The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl

The Great Crumpet Smackdown

The Great Crumpet Smackdown took place in a Weight Watchers meeting when I was about 13 years old. This was in the days before Points. Weight Watchers didn't let you eat just any old thing you fancied back then. It had to be on The List of Stuff You're Allowed To Eat.

One night after weigh-in we were sitting around in a circle airing our grievances and confessing our sins when a woman asked our lovely leader, "Why can't I have a crumpet?"

"Crumpets are not on the list."

"Why not? I read the nutritonal information on the packet. One crumpet is only 330 kilojoules (86 calories). That's less than a piece of bread. It doesn't make any sense!"

"They're not on the list!"

"We can have bread, bread rolls, pita bread, English muffins... but no crumpets. What's so wrong about a crumpet?"

"Because they're inevitably served dripping with butter! And/or honey!"

"But I don't HAVE butter or honey on my crumpet. I don't even have Weight Watchers Whipped Margarine! I have a plain, toasted crumpet with either banana or Vegemite."

"They're not on the list."

"WHY aren't they on the list?"

And on it went.

I remember being conflicted on the issue. Part of me thought, "Well hey, if it's not on the list, you know... we really should obey the list". But the teenager hitherto lacking a cause to rebel against was thinking, "Just let the woman eat her bloody crumpet!"

The incident was seared into my memory. One one of the first purchases I made as an independent householder was a packet of Golden Crumpets. I had them with butter AND honey and yes indeed, they were Golden Good. It was all downhill from there, as has been well documented on this blog.

I've wanted to bake my own crumpets since Clotilde of Chocolate and Zucchini blogged her Sourdough Crumpet recipe in January 2010. I bought some crumpet rings then promptly did nothing for 20 months. Then when Carla and I were coming up with our Five Fun Things for the podcast I decided it was time to give them a red hot go. Messing around with a sourdough starter was beyond my interest level so I went for a straightforward recipe from The Hairy Bikers (Edit: here's a video of them in crumpet action!). For those not in the know, The Hairy Bikers are two hairy blokes on the telly who ride around the countryside on motorbikes and cook things.

The crumpets were simple and satisfying to make. All that rising and waiting and rising and waiting was very soothing somehow. It was such a sweet feeling when I finally poured the batter into the crumpet rings and it went all bubbly like real live crumpets.

I ate the first one with doused with too much butter and eucalyptus honey as a two finger salute to the crumpet fascists of yesteryear. The rest were enjoyed more sensibly over the next few days. My favourite topping is a little butter and a scraping of Vegemite. Well worth the effort on a lazy Sunday if you like that sort of thing!

P.S. I posted about my crumpetry on the Up & Running forum and the wonderful Yvonne replied: "I never considered that they could be made. I assumed God just dropped them out of the sky ready made, like babies." Snortle!

Parsnip Extraction Day

Nine long months after chucking the tiny seeds into ground, today we finally got to meet our parsnips.

"Just like having a bairn, but better... it's cheaper and you can eat them!" said Gareth.

The parsnips were buried under a couple of inches of ice from the late November snow plus some fresh powder from last night. I was worried they'd have rotted away but they were just waiting patiently and getting extremely large!

I'll spare you the three minute epic video of Gareth grunting and swearing as he wrestled this baby from the earth and fast-forward to the moment of triumph instead:

They are very weird and gnarly looking. Some have three legs from their attempts to burrow deeper into our crappy soil. But I still love them too bits. Did I mention they are freaking HUGE? Here I have used a 400g/14oz can of coconut milk for scale. The can is about 10cm/4 inches tall so you can get an idea of the height of them. Some of the tops have a bigger diameter than the can.

It just blows my mind that for nine months while we've been working, eating, sleeping, angsting, travelling and running around like idiots, these beasts were just growing growing growing like mad under the ground.

I made this parsnip and ginger soup tonight and it was bloody tasty. Still have gazillions of snips left for Christmas Day too. Happy days.

Today's other highlight: watching this pigeon refuse to let a snow shower interrupt his dinner.

Season to taste

Thank you everyone for your take on staying healthy over the winter! There was so much brilliant stuff in the comments. The podcast listeners will be lapping up your collective wisdom next week.

Meanwhile I'm adjusting to the darkness much faster this year, aided by lunchtime walks, kickboxing and the slow cooker! That's crock pot to you Americans. I bought one in January and was in such a zombie state that I couldn't work up the energy to get it out of the box. But now? DUDE. What an invention! Shove foods in the pot in the morning, add hot liquid, switch on, ignore for 8 hours then be rewarded with a hot dinner? Everyone's a winner baby, that's no lie.

It is unsettling though, to arrive home to the smell of a tasty meal and bypassing that whole WTF's For Dinner panic. I never realised how time-consuming that panic was.

What do you want for dinner? I don't know, what do YOU want for dinner. I don't know, I asked you first. Well what's in the fridge? Dying mushrooms and jar of non-inspiration, what's in the cupboard? Just BORING stuff, lentils and shit, we never have anything good. Well we could get a takeaway. You said you were trying to be healthy. Yeah well I said that before my tastebuds were bored to tears by the contents of the cupboard. Fine. Why don't we have beans on toast? But I already had that for lunch.

