Eat your heart out :o))

Hello and welcome to some more new readers. A comment from Tina yesterday was quite amusing, I will answer her question.

Your meals always look good, but I was a bit puzzled by you saying there were enough chips for lunch and tea and you were not sure if you need a dinner now, how many meals a day do you have? 

There are so many different words for the meals we have here in the UK, breakfast is simple enough but then there's the midday meal which is known as either lunch or dinner, then some people call their evening meal tea or dinner, yet when some people say tea they mean afternoon tea before the evening dinner!

We have breakfast, lunch, dinner. Although we usually call dinner Supper! 

Oh forgot that there's supper too, so we could be eating all day long, breakfast, elevenses, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, supper.
We'd soon be lardy lumps! Lard, that's what started this comment!


Hi Tina, 
I usually have three meals a day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But, sometimes I have two breakfasts, the second one two hours after the first. If I start with bran flakes I am usually hungry again so I have a snack. If I start with porridge that will see me through to lunchtime.  I suppose you could call the second breakfast elevenses. Lunch is something not too filling because I don't want to spend the afternoon stodged up, and doing physical work after stuffing my face makes me feel sick. Mind you, a big salad doesn't take long to go through, no stodge in that. My mum always used to say, 'sit still and let your dinner go down', I was always the first to ask 'please may I leave the table.' Mind you things have changed now, I don't bolt my food any more, like everything else in my life, eating has slowed down to a more leisurely pace. 

I take lunch when my body tells me it's hungry, which could be any time between 11.30am and 1.30pm, depending on how much breakfast and elevenses I have had. I would rather have several small meals than three humungous ones. There was too many chips for one meal, so I split them into two portions. When I got home it was late afternoon so I warmed up the rest in the microwave and had them for tea. Posh folks would call that high tea. 

I knew that was not going to be enough to see me through to bed time. My first thought was to top it up later with rice pudding, but when it got to 7pm I didn't fancy it, so I had some home made carrot soup with a slice of wholemeal bread instead. 

When I was young we had dinner at lunchtime, and tea when we got home from school at 5pm. We never used to have supper, it wasn't really needed because mum always served up big meals, even though they weren't always the healthiest. Lots of bread and potatoes. If we were hungry before bed time we had a sugar sandwich. 

When I was working, driving all day, my meals were very haphazard, snacking most of the time because there was no time to stop and have a sit down meal until after the days work. Even then I couldn't stomach what they served up in transport cafe's, so I made my own on a little camping stove in the cab. 

Right, to the present day. My eating habits have drastically changed for the better since I have stopped driving. Now I know what is good for me, I am able to pick and choose what to eat, and when to eat it. I know if I don't eat for three to four hours I am going to feel lousy, I am going to feel faint. I know if I go out anywhere I need to take a sandwich, a banana, and a drink. I don't rely on getting something from a shop. I don't buy ready made sandwiches, they are prepared in a factory, and shops sell stodgy snacky things, not good. 

Small amounts often are better than whopping big meals, but, I can eat a big plateful of steamed veg or salad, and I know it will not bloat me. So Tina you won't become a lardy lump if you stuff yourself with veg and salad. Lay off the meat, pies, puddings, cakes, flans, pizzas, pasties, and anything bulked up with pastry. Bulk up with pulses, chick peas, any kind of beans though wash the sugar off them, porridge oats, wholemeal rice and wholemeal pasta. Don't snack on biscuits, crisps, fizzy drinks, choccy bars. Snack on nuts and fruit. Only eat when you are hungry, when your stomach is grumbling. When you are full stop. Keep reducing the amount you eat and your stomach will shrink to accommodate smaller meals. 

I hope that has answered your question, what was the question bye the way? ha ha. Thank you for giving me a topic to write about. The sun is shining, the washer has stopped so I need to go and peg the washing out on the line. Things to do, a bit more gardening today, get out while it's nice. I would like to go out for a long walk but I have commitments here, but I can find plenty to do. Goodness, I have just noticed that the dust is almost an inch thick on the mantlepiece, oh well not to bother, another job for another day. The windows need cleaning first. Keep chipping away at things. I am not superwoman, people take me as they find me. My house is full of love, if not that pristine. 
Have a nice Friday. Toodle pip.