Numbers for Dinner

Do you find yourself at the end of the evening meal totting up the number of fruits and vegetables you have ingested that day? I all too often do, partly because I am far more aware of health matters these days than used to be the case, partly because of a residual sporting competitiveness.


The trouble is I get a bit confused about what counts, according to the official rules of the game. How much is a portion? Does a medium tomato count as one, or do I need (daftly) to suck up another couple of cherry toms to hit the tape? A few weeks back I ended up googling whether nuts (a frequent ingredient and my snack with post-prandial coffee) counted - as I recall there may be a committee working on it, though meantime the sane think of course they bloody do.


Another part of the game that bugged me was the smoothie dilemma. Not whether Hugh Grant should use Grecian 2000, but why a smoothie only counts as one, whatever you put in it - when the Dear Leader (may her enemies suffer watching reality TV for all eternity) is absent planning world domination my breakfast tends to be just coffee and a smoothie, with three or four good portions of fruit. Apparently it's because of the fruit sugars released, but given I process to a lumpy consistency does that apply?


I read yesterday that only one in four Brits reaches the five-a-day target, which is sad in health terms but also taste, and culture. Are we still brought up here to think meat and potatoes, or bacon and eggs, or fish and chips are good everyday? Nice on occasion, but missing out on so many great flavours in fruit and veg, so many options. And cheaper options too - we are not short of cash but I reel at the price for meat currently, or good meat anyway - you can buy cheap grey mince for example for not very much, except your long-term well-being.


On the competitive side, we hit eleven yesterday by my reckoning, ignoring the smoothie rule and counting ours as two, and (I'm not sure if this works according to Hoyle) counting the lettuce eaten at lunch and in the evening as two. Yet more bloody French beans were part of that total, as was kale with anchovies, boiled eggs, garlic and olive oil. Delicious. But yes, we did nail the duvet down.

Deposits in My Taste Bank

We breakfast like kings, though with a better conscience. Nearly every such meal includes a home-made smoothie to get a flying start on our intake of fruit and veg, and because is it thoroughly enjoyable. As I took the first sip of this morning's version I was transported back to the 1970s, or even the 1960s - time travel by food - as the flavour of Vimto coursed through my system.

I'm not sure what actually flavours Vimto (natural or otherwise), but I am reasonably certain it's not a combination of blueberries, banana, peach, plum, and grapes, with lime and satsuma juice, almond milk and yakult to render it more liquid. But those ingredients combined to a moment of adult Vimto awareness.

However grown up we feel, or our roles dictate we should feel, deposits made in ones childhood taste bank are central to our experience of the world of food, at whatever age. I will confess that the flavour of bubble gum, something I have not actually eaten/chewed for decades, is very important to my appreciation of one of life's greatest pleasures, beer - it is significant in Leffe, Chimay, any wheat beer, Traquair, and many others. 'Ah, bubble gum, we love bubble gum,' says my brain (which now I notice it, sounds a tad schizoid).

Similarly with wine. Many grapes and wines hold a hint of Bazooka Joe, but the one where it is/was front and centre is/was Beaujolais Nouveau. Whatever happened to wines en primeur? Whatever happened to the pleasure of Beaj Nouveau, once raced from France to England to minimise the delay between its readiness and our drinking? Some was as rough as a Mohicanned badger's arse, of course; but every year as we took our first sip of the stuff we'd note the bubble gum (and to be accurate, the bananas too) and as jolly advanced nine-year-olds whatever our true age, we'd smile.

Smooth and Delicious

There is not enough written about breakfast. Look at the food sections in your Sunday papers and the foods discussed are almost invariably at home in lunches and suppers - especially on-trend (vile vile phrase, individuality is precious) suppers (darling everybody in London is going mad for Herzogovian these days). Given we all trot out the cliche about breakfast being the most important meal of the day, that seems somewhat odd.

I have a small collection of books about breakfasts, none of recent vintage however, so their ideas tend towards the heavier and the more complicated. Of late we, by way of contrast, as part of our sickeningly successful health regime (for which read pre-hols weight-loss regime), have gone pretty simple - wholemeal toast with some protein and/or preserves, coffee, and either a fruit yogurt plus a fruit platter, or the last two combined in a smoothie.

When did the smoothie hit these shores? Not milkshakes with a bit of fruit, but the full-on smoothie (a delightful misnomer given any interesting ones have bits aplenty in them). My wife, not normally allowed in the kitchen, made a wonderful new variant the other day without any milk, the flesh of a sizeable slice of watermelon providing the liquid. The rest was a load of grapes and one peach yogurt. The result was runnier than normal, but down-in-one delicious.

On the GI front that would be a bit frowned on, as strangely watermelon is high GI, and blending fruit breaks down the fibre so moves everything up the scale regardless of where it starts. But the toast and protein balance it out, and anyway I wouldn't care as it tasted great and provided at least one of our 103 each a day. These things are complicated though: watermelon per an article noticed the other day helps speed fat through ones system (though not with the occasional distressing effects of certain tablets if the stories are true). I'd rather eat watermelon than take tablets. Especially if it tastes as good as that smoothie did. And anyway, I'd rather watch Ipswich than use tablets like that.