Non-working Monkey’s food diary

General, 6th February - 19th February

Toast, stews of various kinds, green beans, broccoli, cheese, wine, gin, salad, more stew, grilled meat, roast meat, meat meat. Smoked salmon, eggs, olive oil. Tarragon, lemon, basil, thyme, rosemary. Lemons, oranges and apricots; stewed plums. Skinny Cow on a stick. More toast, some bread; a salad with cheese in it. Rabbit. Cheese on a plate. Mouthful of chocolate here and there; a truffle the size of my face. 85% Lindt; 75% Cote d’Or. Stir fries, steamed rice, lasagne. Coriander seeds, cumin, turmeric. Onions and garlic; black mustard seed; plain yoghurt, prune yoghurt, vanilla yoghurt; frozen berries; honey; porridge; pumpkin seeds, sesamse seeds, linseeds, sunflower seeds. A packet of crisps, a mouthful of cake. More gin, some port. Roast chicken and salad; grated carrot, steamed carrot, carrot cut in strips. Smoked bison, dried beef, cashew nuts and gin. Maple toffee made in the snow, Caribou, half a goat’s cheese and dried tomato panini; a muffin or 2; a great many skinny capuccino regulier a emporter s’il vous plait. 6 oatcakes. Strong cheddar. Some grapes.

 

 

 

Wednesday 5th February. -1. 2ins snow. First day of new job.

Breakfast: 2 bits toast (nutty home-made bollocks). ‘Smear’ (aaaargh!!!!!!) of peanut butter. Cup of coffee size of face.

Lunch: tomato and garlic soup of the healthy kind. Fucking nice. Half a chicken wrap, of the healthy kind. Fucking nice. Nice lunch as it goes. Didn’t eat other half of chicken wrap as was full. That is the power of soup.

Mid-afternoon: My own hands. Very fucking hungry. Drank cup of coffee, but as I work in an advertising agency, fancy coffee with hot milk and that. In Italy it is a latte. In England it is coffee with hot milk. In Quebec, which reckons itself French, Cafe au lait. Wrong time of day for it. Felt sleepy. Pinched eyes.

Train: Imaginary food whilst standing up half-asleep like a horse, including toast, toast, toast, cheese, toast, toast and cheese. But not cheese on toast; cold cheese, on cold toast. Don’t ask.

Dinner: Half a bowl - like a handful - of last night’s penne (wholemeal, yah, like it makes it calorie-free) with like, tomato sauce made with my own hands and porcini and bits of sliced up roast beef in. Gin and tonic. Bit of dried beef. ABout 6 nuts (which are about the same calorific content as Bernard Manning, but no matter). Salad with a hard boiled egg (no idea why I wanted egg, but there were some in the fridge and I was hungry like the wolf) and some walnuts and 2 fingers’ width (I do not have particularly fat hands like sausages) of lean-a-rama roast pork with la-la dressing. 2 thin wafer-thin slices nut bollocks bread. Now drinking wine, but only one glass.

I find it depressing writing a food diary, not because of what I eat but because the words that describe food are often the kind of words I do not like.

I need to eat the breakfast of champions tomorrow, i.e. either eggs or porridge.

Saturday 2 February. -7. Wind chill: -14.

Late Breakfast: scrambled eggs, smoked salmon, piece of nut ‘n’ seed filled toast, thin one. Roll of similar consistency with jam on. I am eating too much bread. Glass o’ fruit juice (rare). Large cup of coffee.

Mid-afternoon: half of roll (small one) of same dough with marmite on. Cup of tea.

Dinner: Glass of pineau. Half a bottle of faine red waine. Fricasee of octopus, squid, lentils. Duckfest (confit, grilled magret, some sort of croquette thing made of confit, like a sort of ghastly satanic thing made to precipitate the downfall of anyone trying to eat good); polenta, many green vegetables. 3 smallish bits of quebecois cheeses. 3 bits of bread. Glass of port. Espresso. To a bar, whereupon I drank 2 pints of hearty Canadian bear and watched some women far far fatter than me get off with Russian assassins.

1am: stop at Bagel bakery in Fairmount, where the bagels are coming out of the oven. Eat one on the way home.

Have not one moment of remorse. It was all utterly, utterly delicious, but want more vegetables.

 

Friday 1 February:

Breakfast: poached egg on toast.

Mid-morning: some walnuts. Bit of cheese out of the fridge. Randomly chewed on some carrots.

