The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl

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.

Dinners with Bloggers

I did some quality blognobbing while in New York. Meeting bloggers always turns out to be the highlight of my travels. Aye, even better than the food!

When I started blogging in 2000 people would gasp in horror if you mentioned meeting Internet Folk. Axe murderers! Unwashed nerds! But now everyone spews their guts online so it's cool.

Gareth has come to enjoy tagging along, too. We rock up to our destination and he says with infinite patience, "Any appointments? What stranger are we dining with this evening?"

Seems Brooklyn is where the bloggers are at; we spent half our time over there. On our second night we met up with Pamela in Park Slope. We've been blog buddies for yonks and finally met at BlogHer last year, so I was dead chuffed to see her again.

We started off with a spot of neighbourhood window shopping. I fell in love with a robot sculpture in a hipster boutique - it had a ye olde box camera for a body and flash bulbs for eyes. But it was $600, dammit. We also rummaged through vintage clothing shops, in which I realised I'd need to drop at least another twenty pounds for vintage clothing to be really viable. Then I decided I couldn't be arsed and would just have to stick to H&M.

The Oldest Trick in the Book

Dear Makers of Twix,

I consider myself to be a smart consumer and not one to be sucked into your marketing japes but today you got me good.

It was 11AM and I was twitching with the need for chocolate. I went downstairs to the vending machine in search of a small hit.

The Twix was singing to me -  one because it's on my Totally Worth It list and two because the number on the label caught my eye - 142 calories. BARGAIN!

"Dudes! Did you know a Twix only has 142 calories?" I announced to my colleagues moments later through a spray of biscuity crumbs. "Rather economical for two fingers of chococaramel joy! Who woulda thought?"

NB: We're not saddo office cliches who sit around obsessing about diets and thighs and whatnot, but at least seventeen times a week you will hear the phrase, You know, I am totally gagging for a chocolate. So the news of the reasonable-caloried Twix was well received!

Later on I was filling in my online food journal thingo and looked up Twix and it said 284 calories. What the hell? Then I realised it was 142 calories per 28 grams... that is, 142 calories PER BLOODY FINGER.

I can't believe I fell for the oldest trick in the food packaging book: the Per Serve Nutritional Information. I'm known as the grizzled diet veteran with the nerdy blog but now I've made a dick of myself crowing to the comrades, EAT UP KIDS! Get your chocolate hit here!

I bet you have hidden cameras installed in the venue machine and you watch us from your sugar-scented headquarters, lipreading our delight, Wow only 142 calories! Then you pump your corporate fists and cackle as another sucker shoves in their 50p.

It's not that I give a rats how many calories are in your Twix; it was a tasty diversion. I'm boycotting your product purely because you reeled me in with your shiny wrapper and made me feel compelled to prattle on about it like a tit.

The boycott is going to last at least two days. So there!

Sincerely,
Dimwit of Dunfermline

Recipe Corner: Spinach & Feta Frittata

Depending which definition you choose, you could call this recipe a frittata, a tortilla or a Spanish omelette. After my mathematical debacle in the last entry I'm unwilling to commit to an answer. Hehehe.

In this household it has been known variously as:

• There's A Vegetarian At My Table WTF Should I Do
• I'm Too Lazy To Cook But Realistically This Is Quicker Than Getting A Takeaway
• Refrigerator Graveyard In A Pan

Reason for today's culinary diversion: I found this Leftover Recipe Competition on Weight Loss Resources. I raided the fridge for the most shriveled ingredients and got all geeked up to enter. But then realised that might be a bit dodgy, since they kindly pimped the heck out of my book. So I thought I'd share it here instead.

Astounding Feats of Arithmetic

The Scottish Government is running a campaign for a healthier nation called Take Life On. Billboard sayz: change your life by swapping plate of flaccid chips for plate of pasta.

Some folks will get all snobby about it and suggest refined white pasta with a token blob of tomato goo isn't particularly nutritious. Then there's the billboard with a beer on it, imploring you try one night per week without a pint. But the campaign is all about the value of small changes adding up to a healthier you and I'm all for that. You gotta start somewhere, says she who once Drove Thru four times a week.

Must say though, first time I walked past that billboard I thought, "Ooh. Quite fancy chips for my dinner." I've been living here too long!

. . .

100 PushUps Update

Good news: I can now do 12 consecutive proper push-ups! (started out at 3)

Slightly crappy news: I needed to do 16 in order to progress to Week 3. FAIL!

Now I have to repeat Week 2, which had already taken 3.5 weeks to complete. At this rate I will be the World's Oldest Blogger by the time I get to 100.  But my goal for six weeks was to get to 20, so I'm on my way to being able to respond if someone barks, "drop and give me twenty!"

Well... at this stage I'm only any good if conditions are perfect - properly hydrated, well rested, no kickboxing class the night before, not in a bad mood, etc. One day I'll work up to a Spontaneous Show-off level of pushup prowess and I'll drop to the floor in supermarket queues just because I can.

. . .

Any mathemagicians out there? Dr G and I have been having a heated debate about my push up statistics, namely by what percentage I have increased my ability. Could do 3, can now do 12. One of us says 300%, the other 400%. We'veve been sitting here scratching our heads for an embarrassingly long time!

Our excuse is that it's 1AM and we also had a very very late Friday night. Actually Gareth has that PhD so he really has no excuse at all. I am so brain dead that I just asked him, "Is magician spelled with a J?"

Shauna used to be able to do just 3 push-ups, but can now do 12.
By what % has her push-up ability increased?
300%
400%
I'm not going to dignify that with a response,
you pair of numpties!

Free web polls

Bubble and Squeak

Tonight I went to my pal V's house to practice kickboxing in her back yard. When she called up with the invitation I automatically said, I caaaan't. But then I remembered - no Moonwalking, no DIY... I'm free! I'm freeeeee! I dropped to my knees, Tim Robbins in Shawshank style.

We were joined by fellow kickboxing fiend H, and the three of us literally kicked each others arses in the fading light while Max the Dog growled at nothing in particular.

The love affair with kickboxing grows hotter every day. I'm clobbering people in my dreams. I've added in another class too, more advanced and full of intimidating fighter chicks. But it's like what Gareth says to me when I don't want to order in restaurants because I worry they won't understand my accent, "It's good for your development!"

. . .

Things that don't make much sense

#1 - How I can persuade myself to go for walks lasting up to eight consecutive hours, yet at the end of every working day I struggle to walk eight seconds to the kitchen to wash my revolting coffee mug.

#2 - How I have a website with my weight posted on it and a book with my weight written in it, yet I run away screaming when invited to a WiiFit Gathering because I don't want everyone seeing my BMI.

. . .

Dudes, we have CARPET! After bare chipboard for nine months, every step now feels like we're bouncing on the moon. It's added a pleasant dimension to the 100 PushUps Challenge; it smells fantastic when I collapse to the deck. Only downside is I have to re-learn how to be cautious with wine and beetroot.

We also have a COUCH! Although I kind of miss the fold-up camping chairs, the way they make you stink like an Arbroath Smokie.

. . .

I also unpacked the new scanner that we've had for three months, which means I've finally scanned my List of Dinners as some folks kindly requested. You'll see it's a total dog's breakfast but it's purely designed to jog my memory when doing the weekly meal planning, because I always forget what the options are.

Note: "Dr. G Soup" is a recipe that Gareth devised. I haven't chopped him up and turned him into soup.

. . .

Rhiannon and I were in the queue at H&M yesterday when a girl came over and asked politely, "Are you Shauna Reid?"

I tell you what, my heart hammered ninety to the dozen. Have I stolen something by mistake? Have I parked illegally? But I don't even have a car!

Then she said, "I read your blog!" My face burned and words deserted me and I think I might have said something really stupid. But I did manage ask the lovely lass her name. It was Sarah and she said she has a blog too.

HELLO Sarah, if you're out there! Thank you for saying hi! I'm sorry for being a gibbering fool. I was just a wee bit embarrassed because I knew when you came over I had truly slovenly posture and a surly I Am So Over This Shopping Trip expression. If I'd been more organised I would have been doing bicep curls with those 6-pack socks they always have at the checkouts, to be more inspirational blogger-like!

What I Eat

Recently my gurning ginger mug appeared in the Washington Post, along with Deborah of Drop The Fork and Gerry of Disease Proof. Gerry contacted us afterwards asked if we'd fancy tracking our food and exercise for a week, to show what three different weight loss maintainers put away.

