Monthly Archives: February 2013

Jerusalem Artichoke and Goat’s Cheese Gratin

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This is what we had for lunch today – totally delicious and lovely textures. This makes a great feature of Jerusalem Artichokes, which are in season now.  Not entirely plant-based proteins, because of the goat’s cheese….

_MG_3253 Jerusalem Artichoke and Goat's Cheese Gratin _MG_3309 Jerusalem Artichoke and Goat's Cheese Gratin

Jerusalem Artichoke and Goat’s Cheese Gratin

for 2 people (but we couldn’t finish it!). 490 kcals, 12.6g protein per serving

  • 450 grams peeled or scrubbed artichokes (keep under water to stop them going brown)
  • 3 small leeks
  • a grating of fresh nutmeg and black pepper
  • 1/2 tbsp olive oil
  • 40g shelled walnut pieces
  • 2 rounds of fresh young goat’s cheese (called Cabecou here)
  • A couple of sprigs of fresh thyme

Heat oven to 200C.

Slice the artichokes into rounds, about 5mm (1/4″) thick. Cook in boiling lightly salted water for about 3 minutes, until slightly soft. Drain.

Toast the walnuts in a dry frying pan until slightly coloured, then chop finely.

Trim, wash and slice the leeks finely. Heat the oil in a saucepan, add the leeks and spices, stir fry for a minute or two, then add about 100ml of water. Put the lid on and lower the heat to minimum and cook for about 10 minutes until soft and luscious.

Put the leeks in the bottom of an ovenproof dish. If they have dried out, add a couple of tablespoons of water, then layer the artichokes on top. Sprinkle the nuts over and then crumble the goats cheese on top. Sprinkle with fresh thyme leaves.

Bake in the oven for 20 – 25 minutes, until the cheese is starting to brown.

Serve with a rocket and orange salad (half an orange), dressed with the squeezed orange juice and a few drops of aged balsamic vinegar.

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We finished our meal with Vanilla Soya Custard with Banana.

Vanila Soya Custard with Banana

Entered in At Home with Mrs M’s Recipe Link Party,  Made with Love Mondays hosted by javelin warrior and Simple and in Season which is hosted this month by Caroline at Cake, Crumbs and Cooking

5:2 Meal Plan Feb 23 – Mar 1

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Week 7 of fasting coming up. Definitely thinner. Loving this 5:2 as it’s so easy to follow. Yes we are eating sensibly every day, with few ‘treats’, but nothing is forbidden, so there is nothing to feel guilty about, nothing to really miss. Really I’m finding that I don’t want so much to eat and we have got right out of the habit of snacking before our evening meals. I think a lot of that it is to do with not drinking alcohol most of the week.

We went out one evening last week, so I changed things around a bit with my meal plan and still have at least one menu which I didn’t use.

I’ll be going to the local market on Sunday morning and hoping to find local and seasonal watercress, cauliflower, carrots, leeks, pomegranate. Maybe some mushrooms?

I used to eat half a banana every day, for the potassium, but I discovered that mushrooms are also a good source and much lower in calories. I’ll also buy some luscious Prunes d’Agen – although all dried fruit is relatively high in calories, one of the problems with fasting for some people is that it can upset your regular bowel habit, perhaps due to reduced volume. 2 prunes is only 50 calories, so they can easily fit into a normal day.

I’m not showing breakfast except on fast day, or if I plan to try something new.

Here’s the plan:-

Saturday – a day to relax and have some of our favourites – but still with an eye on total intake!

  • lunch: Home made Chorizo, Sundried Tomato and Mozzarella Pizza
    Mixed Leaf Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette
    Satsuma
  • supper: Chicken and Vegetable Curry with a flame-grilled poppadum and a small helping of brown rice, served with chutney, pickle and mint raita
    Apple and Ginger dessert
  • extras: yes, wine and chocolates, if we feel like it – at this rate my box of Christmas chocolates are going to last right to my birthday in May (by which time I hope to have achieved my target weight)

Sunday – looks like it will be chilly, a brisk walk after lunch may be called for….

