Also, by the way, you can get a warm house discount if you are on a low income (regardless of whether you have a smart meter or a regular one). I never knew about that, but they told me about it and that I can apply, so I am mentioning in case other people didn't know about it.
I'm sure we can rustle up a few folks for an Edinburgh shipmeet, it's been a while since the last one (unless people are having lots without telling me )
Loaves and chilli made - I think I've overdone the spices a bit, as I was worried about it being too bland (and trying to hit a happy medium between what I can cope with (gentle heat) and what the recipe said (a tablespoon! ) and bearing in mind that I was making a double quantity.
Maybe it'll be all right for those who are less wimpy about heat than I am.
@Patdys , If you are in London I'd love to meet up if possible. You gave me a lovely Secret Santa present a few years back and it would be good to thank you in person.
And it's not 5 a day any more, it's 10 portions a day - 80g a portion with a preference to eating a rainbow (breakfast was a banana, lunch is a spinach and potato omelette with green and carrot salads with an orange for pudding - so that's yellow, orange, green and purple (salad leaves) and at least 4 portions so far - 10 is a struggle.)
I had a lovely walk in the sunshine at lunchtime and saw lots of my favourite spring flowers and the first butterflies. The very first one I saw was a brimstone and my childhood reading of Moomintroll told me that seeing a yellow butterfly as the first of the year means a happy summer. As things have been a bit rubbish for the past few months I took it as a sign that there may be better things ahead.
Red fruit for breakfast, yellow banana and orange satsumas at lunchtime. Out for evening meal with friends so hopefully something green for the plate then.
Ah - Moomintroll is a very Sagacious Moomin. He gets it from his Pappa and Mamma. The Moomins, as enny fule kno, are sensible enough to hibernate throughout the winter, with their tummies full of nourishing pine-needles (IIRC), and the Moominhouse Porcelain Stove well banked-up.
All this talk of coloured food is not very helpful for those of us with synaesthesia, because each day has its own proper colour, and it is not always feasible to arrange a suitable menu.
For instance, Wednesday (for me) is Bright Yellow Day, but I'm not sure I could (or should) subsist entirely on Bananas.....
Friday, OTOH, is Brown Day, so there's always CHOCOLATE. Monday is Green Day, so vegetable such as watercress, perhaps....?
I had a technicolour evening meal of red beetroot burger, red, yellow and green peppers and orange sweet potato.
That was after 4 hours in the garage rearranging clutter so that my Christmas decorations can live there. It resulted in not much to go to the dump, and a few things to go onto Freecycle.
Ermm… I melted down(!) some cherry tomatoes to make a sauce to go with meatballs and pasta - that was the only veg I've had today. Lunch was cheese on wholemeal toast so today's colours have been browns and golds apart from said tomato sauce.
Vegan food really needs more publicity/explanation, IYSWIM.
I may have mentioned this before, but the partner of my Cousin S makes a really tasty Vegan 'Chocolate Soup'. I think she purveys it to upmarket bistros in Hampstead and the like, so it's not cheap...
It is quite eye-watering.....it contains chillis.... but (once you've recovered) it's very more-ish.....
Vegan 'CHEESE' can take the skin off the roof of your mouth, BTW.
The days have colours for me too, but that doesn't affect what I eat or what I wear. I like colourful meals. I often wonder how many people actually count the 5/7/10 a day we get told we we should eat daily. I count for fun sometimes, but tend not to take it too seriously. I see it as they've given a number because it's more tangible for people to follow than simply 'Eat a variety of fruit and veg each day.' Five and ten are easy numbers to remember. Seven never became an official recommendation, but was mentioned by GPs to people.
BF, I think regular, non-vegan cheese can do that too. I experience it whenever I eat pizza. I thought it must be the tomato though, as I don't get it from cheese on toast, but people say it's the cheese.
This talk of colourful fruit and veg has got me onto one of my mundane fixations, peas.
