Calories (finally!!!) don't apply

Call me crazy or a geek... I am ditching sugars! I am ditching them forever! I am ditching them as they are of no use to my body whatsoever. Allelujah!

Well, Justin Bieber once sang: "Never say never" * ;)

Thus, I am not saying you will never see me with an apple, eating pasta once a month or awarding myself with a square of chocolate over the weekend. What I am trying to do is to reduce carbs to the absolute minimum... or even eat none on those days when I feel like and feel strong.

All this brilliantly dawned upon me right after having read the first chapter (this is how powerful she is) of Zoe Harcombe's book: "Stop counting calories & start losing weight" (http://www.theharcombedietshop.com/book/stop-counting-calories--start-losing-weight--paperback/1749).

Magic Maker!

And as I continue reading I am more and more astonished with her knowledge and courage to tell the world that we are eating crap and to tell the health media that they are teaching crap. So to me, she now appears as an angel who has finally come out to fight this crappy business and give all the desperate food-lovers (me including) a chance to eat (almost) anything we want, whenever we want, and as much as we want without counting calories. Sounds to good to be true? Yes! Is it just a joke? Naaaaaaah, all jokes aside. It is the truth I have been seeking all my life, I dare say.

So how did Zoe change my life? Big words, huh? :)

All those who know me have seen me with a bag of calories-reduced crisp, calories-reduced snacks, calorie-reduced processed foods etc. since forever. No way out! Addiction? Let's face it... YES... addiction & cravings & no nutrients & never-ending starvation. Sounds like a life of a Ralph Lauren model. Well, if at least I looked like one... ]:->

Finally, it's gone! You are reading an individual who eats healthily with no place for junk food. I cannot believe myself when I say it, write it and - most importantly - do it! :O

Freed from desire

Mind and senses purified...

Could it get any more colourful?

I am just back from a restaurant where I had a lovely big cod with herbs, salad and broccoli on the side for my dinner. Not feeling guilty.

I am back from a BBQ party where I had a piece of steak and home-made meatballs. Still not feeling guilty.

I have just roasted a chicken stuffed with garlic and lemon (Zoe's recipe), seasoned with Italian herbs (Italian obsession continues), and shared it with Kevinuzzo. Still soooo not feeling guilty.

How do you like that? :) I am eating... and I am cooking :O

And I may be wide of the mark here, but I think Kevinuzzo is one of beneficiaries :* oh oh oh... our cat Phoebe as well. She did love the roasted chicken. Has been begging me for more ever since ;)

Plus all those eye-openers I have come across... Why shouldn't I mix carbs with fats? Why do we crave the very food we are intolerant to and we mustn't eat? Why should I call an idiot a doctor who tells me to reduce bad (!) cholesterol? And why the f... do we overeat throughout our entire life? She has the question to anything I have ever wished to ask a dietitian about... or God, for crying out loud. She has the guts (and hers are healthy) to speak out about how most of what we eat is driven by huge 100 milliards worth of food business.

Zoe, will you marry me? :)

Inspired this much, I started researching myself ;) However, my study narrows down to checking labels, and cannot hold a candle to Zoe ;) Well, I have been a label reader for ages now, but I have never known what to look for. Calorie intake? Yeah.., now I can stuck my calorie-oriented knowledge deep up the ass of whoever taught me that (the problem is no one knows who came up with the theory, not even Zoe... Lucky bastard - he would die being tortured... and with my useless knowledge up his ass :D)

Run Lola Run... Is there the light at the end of this tunnel, though?

Going back to labels and magic content... I discover how good I am to my body treating it to my simple scrambled eggs for breakfast. Meanwhile, Kellogg's Special Slimmest Waist is smiling at me from the office desk in its devilish you-know-you-cannot-resist manner.

Does it catch my fancy? Not really ]:-> (I'm smiling back)

The only thing I like about the box is a slim lady (as if everyone who eats the lovely cereal had the slightest chance to look like this) in a swimsuit running along the beach and this is just because I am desperate for holidays ;)

So here I read. 76g of sugar, of which 56g is starch.

