Food Diary – June 8, 2011

Mug of coffee; two wheat biscuits with lots of Greek yoghurt and a liberal drizzle of golden syrup.

As you can tell – I have fallen a little bit behind, so we will jump straight in with pictures.

Post-exercise banana.

I seem to consume more junk after running, as though it is an excuse. Need to stop.

Liquorice and fruit gums. (I have nearly finished them, do not despair.)

My “old food” issues seem now to have shifted from fruit to eggs. Creativity (sense the irony) ensues.

Margerine-d seeded toast, friend egg. Two of each.

New fruit!

Nectarine.

I swear I have become re-addicted to cake.

Mug of tea and slice of cake. I could get used to this.

More junk.

I said Nearly finished.

I appear to have taken up the eat little and often approach. Did I use to do this in November?

Cajun spiced sausages, broccoli, ketchup.

Water count: ~1.2l. I thought about posting as soon I had taken each picture, to give myself a better impression of when I eat what I eat, but I think one “picspam” a day is enough. To save all of YOU.

Addendum. Forgot about this.

Nostalgia.

Food Diary – June 1, 2011

Greetings my friends! Food diary is back!

In my quest to find whether or not we really indulge more in the darker months, I am now going to record everything I eat throughout the month of June. I did promise some statistics from the food diary of last November, which will be up after I have had some shut eye for tonight.

So, we shall begin with a picture as blurry as my eyesight was when I ate the depicted items. (Blurriness caused by latent fatigue – I hope to keep my otherwise regular eyesight for some time. *touch wood*)

Milky coffee with a margarine-d cinnamon-and-raisin bagel.

Straight on to lunch.

Couscous salad with iceberg lettuce, German sausage, spring onions and light Caesar dressing.

After which the snacking began.

Mint chocolate ice cream cone. The first of many this month. Believe me.

Managed to stave off cravings until about 1600 hours.

Strawberry milkshake and yoghurty flapjack. In hindsight, this looks full of chemicals.

After which I got into work and forgot about eating.

So I arrived home late and hungry and scrambled for yet another margarine-d cinnamon-and-raisin bagel.

This made me feel that I lacked other nutrients and variation.

Replenished somewhat by a banana and two big dollops of cottage cheese.

Seeing as it is the summer months, I shall be estimating the amount of water I have drunk by the end of the day. I know that as a scientist I should aim for accuracy, but water slips down too easily and I forgot. So! Water count: ~1.5l.

See you tomorrow!

P.S. You may recall a post about the Science Communication Conference from earlier on. Well, I went, and it was AMAZING. So watch this space for hints and tips I picked up from the motivational speakers and the inspirational fellow delegates. Cheerio.

Girl, meet blender

I like food, there is absolutely no doubt about that. I also like gadgetry, so it is a total wonder that I have not owned a blender until last week. Just a small one, cheap and cheerful from Homebase.

After the compulsory rinsing, I started to think about what I was going to make.

If I had these scales, I might weigh myself more often.

Might as well confess that I have always had weight issues, not extreme ones, more of the kind that I have always been sitting right on top of what is acceptable weight for my height. Although apparently I do not look like that is the case, which is both nice and irritating. I believe I lead a fairly healthy lifestyle, with balanced and varied meals, and regular exercise. All of this generally yields little difference to my weight. Each time I decide to increase the amount of exercise I do (non-believer in diets), I lose inches and gain weight, presumably because I gain muscle, which is heavier than fat.

Recently I registered with a new GP, had to face a weigh-in again, and yes, I am still overweight. So, I have decided that I shall maintain my exercise regime (core strength exercises + 3 mile run/power walk, ~5 times a week), but to try out a bunch of crazy diets I have found about.

This is where the blender comes in (bet you were starting to wonder). Apparently food, consumed a viscous fluid fills you up for longer than solid food with a beverage (no, I am NOT going to blend my OJ with roast chicken), because your digestive system drains out liquids much faster than solids, meaning your stomach will start to feel not-so-full again much faster. Viscous liquids however, hit that middle stage where the stomach needs to take its time digesting the whole thing. So I am thinking thick soups or blended casserole-y things.

Good intentions aside, I could not help to take the blender to town on its first outing. After a quick supermarket run, I decided to try out what tastes good blended together: (mishaps not listed)

Beverages

Glass of milk, one banana

Glass of milk, one banana, tbsp of cocoa powder

Fizzy vitamin C tablet dissolved in water, one apple, one carrot

Fizzy vitamin C tablet dissolved in water, two apples

Food (season with salt and pepper to taste)

Boiled peas, spring onions (pan fry these!), chicken stock

Cauliflower, chicken stock, fried red onion, green chillies

Ham, peas, mashed potatoes, chicken stock

… and counting. The good thing is that you can vary the quantities of each ingredient to change the over consistency of the food. Can you recommend things that taste good blended together? Let me know!

Foreign-style home-town food. What is that?

Coming from a Far Eastern family and growing up in Western countries, my amazing mother does all she can to serve up traditional dishes at home.

However, today for lunch, she suggested a mother-daughter trip to a Chinese buffet in town. We usually complain about the poor quality of the food, the lack of authenticity, whilst secretly loving the greasy, fatty dishes (oi, it is not a habit of ours, so we are allowed to).

100% ^^

A lot of Chinese restaurants and takeaways, at least the “locals”, seem to have very similar menus; chicken curry, sweet and sour pork, chow mein, etc. Why? There certainly are House Specials available, but even these do not really seem like they are stepping outside the box, being the same basic dish, but with more meat/seafood. How come these places, especially the ones that have a large number of so-called regulars, do not experiment more?

At the Chinese takeaway/chip shop where I did my compulsory aged-16-17,-hourly-paid-manual-labour (I think everybody should do it, but I will save that for another post), the employees often got served dinner off the menu. Being mostly Chinese, the owners cooked lovely home-style Chinese food with vegetables from their garden and non-battered fish for us, which was lovely. At one point after dinner-rush-hour, I was fronting the shop whilst eating my dinner. A customer walked in, so I set down my plate to greet and take order. They asked me what I was having and if it was available, and I had to excuse it for being off the menu. So in the end, customers are not afraid of change, and trying new things, so the choice is in the hands of restaurateurs. (Although I am still not sure of that Blumenthal’s Snail Porridge, yeuch!)

Other un-connected food-thoughts of today

• Are buffets really worth it? It is if you are capable of eating a lot, very quickly. Alternatively, you can sit there throughout the whole service, and eat slowly, but that will mess up your eating-times for the rest of the day.

• Vegetarian meat-replacements. Sure, if you are allergic. However, if you choose to lead a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle, are you not then already prepared to give up the need for textures like steak and burgers? Without the need for “Facon”, “Tofurkey” and “Soysages”? (The last one, I mean, JAY-zus.)

Soysage, borrowed from ieatfood.net

• The irony in halal/kosher Western-style fast food. Do not get me wrong here, I am all for equal opportunities; but when I think of religiously acquired meat, I think lovely exotic dishes, less “halal Subway” sandwiches. Apparently one can also get a halal burger… with bacon (regular). Roflcopter.