Diet.
Two of my children are coming to stay here for a week or so and I was making a shopping list ... and then thought 'Wait. I'll have to ring up and see what they are eating at the moment'. 'When I was a girl' we all ate the same food at the same sort of times and 'Diet' meant vaguely giving up cake. Also everyone liked practically everything, apart from the odd squeamishness over serving dishes full of something that just looked as if it was asleep.

As we speak, however, every single person in my family is eating a different and separate range of foods. Including myself. Which means that instead of a couple of weeks of earthmother-like Tusc@n peasant summer cooking, which I might normally drag myself to do, there will be several people messing about the kitchen at all times making little bowls of weirdness. No wonder family life is breaking down.

After his health scare my husband is on his own version of the H@y diet which involves him eating and drinking like a gourmet pig while in London but being prissily restrained while here and giving me snake-like glances when I take an extra potato. Also leading to farcical meals where I have thoughtlessly made something like spaghett1 b0lognese and find him sitting with a plate of plain pasta and saving the sauce part for 'later'. My middle daughter who is not coming, thank god - in food annoyance terms only , obviously - lives on tuna salad and herbal tea with the occasional ice cream eaten at top speed in the street.

My older daughter has been unable to put weight back on after travelling in 1ndia (On no ... how awful) and although this is not an actual problem she has given up wheat, sugar and meat and lives on organic oatcakes, corn pasta (disgusting) and soya milk. This is fine in London but down here they still have a rather last century attitude to food and finding these exotic items means a long drive to the town. My son has the opposite problem , exacerbated by long hours spent in bed, and is now on a high protein diet suggested by a friend, so that he will look gorgeous for university. This means that he only eats meat, fish, eggs and oranges. While my daughter only eats fruit, vegetables and pasta. And my husband is on the stupid H@Y diet so can't eat anything which combines anything normal, apparently, except when in an expensive restaurant when, strangely, all dishes are fine.

My own diet - which I will reveal immediately DOES NOT WORK so don't bother to try it - involved 'being sensible'. This means eating exactly what you would normally so as not to make yourself feel deprived but taking much smaller portions than usual. All that happens is that you take a small portion and then quite soon afterwards you go back and take another .. and if still hungry, another. The one thing that DID work, but only in happiness terms, was that I stopped weighing myself. One morning I was skipping down to breakfast humming because I had just found that I had lost two pounds. I then thought, 'How cr@p is this? If I had GAINED two pounds today I would be dragging along depressed. THIS IS NO WAY TO GO THROUGH LIFE, SON'. That was about six months ago and instead I judge the fatness by looking in the mirror. I sometimes feel drawn irresistably towards 'that' corner of the bathroom but I have been strong. It is worth it too for the huge pleasure of beng able to answer truthfuly when someone says 'How much do you weigh?'. I don't know!!

Anyway - I am returning to the shopping list with its totally random range of foodstuffs. And wondering if I could see the two weeks as a culinary challenge and invent futuristic new recipes so that we could all eat together. Hmm ... I could go the Ch1nese way and have a table covered with little dishes and they could make tiny piles of different things on their individual plates and my husband could save the sauces for 'later'. Or .. they could all cook their own anal food for themselves while I watch TV. Yes - that sounds the most appealing.
- posted by Iris @ 6/25/2004 09:08:00 AM comment