Breakfast fruit woes - and then there was juice!

So this morning I crawled out of bed (literally - I've got a bulged disc in my back) and wandered off for breakfast as normal. Cereal - check. Milk - check. Two non-5aday-items - check. Drat. On a 2-to-1 basis, that means that breakfast now involves 4 pieces of fruit or veg. And, having eaten an apple and an orange already this morning and contemplated with horror the thought of another pair of fruits before the fruit juice saved me, that's a rethink about breakfast.

So. Jam counts. Soft fruit counts. And -halleluja- so do fruit juice, smoothies and the red bits in red berry cereal. Which gives a small (and somewhat fruit-laden) set of breakfast options...

• Cereal/oats, milk (2nf) with fruit (raspberries, blackberries, frozen soft fruit mix, red berries etc), juice/smoothie and 2-fruit mid-morning snack (apple, orange, carrot etc).
• Bacon, toast (2nf) with 'shrooms, tomatoes, juice, 1-fruit snack.
• Toast/croissant (1nf) with jam/banana, juice.
• Kipper (1nf) with tomatoes, red pepper.
• Yoghurt (1nf) with fruit (berries, pear).

I'm still debating whether Pain Au Chocolat is a single non-fruit item or two of them. I think I'll declare it as one, before this all gets way way too confusing. On the plus side, a 2nf day will get me to 5 a day by lunchtime; on the minus side, I need to go and buy an awful lot more fruit.

Yeehah! I've just been to the 5-a-day veg portions list. Chickpeas count and so does onion. Hello, hummus...

I hate fruit so much, I've gone off chocolate

This is set to be a difficult month. And one low on chocolate. Twice now (already) I've foresworn a bar of chocolate because I couldn't face finding, buying and eating fruit to go with it. It's not that I dislike fruit per se - I like fruit when I'm eating it - it's more, like exercise, I dislike the thought of it until I get there. And so my chocolate consumption is curtailed (thanks, Hwsgo)... now all I need to do is work out a similar scheme for exercise. Maybe 1 exercise session for every 2 times I use the car?

2-to-1 month...

Yesterday, Hwsgo and I went shopping together. For food for each of our respective houses. Hwsgo helpfully put my shopping in front of his at the checkout. And it was more than a little embarassing. Hswgo: mainly fruit and veg, passata, some alcohol (champagne, I think). Me: bread, potatoes, tinned soup (tomato and scotch broth), baked beans. No veg. No fruit. Now admittedly that was because I wasn't sure whether I'd be visiting the fruit and veg market at the weekend, but it still didn't look good, and Hwsgo was at pains to point out a) my terrible diet and b) the ingredients in the tins (baked beans: sugar and salt; passata: mostly tomatoes).

So we tried again today. Spent most of my shopping time in the fruit and veg section, as advised (by Hwsgo). And when we got to the checkout with that lot and counted things up, we found that it had a 2:1 ratio of healthy things to eat (like green stuff) versus less-healthy ones (like bread). And since I don't have a theme yet for this month (still being on the Tesco-less diet), it's become 2 to 1 month. Every time I buy a foodstuff that isn't on the 5-a-day list, I have to buy 2 that *are* on the list. Oh, and I have to eat in that ratio too. Buying: not so difficult. Eating: almost bloody impossible, but I will at least try. It's only a month. Only a month...

But what *is* on the list? Hwsgo assures me that potatoes aren't, and apples definitely are, but what else? Ah - looking at the NHS site, pretty much anything fruit-ish or veg-ish that's not a potato. Passata counts (annoyingly), as does veg in soup. And if I eat 2 pieces of fruit a day, that should keep my ratios up okay. It's already started though: I went out to pick up some bread, which meant coming home with 2 french sticks and 4 assorted greenish things (rocket, mango, sprouts - yum-, and something green that I've already wiped from my memory). It amused Hwsgo though...