Since my week working on a supermarket rotisserie section, I’ve been off my food a little. For many reasons, and for a while now, my son and I have been having fish about once a week, twice at most, vegetarian meals twice a week, then meat meals. Since being poorly, we’ve decided to up the vegetarian/vegan meals to 3 or 4 times a week. The stink of the cooking really did put me off and my stomach has been out of sorts for a little while; nothing major, just not happy. We have a number of vegetarian options that we like, and I’ve been trawling the net for more vegan options; my son can’t tolerate much dairy, can’t abide eggs, doesn’t eat much cheese, and never drinks ‘real’ milk.

His mild intolerance has been going on since he was quite young and I well remember telling the nursery staff at his school that he wasn’t to have milk at the break time, just a cup of water, and getting a phone call telling me to collect him as he’d thrown up after drinking full fat milk. Good grief… He’s not the only family member to have this intolerance.

My only issue with vegan food, is much of it seems to be bean or lentil based, and is invariably curry or chilli, and always with copious amounts of garlic. Obviously, I can leave out the garlic, but I suspect that I’ll miss the ‘chew’ of meat rather than the meat itself. I’ll have to see if I can source some TVP – textured vegetable protein locally. I used to use this, many years ago as a meat substitute and I remember it being very good in casseroles or stews. My son’s Father was vegetarian when I met him, and we had mainly vegetarian food for a good many years though I did have to have fish now and again. Cravings… lol

We’ll have meat a couple of times a week for now, and plan on having beef for Christmas dinner; not keen on turkey or the price of it, and we’ll see how it goes. With my ‘unhappy’ stomach my weight loss has been slow and steady so that’s a happy outcome so far. I feel fine in myself, just have a ‘tense’ stomach. Now if I could stop having cold after cold, I’d be a happy bunny lol.

We’ve had days and days of rain here, though we’re now forecast dry weather for a number of days which will be nice. This morning, Friday, we’ve awoken to a very hard frost which has crawled all over my car and left very pretty patterns on it. By the time I take my son to Uni, I’m hoping the car will have defrosted. Maybe he’ll even walk if it’s sunny.

On the job front I’ve applied for specific jobs in other supermarkets which advertised very definite roles and times rather than the one I got which had nothing specific detailed at all; I won’t make that mistake again. I’m also looking out for office roles including universities and colleges. Basically, anything I feel I can do. It’s a tough world out there…

Have a great weekend, with hopefully some sunshine – we need and deserve it.