19 teaspoons of sugar is not quite what I want for breakfast, is it? And what do I need this carbohydrates for? Sugar? For nothing, least of all for the promised slimmest waist. Starch? For even lesser nothing. Although, my mum used to starch our shirts for the opening of the school year. The collar did look awesome 1st of September :D

I could go on and on and on... Don't know where to start, but don't want to end. This is what happens when you find a magic wand which is capable of doing for you what nothing else could, just at the right moment when you have already abandoned all hope and bought £100 worth of crisps...

Sugar down the drain! Olé! :)

* It's not like I am following the kid, this is the very first result in my google search for the phrase. I'm telling you. The world has gone down to the (gazillion) dogs!

Ice Action / Quiz it up!

Q: Which big cat should you never play cards with?

A: Cheetah!

Q: What do you call a woodpecker with no beak?

A: A headbanger

Take it in turns to sing 'row row row your boat' whilst doing star jumps and see who can hold the tune the best

No, I did not go back in time to reminisce about my childhood games, for they looked nothing like this...

Thanks to my two challenging (I really want to say 'unthinking') brothers my early years consisted in wrestling, watching "Candyman" (of whom I am still afraid, by the way), hunting for hidden porn magazines, collecting chocolate foil wrappers to support hash* smoking (It wasn't me smoking, but them. I started a bit later :P), and covering up for them lying to the police. Once again, I do come from a pathological family :O I still do believe I have grown to be quite normal.

Sooooooo, what is behind those cheeky monkeys is my every-now-and-then, over-the-weekend secrecy. Ice Cream! One and only Wall's Soft Scoop Vanilla (www.sharehappy.com).

Rays of Sun Marathon

"All hope abandon ye who enter here."**

My evening Heaven smothered with ice cream turns into my morning Inferno... moral hangover, which is the worst of all. Having drunk too much beer - you are fed up with beer and all the breweries within a hundred kilometres from the pub where you spent the previous night (was it a pub or a bar? Yeah! Like that matters...). Having drunk too much wine - you curse grapes, the stupid bartender who sold you yet another bottle seeing that you could barely stand on your own feet, and all the Australian harvesters. Having drunk too much vodka? Well, you probably hate sun rays, traffic noise and pretty much everything around.

(Mind you! If you are not experiencing any of the symptoms above, you quite convincingly show Alcohol Dependance Syndrome :P No worries, you're not alone... a 'high five' with nine in 100 men and four in 100 women in the UK!)***

But having eaten too much ice cream? You hate yourself, for one cannot hate ice cream (Ross has always seemed strange to me). That's where the misery starts. Trapped in self-loathing, if gluttony strikes you Sunday through Thursday... Even kids know that calories don't apply over the weekend. Friday, will you marry me? :)

"I do it for... I do it for the love [x2]" :)

#GoodbyeSerious

Those who know me will believe when I say that I'm actually 100% up for buying vanilla tubs for its riddles, and not for ice cream itself. Of course, craving for vanilla ice cream was the main motive in the first place, but eventually my child-like stubbornness took over and I entered one-person, me-against-me type competition to get as many happy messages as possible. Either Wall's knows my needs or I know theirs...

Anyway, once you open a box, you don't let ice cream sit around in the freezer for too long, and since life ain't no easy pie, you find yourself most lured into grabbing a spoon at night, when you know you passed the-last-meal o'clock a few hours ago. Left, right, left! No one's looking, no one's judging... The next thing you know, you are floating (you could swim - if you controlled it) in a vanilla river and you have to add 300 kcal extra (or 150 kcal if you try to fool yourself and tamper with the kitchen scales) to "MyNetDiary"...

"My spoon is tooooooo biiiiiiig". Oh, what a diet spoiler! I cannot be trusted with ice cream. Thus, I always think twice before I open the freezer. But - at times - giving it a second thought is a challenge big enough to break the tub open. Fucking illusion of freedom and choice.

