Cycling Related

Tonight's HelloFresh is spaghetti with chorizo and prawns. It features layered tomatoes: paste, passata and - yes! - sun-dried. I love tomatoes and I love sun-dried tomatoes, but I realised it's been a long time since I had them.

Obviously I needed to put together a play list to accompany my meal, starting with ...

Tonight's HelloFresh was surprisingly good.

That was my first draft of this post, but maybe it's not that surprising when I started to list the components.

It was the Christmas themed burger. Potato wedges in the oven, patties made with sausage meat, sweetened cranberries and onion, served on a bun with apple chutney, cheddar cheese and more onions, accompanied by the wedges and a rocket and apple salad in balsamic vinaigrette.

Yeah, it might be obvious, but that was delicious!

I popped my head into a recently opened "artisan" butcher to find out what they charge for stock bones. It was late in the day, so the butcher had packed up most of the display. He said "here you go". The only thing that was still out, excluding the steak he was packing, was 3 polystyrene trays of bones. I asked what they cost and he said "free". I said "free is my perfect amount". He misheard me as "three is my perfect amount." I tried not to take all three, arguing they wouldn't fit in my bag but he said "I'll give you a bag". Eventually he wore me down, and I took away 4kg of very meaty and fatty bones and a super strong paper bag for - nothing.

It wasn't free, though. I didn't have a stock pot and no saucepan was big enough. I spent £20 at TK Maxx on a huge saucepan/stockpot. It's on a slow burner now, and will be for 2 more days.

In the future it will take the turkey leg bones I wasn't sure what to do with.

Joan wrote: ↑

4 years ago

I popped my head into a recently opened "artisan" butcher to find out what they charge for stock bones. It was late in the day, so the butcher had packed up most of the display. He said "here you go". The only thing that was still out, excluding the steak he was packing, was 3 polystyrene trays of bones. I asked what they cost and he said "free". I said "free is my perfect amount". He misheard me as "three is my perfect amount." I tried not to take all three, arguing they wouldn't fit in my bag but he said "I'll give you a bag". Eventually he wore me down, and I took away 4kg of very meaty and fatty bones and a super strong paper bag for - nothing.

It wasn't free, though. I didn't have a stock pot and no saucepan was big enough. I spent £20 at TK Maxx on a huge saucepan/stockpot. It's on a slow burner now, and will be for 2 more days.

In the future it will take the turkey leg bones I wasn't sure what to do with.

I have related many times that I get my best meat from Tori & Bens - and although nobody took the bait, their tame Masterchef won the Christmas special cooking their Longhorn Beef. When I visit their shop I come away with the butchered bones which I roast and make stock from. I asked why they didn't use the bones and Tori said that they would need to comply with so many other rules and standards that it was not worth them making stock and it made more sense to have them taken away. That is such a waste.

Tori & Ben's .... Google google ... Lovely!

I can see the immediate problems: even a nutrition label would be a challenge. Do you send it out to a lab? But is that a consistent value, or will it vary with the seasons, or the precise mix of bones and how they are cut?

And at the end, you still have a huge pile of bones to be disposed of, that presumably have less value as fertiliser, so you may need to pay more to have them removed.

But the waste is terrible, and it doesn't even count as part 7 million tonnes of food waste we throw out each year.

I used to go to a chicken shop at the market - where you could buy whole chickens or pieces - and down the end of the counter you could buy what was left after the legs, thighs, breasts and wings were taken. Still a lot of meat on them, and 3 or 4 would make an excellent soup base. I don't have any idea where you could get that now. I guess they are all ground down, cooked and fed to the <shudder> chickens.

Regulator wrote: ↑

4 years ago

I think we have to take into account that dietary advice is changing - particularly in relation to fat.

I'm doing the 'Our Path' diet. It's essentially a low bard, high(er) fat diet that's approved by the NHS. Cheese and other dairy plays a big part in the diet, along with other healthy fats/oils.

I have thoroughly moved that way now - towards the healthy fats, but the NHS officially is still digging it's heels in.

But that's by-the-by. I'm actually reviving this to ask how you are getting on with OurPath? I am thinking of recommending it to someone. Should I?

Notes:

• my definition of healthy fats is also changing. I have an jar of - as yet untouched - beef tallow in my fridge.
• I still can't eat that dish as it is; too many carbs now.

I'm getting on OK. I had a bit a blip of Christmas, when caution was thrown to the wind and I binged a bit* but it's back on to the wagon and the weight is coming off again. Not as quickly as before but still a regular 3-4lbs a week.

I would recommend OurPath - particularly if you can get it 'prescribed' by your GP/medical practice.




*OK... a lot...

Thanks.

For various reasons, I mostly kept my Christmas eating under control but ....

I was explaining my current "eating window" after Christmas to one of the friends I spent Christmas day with. I told her I was only eating during an 8 hour period each day and I had stuck to that on Christmas day....

....and she laughed and said "yes, but you ate the entire 8 hours"

This is true. I had my little blip too.

Smoked beef for me; whitebait for her.
Two lots of goose breast with a bacon stuffing and lentils
Dried fruit tart; brioche and burnt butter pudding

That goose breast had obviously been used - intensively - to flap some wings over hundreds of miles. All of the main protein items other than the lentils must have been sourced from within 20-odd miles of here. As were both after-dinner whiskies.

I don't think you can get all hoity-toity about food miles when you are ignoring the hundreds of air miles the goose breasts have travelled.

Yum.

(I had prawns and avocado for dinner last night. Really enjoyed it, but not thinking about the food miles and the ecological damage )

I've been using my period of enforced isolation to make a sourdough culture...

The bread turned out pretty well. I think I allowed the dough to prove for slightly too long and it needed another five minutes in the oven, but all in all, very acceptable.


The pizza made use of a kitchen worktop offcut for a stone, which worked a treat.

That sourdough looks lush! I've just finished the loaf we picked up from the local farm shop yesterday (the walk up there was our daily exercise).

I'm doing beans with bacon tonight, with added courgette, kale and sweetcorn. Real single dish comfort food.

Apparently this is a thing.

Just yesterday a friend shared this on WhatsApp, which was her own invention So I shared it with Aussie friends, who didn't say much, but the next day someone went to buy bread they found a poster starring her nephew (!!) and featuring the same treat my friend thought she invented.

I now find out my friends wondered why I sent them a photo of something so mundane.

--
The sourdough looks great, but is making me a little wistful. I murdered my last sourdough (long but dull story) and now I am low carb, making another makes no sense. I have a colony of bacteria that makes yogurt, but I didn't capture it from the air but from Waitrose.

Until someone tells me otherwise, I invented hot cross bun eggy bread.

LowlifeDes wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Until someone tells me otherwise, I invented hot cross bun eggy bread.

don't google it then!