People are so used to eating them from childhood that they take them for granted. They can be frozen and still taste good, tinned are still good, eaten in the pods, or mushy, or in a stew. Any risotto without peas can be improved by adding peas. You can ear the twirly clingy bits in a mixed salad and if you she'll your own there's pea pod wine. Such a versatile and under appreciated little vegetable.
If I hadn't been running late this morning I would have had porridge with a banana and a handful of 'black' fruit (currently grapes as last year's frozen blackcurrants have run out) As it was, I had toast. Not sure I can count a teaspoon of marmalade as part of my fruit and veg allowance.
Lunch was a bean and vegetable stew. It had leeks, onions and tomatoes in it. I have no idea how one works out the 80g portions when the veg are all mixed together like that.
Also lemon & parsley cous cous, but the amount of fruit. veg in that is negligible. Banana and custard afterwards, to make up for the missing banana at breakfast.
We had bacon sandwiches for tea - and I had brown sauce, so can't even claim the tomato element of ketchup.
Followed by a nectarine - red skin, yellow flesh - which does that count as?
Beans and pulses count - so my baked beans on toast for supper count (and mango for pudding). Plus I had some blueberries at lunchtime as I dug them out of the freezer for my daughter and helped myself to a handful. I'm up to seven portions and 6 colours, red? (tomato sauce), orange - loads (carrot, mango), yellow (banana), green (spinach, green salad), blue(berries), indigo/purple - purple salad leaves.
If you read the veggie stew ready meals with several vegetables included they often count as two or three portions, depending on ingredients.
I had thought there might have been soured cream available with the chilli, but there wasn't. I didn't actually have any of ours, as we queued up at one table, and it was on the other, but the one I had was very nice. It had tomatoes and dark kidney beans, so that's red and purple sorted. This evening I made a tomato and avocado salad, covering red and green.
As we left early* I don't know whether ours was finished or not. They run a drop-in centre at the hall on Mondays, so they might well use left-overs for lunch tomorrow.
We're apparently in for another foot or so of snow (PLEASE NO MORE!!!); the first little flakes were starting just as we got home. This could be a total pain in the arse tomorrow, as D. has a funeral to play for in the morning, by which time we could be well snowed-in.
* I'm a Very Bad Piglet - D. said after we'd finished lunch that he wanted to go up to his office and check his e-mail, and suggested we skip the AGM. I didn't need a second bidding ...
This talk of colourful fruit and veg has got me onto one of my mundane fixations, peas.
People are so used to eating them from childhood that they take them for granted. They can be frozen and still taste good, tinned are still good, eaten in the pods, or mushy, or in a stew. Any risotto without peas can be improved by adding peas. You can ear the twirly clingy bits in a mixed salad and if you she'll your own there's pea pod wine. Such a versatile and under appreciated little vegetable.
Eat more peas. They are green. Mostly.
Home made pea soup is on the menu for today at Boogieville
Yum. I love peas. I also had yellow, orange and white (brown? -- potatoes) with dinner, and green with lunch.
Thank you for sharing the fact days have colours for you, BF and fineline. May I ask a question? (tell me to mind my own darn business if I shouldn't) Do you 'see' the colour when you hear the word? Or something else?
On smart metres, I was at a lecture on privacy and ethics re big data on Friday and the speaker said smart meters report back all manner of data! I had not considered it.
From the NHS website:
Potatoes, yams, cassava and plantain are vegetables, but don't count towards your 5 A Day. This is because they mainly contribute starch to your diet.
Other root vegetables, such as sweet potatoes, parsnips, swedes and turnips, are usually eaten as a vegetable alongside the main starchy food in a meal. These count towards your fruit and veg portions.
Proper breakfast this morning, so yellow (banana) and purple (grapes) covered.
My problem with the idea of different colours every day all year round is that, in the winter especially, it is rather in conflict with eating in season. The French definitely do this more than the British, and it is more ecologically sound so to do. Also fruit and vegetables taste much nicer when they’ve been harvested at maturity and not flown half-way round the planet.
