After 12 days in Spain immediately followed by a weekend in London I could so easily have just popped to the local Waitrose or Tesco as we had nothing in the house to eat. However, I controlled that urge and we visited our local butchers Rob Meehan (who luckily also sells a bit of veg), popped in the Nisa store next door for milk and cheese for dinner we had tasty chicken, cauliflower cheese and sautéed leeks. I felt so much better for eating some home cooked food, and once I picked up my veg box on Tuesday afternoon we had a nicely stocked fridge and a few choices for dinner for the rest of the week.
Whilst we were away we ate a really mixed up diet, some days it seemed really healthy, some days it felt like all we had eaten was tapas, and other days really unhealthy food, combined with far too much to drink. I am always impressed by the quality of the food in Spain, and love to enjoy leisurely lunches, with even more wine and beer! The aforementioned weekend away in London compounded our alcohol intake and debatable food choices so this week we needed a bit of a rebalance. We’ve made a positive effort to eat healthy and drink a bit less.
The Committed Carnivore has also been a bit under the weather this week (possibly due to a few weeks of excess) so I’ve been concentrating on filling him up with lots of greens and healthy choices, including braising steak and liver for tea on Tuesday, then leftovers for lunch on Thursday and Friday. And a big juicy fillet steak as a treat on Saturday.
Unfortunately, my favourite farm shop, Packington, has now closed and I had been struggling to find a good alternative. Today my prayers were answered as Bradbury’s Farm Shop opened at Curborough – yay!
Best things about these 3 weeks
- Sunshine food in Spain
- Great new farm shop
- Lots of healthy food this week
Biggest Challenges
- Finding all the ingredients for recipes
- Too much wine on holiday
I have decided that I will start to buy some shopping in the local supermarkets again, however the bulk of my food will continue to be bought from the farm shops, markets and local independents. I need to start recipe testing in earnest for my Nutrition business as I have been neglecting that a bit over the last few months, and unfortunately, there are times when I simply cannot get all the ingredients I need from the farm shops.
I will continue to blog and let you know how I’m getting on, and this week I did take a tiny trip to Waitrose to buy some potatoes for mashing (you can’t have liver without mash apparently) as my veg box from Woodhouse Farm still has new potatoes, but I resisted wandering around and filling my trolley and only came out with potatoes (a first for me!)