A Rainbow on Your Breakfast Plate - and in Your Gut

We - the Dear Leader, the temporarily-home-before going-off to-Gozo Sternest Critic, and your humble servant - are on a weight loss quest for a time. Well, weight loss and health drive. That means the occasional 800 calorie day, and generally eating somewhere between 1000 and 1500 calories, with a day off every now and then. That may sound restricting, and in the mathematical sense it is of course, but to be doable without becoming boring it does mean getting creative.


Our breakfasts, except when staying in hotels or at Christmas when bacon and sausages rule, are usually pretty healthy. Currently they are - thanks Donald - bigly so. And not in a bad way - no kale smoothies, in fact given we learn from Michael Moseley that smoothies go straight through the gut and mean a sugar rush, no smoothies at all. But every morning for the past fortnight we have enjoyed a bowl of fruit (along with e.g. poached egg on wholegrain toast of some sort). Again I've tried hard  to avoid that being dull, leading to me hitting the local Asian supermarket, and looking out for what's good in Morrison's, Waitrose and Sainsbury's.


Today, for example, we had cherries, kiwi, blueberries, and golden plums (£1 for a punnet of eight or ten), with a squeeze of perfumed Egyptian lime, tiny little fruits that lift flavours even more than ordinary lemons do. Tuesday we had dragon fruit and guava with some more workaday stuff. I love guava, in spite of ripe ones smelling like men's locker room sweat. The local Chinese shop had durian in, but you have to draw the line somewhere, and fruit that smells like poo is one good place.


What is austerity in this? Eating fruit is not expensive. It takes a bit of effort to seek things out, but Morrison's wonky blueberries that contributed to two for the three of our breakfasts cost 84p. I defy anybody to explain how they were wonky too. Wonky kiwis (maybe 1.358mm shorter than non-wonky?) I think were 70p for a pack of eight. I use one sliced into six to add luminous green to the plate. Little oranges another bargain; likewise grapefruit reaching its sell-by-date and no different to full price ones in feel or as it turned out flavour for 25p. I buy full price stuff too, and dragon fruit are not cheap, but overall breakfasts for the week don't break the bank.


It's cheering to see something so lovely on the morning platter. Great for the body too, with loads of fibre (kiwis for me qualify as superfoods, though shops aren't allowed to use that word now) and vitamin C, and stuff that is good for the eyes but I can't spell. Blueberries are supposed to help the memory, per clinical tests, but they taste fab with lemon or lime on them. Cherries have some special phytonutrients that you don't find in many other foods. It won't harm your - what a very British word - regularity either.


Reading Michael Moseley's Clever Gut Diet book - he is to diet and health what HFW is to ethical food - as part of the current drive to lose a bit of weight one tip was to help your biome's diversity by eating 30 different fruits and vegetables in a week. We did that in two days, and after three are on 42 and heading ever onward. Tinned stuff in there for pennies; our own veg still (PSB, swiss chard, sprouting seeds, kale and leaks at present, we had too the last of our stored squash on Monday and some of our own stored garlic, along with loads of herbs that I haven't counted in the total); wonky or (per Sainsbury's) greengrocers' F&V are super cheap. And some fruits are reduced in price (like cheese) when they are approaching ripeness.


[Standing up] I am not Spartacus. Nor am I vegetarian. Friday's evening meal will be steak for SC and me, fish for the DL. But for our own good, and with more than a nod at helping the only planet we have to live on, and because they are so tasty, F&V make up the bulk of our nutrition. If that sounds poncey, my apologies. Lunch today will be baked beans on toast. Demotic and delicious.

The Hungry Gap Part 2

The hungry gap, the period when little or no new produce is available from the garden/allotment, is nearly over. We have new-growth sorrel for wonderful sorrel and potato soup; the first thinnings of salad seedlings for a tiny but tasty salad; and Welsh onion aplenty to brighten up a variety of dishes. But we also have the carry-overs from last year, namely the last of the leeks and a sudden glut of purple sprouting broccoli.

Both of those crops are expensive in the shops, the latter painfully so. But both are easy to grow if you have a bit of decent land. 

Leeks are one of the crops we major on, with several varieties grown to give different harvest times and a touch of flavour difference, though that should not be exaggerated. Yesterday's picking (with maybe three to go) made leek and potato soup bulked out with carrot and enlivened with our own parsley, another carry-over. 

Our PSB has done really well this year. The huge panful we enjoyed as a course on its own, served on toasted sourdough with chopped garlic and chilli oil, would have cost by my reckoning £6 in the shops if you could find it. Ours cost about £1 for the seeds and a bit of effort over the year. That is the third lot gathered so far, with another two of similar size on the plants already.

Growing your own food is not for everyone - health reasons and mobility exclude some, time commitments and travel make it awkward for others. There are of course many who have no opportunity, or can't be bothered, and sadly lots who give it a go and get put off when the weeds come back - I'd guess about one-in-three of those who get an allotment at our site only last a year or less. 

Those who stick at it gain in so many ways: fresh food, interesting varieties spurned by the shops, savings on the shopping, and even on gym membership - if you dig for an hour, or shift 30 barrow-loads of horse-muck, you don't need the rowing machine. 

Still Picking

Maybe we have learned. It's mid-February and yesterday's main meal included four of our own veg - massive parsnips made into mash with bought spuds; a load of leeks steamed and then whizzed with butter to make a puree; red and green sprouts; and the first PSB of the season. If growing your own is part of the austerity thing - and it should be if you have any land, an allotment, or even a window box - it is also a wonderful way to get really fresh stuff into the kitchen. Top of the head guess for the cost of those veg if purchased from the supermarket, say about £7. The seeds (discounted for allotment association) must have cost about £4 in total, but those veg picked on Saturday were a tiny tiny fraction of what the packets have yielded and continue to yield.

Not sure if it's dig for victory, but maybe for survival.