Thanks to the slow cooker we sat down to dinner at 6.15 the other night. Before we knew it, forks were resting on empty plates and we looked at each other and said, "Now what?" I mean, it was still a whole 85 minutes before University Challenge started.

I fear the slow cooker will accelerate our descent into middle age. Next thing you know when I invite people over for dinner and they say, "Sure, shall we say 7PM?" I will reply, "I was thinking more like FOUR THIRTY," in the manner of some parents-in-law I may or may not know.

I've got a couple of cookbooks and have been reading blogs such as the insanely comprehensive A Year Of Slow Cooking, but if you have any crock pot crackers - particularly vegetarian ones - I'd love to hear them!

Bon weekend, comrades!

P.S. Not a slow cooker recipe, but a few weeks ago I made Juliet's Roast Chicken from one of my favourite blogs, A Wee Bit Of Cooking. It's basically a whole chicken roasted on a bed of sauerkraut, seasoned with paprika. It's the simplest dish ever but there aren't enough superlatives in the world for its goodness! I've been hassling everyone I know plus random strangers to cook it immediately... and now I am pestering YOU :)

Podcast, comments and yogurt

Running is the subject of today's new episode of Two Fit Chicks and a Microphone! Our American-Italian superstar Julia Jones is back to answer listener queries about stepping up to the 10K distance, stretches for runners, conquering hills, bathroom stops, staying motivated for big races and avoiding skanky black toenails.

» Check out Episode 15 over at the Two Fit Chicks website

I wanted to say a huuuuge thanks for all your incredible comments on the last entry. It really means a lot to read your words and to know you're not alone.

By the way, I've had to enable comment moderation because of increased spam, so your comments are stored and won't appear on the site right away. I usually get to them pretty quickly though!

In other news, here's one's for the UK yogurt nerds out there. I found a quite decent Fage Total 2% Greek Yogurt substitute! Onken Natural Set yogurt. I saw an ad in a foodie magazine which claimed it was "just as creamy" as Greek despite having less fat and calories. Pffft, I said. But beggars can't be choosers - no shops stock Total Greek 2% in my town (they only stock 0% which I don't like as much, and full fat which is a bit too full-on for my breakfast).

Verdict: Surprisingly creamy. And cheaper than Total - £1.08 for 500g of Onken versus £2.20 for 500g of Total. I tried a blob on top of some Red Beans and Rice where I'd gone crazy with the chillies. Also tried it with my pseudo-bircher muesli (fruit, oats and yogurt mixed together and left overnight) and it was a good consistency - thick enough to be creamy but enough "give" to blend with the other ingredients. It doesn't have as much protein as the Total - 3.9g versus 6.8g per 100g. Rock n roll!

How to grow pea shoots

I've been busting to tell you about the quickest, cheapest and easiest-to-grow salad leaf ever - pea shoots!

Pea shoots are simply the young leaves of a pea plant. Normal garden pea plants take months to grow and require more space and effort that my garden and enthusiasm currently allow. But pea shoots take just 2-4 weeks, and with minimal effort you are rewarded with delicate, juicy and tender leaves and tendrils.

I'd seen pea shoots in restaurant dishes or in expensive plastic bags at the supermarket and thought they must be a bit posh. But when the most excellent Alys Fowler recently demystified them on her show The Edible Garden, it looked so foolproof I had to give them a bash. She has red hair and you have to trust your own kind.

You start with a bag of ordinary old dried peas from the supermarket. This 500g bag cost about 60p and I've sowed six batches from it already.

If you're lucky you might come across these daggy Leo brand dried peas, just like the ones Alys used on her show. These were 51p for 250g so you are paying for the retro packaging.

Grab a container of choice and some potting compost (potting mix as they call it in Australia. What do you call it in the US? Is it all the same? Help me, proper gardeners! I guess I mean some nice healthy brown stuff? I use peat-free). You're only after the shoots here so you don't need it to be very deep - I use an inch or two.

Now scatter over some dried peas, then lightly cover them with some more compost. Water them gently - don't get too carried away like I did otherwise the peas will float to the top and you'll be cranky.

Leave them outdoors or on a sunny window sill. Water them whenever the soil looks a bit dry. If the sun is blasting hot move them into a shadier spot so they don't wilt. Not much of an issue round these parts :)

While you wait for the pea shoots to grow you can observe the loony squirrel across the street that climbs up to a second-floor window ledge then can't figure out how to get down.

Honestly he sat there for two hours. At first I thought he was asleep but then I zoomed in on his little face and it was a genuine "how the feck did I get into this mess?" expression. We were just about to head across the street with a ladder when he finally scrambled down.

So here's the first batch of pea shoots. I went completely overboard with the dried peas so it was like a pea afro. Once they're an inch or two high you just head outside with your scissors whenever you want a salad and snip off some leaves! Or just stick your face right into the plant and nibble like a rabbit.

They taste best when they're young and crisp - here in Scotland it's taking about two or three weeks. The flavour is delicate and fresh and faintly pea-some. After that the leaves start going a little flimsy.