So, for example, I’m struggling to think of anything red that’s in season at the minute. This is the moment for root vegetables and brassicas. Other pretty colours come in far later in the year. I suppose apples could conceivably be red, but it's a bit of a push.
Thank you for sharing the fact days have colours for you, BF and fineline. May I ask a question? (tell me to mind my own darn business if I shouldn't) Do you 'see' the colour when you hear the word? Or something else?
There is a whole swirl of things in my head - they have personalities too, and shapes. Same with numbers. It was much more vivid when I was a child, and kind of subconscious - I didn't put it into words. As an adult I learned to kind of ignore it, I guess because I have to focus on all sorts of practical daily living stuff, and also I put my life into words as an adult, and this is something I never put into words. So it is more in the background.
I'd kind of zoned it out - put it in a compartment in my head - but then I worked in a special school where the days were given colours, to help the kids (who had learning disabilities) to associate these colours with the day and the lessons they have on that day. And we had shirts to wear, the colour of the day, and we'd be singing each morning songs about what day it was and the day's colour. And I found myself kind of resisting in my head, thinking, 'No, Monday is not a yellow day! Tuesday is a yellow day! Kind of yellowy green. There is no yellow in Monday.'
It was all kind of in my subconscious at first, and I wasn't fully processing it, just wondering why I was resistant to wear my yellow shirt on Monday, and then one day I thought about it clearly, and realised what was happening. So I then told myself 'These are the school colours. Not my colours.' And then in my head were two compartments - school day colours and my day colours. And school colours were more conscious, in words, and my colours more subconscious, not in words.
When I hear a word, like the word 'Tuesday,' I also see the word, visually, as it spelt, and if I hear a new word, I always ask how to spell it, so I can see it. I think seeing a word is the first thing I do if I hear it, and sometimes I phonetically transcribe in my head too, especially if someone has an unusual accent. I think associations of colour and shape and stuff are more what happens when the concepts of these days are inside my head - not with words. It is very hard to explain, because I don't naturally think in words, so when I use words it is a translation of my inner experience into a different sort of world.
I always find it odd that the reason given for potatoes not counting as one of your 5-a-day is that they are normally the starch part of the meal. I guess that is for people who like to clearly divide their meals into starch, protein and veg, and might get confused where potato fits, but I don't see any reason why something can't double up and take two roles. Apparently sweet potatoes are not used as the starch part of the meal, and therefore count as one of your 5-a-day, but I sometimes have a sweet potato with cheese and salad, so by that logic it would have to count as starch for those meals.
I have red food - red tomatoes and red peppers which I get for 10p when they are reduced because they've reached their use by date. They may be imported, but if they are not bought on that day, they will be chucked out, so might as well buy them, and it saves money to buy them so cheap. I also have many strawberries in my freezer, which I bought when they were in season and reduced to 5p. And raspberries that grew in my garden.
But I agree that if one is eating local food in season, colours will vary according to the time of year, and that is fine. People have lived that way for centuries.
Comparing sweet potatoes to ordinary potatoes, the sweet potatoes have less carbohydrate and more fibre and protein, which I guess is why they count as vegetables - I eat them instead of potatoes a lot.
The colour thing is to try and include a variety of vegetables into diets - we need green leafy vegetables, brassicas and coloured veg for the different nutrients each contains.
The colour thing is to try and include a variety of vegetables into diets
Oh, quite - not meant to be an absolute rule, just makes it easier to pick different types of fruit and veg. And makes it a bit of fun into the bargain, especially for kids.
A red pepper and an avocado for me at lunchtime.
Technically its all been fruit so far. Must try for some real veg at dinner.
Thank you for sharing the fact days have colours for you, BF and fineline. May I ask a question? (tell me to mind my own darn business if I shouldn't) Do you 'see' the colour when you hear the word? Or something else?