I hesitated before accepting his invitation. "What do you eat on a typical day?" is one of my most frequent of FAQs but it's always made me feel a little uncomfortable, because I don't really have a typical day and I'd hate for anyone to think it was any sort of blueprint for health. It all depends on what's in the cupboard, cravings du jour, level of fatigue/crankiness, etc.

I also know what I used to be like - trawling blogs and old copies of Slimming magazine for What Successful Losers Eat, seeking patterns and clues; as if searching for the Da Vinci Menu Plan that would unlock all the diet secrets of the universe. I can imagine me analysing my journal:

ME OF 2001:   She ate all that food?! And salmon two nights in a row? Chinese takeaway!? White basmati rice?

ME OF 2008:  [defensive screech] We'd run out of brown rice! I was desperate! The takeaway was Gareth's idea!*

[Cat fight]

(* Last Thursday night after measuring a couch at Steve's house [long story]  Gareth said unto me, "You know how you wrote that blog entry about being tired and hungry and convincing each other to eat dodgy dinners?" then I said, "Chinese takeaway. Woohoo!")

I'd hoped to be healthy and holy all week long, especially knowing there's at least two nutritionists reading this blog. But the end result was more realistic, honest and typical of how I eat -- mostly because I kept forgetting I'd be broadcasting my food intake until  after I'd wedged the spring roll/carrot cake into my mouth.

(I also kept forgetting to photograph my meals until it was too late. My sole contribution was a plate of lentil and tomato goo. Sorry for letting the team down, Gerry!)

So what can you tell from a week's worth of food? It's a snapshot in time. You can't see that the day before we started journaling, I walked up a big hill then scoffed fish, chips and mushy peas afterwards. You can't see that the day after we finished, I was lazy and ate a dozen shriveled almonds for brekkie.

However, it's a reasonable picture of how eat so I can feel:

• satisfied
• not enslaved to the stove
• fueled for exercise
• confident that I'll keep fitting into my clothes
• Balanced and SANE!

Other highly scientific conclusions from this experiment:

• There is tea running through my veins instead of blood
• If not tea, then plain yogurt
• Some days I am a beacon of virtue, some days I'm the opposite
• I eat a helluva lot of beans and lentils
• I am not bothered by repetition in my diet
• I am not bothered by repetition in my diet
• I! Love! Chocolate!

You can check out all three food journals on Disease Proof.

Going Solo

Do you think it's easier to stick with healthy eating when you're on your own, or with a partner?

(or sibling, housemate, etc)

I have pondered this one many times, especially since shacking up with the Scotsman. There are advantages and disadvantages with both...

Group Effort
Pros

• Somebody to share the cooking and cleaning
  I tend to do most of the cooking and Dr G does the cleaning up. It works for us - he chops vegetables too slowly for my liking; I leave too many "bits" on the dishes for his liking.
• Not wanting to look like a greedy lard arse
  Gareth doesn't pass judgement on what I eat, but I still feel less inclined to scarf down a third chocolate biscuit if there's other people around.

Cons

• Persuasion
  Despite my diligent menu planning, if either of us is tired or grumpy it can take very little cajoling to ditch the Plan and have cheese on toast or a takeaway.
• I'll have what he's having
  Gareth likes a quiet beer and a bag of crisps some evenings, and even though I'm not a beer and crisp person, I feel compelled to eat something just because he is. So there.
  
• Man Portions
  I still struggle with a childish sense of, "But but but! His slice of cake is bigger than MINE!" My body simply does not need as much food as Gareth's, but I still resent the fact and find it difficult not to dish up the same portions for myself.

Solo Efforts

Pros

• Simplicity
  I eat very simply when I'm on my own. Poached egg on toast. Fish or veggie burger with salad. I'll make a pot of soup and eat it four nights in a row. Mostly because I'm too lazy to make a mess of the kitchen! But also when Dr G is in the house I feel like I should make the meal more exciting and less snacky, despite him being a lot less bothered about what we eat for dinner than I am.
• Easy routines
  Gareth has been working away for a few days and as usual I've slipped into healthy little robot mode - packing my lunch the night before, organising my breakfast, cooking dinners for later in the week, doing all my planned exercise. When he's here, I can easily use him as an excuse. I often go looking for distractions - yapping away when I get home from work, asking him does he want a cuppa instead of doing my weights DVD... next thing it's 8PM and we can't be arsed cooking dinner.

Cons

• No witnesses
  There are times when I still wrestle with the old "Quick! Eat while noone's looking" mentality. As I said earlier, Gareth doesn't give a rats' what I eat, but there is something about being home alone that makes me look at the Hillwalking Snickers bars in the fridge that I can normally ignore and the wheels start turning... How many were there the other day? Would he notice if I ate one? Would I have time to replace it?!

Hot Carb on Carb Action!

Not the best timing after a post about healthy food, but I have secured photographic proof of the wonder that is the great British chip butty for those of you who were curious.

(more hot greasy action over at WNP!)

I've also added a new page tentatively titled Useful Stuff. Basically I'm attempting to compile all the rockin' health and fitness websites and resources that have helped me over the years, so when people ask me about that sort of thing I can point to this page instead of drooling helplessly!

Make It Easy

The most excellent Kathryn Elliot at Limes & Lycopene confessed her hatred of stir-fries in an entry called, Do small impediments stop you from eating well?

"Don’t get me wrong stir-fries are a great meal and I love eating them. They’re quick, easy and healthy ... Plus we always have tofu and vegetables in the house, which are perfect stir-fry fodder. Our mid-week meals would be better and easier to prepare if I made more stir-fries.

Instead I hate and avoid cooking them.

There are lots of reasons for this.  I don’t think I cook them very well, we often run out of necessary condiments etc, etc.

But the real reason I don’t cook stir-fries is . . . I can’t stand cleaning the wok."

Rather than kidding herself that there would come a miraculous sunny day when wok cleaning suddenly appealed, she devised a different strategy - she steams her veg and grills her tofu then throws over a quick dressing.

I agree that it's often the small, seemingly trivial things that lead to less healthy choices. Kathryn gave examples like skipping brekkie because you didn't have milk in the house; raiding the vending machine because you forgot your afternoon snack.

Personally I've found eating well becomes easier if you're truly realistic. What fits into your life? What are your likes and dislikes? What can you manage without wanting to stab yourself with a fork? Some people wouldn't mind washing a wok but for others it could mean, Screw this! I'm dialling a pizza. (Not that Kathryn would do that, mind; being an ace nutritionist and all!)

I love food and I love cooking. In my fantasy life, I slave over complicated casseroles and ponce off to the farmers market to stroke the organic spinach. But in reality? I'm lazy, busy and irritable. And hungry. There's no point pretending otherwise; you just have to work around it.

So I have a list of about 20 easy meals in the back of my notebook. There's old Weight Watchers recipes, food blog recipes, soups, salads; things I swiped from Ready Steady Cook. Half of them aren't meals so much as assembling things. I use the list to plan our meals before doing the weekly online grocery shop. I take into account the Level of Busyness - what will I have time and energy to cook? What could I be arsed to peel or steam after work or kickboxing?

I chuck the notebook at Gareth and ask for his opinion. He says, I don't mind! You're in charge of Foods. I say, Just look at the damn LIST would you.

We debate for five minutes: Yep. Nope. Bored of that. Aye. Nope. Too hard. That one's good. Too much chopping. Too many utensils. Can't we just have CHIPS for dinner? No. Oh.

Right now, with the Kitchen of Chaos, it's about minimum effort. For example, in the past I've made falafels from scratch, blitzing chickpeas and herbs and whatnot. Currently the very thought of messy food processor and messy chickpea hands and messy frying pan makes me want to stick my head in the oven. So this week I bought ready-made, non-dodgy falafel that take ten minutes in the oven. Last night while they baked I slapped hummus, salad leaves, cucumber, cherry tomatoes and grated carrot on a wholemeal wrap. Then I plonked on the wee falafel... squeeze o' lemon... dinner in 15 minutes. Rock n roll.

In summary: Online shopping, a daggy old list and a strong sense of reality make it easier for me to do the healthy thing. It took a lot of time and effort to find my groove, and sometimes I still fall out of it. But when I screw I just return to the basic formula and soon enough we're rattling along again.

