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.