Yes - the word brings the colour before my eyes, so to speak. Others will differ, given the amount of neurodiversity there is in the multiverse!
Comparing sweet potatoes to ordinary potatoes, the sweet potatoes have less carbohydrate and more fibre and protein, which I guess is why they count as vegetables - I eat them instead of potatoes a lot.
Yes, that is a reason that would make sense, and the reason I tend to assume, but it is not the reason given by the NHS site:
'When eaten as part of a meal, potatoes are generally used in place of other sources of starch, such as bread, pasta or rice. Because of this, they don't count towards your 5 A Day.
...
Sweet potatoes, parsnips, swedes and turnips do count towards your 5 A Day because they're usually eaten in addition to the starchy food part of the meal.'
I am often eating parsnips, swedes, turnips and sweet potatoes as my starch. I have chicken, parsnip chips, and salad, for instance.
When I hear a word, like the word 'Tuesday,' I also see the word, visually, as it spelt, and if I hear a new word, I always ask how to spell it, so I can see it.
I see words written too - in black print on a white background. I don't think I know anyone else who does, although I haven't asked everyone I know! We have two sets of friends whose surnames are similar - both with a double 'r' in the middle and a double 'l' at the end. Once I was talking to Mr Nen about one couple but named them as the other couple, and when he pointed it out I said, "Oh, yes, sorry - I saw the double letters and read it wrong." He looked at me as though I was mad.
That's interesting, Nenya. I have never asked anyone how they process spoken words, as it never occurred to me. I don't see mine as black print on white background. They are just dangling there, 3D, up and down, with no background other than their surroundings. I'm doing it with Tuesday now, trying to put into words how I see it. The surroundings are yellow and green, patterned, 3D. Which is why Tuesday is yellow and green, I guess. The letters are very thin, and I do see Tuesday as thin. Wednesday is fat. Thursday is sinewy. This is very odd to me because I have never put all this into words before - I am just processing it as I type. I will stop, as it kind of weirds me out to put it into words - it then takes on a different quality and confuses me.
Veggie chilli-of-sorts made in a rush tonight. Red pepper and tomatoes. Orange butternut squash and carrot. Yellow (well white) onion. Green celery. Purple-ish kidney beans.
It was made in compensation for not a great diet recently though.
We’ve just had solar panels and a battery installed, so whilst we don’t have a smart meter we do have All The Pretty Data on an app on our phone. Or as Mr Ferijen said “quick it’s sunny, put the washing machine on”, the washing machine being responsible for the weekend’s peaks. We’ve also inherited a v fancy cooker in this house, with a halogen ring as well as gas rings, so he was using the electric over the weekend as it was “free”.
My dinner was a salad with chicken, tomato (red), carrot (orange), sweetcorn (yellow), lettuce leaves (green), avocado (green), beetroot (purple), shallot (purple/white), and cucumber (green/white). There was no starch, but earlier I had two toasted ciabattas with cheese. And a banana, I think. I will have a pear now, and some cheese,
Yesterday I had a stir fry with all the colours of veg (tomato, red pepper, green pepper, yellow pepper, cavola nero, green beans, red cabbage, mushroom, carrot), and two sauasages and an egg. And for breakfast a banana and peanut butter sandwich. And for snack, black grapes and cheese.
I guess in counting I do have roughly ten a day, but I don't generally count them.
I'm doing the Sl*****g W***d diet, so eating veg regularly. (I've never been a great veg eater) Today, it was banana at breakfast, pear at lunch, corn and mange tout at tea, so 2 lots of yellow, 2 lots of green. I've also found that liquorice ought to be a "speed" food.
Too right - it can speed away from me as fast as it likes! Ugh.
