A Letter To Explain

Dear Girl-I-Sit-With-At-Lunch.

Hi. How are you?
Yesterday you told me that I looked better, that I was smiling more. I agreed and said that I felt happier, partly due to my medication. You then proceeded to ask if I was eating more, to which I said that I had been, but that I had stopped because I was finding the reality of gaining weight hard. You agreed that it must all be very hard.

The truth is, "well" or "better" to me is translated as meaning "fat". It's illogical, but true. Well, the feeling is true. You weren't to know - its not your fault.
So you see, I'm screaming out inside although I have this calm exterior. And I won't tell you that I've gained some weight for fear of you thinking worse of me.
I'm sorry if I was slightly sad the rest of the afternoon; if I didn't live up to new expectations or seemed more pensive than usual.

Yours,
G x

A Letter To Say What I Can't

Dear Girl-I-Worry-About-In-My-Year-Group,

Hi. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you this face to face, but - you see - the real problem is that I can't deal with your problems as well as my own.
It sounds awful, but please, let me explain.
Last March my problems were just heating up, and you told me you were worried about me. In a haze of my own tears you took me aside and insisted that I tell you that I was getting help. You told me of your own problems - so many problems, and so similar to mine - hoping that it would make me feel not so alone. What I must now tell you is that although I fully understand your good intentions, and know how sweet they were, I was in a place where I couldn't deal with what was going on in my own head - let alone yours as well.

That night I went home and had my first anxiety attack, and my mother took me to the out of hours doctors.

I haven't told anyone what you told me, but it prays on my mind almost every day.
You're not a small girl, and you work hard. You remind me of how I used to be before I admitted I had a problem. Stressed out to the max, doing far too much work, wanting to loose weight, no time for friends, and unsatisfied with every good grade. Wrapped up in a little bubble of me, not knowing how to relax. This is a bubble that I still often find it hard to come out of.

Every time you tell me about your stresses, I'm torn between running a mile and telling you all of my deepest secrets in the hope that I can shock you out of what you seem to be becoming.

Yet, I also need to admit that this could just be my mind, searching for someone else like me. Scrutinizing your figure to judge if you've lost weight. Obsessing over finding "the same" in someone else.

Sometimes it may seem like I don't care, when I break off a conversation or seemingly snap at you. Please don't take it that way. Its because I care that I run a mile - I don't want to hurt you when I finally fly off the handle or do something stupid. It sounds crazy, but somehow it makes sense. By protecting you from what I know maybe you won't go the same way I did.

Please forgive me. Please don't think any worse of me for protecting myself.

Yours,
G xx

Honey and Walnut Stuffed Mushrooms

This is a recipe that I created myself, and has been very well received in our household. I tend to serve it as it is with some mixed salad, but if you fancy something a little more substantial you could add some new potatoes and chives.

Honey and Walnut Stuffed Mushrooms

Ingredients

4 large portobello mushrooms

1 tbs set honey

30g creamy blue cheese (I use Castello)

50g chopped dried apricots

25g chopped walnuts

olive oil

handful of chopped parsley

25g breadcrumbs

salad to serve

Method

• Preheat your oven to 180C fan or 200C conventional.
• In a bowl, combine the honey, cheese, breadcrumbs, apricots, parsley, walnuts and 1 tbsp of olive oil.
• Place your mushrooms on a baking tray and drizzle with 1/2 tbsp olive oil each.
• Evenly divide the stuffing mixture between all of your mushrooms.
• Bake in the oven for 10 minutes, or untill the mushrooms are soft and the topping mixture had mingled together and melted slightly.
• Serve with salad and enjoy!

This is a really easy and delicious supper, and it will only take at the very most 25 minutes to be ready!

Learning

Learning to breathe,

Learning to laugh.

Learning to give and take,

Learning to feel.

Learning to love,

Learning to live.

Learning to eat,

Learning to feel hunger,

Learning to feel satisfied.

Learning to fight,

Learning to change,

Learning to break the mould

Learning to be brave,

Grabbing the bull by the horns.

