Socca pizza for the soul

I spent a very happy evening with Megan Kerr last night. We talked about food and gardening and bumble bees and bonobos, and she cooked the most delicious gram-flour pizzas and I admired her arts-and-crafts home decor. She is definitely a domestic goddess!

Her easy no-wheat pizza-base recipe is here. I'm determined to give it a go - if I can ever raise myself from the level of "open packet, microwave contents" ;-)

Getting together with other writers is really important. We inspire each other. We all find each other daunting, of course, and we worry that everyone else is more talented/hardworking/lucky than we are. But the really great thing is to be among those who understand what it feels like to be a writer, which is sometimes an odd and lonely state. So I'm grateful for evenings like this - and not just for the pizza!

The really weird thing is, all her family think I sound Australian...

Cock flavour - my fave!

Look what I got for Xmas!

And it's vegetarian...

Low-Carb Diet: Week 2 results

It's difficult making tofu look interesting ...

Well, my initial two-week ultra-low carb-cleanse period is up. I've noticed that I've a tendency to get dehydrated (probably because I'm not eating loads of fruit like I used to).  But look:

Total weight loss so far: 7 lbs in 14 days!

Low-Carb Diet: Week 1 results

Okay, so I've had a whole week on this Vegetarian Low-Carb Diet, counting the carbs and single-handedly sustaining the entire European cheese industry.

And the results after 7 days?

I weigh 139lb - I've lost 4lbs!

Well. Bugger me.  It does work. And surprisingly fast. Okay, I'm a convert...

I've got another week to go on this very low carb level (20g per day) and after that the idea is that I can start slowly reintroducing carbs until I find the point at which my weight stabilises. Will there be room in my life for a digestive biscuit - Who knows? I think I'll stop blogging daily about it at this point though, because I really haven't that much to report. I was sorta thinking there might be interesting psychotic episodes and hallucinations and stuff, but the nearest I've come to drama is dropping a carton of cream on the kitchen floor last night, which is a bit lame.

I'm losing weight. I love (most of) the food. I'm not hungry. That's all. How great is that?

Low-Carb Diet: Day 7

Today's Menu:

Breakfast:  Peanut smoothie. (Okay. Filling. Doesn't involve frying anything, which is good.)

Lunch: Asparagus, pak-choi and tomato grilled with gruyere cheese.

Dinner: Tofu curry (much better this time - fried not grilled.)

Snack: red fruit jelly (made with fruit teabags, lol!), double cream



Here's a list of the things I've got in my kitchen that I never used before starting this diet:

• Mayonnaise
• Tobasco sauce (I like to combine these two, it turns out)
  
• Nutritional yeast flakes (sounds awful but actually they taste like toasted cheese and not marmite)
• Flax seeds
• Pak-choi
  
• Onion salt
• Mustard powder
• No-sugar sweetner
• Soya protein isolate powder (for making shakes with. Makes me look like I've got a serious coke habit, as it gets everywhere)
  
• An electric blender
• Scales that weigh in individual grammes

Tomorrow - the weigh-in!

Low-Carb Diet: Day 6

Today's Menu:

Breakfast: 3 eggs, scrambled

Lunch: Special Cauliflower cheese (Okay it was worth making after all - delicious), Half a tomato.

Dinner: Parmesan and macademia nut salad (yes, again: because I wanted it).

Snack: Greek yoghurt with flax seeds. (Damn, I've run out of yoghurt.)

The end of Week 1 is in sight. Having resisted the lemon cupcakes present at last night's boardgaming I feel ready to take on anything ... except maybe more bloody washing up. Sheesh! It spontaneously generates itself, I swear; I never actually get down to a clear deck. Why did nobody warn me about this? When it comes to cooking you lose hours of life just to sorting out the kitchen every day.

Low-Carb Diet: Day 5

Today's Menu:

Breakfast: Chocolate protein shake (dull).

Lunch: Devilled eggs (how 1920s! Nicer than I anticipated too). Celery stick. Pecan nuts. Slice of goats' cheese.

Dinner: Half an avocado. Celery and peanut butter.Yoghurt with flax seeds.

