Back to normal

Healthy again now (although a canteen egg sandwich may yet see to that); weight 166.8, and fridge full so foodie tasks today are limited to planning and possibly making things with chocolate.

Food intake: 1 bowl specialk + milk, 1 bag baked crisps, 1 canteen egg sandwich, 1 latte, 1 machine coffee, lots water, 1 bag mini cheddars. Exercise: well, I'm thinking about it. I have a plan forming. I feel guilty about eating too much chocolate, and I don't run enough. So: the chocolate/running exchange rate. I've thought about it, and a half-hour run is mentally worth five 1" squares of chocolate. The catch? I have to do the running before I can have the chocolate. Boy am I going to hate myself for this one...

...really didn't want to eat tonight, so I headed off down the gym to see if I could work up an appetite. First bodypump, on the 10kg warmup because I'm a bit wimpy at the moment... still had a complete muscle rebellion 2/3 of the way through, but at least I made it to the end; then Pilates, which was in some ways much more difficult... a bit shocking how bad my core stability is at the moment, but I can work on it and the fat that stopped me bending properly a few months ago has gone now. Still not hungry, but I forced a bowl of chicken and sauce. I'm now eyeing up a square of chocolate and wondering if 1 bodypump will allow me to eat a square inch. I rather think it will.

Not much food today

It's a little embarassing this, but I appear to have picked up a food bug. Not really ideal for someone trying to blog about food. Today's fare will be less ornate than usual: active yoghurt, water and plain rye bread. All day. Simply missing out coffee will be death itself, but it's better than spending any more days waking up unreasonably spaced out and hurting every time I go near sugar (the chocolate last night was a very very bad idea). Although the weight loss is good (169.8lbs yesterday; 166.4lbs today), it's probably very bad for me not to be absorbing any energy from my food.

Enough. This is a food blog, and I have at least one morsel for today. I've found my local Polish food shop (not that that's very difficult anymore); well, Polish-Tamil food shop, but at least now I have a good source of rye bread, pickled fish, hot sausages and unusual ketchups. And German yoghurt: not something I often feel the need for, but I now know where to find it.

Onwards... food purgatory awaits.

Plans for today

Today is a good day to buy and cook a chicken to the next book recipe (poulet poche). And to attempt an rotw (lemon meringue pie) at the same time. And maybe consider buying a straightjacket in advance.

I was so out-of-sorts that Hwsgo cooked the chicken instead and we missed the lemon meringue completely. He was ever so sweet, and re-did Simon's roast chicken recipe for us; we bought a big bird (2.4kg, the smallest they had) at Allen Martin Meats; it was a good bird, but I think a little too large for the recipe; we got good firm flesh, but not quite as infused with lemon and herbs as the earlier one had been. The really really good thing was the banana shallots that Hwsgo packed around the baking tray (with roast potatoes; also good, but not as spectacular); they picked up the butter sauce, and caramelised into melt-in-the-mouth sweetness. We also finally found a use for the comedy turkey baster that's been sat in my kitchen drawer for the past year: it really does work, and it saves an awful lot of fishing around in the baking tray with a spoon.