I realise this topic won't be particularly earth shattering for some, but I know from experience that eating healthy can feel like a royal palaver and totally overwhelming. Do you have any crafty strategies for eating well? Let's hear 'em!

UPDATE: Many people have requested a copy of The List - you can find it here.

Vegetarian Curry: DG by Request

I've been making a list of questions that keep coming up in comments and emails. Not only for the love of a good list, but so I can finally do that FAQ and be a wee bit more helpful to the folks out there.

One question that has popped up a lot is: Could I get the recipe for the veggie curry you cooked for Gareth in the book?

Oh yes. Forget flowers and chocs, there is no better gift to give your new vegetarian love interest than the Gift of Fragrance.

The recipe mentioned in the book is this Spiced Dahl Soup from BBC Good Homes magazine, February 2004 (click on the pic to enlarge). In February 2004 I was living in a sharehouse with six other chicks so I figure the purchase was desperate escapism.

It's an easy recipe and the ingredients are dead cheap. I didn't have a food processor at the time to make the paste so I just chopped and chopped til I couldn't chop no more. I also used yogurt instead of crème fraîche for the garnish thingy.

I've got a few more easy curry recipes/links to share but I'm about to nick off to Glasgow to see Mogwai et al at the Triptych Festival, WOOHOO! But the recipe says "One to cook on lazy Sundays" and tomorrow is Sunday so I scanned it in case anyone is looking to lazify their Sunday!

Steamy Windows

Last night I...

• ... sneaked off to Anstruther with Gareth for fish and chips by the sea. It was a clear, sunny evening and we were stressed oot our skulls so decided that LARD WAS THE ANSWER. By the time we queued for the goods it was freezing outside, so we ate in the car (fish and chips me, chip butties for him) and the windows got all steamed up. This is the kind of steamy window action enjoyed by the dull and married.
• ... finished listening to The Time Traveler's Wife! Argh! I was supposed to save it for walks only, but I got hooked and gorged on the whole thing. Do you see a pattern here!?
  I'll have to get to the library because audiobooks aren't cheap. Did you know the movie version comes out later this year, starring Australia's Eric Bana as the time travellin' fella? Mrrrowr.
• ... cleaned the oven. The oven had not been cleaned for seven years. Imagine the carnage.
• ... did a rocking interview with an Irish radio station called i102104. I was on the iTalk show with Chris Greene and Mary McGill. I didn't think you could listen online because the website link on Mary's email didn't work, and it didn't occur to me to ask or bloody Google it myself until after the fact. Tis a pity because it was lots of fun, as it always seems to be with the lovely, lovely Irish folk. I think I was a bit wacky from the fish and chips because when they asked me how and when my weight issues started, I blurted that when I was a child I, "turned to chocolate because I was too young for crack". OH dear.

Tonight Dr G and I are cleaning the kitchen in readiness for painting, so this is the shoddy entry you get instead of the Proper One I've been trying to finish for two weeks. But summer is coming and we are desperate to finish fixing up the flat. We are so bloody bored of fixing up the flat. It's been chaos since last September when we kicked off with the wallpaper stripping. You cannot move for tripping over paint pots and tile cutters and mountain bikes. The kitchen is the biggest pain in the arse - right now the fridge is in the hallway, the microwave is in the bathroom and the spaghetti jar is on top of the telly. An organised kitchen is the most sacred, fundamental element of my health and well-being routine so I'm feeling rather edgy at the moment.

Full of Lassies

Today was a bit of a bastard day at work, I have to say. I got in at 8AM with the hope of getting a large mother of a task done by the time everyone else arrived, but it ended up taking me until FIVE PEE EM. Magically that was when Gareth called to say he was off to the shops for a beer and a bag o' crisps, and did I require any Friday night supplies of a brown and cocoa-ish nature? I gratefully ordered the usual small bar of G&B's.

"The chocolate aisle was full of lassies," he reported when I got home. "All these lassies in business suits, staring up at the chocolates and looking completely knackered."

MY PEOPLE!

. . .

My heart is thundering in anticipation of tomorrow's eight miler - hopefully it will be the first outing of the heart rate monitor! If I can figure out which buttons to press.

I'd initially ordered a men's HRM because I thought the lady one would look too lost and dainty on my wrist. Plus the bloke colours were better. Maybe I've got a bit of Forearm Dysmorphia, you know that well-known condition. It arrived last week and it looked huge and bloody ridiculous. I knew it would bug the crap out of me so I sent it back and ordered the poncy pastel lady model instead.

So far I've managed set the date and time and enter my weight and height! The next step is to read the manual. I haven't tried on the chest strap thingy yet. There was an automatic nervous flutter when I took it out of the box, wondering if it would fit around me. Will that feeling ever go away!?

Thanks a bazillion for all your comments on the last entry; I really liked your suggestions to spice up the long walks with audio books. Heard any good ones lately? What's appropriate for a couple hours of exercise? Crime and Punishment?

Hope you have a good weekend comrades. I'll be tuning into the London Marathon on Sunday to have a vicarious blub at all that sweat and personal triumph! Good luck YP and anyone else out there!

Pleasures of the Flesh

Gareth is working up yonder in the Shetland Islands tonight so I took the opportunity to eat animals for dinner.

Dr G's not a militant vegetarian; it doesn't bother him if I eat meat. I could wear a steak for a hat and play drums on his lovely bald head with chicken legs and he wouldn't freak out at all. But I too lead the vegetarian life most of the time coz I'm lazy and find it much quicker to make veggie food now. I still love me some flesh, but it's more of a sometimes food. I kind of play it by ear - every week or so my body suddenly screams, "I NEED FISH!" so I'll eat some. And then every month or two, out of the blue, I find myself daydreaming about bacon. And/or burgers.

Thus when Dr G got the call to Shetland I said, "Yessss! Flesh night. I mean... dang, you're going?"

I went hunting in my lunch hour today, pacing between the butcher and the supermarkets over and over, unable to decide. So many animals! So many parts! How do I cook 'em? Could I be arsed chopping 'em up? It suddenly seemed like an awful lot of work and dirty dishes. In the end I bought two lamb burgers stuffed with feta. I put them in the oven along with a potato hacked into wedges. Then I made a wee salad with tomato and peppers and cucumber and oregano; in other words Greek salad without the really good bits. I plonked the salad and the wedges and a burger on a deathbed of baby spinach. You know the kind of spinach, where you spend five minutes picking out the mush and convincing yourself the rest is edible.

The verdict: Very tasty. Very filling. And strange! Flesh has so much more going on than a bean, I have to say. I enjoyed the texture. I'd also forgotten how meat has juices. Beans don't ooze! Flesh seems to hang around in your mouth for longer. It keeps talking to you, whereas the beans sort of whoosh on down.

But looking at that mucky oven tray, I think meat shall remain a sometimes food. Beans are much tidier specimens. And they don't give me the weighed down feeling I have right now, five hours later. Maybe it's the wee ghost of a lamb sitting in my stomach... Whyyy? Why did you do this to me?

Hush little lamb! I'm still going to eat your leftover brother for lunch tomorrow.

Unleash Your Inner Tightarse

Just wanted to share a couple of links on the hot topic of frugality.

From the lovely Trace in the comments - Love Food, HateWaste - an official campaign that aims to "raise awareness of the need to reduce the amount of food that we throw away, and how doing this will benefit us as consumers and the environment". There's money saving and storage tips, recipes for pesky leftovers and a guide to stocking a store cupboard. Looks like a goodun, but where's the Honey Jar Ring? The stray peppercorns and couscous grains rolling round the bottom?

Via SJ comes an article by Alanna Kellogg at BlogHer - How To Save Money On Groceries. Personally I've found shacking up with a vegetarian really slashes the food bills. Animal parts can be expensive. Lentils and beans are cheap, if you can tolerate the changes in the atmosphere while your digestive system learns to cope. Bwahaha.

STOP PRESS!

Spooky Mulder. I was typing the above on Friday evening when suddenly! A wee lady appeared at the door from a market research company. "I just need one more survey then I can go home for the weekend," she pleaded with her clipboard and puppy-dog eyes.

These people always come to our door. I think the word got out last year when I was home writing. I'd let anyone in - religious callers, charities, electricity companies, the radio ratings people - anything to get away from That Stinking Book for ten minutes.

Anyway, I caved again. After asking my opinions on stamps from Northern Ireland, nanotechnology, lifeboats and Scottish football sponsors... the next topic was FOOD WASTE!

