Breakfast/lunch/Dinner, what are you having?

[Scepticalscribe]

Poached fish (monkfish) in an oriental inspired broth (stock, fish sauce, Soya sauce, Oyster sauce, lemon grass, lime leaves, ginger, chopped chilli, a little sambal) with added vegetables (roughly chopped onions, carrots, tomatoes, Chinese cabbage, French onions), served with basmati rice.

Though I say so, myself, it was absolutely delicious.

 

[lizkat]

Supper was hokkien noodles w/ steamed fresh carrot medallions and broccoli florets.... and sweet hot chili sauce, the kind you can buy by the liter and grab from the fridge on autopilot when nothing else comes to mind.

Right so I had that sauce over my supper with all its added hotness and sweetness, about an hour before reading some piece in the Guardian about development of less than healthful food consumption during the pandemic, and recent efforts to undo damage, etc., and of course my eye went right to some paragraph with the word bacon in it.

The author was talking about inverting her buying habits after a consultation with her doctor, who was stern about need to lower cholesterol levels.. so at the store it was going to be far less ham and fewer sausages, and far more lentils, and immediately.

I coped through the pandemic with a diet of junk food. Now I'm regretting it | Emma Brockes

My doctor says my cholesterol levels are insane and I have to eat healthily. My supermarket shop has changed overnight, says Guardian columnist Emma Brockes

www.theguardian.com

"Before Christmas, I would have dropped in a block of cheese the size of my apartment, or at the very least dumped in a mountain of salt. Now it’s just the lentils, with their lentilly brown taste. The recipe says they’re great unadorned and don’t need extra flavouring. I wonder if this person has ever tasted bacon."

Yeah. I wonder too. I mean I do love lentils but they get doctored on with herbs or spices or both and usually some onions or garlic and carrots, maybe some tomato paste. And I still once in awhile acquire some bacon or sausage and cook that up to go into the pot. Never thought add any cheese and that's just as well. I'm even less trustworthy around cheese than I am around bacon.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Supper was hokkien noodles w/ steamed fresh carrot medallions and broccoli florets.... and sweet hot chili sauce, the kind you can buy by the liter and grab from the fridge on autopilot when nothing else comes to mind.

Right so I had that sauce over my supper with all its added hotness and sweetness, about an hour before reading some piece in the Guardian about development of less than healthful food consumption during the pandemic, and recent efforts to undo damage, etc., and of course my eye went right to some paragraph with the word bacon in it.

The author was talking about inverting her buying habits after a consultation with her doctor, who was stern about need to lower cholesterol levels.. so at the store it was going to be far less ham and fewer sausages, and far more lentils, and immediately.

I coped through the pandemic with a diet of junk food. Now I'm regretting it | Emma Brockes

My doctor says my cholesterol levels are insane and I have to eat healthily. My supermarket shop has changed overnight, says Guardian columnist Emma Brockes

www.theguardian.com

​

Yeah. I wonder too. I mean I do love lentils but they get doctored on with herbs or spices or both and usually some onions or garlic and carrots, maybe some tomato paste. And I still once in awhile acquire some bacon or sausage and cook that up to go into the pot. Never thought add any cheese and that's just as well. I'm even less trustworthy around cheese than I am around bacon.

I read that article, too, and roared with the laughter of recognition.

Yes, cholesterol, and the inevitable health arguments, I see them, but there is also that awful guilt that women are (culturally encouraged, a cultural encouragement that is strongly reinforced by society) to carry re the pure, uninhibited, greedy, immoderate enjoyment (which is then seen as a "sinful pleasure") of food.

It is not just that so many diets are dreary, and self-denying, it is that the elemnet of guilt feeeds (a deliberate use of that verb) notions of deprivation of food, and regulation of food as punishment. (And sometimes reward).