1 Recipe: Leek Tart (Page 121)

I really really didn't want to cook today. Got out of work late (traffic snarled up again), went and bought the ingredients I needed then wandered aimlessly round Sainsbo's, trying to think of something I desperately needed and had to spend a long time thinking about, then eventually (I now know their entire range of non-food goods, which really isn't something to be proud of) came home. And read the Guardian, did the crossword (nearly), puzzle (absolutely), watched something fascinating about cooking on TV, checked hwsgo's now very-important-blog (vib); in short, anything but come into the kitchen and cook.
But I had to come here eventually (the butter was going soft), and start. So I made the pastry dough (p151) , started chopping the leeks, and suddenly it hit me. I'm in here doing something repetitive, difficult, long-winded (it's going to be well past bedtime when I finish tonight) because it calms me. And it calms me because I start to think. About life (not as bad as Monday), about work (definitely not as bad as Monday), about hwsgo and familes and roles and self and jobs and the limits of banks buying Bayesians because they're trendy but not thinking about what happens next (hopefully not the same as puppies after xmas, but my gut feeling tells me that only some will be allowed to stay in the house).
And then somewhere at the end of this reverie, I realise I have more leeks than I realistically have pan. I mean, I have some big pans, but the leek pile has filled a very large bowl and I'm suddenly wondering if I should revise my idea of 'big' for this quest. I also have my soup kettle, but I'm loathe to burn things on the bottom of it without reason, so I melt the butter and carefully tip all the leek cuttings into the biggest 'normal' pan that I own. Which they completely fill, as in no pan insides showing at all. Now I believe I'm logical, and I have several pieces of evidence that lead me to believe that everything's going to turn out fine. 1) I have enough pastry for an 8" dish, and there's no way that lot is going to fit into anything but an unreasonably tall 8" dish. 2) onions shrink, and leeks are basically onions on an Atkins diet, and 3) it looks a bit like my compost heap. Which is not as bad as it sounds. One of things I love about my compost heap (compost not having been one of them yet) is that it's always full when I fill it up (with leaves, grass, clippings etc), but when I come back to it, there's always a gap in the top waiting to be filled. Now either some kind soul has been digging out my compost for the last few years (and I wouldn't put the neighbourhood squirrels past that), or when you warm up a pile of leaves they shrink. So that's solved nicely then. But there's still the issue of where the butter went. I put leek clippings on it, stirred them and all the butter disappeared. And how are the leeks going to sweat without water? I'm really hoping the stuff about their high water content is true, or it's compost pie for supper tonight...
It's okay; it's half an hour later and all the mysteries (the leek-based ones anyway) have been solved. They do have enough water to sweat; the butter has run out and joined the leek juice too, and I can see half of my pan insides with no leek-shifting cheating. I think I can go and bake the pastry now...
...okay, problem. I don't own a small baking thing. I have 10" ones and huger, but nothing at 8". I must remember to buy at least one of these (all my baking trays are rubber, so another one of those would be good), as well as the large frying pan that I need, and a full-sized Le Creuset pot. All I need now is a town with shops that stock that sort of thing.
Okay folks. I'm supposed to be one of the smarter people in the world (there are also people who think I'm completely stupid, but I guess it's all relative). Let's think what happens when we try to put wobbly pastry into a wobbly rubber baking tin. Oh yes; collapse on a scale not seen since.. well, quite recently if we're talking finance, but. Oh grief. I've just looked at the oven. The sides have fallen into the middle. Using only your skill and ingenuity... I've been and poked it, but the sides are determined to lie down and sunbathe. I poked the leeks too: it does indeed take an hour to sweat them down. I do hope the filling won't turn out to be too runny. Oh, and you prick the bottom of pastry cases with a fork to stop them blowing giant bubbles on their base. Doing it halfway through cooking is definitely not a cool idea (but is fun watching the bubbles go down).
The pastry case is cooked. And shot. It's more of a bent pastry saucer; my first official kitchenblog disaster (takes bow/curtsey). But the leek filling is good. I was tempted to eat the tarragon on its own. I can't remember having ever cooked with tarragon, although I may have grown it sometime (I love just having herbs around to smell in the garden), and it's a much nicer smell and taste than I was expecting. I've put the filling over/around the tart bas(in), and I'll see what happens over the next half hour. Apart from me getting hungrier, of course.
It's done. Smells good but I've left it for a while to cool (there being no pastry edges to keep the filling in). And the verdict is. The tastes work really well together: the tarragon, the leek, the parmesan (I put it in, even though it was optional) is a really good combination. But it's a bit... erm.. squidgy. I suspect I didn't cook it quite long enough (out at 35 mins on a 30-40 min timing because I was worried about overcooking it). I think I like the recipe, but I don't think I've done it justice this time.

Reorientation...

Right! This blog has been far too much about me and not enough about food for a few days. All immediate crises are over, so it's time to get back with the Simons. Hwsgo has suggested Poulet Poche a la creme with crepes parmentier (posh chicken pancakes, p38) for the weekend, and I'm taking The Book to work with me today to choose something for this evening as well.
Back to me for a second... weight yesterday was 171.0; today is 170.4lbs. Food intake today 1 bowl specialK + milk. Yesterday 1 bowl SpecialK+milk, 1 specialK bar, 1 cream-inside biscuit, 1 pack baked crisps, 1 bowl soup + bread + butter, 2 slices bread with butter and smelly cheese, 1" lump of Italian dried sausage, 1 1" square millionare shortbread (thank you IET, you do lovely cakes at your talks), way too much coffee.
Onwards...

Another night on the town...

Ah, yet another non-cooking day caused by my social life... am going out on the town tonight, so dinner will yet again be cooked by someone else. Will try to eat healthily though, to maintain my (probably temporary) weight advantage of 168.8lbs. Today's food: 1 bowl specialK and milk, 1 bag baked crisps, 1 bowl soup with bread+butter, too much beer, Thai fishcakes and Thai red curry (which elicited a quite spectacular food reaction later; maybe additives, maybe just a bit too hot a curry for me).

weight rising

Back from a lovely weekend with the chef and her family. No cooking as such (except bacon etc) but lots of eating. Italian friday night (risotto and lots of wine), moules saturday lunch (great watching the 2-year-old eating them), salmon and salad sat pm, roast beef in the pub on sunday. On the 1st feb, weight was 170.8; now, it's 171.6. I really really need to get some exercise and some rest from eating too much.

This is very odd; same scales, same me, scales not moved at all, but my weight changed during the night... at 3am it was 171.6; at 7am it was 170.0lbs. I really really must have been hot during the night...

Today not a good food day; work exploded badly, and I ended up being sick with shock and unable to eat much. Bad on the stress/ Simon fronts; possibly good on the weight front...