trying to be better at asking for help.

As for budget, well, barring one potentially crappy situation (I messed up a big translation job and am waiting to hear back from them - may have to pay them back, may have to cover damages they incurred if they ended up getting someone else to redo it), I'm actually starting to slowly get to a relatively stable place. I have enough money set aside to be able to pay my tax bill for 2016 whenever it comes in and when the rest of my outstanding invoices are paid, should have enough to cover 2017's tax bill as well. I have 450 set aside for annual expenses and 250 for travel/holidays. But, I should also be able to cover annual expenses and travels costs for the next two months directly without needing to touch the savings. Finally, I have 500 set aside in a separate savings account, which is the start of a proper emergency fund.

As I am now working full-time, I am earning almost 300 more per month than I was before. I will have a few expenses that I want to put this money towards over the first few months of the year (getting bike fixed, getting shelves put up in the kitchen and so on) but by June I want to be at the stage where I am living on my previous 75% salary and saving the extra. Will someone come back and ask me in June whether or not I've managed to do that? To be perfectly honest, I'm not really loving working 100% again and I'd rather not get used to the money so that if I can at all finagle my way to reducing hours, it won't be a difficult financial decision.

So much for the monthly stuff. On a more micro level, I'm going to start an envelope method again. I have signed up for a monthly Solawi* box (or at least, I'll be visiting tomorrow and plan to sign up) and that will provide the bulk of my food. Apart from that I will be withdrawing a very generous 60 euro per week from the bank in cash. That's actually how much I was planning on allocating every week before I took the Solawi box into account. I'm going to see how it goes. The idea is that I should be well able to not spend that amount of money every week and will be able to build up a bit of a buffer to start my envelopes off well.

I should think about what envelopes I want to have actually. Hmm. Here's a first list:

1. Birthdays/presents incl. postage
2. Clothes
3. Shoes
4. New coat next winter
5. Meals/drinks out
6. Exercise

So as these things come up over the first few months I'll just cover the cost from my weekly amount but I'll also be putting aside a small amount each week to build that buffer. I have a few birthdays in January and February but already have presents for those so will just need to cover the postage cost. I don't currently really need new clothes or shoes and won't really be going out much. The only exercise cost will be 10 euro per week for my back training course for about six weeks. After that the official course, paid for by work, will be starting up again.

I'm sure I'll end up changing this all a lot as time passes but it's a starting point at least. Need to just keep repeating to myself that a millionaire is made ten bucks at a time.

* Solawi is the name given to an organisation called Solidarische Landwirtschaft or literally solidary agriculture, and is similar to the CSA programs they have in the US. I pay a certain amount every month and for that get a box of food every week. Mostly veg but also meat, dairy and wheat (in the form of grain, flour or bread). Smaller amounts in winter, obviously, and if there is a disastrous harvest then it's tough luck and not a lot of food. The monthly amount paid remains the same. But it means I'll be genuninely back to having mostly local and organic food, as it really is just the one farm providing everything and that farm is located less than 7km from where I live and 15 km from where I work (my pick-up point will be close to work).

Another recipe attempt and some brain unloading

Recipe first. This involves the pork fillet that I bought at the beginning of December and have had in the freezer. Inspired by Two and a Half Men's recent post and feeling like there's a good joke about how their loin was bigger than mine but not finding it, I decided to try to do something with it. I don't have a meat thermometer though and wasn't going to be able to use that method of timing the cooking. So I read through a couple of books, thinking I might do it in the slow cooker but rejected that in favour of amalgamating a few things from a few different places, memory included. And I've added meat thermometer to the list of things I need to buy.

So, I've lined a dish with some tinfoil, oiled it with a small amount of olive oil and put a good layer of sliced apples on the bottom (two fairly big Boskoop apples). I chopped and fried and onion in some butter and sprinkled that on top of the apple, adding five cloves of garlic that I roasted yesterday but didn't finish eating with the rest of the veg. Waste not, want not. Then I poured some olive oil into one of my little yellow bowls (probably about a tablespoon, maybe a bit less) and added herbes de provence, probably about the same amount. I rubbed that all over the pork and laid the pork on top of the apples, onion and garlic. I poured about a mugful of water over the apples and then wrapped the tinfoil loosely over the whole lot. Well, tightly sealed but not tightly packed, if you know what I mean. It has been in the oven at 190C for twenty minutes and I think I'll check it in ten minutes or so.

Since the oven was on anyway, I also roasted 200g of unblanched almonds for ten minutes. I bought a kilo of almonds months ago to try making almond butter and have slowly but surely been eating them but never actually making almond butter. Really want to try it out once and for all. Not least because it's one of the ingredients in these genious ginger cakes and they sound delicious.

Otherwise, I just really wanted to post something. I miss blogging (I first of all wrote writing there but that's not entirely accurate) and amn't sure why I've been so sporadic in doing it recently. I don't quite feel up to any kind of every-day-challenge but I want to try and make a bit of an effort to do things I enjoy more.