Did I waste food?
Did food waste upset me?
Had I heard of Love Food Hate Waste?
Where did you hear about Love Food Hate Waste?

Would you believe they didn't have an option for "Heard About It In My Blog Comments".

How freaky cool was that? I was so blown away by this strange coincidence that I watched Saturday Night Fever on DVD instead of finishing this entry.

Where were we?

Ahh, links. This one illustrates the fine line between thrift/ingenuity and outright tightwaddery. It's the remnants of Merrick and Rosso's TightArse Tuesday Guestbook from 2000. Back then Merrick & Rosso were on Australia's Triple J network and one of their segments was Tightarse Tuesday, in which listeners submitted hilarious tales of penny pinching. It helps if you can read the entries in your best Aussie accent.

Ben from Launceston:
I have a mate, named Brad, who went to buy his girlfriend a ring for her birthday, all well and good, then he decided he might get it engraved. He went to the 'engravers' and was told it was $3.00 to start and then twenty cents per letter. He thought this was a little steep, so instead of writing "I will love you forever" he thought he would save a bob and got "I'll luv u 4eva", so he only paid for twelve letters instead of 19. Thus saving a hole $1.40.

Gillian from Gladstone:
Dad, who is now 96, bought a pair of slippers on special, as you do, but unfortunately they were 2 sizes too big. No drama, just cut the ends off them and staple them together. They now match the other pair of Specials in his shoe closet which were too small and he cut out the toes on them. Can't beat a bargain can you!!!

Brownyn from Launceston:
Have i got a rippa tight arse story for u.
My mum is the ultimate tight arse. She collects barcodes from packets of biscuits, canned food etc, in case one day they have a competition. She wont have to go out and buy the products to collect the barcodes 'hey presto' she's already got them.

Taryn from Drysdale:
The people down the road from us had their letterbox broken by some (extremely intoxicated) locals. Instead of bying a new one, they've just gone, "oh no, hang on, we've got an old microwave out here we're not using, let's use that instead." So they've got their big old box-of-a-microwave out on the roadside as the letterbox. And the posty uses it.

Briony from New Lambton Heights:
Two "elderly" people were in the 'egg isle' of a supermarket and these two people were taking the free-range eggs out of the free-range carton and putting them in the battery egg carton so they could have free-range eggs at the price of battery eggs.

Anyone got a tightarse tale to share?

Mean and Green

I had a Mothership Moment in Marks & Spencer. There was a dude putting yellow stickers on a trolley of goods. Lettuces, salads, over-packaged potato products. My heart skipped a beat... could this be... a CHUCK-OUT BIN?

The Chuck Out Bin is what Mum called the bit where supermarkets put all the aging yogurts and the nearly-stale bread. I've often written about my childhood mortification as she pawed through the goods: "To her an expiration date is not a recommendation but a challenge".

I once vowed never to follow in her footsteps, but this was M&S! I'd never seen M&S do a bargain bin before. They've been infamous for simply tossing their near-expired food, making them extremely popular with bin-raking freegans. Also, now I'm older and madly saving for a house deposit and/or a visit to Australia. Therefore I could justify stalking the aisles and lurking behind the posh crisps; waiting for the dude to finish sticking his stickers.

In the end I took the direct Mothership approach and marched on over.

"Hellooooo! Are these on special?"

(They tend to say "On Offer" in the UK but the whole bargain hunt experience transported me to Oz.)

"Yes!" he rolled his eyes, "Happy digging!"

I got a wee tub of three bean salad for £1. You have to be careful with these things as cheap can be dear, "because it tempts us to buy what we need not." But I told myself I really needed something for lunch the next day, and you couldn't buy the ingredients for a pound! Well you probably could. And you'd get a few servings too, then you could recycle the bean tin instead of clogging the earth with another plastic container. But that wee surge of adrenaline and triumph made it feel like a bargain, especially with the shiny yellow sticker.

On Sunday I was thinking about the relationship between food and thrift and the planet. This week's Food Programme on Radio 4 was about commercial food waste. Around 24 million tonnes of food is dumped into landfill every year by restaurants, food manufacturers, supermarkets and airline caterers. Crikey! Apparently the methane generated by all this food has a great impact on the environment.

And just before that I'd been listening to 86-year-old actress Liz Smith on Desert Island Discs, cheerfully talking about her 1930s childhood with bugger all money and her frocks clobbered together from random scraps of fabric.

I thought of these shows later on when doing the weekly online grocery shop. Normally I have a vague menu in my head then go madly clicking through the virtual aisles, throwing in anything and everything. Then I freak out at the subtotal and remove half the items from the basket until it looks respectable. But with money and waste on the brain, I decided to do a proper stocktake of the kitchen cupboards.

Turns out I already had plenty of tins of beans that would have made a great salad. D'oh! And then there were a dozen half-empty packets of various grains and seeds and pulses. Oodles of experimental sauces and spices. Abandoned bags of frozen veggies. I came up with a week's meals there and then; all I needed was bread and milk and some more fresh stuff. Ka-ching!

Among the scoffings this week:

• Vegetable lasagna - using the leftover lasagna sheets that have annoyed me for months, a stray ball of mozzarella and three tins of brown lentils which I can almost convince myself taste like beef. O, the plight of the vegetarian's wife.
• Lentil Dahl - as featured in the Farting Out The Window incident in the DG book! Starring dregs of yellow and red lentils and a bag of frozen spinach I've tried to ignore since October.
• Smiley Bill's Muesli Bars - a.k.a. granola bars (US) or cereal bars (UK). A healthy-ish Bill Granger recipe with oats, dates, sunflower seeds, pecans, honey and a dod of sunflower oil. Finally got rid of all them seedy scraps and they taste BLOODY BEAUTIFUL!

I think green and frugal kind of go hand in hand. Less about sticking a bloody wind turbine on your roof and more about being thoughtful with your consumption. Of course, if you truly wanted to minimise your impact on the environment, you'd need to sit very still and very naked and not touch anything... and just wait to die. This is the only way I can see that one could avoid leaving carbon footprints and exploiting children in clothing factories and scoffing ill-treated chickens/ depleted fishes/ bananas from distant lands. Although you'd still be hogging oxygen and stuff.

But here in reality, methinks you can only do your best to not be an obnoxious resource vulture. That way you get to save money and be smug all at the same time.

The Humble Spud

Did you know that it was recently National Chip Week? Brought to you by the British Potato Council, of course. Chips are loved the world over but seem particularly celebrated here in Scotland. Some of my happiest moments in this country have involved chips... limp ones in a polystyrene box after a drunken night oot, with fish and mushy peas by the sea; gobbled down in the car after a hike in the hills.

A popular chip manufacturer currently has a billboard that truly shits me off. It features a big bowl of oven chips with the headline: EAT YOUR GREENS. Then there's wee green icons that say: Low fat! Low salt! Low sugar! Etc etc.

A chip ain't a green. A chip is a chip. It's starchy, sometimes greasy, and usually delicious. Why do we have to pretend otherwise? Why can't we just enjoy a food for what it really is? Why do food manufactures have to dress things up with flimsy health claims?

Recently a Nutella advert proclaimed that every jar contained, "52 hazelnuts, the equivalent of a glass of skimmed milk and some cocoa" and was a healthy breakfast for the kiddies. Never mind the fat and sugar and the fact you'd have to eat the whole jar to claim that glass of skimmed milk.

I wish there was some sort of regulation of food advertising. Right now you could stick a blueberry in a bucket of ice cream and scream, CONTAINS ANTI-OXIDANTS! Next thing they'll put 5p coins into yogurt pots and claim they're rich in... richness? Is it any wonder people are confused about what the hell is a healthy food?

I guess these companies wouldn't make as much money if they said something sensible and honest, like:

Yep, this is Nutella. It's brown and gooey and delicious. The Europeans are fond of it on bread for brekkie, but we don't advise you eat the whole jar with a spoon like certain people used to do. Think of it as a Sometimes food.

Likewise the mighty Chip. I wouldn't call them an everyday food, whether this be in their traditional soggy Scottish or pre-fried weird-coated freezer-to-oven incarnation. But they are tasty, and they are there to be enjoyed without guilt or apology.

I'm still immersed in a Heston Blumenthal-style search for the perfect homemade oven chip technique. When you're married to Scot, chips need to feature on the menu. If you cut Gareth with a knife he would bleed starch. But we do try to keep them reasonably  healthy.