I just couldn't do it: I could not face dinner. It was supposed to be cauliflower cheese but I couldn't stomach the idea of a whole plate of hot greasy cheesiness, so I just snacked on cold stuff. I've stopped getting hungry, and that is a very strange feeling. Played the Lord of the Rings Boardgame instead (3 times, didn't win).

Low-Carb Diet: Day 4

Today's Menu:

Breakfast: rhubarb and cream

Lunch: Remains of yesterday's spinach and cheese gratin. Sauted pak-choi.

Snack: 6 green olives.

Dinner: Garlicy tofu in a mushroom cream sauce. (Nomnomnom!! Though mostly because you can only taste the sauce...)

I think this diet must be sponsored by the Cheese Marketing Board. I am spending a fortune on gruyere, brie, creamcheese and goat's cheese. It's a good job I love every little morsel, isn't it?

Low-Carb Diet: Day 3

Today's Menu:

Breakfast: 3-egg omelette (mushrooms and goats' cheese)

Lunch: Parmesan and macadamia nut salad. Greek yoghurt with flax seeds.

Dinner: Spinach and cream cheese gratin. Half a tomato. Half an avacado because I couldn't bear to see it sit in the fridge going black. Aargh - must learn to throw food away!

Feeling a bit of a chemical buzz. Weird. Had to force myself to eat breakfast as my appetite seems to have declined in the face of all this fatty goodness, and I can't remember ever not wanting breakfast before in my life. Lunch was yummy - will keep that recipe.

Have frozen my bananas.

Low-Carb Diet: Day 2

Today's Menu:

Breakfast: Greek yoghurt with linseeds. Almonds.

Lunch: Remains of yesterday's Asparagus Quiche, salad with viniagrette. Protein shake.

Dinner: Tandoori tofu. Sauted greens. Half a tomato. Tinned rhubarb with double cream.


I've been expecting carb withdrawal symptoms like headaches, since the book is full of warnings about the first couple of days. But so far, nothing.

Linseeds (flax) are pleasant enough, it turns out: mild and quite oily. But yoghurt isn't enough to keep me going until midday - I had to eat lunch at 11am. The quiche recipe is fantastic, but the tandoori tofu was dull.  I only really like tofu if it's fried I think. Hey, it took me years to become that tolerant of the rubbery stuff!

What am I going to do with my remaining bananas? They are Forbidden Fruit. Throwing food out makes me cringe: I was brought up in a house where we were always leaned on to clear all our plates. "Oh, someone finish this off - I can't keep it!" we'd be told. Which explains a lot about my goddamn weight struggles as an adult, frankly...

Low-Carb Diet: Day 1

Today I started a diet and I thought I'd log it here because, well, I've gotta vent steam somewhere.  I'm on Rose Elliot's Vegetarian Low-Carb Diet, which is basically a veggie version of Atkins. The idea is to drop the carbs, lift the protein, and eat pretty much as much fat as you want. It could be called "the egg,cheese and tofu diet," frankly. It involves a lot of reading food labels and totting up carb counts.

So from now on no bread, pasta, potatoes, sugar and - sadly - no beans or lentils.  It's the most counter-intuitive thing you can imagine, which is intriguing in itself. Like, I can have butter but no toast, mayonnaise but no fries, and I've got to switch from skimmed milk in my coffee to double cream. All in aid of losing the blubber!

I've got no idea whether this is going to work, or whether I'll just suffer a huge suger-crash and end up slaughtering the neighbours with an axe and stealing their cookies. But I'm more likely to stick to the rules if I have to confess here.

Today's Menu:

Breakfast: Scrambled eggs (3) with butter and cream. Veggie sausage. Half a tomato.

Lunch: Goats' cheese and pecan-nut salad.
Dinner: Crustless asparagus quiche. Sauted greens.
Snack: Half an avocado.

Are you getting the picture? The food's lovely, but very rich and fatty. I've eaten 4.5 eggs today and am thinking I may not go to the toilet for a week. There's a lot of washing up generated - a concept new to this microwave-meal fan. Jeez, how do you get baked egg off  a pan?

Still, obsessing over the Green Book of The Law keeps my mind off all the other stuff going on this week...

Starting weight: 143lbs