Tag: Food

Food or Foe?

I’ve been thinking about weight and food lately and my relationship with food. Ok, who am I kidding, I spend my life thinking about it.

I know you’re meant to eat to live and not live to eat, but honestly, I’m never going to be a salad and chicken breast only kinda gal.  I love chicken skin and pork belly and crackling (with apologies to my Muslim and Jewish and any other non-pork eating friends) and Malva pudding smothered with custard as much as the next heart attack waiting to happen.  I started eating meat last year after many years as a non-redmeat-eater and it’s been awesome. I could go on about all the things I love to eat forever.

BUT.

Of late I have listened in to my own internal dialogue after packing on a couple (!!!) of those  kilos it took me most of last year to lose.  If I sound a bit crazy, ja, well, then there’s that.

Firstly there’s the whole wheat/lactose thing.  I cannot eat a sandwich like most people.  Ever.  My stomach cannot handle all that wheat.  So if I feel like something bad I’ll have hot chips.

But on the Hot Chips Day it’s never just the Hot Chips.  It’s the burger/cheesegriller/chicken that goes with it, because I need protein you know.  And the carbonated drink (another thing my stomach loves) and then, after all that salt I crave something sweet to get it all down.

Do I feel good after having a Hot Chip Buffet? (because let’s face it, it’s never just the chips, it’s a veritable Buffet of Death). NO.  I feel like shit. So I top up with some coffee to stay awake.

Enter my other friend, Mr Lactose.  Never can I eat an ice-cream or drink Hot Chocolate made with normal milk, my stomach is immediately on fire. On. Fire.

Both my darling friends and stress also like to invite along their friend, Mr 4 Day Stomach Spasm.  I’m trying to get out of that abusive relationship, but I find myself back there every now and again and try not to hate myself afterwards.

Secondly, there’s the whole “It’s Holiday/Weekend/Date night I’m going to be bad tonight anyway so let me have a cheat lunch” internal dialogue.  I’m trying to train myself not to think like this.  It’s hard.  I’m trying to view occasions as, well, occasions and not the caution-to-the-wind-3-day-wallow-in-calories-occasions they are at the moment.

Thirdly we have the “Finish all the food on your plate” syndrome.  I must be rolling bursting at the seams ready to vomit really full to walk away from food left over on a plate. This is one of the things we also try not to teach the kids. (think of all the hungry kids in Ethiopia..)

Fourthly, I suffer from the “I’m not really enjoying this, but it’s in my hand so I’ll have to eat it” complex. For example, I was eating a piece of droë wors the other night that was so fatty I felt sick just looking at it.  I had to force myself to put it down and back away from it.  When will I ever learn that if it isn’t nice that I shouldn’t eat it?  And that eating it faster to get rid of it will only make it worse.

And fifthly, I would also like to include “half eaten crap the kids no longer want”.  You know, the soggy cupcakes sans icing, half-licked lollipops and half-eaten bags of candy floss.  I normally make Etienne eat those, but I have been known graze through plates of barely touched pieces of cake at parties where all 3 our kids have been.  See point above about the children in Ethiopia.

I’ve made a deal with myself: stay moving, eat healthy, have occasions, don’t berate yourself or hate yourself and if it aint nice don’t eat it.

How is your relationship with food?

What lessons have you had to learn?

 

My other job as a kitchen elf

Oh my hat, I can’t believe it’s Wednesday already and I haven’t had a chance to tell you about my spectacular Saturday evening.

You may or may not know that one of my favourite Food People is Jane-Anne Hobbs. Whenever we are looking for a recipe idea to make a feast we inevitably find it on her blog or in her book she released earlier this year. She is very quick to point out that she is a cook, not a chef, and I think that is why the food she makes appeals to us so much. It’s not fancy, it’s REAL and whenever we make something of hers it is always a hit.

So, imagine my glee at being lucky enough to be her kitchen elf on Saturday night at the Spier Secret Festival dinner. Ticket holders could choose to have dinner cooked by a celebrity chef at different venues. Our venue was, well, interesting, to say the least. Lets just say we went with rustic in the end. I also got to meet some lovely people, amongst which were Pat from Yumsy and her son Jason. Here is the post Pat did on the dinner, I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Thank you thank you Jane-Anne, I will quite happily be your kitchen elf any day!

Love to hate

And you think I have issues?

I don’t know about you lot, but I am officially a stress eater.

I’ve been on a marvelous eating plan and have shaken off some of the gazillion kilograms I gained pre-kids, pre-Daniel IVF hormone induced craze, post Daniel, pre Twins, post Twins and post-post Twins sleep deprivation comfort eating.  Not to mention the depression lets-stuff-things-in-our-mouth-because-life’s-a-bitch kilos.

I hesitate to talk about losing weight as I’ve been in a rather abusive relationship with the scale the last, oh, 20 years or so.  I’m also in the habit of losing and gaining the very same 5 kilos once a year and then adding on a few more just for good measure.

