I worked from home today which makes it so much easier to eat nourishing food to help along my diet.  I was very disappointed with my breakfast though.  Seduced by the lovely packaging and the fact it was organic, I bought Mornflake’s oats to make porridge with.

I made them with water to save on some calories and added salt, the Scottish way of eating porridge.  What disgusting oats!  They turned to mush so quickly it was like eating baby food.  The Macadamia nut butter was lovely but the porridge was the wrong consistency so little pleasure was to be had from that.

364 calories I love coffee 🙂

One chef whose recipes I like is Nigel Slater.  I have recently seen some of his ‘Simple Cooking’ series which I enjoyed and one recipe which stood out for me is a winter salad made with Kohlrabi and Grapefruit, topped with a ‘slaw made from celeriac and beetroot.  Nigel Slater made a yogurt based dressing but as I am dairy free at the moment, I made an olive oil based  dressing instead.  This salad was fantastic.

Kohlrabi and Grapefruit Salad

Ingredients (serves 2)

• 1 Kohlrabi
• 1 Pink Grapefruit
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tbsp capers, crushed lightly
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 beetroot
• Half a celeriac
• 4 spring onions
• Parsley
• 2 tbsps olive oil
  1/2 a raw garlic clove, minced
  2 tbsp white wine vinegar
  Salt to taste

Method

• Peel the grapefruit and kohlrabi
• Slice the kohlrabi as thin as you can and arrange on a plate
• Slice the grapefruit in thin slices and lay on top of the kohlrabi

• Mix the lemon juice, capers and olive oil and pour over the kohlrabi and grapefruit

• Peel the celeriac and beetroot and trim the spring onions

• Grate the celeriac and beetroot and chop the spring onions finely

• Mix together the white wine vinegar, garlic and olive oil and season to taste and garnish with fresh parsley.

This salad was really good.  It was crunchy, crisp and so fresh.  The kohlrabi is slightly peppery, the grapefruit is sharp, the beetroot and celeriac were sweet.  As a combination it totally rocked.

I needed to add some protein to this mountain of vegetables and I used one of the tins of fish my sister Lucy gave me for Christmas.   This is a tin of small smoked sardines.  Probably the very best tinned fish I have ever had.  The smoked flavour was extremely mild and the fish were soft with no bones that were detectable.  The soft mildly smoked fish were a good contrast to the lively flavours and crunch of the vegetables.  If I ran a restaurant, I would serve this and be proud of it.  It was high in calories even though it tasted as if it shouldn’t be.  Mainly due to the olive oil and fish but it was so yummy it was every single one of those calories and they were all healthy calories.

580 calories. Supper was a very simple minced beef and pea curry, called Kheema Mater.  It was pleasant enough but not worth sharing the recipe.  I had a modest portion with no accompaniments.

337 calories.No exercise today.  I should have gone for a walk but every time I though about it, it rained.  I should have gone anyway but I didn’t so my total calories today were 1,295 which is slightly over target.  I was under target yesterday so I think that balances out.