Uses for pea shoots: Salads (especially when feta is involved!), stir-fries; garnishes for soups. Maybe stick them in those green smoothies. I like just munching a handful of shoots by themselves.

Growing pea shoots is so easy and perfect if you're short on space. They grow in pretty much anything - I'm using old yogurt pots and those dishes that mushrooms often come in - just punch some holes in the bottom for drainage.

So if you love your greenery and resent paying £2 for a plastic bag of weeds down the shops, why not give them a go?

The Forbidden Eclair

Highlights of the past few weeks:

Kicking off a mission to bake 50 different kinds of bread before I leave this earth.
This is brown soda bread, which is like Bread for Dummies since you just use baking soda - no faffing with yeast. It was bloody beautiful, especially dunked in Reassurance Soup.

Looked after the kids.
It's still a "shove random things in pots and cross fingers" approach because gardening books and websites just make me scream in confusion after awhile. But it's all looking green, so rock on!

Watched Scruffy, my new favourite Eating Disorder Pigeon, potter round the yard.
Maybe he got into a brawl or a cat tried to take him out. He was pretty much ignored by the other EDPs...

... but recently began to pursue a pretty little bird.

A week later and they are inseparable, guzzling seeds and wandering side by side down the rows in the veggie patch. Until Dr G yells out the window, "Oi! Get arf my parsnips!"

Dr G and I also spent a couple of days in Belfast and saw a Metallica gig.

And Dr G ate a chocolate eclair the size of his head.

(I had a custard tart with berries on it but the photo was blurry; hands shaking from anticipation)

Gareth is usually indifferent to sweets so I was surprised when he said, "Oh man, I'm having that eclair!"

"Really?" I said.

"Oh aye. I always wanted to have a chocolate eclair when I was a kid and Mum never let me have one so now I'm going to have one!"

"Dude that's a slippery slope," I joked, "I spent years eating all the stuff my mother never let me have when I was a kid and I'm still paying for it!"

He only got halfway through before threw down his spoon in defeat, saying that maybe his Mum had his best interests at heart after all.

How to grow your own sprouts

I've had some emails asking how I went about growing mung bean sprouts. Sprouts have to be the easiest way to get some homegrown greenery in your life so I thought I'd share what I've learned so far.

What is sprouting?
Sprouting is the fine art of soaking, draining and rinsing seeds and beans until they germinate, or sprout.

The most common kind you see supermarkets are alfalfa and mung beans but there's gazillions of sproutables, such as adzuki beans, broccoli seeds, chickpeas/garbanzos, hemp seeds, lentils, quinoa seeds and sunflower seeds.

Why should I grow spouts?

• They're dead tasty – they're magic on sandwiches (my favourite chicken, alfalfa and avocado) and have a magic way of pulling a salad together. Try the Leon superfood salad if you need convincing!
• They're cheap – a little bag of alfalfa costs £1 in my local supermarket and I get a maximum 3 salads out of it. 100g of alfalfa seed is £2.70 and you can grow piles more.
• They're good for you – see below.
• They're easy greens –You don't need a garden. You don't need dirt. You can grow them any time of year. They hate direct sunlight so they're perfect if you live in the dreary north.

What you do need is...

• Water – as they need to be rinsed twice a day. So if you live in Australia or lived there for a long time you'll have to deal with great stabs of guilt every time you rinse.
• A decent memory – it's so easy to forget to bathe the little fellas!

Why are they so good for you?
I don't know. I just like how they taste! Allow me to cut and paste some information from the internet.

Sprouts are highly nutritious because "they contain all elements a plant needs for life and growth." This is from World's Healthiest Foods:

“In the life of a plant, sprouting is a moment of great vitality and energy. The seed, after having remained quiet for an often long period of time, becomes more and more active and begins its journey up through the topsoil and into the open air. When it sprouts, a healthy seed activates many different metabolic systems. It converts some of its sugar content into vitamin C, to act as an antioxidant in the new open air environment. It also begins to synthesize a variety of new enzymes... On a gram for gram basis, sprouts are richer in vitamin C than the older, more mature plants they eventually become, because this moment in their lifecyle calls for a high level of vitality. For you to get the benefit of healthy sprouts, the sprouts need to be very fresh, and carefully refrigerated and handled.”

Now I shall quoth lazily from Wikipedia:

“Sprouts are rich in digestible energy, bio available vitamins, minerals, amino acids, proteins, beneficial enzymes and phytochemicals, as these are necessary for a germinating plant to grow.”

What do you grow them in?
You can be as cheap or as fancy pants as you like. Sprouts will grow in a simple glass jar or in a made-for-purpose sprouting vessel, like a tiered plastic one.

Where do I get the seeds and beans from?
I got my first packet of radish seeds from B&Q, a popular hardware shoppe here in merry old Britain. I later Googled "sprouting seeds" and ordered more from Living Food, a Cornwall company. The seeds are organic which is great because according to Wikipedia, "with all seeds, care should be taken that they are intended for sprouting or human consumption rather than sowing. Seeds intended for sowing may be treated with chemical dressings."

