Weighting

Whilst waiting for the medical profession to provide me with a new hip in the New Year, I have been a lot less active than usual, which has unsurprisingly led to my putting on a bit of weight.

There seem to be two major drawbacks to going on a diet.  The first is that diets are unpleasant, leaving one hungry and/or having to eat ghastly food. The second is that they rarely work in the long term.

I am trying a fasting diet, of sorts. No dinner. The idea is that I can have what I like for breakfast and lunch, but then at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the shutter comes down: nothing to eat or drink except water until the next morning.

Obviously, this is good, in that I’m not required to eat raw carrots, lettuce or fish sticks. Surprisingly, after several days on this regime, it is not nearly as annoying as one might think. Ordinarily

The Government makes us Fat

Just watched a very interesting programme on SBS on how important bacteria are to controlling our weight.  The less the diversity of the bacteria in our guts, the fatter we get, they say.  I think they are right.

It is notable that most of the problem is the governments around the world. Viz:

• They pay for doctors to prescribe antibiotics. It is hard to resist the conclusion that antibiotics reduce biodiversity in our bodies, and hence make us fatter. A handy fix, but at the cost of our health.
• Here in Oz they ban raw cheese. Totally potty. Really smelly cheese is exactly what we need for biodiversity in our guts.
• Dog bans are everywhere. But dogs are a really good source of healthy bacteria. Really dumb.

There is an interesting thought. Why are French women relatively thin, notwithstanding

The Lure of the Wild

I have never been keen on killing animals for fun. Regardless of whether they be mammals, birds or fish. Probably a function of having been brought up in a city? It is not that I presume to tell country people how to control the foxes that slaughter huge numbers of other animals, including chickens. Nor do I presume to tell anglers whether or how they should kill fish.

But fish hooks do strike me as particularly unpleasant things.  They are designed, of course, to assist with the killing of fish, so they are not designed for their helpful qualities.

Poor Perdita got a fish hook embedded in her flank a week or so ago.  It being Easter, she had to go to the Emergency Vet an hour away for it to be cut out with the benefit of an anaesthetic. So that was a few hundred dollars spent.

This weekend, it was a lure, with many hooks on its tail. Happily for Perdita, this one – evidently made to look like a prawn – was not embedded in her flesh, but just

Curly red writing

There are those who reckon that a Bristol is just about the best car in the world (albeit currently in hiatus). A lot less flashy than a Rolls-Royce, of course, but a lot more beautiful. A lot less speedy than a Ferrari, but a lot more comfortable. And much more important, in much better taste than any of the “brands” that spend a fortune on the sort of advertising that evidently reaches footballers, drug dealers and other crooks. The most they do by way of merchandising at Bristol Cars is the occasional bone china mug, pin or somesuch.

A Muesli Breakfast

It is easy to see why having muesli for breakfast might be good for losing weight.

Halfway through a bowl of muesli, and I am already losing the will to live, let alone

Playing Chicken

Overheard in the supermarket today, from an assistant talking to a shopper at the egg department:

“Would you like free range or normal?”

It is rather a shame, I thought, that anyone would think it normal to eat eggs laid by chickens kept in battery conditions.  Chickens are hardly the brightest of creatures, and I am neither vegetarian nor vegan. But I do think that common decency dictates

The Tofu in the Sandwich

My elder daughter from New York is staying with me at the moment, as is my elder son, which is a joy. And one of our pleasures is to cook well, and to sit down together to enjoy food and wine.

Annabel has become a vegan, which is obviously a bit limiting as far as the menu is concerned.  She said, “Don’t worry about cooking for me; I will sort myself out”.  But Charlie and I have tried to work around this by finding things that Annabel will eat that we also think are actually edible.

Home Alone IV

What I hugely miss since my wife left is my wife. But I do not miss the ghastly Thermomix – see http://www.users.on.net/~rjfenwickelliott/diary2010.html#eggson.

The breadmaker that used to live behind the Panzerkampfwagen broke. It had done 10 years service, and that is fair enough: I then happily used the KitchenAid (which had a perfectly good dough hook) to make dough.  But that was Jeanie’s, and has now gone.

The main trouble with making dough by hand is that the telephone always rings half way through. 

Mushrooms on Toast

I will try for while to write up what I cook.  So:

For this you need

• Mushrooms
• Bread, to make toast
• Salt
• Balsamic vinegar
• Lemon
• Coriander

The mushrooms have to be fresh, obviously. 

Home Alone III

I have resumed work on my cook book.  Here is what I have to say about soup in general and vichyssoise in particular:

Soup

Soup is underrated and undeservedly unfashionable.  Few people choose it, perhaps because it seems a little boring, but most people enjoy it if it is served to them.

The easiest way to get decent soup is to buy it.  Go for the most expensive carton in the refrigerator in the supermarket, or if none, the most expensive tin on the shelf.  In the summer, a cold vichyssoise or gazpacho is hard to beat.  In the winter, soups with cream or potato are particularly warming.  Lobster bisque is good any time. Do not heat soup you buy in the microwave, but in a saucepan; that way, the smell of the soup will proceed it, which is important.

There are two tricks to serving soup.