Lovely medium raw fillet steak on a bed of spicy veg. Looks like a massive plate. I had no trouble finishing it off.

I feel a little bit guilty, we just discussed this week at work what a burden to environment beef is. Our company has nothing to with food unfortunately, but the topic came up as Barry who looks after our environmental agenda presented some numbers and suggested that we stop serving beef in our canteen. Not entirely unexpectedly to anyone apart from maybe Barry his proposal didn't go down well with the audience mainly consisting of middle-aged Yorkshire men who recognise three food groups: pork, beef and gravy. (I know I'm being prejudiced and unfair, I actually know a vegetarian Yorkshire man, young Adam from work and it is entirely possible there are others.) In the debate I supported Barry perhaps slightly hypocritically considering my secret steak habit and the fact that I don't eat in the canteen because I'm based in our Southern office. But opposition was fierce. The main reason for this tended to be "I like beef". Fair enough.

But stats are very much supporting poor heckled Barry, I hope it's safe for him to return to work soon. According to him 26% of all greenhouse gases come from food production, and about half of that from beef. If you disagree with the numbers talk to Barry, but I had a quick look and although there are lots of estimates out there, whatever numbers you go by the fact remains, beef is quite a culprit.

So I am going to improve my ways and do some vegetarian cooking tomorrow. I am planning to do some chickpea and hummus patties for which I prepared this nice light hummus already.

But I did pop into Waitrose and got two venison steaks so as not to make this move too cold turkey-like. I think deer are less farty than cows, just by looking at their physique you can kind of make this conclusion, so they probably burden the environment less than their more flatulent domesticated cousins. And one can't very well be expected to eat chickpea burgers all the time, can one?

Gorgeous Scottish venison with broccoli, asparagus and a salad.

My Friday night dinner date with Jamie Oliver - unfortunately we disagreed about mackerel.

So today I made this lovely light hummus. This (and the steaks) are all part of my convoluted new lifestyle which aims to invigorate  my sad middle-aged metabolism and get rid of some excess belly blubber. Included is a menu of lots of protein, complex carbs, fibre, controlled amounts of fat and thus sadly very little cheese, apart from cottage cheese which is not really cheese.

And combined with my new HIIT exercise regime I can already see a little change and scales confirm a loss of about 4.5 pounds or 2 kilos. And I can do a set of shitty commando planks without wanting to strangle Emi Wong, one of my youtube trainers.

And back to the hummus. Even compared to my best ever silky-smooth hummus with lots of tahini this lower fat version is really tasty. For this version I didn't peel the chickpeas because I thought this way it probably has more fibre in it. I have no evidence of this. But I have first hand evidence and can testify in court that peeling them is boring as hell. I used good quality chickpeas (a glass jar = good quality in my world), so the hummus was still really smooth and velvety. I didn't add any oil at all and only one not too heaped tablespoon of tahini. One day when I am industrious enough I will do them both and taste test them side by side.

But I can recommend this on it's own. And I will tell you how it works in the hummus and chickpea burgers once I get to them.

Best ever low calorie hummus

Calories in the entire pot 360 kCal, fat 15g

200g of drained chickpeas and some of the liquid
1 level tbsp of tahini
1/2 clove of garlic
Juice of half a lemon
1 tsp cumin
Salt

Grate the garlic and add all ingredients in the mixer. Mix well, check the taste and add more salt or lemon if necessary.

I promise I won't go on about this forever, but I am still in shock about this betrayal by my own body.  I recently uncovered basically by lifting my shirt followed by detailed Google research, that the amazing female body that is able to do such unbelievable things, almost overnight in peri-menopause decides it's a good idea to start storing every bit of fat it can get it progesterone deficient hands on in the belly and then molding ample sidehandles for good measure. 

Why? Why would it do that? After surviving the teenage angst and our 20s and 30s borderline eating disorders we finally enter a kind of a ceasefire only to witness our bodies going on a rampage with no regard for our attempts at a healthy diet and regular exercise or respect to how many things we deny ourselves like vinegar crisps. I LOVE vinegar crisp, but I never eat them due to the 500 kCal / 100g. Or Real Greek Taramasalata, 989 kCal a portion, for years I have wanted it but never ordered. Has this made a difference. Currently my gut says probably not.

This latest development is also very unexpected, since my biggest enemy has always been my bum. Again there is a physiological reason - apparently our bodies store fat in our bums for breastfeeding, in my case not a very useful excerise, and why wouldn't it store it in the breasts, much better place for it I'd say. And I think I can hear a male chorus agreeing. Oh, but then the bum men seem to be booing. Confusing.

But now for a small window of time my bum will apparently be my best asset, while my body without asking my opinion moves these fat deposits from my bottom to my belly. But of course my body will overdo this transportation job and I will end up looking like tweedledum.