WBN 2012

 

  

Books.
The smell of them, the feel of them, the look of them. I love them. I devour them. I live and breathe them. Aside from cooking and travel programs, my favourite thing to watch on TV has to be adaptations of books, or programs about books, such as the series of emissions produced for World Book Night, which has to be after Christmas, birthdays and holidays one of my favourite times of the year. Nothing can match the sheer delight of sharing with people the joy of books - how they can change the way we think and lead us to new conclusions in new and far-flung worlds.
This year, WBN will be on the 23rd of April, and is to be celebrated in the USA as well as Britain, and I just cannot wait!
Here is a list of the WBN interactive top 100 books for you to peruse at your own leisure. I personally have  already read 23 of the books on the list, and a further 9 are already sitting in my bookcase waiting to be read, not to mention the numerous others on the list I plan to read and are either sitting in the school library or local bookshop waiting for me.
I await WBN 2012 with impatience, and would be glad to hear from anyone who shares my unhealthy obsession with such events.

Naming Your Eating Disorder

Sometimes it helps to think of your eating disorder as something other than just EDNOS, Anorexia or Bulimia. Sometimes something more expressive (or abusive) is called for - something to help you stand up to it.
Also, there are names that your eating disorder likes to be called, and although they can feel quite fitting at our weakest of times, it should be acknowledged that by calling it by these, you are giving in to it!

Names Your ED Likes


friend
ally
cohort
comrade
alter ego
comforter
ruler
aide
confidante
monarch
boss
ringleader



Names Your ED Doesn't Like


dictator
oppressor
taskmaster
foe
enemy
nemesis
opposite
saboteur
problem
tyrant
illness
abuser



Names To Call Yourself And Stand Up to Your (Insert name from above)

Revolutionary
anarchist
rebel
radical
over-thrower
over-comer
persecutor
fighter


Do you have any more ideas?

Yours,
The Anxious Foodie

The Art of French Cooking

The following is an entry I wrote for a school languages competition last summer, which I thought would fit in with my blog quite nicely. Bon Appétit!


Yours, The Anxious Foodie <3

The Art of French Cooking

I suppose I have, for most of my life without even realising it, always had a fascination with French food. Ever since I was small and would go on holiday to Brittany with my parents, I have known in the back of my mind that it was something special, even though at first I could not understand it. As a small child on the coast of Brittany, it is sometimes difficult to come across the real gems of French food. As I went through a phase of having a large aversion to seafood, although I had once loved it, I therefore used to think people were mad when the raved about the quality of French food. What was so special about the ham, chips and mayonnaise that I was always presented with, or that chicken in a creamy sauce?

I regret that it wasn’t until years later that I discovered what French food really is about, and really started to understand it in all of its detail.

   French food is sociable food, food for friends. What is better than digging into a large pot of moules with your bare hands, using shells to scoop the fleshy seafood from its black bed, and then mopping up the delicious broth with a hunk of freshly baked French baguette? Or who can forget the huge fresh platters of fruits de mer offered in French seaside resorts, which just call out to diners to dig in.

   In England, everyone is too prim and proper, laying their cutlery down in a precise fashion after every meal, to be able to adhere to such culinary traditions as the French. The truth is that food is more fun when eaten as it is in France. French breakfast is traditionally taken in the hands also, for example fresh croissants qui sont juse sortis du four et pain avec confiture fait à la maison et jus d'orange pressée, and perhaps a steaming bowl of hot chocolate with which to warm cold fingers.  Is this not somewhat more special than a soggy bowl of cereal and a mug of tepid tea?

   French crêpes oozing with cheese and cream,  boef bourgignon emitting a pungent aroma of red wine and herbs, snails (who else other than the resilient French would cook a common garden mollusc and turn it into a culinary delight) drenched in garlic butter having to be gripped in tongs and the grappled out with small snail forks and the pastry encasing such delights as tarte au citron, tarte aux épinards and a multitude of other delicious desserts and savoury wonders  will all always be a part of the grand culinary institution of the French. 

My Experience of the Art of French Cooking

            One thing I have learnt about French cooking is how unpredictable it can be.  Sometimes a dish may have involved a large amount of preparation and been extremely easy, and other times a meal can look like the simplest thing but have turned out to be a nightmare of precision.

Carrelet meunière is one of these latter dishes. A simple sounding dish of pan-fried seasoned fish with thin strips of carrots and runner beans may look extremely simple, but instead my experience of it was less than easy.

            First of all, I should mention that plaice fillets, or carrelet in French, are extremely delicate, and if it wasn’t for this, carrelet meunière could have been a simple dish after all, but once I had clarified the butter and added the fish to the pan, it became a nightmare of sticking fish and sizzling butter. This may have been due to my use of an age old frying pan with a diminishing non stick coating, but all the same it was not what I had expected.