Most people say the Maris Piper potato makes for the best chips but I made a cracking batch with the good ol' King Edward. The best batch yet involved cutting into wedges leaving the skin on, par-boiling them until JUST stab-able, then draining in a colander. Then I left 'em to dry completely and cool down quite a bit. This drying and cooling step seemed to make ALL the difference.

Then I put them onto an oven tray, making sure they had a reasonable space around them coz overcrowded chips don't crisp up very well. Then I seasoned and sprayed them in olive oil, then put into a 230'C oven (which may be cooler as our oven sucks) for about 30 mins, turning halfway. They were bloody beautiful - crunchy outsides with tender guts.

Yeah baby. Chip week may be over but I will party on all year.

You'd Butter Believe It

Last year in a post called Why Stripping Wallpaper Is Like Weight Loss I reckoned that you could pretty much turn anything into a crappy metaphor for lard busting. Sunglasses, chickens, bananas, etc. I've got another one for you today: Making Your Own Almond Butter Is Like Weight Loss. Ohhh... yeah!

Way back in July 2006 Clotilde of Chocolate and Zucchini fame posted a recipe for homemade cashew nut butter, or beurre de cajou as they so elegantly say across the Channel. You grind raw nuts in a food processor until the natural oils emerge and transforms into a preservative-free trans-fatless natural goo. I was dying to make an almond version, but was convinced I couldn't be trusted not to gobble the whole jar with a spoon.

Eighteen months later, I try not to say that sort of thing. I don't like to think of foods as dangerous or triggers or any word that implies that I am a powerless, out of control fruitloop that needs to be muzzled at farmer's markets. So I felt I was ready to pulverise some nuts.

Almond butter is delicately grainy and almonds are very nutritious, don't you know. But it is pricey. £1.80 for a tiny 170g jar! It's a lot cheaper in the USA - I lugged a big jar of Trader Joe's stuff back from Chicago. It had honking huge shards of almond that stabbed the roof of the mouth in a painfully pleasant way. But once that ran out I was back to the expensive one, which made me recall Clotilde's recipe. Hmmm, I said in a tightwad tone befitting of one who has lived in Scotland almost five years, I could buy a half a kilo of raw almonds for the same price and make my own! THRIFT-O-RAMA!

Back in January, I bought my bag o' nuts and prepared to churn out another shitty metaphor.

Making almond butter is like weight loss because...

1. You start out with a lumpy mess!

Ho ho ho.
This is actually 500 grams of raw almonds, which I toasted in the oven.

2. The fundamental recipe is simple
Dump almonds into food processor, process at high speed until creamy. That's all there is to it! Eat less, move more! EASY!

3. The reality is painfully slow and messy and tedious frustrating as hell.
I hit the button.
And I ground and I ground and I ground.
And nothing happened.
So I looked at the clock. Ground some more.
Grind grind grind.
Sweat swear sweat.
Nothing happening!
It's not working! WHY ISN'T IT WORKING?! The recipe said it would work!
Twenty minutes of solid labour and all I had was almond clods!
This blows. WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME?!

4. When you least expect it, it all comes together.
By this point the food processor was almost too hot to touch. I was waiting for the smoke to appear. But after twenty five minutes the first trickle of oil oozed out. BROWN GOLD! And then finally it started to take shape.

5. The end product may not be exactly what you'd dreamed of. Might a bit rough. And lumpy.
Or look like complete dogs droppings. And I'd overtoasted the nuts - our oven has two settings: Cold Indifference or Cremains, so you can never get things right. But perfection is for... perfect people. This stuff had character! It was delicious too, subtle and creamy.

I also managed to eat it in a sensible manner, spread over a series of breakfasts (with Bonne Maman apricot jam, CHOICE!) I didn't attack it with spoons or write odes of longing when we were apart. There's hope for me yet.

CONCLUSION
This mega jar of almond butter was a bargain at just £2. Of course that doesn't account for labour and half an hour of electricity. But just like the lard busting, sometimes the most effective method is not the most efficient!

Modus Operandi

Oooh I've nearly finished my 2008 goals list so am feeling excited and purposeful. About bloody time.

The Mothership reports that Dietgirl got a great mention in Ray Chesterton's column in the Aussie Daily Telegraph today:

"With the issue of obesity in the news in Australia, a new book is a timely release. 'The Amazing Adventures of Diet Girl' by Shauna Reid details in an intimate and often hilarious style her personal battle of the bulge to cut her weight in half from 159.5 kg to 79.8 kg from 2001-07. There are no recipes: weight was shed via a controlled diet using food from a commercial weight-loss company."

It could have been quite a different book had I actually spent six whole years on a Jenny Craig-esque regime:

Day 1: Chicken cacciatore. Yum!

Day 7: Chicken cacciatore. Joy!

Day 976: Chicken caccaitore. KILL ME!

Then the whole moving-to-Scotland-finds-love sub-plot would never have happened by virtue of being too darn bankrupt to go travelling.

For the record, it will be seven years next week since it all kicked off and it's comprised: one year of Weight Watchers, four months of Sure Slim... and 5 years 8 months of my own hard work and bumbling trial and error :)

The Last Supper

Hello to anyone who wandered in after seeing my gurning mug in the Daily Express today!

The article turned out fab; the journalist was wonderful to talk to. It's not online, which is quite a relief as I look bloody awful in the photo. Awful, and totally lardy. I had so much fun at the shoot yet something went horribly wrong in that frame. I reserve the right not to scan it for you all!

Meanwhile, Gareth is guffawing at the wee breakout box called WHAT SHAUNA USED TO EAT. In the book I talk about The Last Supper - the day before I braved the scale in 2001, I ate all the things I thought I'd never see again. It was going to be all carrots and lettuce from then on! But taken out of context, it gives the impression that I ate like this every day. Holy fat girl cliche, Batman. Please understand, Express readers... it was the Last Supper!

Cold Hearted

Righto! Today I give you neglect, decay and minimal nutrition. The lovely Tanya of I Ate A Pie told me about her Show Us Your Fridge contest and I almost declined knowing the toxic horrors contained in ours. And because the fridge light doesn't work.

Then I thought I could spend three hours cleaning, grocery shopping and artfully arranging and look like a right domestic goddess. Instead I've taken strategic pictures to hide all the gunk and dodginess.

Gareth bought this fridge freezer in 2004 and we just realised that it's never been defrosted. I think of all the times the Mothership had me scrubbing the seals of her fridge with a toothbrush and hang my head in SHAME!

Here we have in the butter drawer thingy three packets of low fat mozzarella. It's one of the few cheese I will eat in low fat form. We put a dollop of red pesto on a tortilla, chuck on chopped up onions, peppers, mushrooms and olives, tear up a ball of mozza then whack under the grill for lazy pizza. But even that seemed too much effort lately, so they are dancing towards the use by date at a rapid rate.

Out of focus jam collection! Each jar has a half-inch of dregs in the bottom. Gareth and I went through a phase of taking peanut butter and jam sandwiches on our hillwalking expeditions but now he's totally "gone arf it", as they say in Scotland. I'm still into it though, especially the Meridian blackcurrant spread stuff on the right there, it's sweetened with apple juice instead of sugar. I think it was Smaller Sue who blogged about fruit spread and light cream cheese on toast and got me hooked... looks revolting but tastes bloody fabulous.

Condiments! Ancient mayo and mustard plus neglected oyster sauce. Earlier this year I went through a tofu stir-fry obsession, painfully wholesome with ten kinds of green vegetables and marinated grilled tofu. Gareth never ever complains about my cooking but finally he begged me to stop, saying it he couldn't face another "Communist stir fry".

In the background is a sample sachet of Fair Trade coffee that I got about a year ago. I'd sent away a coupon for a free sample of luxury of hot chocolate and they sent me a letter saying, "Sorry, we're all out of the choc but have some coffee instead!" Despicable!

Token vegetables! Aging bag of carrots. Spring onions and tomatoes as we're both going through an omelette craze right now, trying to recreate the gobsmacking delicious Mexican omelette we had at Elephant and Castle in NYC. It's got guacamole and cheese in the middle. Phwoar!

