Sunday saw me back on the allotment. It's peaceful down there: there are trains going past and planes and cars in the distance, but the birdsong is clear and the area is in enough of a cutting for the air to be quite still most of the time. I've planted the other two sets of potatoes (early Charlottes and Epicures), built my very first raised bed frame (well almost; I miscounted the timber slightly so it's a frame minus one plank at the moment) and put Hwngos sorrel seeds into it (they'll need the protection; they're tiny onionseedy things that look like they wouldn't survive a fight with a miniature carrot). I forgot to hide the big tools so they'll probably not be there when I get back, but at least they didn't cost much (Asda are good like that); I'm starting to accept theft from an inner-town allotment as a normal fact of life.
My weight? Well, I'm about to go running as part of my grab exercise when I can strategy (busy night tonight and a short lunchtime means that now's the time today); the weight today is -tada- 174.6lbs. So. Under the 175 and aiming now for the 165 via the 170. Each day, another challenge. But today a chance to be a teeny big smug about having met the first one. Inch by inch, block by block. But seriously, this is a good thing for sometimes the strangest of reasons: like the pattern I'm using in my needlework class being big enough for my bust but a centimetre smaller than my waist. And jokes about becoming square aside, it's little things like that that form the basis of fitting properly into ones world. And if the only thing I need to do to do that is get a little fitter and lose a little weight, well hey, that's hardly a big penalty on my life. Onwards...
Thursday 24 April 2008
Saturday 19 April 2008
And we're off...
176.2 this morning. Down a little (yesterday's 179 did drop to 177ish after an hour; please don't ask). Still heavy, but I can work on that.
I've been resisting going running for a while. I thoroughly enjoyed running out with Hwngo t'other week, but I just haven't been able to persuade myself to go out on my own. But this morning (spurred on by the over-175 thing), I got on with it. I only did a short one, a run to the pub and back to get a timing for it (25 minutes, door-to-door including stretches, easily possible as a run before work). My legs felt sooo heavy after yesterday's BodyPump (sore gluts, ouch!) but I'm glad I did it. It's too wet out to go play on the allotment today (digging is good cardio) so I'll just see how many miles I can walk on the pavements and gallery floors of London before I fall over/ my feet want to fall off. Lunch, I think, will be healthy. Dinner (with Hwngo) appears to involve a chicken...
I've been resisting going running for a while. I thoroughly enjoyed running out with Hwngo t'other week, but I just haven't been able to persuade myself to go out on my own. But this morning (spurred on by the over-175 thing), I got on with it. I only did a short one, a run to the pub and back to get a timing for it (25 minutes, door-to-door including stretches, easily possible as a run before work). My legs felt sooo heavy after yesterday's BodyPump (sore gluts, ouch!) but I'm glad I did it. It's too wet out to go play on the allotment today (digging is good cardio) so I'll just see how many miles I can walk on the pavements and gallery floors of London before I fall over/ my feet want to fall off. Lunch, I think, will be healthy. Dinner (with Hwngo) appears to involve a chicken...
Friday 18 April 2008
It's only a crisis if I let it become one...
I weighed myself this morning. I still weigh myself every morning, but I'd got out of the habit of putting it onto this blog. I guess I forgot that it was about health as well as food, and stopped writing daily because I wasn't getting the Simons in. Well, now I'm back. And heavy. I stepped on the scales this morning and nearly jumped back off again in horror: 179kg! Back to the edges of unreasonable. Elephantine. Ugly-blobby. Too fat for hope. Well, no actually. I've put on too much weight again, the campaign to slim down and become sexy has faltered but I have a choice here. I can carry on sliding, comfort-eat my way out of my I'm-a-girl wardrobe and feel sorry for myself, or I can do something about it.