Now how does one sprout?

1. Soak your seeds in a little dish for time period that is correct for your chosen sprout type - it will usually say so on the packet. I just soak mine overnight whatever the type.
2. Drain the seeds into mesh sieve, rinse and drain again.
3. Transfer to your clean jar or sprouting container. Spread them out evenly.
4. Cover the container (with muslin or cling film or a lid) to prevent the sprouts from drying out. (Note: Most instructions I've read have this step but my three-tier sprouter doesn't have a cover. The top layer of sprouts seem to be working okay without being covered)
5. For the specified number of days, rinse and drain the sprouts every morning and evening to prevent mould forming. I do this by emptying the contents into a fine mesh sieve, rinsing, draining then shaking thoroughly then putting back into the jar/sprouter.
6. After the specified number of days your sprouts are ready for ‘harvesting’. Rinse the sprouts with fresh water and transfer to a bowl.
7. Eat immediately for maximum nutrition or store in the fridge for up to a few days.

Note: Let me know if any of the above makes no sense or seems grossly inaccurate, as I woke up at 4am today for no good reason and my brain is mush!

Now here's some photographical evidence.

This was my first ever batch of radish seeds, in for the soak


After a couple of days they were coming along nicely...


... until disaster struck. Mould!
Okay it was an entirely preventable disaster. I kept forgetting to rinse them.

Despite this setback I'd seen it was possible for those little puppies to grow even during the miserable armpit that was February 2010.

Keen to try other varieties, I took the plunge and spent £20 on a three-tier sprouter.


Radish, mung beans and snow peas all soaked and ready to go


Snow peas after about five days


A mix of mung beans and snow pea sprouts, ready for scoffing


Alfalfa on a salad. Sure it looks kinda hairy but it tastes great!


This is a resident Eating Disorder Pigeon, flopped on the needs-a-mow grass having just munched all the Brussels Sprout seedlings in the veggie patch. Moral to the story: Stick to indoor seed sprouting and you'll never know such heartbreak!
 

Two Fit Chicks Episode 09 - Food Glorious Food

Just a quickie to say there's a new episode of Two Fit Chicks and a Microphone today.

Our topic is Food Glorious Food and we are joined by the legend that is nutritionist Kathryn Elliott of Limes and Lycopene. There's talk of Vitamin D, whey protein, tutus and one-star reviews.

This one was a real cack to record and edit so hope you enjoy! I only wish I could pissfart around with silly sound effects in Garageband all day instead of working in the real world.

» Check out Episode 9 over at the Two Fit Chicks website

Friday Link Feast #5

• Daily Mile - you might call it a Facebook for exercise. I'm using it more to record workouts than succumbing to the timesuck of yet another social media thingy. Geeks rejoice: it makes a groovy graph! of your weekly activity - it's motivating see those bursts of movement add up.
• Orangette's Oatmeal Pancakes - I am swoony fan of Molly Wizenburg, least of all because she is a redhead and I feel it is important to support your own kind. I'm trying to introduce a Civilised Sunday Breakfast routine at Crooked House, especially since we have an actual table now! (scored free from a friend who was about to donate it charity!). These pancakes have been the triumph so far. I used less butter and sugar and added blueberries to the batter... yummo. Cold leftovers festooned with almond butter and sliced bananas were also smashing.
• Matar Paneer - I had a random craving for both green peas and paneer cheese last week and this curry recipe was Google's solution. I cut the oil down to a tablespoon, stir-fried the paneer at the start to give it nice crispy edges, added a tin of tomatoes to bulk it up, and substituted about a quarter cup of ground almonds for the cream and yogurt. Very tasty and super quick.
• The Thrifty Gardener  - Alison Lewis has only five videos on her YouTube but they charmed my pants off. She tells you how to hunt down snails, repurpose random objects and most helpfully, How To Grow Potatoes In A Dust Bin. Totally going to do that!
• Dietgirl Facebook page - they call these things Fan Pages but it feels rather pathetic to say BE MY FAN PLZ. So think of it as a place to chat to fellow Dietgirl visitors, ask questions and read mini updates and links when writing a Proper Blog Entry seems far too taxing :)

The End of Summer

Have you seen the tomatoes? Do you want to see the tomatoes? Come closer! Let me show you the tomatoes!

I'm hoping that this tomato hysteria means I'll get all the excess exuberance out of my system now, so if I ever become a parent I won't bore folks to death by shoving dozens of blurry photos of my shriveled offspring in their faces. Here it is sleeping. And here it is screaming. And here it is screaming from another angle. Here it is screaming with snot streaming out its nose. Isn't it stunning?

Seriously, the tomatoes are ace. They've turned the greenhouse into the jungle.

I can't believe we grew enough stuff to fill a bowl. I wish you could smell how good this smelled. Also shown: a few kickarse little chillies.