And in the other butter shelf thingy, a block of feta cheese and an American Milky Way bar. I don't know what it is about American Milky Way bars that sing to me. They're like a Mars Bar, except milder somehow. These days I am a wee bit snobby about my choc and would usually choose Green and Blacks over the corny syrupy and palm oiled. But I dragged this souvenir Milky Way bar all the way back from New York. Tonight I enjoyed every one of those 260 calories with a cup of tea a few minutes after taking that photo :)

Finally we have two bottles of Williams Bros beer. Gareth has become somewhat of an ale connoisseur this past year and I can't tell you how bloody elated I am about it. He'll sit there on the couch with some fancy beer in a fancy bottle on a Friday night while I tuck into a sweet treat and all is right with the world. The relationship feels balanced. I am not a freak! For years I've seen his bemused and bewildered looks as I lusted over chocolate bars and bakery windows, but now he's got an obsession that contains calories too!

Tenderised

Two stupid minor injuries in the name of health and wellbeing this week. Firstly, I bit into an apple yesterday. Since spatial reasoning has never been my forte the bite was much wider than it needed to be. Instead of sinking into the fruit, that really pointy tooth sank straight into the side of my tongue. Now I've got a centimetre-wide flappy bit of broken tongue, all swollen and painful.

And then tonight we went to the forest for some off-road cycling action and I forgot to wear my padded shorts underneath my trousers. D'oh! After 90 minutes of pelting over rocks and puddles and big fat tree roots, I am feeling rather tender in the lady parts.

The first half hour of these bike rides always seems to suck. My legs just don't work properly and it's too haaard and I just want to go home because I just don't think I can doooo this today. But when it's done and I'm wiping mud off my bike with a handful of grass before loading it back into the car, that's all completely forgotten.

"Sorry I was such a whingy git earlier," I said to Gareth after a recent ride, "It always feels like I'm not going to make it."

"That's alright," he smiled, "I don't listen to you anyway!"

. . .

In other exciting news, I had another culinary first last weekend - a fresh fig!

Somehow figs had passed me by until now. Once as a child I waited in the car feeling completely mortified as a certain member of my family climbed over a fence of a former WWII prison camp site with a plastic bucket, then raided the fig trees in order to feed their homemade fig jam habit. The jam was always a weird browny greeny colour and freaked me out. The fruit itself looked a bit creepy too.

So when my friend served them up for dessert the other day I wrinkled up my nose. Well I wrinkled it up inside my mind, because it would have been rude to wrinkle it for real! But these figs had briefly been in the oven alongside some fresh peaches so they were warm and syrupy. Then they were dolloped with vanilla creme fraiche. PHWOAR! It was difficult not to moan with all that juicy soft but crunchy goodness... I waited nearly 30 years for this? All week long I've been thinking fig fig fig, I gotta get me some more figs.

That is one of the greatest pleasures in life, I reckon. The moment of surprise when you taste something amazing that you've never tasted before. And knowing there's still a million other untasted things out there all shiny and new. Noice.

Bon weekend, lovelies!

Creme de la Creme

O joy! The gospel of Fage Greek Yogurt is spreading ever further throughout the land, particularly after a very swanky ad in New York Magazine. Here in the UK, I spied it in this month's Red, named as a fabulous alternative to mealy, over-processed diet yogurts.

Hopefully this will mean more 2% in the shops so I'll no longer have to wrestle old ladies for the last tub. I admit it, I'm hopelessly addicted. But Greek yogurt just makes life worth so much brighter. Well, creamier.

You see I once was a fool for sour cream. One of my favourite foods used to be this white trash French onion dip - in which you mix a packet of dried French onion soup with a tub of sour cream. I used to eat a whole tub of that on my own, with a whole box of Jatz crackers. Sitting home alone wondering what would become of me. Those were the days.

But my waistline has enjoyed some respite since Argy put me on to Fage. It works the same magic on that dip (which I now prefer to share with friends) without the artery-clogging properties. It's also a dream dolloped onto a bean burrito or into a bowl of chili or pumpkin soup.

And it works just as well with sweet things. Like on Sunday when Gareth insisted he didn't want a birthday cake as he wanted to stay svelte for all his sporty activities. But I said, what's a birthday without FLAMES?

So I got some meringue nests from M&S (just 50 cals each, rah!) and spooned in some yogurt then chucked on some chunks of kiwi, strawberries and fresh pineapple on top and flooded lightly drizzled with raspberry sauce.

(Tangent - how good are fresh pineapples!? It's been years since I bought one. It was on sale for £1 and bloody beautiful)

Then I just stabbed the meringue with some candles. Flaming miniature birthday pavlova! The picture is a bit dodgy because I was in a hurry - waxy yogurt is not tasty. And yes, apparently Gareth turned four years old.

Anyway, I can't help thinking of that old Seinfeld episode in which the gang get hooked on the yogurt from a non-fat frozen yogurt shop. Suddenly they're all stacking on the weight, so they send a sample off for some scientific tests and it turns out - gasp - the non-fat yogurt isn't non-fat at all!

I know Fage has been around for eighty years but there's still part of me that's very paranoid and pessimistic. That's the part that believes if something seems too good to be true then it usually is, that there's no way I could enjoy something so indulgent without terrible repercussions, that all good things must come to end, that every rose has its thorn, etcetera etcetera. So I'm half-expecting that one gloomy day I'll open the paper to the shocking headline TOTAL 2% ACTUALLY TOTALLY LARDY!

But then there's the positive thinking me that trusts in a good Nutritional Information panel. Pass the tub.

Here Comes The Sun

Remember the old days when I was hysterical about keeping this blog anonymous? After a very public outing to friends, family and colleagues via the Scottish papers I thought, "Righto, that's it. Finally everyone knows." But there was one frontier that I'd forgotten, and that's Folks Back Home. Home, as in the wee town where I grew up.

When I left for university in 1996 I was already a considerably lardy lass, about 100 kilos (220lb). I managed to gain a spectacular 59.2 kilos (130lb) over the next five years and was so bogged down with shame and loathing that I basically became a hometown hermit. Whenever I went back I'd hide out at Mum's house, not telling anyone that I was around. We'd go out shopping but I'd insist on waiting in the car, not wanting anyone to see me waddling down the aisles. I lied my way out of many parties and reunions. It wasn't until I was back down to about 120 kilos that I started venturing out again. I remember feeling rather smug and evil, "MWAHAHA. Nobody will ever know how big I got!"

But now people have found the site and the truth is in here. It's nae bother now, though. I yam what I yam, I was what I was. It's all me, no matter what size the undies are. So welcome aboard, old chums :)

. . .

Speaking of friends, I finally met my dear mate Argyro in Athens this week. The Greek Goddess first wrote to me many years ago when she found this blog and I was instantly charmed by her passionate prose, endearing English and general lust for life. Her blog is private these days but she's an inspiring dame for many reasons, one of which being she's lost over 50 kilos.

Argy was one of the first people I ever "met" who'd lost a shitload of weight so I was overjoyed to find someone who understood all the crazy things you go through. I have a tendency to get intense and obsessive but like to smother those feelings with lame jokes. Argy always cut right past the jokes and made me get to the honest guts of the matter. She's a good egg, I tells ya.

I've not met many fatbloggers in person yet but from my limited experience I can already see one pattern. People are always smaller than you'd imagined. It must be the way we describe ourselves in our writing, full of sprawling adjectives. We speak of mammoth chests, loaf-like arms and bulbous butts that knock over children and trash cans when we walk down the street.

It happened when I met Lainey last year. She stood up from her chair to greet me looking bloody gorgeous and I remember thinking, "Where's the rest of her!?" Likewise in wee small hours of Friday morning when I stumbled off the plane, there was Argy holding a rose and looking SO bloody tiny. I don't know if we describe our bodies in such terms because this is the way we perceive them, or maybe we're trying to lower expectations? Hehe.

I know Argy mou has a lot of fans out there so I'm happy to report that she is even more brilliant in person. After about 27 seconds lounging in her stylish abode, it felt like I'd known her for a hundred years. Do not hesitate to meet her, and I'm especially lookin' at you Cat :P

So we had a lovely five days in roasting hot Athens. Argy is an extremely kind and generous hostess. After all these years of tantalising descriptions, I finally got to sample her culinary skillz for myself. Oooh yeah. Stuffed peppers with bulgur wheat and loadsa herbs, pasta with lobster sauce, pungent homemade pesto I'd sell my grandmother for. We made Greek salads sprinkled with the famous herbs growing in pots on her verandah and ate cherry tomatoes still hot from the vines. I ransacked her gigantic jar of homemade pickled veggies and we sampled her homemade peach liqueur, warm and potent from baking on the windowsill. Everything tasted so pure and clean and fresh and made you glad to be alive.

