Let me eat cake

I know, I know, the phrase has all kinds of political connotations and is a mis-translation anyway but frankly French cake is so amazing that I believe the revolting peasants would have definitely chosen to eat it instead of bread if they could.

I've been systematically trying each type of patisserie deliciousness and so far my favourite has to be the macaron - I've only had pistachio flavour but I'm going to try coffee next.

Today, however, I had this:

It was quite nice, but a bit rich and gooey for me (I'm recovering from stomach flu, which has rather put the kibosh on the whole eating thing). It might have been nicer if I had eaten it yesterday when I bought it, but that is when I started feeling really ill.

Thursday seems like my day for buying lunch at the local bakery so expect lots of gorgeous cakes and a regular repeat of my favourite sandwich.

Bit of a hiatus

Well, it has been a while since I updated in here! That's because all kinds of things have been happening. I don't think I have mentioned it before but over the summer I got pretty sick with viral tonsilitis, which knocked me out for a week and would have lasted longer if I hadn't just had to suck it up and get on with things (I had flights booked to go to Amsterdam for a long weekend and then was straight into rehearsals and performances for two shows for the rest of the summer).

When I got back to uni in October I could tell something wasn't right because I kept falling asleep all the time; I would get up at eight after a fairly good night's sleep, go to a lecture or two, and be asleep again by ten. I think I spent a good two thirds of my time asleep and consequently I didn't manage to get any work done. It was all I could do to feed myself and wash every so often.

So in the end I gave up and withdrew from my course for the rest of the year, and headed home where lunch is much less interesting and usually just soup (either in a cup or homemade in a bowl) and some bread or a sandwich. Most days I slept until noon anyway so I often missed lunch and just had breakfast and an early dinner before sleeping again.

Jump to December and I was a lot better and I went off for a couple of weeks at Christmas. In Norway I discovered the joy of crispbread with mustard and slices of cheese! I will take a photo when I next have it, it's sheer heaven.

Now it's mid-January and I'm in Paris, having taken a job here. I'm living in at a family's house and surrounded by wonderful food so I'll make a real effort to take some photos and show you! France has a genius for cakes and bread.

So there we go, that's what's been happening lately.

The thing that inspired me to head back over here and update for once was thinking about breakfast. Since I got here I've been eating Special K for breakfast, which is flakes of wheat and corn. I normally eat at about 7.30am and that keeps me going until midday, possibly with a slice of crispbread or a yoghurt mid-morning. But one morning I decided to have a sugary kind of cereal marketed for children, Frosties, which I often had when I was at uni. By nine I was hungry; by eleven I was so hungry I had to eat lunch way early. It was interesting, particularly since in the past I've often been hungry mid-morning and compensated by snacking on unhealthy or stodgy foods. Now I'll just try to have a more solid breakfast and be more aware of what I eat.

I've also not had any kind of problems with stomach ache since I got here. I've been trying to keep track of what makes me feel ill and I think it's excessive sugar - I munched my way through an entire tub of mini chocolate rolls over two days and felt appalling. It's always been things like ice cream and chocolate which have been the triggers so I've been assuming it was lactose but maybe after all it's the sugar content. I don't know if there is an allergy for that.

Anyway, this has turned into rather an essay and unfortunately I haven't got any pictures to brighten things up. Tomorrow I'm going for lunch with a friend somewhere in the north of the city so I might sneak a photo if the waiter isn't looking.

Bought lunch

No pics today, I was eating on the move, but I have a point and a message and stuff.

I was in a hurry today so I bought myself lunch (drink, sandwich, dessert and then a chocolate lollipop I couldn't resist). It came to more than a third of what I spent on the entire week's groceries in the supermarket.

Making lunch is so much cheaper.

Quesadillas, sort of

I had been meaning to have this lunch for a while and had bought a pack of tex mex dips, but then we had them for lunch at church on Sunday, so I put it off for a few days. Anyway, my interpretation of quesadillas!