Five months of labour has produced approximately two punnets of cherry tomatoes. It may not be time and cost effective but it's been excellent learning something completely new. And the mind-blowing taste made it all worthwhile. If you think I'm exaggerating just ask Gareth. I think I've mentioned before in the six years I've known him he has only ever used three different phrases to positively describe anything in life: food, holidays, hot chicks, concerts, books, thrilling sporting events, etc:

1. Pretty good!
2. Not bad!
3. Alright!

But when he ate a tomato straight from the vine on the weekend he actually paused in his tracks and said, "Whoa. That is amazing."

!!!

Now summer is most definitely over and things are happening on the farm behind Cow Poo Manor. Namely, the complete destruction of the Cow Poo Pile!

Sunday morning:

Sunday afternoon:

Indeed the mound was not just for decoration. They ploughed it all into the fields once the hay had been harvested. Now they've put in something else (gee I'm down with the farmer chat). I spent Tuesday evening watching seagulls chase the tractor.

Sloth and Superfood Salad

I'm home alone this week so I'm relishing the chance to be slovenly. My friends bitch about sloppy man companions but I have the opposite scenario. Dr G, typical engineer, thrives on order and tidiness. Like on Sunday when I sloshed my cup of tea and a tiny wee splash landed on the coaster, the poor fella tsk-tsked and dashed off to the kitchen to fetch a cloth, despite my howl of protest, It's a COASTER! Let it do its JOB! Because there is no way he could sit down and enjoy his cuppa with that disorderly droplet taunting him.

Usually when Dr G goes away I plonk my bag in the hallway when I walk in the door, shed clothes all over the house and take a casual approach to dishwashing and bedmaking then clean up in a frenzy an hour before he returns. I am trying to overcome a long history of sloth which I've written about before but can't find the link... during winter I'd iron just the collar and one sleeve of my school shirts then carefully hang them in the wardrobe, so when The Mothership opened the door for a spot check it'd look like I'd done my chores. You can imagine the pitch and boom of the famous schoolteacher voice when she finally rumbled that one!

Another thing I do when Dr G is away is eat lots of lazy salads. He likes healthy food but kind of gets a haunted Is This It look when it's only green things. Hehe. Last night included green lentils, feta and cherry tomatoes but I totally overdid the dijon mustard in the dressing. I couldn't stop snorting as I watched Scotland's Andy Murray go to five sets Wimbledon.

Tonight I made Leon's Superfood Salad which I'd had on my To Cook list for two years. The main ingredients: quinoa, broccoli, cucumber, alfalfa sprouts, mint, parsley, peas, sunflower seeds and avocado that I neglected to buy so substituted chives which is no substitute really but it was the right colour. Oh and our old friend feta. Then lemon and olive oil dressing to tie the room together. So bloody tasty! Even better than the one I ate at the Leon in Carnaby Street years ago, no doubt coz I was about 300% less stingy with the feta.

Serve with a glass of water
and an idiot-filled episode of Property Snakes And Ladders

Hoping to get back to some regular witterings; everything's been a little crazy and busy. Hope you guys are doing well out there?!

Freshly Baked

This weekend at Cow Poo Manor: a fresh delivery...

 

... accompanied by a strong breeze which wafted right through our kitchen window. It was just the ticket for a hangover.

(ETA: The Pile is about 300 metres from the house - this was the first time I'd ever caught a whiff!)

I read an interview with Matt Lucas of Little Britain fame where he said, "If I never drank alcohol again I wouldn’t be in the least bothered... You could be spending your money on crisps, couldn’t you?"

I feel exactly the same about booze. And yet I ended up quietly rat-arsed on vodka when I met the lovely former House of Sport colleagues on Friday night (if any of you are out there, HELLO! It was rockin to see you). I got home just as Gareth arrived back from a thrash metal gig. He said he was hungry so I said, "I KNOW, chips and curry sauce!"

Next thing it's 2AM and we're watching Twenty20 Cricket highlights and I'm waxing lyrical about how good chips and curry sauce and fried rice are together; how I was a fool to mock Gareth for the combination all those years ago; how the nubbly texture of the rice balanced the slop of the sauce; how it was oh so wrong but somehow right... this is why I don't drink very often; it always leads to trouble.

Then Saturday 1PM; finally functional enough to make some vegetarian sausage rolls...

Whoops, conjoined.

Tastes amazingly sausage-like but no animal parts here whatsoever... just nuts, oats, herbs, breadcrumbs, etc - recipe here at Green Gourmet Giraffe. Best sausage roll ever! Aside from Cornucopia Bakery in Braddon, Australian Capital Territory, OZ.

Next up: stumbling around garden, giddy at first sign of actual tomatoes.

Currently the size of your pinky fingernail!

Also a sudden glut of roses out front that we have no idea how to look after, in the most daggy coral colour that reminds me of old ladies I have known. 

 

Then we headed off to Carnoustie to see more good friends and their herd of children and dog. Went for a walk and got chased by frothing German Shepherds. Then curry - proper; not the drunken chip kind. Then almost falling asleep into a glass of wine.

Today, a kayaking party at the lake for two of the kids' birthday. I didn't partake because I cannot kayak for shit. I know you have to do it more than once to improve but I choose not to improve with ten eight-year-olds as witnesses!