It wasn't all about the food, of course! I met her family and friends and swam and pottered around Athens. We went shopping. We went to the farmer's market. Hang on, that's more food, innit?

I also thought I would wilt away while visiting the Acropolis. It was 41'C (106'F) in city on Tuesday, and lord knows how many degrees hotter it was up there on the hill with the sun bouncing off all the bright white columns of the Parthenon. DUDES. I was frying, despite giant hat and 27 layers of sunscreen!

(NB - I was at the Acropolis by myself so a nice American tourist took my photie. She put me in the corner! I promise I wasn't doing the old Fat Girl Hiding trick :)

But my most favourite part of the trip was when we were lazing around at 4AM, talking about everything under the sun. Inevitably the subject of lard-busting would come up from time to time, and it was heartening to see we've both reached a peaceful place with food now. A year ago I'd have been sick with worry, going to Greece for five days with all that amazing tucker to tempt me. But these days I'm more calm and rational and in tune with the ol' body. And although my jeans felt a bit snug on my return, I got back on track right away. I can finally enjoy food passionately but moderately; there is no more Crime and Punishment mentality.

. . .

I've been back in Scotland for three days but my head is still reeling from all the sights and senses and emotions. There's so much more I want to say, and no doubt will end up writing on WNP, as that's where I keep all the travel stuff. But what I do know is that the more I venture out into this world, the more I learn. I see things in different ways and feel my mind opening up, exploring and discovering again what's important.

PEOPLE! That's what's bloody important. Not wobbly bellies or doughy arms. I was so scared of people for a long time, hiding away in my house with the blinds drawn; thinking I shouldn't disturb anyone with my lardy presence. But now I'm determined to make up for those lost hermit years. Life just gets so much more interesting when you reach out and connect with the humans. I'm determined to make a better effort. There are some bloody brilliant people out there. One day we all shall have that Fatblogger's Convention.

Right now I've got a huge stack of emails with a Reply To label stuck on 'em so I'm going to get cracking. Bon weekend, comrades!

Ain't No Mountain

Oooh! The other day I had the best breakfast in ages. Total 2% Greek Yogurt, strawberries and a splodge of honey. It's a wonder the strawberries made it to brekkie, when I bought them the night before I opened the punnet and POW! The scent of summer smacked me in the nose. Is there anything more scrumptious than berries this time of year?

And that Total 2% is the business. I've waxed lyrical about the 0% version before, but I only really use it for cooking - like a dollop in some pumpkin soup or on a bean burrito in place of sour cream. And the full fat version is ace, but it's sooo thick and sturdy you could probably smear it on the ground and build a house on top that would last 100 years. Then recently someone blogged about a 2% version but can't remember who it was! If you were the 2% yogurt blogger, please let me know so I can bow down to you! (ETA: Taylore blogged about it!)

It's the perfect yogurt compromise! Especially with good old Australian Capilano honey mixed in. There's a lot of poncy honey on the market today, derived from all sorts of exotic trees or bushes, but I like Capilano coz it makes me think of home. Every time I squeeze that bottle I sing the old jingle... Capilano honeeeeey makes the difference every tiiiiime!

(Do they still have that jingle? Sniff sniff. Holy homesick, Batman.)

Anyway. Berries! Summer! Sunshine! But there's no need to be jealous, all you Southern Hemispherians in the throes of winter - it was only 2 degrees cooler in Melbourne yesterday than it was here. Sultry! Gareth and I decided to get out there and walk up a hill. In fine Scottish tradition it was rainy and misty and you could barely make out the view. But it was refreshing nonetheless!

I finally tested out my brand new walking pole thingies. Normally these are reserved for creaky old people but the lovely Babs mentioned them on this old entry and they seemed great for someone with a dodgy knee and a Fear of Descents. I made Gareth walk in front of me, so he could suss out any impending obstacles. He said the climb was like being chased by a pack of blind people because all he could hear behind him was TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP!

But today my knees are thanking me and it was much less scary when I could stab the ground with a pole. I still HATE descending - I whinge and whimper and it took me longer to get down than climb up! But I'm sure it's character building, right?

You can see the blinding Scottish summer sunshine below. And some very sexy high-waisted walking trousers! (That weird bulge around my middle is the bulky waistband, not a sprawling belly roll, hehe) And you can see those golden poles. I am thinking of carrying them at all times, just to poke people who don't shuffle up quick enough in the Post Office queue.

And finally, thank you kindly for the comments on the last entry. It wasn't so much about what the Bra Lady said - I totally agree it was simply off-the-cuff Retail Banter - but my utterly wounded reaction to it. I thought I'd developed this tough skin lately, feeling confident and foxy, but I was really disappointed at how instantly deflated I felt, how one little comment made me question everything. But I guess it just takes time to build up your self-belief, to trust that you genuinely feel good just to be you. The more I stop obsessing about diet stuff and just start doing things like climbing up hills... the more I really believe it :)

Great Veggie Box Mysteries

So... what to do with the celeriac, the orange pumpkin thingy and the fennel? Not all at once, mind; but if anyone has any ideas that'd be tops!

Update: Whoa! Thanks a bazillion comrades! After much deliberation and examination of wot's in our pantry I've finally narrowed it down. Since the celeriac is so huge I think I will use half for this mustardy mash and half in Kathryn's celeriac, leek and white bean soup. Then methinks the pumpkin cauldron looks good, and Cal's suggestion of braised fennel a la Orangette looks like a winner. I've made Molly's braised cabbage many times and it changed the way I looked at the humble green lump forever. Ooh yeah.

Update Update:  16/01 Sorry to keep adding to this post, long-suffering Bloglines subscribers; but I'm in LURVE with celeriac! I ended up roasting half of it along with a bit of that amazing pumpkin. The pumpkin had a strong, nutty flavour and the celeriac was gorgeously sweet.

The next night I made celeriac mash with the rest of it, with vegie sausages. On the side was some curly kale and Molly's braised fennel. I was a bit worried because when raw the aniseed pong was overwhelming, but the braising really mellowed it out.

Last night I roasted to the last of the pumpkin and a chunk of butternut and chucked it in a risotto, phwoar! Thanks again for all your ideas. I hope we get another pumpkin next week!

Better Than Hitler

Happy days! The scales are going down again. I got through the last set of seven with minimal fuss, but as Lainey says it's far easier to eat well when you're on holidays and sleeping in til lunchtime. There's not as many hours to eat! Mwahaha. Let's see how I function this week back in the Real World.

. . .

Deep in the suburbs last week, I found myself back at the dreaded MegaTesco. I was in the throes of Christmas Withdrawls, my body twitching and screaming as it struggled with the abrupt end to the fat and sugar feast.

Right at the entrance next to the newspapers was a huge display of sausage rolls on sale.

"Oooh, lookit them sausage rolls!"

"Are you getting some then?" asked Gareth.

"No!" I huffed. "I was just admiring them from afar!"

At the checkouts I glared at our bag of frozen vegies and the brown rice and the oranges and the bananas and the tuna. When you still have recent memories of Christmas puddings and roast potatoes, you don't see a cornucopia of health - you just see boredom and misery.

My eyes wandered to the trolleys of our fellow shoppers. The guy in front of us had chocolate, cakes, pizza, oven chips and those sausage rolls. The guy behind us had fancy cheeses and wine and those sausage rolls. The lady next door had crisps and croissants and again, those sausage rolls.

Those bastards, I fumed. Why can't I have that stuff?

But then I noticed something. My fellow shoppers with the junk food were universally Extremely Large. Now don't yell at me, I was not passing judgement. I know that people who eat junk food come in all shapes and sizes. And just coz it's in your trolley does not necessarily mean you eat that stuff all the time. For all I know they may have bought that stuff for a big party and would normally be on a Dr Gillian McKeith carrot juice and bean sprout regime.

It simply triggered an equation on my head; the junk food trolleys and the bellies. It reminded me that when I ate food like that, the consquence for me was that I became Extremely Large. In the midst of my festive-piggy-comedown I really needed to be brought back to reality.

On Friday we were walking to the supermarket. Well Gareth was walking, but I was walking and whinging; because I didn't wanna walk to the supermarket. It's an hour round trip and I was feeling slovenly. On the way we debated what to have with our tuna steaks and spring greens - some oven roasted potatoes or Gareth's butterbean mash? Which was the healthiest? Which would be most beneficial to my lard bustin' efforts? Holy middle class connundrum, Batman!

