Day Seven – Dinner

I think yesterdays lasagne may have inspired my housemate to try an experimental communal cooking challenge himself – home made chips.

So we all had “fishfingers, chips & peas” together.

Day Seven – Lunch

“Ham sandwich, banana”

I’d bought turkey ham because it was cheaper. Turkey ham is a strange, bewildering product to me. I’ve seen whole cooked turkies and I dont remember seeing anything like ham. It doesn’t even taste like turkey! It’s just not right…

Day Seven – Breakfast

“Shreddies” – Malties again.

Reminded of the shreddie – maltie contention from before, but less concerned this time – a second ‘error’ of the same kind is easier than the first to ignore. Having “made ones mind up” can be justification enough.

Day Six – Dinner

“Lasagne”

Housemate Stu requested “a big shout-out” for helping me prepare a huge lasagne for housemates and friends. I felt bad after flaking out on a communal curry so bought beef mince, pasta sheets, veg etc. for an Italian-style feast.

Factors of not normally preparing tea in advance include eating at odd times and also alone. This ended up being a really nice social event for the household – preparing, cooking, washing-up, etc.; housemate Jon even made a big apple crumble for desert, which was delicious. So another very enjoyable experience has come out of this change in approach, and I was very pleased.

with respect to the curry from the previous night, can failure (or specifically guilt) ever be an appropriate source of motivation? At what point does lack of succes encourage motivation, and at what point does it demotivate further efforts?

Day Six – Lunch

The menu said “Bacon & Brie Baguette”. Fantastic! Selecting food last Thursday had been done quickly and fairly arbitrarily (apart from Zoe’s menu on sat – mon) but I felt like I had made a good choice here.

I used Sainsburys Basics cooking bacon, which to my mind is one of the best bargains around – it’s all the bacon that can’t practically be made into rashers, so if you get a good bag you can get great big gammon-steak like cuts at rock-bottom prices. The only draw back is cutting all the fat off can be a bit labourious. I added some brown sugar BBQ marinade and put the whole thing in a panini press. Anyway, it was absolutely delicious – if not massively unhealthy.

Day Six – Breakfast

I went running this morning, something I’ve been wanting to do but put off for probably over a month. Perhaps discipline in one area of life can have have a positive effect on discipline in another.

Cornflakes for breakfast.

Day Five – Dinner

“curry”

Quite vague.

I had been thinking about making a big communal curry, I’d even mentioned it to housemates – from scratch, i’d said; ill get poppadoms, naans, everything, i’d said. I copped out immediately when I saw a price-reduced serves:1 microwavable chicken rogan josh. Cooked it up, added rice and ate it. I got a few disapointed looks in the kitchen that evening.

Perhaps I’ll make up for it with a lasagne tomorrow.

Day Five – Lunch

“cheese and pickle sandwich, an apple”

Nice and easy, very tasty. I grilled the sandwiches. I did’t think to keep on top of the recomended five-a-day fruit and veg when writing the list. The latte and croissant were the last of the 6 courses from Zoe’s menu – from here on in food was chosen by me (over a total period of about 5 minutes sat at a desk – courses may not be brilliantly thought out)

Day Five – Breakfast

“Skinny latte and a croissant”

So after I got out of bed, got washed, brushed my teeth etc. I put my shoes on and marched down to Lewisham, my nearest town centre. I needed to do some more food shopping to keep up with the list anyway.

I found croissants at a slightly skanky looking muffin place in the middle of Lewisham centre. I ordered a small latte too. As I was leaving the woman behind me asked for a large skinny latte. uh-oh. I thought skinny meant small, like tall, grande, venti, that kind of thing. Turns out it means made with low-fat milk. It looked like, even though I had made the effort, I’d accidently messed up a little bit.

Day Four – Dinner

“Tuna, sweetcorn, kidney beans & rice”.

I added a few more ingredients that needed eating, anchovies and rocket from last nights salad etc.

I was annoyed to have wasted some reduced-price food I had meant to use for this meal. Confused, I had bought a tuna, sweetcorn and pasta salad (£3.10 £1.80), forgetting i was supposed to be cooking rice, not pasta. I suppose I could have just added rice and kidney beans to the pasta, it would have been a bit carbohydratey but at least it wouldnt have been thrown away. Thats probably what I should’ve done. whoops.