Day 18

The 7:54 Moment: Domestic Bliss, Dietary Dilemmas and Brain Spasms.

Today Matthew, my husband writes on the challenge from his perspective.


As the male compatriot on this dietary expedition I’ve generally been an enthusiastic co-adventurer with Elizabeth. However, in a tragic display of poor timing, I’ve recently discovered after a spate of cooking with very mixed results, that in true bloke fashion the epicentre of my culinary abilities lays with the frying pan. If I can fry it, I can cook it. This ability includes all your basic proteins from beef to lamb, chicken, sausages, bacon and eggs.
On the food challenge I’ve also broadened it to include fried, er, I mean ‘sautéed’ tomatoes, onions, capsicum, zucchini and leeks. Add to this the occasional veggie stir fry or fried rice and I think I cover most of the basics a man would want or need to eat. However, I did find myself in a spot of bother Sunday morning when it can to making a ‘nice’ breakfast.


Setting the scene, our eldest was sleeping over with friends, our youngest was happily occupied with her bottle, and we were planning a relaxed Sunday morning breakfast before heading to the local beachside park for a pre-school picnic. Into this scene I waded, frying pan in hand, to make a ‘nice’ breakfast while Elizabeth got ready.


Knowing full well the boundaries set by the 30-day challenge I began:


Me (to self):     Fresh pear and pineapple juice – check! Coffee – check! Now for the food. 
                       
                        (Long pause)


Me (to self):     Umm

(Another long pause)

Me (to self):     Ok so I can do eggs, scrambled or poached and I’ll have them with…. Um….nothing! What do you have your eggs with if you can’t have bacon, or sausages, or even toast!

This outcome was clearly unacceptable to me so I proceeded to pull several packs of bacon from the

freezer in clear contravention of the 30 day challenger’s cooking code. Call it a brain spasm, but I had

no idea how to proceed. Undetered by this  unforgivable breach of the code and re-assured by the

comforting sizzle of my frying pan I finished the bacon and eggs and called the family to the table.

That’s where it went strangely pear shaped.

She:                 Why did you make me this!?!?

Me:                  I was making a nice Sunday breakfast. That’s what we said didn’t we?

She:                 What about the challenge? You know we aren’t eating this?

Me:                  Well I couldn’t very well give you fruit again now could I? That’s so ‘everyday’.

She:                 I like fruit. If you want it to be nice, put it in a nice bowl, light a candle, do something like that!

Me (with a look of utter incomprehension):

                       

                        Nice bowl?!?

For the sake of brevity we’ll now skip the rest of the scene to get to the key points:

1. If you are changing up your menu, you need to do some homework on how to cover both everyday meals and also special occasions. Otherwise you’ll fall back into old habits.
2. Agree with the other people going on the journey of diet change with you what their expectations and ideals are. It may be that a nice bowl is all that is required to mix it up, rather than cooking a three course off menu meal of wonder that is just going to miss the mark and leave everyone with physical and relational indigestion.
3. If you have a dietary or relational blowout on the journey, talk it out, plan for the future and get back in the saddle.

Til next time, (raising my carrot stick skyward)

Cheers! Matthew

Breakfast: Weird poached egg sitting all alone on the plate, coffee and fresh juice.

Lunch: Wraps.

Afternoon Tea: Coffee.

Dinner: Pumpkin soup with left over homemade 'wrap' chips.