Freelance writer Square Sparrow lives on a rambling smallholding in rural Scotland with her husband (HunterGatherer) and, now and then, their three offspring. Other smallholding incumbents include one overly indulged feline called FatCat, a similarly rotund Highland pony called FatHorse, plus a flock of rather attractive Shetland sheep – known affectionately as the Chocolate Sheep because of their rich assortment of wool colours (and because of Square Sparrow’s passion for chocolate).
Thursday, 11 April 2013
How much chocolate indulgence can a girl survive...?
If there are any chocoholics like me out there who would like a blow-by-blow account of my experiences at the Easter Monday Chocolate Workshop mentioned in my recent blogpost, you'll find the report (complete with photos) here on the Crail Food Festival website:
http://crailfoodfest.co.uk/2013/04/11/ive-bean-to-paradise-at-pittenweem-church-hall/
Monday, 8 April 2013
From Irn-Bru ice cream to Don Giovanni
The moment
of truth arrived this weekend. On Sunday evening it struck me that was four months to the day
until I turn 50, and it has to be said that the “get fit for 50” campaign has
been somewhat derailed. In my defence, my recent rampant over-indulgence has been due to a combination
of circumstances: DD1 (aka Delia) being home from Paris for a week; significant
quantities of comfort food being consumed to combat snow-induced hunger; a
few lunches with friends (rude not to!) plus a 21st party to attend...Oooh, and
let’s not forget my blogging mission for Crail Food Festival which took me, on
Easter Monday, to a chocolate workshop courtesy of The Pittenweem ChocolateCompany (merci mille fois, Sophie).
Let battle commence! |
Then there
was last weekend, most of which I spent at The Peak Sports Village in Stirling.
‘But surely spending hours at a sports venue could only be beneficial to your
diet,’ I hear you cry. Well, it certainly would have been if I’d actually been doing any
sport. But, in fact, it was Son+Heir who was on “active duty” at Forthbank with
Scotland U18 hockey team who were playing two international matches vs their
Welsh counterparts. While the lads were
training, Yours Truly spent several hours in the excellent cafe at The Peak,
imbibing hot chocolate and downing bacon rolls – rounded off with a (small) tub
of Irn-Bru ice cream. Yes, such a
delicacy does exist, and very tasty it was too.
Irn-Bru ice cream - not as 'orange' as the real thing |
And it didn’t
stop there, because on Sunday SuperGran and I set off through to Auld Reekie to
watch/listen to DD2 tooting her flute at Edinburgh Studio Opera's concert of
Mozart arias. To refuel the fatigued flautist
post-concert, we headed pronto for Pizza Express, where a generously
proportioned caramelised onion and goat’s cheese Padana pizza leapt entirely unbidden on
to my plate!
Mozart-inspired melody-making |
Suffice to
say that reading the scales on Sunday night was about as cheering as reading
Les Miserables while suffering simultaneously from raging toothache and an ingrown toenail. Action
was (is!) most certainly called for. So I immediately
announced to HunterGatherer my intention to try the 5:2 diet (as featured in a
documentary by Dr Michael Moseley – if any of you folks have tried it, do leave a comment, as I'd be really interested to hear your experiences). Of course, I should have known better than to
expect any helpful encouragement. HG’s grinning – and rather uncharitable, I
felt – response to my triumphant declaration of dietary intent was: “Hmm, 5:2 diet. Does that
mean five bars of chocolate to every two apples?” Ah, how well he knows me...
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