D. was so impressed at me getting up earlier than I needed to and shovelling* so that he could get out to go and play for the funeral (and enlisting the help of Snowblower Superhero) that he suggested we go out for a nice lunch, which included lots of useful veggies. He had a Mexican bean skillet, which included tomatoes, black beans, sweetcorn and cheese, and came with nacho chips a salad (and which he enlisted my help in finishing); I had a smoked salmon fish cake, which also came with a salad (covering green and red). Wine is made of grapes, so a glass counts as one portion, doesn't it ... ?
* If God really loved us, every shovelful of snow you shift would burn a million calories.
* * * * *
We then went to have photographs taken for new Permanent Residence cards; now to fill in the interminable forms (again) and wait for them to be rejected for some spurious reason (again). We love Canada and its people, but its bureaucracy would drive you up the wall.
I like the taste of liquorice root, but am less keen on the taste of black sticky liquorice sweets. I drink quite a lot of liquorice infusions, which I probably shouldn't as my blood pressure tends to be a bit high.
Dinner tonight was a mound of brown rice mixed with onions mushrooms and peas, romanesco cauliflower and kalettes on the side and a couple of sausages. I have no idea if there was enough of any of these veg for 'a serving', but I think that amounted to 9 varieties in the day.
Comments
AG
Maybe it'll be all right for those who are less wimpy about heat than I am.
(Rhetorical question.
Banana, apple, peas, broccoli and mango.
So half way there. Evening meal is a chilli which has onions and pepper in it, then raspberries for pud.
So I’ll have managed eight 🤔
Red fruit for breakfast, yellow banana and orange satsumas at lunchtime. Out for evening meal with friends so hopefully something green for the plate then.
All this talk of coloured food is not very helpful for those of us with synaesthesia, because each day has its own proper colour, and it is not always feasible to arrange a suitable menu.
For instance, Wednesday (for me) is Bright Yellow Day, but I'm not sure I could (or should) subsist entirely on Bananas.....
Friday, OTOH, is Brown Day, so there's always CHOCOLATE. Monday is Green Day, so vegetable such as watercress, perhaps....?
You get the picture....
Monday - Grass Green
Tuesday - Azure Blue (think 'kingfisher')
Wednesday - Bright Yellow (sunshiny, sort of)
Thursday - Dark Red (Burgundy/claret, sort of)
Friday - MILK CHOCOLATE Brown
Saturday - Light Silver-Grey (fishy scales, sort of)
Sunday - Gold (but not the same as Wednesday)
Menu suggestions, anyone?
(There is, I suspect, no Rational Explanation for this whatsoever, but I am proud to be on the autistic spectrum thingy).
That was after 4 hours in the garage rearranging clutter so that my Christmas decorations can live there. It resulted in not much to go to the dump, and a few things to go onto Freecycle.
He has been vegetarian since he was 16 and recently decided to become vegan. On Friday we went to a vegan diner in Manchester for lunch.
It was amazing - the best burger I’ve ever eaten!
V-Rev vegan diner.
I may have mentioned this before, but the partner of my Cousin S makes a really tasty Vegan 'Chocolate Soup'. I think she purveys it to upmarket bistros in Hampstead and the like, so it's not cheap...
It is quite eye-watering.....it contains chillis....
Vegan 'CHEESE' can take the skin off the roof of your mouth, BTW.
BF, I think regular, non-vegan cheese can do that too. I experience it whenever I eat pizza. I thought it must be the tomato though, as I don't get it from cheese on toast, but people say it's the cheese.
People are so used to eating them from childhood that they take them for granted. They can be frozen and still taste good, tinned are still good, eaten in the pods, or mushy, or in a stew. Any risotto without peas can be improved by adding peas. You can ear the twirly clingy bits in a mixed salad and if you she'll your own there's pea pod wine. Such a versatile and under appreciated little vegetable.
Eat more peas. They are green. Mostly.
Lunch was a bean and vegetable stew. It had leeks, onions and tomatoes in it. I have no idea how one works out the 80g portions when the veg are all mixed together like that.
Also lemon & parsley cous cous, but the amount of fruit. veg in that is negligible. Banana and custard afterwards, to make up for the missing banana at breakfast.
