A Few Sample Meals

Interesting discussion in comments a few posts back about meal specifics. I've restarted a food diary so may in the future post a more rigorous sample of a typical day or week, but in the meantime, some sample meals from the past few days.

• Chicken breast stuffed with spinach & ricotta (spinach, ricotta, parmesan, egg), wrapped in bacon, served with rocket salad w/ olive oil & parmesan.
• thai(-ish) pork curry: meat from pork ribs, with addl spices, coconut cream, green beans, and fresh sliced red chilis
• eggs
  
• ham & eggs (I eat a lot of eggs, they may be a near-perfect ingredient)
  
• toasted ham & cheese (vacherin) on a large bed of rocket & fresh baby spinach leaves, with a little olive oil, and a glass of red wine
  
• snacks: garlic-stuffed olives, almonds, walnuts

This is not necessarily a good representative sample. This is a holiday weekend and I've had more time to cook than I normally would. I cook eggs for breakfast frequently because it's so quick, but after work I would almost never come home, grab a whole chicken and some fresh spinach and end up with what I cooked the other night. Also, quality counts. The "ham", above, is incredible quality, cut to order from the butcher, made and baked by the butcher. It never saw the inside of a factory or any cure other than a dry-cure in salt. Eggs and chickens are free range. Beef is grass-fed. Etc.

Anyway, a typical work day is more like: eggs for breakfast (cooked in butter, usually by themselves, or sometimes with meat or cheese or spinach); green veg, olives, hard boiled eggs from salad bar at work canteen; something meaty or fishy for dinner; nuts for snacks.

The last few months I've had the pleasure of enjoying the following meats: beef, pork, lamb & mutton, chicken, duck, goose, bison, venison, elk, caribou [rudolph == tasty!]. Fish I most commonly eat: tuna, salmon, trout, mackerel, sardines, cod. Dairy: I eat all manner of cheese (how cool is it that you can pan-fry or grill halloumi?), sometimes full-fat, unsweetened yogurt, sour cream, occasionally cream, and almost never (now) milk. Snacks: nuts (almonds, walnuts, pistachios mostly), seeds, olives, cheese. Veg, etc.: rocket, spinach, romaine (and other letti), green beans, broccoli, mushrooms mostly, peppers (mostly chilis rather than heaps of sweet peppers), celery, cabbage; sometimes courgette or aubergine or fresh tomato.

I try to avoid sugar (including sugary fruit), wheat, starch (spuds, rice) but attempting to limit carbs (say, to 50g/day) generally takes care of that for me (in that you end up taking off the menu all the things you would individually identify as "should avoid" solely by virtue of giving yourself a carb cap per day).

P.S. Black coffee good. And the chocolate: a few squares of Lindt 85%.