I’m back from Turkey by about a week and, wow, food wise, last week was a shambles. To be fair, we were mostly too tired and immediately too busy to even care about shopping for the week.
Two days back from Turkey, I went for an appointment with an adorable nutritionist. As someone with fibromyalgia that has gotten a lot worse over the last year, I’m desperate to try everything that might help. Adorable Nutritionist has advised me to try cutting out dairy, refined carbohydrates, and refined sugar. The dairy and sugar part are easy to understand, but the carbohydrates I’ve been struggling over. Mostly I know: no more white rice (SOBBING), white flour, or bread. I’ve also been advised to try and eat oily fish three times a week.
I didn’t start straight away, partly because we had dairy products (like yoghurt) and chocolate from duty free. I hate waste and I couldn’t let Aaron eat all that chocolate by himself. ALSO, we had a wedding to go to, whoo! Bit late to say: could you make my dinner very specific, thanks.
But, on a trip to the shops for some semblance of dinner, I found a HELL OF A LOT OF FISH in the reduced section of Tesco. I came home with five pieces of Vietnamese cobbler, six tuna steaks (they are small), and one whole salmon. “Hi, honey, I’m home!” I cried, lugging a small whale over the doorstep and shoal of fish. Luckily, fisherman Grandad came over and helped me skin, de-bone, and chop up the salmon into fillets. There is a lot of frozen fish in our freezer right now.
Without further ado…
Wednesday
Baked salmon, crispy seaweed, poached eggs & asparagus
Funnily enough, a perfect Food Lover magazine (issue 47) was delivered to my workplace with loads of perfect vegetarian recipes, so lots of supplements for refined carbs and meat because vegetarians need to find healthy ways of getting their protein, which comes from things like legumes, nuts, wholegrains, quinoa, etc. The meal in the picture above? Yeah, pretty lush. A lot of howevers, however. First of all: I lined my baking tray the Dad Taught Me How Way. Examples A and B:
- Line your tray with foil and arrange food. Fold the excess foil over to make a mostly air-tight tent over the food – this keeps the moisture in your fish and veg, rather than it evaporating and leaving you with leather for dinner. Try not to wrap it too tight that you’ll struggle to unwrap it when it’s piping hot, mind you.
- Next however with this recipe is: way too much oil involved. Kinda spoiled it for me – I like to TASTE my luscious fish. Squeeze lemon juice over your fish and asparagus instead, it will keep your ingredients just as moist, especially if you’re doing the magic foil tent.
- Next however: I never boil eggs, I’ll be honest, but the photo you CAN’T see is that “make a whirlpool and crack your eggs into it” is egg suicide. Mine looked like a fucking hairnet for the school lunch-lady, so my next egg I just gently plopped into the NOT SWIRLING VORTEX OF WATER like a sane person.
- Final howevers: we replaced millet with bulgarwheat because I couldn’t find millet for the life of me, and the nori seasweed was dry as tissue paper – not sure I enjoyed it as an addition. Overall: yeah, I’d make it again. Bon appetite.
Thursday
Wedding day!
My other cousin got married to his high-school sweetheart on May the 4th (get it?). A lovely day, with lovely food. That I took no pictures of, whoops. Who cares? My cousin got married and that’s awesome *tears up some more*.
Friday
So Tasty Junior homemade alphabet soup
My cat did not throw up in my bowl. We tried to make a STJ recipe but…by replacing half of the ingredients. In a moment of madness we used quorn mince, like, that’ll work totally the same way as beef mince (disclaimer: I cannot remember the last time I ate quorn in bits, I am sorry). If you didn’t know: it does not work the same way at all. We also replaced the alphabet pasta with wholegrain pasta. So I think I know why we had no soup texture at the end result.
Despite the sick in a bowl appearance, it was super flavourful. I want to make this again, but I think I’ll use wholegrain spaghetti and break it into little pieces, and either use real beef mince or quorn PIECES next time.
Saturday
Salmon on avocado, brown rice, and kale
Looking at my weekly menu, I see only now that I forgot to add chopped cucumber and sesame seeds. Oh well. I baked the salmon as I always bake salmon – 180C (fan oven), 20 min, in a tent, seasoned with garlic and other bits we like, drizzled with lemon. Served with brown rice, a whole avocado for us each, and steamed a lot of kale. Ta-da!
Sunday
Red lentils with yoghurt and clearly whatever the hell I felt like
This was inspired by another recipe from the Food Lover magazine. Not a very exciting meal, but it was lovely cold the next day. We used leftover brown rice from the day before and spinach that needed eating. We didn’t have yoghurt because, at the time, I hadn’t managed to find any dairy free yoghurt and by this point I was starting to get into the swing of my new regime. Try the original recipe for yourself though! At least give it a read-through to see how it varies from the way I ended up making it.
Monday
Slop.
Not even worth taking a picture of this. It genuinely looked like the worst kind of supermarket baby-food-slush. I was trying to use up vegetables in my fridge, along with some lentils and quorn. My soup maker HATED me for it and I had to finish it off the traditional way, in a saucepan and with a hand-blender. It tasted good, but the texture was very odd… Do not recommend.
Other bits from this week
Made a lot of fresh juice this week, because of course I have a juicer. I also have a pretty glass bottle to fill with 2.5 pints of juice. It doesn’t last as long as supermarket juices, obviously, but I tend to drink it all by the next evening anyway. They’re lovely pick-me-ups after work.
Juice on the left was trying to use the last of my kale, and I got the recipe from Delicious Ella. The juice on the right I stole from a cat cafe I visited on Sunday for someone else’s hen party, so I kind of made up the quantities, but it came out fab; 3 small to medium carrots, two apples, a blob of ginger, and generous handfuls of blackberries and strawberries. That makes a little less than a pint – enough to drink in one sitting. So I doubled that quantity (except the ginger) to almost fill my glass bottle.
Don’t even ask my how much this week cost because I’ve got no idea. But we’re back on track for next week and it’s going to be…not massively different, I’ll admit. Just…no white rice and a lot less pasta. Ciao!
Willow H. Wood 