We had bacon sandwiches for tea - and I had brown sauce, so can't even claim the tomato element of ketchup.
Followed by a nectarine - red skin, yellow flesh - which does that count as?
If you read the veggie stew ready meals with several vegetables included they often count as two or three portions, depending on ingredients.
Mondays are easy - any kind of green veggies, grapes, green apples ...
How about blueberries for Tuesday? (I'm assuming kingfishers aren't actually edible ...).
Wednesday -sweetcorn
Thursday and Friday sorted - WINE and CHOCOLATE
Not sure about the light silver grey - sardines? Or substitute white - rice, pearl barley
Sunday - toffee, caramel, Werther's Originals?
To be honest, I'm not convinced by the idea of 10 portions of fruit/veggies a day - you'd be doing nothing but eat!
ETA: @balaam - right with you about peas!
* * * * *
I had thought there might have been soured cream available with the chilli, but there wasn't. I didn't actually have any of ours, as we queued up at one table, and it was on the other, but the one I had was very nice. It had tomatoes and dark kidney beans, so that's red and purple sorted. This evening I made a tomato and avocado salad, covering red and green.
As we left early* I don't know whether ours was finished or not. They run a drop-in centre at the hall on Mondays, so they might well use left-overs for lunch tomorrow.
We're apparently in for another foot or so of snow (PLEASE NO MORE!!!); the first little flakes were starting just as we got home. This could be a total pain in the arse tomorrow, as D. has a funeral to play for in the morning, by which time we could be well snowed-in.
* I'm a Very Bad Piglet - D. said after we'd finished lunch that he wanted to go up to his office and check his e-mail, and suggested we skip the AGM. I didn't need a second bidding ...
Home made pea soup is on the menu for today at Boogieville
Thank you for sharing the fact days have colours for you, BF and fineline. May I ask a question? (tell me to mind my own darn business if I shouldn't) Do you 'see' the colour when you hear the word? Or something else?
On smart metres, I was at a lecture on privacy and ethics re big data on Friday and the speaker said smart meters report back all manner of data! I had not considered it.
Potatoes, yams, cassava and plantain are vegetables, but don't count towards your 5 A Day. This is because they mainly contribute starch to your diet.
Other root vegetables, such as sweet potatoes, parsnips, swedes and turnips, are usually eaten as a vegetable alongside the main starchy food in a meal. These count towards your fruit and veg portions.
Proper breakfast this morning, so yellow (banana) and purple (grapes) covered.
So, for example, I’m struggling to think of anything red that’s in season at the minute. This is the moment for root vegetables and brassicas. Other pretty colours come in far later in the year. I suppose apples could conceivably be red, but it's a bit of a push.
There is a whole swirl of things in my head - they have personalities too, and shapes. Same with numbers. It was much more vivid when I was a child, and kind of subconscious - I didn't put it into words. As an adult I learned to kind of ignore it, I guess because I have to focus on all sorts of practical daily living stuff, and also I put my life into words as an adult, and this is something I never put into words. So it is more in the background.
I'd kind of zoned it out - put it in a compartment in my head - but then I worked in a special school where the days were given colours, to help the kids (who had learning disabilities) to associate these colours with the day and the lessons they have on that day. And we had shirts to wear, the colour of the day, and we'd be singing each morning songs about what day it was and the day's colour. And I found myself kind of resisting in my head, thinking, 'No, Monday is not a yellow day! Tuesday is a yellow day! Kind of yellowy green. There is no yellow in Monday.'
It was all kind of in my subconscious at first, and I wasn't fully processing it, just wondering why I was resistant to wear my yellow shirt on Monday, and then one day I thought about it clearly, and realised what was happening. So I then told myself 'These are the school colours. Not my colours.' And then in my head were two compartments - school day colours and my day colours. And school colours were more conscious, in words, and my colours more subconscious, not in words.