But every (vanilla) cloud has a silver lining and I get to leave a love message carved in ice cream... ("I do it for... I do it for the love [x2]")

I am the queen of excuses!

P.S. On monday I will skip my breakfast and we are good to go... Catch up with you on Friday, love ♡

*funny that nowadays, the word hash makes me think about Instagram rather than cannabis... ;)

**From Dante's Divine Comedy. The 1814 translation into English by the Reverend H. F. Cary

*** Is it obvious that I have a slight tendency to look down on the majority of Britons? :O

Salad me this! Salad me that!

Isn't the life all about omissions? If you don't know how to spell courteous, you go for nice. If you don't know how to go aroung London with buses, you choose tube. If you don't know how to get a man into bed, you become a lesbian. And if you don't know how to roast a stuffed turkey (and how to stuff it, in the first place), you choose to make a salad. And if you are me, you choose to become a master of salads ;)

But this time my Master Degree wasn't so much planned as it was acquired. I was given a hint... Oh, excuse me... an 'int by a bunch of Italians (always 'ungry for 'h') who admitted that my pasta salad is somewhat awesome, both verbally: "Buono, molto buono. Brava!" As well as orally gulping it all in no time. So here we are, following my favourite plot where it gets saucy despite an innocent beginning. And it was innocent indeed as the first recipe, which started it all, was secretly revealed by an aunt of an ex someone (life is a bitch!). "Let's just say I know a guy…. who knows a guy… who knows another guy." (and if you dunno what I'm talking about, biatch - better call Saul!). So, I took those secret ingredients, mixed them into a salad, spread the joy around, and made myself a miraculously good cook of salads that 'apparently have never been invented before'. The auntie spelt the beans. I spelt the sweetcorn. Quite by an accident (and sneaky moves of mine)... But boy! What a satisfaction :)

Sneaky Fusilli!

So once you hear it's good, once you discover how many occasions there are to cook and celebrate dinners together (something Kevin and his mum have taught me, and my mum and dad never did*), and once you discover how cheap Winiary mayo is in the UK, you don't want to rest on your laurels. Anyway, durszlak.pl will not let you stop ;) Choose any ingredient you wish to experiment with, be that roasted beet, scallions, arugula (wtf is this?), past-expiry-date potatoes… You will sooner run out of ideas than the contributors run out of recipes. I personally went for pasta! Ovviamente! How else can I get to the Italian man's heart if not through stomach full of pasta? :P

Call me what you want but I am now a full-time student of types of pasta and of smiles they bring. Fusilli goes with cucumber and a party dress, it enhances your heart and improves blood circulation. Tortellini matches broccoli and Christmas presents, it has a bit of unwanted aftertaste due to leek (alternatively spring onion), which can - however - be washed away with the above mentioned flow of blood. Penne seems to like tune as well as New Year Resolutions, it isn't scared at all cause the future looks as bright as fireworks watched from the top floor. Noodles adore kidney beans and quiet nights in; yet being originally chinese (?) they cling to mayonnaise in order to be rescued and loved as all the rest. Successfully!

Night-time noodling :)

Stick a fork in me. I'm done!

♥

All in all, I tend to think I would be nothing without a touch of mayonnaise at the end**. Anyway, my fans need not to know that… Instead, I love to see myself as the one who gives mayonnaise the very reason to be opened, and egg yolks to be mixed with oil. Yeah! I'm a Saviour… a Savour? Well, why else would you come back? ;)

* from an unpublished series: "Cherish your life before you turn fifty" ;)

** once I even scared the life out of Kevin saying I'm not going to add Mayo to my salad… I think he had nightmares that night ;)*

Must-try. Must-see. Admiringly... Sicily!!

If I can make it rhyme - it's a perfect paradigm! (Am I on fire or what? :P)

The holidays in Sicily were indeed paradigmatic. I saw how Sicilian life works (or actually how it doesn't work), I learnt how delicious pasta can be, I realised that Italian 'mamma-mia!' gesturing is half a message, and I noticed that mirrors in a bedroom where you sleep are very useful (actually pistacchietto was the one who did notice). And I loved everything... But I might have as well been blinded by a shapely bottom of my professional guide, by his magnetic eyes, and by his lasagna... who knows? Once again, I am subjective, but who's to say that it is bad?