Lunch: salad of many things. much lettuce; some re-grilled grilled chicken; 2 slices of grilled halloumi; some sunflower seeds; tomato, spring onion, green beans. Bit of bread. Lush, it were.

Aperitif: this is sacred and a new thing and I will always do it. I look forward to it and I love it. Gin and tonic. Carrots. Fat free yoghurt with garlic, salt, pepper, parsley (sometimes). Some (very low fat - top tip) jambon de bayonne. A couple of almonds (and no more). Just tiny bits of everything but a really nice thing to do at the beginning of the evening (if you have time…)

Dinner: homemade chicken chili (this is top tucker - if you want the recipe, let me know); brown rice (how to make brown rice nice: soak it all day; sweat a diced onion in a little bit of olive oil; turn the rice until it is transparent - but most importantly cook it in stock. Or just chuck a stock cube into the water.) Loads of broccoli. Green salad. Homemade chocolate cake (no butter, but eggs and some sugar and hardcore cocoa; only a small bit needed) with raspberries and no-fat vanilla yoghurt.

This is what I normally eat. It makes me very happy. When I eat like this and go to the gym I lose about 1 - 2lbs a week. It isn’t a diet, it’s what I like eating. I fuck up when I eat cheese for no reason, or don’t go to the gym, or drink too much for too many nights, or eat a bit of toast in the afternoon for no reason because I am bored, or a biscuit in a meeting.

I am also reminded that it is easy to cook and eat like this if a) you are not working and b) you don’t have kids and c) you live with someone who likes food and cooks well. They are good circumstances for losing weight; I’ve got enough time to go to the gym, for starters. It’s going to be 10 times harder when I start working.

 

 

Tuesday 29 January. Still in Canada, because I live here. It is after lunch.

Breakfast: 1 bit of toast made with dough I made into bread (awash with walnuts and seeds and shit like that) with a poached egg. No butter and that. No need.

1 other bit of toast with a bit of honey on it.They are small bits of toast, like half the size of a bit of packet bread.

Half of gigantic cup of coffee the size of the moon.

Gym: About 700 calories burnt off sweating like a killer on the crosstrainer, step machine,treadmill etc. Quite a lot of hot weight action. 30 situps. Smelt a bit.

Other half of gigantic cup of coffee. Small roll of bread I made with cheese on it, but not much cheese.

Lunch : Thai soup made by the pathologist. Added rice noodles, mushrooms, some prawns.

Viatnamese roll feat. many types of beef, hot stock, grills, lettuce, rice paper and stuff. Not enough vegetables.Half a bottle of wine. Kid Koala, beer. Now home drinking port and eating about I dunno, 10 nuts out of a tub. Yeah.

Monday 28 January. I am in Canada. I am on a different time zone. The others have eaten their dinner. I have not.

 

Breakfast: Gnawed on home-made ‘roll’, aka small loaf. Spat quite a lot of it out as baked it too long and crust like that of the earth 100,000,000 years ago. Splodge of honey from down the road. Bit of cheese. Gigantic cup of coffee the size of the moon. Yes.

Mid-morning: Looked out of window. At bit of pork of end of roast loin of pork. Was so lean it was dry and tasted like slippers. Spat it out.

Lunch: Made nice bread. Cut off the crust to check. (”check” is not a euphemism; I couldn’t remember when I put it in and had to make sure it was OK. It was.) Ate some of the foxy Thai soup made by the pathologist, but added in some prawns and sugar snap peas and some Thai rice noodles. Bowl size of Lithuania. Still full.

Ate a brazil nut. Wondered about the orange. Decided it looked evil.

Dinner: I will drink a gin and tonic, as I always do. I will eat carrots with it, and home-made humous (anyone want the recipe? No fat. Makes you stink like a garlic press mind). I am about to go and flatten a chicken fillet (organic meat hard to come by in Canada unless you cycle on your tofu bicycle to the farmer’s market in Montreal), slosh it about in lemon juice, basil, red chili, pepper, Maldon (I am precise about this: I use it when I want to taste the salt; for cooking I use what they call in the Americas “kosher salt”) and griddle it later. While it has a bit of a rest I will griddle some asparagus. I will jizz some lemon juice on it all and a tiny bit of parmesan.

I will probably eat a poached plum and some 0 fat jizz-free organic vanilla yoghurt with some mushed pecans stirred in. (In fact that reminds me - if anyone wants the spastically easy but delicious frozen berry, yoghurt and Cassis thing I do lemme know).

Coming soon: I look at the chocolate but do not lick it.