  • lunch: Baked Guinea Fowl with a Pomegranate Jus and Seasonal Vegetables – I still have red cabbage, a little butternut squash, some green cabbage and a couple of parsnips to use up. Guinea Fowl is in season, but I may have to settle for a chicken or a couple of quail. I need just a little leftover meat for the soup tomorrow and I do like to make my own stock from a carcass.
    Chocolate Pear Crisp – 140 kcal (I couldn’t make this last week as I suddenly realised I hadn’t got any ground almonds)
  • dinner: Watercress Soup
    Mushrooms and Grilled Back Bacon on Wholewheat Toast, green salad with balsamic dressing
    fresh fruit
  • extras: wine and dark Belgian chocolate (that’s it for treats until next weekend…)

Monday – FAST day

  • breakfast: Scrambled Egg with Lean Ham – 120 kcal
  • dinner: Tom Yum Gai (Thai style chicken broth) – 75 kcal
    Superhealthy Salmon Burgers – I turn this recipe into small asian style fish cakes, served with pickled ribbons of carrot and cucumber – 245 kcal
    spiced fruit and fromage blanc – 55 kcal

Tuesday –

  • lunch: Toulouse Sausage with Cauliflower Mash and Roasted Red Onions – These sausages are very meaty with no added cereal. Cauliflower makes a great mash with far less calories than spuds! 
    Filo cups with Apple and Blackberry
  • supper: Indian Chickpea and Vegetable Soup with naan bread
    Figs Poached with Stem Ginger

Wednesday

Thursday – FAST day

  • breakfast: Bircher Muesli with Apple (soak oats overnight, add grated apple in the morning)
  • dinner: Simple Vegetable Soup
    Smoked Haddock with Poached Egg and Wilted Spinach
    Mocha Fromage Blanc

Friday

  • lunch: Hummus and Crudités
    Stir fry Lamb with Feta, Spinach and Sun-dried Tomatoes
    Yogurt with toasted Almonds and a drizzle of honey
  • supper: Wholewheat Penne Pasta with Duck Ragu
    fresh fruit

I’m lucky to have some home grown produce in the freezer – cherries, figs, blackberries, mange tout, courgettes and green beans at least and also my own sun-dried tomatoes – to bring a taste of summer into my otherwise seasonal menu.

I’m looking forward to it, and will try and photograph and write up my recipes. I’m a bit behind in getting all the information onto here – not enough hours in the day. But if you have any questions about anything here, don’t hesitate to either comment, or contact me through the Facebook 5:2 Intermittent Fasting group, where you’ll find me – Belinda Berry

Salmon Teriyaki with steamed vegetables

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_MG_3207  This Salmon dish is baked in the oven on a bed of shredded leeks. Ideal for a Fast Day dinner, served with some steamed vegetables.

Total Calories < 250 (for 80g portion of fish) including steamed veg.

Salmon Teriyaki

I’m going to bake this in paper in the oven, to avoid using any extra fat (and calories)!

For two people:

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  • 1 leek, washed, trimmed and finely sliced
  • 2 salmon fillets (80g for me, 100 g for him)
  • 1 tbsp teriyaki sauce
  • 1/2 tsp ground cumin
  • 1/2 tsp ground coriander
  • 2 slices of lime, halved
  • a little chopped coriander leaf or parsley
  • I also added a couple of sliced mushrooms and 4 tomatoes, to cook along with the fish inside the parcel

Heat oven to 180c. Put the leeks in the centre of a piece of baking parchment with the salmon on top. Spoon over the teriyaki sauce and sprinkle with spices.  Top with the slices of lime. Bake for 20 minutes. Unwrap and sprinkle with herbs. Serve with a nice heap of steamed vegetables (e.g. broccoli, carrots, spinach, celeriac, mange tout).