I had a very lazy break over the holidays and have done exactly the same this weekend, including on the bank holiday on Friday. It's a bit funny really. It's not the kind of lazy lying around that is just being lazy. I really feel like I need it to unwind. Even though it seems like there are probably better, more active ways to unwind. When I finished work just over a year ago I spent weeks not doing much  and wouldn't have done anything at all except that I had to (sorting out stuff with social welfare, tax office, and doing translation work that came in). It was March before I really started to feel like I was getting over work and starting to actually do something every day, like going for long walks and really looking for a new job. It almost feels like I found a job too soon now. I could have used another four or five months I think. Recovering from overwork and chronic overstress takes a long time. And having to go through an extremely stressful time like I had during the move just took so much out of me. If I hadn't had those few months inbetween, I don't think I would've managed it.

It was my guest from hell in July that really threw me for a loop and, since that visit was unfortunately timed for just before a really busy period in my new job, it took me a few months to get over it, even as I tried to really, consciously, fight it and not just let myself be dragged back down into a hole of depression. It's hard to explain really. I suppose the analogy of a piece of elastic fits to a certain extent. After years and years of being stretched too far, I just can't bounce back to where I was before. And I have less stretch in me now, too. My head is, for the most part, however, pretty clear. It's not quite the same overwhelming, grey cover on my brain feeling of depression - so I'm hopeful that I really have made strides forward and am now getting to a stage of needing to just look after myself a bit, cherish myself a bit and allow myself the time and space to realise and accept that in between depression, long-term overwork and stress, and being able to lead a more normal life, there's a whole lot of space and I can't just go from one to the other. I have to keep focusing on the amazing and positive changes I have made in my life in the past year and keep moving in that direction. Even if I'm not there yet, I'm much closer than I used to be so even though it feels like I'm letting time just slip past me, I need to be kind to myself and give myself this time that I obviously still so desperately need.

Potentially delicious new recipe

Just want to jot this down here because it's looking and smelling so delicious at the moment, I feel like I may have just invented a delicious new recipe.

I cooked some chickpeas yesterday but couldn't get enthusiastic about making them into any kind of a dish. So instead I took the pumpkin and leek that I cooked last week but never got around to making into danishes and made it into a pastryless quiche instead. It was about thirty seconds of active work and although I ended up overcooking it slightly, it was really delicious. Note to self: the quantity from the danishes recipes was enough for a quiche made using 5 eggs in the small white dish.

Anyway, this evening, I needed something fast so I picked up some turkey pieces and decided to just have them with some red cabbage and apple, since I knew I had a jar of that and would just need to heat it up. Aaagh, but the chickpeas are still in the fridge from yesterday. So, I put a 250g portion into the freezer, something I always mean to do but forget.

That left 300g of chickpeas. I sliced a couple of onions and sauteed them in some peanut oil and added a teaspoon each of ginger and garlic paste. Then I added a grated carrot (hooray for using up things that have been in the fridge for far too long already) and a tin of tomatoes. And for good measure, a small Tupperware container of Chinese cabbage that I had in the freezer. So pleased I thought of it, as it was the last "old" thing I had in the freezer and I'd been trying to figure out what to do with it. I add two teaspoons of ras el hanout spice and when it has all cooked for a while, I'll add the chickpeas and that'll be two very generous portions or three smaller ones, I think. Really hope it lives up to its promise now. 

Foodsharing

Just a quick one. Not long after I moved here I met a woman who is involved with the local foodsharing team. This is a voluntary organisation that collects food from supermarkets and shops that would otherwise be thrown out, and organises collection points where people can come and take some of that food. The supermarkets save a little on their rubbish charges, less food goes to landfill, and a few people get to (partially) feed themselves for free.

Looks like relatively little?

Yesterday, I finally managed to call to one of the collection points at a time when I knew she would have just been to a weekly pick-up. Now, I know that food waste, especially the amount of food thrown out by supermarkets is a big issue but still. actually seeing the quantities up close was a bit sobering.

Bear in mind that the organiser at already taken out quite a bit, as she has a few families who can't make it to the pick-up at the time but need the help, so she keeps stuff aside for them. So, there were a few boxes worth of stuff already gone.

 

 I couldn't even fit it all into one photograph and although some of those boxes don't look full, there was quite a lot stuffed into each one (the fill the box as much as possible method of transferring a lot rather than the don't damage the produce method of packing).




It does leave me a little bit torn as very little of this was organic and I don't think any of it was local. However, not wasting food is so important as well. And honestly, this kind of suits my budget at the moment so I really shouldn't cavil. So I did bring home a big bag full of stuff and will have to spend a few hours in the kitchen tomorrow cooking.

Peeking out at the back, you can just see the corner of a 500g packet of organic tomatoes. Then there are two packets of two lettuces with the roots still attached in a soil plug. A basil plant (this was the only thing that is very close to past its best, with several blackening leaves. However still plenty to make a batch of pesto for freezer with). Scallions, which are absolutely perfect and nowhere close to needing to be dumped. A packet with three passion fruit. Three bananas, which will be perfect for making banana muffins in the next day or two. A huge butternut squash (1.8kg!). And another 1.2kg of loose tomatoes.
If I had been faster and less takenaback by the whole thing, I could also have gotten some carrots or broccoli.




I won't be there next week as I'll be travelling for work but I will definitely try and make it back about once a month. That feels like a good way to supplement my budget without feeling too much like I may be taking from others who might need it more. But seriously, we live in a mad, mad, mad, mad world!