Then we had a BBQ. Then the kidlets toasted marshmallows and when they ran out of marshmallows they just toasted anything they could find. So here we have a delightful fusion on a stick: strawberry, cherry tomato, cocktail pork sausage and a Terry's Chocolate Orange segment.

Now salad and leftover snag roll then BED. Hope you all had a good weekend!

Salad Days

Less than four weeks ago these little green whippernsnappers were floppy and uninspired. And planted really crookedly by some flaming amateur.

Despite their snug quarters and my long history of killing plants, they're actually doing pretty well now!

 

So are the herbs, despite repeated attacks.

The rocket plants were reduced to shreds by the same boofheaded creature but after a week in the greenhouse ICU, they were back from the brink!

NB: Rocket means arugula in the American language. Rocket is also a Scots word for a crazy person. Try it on your friends today, ya mad rockets!

The greenhouse also features a random pile o bubble wrap and this stunning portrait of Urquhart Castle.

This flower has nothing to do with our efforts, it just appeared on Friday. It's a biggun. Does anyone know what it is?

Today I finally chopped down some salad. That is once I'd removed the stray feathers and dodged the leaves anointed with pheasant crap. But there was plenty of goodness left. Oh YEAH... it was tasty! And the rocket was the most peppery and delicious I'd ever eaten. Much better than paying 99p for a withered bag of supermarket stuff. I go through about three bags of various salad leaves a week so this is GREEN GOLD, baby!

Six in Scotland

Six years ago today I left Australia for sunny Scotland!

Leading up to our depature I grumbled, "If one more person tells me how they gained so much weight while living overseas, I will punch them in the face. If I'm to believe what I'm told, it rains pure beer in Edinburgh and the streets are paved with lard."

Well I can now say with certainty that you can lose and gain weight on any side of the world you fancy; lard is not discriminating! I've stacked it on Scotland and taken it back off. I've lost weight in Oz then gained 6 kilos on my three week visit in 2005. You can do it anywhere if you put your mind to it!

For all the horror stories and sterotypes about the Scottish diet and lifestyle, in many ways I'm a healthier person than when I left Oz six years ago. I've not had a car for six years so walking everywhere has boosted my fitness. The weather has made me more adventurous too. I'd never have tried hill walking or canoeing back home since I fry to a crisp at the first hint of sunshine. I used to slather myself with SPF50 just to peg my washing on the line! So I'd never have attempted anything like the Moonwalk marathon walk - I bitched up a storm during the five hour 20-mile training walk on a Scottish spring day so can you imagine the bag of WHINE I would have been in Australia? I'm a wimp with a wan complexion so the Scottish climate suits me well.

The downsides are mostly dietary. I didn't drink tea before I met Gareth. There's nothing wrong with tea in itself - just all the goodies that go with it! Six years ago biscuits (cookies) were barely on my radar but now I know the pleasures of a good custard cream or Digestive and I am in recovery for my HobNob addiction.

I also was not a cheese person back in Oz, then Gareth got me hooked on delicious bitey mature cheddar. I also would have run screaming from a hot bag of shrivelled chips after a boozy night out or the carb-on-carb wickedness of a chip butty but that is normal to me now.

Hmmm. Hopefully the good and bad points balance each other alright :)

Right now I'm at the airport about to fly to the grand kingdom of Australia to visit the family after 3.5 long years away, woohoo! I am determined not to stack on the lard like the last visit. Oh dear. My mantra is: Violent Crumble bars are not a breakfast food! By the way, there's no cut and paste on this weird terminal so I can't link to anything in the entry so sorry it's all linkless and a wee bit random!

Better scoot. Hope to update while in Oz. Take care, dear comrades! Hope you are well!

Almond Butter Hunt

Does anyone know of good purveyors of almond butter in the UK?

I bought three jars of Trader Joe's Crunchy Unsalted back in my suitcase from NYC and I'm onto the second jar already! I'm rationing it carefully but dreading the day when it's gone.

I could grind my own again but the little food processor would probably explode from the strain. The UK brands I've tried (Meridian, Biona) have a grainy, uninspired texture but the Trader Joes has fantastic stabby chunks of almond in it. God bless America. Sniff sniff.

Scones, tea and AOL

Good morning AOL.com visitors - thank you for dropping by!

If you're not sure where to click first, you could peek inside my book The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl right here, watch me yabbering on about my lard-busting efforts on CBS The Early Show or check out some of my alleged best entries.

I've been in London this weekend, visiting my sister for her birthday. She had a gift voucher for afternoon tea at the very posh Dorchester Hotel. Unlike the snotty lady at the table beside us, I did not sigh and say airily, "I really just don't get hungry in the afternoons" when presented with French pastries and fresh scones with jam and clotted cream.

Why spend £40 on AFTERNOON TEA if you don't like to bloody eat in the afternoon? Sure I should probably walk home to Scotland to burn off the calories but life is for living! Nothing wrong with a little of what you fancy. Mmmm, macaron.

Green News

1. I passed my Green Belt grading at kickboxing yesterday! It was hell! Sweet, punchy hell. It hurts to type now. I managed to screw up the bits that I'd been feeling confident about, and do well at the things I was worried about, which meant it all evened out nicely. Woohoo!
   