            Once I had managed to remove the fish from the pan, the vegetables proved relatively easy. I added the rest of the butter to the pan and slipped in the vegetables once it started to foam, cooked them for two minutes, and then added the white wine and lemon juice for them to simmer in for a further four minutes. This is evidence of another famous French culinary practice – butter and wine. Both seem to be used in varying amounts in many French dishes, and although this may not be good news for the waistline, it certainly is good news for the taste buds, for the end result of my dish was a simply presented (if not entirely simply prepared) and beautiful mix of delicate seasoned fish fillet, crunchy vegetables and a sublimely smooth, fruity and rich sauce in which to soak large hunks of bread. Worth the effort and aggravation of the fish sticking to the pan, I’m sure.

 Above: Cooking the vegetables that I had spent a very long time painstakingly cutting into the tiny strips required for carrelet meunière.

Below: The fish must be returned to the pan once the vegetables are done to be coated it in the sauce of butter, wine and lemon juice.

The Story of tarte tatin ( or tarte des desmoiselles tatin)

Ever since I first discovered Tarte Tatin, I have loved its story of how such a delicious tradition came about completely unintentionally.  I have heard it with many slight variations, but the following is the version that I believe to be closest to the truth.

Prétendument, la tarte était créer environ 1890, par deux soeurs qui avait un hôtel, l'hôtel Tatin,  dans le Vallée de la Loire. Un jour, c'était particulièrement chargé dans la cuisine, donc Stephanie Tatin a mis ses pommes dans un moule et a mis le moule dans le four sans un doublure de pâte. Quand elle s'est rendrée compt de l'erreur, Stephanie as l'ajouté dessus les fruits et le sucre, et elle a servi le résultat dessert - qui était somptueux et a eu le goût de caramel - chaud, peut-être avec un petit peu du crème fraîche. 

Finally, my most favourite dish to prepare might just be moules (sans frites). Why? Its magic, that’s why. What can beat the sheer sensation of excitement that comes when you lift the lid of the pan and see the molluscs’ shells have opened on their hinges to yield their treasures, and then you are hit in the face with the delicious aroma of seafood and its inviting broth, often made with cream and wine, or perhaps you are looking forward to eating moules provençale, thailandaise or even antillaise, instead of the traditional marinière.

All in all, that's what French food is for me. It is magic to be shared with friends, even if it can be unpredictably difficult, as with carrelet meunière, or extremely simply yet exciting, such as any dish involving moules. 

Above: The moules begin to yield their treasures.

Above: A table set for sharing, with moules, side salads and baguette.

Positive Thinking

Just dropping in with a few positive mantras for ED sufferers.
I know not all will apply to everyone, for they don't all apply to me, but I think that some of them can be very helpful.

"One brave thing at a time"

"Food is my medicine"

"Will this decision matter in a year's time?"

"My eating disorder is the prison which keeps me from my true self"

"Food is neither good nor bad, but in moderation all foods provide nourishment for my body, mind and soul"

"I am lovable no matter what my size"

"I am healthy and attractive and I am not going to be affected by others"

"As I feed and care for myself appropriately, I learn to love myself."

Yours,

The Anxious Foodie x

A Letter To My Oppressor

Dear Problem,

Would you be so kind as to take a step back, look in the mirror and regard yourself for what you truly are?

Beneath your façade of protection and comfort can be found a layer of lies, and through your veneer of friendship shines an aura of contempt.

You have misguided me for God knows how long - only you can tell when I first fell into your mammoth trap - whether it was three years ago, or ten. Was my anxiousness about trains, planes and petrol stations and my obsession with order as a child a misinterpreted forewarning of your gloomy arrival?

Yet although I know all of this, I still can't seem to shake you off. After at least eighteen months of being fully in your grasp I am at last beginning to find the chinks in your armour,  although were it not for the others rallying around me I feel that I should still be cocooned with you in our own cotton wool padded world of ignorance.

I get the feeling that you have been loitering  in the background of my life for so long, casting your incantations and spells, that I will never be able to fully shake you off. Will your rules and guidelines always plague me, niggling away at the back of my mind - an unwanted reminder of an unhappy past?