It's a rather dull photo but it contains red kidney beans, guacamole, sour cream and chive, salsa, grated cheese, halved cherry tomatoes and mushrooms. I don't think they could really be called quesadillas as they're just mildly warmed and the fillings are all cold but still, nom nom. I made three but had eaten two before I took the photo - this one is now in a box in the fridge to be tomorrow's lunch.

I also made dinner for tonight! I'm off to the library to write an essay, then I have a tutorial, and then about half an hour later I have to head out for a play rehearsal, so I saved some time by making two meals at once. Check out the cute lunch boxes!

The larger two contain pasta salad, and yoghurt (obviously one in each box, not mixed together). The smaller two are currently empty but I think they'll be great for sliced fruit, or dip, or many other things. I got some derision when I bought them and showed them to friends but they're so cute and I quite often have to pack food up to take out with me.

Mushroom Korma

Mmmmmm this was good. I cooked it last night and kept the left-overs to reheat today for lunch. Unfortunately I forgot to take photos yesterday when it was looking lovely on a plate, and today I took the tub over to a friend's kitchen and ate it without thinking so no pictures.

I was pretty proud; I have never been very good at cooking for flavour - I would just heat a food item up to a safe temperature and combine it with vaguely complementary food items and eat them. Now I'm considering what flavours go well together and adding spices and stuff and it's great!

Tomorrow's lunch will hopefully be quaesadillas, or at least wraps, as I've bought Tex Mex dip and carrots and tomatoes and still have some mushrooms left over. Just need to buy the wraps...

Bentolicious

Although I haven't been blogging about my own lunches lately, I have been reading a lot about other people's! I love the idea of bentos for children's lunches and I'm really keen to do something similar for myself, although since I spend most of the day in my room and rarely have to take a packed lunch anywhere, I probably don't need to invest in a huge selection of different boxes and dividers (but boy do I want to!).

That said, I did just order a pair of egg moulds so that I can shape boiled eggs into cute shapes before eating them. I just couldn't resist!

Today's lunch is a back-to-basics, lots of nutrition type lunch to get myself going again. Peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches in delicious seeded bread, a small amount of side salad (it's going off, not a lot of it is edible any more) and some cherry tomatoes. There's also a boiled egg, unfortuately just egg-shaped as the moulds won't arrive for 12-24 working days. I think they're being delivered from Japan by carrier pigeon relay.

As you can see, the salad looks rather sad - I discovered my fridge was too cold so in addition to being out of date it was also frozen. I picked out the least miserable leaves and had to throw the rest away.

The amount of food waste I produce horrifies me, and I do my best to use up left-overs and only buy what I know I'll eat. You can probably see that the sandwiches are missing the bottom crust, because there was a bit of mould on it and I felt it was better to cut it off and not waste half a loaf than to throw the whole lot out. I've transferred it into a box in the hopes that it will be more air-tight and less liable to go mouldy than the bag. A good half of the loaves I buy end up going mouldy before I finish them, because the supermarket (the only supermarket in the town centre) doesn't sell half loaves. In a student-heavy town, it amazes me that there is one small supermarket, one of the corner-shop types rather than a full-sized one, and that it caters for families more than individuals despite the fact that a good 60% of the town's population are students. Grrr!

I'll come down from my hobby horse to note the juice in the bottle - I managed to break another glass a few days ago, so I'm now on the look-out for some more sturdy tumblers.

Lunch will soon be back on the menu!

So the reason I started this blog was in a desperate attempt to give myself another motivation to eat lunch - hunger and health wasn't managing it alone.

Unfortunately I have been busy, even busier than usual, busier than ever before, for the last two weeks and I haven't had time to eat lunch. I haven't really had time to sleep - I think the most I've got is six hours and I normally can't function without nine. So that hasn't been great.

However, yesterday a marathon of work paused briefly and I seized the opportunity to clean my room - I can see my carpet again! And today I got back from lectures to a disgusting, vomit-type smell, so I abandoned the reading I'd been planning on doing and washed up dishes. For an hour. Considering that most of my crockery is currently being used as props for a play (don't ask), that is a long time to be washing up. But now everything is clean and back in the cupboards, so for my lunch I had...

a Cup-a-Soup. Because I haven't had time to shop for any food.

I'll get there eventually!