Teriyaki Sauce

For 4 people

  • 1 tbsp tamari soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp Hoisin or Plum Sauce (if not available, add 1tsp honey or maple syrup and a little Chinese five spice powder)
  • 2.5cm root ginger, peeled and finely chopped or grated
  • 1 clove of garlic, crushed
  • 4 tbsp water

Mix all ingredients together and simmer in a small pan until the garlic and ginger have softened.

Leftovers can be stored for a few days in a covered container in the fridge. You can use this as a marinade for chicken, fish or tofu, or as a sauce in a vegetable stir-fry.

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This recipe submitted to At Home with Mrs M! Mrs M’s Recipe Link Party – February

Eat sustainable, eat real food

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My head is buzzing with food activisim this morning.

Last night I watched “Hugh’s Fish Fight” on Channel 4 – a revelation about what’s happening in the oceans around Antarctica as the mega manufacturing ship hoovers up and processes thousands of tons of krill every day – to feed farmed salmon, to make food for farm animals and our pets, to make chic omega 3 fish oil capsules and increasingly, to make food to feed humans. Krill? That’s for whales – that’s for penguins –  that’s for the whole food chain in the ocean! How can krill, and the species that depend upon it, possibly withstand the onslaught of this wholesale pillaging?

Join Hugh in his Fish Fight campaign to stop the feeding frenzy and bring some sense into fishing policies world-wide.

Then this morning I read the NYTimes article The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

Terrifying and illuminating.

The fact is, if you eat manufactured, packaged food or drink, then you are consuming an engineered product. Don’t for one moment believe that the product is created to give you the best possible nutritional value.  No, it is designed to increase the manufacturer’s “stomach share” of the market.  If you eat anything that comes in a packet, or drink soft drinks with a bit of fizz – read it. It just might open your eyes and encourage you to make more foods from scratch.

What can we do?

Let supermarkets and manufacturers know that we want real food, we want sustainable food and we want food that is good for us! Our buying choices influence them more than you might think. The power of the purse!

Looking at the statistics on the 5:2 Fast Diet Forum is fascinating – showing how the obese are slimming down to be overweight, and the overweight are achieving normal weight.

Of course if the 5:2 lifestyle becomes even more popular and is maintained, it is going to hit the food manufacturers and suppliers hard. Appetites reduced, cravings banished, less food being bought, more food being freshly prepared….

Expect a backlash – and it won’t be pretty. They will use all kinds of tactics to try and win us back to their packaged products.

Eat sustainable food. Eat real food. Support your local fisherman and your local growers and producers. Buy wisely. Sign petitions and get your voice heard!

5:2 Fast Day dinner: Asian Poached Chicken with Vegetable Salad and Vietnamese Dressing

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Asian Poached Chicken

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Asian Poached Chicken with Vegetable Salad and Vietnamese Dressing

I discovered the joys of poached chicken when one of our Images of France photography course guests introduced me to the work of a New Zealand cook, Annabel Langbein. Her book, Cooking to Impress without Stress not only has a fabulous title, it also contains some excellent ideas, of which this is one.

I love the fact that this is an easy and low fat way to prepare chicken. The flesh is moist and full of flavour. Then there is the added bonus of having tasty stock made at the same time, which makes home made soups even better.

The slightly spicy aromatic flavour of this goes particularly well with Asian Vegetable Salad and a Vietnamese style dressing. Leftovers could be used for No-Carb Caesar Salad and a Chicken Noodle Soup.

You could use the same idea and cook just a single chicken breast, or a joint or two.

Calorie count for chicken poached in this way : 165kcals for 100 grams

  • 1 whole organic or free range chicken
  • 2 dried chillies
  • 3 star anise
  • 2.5cm of root ginger, cut into fine slices (no need to peel)
  • 2 or 3 spring onions, or leek trimmings
  • Sea salt and black pepper
  • 12 whole mixed peppercorns

Cold water, to cover.

