Community Dinners gone Mad

We have been taking it in turn to cook dinners in our little neighbourhood. There are six of us so this means we only have to cook once a week each with the day off every week in five. Saturdays and Sundays are left to our own adventures. It’s great system and we eat extremely well. So well that last week we were groaning and beginning to feel like teletubbies. Someone had the bright idea of a detox, no wheat, no sugar and no dairy for a week and we allowed ourselves to be coerced into this little plan.

It started today. I had cup of tea when I got up and rushed off to work. I don’t usually eat before I go as it’s too early to be hungry and I don’t get up early enough to sit down and eat. This was a bad start considering that I work in a kitchen. We had an extremely busy day and I couldn’t eat my usual fresh scone mid morning as it’s made with wheat – and the butter and jam would have been out too. By the time I got to eat my lunch my usual salad bowl was down to two choices as we had made a noodle salad and that was on the no no list. I was ravenous and had a bowl of Ronan’s special cole slaw and mango and chickpea salad, this sated my hunger until around four thirty when I was hungry again. At this stage most of the food that we had made was sold and all that remained had the three forbidden ingredients – wheat , dairy or sugar in them – and I ended up scoffing a bag of salted crisps. Hardly the healthy option.

Dinner was as usual a glorious feast. I don’t think this diet is going to make us eat any less, the only thing we won’t be doing is eating any left over sweet tarts that come home from the shop.

Our dinner was roasted vegetables with rose harissa, burnt aubergines ( baba ganoush) and brown rice. Absolutely delicious. Our plates were licked clean and I’m looking forward to the next dinner