I hope with all of my might that this will not be the case, for I want to lead a happy life, free of lies. I understand that there will always be problems with weight and body image associated with the female kind, but I will do my best to only look back at you as a victor does, reflecting on a past triumph - the time I overpowered the eating disorder! The time I burst free of my oppressor and grabbed the bull by the horns.

Now, have I helped you to see what I see? What the others around me see in you? Have I given you something to think about? Knocked your confidence? Taken away the spring in your step?

I hope so,

G x

Baking Of The Canine Kind

Many anorexics are foodies, and I myself can profess to being one of them. Food envelopes my thoughts day in and day out (not always for the best) and I am never happier than when trawling through the Waitrose recipe pages or watching the latest nail  biting episode of Masterchef.
My love of cooking and of baking has become slightly easier lately after starting to take anti-psychotics and anti-depressants, but there was a time when I was eaten by anxiety around food, and making even the simplest of sandwiches could be a mammoth, frightening and unnerving task.
Given this, you will understand my joy when I received a  "Doggie Biscuit" cookbook  for Christmas, claiming to be full of recipes for "healthy homemade treats - seasoned with affection". Now I can bake without having to eat the end product, fulfilling my joy of baking without the anxiety of the warm aromas of human food emanating from the oven and beckoning for me to dig in. All I have to do is tell myself that, "no - this is dog food", however tempting it may smell, and I can leave the treats to my enthusiastic Golden Retriever cross Labrador, Saffy.
So, without further delay, here is a recipe for a taster of these delectable bites that you may try to make for your little darlings. If you find that this idea is something that you may like to try, the recipe is from the book "Doggie Biscuits" by Ingeborg Pils.

Bonnie's Banana Biscuits

Ingredients

2 carrots

1 banana

200g plain flour

100g rolled oats

50ml sunflower oil

water as required

Method

• Preheat the oven to 180C

• Grate the carrots finely and mash the banana to a pulp. Mix with the flour, oats and oil to make a dough. Add water as necessary to bind.
• On a floured surface (although I find that a silicone baking mat works just fine), roll out the dough to a 1cm thickness and use a biscuit cutter to make shapes of about 4cm in size. Place these on a non-stick baking sheet and bake for 25minutes. (I gave mine three minutes extra, but all ovens vary).

• Turn off the oven and leave the biscuits to cool and dry out slightly overnight, before storing in an airtight container for up to three weeks. 

I must say, these smelled as delicious as my homemade carrot and banana cake, and fittingly their texture was more like a hardened cake than a biscuit. My mother tried one and said words to the effect that they are almost too good for doggies.
As the introduction to the book explains, these treats are extremely healthy for your four-legged friends, containing no additives or flavor enhancers, but should still be eaten in moderation. Of course, certain ingredients such as cocoa and grapes are poisonous to dogs, and should never be added along with ingredients such as white sugar, spicy seasoning and chemical additives.
I do not see anything that can stop these passing over into the realm of cat treats, but maybe they should be scaled down first for your feline family-members.

Happy Baking!
Yours,
The Anxious Foodie <3

New Year, New Declaration

Its hard to put an exact date on when I started my slippery descent down the sticky slope of an eating disorder. All I know is that it was just over a year and a half ago that we knew something was wrong, and decided to seek help.

Things can progress extremely quickly once in the grips of an Eating Disorder, and its not an easy thing to escape from. Some people take the attitude that one should just be able to "pull yourself together and get over it", and trust me, we would if we could. I like to think of my eating disorder, the "The Problem" as I call it with my psychologist at CAMHS (the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service), as a viscous dictator like Lenin or Stalin or a progressing relationship from that of  a manipulating, delusional friend and deluded, cheated victim to harsh dictator and oppressed peasant. 

I've been toying with the idea of starting a blog for some time now, and at last have given in to my curiosity. My intention is to not only write about what I love, (culture, literature, languages, films, travel and food), but also to find an outlet for the complications inside my head that arrived with my EDNOS (Eating Disorder Not Specified) and have stayed with my progression into anorexia, and if I can reach out to just one person who is going through something similar to me, and help them to feel not so alone and trapped, or help someone understand in more detail what an eating disorder can involve, I will have fulfilled my purpose and be able to live a little bit more happily. 

I won't claim to be a master blogger, since my previous forays into the complicated world of the internet based diary have been slightly silly and very short lived, but I hope to stick this one out.

I look forward to sharing my wisdom and foolishness alike, and hopefully contributing usefully to the online community. 

Yours,

The Anxious Foodie <3