Week 1: (mostly) Slow by our community manager
I love spaghetti. It's one of my favourite foods, I like spelt spaghetti for cooking.
First things first, unlike Susan, also documenting on our blog how she is learning to eat Slowly, I am not new to slow food, having been on the Slow Food London committee since 2008, and in 2009 I set up and continue to manage the social media accounts. I'm curating your daily dose of slow food and reading lots of articles, everything from sustainability to novel food manufacturing.
Even with this knowledge it certainly doesn't mean my diet is perfect. It's more the best that I can most of the time, while knowing that I'm human and that I will inevitably eat the delicious huge chocolate bar, big bag of crisps, Indian takeaway, salmon and cream cheese bagel, insert your guilty pleasure here. But not daily and often not weekly. Most of the time I try to avoid processed foods, cook from scratch with fresh seasonal ingredients and whole grains, have moderate portions, with regular exercise.
So, truthfully, here's what I ate.
Monday 23rd June 2014
My standard breakfast at home is a boiled egg with a slice of E5 Bakehouse sourdough toast and a cup of Colombian coffee with raw milk. E5 is probably my closest real bread baker. And their bread names are lovely, my fave's the Hackney Wild.
Mid-morning latte at our Approved (The Snail Trail) member Climpson & Sons.
Lunch: home made quinoa salad with plum tomatoes, fetta, avocado, and flat leaf parsley dressed with balsamic vinegar, good olive oil, lemon juice and seasoning. The trick to great quinoa is to toast it first, and then I cook using the absorption method (1 cup of quinoa to 2 cups of water) for perfect light fluffiness.
In the evening I was at a pub for a bookclub meet. I had fish'n'chips and a pint of some unremembered crisp lager, probably German. When I cook fish at home, I never batter it. So I like to order fish'n'chips when I'm out.
x2 small chocolate bars - here's the pleasure, with no guilt - life's too short and I think it's perfectly ok to have a treat, providing the rest of the time you're on the straight and narrow.
Tuesday
Boiled egg with a slice of E5 Bakehouse sourdough toast with 2 cups of Colombian coffee with raw milk (one was at mid-morning, I like to pace my caffeine input, depending on tasks and energy levels).
Lunch: Left over home made quinoa salad as above, I deliberately made enough for 2 servings which I often do, to have for lunch or dinner in the next few days.
Dinner: I cooked a tiny rice shaped pasta and combined with cooked cherry tomatoes, fetta, garlic, chilli, flat leaf parsley, seasoning. It was like a risotto. I'd bought the pasta on special from a local Indian shop because of its shape, and it had been in my cupboards for at least 6 months. Here's a version with spinach I made later in the week. Yes, that's my favourite bowl, given to me by a friend.
Punnet of English raspberries with quite a few generous scoops of Cornish clotted cream and strawberry icecream.
Wednesday
Boiled egg with a slice of E5 Bakehouse sourdough toast and 2 cups of Colombian coffee with raw milk.
Lunch: half a tin of baked beans with grated cheese on buttered sourdough toast. I regularly use useful convenience foods such as tinned tomatoes and beans.
Dinner: delicious onion rings and 5 1/2s at various pubs during our fun historical Soho pub saunter. When I'm out, I like to buy food I don't cook at home, either because it's extremely time consuming e.g. dumplings, it's an occasional treat, or it involves techniques I don't use. For e.g. deep frying scares the hell out of me and I don't do it at home. But I LOVE onion rings!
After: kebab shop bought vegie burger and chips. I'm a believer that it's best to eat anything rather than nothing after a few drinks, especially as a woman.
And after the chips, at home, a small chocolate bar and later quite a few generous scoops of Cornish clotted cream and strawberry icecream.
Thursday
Boiled egg with a slice of E5 Bakehouse sourdough toast and 2 cups of Colombian coffee with raw milk.
3 flat peaches followed by 4 thin whole rye crips with hommous, trying not to spoil my appetite ahead of a late afternoon lunch meeting.
Our slow food London chair Shane and I met to discuss our focus and comms strategy, and ate out: slice of spinach and cheese pizza, and buffalo mozzarella and tomato salad. I ADORE buffalo mozzarella.
Still out: 2 1/2s of Czech lager.
Dinner: bought falafel and filled with my favourite fried cauliflower from the salad bar.
5 delicious truffles from Paul A Young who is approved for our The Snail Trail. My current favourite, ahead of the salted caramel, and the rhubarb one, is the pasionfruit, so tangy.
Friday
Boiled egg and and 2 cups of Colombian coffee with raw milk.
Lunch: spicy Caribbean vegie pattie with chilli tomato sauce.
Dinner: puff pastry flake-out extravaganza: puff pastry (store bought) home made savoury tarts with courgette and fetta, and a filling of beaten egg, creme fraiche with pepper. Quick, easy, satisfying and delicious.
Home made sweet puff pastry tarts with thinly sliced peacherine, mascarpone, sprinkle of sugar. When I start with puff pastry I usually can't stop. I admit I ate all the tarts over the evening.
2 delicious truffles from Paul A Young.
Saturday
Boiled egg.
1 cup of Colombian coffee with raw milk.
Potato latka wrap and 1 delicious cold brew coffee at Broadway market where I do my weekly shopping. My standard items are organic eggs, raw milk, tomatoes, a Hackney Wild from nearby E5 Bakehouse.
I cooked again with the tiny rice shaped pasta and combined with courgette, a bunch of spinach, fetta, garlic, chilli and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. I preferred this version to the one I made with tomatoes.
Reese's peanut butter cups and 3 flat peaches. I'm a big fan of chocolate and peanut butter together.
Last delicious truffle from Paul A Young. That took a lot of self control to make them last 3 days!
Sunday
Cheesy scrambled eggs with flat leaf parsley on E5 Bakehouse sourdough toast and 2 cups of Colombian coffee with raw milk.
I find scrambled eggs very filling. Maybe cos of the additional egg. Anyway, later in the day I got ridiculously caught up watching a suspenseful TV series on catch up and ended up just having a quick and easy toasted sandwich with fried halloumi, homous, gherkin, tomato, mayonnaise, avocado. So I could get back to a slightly unfulfilling series climax.
Some chocolate bar.
I tried that, and that, AND that ...
When I was a teenager I joined my best friend in vegetarianism. A year later, at uni, I begun some of the essential reading such as Diet for a Small Planet, which gave me a philosophical and economical understanding of vegetarianism. I've also experimented with a vegan diet - I missed yoghurt and cheese; raw food - I prepared tasty raw sprout crackers on my Australian sunlit balcony and discovered raw sprouted bread; can you see where this is going? - fruitarianism - works best in summer in a warm country, I was still in Australia; food combining - oops, was less critical in my fad diet detector then. I drew the line at the 'breatharian diet', yes really there's such a thing.
I took the path not unknown to vegetarians and began eating fish a few years back. It took 3 years before I bought fresh fish fillets from a sustainable fish monger to cook at home.
By our community manager Georgie Knight @slowfoodLondon aka @mermaid99
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