If anyone knows of any reason why me and my fascination of Italian culture/food/language/habits/kisses should not be joined in marriage, speak now or forever hold your peace!

(...hours of lengthy and heavy silence...)

So I though! :P

Italian feast!

Allora, as any traveller I was afraid of what is awaiting out there. Are all the stereotypes true? Is sicilianismo a real thing? In other words, will I be surrounded by men speaking with a heavy, gutteral accent, using arcane gestures, wearing lots of gold and attempting to impress others of their sexist importance? That would leave me with nothing but act like a giuseppina. (Over my dead body!!). Does Sicilian Mafia rule the roads? Do women have moustaches? Do they really eat spaghetti bolognese every fucking single day? :O

Thank Heaven! None of those took place (or maybe I was well-protected...?). Instead of worrying about pasta overdose, I concentrated on the places we visited, sun (and rain) we enjoyed and of course... must-try food which we willingly tasted but which, at times, I was forced to eat: "You will put on weight, anyway!" Vafanapoli!

Follow me in time on my weight gain journey along a serpentine route from one side of the table to the other which took me one week... And enjoy the ride! :)

For the start - pasta :D C'mon! Stop laughing... I was integrated into the community delicate step by delicate step with something I know more or less (cause basically, with pasta you NEVER know!!). Let me take a second to bow in words to Italians and once again express my admiration to their magic cooking moves. Uno, due, tre... Pasta... Fiesta... Siesta! ;) In a few simple (?) moves they can make a delicious meal. Innate talent or food enhancers? As far as I have been shown so far they are strong opponents of any crap food, preservatives etc. and I was told off on every single occasion to cut down on my beloved junk food. Piatti di stronzate! ;)

But even pasta can surprise you a lot! You think ''farfalle, spaghetti, tagliatelle, gnochi, bla bla bla... ble bli blu... pa pi ri pupi... the same old gangsta rap!'' Mind you, they have so many kinds of pasta that you can literally go crazy! Obligatory, with grated parmesan.

I personally fell in love with the strangled priests (literally translated from the name strozza preti) - an elongated form of hand-rolled pasta. I mistakenly took the dish for haricots :O (''so we are eating mere veggies for the dinner? :(''). And then I tasted the first forkful. Never have expected that a priest can give me such awesome oral sensations! ;) I was also taken aback by the fact it needs to be refrigerated... Cool priests? I could expect that :p

Never enough colours. La vita è bella ;)

Strozza pretti <3 td="">

Ok, time to exercise the brains! What lies next to pasta?

Lady Lasagna! Slim and elegant - just as elegant as the dish we had and as slim as I wished to be again after gobbling more then anyone could believe. Mummy! I was eating as much as you have always prayed for! :)

Made according to Italian mum's recipe (grazie!), cooked with passion, eaten with heart and vino di terra siciliana. Buono e bellissimo!! :) My role was a kitchen porter only, but I may assure you that it wasn't as easy and quick as regular pasta, yet extremely enjoyable! Honestly... I didn't shed a single tear while slicing the onions.

Lasagna in the making

Bravo cuoco!

Not far from pasta we will find pizza. Not much to shock with here. I didn't manage to get any secret recipes and know about it almost as little as I had known before. The only are-you-serious? novelty was the fact that a real pizza should have all the toppings cooked at their own time, added on top one by one... or something to that effect (I've just realised this will be read by an Italian :* so I cannot sell you any bullshit :P). The pizza we had at the restaurant must have been made by a genuine Italian, as it took 'spaghetti' ages to get it (at some time you could literally think the cook went to some remote forest to pick up the mushrooms for Funghi... alternatively, he waited for the hen to lay the eggs for our Capricciosa -much appreciated!).

