What we're eating differently

Have just done some baking rather than the cleaning that needs doing and thought I would write what we have changed in our eating habits so that I remember. (Another procrastination)

Some of this is to cut out all the saturated fat and some of it is to increase the fibre and hydration and to eat the things that are supposed to lower cholesterol.

In baking I have changed every butter mention for olive oil and changed to multicereal flour. I make oatcakes with oats and olive oil, pastry with multicereal flour and olive oil. We are eating brown basmati rice instead of white. (Haven't found brown pasta anywhere local, you can get red/green but not complet.)

Changed every oil mention to olive with occasional other.

No cheese. We have some 0% cream cheese and Boursin type for when I need to sink my teeth into the creaminess before the smoked salmon in a sandwich but it doesn't work as a sauce for pasta, just disappears completely (so heaven knows what it is really).

No booze.

No meat except skinless chicken but lots of oily fish.

A 75cl (just checked, thought it was a litre) bottle of water between us with every meal.

Snacks are now oatcakes and home made hummous. Via a diversion through a red kidney bean spread and a red lentil spread which were not enthusiastically received. Fruit and walnuts.

We have swapped the daily baguette for wholemeal bread (made by Him Outdoors).

Have home made mayonnaise with olive oil/rapeseed oil.

We have either fruit juice or a lime cordial/lemonade/angostura bitters or an elderflower cordial with fizzy water aperatif.

No cake. Him Outdoors is used to cake for elevenses, pudding and afternoon tea. He works hard physically outside most of the day and gets hungry. We decided that if I didn't make it - even with no saturated fats which he has had before without noticing - he would eat more of the stuff that is recommended to lower cholesterol.

That is oats (muesli for breakfast/oatcakes/instead of breadcrumbs as stuffing for mackerel), avocado,walnuts (added to bread and munched by the handful/walnut and lentil salad), oily fish (tuna fresh and tinned,salmon smoked and fresh, mackerel, herring, trout).

Him Outdoors is a meat and two veg man really. Or definitely a meat man. We had a vegetarian chilli last night that he had made. He is thinking wistfully after the minced beef and the glass of red wine, I am missing the butter on the crunchy baguette.

We have done 5 weeks now and plan to keep it at this level until the next blood test. We have a plan to go out for lunch between that test and the results :-). After that (depending on the result I guess) we will bring back some wine though hopefully quality not quantity.

PS I'm not mentioning the yoga because I'm not doing it anymore - weird, I like doing it and felt better but still don't???? Him Outdoors is doing a long bike ride twice a week but not the extra walking he was partly because it has been hot but not really.