As part of this marvelous eating plan you are weighed every 2 weeks and you have to tell them what you have eaten, every meal, every day.  Let me tell you, when you start writing that shit down it gets real.  You really start noticing things about yourself and about the things you eat (and drink!!), when and why.

Mostly I have noticed when I’m feeling stressed, tired or insecure I graze scoff stuff food in my mouth eat.  I’m fine at work, but the minute I get home and I open the fridge or start packing stuff for the kids for school or Etienne sits down with his packet of chips at night its tickets, especially if I’ve had a rough day at work or I have come home to mammammammammammammamma from the minute I put my foot in the door until the kids are eventually fast asleep.  I’m not a big fan of chocolate, but do not let me anywhere near anything remotely salty or these cookies I made last week.  Those were a monumental error in judgement, or so my waist alleges.

I’ve also learnt that when I have something really stressful going on I’m often fine during that period, it’s 2 or 3 days later when my body wakes up and I need to eat everything that’s not bolted down.

I follow a very thought provoking (and beautifully simple) blog by Leo Babauta about Zen Living and I found this post in my reader that really made me think about my relationship with food.  Before you get all angst ridden about how to change a monumentally messed up relationship of any kind you might want to read his posts about changing habits.  I love how he breaks down things that are fundamentally hard for us to change because we go on a mission to re-invent ourselves in one fell swoop and then hate ourselves for failing.  Go on, the man talks a lot of sense.

Except for sharing a toothbrush when you are travelling, Etienne didn’t like that idea one little bit.  How very selfish of him.

If you could change one habit today, what would it be?

Food and infertility

I don’t see myself as an hysterical person, but when I read articles like this one, I feel just a teeny weeny little bit hysterical.

It’s no secret that I don’t eat red meat and as a household we are careful with meats and try to buy free range/organic whenever we can find and afford it.  This is part due to reading My Year of Meats and All Over Creation by Ruth Ozeki about what goes into our food without our knowledge or permission.  If you haven’t read her books, you should really try.  They aren’t just very well researched, they are also very well written.

The biggest reason I feel a little hysterical is because a lot of what goes into our milk, meat, potatoes and apples is making us infertile.  Even worse: it’s making our children infertile.  I have a well documented history of infertility and seeing all this really just pisses me off as infertility is an issue very close to my heart.

It also pissed me off that we try to make healthy choices for our children, but we are doing the exact opposite by giving them the “healthy” foods we do and forcing them to eat them.

Picture this:

“Dear, eat your potatoes, and don’t worry that they are full of pesticides, they are good for you.”

“And while you are at it, please eat that lovely spaghetti bolognese we made you with canned tomatoes and I don’t want to hear a word.”

That derelict vegetable garden of our is about to get a make-over I think.  We already have a compost heap with beautiful compost and a laid out veggie patch, we just need to keep it going and keep the delinquent dogs out.

Watch this space.

And no, I haven’t listened to any Alanis Morrisette in days.  Just so you know.

 

 

The Food Chronicles

Picture this:

18h30.  Supper time in the Roux Household.  Everyone is gathered around the table and dinner is almost done.  Well no, not really.  These days the kids are going for seconds and thirds.

We have had our fair share of fights about food.  You know the script:  “eat your food OR…”, “If you don’t eat your food there will be no snack/TV/friends to play” etc etc etc,  so this has come as a real shocker.  I mean, what will we do now for kicks?  Is it even possible to have amicable meal?  Suddenly there is dialogue, not threats and fights and begging.

And you know what the worst thing was that crossed my mind about 3 seconds after I felt really grateful that they were actually eating?  “OMG, my kids are going to be fat.”

How ridiculous that you fight for years to get your kids to eat their food and then, when they finally do, all I want to do is rip that second piece of chicken out of their hands and shout NO!

Speaking of grabbing food out of a child’s hand that is the precise fight we are having with Daniel at the moment:  not eating with his hands.  When you have a small baby it’s quite easy to measure their milestones.  You know they will start smiling at about 6 weeks.  And you know what their poop will look like once you stop breastfeeding.

But when is a child supposed to comfortably be able to eat with a knife and fork?  Where is the handy week-by-week guide to the 5 year old boy?  And don’t think that any 2 websites will give you the same information about milestones.

All we mostly have is our gut and a lot of faith in our child’s abilities.  And the intense need not to see our child eat his rice with his hands.  And much as we ask him to use his fork to eat his food he will still use his other hand to scoop the food on to the fork or hold on to the one end of the chicken and the fork in the other.  Makes us giggle every time.  But he tries and that’s all that matters right now.

He has also decided that he wants to bath with his sisters and apparently they sprint for the bathroom when they walk in the door and Etienne has to bath them all at the same time, so it’s wet chaos when I get home.  We seriously need a bigger bath..

Wet Chaos