Weight report and scrappy meals

This morning my weight was down another 1.4 kg. That makes a weight loss of nearly 4 kilograms over three weeks. This is in the middle of winter when it's usually impossible to lose weight. Encouraging!

OK, breakfast was the usual egg, this time scrambled, which I had with 2 slices of serrano ham. Lunch was a handful of nuts and a bowl of yoghurt. Paul was home late, and I was hungry, so I had more nuts and yoghurt at around 7. By the time he came home, it was too late for me to eat much, so I had half a bowl of vegetable soup with cheese.

Witloof Cappuccino and Roast Chicken

Supper we started with a belgian endive soup. This was from a Dutch book by Francois van Arkel, called Amuses.actually quite simple. I'm sure you could do it with any vegetable, but in this case it called for Belgian Endive and I happened to have quite a lot. You basically chop up one head of denive and a shallot, and sweat them in oil for about three minutes. Then you add half a litre of stock, bring it to the boil, then simmer for ten minutes until soft. Then you purée it. Oh boy, was this bitter! The recipe calls for 75 ml cream but I didn't see that cream would ease the bitterness. I added a load of nutmeg, which helped some, and finally threw in about 200 ml of coconut milk. That improved it no end.

Next step is to serve it in little glass cups, with frothed milk on top and some crispy bacon bits.



Main course was roast chicken with roast parsnip and a small salad. My food list doesn't say anything about parsnip. I would think it not compatible with a low carb diet, but then neither is fruit and carrot, both of which are allowed. And I had parsnip in my weekly organic bag, so parsnip it was.

Roast chicken is one of the easiest meals in the world and it depends on the chicken you buy. So buy a free range one if you can, they taste much better because the exercise gives them flavour. Sprinkle it chicken spice mix, barbecue spice, whatever you have. You can stuff a lemon into the cavity, or a bulb of garlic, it's all optional. Put it in a cooking bag, close the bag and stab a couple of holes in it. I usually put the bag with chicken into a dish in case there's any leaking. All of that goes into an oven of about 180C for an hour an a quarter. Just set the timer and forget about it.

I set the timer for 45 minutes so I could add in some thickly sliced peeled parsnip to roast alongside it for 30 minutes. Just put them on top of the bag, it's fine.
It needs to stand about ten minutes before carving, a good time to do some last minute veggies or in this case, cut up some cukes and tomato.



Ah, dessert today! This time I cooked the fruit. I cored an apple, cut it in half across the middle, and stuffed the two cores with nuts and goats cheese, topped it with more goats cheese. I put this in a dish and chucked it in the oven for half an hour alongside the chicken. yeah, when I added the parsnips. It was just so fabulous, I need to make it again.

Italian Fish from a box

Weekends we hardly ever have three meals. It's usually two. A late brunch, and dinner.

I can't eat egg everyday. It's not an emotional decision based on current research on eggs. It's a physical nausea and gagging. In any case eggs have to be really fresh for me to eat them at all.

So late brunch is a good excuse for something different. And I was lazy. So I had fish from a box for brunch. I had the choice between italian and florentine, and chose italian. Salad on the side.

Speklapjes

Bleah. I had an upset stomach which I blamed on two doses of metformin so close to each other. Normally I would have dry toast or a banana to cope with that, but as those are now taboo foods, I had half a pear and yoghurt for breakfast. And I had more yoghurt at 11.30.

I had a latish lunch, but I forget what it was. Possibly a handful of nuts. I had no appetite, anyway.

Supper I did speklapjes (sliced belly pork) with cabbage and a sort of curly kale they call boerenkool here. I ate the meat. The vegetables were disgusting and I threw them away.

Orange salad and leftover rabbit

Oh boy, being on diet is a full time job. I need to be doing these things daily.

Let's see. Thursday. Breakfast was half a pear, half a kiwi fruit, with some yoghurt. And separately, a scrambled egg.

Lunch. Why can I never remember lunch? Oh yes, leftover roast beef. Three very thin slices, with all the vegetable gravy piled on top. There were peas in the gravy, taboo food peas. Tough. I ate them.

Dinner. We had dinner very late. And I had the metformin before dinner.


We started with an orange, onion and olive salad from Robert Carrier's Gourmet Vegetarian. It was entirely unremarkable.



After that I delved in the bottom drawer of the fridge (the one at zero degrees, wonderful for keeping stuff fresh for longer) and fished out the leftover rabbit. I scooped that into individual serving dishes and did some leftover kookavond vegetables, carrot and kohlrabi.

Grilled Steak

Best I write these up while I still remember what I ate, and add photos later if I have them.

Breakfast.
A one-egg ham and cheese omelette with 3 slices tomato, plus half a pear with a couple of spoons of yoghurt. Dead simple.

Lunch:
A mug of leftover vegetable soup with LOTS of cheese. Then I had a handful of cashews, and more cheese.

Dinner:

I pureed the leftover vegetable soup and added a hearty dose of nutmeg. Served it up with a dollop of creme fraiche.

We ate late. I could have skipped supper quite happily actually, but Paul was hungry. These tablets take away all my appetite. So grilled steak is very quick. With grilled courgette and grilled tomato.


We had wine. I'm still trying to find a balance with wine, as it reacts most dreadfully with the metformin. One glass is definitely fine. Two glasses is also fine. More than that seems to leave me very queasy.

Meals 11 December

We started with a simple vegetable soup. You know the kind. Sweat onion, carrot and celery in oil for ten minutes, add water or stock, add more chopped vegetables. In this case I sweated carrot and kohlrabi, both being leftover from Cooking Club on Monday, and then added whatever was in the fridge. There was quite a lot of carrot, which made it quite sweet.


Then we had a green pepper stuffed with mince and mushrooms, topped with cheese. Courgette on the side.

Earlier, breakfast was the standard omelette with ham, while lunch I only had at three and it was a courgette carpaccio.

Not too much in the way of calories, there. :( I have been wondering whether my calorie intake is too low. At some stage soon I will feed these meals into Mastercook and get an opinion.