So here I am again. My new phrase when I think about food is "do you really need those calories". It's simple but remarkably effective. I've walked away from the snack machine, the fridge, a quick snack in the gym after training and the temptation to buy some good chocolate on the way home today. Oh, and I went to the gym today even though I didn't want to. And actually enjoyed it once I was there: another thing to reinforce, I think. So here I am thinking about some cheese for a light suppery snack. And I may just, but it will be a small piece of cheese not a block, and it comes after a day of carefully behaving myself. Onwards...
...Postscript: I didn't eat the cheese. I got to the fridge, said "do I really need these calories" and wandered off to bed instead. It works...
So here I am again. My new phrase when I think about food is "do you really need those calories". It's simple but remarkably effective. I've walked away from the snack machine, the fridge, a quick snack in the gym after training and the temptation to buy some good chocolate on the way home today. Oh, and I went to the gym today even though I didn't want to. And actually enjoyed it once I was there: another thing to reinforce, I think. So here I am thinking about some cheese for a light suppery snack. And I may just, but it will be a small piece of cheese not a block, and it comes after a day of carefully behaving myself. Onwards...
...Postscript: I didn't eat the cheese. I got to the fridge, said "do I really need these calories" and wandered off to bed instead. It works...
Tuesday 8 April 2008
Les P'tit Parapluies, Rouen
Rouen is cute. Definitely a town they forgot to burn down, all leaning wood-framed houses, cute curving alleys and big churches. I mean *big* churches. Man, do they like their gods towering over them. But I digress: this blog is about food, and food we shall discuss.
Les P'tit Parapluies is nominally a modern European (more of that in a minute) restaurant in an old umbrella factory on the edges (i.e. walking distance from the cathedral) of Rouen centre. Hwngo had done his research, and this looked like one of two possibly good places to check out the non-traditional cuisine in Rouen. He's pretty darn good at snuffling out decent food, so off we went.
What we found was the plight of French culture in a microcosm. Well, in an impeccably put together, difficult-to-put-your-finger-on-the-problem neat room with a perfectly laid table and well-turned-out staff. Got it. It's like listening to classical music. You know you love the Messiah, you know it's a great piece of music, you've paid to hear a decent choir and orchestra, but this is the season where they just don't quite get it together. All the ingredients are there, but somehow they add to less than the sum of their parts. I s'pose we're back to cooking there really, aren't we? So. The ingredients were good. The food was competent. The look was good (if a little Euro-hotel in places), the staff were friendly. But the service wasn't quite right: we waited ages for bread, then the staff kept bringing us more - damn good bread, so we weren't complaining about that- not because it was the right time and sense to do so, but more because they really wanted to please.
And so to a sex metaphor. Sometimes what you want in bed isn't a transaction, a by-the-numbers quickie, but a sharing of souls, a sensitivity of them to your needs and you to theirs. Now I'm not suggesting that we should get way over-friendly with the sommelier, but a great restaurant experience has much in common with that style of sex... you feel cared for, listened to, but so discreetly that when asked you couldn't say when the extra fork arrived or why it all flowed so well, you just know that it was special. And in return, you get it; you hit that moment when you understand that this is indeed a great thing, and are humbled that someone could make you concentrate so much on their art and give you such a high from it. And then you pay, but hey, that's only fair. Les P'tit was a high-class hooker rather than a proper French mistress; all the curves and lacy bits, but there was no way she was going to kiss you. The food was competently put together, but my sense was that the person who wrote the menus and bought the ingredients wasn't the same as the person who put it together in the kitchen. There were bum notes; my pigeon was well cooked, the potatocake with it was excellent, but they really shouldn't have been together. The asparagus amuse-bouche were good but I'd had the same and better in Switzerland (Switzerland for god's sake) the week before; the desserts were over-sweet and cooked at too low a heat... the list goes on...
