An omnivore & proud of it

I'm sitting down to recover. I've just been preparing dinner. I was late up so the heat of the day had already begun. Today's meal is going to be well seasoned from the drips of sweat rolling down my face.

Yesterday we didn't go to see MK in the end. Helen rang to say the heat was too much for him. He was on permanent oxygen & she was fearing any minute she might be ringing the ambulance to come & take him back into hospital, just unable to breathe.

So we didn't get to the carvery for our meal either. Instead we had a bean & tuna salad. As a result today, another sizzling day, we fancy something other than salad. I've just made some crab soup with plenty of veg in it to be warmed up this evening. We'll then have a jacket potato stuffed probably with prawns in a rose Marie sauce. Nothing else.

Earlier in the week we watched "World's Best Diet" on ITV. Various diets were tried, Mediterranean ie Italian, Japanese, Indian, British & West coast American. The British was little more than learning about portion control & cutting out snacks. I sympathised with the person put on a Japanese diet. I'm not sure I could cope with that much raw fish. Cooked no difficulty, but raw no. Equally much as I love a good curry, I wouldn't want one every day. The American one was low carb with the result that person ended up permanently hungry, as well as being expected to do an enormous amount of exercise. Not for me. I was quite relieved the experts reckon that diet wasn't even healthy. I was not surprised to discover the Med diet was regarded as the best. Just the sight of that fresh fish, veg & ripe fruit set my gastric juices running.

But ultimately I concluded I'm an omnivore. I like a bit of all cuisines. I enjoy the variety. I can see the Med diet does tend to mean smaller portions of meat, plenty of veg & salads, & olive oil. But I also have to admit, come the cold of winter I feel the need for more stodge to help me keep warm. Good quality salad ingredients are appealing but they're hard to find in this country, & most of the time they are not satisfying in the cold of the British climate. Whenever we go on holiday in the Med area, especially if we're self-catering, we do eat far more salads. We find we want something lighter to eat in the heat. And sure enough, right now, in this country a salad is just the thing. I find my appetite is reducing. I want something lighter to eat & I certainly don't want to spend much time cooking in an already hot kitchen.

The other thing I couldn't help noticing is that in the healthier diets, the food tended to be eaten as a family. Time was taken both preparing & eating it. Even the utensils used to eat with - fingers (Indian), chopsticks (Japanese) - are conducive to slow eating. When I eat slowly, I do tend to eat less. I can't help wondering if the real reason why some of these cuisines are healthier doesn't come down to the fact that less is eaten, yet people remain satisfied.

Meanwhile I shall continue to be an omnivore, eating plenty of fish & veg, as we do now. I shall continue to try foods from all the world & relish the sheer variety of tastes & textures. Bon appetit to all.