Put the whole chicken into a large pan with the spices and flavourings and cover completely with cold water. Bring to the boil. Simmer very gently for 25 minutes, removing any scum that forms on the top. Then remove from the heat, cover with a lid and leave to cool in the liquid.

Lift out the chicken when completely cool and store in the fridge until ready to use.

Remove the flavourings from the stock with a slotted spoon and discard. Bring the stock to the boil and reduce to about half the volume. Then strain and refrigerate.

Use the stock for soups such as Piquant Leek Soup or Chicken Noodle Soup.

As an alternative to the Asian flavourings, you could poach the chicken with bay leaves, thyme, parsley, and onion.

Raw Vegetable Salad

Vegetable Salad with Vietnamese Dressing

Raw Vegetable Salad with Vietnamese Dressing

per person – 65 kcals

  • Handful of Rocket
  • 25g Celeriac, grated or cut in julienne strips
  • 1/4 Red sweet pepper, cut in strips
  • 1/4 Cucumber, sliced diagonally
  • 1 Celery stick, sliced diagonally
  • 1/2 Carrot, sliced into ribbons
  • 25g Broccoli, small florets
  • 1 tsp Sesame seeds, lightly toasted
  • Thai Basil or Coriander leaves, to garnish

Lay all the prepared vegetables on a platter and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Serve with the white meat from Asian Poached Chicken, sliced.

Pour the dressing over the chicken and garnish with basil or coriander.

Other veggies you could use: bean shoots, finely sliced spring onions, raw beetroot strips, courgette ribbons, cauliflower florets, shredded cabbage.

Vietnamese Style Dressing

per person – 45 kcals

  • Juice and grated zest of 1/2 lime
  • a few drops of sesame oil
  • 1/2 tsp Thai fish sauce
  • 1/2 tsp Tamari soy sauce
  • 1 tsp Chilli Dipping Sauce

Whisk together all the dressing ingredients.

Total for this dish, with 80g chicken: 240 kcals, with 100g chicken : 290 kcals

Before the Chicken, we had Simple Vegetable Soup (67 kcals). For dessert we had 30g of fromage blanc with a few cherries and a fine dusting of 100% chocolate (40 kcals). Total meal count : 350kcals for me, 400 kcals for my husband.

These recipes are taken from my book “Focus on Flavour – recipes inspired by living in South West France”

This recipe submitted to At Home with Mrs M! Mrs M’s Recipe Linky Party

Sweet nothings…..

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I’m finding that portion sizes of recipes are usually way too large and there seems to be a complete obsession with adding sweetness to things in recipes, even on the BBC Good Food Healthy recipes section.

Case in point: yesterday I cooked braised red cabbage. The recipe called for a tablespoon of brown sugar! It didn’t need it, a drop of aged balsamic brought out the sweetness. I made a parsnip dish, the recipe called for a tablespoon of honey! Parsnips are naturally sweet, they don’t need any extra! I made a pear dessert, the recipe called for a tablespoon of honey per person! Again, pears already have natural sugars, but I did add a teaspoonful between us. No wonder so many people are struggling with their weight!

If I had followed the recipes without thinking, we each would have consumed 1/2 a tablespoon of sugar and a tablespoonful of honey. I don’t think the food would have tasted any better for it.

If you can stop having sweeteners in drinks like tea and coffee, then it becomes possible to appreciate the innate sweetness of fruits and vegetables and then the amount of sugar that you need everywhere else in your diet can be dramatically reduced.

Sweet nothings…. Black coffee, herb tea, mineral water, lemon and ginger tea, rooibosh tea – that’s what I’m looking forward to today. Try and leave out the artificial sweeteners altogether, they don’t do your body any favours. Sugar-free does not mean impact-free, your body can still respond as if it was having sugar. Leave the diet coke on the shelf.