Now be well aware: this is not a bad restaurant. The food is reasonable. It's just that it doesn't quite live up to either its own aspirations or to the pool of equivalent European restaurants to which it's aspired. Which is a shame. France has a long tradition of great food and serious chefs even in the most back-of-the-woods places (roadside caffs, yum!), but it's slowly being lost. There's a Thatcher revolution in the air there, a sense of moving into the modern world that has young madames driving past the boulangeries in the mornings and picking up ready meals in the hypermarches at night. And just as the UK lost much of its traditions during its own Thatcher years then reinvented them as heritage pastiche, so too is France going down that same path. It saddens me, but I won't be surprised to see more French restos starting up with neat modern decor and the spirit seeping from its expensive menu, more French food whose commonality is with the cookbook rather than the soul of the ingredients available today. I hope La France can sort out its social problems, its massive unemployment, its impassable social strata, but I fear it will pay a very high price.
Les P'tit Parapluies is nominally a modern European (more of that in a minute) restaurant in an old umbrella factory on the edges (i.e. walking distance from the cathedral) of Rouen centre. Hwngo had done his research, and this looked like one of two possibly good places to check out the non-traditional cuisine in Rouen. He's pretty darn good at snuffling out decent food, so off we went.
What we found was the plight of French culture in a microcosm. Well, in an impeccably put together, difficult-to-put-your-finger-on-the-problem neat room with a perfectly laid table and well-turned-out staff. Got it. It's like listening to classical music. You know you love the Messiah, you know it's a great piece of music, you've paid to hear a decent choir and orchestra, but this is the season where they just don't quite get it together. All the ingredients are there, but somehow they add to less than the sum of their parts. I s'pose we're back to cooking there really, aren't we? So. The ingredients were good. The food was competent. The look was good (if a little Euro-hotel in places), the staff were friendly. But the service wasn't quite right: we waited ages for bread, then the staff kept bringing us more - damn good bread, so we weren't complaining about that- not because it was the right time and sense to do so, but more because they really wanted to please.
And so to a sex metaphor. Sometimes what you want in bed isn't a transaction, a by-the-numbers quickie, but a sharing of souls, a sensitivity of them to your needs and you to theirs. Now I'm not suggesting that we should get way over-friendly with the sommelier, but a great restaurant experience has much in common with that style of sex... you feel cared for, listened to, but so discreetly that when asked you couldn't say when the extra fork arrived or why it all flowed so well, you just know that it was special. And in return, you get it; you hit that moment when you understand that this is indeed a great thing, and are humbled that someone could make you concentrate so much on their art and give you such a high from it. And then you pay, but hey, that's only fair. Les P'tit was a high-class hooker rather than a proper French mistress; all the curves and lacy bits, but there was no way she was going to kiss you. The food was competently put together, but my sense was that the person who wrote the menus and bought the ingredients wasn't the same as the person who put it together in the kitchen. There were bum notes; my pigeon was well cooked, the potatocake with it was excellent, but they really shouldn't have been together. The asparagus amuse-bouche were good but I'd had the same and better in Switzerland (Switzerland for god's sake) the week before; the desserts were over-sweet and cooked at too low a heat... the list goes on...
Now be well aware: this is not a bad restaurant. The food is reasonable. It's just that it doesn't quite live up to either its own aspirations or to the pool of equivalent European restaurants to which it's aspired. Which is a shame. France has a long tradition of great food and serious chefs even in the most back-of-the-woods places (roadside caffs, yum!), but it's slowly being lost. There's a Thatcher revolution in the air there, a sense of moving into the modern world that has young madames driving past the boulangeries in the mornings and picking up ready meals in the hypermarches at night. And just as the UK lost much of its traditions during its own Thatcher years then reinvented them as heritage pastiche, so too is France going down that same path. It saddens me, but I won't be surprised to see more French restos starting up with neat modern decor and the spirit seeping from its expensive menu, more French food whose commonality is with the cookbook rather than the soul of the ingredients available today. I hope La France can sort out its social problems, its massive unemployment, its impassable social strata, but I fear it will pay a very high price.
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