Food, Glorious Food

I know I’m talking about food a lot at the moment but there’s a simple reason for that – J is on another of her régimes (a diet to you and me) - and it’s hell!

I do her a bit of a disservice claiming that her régime is purely about food, or the lack of it, as she’s taking to walking into the village and back a couple of times a week and that’s a total of some five to six miles in total. Very commendable.

I don’t know what started this latest crusade off. Maybe I said something – like ‘can you still get into your wedding dress?’ Or maybe it was when I said, on passing her in the kitchen and bumping into her, that she should have made the kitchen bigger. Whatever it was, when J is on a diet, we’re all on a diet.

The first sign is the fridge being filled with green stuff that even a rabbit would turn its nose up at and an overflowing fruit bowl. Being a Glaswegian and hence known as a ‘salad dodger’, being served up with lettuce leaves and low fat goat’s cheese is a crime against humanity as far as I’m concerned. I even found her weighing out my portion of gnocchi the other day as I was getting ready for lunch. What’s going on?

The kids get home from school about 5.30pm and they’re starving. Normally, I’d rustle up some pancakes or spam fritters to keep them going until dinner but the deep fat fryer now has a combination padlock on it and the spam remains on the supermarket shelf.

It’s just a shame, having read about a child being brought up in squalor in South London where he’d have to sneak down the stairs in the middle of the night to try and get some food from the fridge to keep the hunger pangs at bay, to see my kids salivate when I make Shadow’s dinner at night. Juicy chunks of steak in a gravy mixed in with his protein rich biscuits.

Their pocket money (or ‘allowance’ as Kitty calls it) is now spent, not on sweets or drinks in the village but sandwiches and stashes of bread and jam which are secreted under their beds. I reckon Social Services will be making a visit very soon. The kids are even banned from going over to Tan and Angie’s after they’ve had dinner to see if there are any scraps left! Even I can feel the weight dropping off me as my scooter now goes faster up hills – a sure sign that my weight is suffering.

And all the meals out we used to have (oh those halcyon days) have stopped. I even tried to seduce J into going for a walk the other day – to a local restaurant, but even that didn’t sway her. It was a two mile power walk there and back to the house (actually – it was there and back to the parked car – J hates walking up hills!).

And so I can’t wait until my trip to Manchester and Glasgow next week. Rag Puddings (steak and kidney suet puddings for the uninitiated) with lashings of chips and mushy peas. Steaks galore. Ten item breakfasts at my brother’s  house (see next Monday’s post). Haggis with all the trimmings. A Fish and Chip supper in paper late at night in Glasgow. A huge curry.

I’m salivating now as well!