Try and make fast day a day of sweet nothings.

Roast Pork with Couscous and Ginger Yogurt, Baked Pear

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Came across this interesting recipe on BBC Good Food

Roast Pork with Couscous and Ginger Yogurt

To go with it I made braised red cabbage with bacon, braised parsnips and steamed broccoli. Whole plateful < 350 kcals

Roast Pork with cous cous and ginger yogurt, served with braised red cabbage, parsnips and broccoli
All the flavours were lovely – but I couldn’t finish it!

I saved a bit of room for dessert :-

Easy Baked Pear with Amaretti. Half a pear each was plenty (100 kcals)

Pears with Amaretti

Pears with Amaretti

I replaced the ricotta cheese with a tablespoonful of fromage blanc (between two halves) and reduced the amount of honey to less than 1 teaspoonful in total.

5:2 Meal Plan Feb 16 – 22

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We’re on to week 6 of our 5:2 lifestyle and I’m delighted to have got below a virtual milestone this week. On to my next goal!

So my plan for the week ahead. I still have some food left in the fridge – it’s amazing how much less we are eating. So I have to think about how to use up the odds and ends as well as making the most of whatever local seasonal produce I can find and also to keep things simple – I’m not going to be spending much time in the kitchen this week.

My choice of seasonal and locally grown foods for this week include: red cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, butternut squash, leeks, celeriac, parsnips, apples, kiwi fruit, pears, plus clementines from Spain.

I am working on a target of 450 – 500 calories on a fast day and 1200 calories on a feed day – any more than that has to be earned by exercise. The numbers are based on my calculations for losing 1lb a week according to my BMR (Basic Metabolic Rate), as a largely sedentary person of my age, height and current weight. You can calculate your BMR here.

My husband has a target of 600 calories on a Fast Day and 1800 on a feed day. He gets larger portions and tends to eat crackers with soup as well.

I’m not showing breakfast except on fast day, or if I plan to try something new.

Here’s the plan:-

Saturday

  • lunch: Home made pizza – 320 kcal for my portion
    Mixed Leaf Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette – 50 kcal
    Satsuma – 30 kcal
  • supper: Moroccan Spiced Cauliflower & Almond soup – 160 kcals (for 200 ml BBC Good Food version – mine is lighter)
    Mushrooms and Grilled Back Bacon on Wholewheat Toast, green salad with balsamic dressing
    Glazed Pineapple with Cinnamon Fromage Frais 160 kcal ( BBC Good Food again, my version is lighter, but I haven’t had time to write it up yet!)
  • extras: yes, wine and chocolates, why not?
    I make the pizza dough in my bread maker. I split one batch to make 2 thin crust pizzas, which cuts the calories down enormously.

Sunday

  • lunch: Moroccan Spiced Cauliflower & Almond soup – 160 kcals
    Farmhouse Paté with crispbread, light cole slaw and green salad – 260 kcals
    small piece of cheddar cheese – 10g – 40 kcals
    Fresh fruit salad (apple, pear, blood orange, banana)- 80 kcals
  • dinner: Roast Pork with Seasonal Vegetables – going to try a variation of my healthy Sunday roast this week, using a lean pork fillet joint. I may base it on this recipe (290 kcals) and I’ll add some seasonal veg, like parsnips and red cabbage.
    Chocolate Pear Crisp – 140 kcal (I made this last week and it was yummy, but I think I can improve on it)
  • extras: wine and dark Belgian chocolate (that’s it for treats until next weekend…)
    I’ll make a couple of wholewheat loaves today and freeze one. I’m trying to make sure that the majority of our staple carbs are wholegrain.

