Epi-Cure

My relationship with food is an odd one. I love food and eating and cooking. Unprocessed and organic products are important to me. But I insist on a thinish body so I have to live some of my food lifes and loves vicariously through others. Or pretend. Or fantasise about how much fun I will have when I am pregnant some day. Or have a wealthy husband and I am not working, just eating and working-out and providing heirs here and there. We have gorgeous food stores here in London, like Ottolenghi and my local butcher HG Walters. Yet it is the same for me as if I go to a Christian Louboutin store or a strip club in Marylebone (been there, done that): all look and no touch.

With some beach trips and short skirt season on the way, I have entered the Diet Zone. Not a silly crash thing, nor am I counting calories. I am merely cutting out dairy and wheat for 2 weeks. I usually eat those on a minimal basis, but now it is zero. Thus I crave, dream and masturbate to the concept of pizza. I have given myself until next Friday, when I go to Portsmouth to see M, to stick to this way of eating. Combined with the nightly up and down stairs that is my workout regime dictated my my flat move over the next week, I should melt away those 5 lbs.

This weekend, knowing I was about to make many foods redundant, I expressed my love by actually eating some high calorie things. Joy!
M came in town from Portsmouth and I made us dinner. To start we had a salad of lettuce, pear, toasted walnuts with a sherry vinegar dressing. But he didn't eat the walnuts because he thinks he is slightly allergic to nuts. Which is why he did not disclose that when I asked "what is there you don't/can't eat" and he only said no fish. Sigh. Men. Instructions? Follow? Then organic beef fillet steaks on parmesan polenta, courgettes and haricot verts sautéed with olive oil, chilli and dwarf sweet onion, and a potato gratin. For pud we had chocolate/ginger ice cream on pavlova, topped with chocolate sauce. It all turned out really well. For my peace of mind, the menu had dairy, but it was gluten free.
Top all that off with too much obligatory drinking as one is wont to do with a visitor from out of town.
The next morning we went to Harlem in Notting Hill, which has an American brunch menu. I talked myself out of the pancakes, and we both had omelettes, sausages and corn fritters. I have yet to have a good omelette in the UK. It was more like a frittata. If I was French, it would have horrified me. But the corn fritters were so yummy – fried bits of cheesy corn batter, not too course or fine, and a very mild cakey sweetness. With a bloody mary to finish that off, I made the calorie faerie very happy. I needed my coffee fix so at Starbucks on the way to the museum I had a skinny mocha. I never have mochas – the sugar, the calories! But, i thought, we are so far down the path today, just pile it on the bandwagon. As my friend Kirk in the US says, if it is all at once, your body rejects most of it anyway instead of adding to the collection.

I did not have to eat again until dinner that Saturday evening when I was on another date, this night with P, the Swiss investment banker, which was at a great gastropub in Primrose Hill called the Engineer. A regular of the Primrose Hill set. I did spy any of the Set. There were some clever looking, quirkily artsy patrons there. One has to wonder if they are novelists, musicians, or film directors. They had that look which says I don't have to be beautiful to be cool and I am at such a level that you know I am Somebody but you don't know Who. Very typical London. Last summer I had been to the place for brunch but was not impressed. However, my dinner there was exceptional. I started with carrot lentil soup that had a varied texture with just the right amount of mild curry flavour with overtones of coriander and cumin. Not too much, nor was I eating something that was supposed to be a smoothie drink. My seabass for once was not overcooked, and on a pile of barely mashed jersey potatoes, devoid of unnecessary butters and creams, and drizzled with a recently made parsley pesto. I only needed a touch of fresh ground pepper for seasoning.
The overall theme of the food was spring rustic, nothing too formal and tasted as if just from the Garden. The food wasn't the only rustic item. I was aware of my own simpleness in the company of P because of his language proficiency. He can speak four. P doesn't intimidate me, but I do feel like I have to work on dusting the I am an American and thus poorly educated especially linguistically chip off my shoulder. And then I have to work to make sure that this effort doesn’t show. Don't mind me, just trying not to sound like a Philistine who can only speak English unless she is drunk (when she will launch sporadically into Russian or Spanish or Spussian). He does not make me feel stupid, but just question what I can bring to the table other than ignorance in languages. I believe I have identified an insecurity spot.

I didn't eat much for the rest of the weekend. I seared some tuna steaks, threw some lettuce in a bowl, and had my obligatory porridge. I had one more foray into the naughty with a box of popcorn at the movies on Monday. Now, I am planning my downfall pizza in a few weeks. Do I make it or buy it? How many cheeses? Veg or add meat? Tomato or white sauce…

Now home to move some boxes and work off that Pavlova. Which is Russian by the way.