Tag Archives: portion size

Up to 21

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I had salad for the second time in two days.  Didn’t like it, but it has to be done. I need to control my weight and I need the nutrients.

Had cereal for breakfast (bran flakes) with raspberries, banana and blueberries. I’m claiming four towards my 30. Lunch – remembered to add peppers to the salad, so added an extra one. Julia is currently dishing up roast pork with stuffing and apple sauce with roast potatoes, cauliflower, carrot and parsnips. That’s four more, as there’s sage in the stuffing. I ate a pear today too, so that’s ten new vegetable sources of nutrition. Apple sauce doesn’t count as it is processed, but I will have an apple for lunch tomorrow. Just remembered we had grapes with the salad, though I did forget the nuts again. Eleven.

Add this to yesterday and we are now on 21.

Vegetables – Carsington Water

Having looked into what people recommend for the “five a day” I am quite alarmed by some of the things I read. I thought we were doing quite well but in world terms we are way behind.

Japan recommends up to 17 portions a day – 13 vegetable and four fruit. The portions are only 50g, compared to our 80g portions, but they still get 850g of veg to our 400g.

Austria recommends three portions of veg, two of fruit and four of rice, grains, potatoes, bread or pasta a day (five for children and active athletes). A portion of cooked vegetables in Austria is 2-300g. Five of our portions are only a little more than one Austrian portion, though you can eat less if they are raw.

Spanish portions are  up to 200g each – 3 veg and 2-3 fruit per day. Minimum is about 600g per day.

The problem is that I’m not sure I’m actually eating full portions for my five a day. The portion size is two inches of cucumber and three sticks of celery. Who eats that amount of cucumber or celery in a day? One stick of celery is plenty when I take it for lunch. And four or five thinnish slices of cucumber are plenty.

Healthy home grown veg

 

Steak Pie and Idle Chat

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I went out for  meal last night – Steak and Ale Pie at a local pub. Since I last had it either the portions have grown larger or my capacity for food has ben reduced. I’m hoping, after  over a month of losing weight, it is the latter. I hve to get my portion size down, it’s the only way to do it. Experiences like last night are worrying, because it’s an example of how you cn start eating too much again.

Newstead Abbey Again

Work was dull in parts, interesting in others. I ate my sandwiches far too early. This has always been the case. When I worked on farms I ate at lunchtime but as soon as I had a job driving between farms to do blood tests and monitoring I started eating my sandwiches about half an hour after leaving home.

I had an email last night, two tanka accepted to go with the tanka prose I previously had accepted. Some editors are very quick. One of the others tells me they don’t send out rejections, but if you haven’t heard from them within 12 weeks you can assume it’s safe to send the poems to other people. This isn’t satisfactory and I don’t usually submit to editors with similar policies, but I fancied a change this month.

For January I sent out 11 submissions. I missed one out because they wanted poems to a theme I didn’t feel like writing and two because they were competitions and I’m not altogether in favour of competitions. You tie up the poems for months, pay for the privilege, and then when you read the winning entries you wonder what idiot picked them. Sometimes I optimistically enter a competition but am usually brought down to earth when I read the results.

Next month I just have five. I may look for a few more, or I may just take a rest.

 

Newstead Abbey again

Thanks to Julia for the photos again.

Carrot & Ginger Soup

Parsnip Soup

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The shortage is over, and we now have more parsnips than we need. That’s not a hard problem to balance, as I have just made parsnip and lentil soup. It’s possible that I didn’t need the lentils but, at the back of my mind, I always have the idea that a varied diet is a healthy one.

I am now wondering whether to make a hash or a vegetable stew for my next dish of the day. I’m favouring hash at the moment because we are out of flour and stew without dumplings is just a bowl of boiled vegetables. That is OK in summer but not so good in winter.

Really, I should get a new menu as I seem to recall writing similar blog posts before.  I was going to try pilaff after one of the neighbours brought one round for us, but I never quite get round to it. I’ve made it before, but suspect it was so long ago I wasn’t married.

Tidying my desk has gone unevenly. There’s definitely a difference, but I’m not sure it’s an improvement, being more of an exercise in relocation than in decluttering. It’s going to be an 9nteresting conversation with Julia when she gets back. That’s why I’ve just been messing around on Whoosh, the TESCO short-notice delivery service. I meant to order flour, but the system defeated me. I did remember chocolate cake, so there’s a chance I may be able to buy her off. I will, of course tell her it’s a birthday treat, rather than draw attention to the carnage around my table.

I’m trying to cut down on portion sizes. It hasn’t really worked with the soup, so I’m going to try again with the hash. The only trouble is in cutting down the corned beef. What do you do with half a tin of corned beef that has been extracted from the tin with more force than skill? It might slice in this weather but in summer it can end badly, at which point I just shovel it all in.

I just had my Whoosh delivery. That is going to be a whole new post. Drop by later for that. It will be worth it. For now, imagine my surprise at opening it up and finding I had a lettuce in my shopping. A lettuce🙹 (That’s an interrobang, by the way, it really is proper punctuation.) Not sure if it looks better than ?!, which is one of the alternatives.

 

Chips at the Dolphin

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I’ve been going to the Dolphin fish and chip restaurant for around 30 years. When I sold chickens to farmers in Lincolnshire I would make a detour two or three times a year to walk round Sutton and then have lunch at the Dolphin.

We have been most years, either with the kids or just as a couple. It was always OK rather than outstanding, but has always been a pleasant place to eat. Over the years various owners have made improvements, though this has been accompanied by the occasional lapse, and in the last few years, they seem to have been selling off household goods to raise cash. It did start to look a bit like a jumble sale, but when we visited on Wednesday it was a lot tidier.