Monday – FAST day

  • breakfast: Scrambled Egg with Lean Ham – 120 kcal
  • dinner: Simple Vegetable Soup – 70 kcal
    Asian Poached Chicken
    Vegetable Salad (red pepper, celeriac, carrot, broccoli, spring onion)
    Vietnamese Style Dressing
    Cherry Choc dessert (0% fat fromage blanc, cherries and grated dark chocolate; no sweetener)

Tuesday

  • lunch: Stir-fry pork and vegetables (using leftover from roast)
    Light apple and blackberry crumble
  • supper: Caribbean Butternut Squash Soup
    No-Carb Caesar Salad with Crispy Parma Ham (this is a suggestion in The Fast Diet book, it is a really good idea. I’ll use leftover poached chicken in this).
    fresh fruit and fromage blanc

Wednesday

  • lunch: Leek Risotto with Parmesan Crisps (Nigel Slater recipe) – 250 kcal
    I’ll use the chicken stock from the Asian Poached Chicken for this
    Frozen Cherry Choc dessert
  • supper : Caribbean Butternut Squash Soup
    Farmhouse Paté with light cole slaw and mixed salad – 260 kcals
    light apple and blackberry crumble

Thursday – FAST day

  • breakfast: Porridge with blackberries
  • dinner: Carrot and coriander soup
    Teriyaki Salmon with steamed vegetables
    Clementine

Friday

  • breakfast: Swiss style muesli with grated apple (soak oats overnight, add grated apple in the morning)
  • lunch: Wholewheat Penne Pasta with Duck Ragu (from the freezer)
    fresh fruit salad
  • Carrot and coriander soup
    Tuna and Bean Salad with Feta Cheese
    fromage blanc topped with chopped kiwi and dried cherries

There should be enough tasty variety of food there to keep us both happy – and keep the weight off. I’ll try and add the recipes as I have the time. I’ve got plenty more ideas!

Body Mass Index – BMI

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I weigh myself in kilos, which I can understand for bags of flour and portions of fish or piles of vegetables, but they mean nothing to me in terms of body weight – maybe one of the reasons why mine crept up so steadily the last few years! It was a shock when I realised that my 68.4 kilos was about 10 stone 10 lbs – a healthy weight for me is a good way under 9 stone!

How do you know what a healthy weight is for you? Well apart from your own sense of what weight you should be to look good and feel good, you can use a BMI calculator. This will give you an estimate of your body mass. There are some new weighing machines on the market that will calculate percentage body fat, but I think unless you have a lot of money to spend, these are unreliable. BMI will only give you a range of healthy weights for your age and height, it’s up to you to decide where you need to be in that range for your body frame.

My BMI today

My BMI today

My starting BMI was 29.45 – right towards the top end of overweight  – and would have been set to continue into obese unless I had taken action.

We started on 2nd January on cutting out alcohol for the month, reducing our calorie intake and increasing our activity levels . Then fortuitously my husband saw Michael Mosley talking about the 5:2 diet on TV, as his The Fast Diet book was about to be launched. After doing some researching we both agreed it would be a fantastic way to change our lifestyles and something that we are both enthusiastic about for the long term health benefits. Being in my early 60s I am optimistic that it is not too late to reverse the trend towards diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, high blood pressure and whatever other ailments I was heading for.

The first thing though is to get rid of this excess weight  – and the 5:2 way of eating is really helping with that. I’m still calorie counting as I need to re-educate myself about portion size, which foods have hidden or surprise calories and to know that even when I am eating on a non-fast day that I am not going overboard in adding calories that my body can’t burn off.  I’m really enjoying the challenge of finding interesting, flavourful food that is filling but not fattening.

I know this is a popular diet with foodies, as it can give you the leeway to indulge yourself a little and still maintain a healthy weight. But whilst I don’t want to exclude anything in particular long term, in the short term it is worth saying NO to the wonderful French patisserie, the rich buttery pastry, the rich creamy sauces and so on, while I am working on getting to a maintenance weight.  So I am being careful, but not entirely restrictive. Weekends and the occasional night out can still include a couple of glasses of wine and something sweet. If I have burned calories by cycling or Zumba, then that gives me some spare calories that I could use. But I don’t want guzzle a whole handful of chocolates and ruin everything I have achieved so far –  and thanks to the changes that are happening to my body and brain, I don’t want to! How brilliant is that?