I have started my offensive supported by US fitness gurus who really just want to sell you a DVD-set or a monthly subscription of some kind, but thanks to YouTube a lot of good exercise programmes are available there free of charge. I'm doing a lot of high intensity interval training, which is supposed to work for this kind of thing. It's pretty much as awful as it sounds. But no pain no gain as my YouTube trainers keep telling me! I nearly threw something at the TV today at the 10th set of a variation of the plank. I hate the plank and I particularly hate the stupid commando, which has nothing to do with taking off your knickers unfortunately, but is this stupid move from elbow plank to full plank one arm at a time.

Cooking-wise the transition is much more fun because I like experimenting substitutions in recipes and find that I can make lots of food still very tasty just being more careful with calories and fat, even healthy fats.

In terms of Caesar Salad the secret to lightness is obviously in the dressing. Apart from the dressing this is a very healthy salad. Although I health hacked the croutons as well, by using whole wheat loaf and baking it with a very tiny amount of oil.

I made this as part of a Italian / Sicialian inspired lunch I prepared for a friend on Saturday. We made a successful trip to IKEA, which we sometimes do when we are desperately lacking in house plants, napkins, plastic containers or candles. And usually I get a tube of this amazing Swedish super salty roe paste, which I squeeze straight to my mouth as a light little salty snack. I will maybe do slightly fewer squirts in the near future as I'm trying to recover my normal body shape. I'm not sure 37% fat Kalle's Kaviar is really helping.

Super light Classic Caesar Salad 

(serves 4 as a side salad)

Dressing

2 anchovy fillets
1 small glove of garlic
1/3 cup of low fat Greek yoghurt
1 tbsp low fat mayonnaise
2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 tsp worchestershire sauce
1 tbsp grated pecorino
Salt (if needed)
Black pepper

Croutons
2-3 slices of wholewheat bread with crusts on
Olive oil spray
Salt
Blackpepper
2 tsp dried oregano

Salad

2 hearts of romaine
1 cup of home made croutons
Dressing
(Anjovy fillets optional)

To make the sauce place all ingredients apart from salt into a mixer and mix until smooth. Check the taste and add salt if necessary, the anchovies, worchestershire sauce and pecorino may have been enough. You can use parmesan, but I find with pecorino you get more flavour from a smaller amount.

To make the croutons either cut the slices of wholemeal bread into cubes or tear into chunks for a more rustic feel. Place on a baking sheet and spray with olive oil spray to keep the amount of oil down. Season with salt and pepper, add the oregano and mix well. Bake in a 180C oven for 10-15 minutes.

To assemble the salad, wash the romaine and cut the leaves into rough chunks. Add in the croutons and as much of the sauce as you like. I like to add enough to lightly coat most of the salad and then have the rest of the sauce on the side for everyone to add more if they wish.

This salad would of course be lovely topped with some baked or grilled chicken.

Last week was my French week and I loved it. I didn't stick to all of it, I missed the tuna nicoise salad, because the supermarket didn't have fresh tuna on the day and I skipped the French onion soup, because there were leftovers to be had. But I did some pretty lovely French meals. The one I enjoyed cooking and eating the most was the Bouillabaisse and I can't wait to do it again. Coq au Vin was lovely and I got some bread baking done as well in the form of a Provencal olive and rosemary fougasse.

Bouillabaisse - French fish soup

Coq au Vin - French red wine chicken stew

Fougasse

Saturday we celebrated step-son's 18th birthday. I could have freaked out about the fact that I have a grown-up step child, but seeing that I could easily and quite legally be a grandmother, great-grandmother if it was the Tudor times, I chose to remain philosophical and bake a cake.

Three layered angelfood cake with vanilla cream and fresh berries

And yesterday we finished our French week with a ratatouille and pissaladiere, a Provencal anchovy and olive pizza type tart. The winner of the week's last French meal was surprisingly the humble ratatouille, it was gorgeous.

Ratatouille

Pissaladiere

Week's food bill came to £84 not taking into account the Saturday's meal out. Merde.

This week I'll focus on healthy and light meals with lots of vegetables and heart-healthy fish. I am trying to put off wintery comfort foods as long as I can, although I am really missing ragus, stews, slow cooked lamb and the like and the weather is getting definitely autumnal. But knowing that there are way too many winter months ahead to stew my way through I want to stretch the more summery menu as long as possible.

I lost the fight to ponchos and pashminas though. I love them, but have tried to not start wearing them too soon, but caved in last week. I scandalously even had a pair of boots on one day.

So this is what our early autumn meal plan looks like:

#meatfreemonday            Classic Italian Minestrone soup, home-made wholemeal seeded rolls
Tuesday                           Baked falafel and home-made wholemeal pitta bread
Wednesday                      Sardine with sweet potato, new potato and peas
Thursday                          Leftovers of the above
#fishfriday                        Lemon, trout and squid spelt pasta
Saturday                           Riso al Forno alla Siciliana, lemon and herb roast chicken
Sunday                             Mum's Finnish salmon soup

Hooking up with Mrs M and the Organizing junkie and all the other lovely meal planners and junkies (organizing junkies)!