Toast! Toast! I miss you the most!

Two loaves of bread, cooling on a rack a few minutes ago

I've lived without pasta
I could've done without rice
(Though I've risked a few grains
And they've been very nice)
And I haven't craved muesli
As much as I feared,
It being my favourite
breakfast for years
The glamour of cous cous
Had started to fade
Of porridge I've never been
Keen anyway
Potatoes? Abandoned!
Without being missed!
Though in winter, one baked
Will be hard to resist

The niggle, the tickle,
The craving I feel
Is for crunch with my breakfast,
Or with any meal
The butter, the honey,
The humble poached egg
All yearn for the touch
Of a slice of grilled bread
Toast! Toast!
I miss you the most!
At midnight the toaster
Goes pop with your ghost
As that wraith roams the house
And I dance to its drums
And follow the seductive
Trails of crumbs
I feel that I might
Nay, I know that I must
Bite lovingly into
Your o'arching crust
My cravings needs quenching
My needs must be met

I'll just go and check
If my loaf is done yet

So anyway, I decided it was time to try adding bread back into the mix and baked a couple of loaves today. No big deal, just a cool-headed, scientific decision. I can't report my findings yet as the experiment has only just come out of the oven but as soon as the loaves are at eating temperature, I'm in there!

Avocado Breakfast Recipie

Ingredients: avocado, handful of seeds, knob of butter, 1 or 2 Tsp lemon or lime juice

Slice the avocado in half and take out the stone

Tip the lemon or lime juice over the cut surfaces of the avocado, and into the hole left by the stone

Melt the butter in a small pan and fry the seeds for between one and two minutes. Seeds burn easily, so as soon as they look browned, remove from the heat and scoop onto the avocados

The seeds will sizzle in the juice, which is very exciting for breakfast time, and also stops them from getting burnt by their own left-over heat.

In the photo here I have used sunflower and pumpkin seeds. I sometimes use a seed mix from Lidl, which contains these and pine nuts. There is parsley in the photo which I am no longer using as ours is finished! I used to score the avocado to let the juice sink in, then I realised that leaving the avocado uncut was quicker and I got a bigger sizzle! 

For me, one half of the avocado is usually enough. I seal the other half with juice and put it in the fridge to use next morning.

Coming out of the fog to round up my week

Two weeks since I resolved to change my diet in order to be able to quit my stomach acid-reducing PPI drug, I still can't quite believe the success I've had. I've also really enjoyed all the new dishes I've been sampling, I certainly never thought that a reflux friendly diet would be any fun. Whenever I have read about beating reflux through lifestyle changes before, it has always been rich food, alcohol and smoking that have been the suggested triggers to avoid. The message that comes across is; 'you can either take the drugs or resign yourself to hermit's diet.' I'm almost surprised that 'stimulating conversation' hasn't been added to the list. But here I am, doing very well just by cutting down on carbohydrates.

My favourites this week have been Celeriac Mash, which I've made twice and both times eaten before I thought to take a photo, and Thai Fish Soup, which is an old favourite actually improved by the removal of noodles and the addition of broccoli and more fish!
I've also indulged my love of fresh Tuna with Tuna and Avocado salad, where the raw Tuna is 'cooked' cold by a lime and chilli dressing, and Seared Tuna Steak, where frying for one minute on each side leaves the tuna beautifully red and raw all through the middle.
We've also brought in the winter favourite, Pot Roast, a little early this year with a Brisket of Beef from the most excellent Model Farm, whose weekly delivery provides our milk, eggs, butter and most of our vegetables. Highly recommended.
So much for Gastric Reflux, what about that other malady? What about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome? I didn't expect to see immediate improvement in CFS as a result of this minor diet change, but I am hoping that it will be part of a foundation for recovery. One possible problem that has occurred to me is that by restricting carbohydrates, I could be reducing my energy still further. The solution is to make sure that the calorific value of the food I'm eating is sufficient for my needs, so what are my needs? CFS means that I'm not very active, but does that mean that I'm not burning much energy and so don't need many calories coming in? Or am I burning lots of energy to little effect, in which case I should be upping my calorie intake? In any case, in order to get some informed advice, I have asked my doctor for a referral to a dietician or nutritionalist and will report back. I hope to be posting more this week about a number of issues around CFS that have appeared in the fog of my brain while writing this, but which are for now, lost in the clouds.

Going down in flames

'this was my lowest-energy day so far this week'

Should this extract from last Thursday's blog post have raised a red flag? Probably, but on Friday I rather optimistically went to watch my nine-year old on the last day of the sailing course that he's been doing at Edgbaston Water Sports. He'd been telling me all week about how much he'd been enjoying it and, well, it seemed like a good idea. It was not until we were half-way home that I realised that I was in trouble.

I should say something here about CFS here, and this is just my personal experience as I know that different sufferers face a wide range of symptoms at varying levels of severity. For me, the first indication that I'm overdoing things is not a feeling of tiredness. I feel tired every minute of every day and any physical activity at all exhausts me very quickly. This means that the measure of available energy that works so well in a healthy person, tiredness, is for me a very unreliable indicator. This means that it is very easy for me to persist with a tiring activity, particularly one that doesn't feel tiring, say for example sitting and looking at boats in a reservoir, for too long. The first I know that there is any problem, is that I become irritable and short tempered. Unfortunately this symptom is not an early warning system, once I get to this point I know that my energy budget for the day has been over-spent. Unless at this point I can lie down in a dark, quiet room and rest for the remainder of the day, then there will be a 'hangover' of exhaustion which will further limit my energy for one, two or even three days.

Sarah was driving us up Highgate Middleway on the way back from the reservoir when I commented on her lane placement, and snapped at her reply. I sat in a sulk for a couple of minutes before it sunk in that I was in an 'energy crash' situation and that there was no escape. I closed my eyes and stopped talking. It would be at least twenty minutes until we got home, and I would just have to sit there and wait. What is tiring about sitting in a car? Sitting down tires me, the engine and road noise tire me and the movement tires me. It was about half an hour before we were home and I could retreat to bed. Again, the feeling of complete exhaustion was too familiar to gauge my energy level by and it was my emotional state that gave it away, a kind of undercurrent of negative feelings, raising up in turn like evil salesman retailing negative thought processes. Why not indulge yourself in misery? Have you considered utter despair? How about a good, seething bout of rage? Once lying down in the quiet dark, my body was now able to rest, and the challenge was for the brain to remain aloof, to allow those emotions to run themselves out, without being swept along. It took a couple of hours to completely pass through this crisis phase and the remainder of the day had to be given over to rest.

So, fascinating insight into the life of a CFS sufferer, or laboured excuse for not posting on Friday? I will attempt, in any case, to make up for failing to tell you about Friday's breakfast by describing it here. Baked anchovy on egg on mushroom, a pretty good idea I thought and, who knows, maybe it could be delicious. Maybe the mushroom was just past it's best. Maybe if the egg had stayed on top instead of running off over the baking tray. All I know is, I didn't enjoy it one little bit.

Dinner was much better; Avocado topped with Lime juice, toasted seeds and Parsley. The Avocado is scored with a grid pattern so that the lime juice, which is added next, can seep into the flesh. The Pumpkin seeds are heated in a frying pan for one minute, before adding the sunflower seeds and heating for a further minute. The Parsley is thrown in for a few seconds, and then the contents of the pan are used to top the avocado. Lovely. Had the same again today!