Yes there is some willpower required to keep going on a fast day, to wait another 15 minutes before having something to eat, to say NO to a cream cake or whatever is your weakness – but the goals of being healthy, looking good, and best of all, feeling good – well those are worth working for, worth a little short-term discomfort.

The act of fasting twice a week helps to reduce your stomach size, reduce your appetite and reduce your cravings. It makes you more mindful about what and when you eat and to not mind being a little hungry occasionally.   If you combine this with steps towards avoiding junk food, cutting back on snacking and sweetened soft drinks and replacing processed and refined foods with home-made and wholefoods wherever you can, then you will be well on the way to a really healthy lifestyle, even if you don’t take any more exercise.  It’s a journey, not an instant fix. I’m lucky to already have a lot of knowledge about food and I enjoy planning meals and preparing things from scratch, but I’m still learning about nutrition. I’m happy to share to help others to get healthy and it  encourages me too.

So keep at it. If you have read this far – I hope you will find some useful and inspiring ideas here to help you to keep going with 5:2 in the long term, along with me and my husband.

My current BMI is 27.04 – I still have a further 5 kgs to lose to get me into the healthy zone and my target is to get a little under that, to allow for a little fluctuation.

Let’s all get to a healthy BMI and keep the cost of medical care down!

You can calculate your BMI here on the NHS website.

Not going to bed hungry!

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Today was our 10th fast day. Amazing! My weight is still on a very pleasing downward trend. I love my bathroom scales at the moment! I’ve also lost another 1cm off my waist and hips in the last week or so, so I love my tape measure too! I use one that I got from free when I joined the British Heart Foundation – I’m still in the pink ‘at risk’ zone for my waist measurement, but at least I am out of the red ‘high risk’ zone now.

I’ve noticed a few people on the 5:2 Intermittent Fasting support group on Facebook saying that they are going to bed hungry and early, wishing for their breakfast to come soon. That’s certainly not the case for me. Once we’ve had our evening meal I am finding myself completely comfortable and not in the slightest bit hungry. Mid afternoon is when I usually find my stomach grumbling and rumbling, but a cup of rooibosh tea or lime and ginger tea and the feeling passes. The weather was dreary, damp and cold here again though, so I was very glad that the wood burner stove was going as I felt decidedly chilly.

Waking up the morning after I was in no particular hurry for breakfast either. I really think there is a great benefit from going 12 hours or so without filling your stomach – not just because your system gets a break from food processing and pumping out insulin, but your stomach gets used to being empty, your mind gets more used to your stomach being empty and overall it helps to decrease your appetite.

So for our fast day morning this Thursday we had a breakfast of porridge (made with water) and a dozen blackberries each, from last year’s harvest in our garden. A cup of black coffee. No sugar, no honey, no sweeteners, no milk.

During the day I drank another cup of black coffee, a couple of glasses of water, a lime and ginger tea, 2 cups of rooibosh tea.

For our evening meal we had simple vegetable soup followed by peppered smoked mackerel with poached egg, wilted spinach and steamed broccoli and carrots. For dessert we had fromage blanc with a few home grown cherries from the freezer, poached with some mixed spice. No sugar or sweetener

According to myfitnesspal, my intake was just slightly over target, at 515 calories. The mackerel was quite a lot higher in calories than I expected (my 60g fillet was 186kcal), more than twice what a piece of salmon would have been, so not really a brilliant choice for a fast day. But it was very tasty and the meal was very filling.  I think the soup to start with is a great way to break a fast and it certainly helps to fill me up.

About an hour before bed I had a cup of camomile tea, which I often find is helpful for getting a good night’s sleep.

Neither of us went to bed hungry!