It has also grown an assortment of notices prohibiting various sorts of behaviour. I can’t give examples as I didn’t really read them. I prefer my food without too many petty rules.

Haddock Special at the Dolphin Fish Bar, Sutton on Sea

Haddock Special at the Dolphin Fish Bar, Sutton on Sea

The Haddock Special was £9.95, not £8.95 as stated in various reviews, and tea is not included in that. The chip portion was sufficient, though not generous, and the peas were also served in a smaller pot than we remember. That wasn’t the worst thing though, they were a bit tasteless too. All in all, not the best “special” we’ve had.

You can’t order at the table now either. It’s not a big thing, but it is a sign of the erosion of standards of service.

Finally, on that subject, when someone asked for tapwater they were told it was 50p a glass. Now, the law states that only places selling alcohol have to provide tapwater free of charge, and they are, it seems, allowed to charge for service and use of the glass. As the Dolphin doesn’t serve alcohol they don’t need to offer free tapwater, but on the other hand, it’s another nail in the coffin of customer service.

However, if you have a dog with you, you are welcome to bring the germ-ridden fleabag into the eating area, where I have no doubt it will be provided with free water, and if that’s not enough you can even buy frozen lactose-free yoghurt for your dog.

Frozen yoghurt for dogs - what next?

Frozen yoghurt for dogs – what next?

The staff were quick, efficient and reasonably cheerful, though they were arguably too efficient in clearing tables. I finished before Julia, as I come from a family of predatory snackers and speed is the best defence against food theft. The way they whipped my plate from the table was undeniably efficient, but felt like they were trying to get rid of me as soon as possible.

So that’s the report – declining portion size and a couple of queries over peas and service. It’s clean and efficient, and the food is generally good, but not so good we can’t find somewhere else equally as good. We will probably do that next time.

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Wall tiles – Sutton on Sea

Roasted Ratatouille

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I’ll carry on the burger post later. I thought I’d better do something that involves a photograph for the moment.

The photograph is Sausages with Roasted Ratatouille. It’s not quite the same as the recipe photograph that I had. My vegetables never seem to cook as attractively as the ones in recipe pictures. It also didn’t help that I forgot to buy peppers and couldn’t get the right sausages. And they said red onions but I could only get the small size in brown. That probably made a difference too.

Despite this it didn’t turn out too badly in the end, and with a bit of rearrangement three floppy mini peppers from the back of the salad drawer put up quite a decent show.

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Roasted Ratatouille

I was quite pleased with the way it worked out and it had a good flavour thanks to three cloves of wrinkly garlic (you could probably use ordinary garlic but I always leave mine hanging round for a few weeks to mature) and a couple of sprigs of rosemary from the garden.

As long as I can use my own rosemary I can pretend I’m a proper cook.

The other good thing about this dish is that I’m never in a hurry to eat vegetables so I remembered to take the photograph. I’m also not embarrassed about taking pictures of my food like I am when I’m in public. (See comments from beatingthebounds in the previous post about this.)

 

 

 

Just a Short Post

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It’s been a strange day. I spent most of it sorting through a pile of junk. As a result, I have a neater and better sorted pile of junk. It takes years to make a proper mess, so you aren’t going to set it all to rights in a day.

I’ve found some interesting items, but have also managed to start a bag of things for the charity shop and another couple for the bin.

It’s slow but it’s moving in the right direction.

I will be writing about ebay at greater length soon, but for now I have to say I’m now feeling much better about it. I’ve just had a day when I bought everything I bid on at minimum price. This is a mixed blessing, as all the items were cheap (which is good) but I bought eight items and the bill soon adds up.

We had another casserole for tea after Julia came back from work. This was stewing steak with carrots, parsnips, small onions, garlic and thyme. I also used two stock pots, cumin and black pepper. I then covered it, chucked it in the oven and fell asleep in front of the TV. When I woke up it was ready. What’s not to like with a laid back recipe like that? I could have woken up an hour earlier or an hour later and it would probably have been OK.

I dropped Number 2 son off in Sheffield yesterday and we have the house to ourselves again. This should be relaxing, but it isn’t as Julia is now wittering on about hoping he’ll be alright. I’m sure he will be. He has money, he has stationery and he has access to kitchen, shop and pubs. He’s a student, what more does he need?

One adjustment I will have to make is portion size, I cooked for three tonight.

 

A New Dawn…

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I slept better last night.

This is probably due to my management of liquid intake during the evening (as what goes in must come out) but may also be due to the events of the day. I certainly feel happier than I have for some time.

Three notable things happened, two of which produced a feeling of wellbeing. Those two were the conversation with the new tenants and a visit to the farmer’s parents (where we completed a jigsaw to check it had all its pieces before it went to the charity shop). I like jigsaws.

The third event was lunch at the Garden Centre. I swear they have reduced the size of the paninis. It’s difficult to say without evidence to back it up, but it seemed to me that the bread was shorter and the fact was concealed with artistic arrangement and an extra dab of salad (which is, let’s face it, just adding insult to injury).

It’s a re-run of the eternal Little Chef Breakfast Conundrum – you know something is lacking but you can’t quite recall what it is. I’m sure that the Olympic Breakfast is half a tomato and a full sausage down on what it used to be. If only I had photographs…

With the panini all I needed was a ruler.

Julia, as usual, has little sympathy with my quest for value, or my thirst for scientific knowledge.

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Olympic Breakfast with fried bread option

I can’t imagine Pierre Curie met with such obstruction in his scientific research/