food and a red cat thing

[madelinekelly]

I've had a pleasantly busy couple of days, and am now feeling both smug and industrious.





This morning I made a cuddly cat toy for a baby that's due in March. (I anticipated being too busy with moving house to have time to craft things in the spring, so it seemed sensible to do it now while I still know where all my craft stuff is.)

Here he is:



It's just occurred to me you could easily mistake him for a little cuddly devil. Oops. Hopefully the baby's cat-loving parents won't notice...

Here's the back:



I discovered, with this project, that my sewing machine can do a fair approximation of blanket stitch (oh, how I love this machine!). Here's a close-up of the face, so you can see the stitching:



It's decorative enough to use without any appliqued fabric too, I think. Here's the reverse of the little heart tag:



Isn't that lovely? I want to put little blanket-stitch embellishments on all my clothes now.

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I'm finding the whole process of cooking fascinating at the moment. What do you eat when the cheap bulky staples like pasta, bread, rice and potatoes aren't allowed? We're both discovering interesting new meals, and new ways of cooking things. (This is good, because we were getting into a bit of a soup/risotto/pasta rut.)



Yesterday's food:

Breakfast: two little poached eggs with spicy salsa (tomato, cucumber, red pepper, tiny-but-potent chili pepper and basil in flax oil and lemon juice dressing); mango-and-passionfruit smoothie

Dinner: roast chicken with walnut-and-apple stuffing, broccoli, carrots, and onion gravy; natural yoghurt (with flax oil stirred in) with apples, currants, roasted pecans and cinnamon

Tea: roasted butternut squash and mushrooms, fried chicken in a pesto/mayonnaise dressing; satsuma

And various herbal teas

Exercise: 25 minute aerobic work-out

Feeling: industrious and alert

Today's food:

Breakfast: natural yoghurt (with flax oil stirred in), sliced banana, chopped apple, walnuts; mango-and-passionfruit smoothie

Dinner: salad of chicken, almonds, cabbage, carrot, satsuma and dates in a flax oil and satsuma juice dressing

Snack: one-and-a-half chocolate bars, because Matt found a box of birthday chocolate upstairs -- and you shouldn't let food go to waste, should you?

Tea: haven't had it yet, but we've been invited out for a meal and I expect it'll be packed full of lovely starchy carbohydrates

Exercise: epic 2-hour walk with Matt along the coast, then back through a sea of mud

Feeling: tired and happy

Comments

[faerie-writer.livejournal.com]

That blanket stitch really does look so nice on the toy. Wish my sewing machine could do that. :D

[piapiapiano.livejournal.com]

My mum bought the machine for me a few years ago. It's got over 30 stitches but I tend to use the same 3 for everything...

[miri-me.livejournal.com]

What (if any) root vegetables/grains are allowed? What about beans/pulses?

And that's a really cute kitty :-D

[piapiapiano.livejournal.com]

The general rules are: no grains, no beans/pulses, no dairy, no starchy tubers (ie. potatoes or sweet potatoes). Everything else is fine, although this particular diet pays special attention to omega-3 (which is why I'm adding flax oil to salads and yoghurt).

In a typical week between us we'd eat a big block of cheese, a couple of packets of butter, half a kilo of pasta, half a kilo of rice, a couple of potatoes, and unknown quantities of lentils and split peas and frozen peas and tinned beans (of various kinds).

The diet's been quite a fun challenge so far. :)

[miri-me.livejournal.com]

Lol, that's pretty much all my ideas out then ;-)

*googles*

It looks like beetroot, carrots, turnips and pumpkin are all good? Roast/mashed friendly roots and squash vegetables replacing potato; finely diced and boiled to replace rice/pasta in dishes?

[piapiapiano.livejournal.com]

That's basically what we've been doing.

As a species we're never going to be able to truly replicate the pre-agriculture diet, though. All cultivated fruit and veg are much sweeter now than their wild counterparts, and fleshy/starchy fruit and veg are fleshier/starchier. It does concern me. In this diet we're replacing starchy foods (eg. rice and pasta) with roots and squashes -- all I can think is that the starch would've been converted to sugar, but now we're going straight for the sugar. I'm not sure it's much of an improvement.

[miri-me.livejournal.com]

I thought that complex carbs, in moderation, were reasonably healthy (converted to sugars at the rate the body could use, not converted to fats, ready supply of energy)?

And it sounds like the diet should be at least comparable to a typical one, protein-wise (though no dairy, pulses or beans (including soya products) and a maximum of 6 eggs a week would be a bit problematic for veggies!!)..? Not Atkins-y (but the lack of fibre, vitamins and minerals, and excess of salt and fat in that is a bit icky!), but a healthier variant?

In the summer, I guess you can have a lot of salads and leaf-based meals though :-)