   Somehow in the sparring I managed to kick my opponent with my big toe, despite the gigantic padded Mickey Mouse shoes. It bent back very painfully. I still suck at sparring, but otherwise I'm on a total high and amazed at the power of the human brain to learn stuff. A few weeks ago I was chucking tantrums trying to do a spin kick but I managed six in a row yesterday. If only I could apply my kickboxing dedication to other aspects of my life I would be unstoppable. Limping and quite ineffectual in a dark alley... but otherwise unstoppable.
     
2. In other Green developments, last week I made The Best Broccoli Of Your Life, an Ina Garten recipe as seen on the Amateur Gourmet. People are so free and easy with superlatives these days... how many volumes of those Greatest Rock Album In The World... EVER! albums did they bring out in the 90s? But this easy recipe truly awesomizes broccoli - oven roasted with garlic then lashed with lemon zest and juice and a wee bit of Parmesan. The original calls for lots of olive oil but I only used a dribble and accidentally forgot the basil and pine nuts but it was still brilliant. Even Gareth who has just three adjectives to describe anything in this world (Not Bad, Pretty Good or Alright) went cuckoo. I cooked almost two pounds of broccoli and we guzzled the lot of it. Oh it was lick-the-bowl good. Let me know if you try it! Come join the broccoli cult!
   
   Warning: I know I said in the last entry that there's no need to worry; that your digestive system adjusts to a vegetarian diet. However, if you have never consumed a pound of broccoli in a oner before, you can expect the only thing you'll give your partner on Valentine's Day is the Gift of Fragrance.

How to eat less meat

There's been a glut of vegetarian questions lately...

(Edit: Well there WAS a glut of questions, back in freakin' May 2008 when I started writing this entry. Slackarse! I'm determined to finish today!)

... You've shacked up with one, you want to be one, you want to be a part-time one, or you just want to beat gas prices and find out if you can propel yourself to the office with your very own wind power.

Whatever your reasons for wanting to eat less/no meat - economical, ethical, environmental - your questions were about how to put that desire into practice:

• how do I change my diet?
• how do I make non-meat meals tasty and satisfying?
• what do I do with all those beans? 
• what about the FARTING?

As always I can only offer my own experiences and hope you might find something helpful there. Also, in the eons that have passed since I started this entry, I've noticed lots of bloggers talking about decreasing their meat consumption - so if anyone out there has some tips, feel free to join in!

I grew up on a farm where it was blasphemy not to eat meat every night. There was always half a cow in our freezer at least. I only knew one vegetarian, the lovely Carrie. We gave her a lot of hell about it at school. There was a range of vegetarian products in Australia that were all called Not-something. Not Burgers. Not Bacon. Not Dogs. Every time the poor girl grilled one up for lunch we'd all cackle, "How's your Not Burger?... NOT BAD?"

My meat consumption decreased sharply when I moved to Scotland, firstly for financial reasons. Then I hooked up with Vegetarian Gareth and when I moved in with him, he insisted I shouldn't change my diet on his account. But I found it more practical to cook one meal and enjoyed the culinary challenge. I also liked how vegetarian cooking usually resulted in less skanky pots to clean!

These days I treat meat and fish like I do chocolate  - they're Sometimes foods. I go for the best quality I can afford and try to be mindful of sustainability and origin and all that stuff.

So here's the step-by-step meat-reducing process I went through:

1. Adapting old meaty recipes
Back when I first shacked up with Dr G, I started by taking my old standard meat recipes and finding veggie substitutes. This meant lots of beans and lentils. Mostly from cans (with no added sugar or salt) because I couldn't be bothered soaking dried ones and our unreliable stove meant you'd have to stand beside it for hours making sure the little beans didn't stick to the pot.

Some favourites:

• Canned green or brown lentils - great sub for minced beef in spaghetti bol. Once you add some herbs, vegetable stock and wine and simmer for a good while, it gets nice and rich and you don't miss the beef.
• Borlotti beans - these ones are the ones they use in baked beans. I love them for bean burgers - just mash up a tin of beans, add some fresh herbs, some chopped onion, maybe some pesto, or some nuts and seeds, roll into balls, oven bake or pan fry. Ace.
• Butter beans - Dr G makes this great butterbean mash - just sautee an onion, add the butterbeans and a dash of Tabasco then squash with a stab blender. Sometimes he adds chopped herbs or a sprinkle of cheese.

2. Dabbling with meat substitutes
I went through a phase of trying lots of vegetarian products, particularly Quorn. What is Quorn? It's mycoprotein... fungi sort of thing, flavoured and formed into various shapes - sausages, burgers, mince. Like the Not range back in Oz. I tried it all, baby. It's quite tasty, but the Quorn "bacon" did me in... it tasted nothing like bacon and it had the most creepy texture. I decided I'd rather have some REAL bacon every now and then instead of a pretender.

3. Getting big and bold with flavours
Once I got bored with faux meat I thought about flavoursome ingredients that would jazz up plain veggies and beans. Olives, capers, sundried tomatoes, chilies, feta cheese, lemon, lime. Lots of fresh herbs too. Trying new spices with weird names. It's lovely how a sprinkle of this and that can make a vegetable sing.

