Sunday 14th October.

I promised myself I'd blog again over the weekend. Not for any particular reason - just because I feel I'm not blogging enough!
I've been busy over the weekend making bagcharms - last effort before Xmas I guess. I dare say I'll make more, but it's one last big effort! And loading stuff - lots more bookmarks to go on the site, but that'll go on for a while.
I'm about to go make dinner. Today's big meal is going to be pasta and green vegetable sauce. I've chopped up leek and Bok Choi finely, and an onion & garlic. I've soaked some dried mushrooms as well, and I'll keep the water for stock, but I'll fry off the onions and garlic in some olive oil, add the veg and mushrooms - maybe I'll put in a few olives, and perhaps the last of a box of plum tomato's I've got, and perhaps I'll even put it in the blender. I've got some linguine to cook to eat it with, and to follow this, I made an apple crumble earlier. I made this by cutting up a load of apples I had which had reached the point of use them or loose them! I cut them into big chunks rather than anything small or fine, and I left the skins on them. For some added zing, I added the juice of a fresh orange. I made crumble by just doing the standard thing - nothing extra, just flour, butter and a little sugar. Piled it up on the top, and dotted a bit of extra butter on there, and popped it into the oven for an hour at 150 degrees c. It's come up golden brown, and the apples have cooked down to a beautiful looking mush type filling - I can't wait to get my teeth into it! All in all, I think it's a very healthy and good dinner.

God look at me, going on about food again. That's life for you - well, I like eating and all, and I am still trying to loose weight. I agree it's not every one's idea of a diet, but it's high in fresh veg, and fruit, and there's very little sugar in it. As for fats, yep, there's fat, but the crumble layer is extremely thin, and I'll use probably less than a teaspoonful of oil. So beat that - it'll have real flavour to it too. I can't abide those ready meals that everyone seems to buy to eat these days - ok, I buy one every now and again, when I'm pushed for time or whatever (ie I can't be bothered to cook) but the idea of eating something like that every day or even more than once say every two weeks, fills me with horror. You only have to look at the list of ingredients. E numbers galore, additives, preservatives - vile. I'm not into puritanical avoidance - like I said I do eat them every now and again. I like curry, and I'll eat Chinese, but that's about as far as it goes. And to be honest, when I do buy them, I do tend to buy the more expensive one's, Marks and Sparks etc. It's a treat - now doesn't that sound strange. I definitely think of them as being a treat, and yet I'm also telling myself that they're full of 'stuff'. Well it's an example of how we can hold contradictory positions on things!

Back to the diet though. I was thinking to myself earlier today that I'm slipping a bit, in the sense that I don't even think I've thought about it for the last week, week and a half or so. I must get myself back up together with it, and a way of doing that is to consciously blog what I've been eating. So I'm setting myself a challenge right? I'm going to do a short blog every day about what I've been eating. For example, today - on top of what I was talking about above, I've had a few pieces of toast and peanut butter, (yes a bit of butter as well!) two freshly squeezed oranges, and a cheese sandwich for lunch. So you see, having a proper dinner that includes a bit of apple crumble is not a bad thing to be eating. Oh I also had two cups of tea with sugar, but I restrained myself - no cake, no biscuits! I might have a couple of small squares of chocolate before bed, if I feel that I need something to restrain myself from running amok at about nine or ten tonight!

So - well there we go. I'll be seeing you tomorrow I guess, for the first of my food instalments!