Broad beans

          I recently read a post by “Crushed Caramel“… Who dislikes broad beans.

          I don’t blame her in the slightest… nasty, horrible “fat things”… or that’s what we used to call them as kids.

           I’ve never had a good relationship with food, I’ve always been a very picky eater, I have what Eldest Daughter recently described as “over active tastebuds”, whether I was born with such a sensitive taste, or whether I’ve just cultivated it over the years is another question to ponder, but my food, which Hubby considers to be bland and tasteless holds plenty of flavour to me, and his choice of spicy, intense flavoured food blows my head off. 

          I have no great love affair with food.  Cooking in general holds pretty much no fun. You would think that the side of me which enjoys making things, the part which put so much into “Building the garden” this past summer, the part which enjoys jigsaws and puzzles, and has played for hours cutting and sticking a wonderful project for Little Sister (to be revealed next summer). You would think that this side of me would like the collecting of ingredients, the planning, the preparation and finally the finished product of creating a meal. But alas no, I eat to live, and very much not the other way around.

          This being the case, you would expect me to be as skinny as a rake. Unfortunately not.  When “The Grumpiness” sets in there is nothing I like more than cakes, pastries, biscuits… the list here is endless. But then I will binge the nice things, I will feel guilty, and then of course, get more grumpy.

          The strange thing here is that I actually enjoy baking, I used to bake so many cakes when the girls were little, I guess the guilt thing about eating the whole cake to myself is stopping me making them.

          Since we’ve moved to our “Semi-retirement by the seaside”  I’ve eaten so many “Holiday calories” that I’m in very real danger of having to replace the clothes in my wardrobe with tents. If I want to look smaller for Little Sister’s special event next summer, I have to do some serious damage limitation between now and then.

          I binge eat, something will tweak my interest in food and I’ll eat it over and over again until I’m bored with it.  Surprisingly enough, this is helping me to diet. The diet I followed, quite successfully, a couple of years ago depends a lot on preparation. Obviously cooking for myself every mealtime is such a chore that I’d rather be hungry, then when I do get hungry, I’ll eat all the wrong things and the diet doesn’t work.

          I’ve taken to preparing four or five meals at a time, then I just pop them in the fridge or freezer and work my way through them until I need to prepare another batch. I’m also finding ways of cooking and preparing “Adult snacks” for fridge picking. So instead of cheese rolls, which i would quite happily live on, I’m snacking diet food.

          Mmmm, did I mention cheese rolls ?  They don’t necessarily have to have cheese in them, or come to think of it even butter if they’re fresh, I just love bread, white stodgy bread…

          Sorry, my mind wanders, where was I ? Oh yes, holiday calories… Cakes.

          I’ve decided that although I’m now living in a holiday resort, the holiday calories are only guilt free if you’re on holiday, so I’m going to allow myself these guilt free calories when I get visitors. So, in theory, each time I’m expecting visitors, I can bake a cake.

          I have a great selection to choose from in my online recipe book…

     “CAKES AND MORE“

          Oh, I nearly forgot about the board beans…

          There we were, Little Sister and me, sitting at the table, banned from leaving until our food was finished, with just a portion of “fat things” each left on our plate.  I hit on the idea of pursuading Little Sister that it was all really a case of mind over matter, if she could pursuade herself that she really liked these horrible fat things, she would really enjoy them and then she could eat them all and leave the table.

          I was full of encouragement as she stuffed the beans into her mouth uttering the word yum yum in between snivells and tears and heaves as she ate the broad beans… her portion and mine.

          I wonder if she remembers.