4. Putting the veg centre stage
For a couple of years we got a vegetable box delivery. For £10 per fortnight all sorts of weirdo veggies would show up on our doorstep. This forced me to get more imaginative and build the meals around the vegetable, whereas in the old days it revolved around the meat. I found Leith's Vegetarian Bible and the Riverford Organics recipe pages great for those "What the HELL do I do with this leafy thing?" moments.

5. Finding some new old standards
I was cool with the veggie thing once I had a couple of recipes for that worked every time and pleased a crowd. I always trot out Sophie's Comforting Butternut Squash Dal that I have linked to 27 times before. Sooo soothing and filling and tasty, it would never occur to you that meat was "missing". Plus if you do the spicy onion garnish and yogurt and naan bread, it looks like you've gone to lots of fuss. Hehe.

I'd also be lost without Delia Smith's vegetarian shepherds pie. It is the Friends For Lunch standard - although I make it with about 75% less butter than Delia. It's one of those dishes that make you sigh, "Ahh... lentils rule". It showed me that the beans and lentils can be flavoursome in their own right. They are such great "carriers" for other flavours. It's a very adaptable recipe - I like it with sweet potato or butternut or parsnip mash instead of plain potato. I also swap out the goats cheese coz Dr G is freaked out by goats cheese (I just asked him again why he hates it and he said, "URRGH! Coz it just tastes of goats." Righto then.)

6. Devouring food blogs
There's no better way of getting ideas than from snooping at what other people do. Here are some of my favourite food blogs that are either vegetarian or just have some great vegetable recipes:

• Green Gourmet Giraffe
• A Wee Bit Of Cooking
• 101 Cookbooks
• Fat Free Vegan
• Orangette
• Mostly Eating
• The Gooseberry Fool

Oh yeah... the farting. Your body does adjust! I've eaten beans for lunch every day this week and I've not issued a single trumpet. My colleagues will be pleased to know that.

Further reading:

• Yottam Ottolenghi's weekly Guardian column, The new vegetarian - swoony recipes!
• Vegetarian Society - great beginners guides and nutritional information if you're worried you'll fade away if you go veggie.
• Eating less meat to save the earth - NPR interview with Mark Bittman (via Jen)

Crumbs

I can't wait to tell my sister Rhiannon that there's a chain of bakeries over here called Crumbs. Back when we were kids we used to play Barbies, as you do. The Barbies lived in a dinky dollhouse with doors that only came up to their waists.

But the fact that the Barbies had to crawl around their own house did not stop them pursuing their dreams. They didn't just lie in bed tangled up with Ken all day; these dames were entrepreneurs. They turned the kitchen into a restaurant and it was called Crumbs.

It was a fine establishment. It even had an elevator made out of string and an Avon perfume box. I lived vicariously through the whole operation - the Barbies could cook and eat whatever they wanted. If they whined about being hungry, nobody rolled their eyes and said, "Just have an apple!"

Rhi and I had big plans for Crumbs and the Barbies. They were going to expand overseas, Crumbs International. They would move from the tiny dollhouse to a swanky skyscraper. But that was 1985 and now some bastards have beat us to it!

I bought one of their red velvet cupcakes today. It wasn't a cup so much as a behemoth pint glass of a cake. I've gotta hand it to Crumbs - they may not have flowing blonde tresses and plastic legs up to their armpits, but they make a tasty cupcake!

It looked really pretty too, until I squashed it my bag.

Troutin' About

I fear we're going to have to abandon the house. Pack up our suitcases and just live in the car. Not because we're drowning in bills and mortgages, but because the place stinks to bloody high heaven.

I innocently pan-fried a trout fillet on Wednesday night and now you can barely breathe for the fish fug.

I scrubbed the pan clean. I took out the rubbish that contained the fish wrappings. I doused every room with air freshener and Febreeze whilst singing, Trout! Trout! Let it all out! But that just made it smell like fishy flowers. So we left the windows wide open all night long... yet the stench persisted, more evil than before.

I've been pseudo-vegetarian for a few years now - I usually reserve meat for when we dine out - so it's been yonks since I cooked fish. Have I forgotten some crucial information? Has fish always been this stinky? Is trout a particularly pungent specimen? Is it because I pan-fried it - would it have been less brutal had I given it a gentle grilling?

"Maybe the fish wasn't fresh," Gareth said as we lay awake and shivering in our oxygen masks last night.

"It was fresh! It was bloody tasty."

"Are you sure it wasn't bad? You haven't had the squits, have you?"

"THE SQUITS? I never want to hear you say that word again!"

"It's a great word! It's one of those words that sounds like its meaning."

"It's onomatopoeic."

"That's what I said."

When I left the house this morning the icy wind rattled through the hallway and I thought perhaps it was getting a little better. But I've just received a text from Gareth: I'm freezing here and it still smells like trout!

I was just trying to get in some Omega-3's, dammit. I'm sticking to sunflower seeds from now on.