When I hear a word, like the word 'Tuesday,' I also see the word, visually, as it spelt, and if I hear a new word, I always ask how to spell it, so I can see it. I think seeing a word is the first thing I do if I hear it, and sometimes I phonetically transcribe in my head too, especially if someone has an unusual accent. I think associations of colour and shape and stuff are more what happens when the concepts of these days are inside my head - not with words. It is very hard to explain, because I don't naturally think in words, so when I use words it is a translation of my inner experience into a different sort of world.
But I agree that if one is eating local food in season, colours will vary according to the time of year, and that is fine. People have lived that way for centuries.
The colour thing is to try and include a variety of vegetables into diets - we need green leafy vegetables, brassicas and coloured veg for the different nutrients each contains.
A red pepper and an avocado for me at lunchtime.
Technically its all been fruit so far. Must try for some real veg at dinner.
Yes - the word brings the colour before my eyes, so to speak. Others will differ, given the amount of neurodiversity there is in the multiverse!
Yes, that is a reason that would make sense, and the reason I tend to assume, but it is not the reason given by the NHS site:
'When eaten as part of a meal, potatoes are generally used in place of other sources of starch, such as bread, pasta or rice. Because of this, they don't count towards your 5 A Day.
...
Sweet potatoes, parsnips, swedes and turnips do count towards your 5 A Day because they're usually eaten in addition to the starchy food part of the meal.'
I am often eating parsnips, swedes, turnips and sweet potatoes as my starch. I have chicken, parsnip chips, and salad, for instance.
Thank you fineline and Bishop's Finger -- much appreciated. The human race continues to amaze me -- we can be so different. Thank you again.
I see words written too - in black print on a white background. I don't think I know anyone else who does, although I haven't asked everyone I know! We have two sets of friends whose surnames are similar - both with a double 'r' in the middle and a double 'l' at the end. Once I was talking to Mr Nen about one couple but named them as the other couple, and when he pointed it out I said, "Oh, yes, sorry - I saw the double letters and read it wrong." He looked at me as though I was mad.
It was made in compensation for not a great diet recently though.
We’ve just had solar panels and a battery installed, so whilst we don’t have a smart meter we do have All The Pretty Data on an app on our phone. Or as Mr Ferijen said “quick it’s sunny, put the washing machine on”, the washing machine being responsible for the weekend’s peaks. We’ve also inherited a v fancy cooker in this house, with a halogen ring as well as gas rings, so he was using the electric over the weekend as it was “free”.
Yesterday I had a stir fry with all the colours of veg (tomato, red pepper, green pepper, yellow pepper, cavola nero, green beans, red cabbage, mushroom, carrot), and two sauasages and an egg. And for breakfast a banana and peanut butter sandwich. And for snack, black grapes and cheese.
I guess in counting I do have roughly ten a day, but I don't generally count them.
D. was so impressed at me getting up earlier than I needed to and shovelling* so that he could get out to go and play for the funeral (and enlisting the help of Snowblower Superhero) that he suggested we go out for a nice lunch, which included lots of useful veggies. He had a Mexican bean skillet, which included tomatoes, black beans, sweetcorn and cheese, and came with nacho chips a salad (and which he enlisted my help in finishing); I had a smoked salmon fish cake, which also came with a salad (covering green and red). Wine is made of grapes, so a glass counts as one portion, doesn't it ... ?
* If God really loved us, every shovelful of snow you shift would burn a million calories.
* * * * *
We then went to have photographs taken for new Permanent Residence cards; now to fill in the interminable forms (again) and wait for them to be rejected for some spurious reason (again). We love Canada and its people, but its bureaucracy would drive you up the wall.
Dinner tonight was a mound of brown rice mixed with onions mushrooms and peas, romanesco cauliflower and kalettes on the side and a couple of sausages. I have no idea if there was enough of any of these veg for 'a serving', but I think that amounted to 9 varieties in the day.