And then we walked past the fish and chip shop, where people were queued up trying to decide between a deep-fried black pudding or a deep-fried pizza to go with their chips.

"So here we are arguing the merits of a new potato versus a butterbean when in there it's kebabs versus deep-fried haggis," said Gareth.

"Ha ha! I feel rather smug now."

But not really. I mean, you have to have your own standards, don't you? One person's Healthy Choice is another persons Lardy Splurge. I could compare myself to the Chippie Queue or the Ready Meal Brigade and say, "Well I eat so much better than that." I may as well run over the postman with a tractor and say, "Well at least I haven't killed as many people as Hitler!". I can only compare my efforts to the benchmarks I set for myself. I really hope that awkward sentence makes sense.

Anyway, the supermarket and the chippie reminded me with a jolt why I walk to the supermarket and why I ponder spuds and butterbeans. Eating healthy food and moving my lardy arse is not just for vanity and smaller jeans. It's about my HEALTH, dammit.

There's enough dodgy things that could happen to a person without voluntarily shortening your lifespan with crappy lifestyle choices. And the dawning of a new year makes me particularly sentimental, so I've been thinking of my friends and my family and the lovely Dr G and all the things I want to do with my life... and I want to take of myself better. I want to see my grandkiddies and roam the world and be able to ride a bike when I'm an old lady, all the while still eating my greens with my own teeth. It's a powerful incentive that's easy to lose sight of.

. . .

Next Stop: New Year's Resolutions! Hope you are feeling well and groovy, troops.

Recipe Corner: Pumpkin and Tomato Soup

Happy Thanksgiving to all those who partook yesterday!

I hope you dined well, whether you turkeyed or tofuturkeyed or something else altogether. I don't know much about Thanksgiving except for the general themes of eating too much and being thankful. Sounds like the perfect holiday to me.

In the spirit of the event, here is a wee list of lard-busting things I am thankful for:

Internet Shopping - As much as I love wandering down the aisles of supermarkets admiring the goods, I hate the people. I hate when they meet their friends in the dairy aisle and park their trolleys nose to nose and chatter away oblivious to me trying to squeeze past. I hate the crowded car parks and the checkout queues and jumping up and down at the fish counter trying to get some service. I hate how miserable everyone looks.

So this is why I order groceries online and have them delivered for no more than the cost of trekking to the megamart on the bus. I plan a week's meals in advance, click click for ten minutes, then sit back while some other poor bastard has to scour the aisles with my shopping list then cart it to my door. And they don't "accidentally" chuck in cakes or bars of chocolate. It's a lard-buster's dream!

Dumbells Under The Bed - Again, I hate people. Bah, humbug. And I hate venturing out in the cold and dark, so I like to work out at home this time of year and not have to interact with the world.

Soup - Everything you need in a bowl. Easy to cook, easy to clean up. Endless leftovers. Equally healthy as, but far less fiddly than, a summer salad.

External Validation - The other day I had two separate people ask me if I'd lost weight. Amazing! This hasn't happened to me in so long. The first was a lovely woman who'd been away for six months and the other was someone I see in passing most days. They both used the word "load". As in, "Have you lost a load of weight?".

Dietgirl wept.

Actually, I just said, "Well, maybe a wee bit". Because I haven't lost anything, really. But I've been doing well for a few weeks now and had been annoyed with the scales as you well know, so to hear some nice words from impartial observers was a real boost to the ol' motivation. The number on the scale can faff around all it wants, but at the end of the day I just want to look like I take up less space, darnit.

Other things I'm thankful for: Good friends and internet people, emails from siblings, emerging biceps and Thursday night repeats of The Avengers on BBC4.

. . .

I've been meaning to apologise for my horribly slow email replies. But then I wondered if apologising would make me sound like a raging egomaniac, as though I can't get through the front door of our flat because there's just soooo many emails that they've all burst out of the computer and flooded the hallway. But then I figure if I don't say anything then it looks like I am a unresponsive snob. Hmm, dilemma!

So let me reassure you I have neither delusions of megastardom nor am I too important to answer my emails, I've just been a bit busy. Anyway I'm now down to 18 emails in my ReplyTo folder, and the oldest one is from late September so that's much better. Woohoo!

. . .

Recipe Corner!

Well it's not much of a corner, more the arse end of the page. But there's no time for pedantry, we have to make the world's most delicious soup! Allez allez!

Seriously, it's the best soup I've had in yonks. It comes from Good Food magazine and was described as "rustic and robust". I thought that a rather poncy and optimistic description but it was really sublime! Hearty, rich, smooth and sweet. And strangely creamy despite absence of actual creamy ingredients. Hubba hubba.

Notes:

• In the mag the soup was served with some fancy cheese croutons but I skipped those as I am trying to shrink, dammit.
• The recipe said to roast the vegies with the herbs left on their stalks, and remove the leaves afterward. I thought that sounded far too fiddly so I just did that before it went into the oven.
• I chopped the tomatoes in half before roasting, which was a bad move as the juices ran everywhere and the veggies were more steamed than roasted. Next time I'll leave them whole.
• The recipe calls for pumpkin but I used butternut squash as that's all there bloody ever seems to be in the shops, except for Halloween. Then felt guilty as hell when I discovered my butternut had been flown in from NEW ZEALAND!?!

I don't have the recipe on me right now so I will blurt from memory and apologise in advance for any glaring inaccuracies! (UPDATE - Have now checked recipe, should all be functional now!)

Pumpkin & Tomato Soup

650 - 900g (1.5 - 2lb) chunk of winter pumpkin or squash, peeled and cut into cubes
450g (1lb) ripe tomatoes
one red onion, peeled and cut into 8 wedges
6 whole cloves of garlic, unpeeled
a few sprigs of each fresh rosemary and thyme (I used about 6 of each)
3 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil
1.2 litres (2 pints) vegetable or chicken stock

1. Preheat oven to 220'C (430'F).
2. Pull the leaves off the herb stalks and chop finely.
3. Put all of the ingredients, except for the stock, into a roasting tin. Turn in your hands so everything is coated in oil. Roast, uncovered, for 35-40 minutes, turning occasionally, until it all looks... roasty.
4. Remove veg from oven. Squeeze garlic cloves out of their skins.
5. Scrape the veggies into a blender and liquidise with the stock, in two batches if necessary. (I just put the lot in a big pot then blasted to smithereens with my trusty hand-held pulveriser thingy)
6. Pour into a large pot and heat a little if needed.
7. Check seasoning then EAT. Ooh yeah.
8. Actually, put it some bowls first, THEN eat. If you insist on being civilised.

Serves 4.
212 calories, 12g fat per serve

Bon weekend, you groovers!

Downsizing

I'm amazed at the subtle difference of focusing on what I can do instad of what I can't. Before I would have looked at a 20-minute stretch DVD or 60 leg raises as a cop-out but now I see it's what my body needs right now. So I am just getting on with it instead of fighting against it and being cranky for not being able to do something more Hardcore.

It also amazes me how long I have to beat myself up against a brick wall before I come to these realisations. I seem to be particularly dense when it comes to my body. Just say I was learning to speak English, I would be perfectly content with learning how to say "goodbye" and "hello" and wouldn't smash things up because I couldn't read the complete works of bloody Shakespeare. Yet I have spent the past year or so being frustrated as hell and refusing to accept that you need to walk (or limp) before you can run. Thankfully for you, long suffering reader, I have finally made my peace with that.

. . .

Sam Breach is the author of scrummy food blog Becks and Posh and also happens to be on Weight Watchers to shed a few stray pounds. She posted an entry listing what she ate over the past week. It's a beautiful example of how you can eat the foods you love and still lose weight. There's mushroom and parmesan pizza, croissants, wine, sorbet, sausage - but all in small, controlled portions. Sam eats such delicious and wholesome food but in a very mindful way. And she lost 1.5lb this week, proving that you don't need to give up foods you love or cut out carbs or only eat green things or live off fat-free sugar-free taste-free overprocessed diet shite. Hurrah!

. . .

Another one for my Can Do list - Pay More Attention To What You Put In Your Gob. I'm halfway through my GFG Challenge and I'm right where I started! My waist and boobs have shrunk in a minor way but th