Four Italian pizzas = seven wide smiles

Not far from pizza, we will find bread. No, we didn't bake bread... I was only shown a simple McGyver move how to make it garlic - something I'm going to smuggle with me to the UK. Again, no crap allowed on the table, no garlic sauces, no Sainsbury's garlic baguettes ready to be microwaved. Let's take from the nature. Garlic! Niente di più! Peel it. Cut off the tip. Grate against a slice of bread. Tutto è musica! ;)

Do I seem too excited? If it's time to cool down, it's just about time to bring on ice cream. Well, Italy is famous for (or should I say notorious? Those are calorific bombs they produce!) and proud of gelato. Must say, once you are aware you are eating home-made goodies (again, probably with as little preservatives and junk as possible) it doesn't feel this much of a sin. Unfortunately, they give you such a vast choice that only an idiot would go for strawberry or mango flavour. Kinder Country, Nutella, Ciocco... And don't be mistaken thinking three huge scoops will not fit into a small cone - ice cream ladies (bless them!) are perfectly skilled to squeeze any amount of gelato you wish for.

Gelati! Pure art, isn't it?

Crabs from gelato before climbing Aci Castello

With ice cream goes slightly less evil (or so I cheated myself after having it for breakfast), and still lovely granita - a semi-frozen dessert similar to sorbet. I supposed it is usually served with brioche - a kind of puffed pastry. I suppose... as I was in the toilet (never-ending pressure on the bladder) while my personal guide took care of the order. Wouldn't be surprised - though - if he actually ordered the pastry extra (to keep up with the Joneses, who apparently must be fat).

Breakfast is here!

This is how we entered a dangerous and pernicious area of sweets. Obviously, I had to try literally everything. Firstly, due to my curiosity; secondly, because I was forced to (I hate you :P) and fed like a fowl which is soon to drown in broth; and thirdly, just because (I was on holidays, for crying out loud). Whatever you feel like... Cream-filled pastry? Go for Cannoli Siciliani (deep fried pastry shell filled with sweet ricotta cheese, candied orange/lemon peel and chocolate chips, dusted with icing sugar :O Definitely, can cause more harm than the mafia). Something with alcohol? Babbá or Rum Baba! (smells a bit of Poland, doesn't it? I'm happy to see that Italian-Polish union hits it off on all levels). Want something that crumbles in mouth? Biscotti Siciliani: biscotti con noci, biscotti con pistacchio, biscotti con limone. Fancy a sweet that goes with Chianti? Paste di Mandorla. And since I felt like everything, I ate everything and since dolci are often accompanied by espresso, I drunk a lot of coffee, and since at some places they served espresso with sweets, I ate even more sweets than originally planned ;)

Tray from Heaven

Cannoli

Not that scary Babbá

Let's leave it as we have touched upon a better topic. Wines! :) I aimed at trying wines from the region (why should I go for Australian Chardonnay, which I have at fingertips back home) - I consider myself a real traveller who needs to dive into the culture. How possibly could I understand Italians without tasting Chianti, Nero D'Avola, or Grillo? (I'm the one who will always find an excuse for any sin she commits). Believe me, after a few glasses I could not only understand the culture, but I could understand the language of comunques, dungues, quindis and giustos ;) I picked up some wide gestures as well ;)

One of our friends. Came from Palermo! Yeap, as if you knew a shit about the distance they covered :P

Pellegrino (liqueur wine) visited by a tasty Italian cheese

Wine is my old friend, though, and we can bear with each other entire evenings (as officially stated a few days ago - a bottle of wine is not enough for us). I met a real killer at the altitude of 1986 metres above sea level. Fuoco dell'Etna by the Crater Silvestri. 50% from a plastic cup - almost like in good old days of high school, drinking on a bench in a park. This time, however, I didn't sleep on anyone's lap and didn't kiss strangers (stop talking, Nata!). As a liqueurs fan, I swear it must work gorgeously with an orange juice.

Red and Hot

Italians do lunch a lot! Pranzi were at times - secondo me - heavier than dinners. Imagine a rice ball with bolognese sauce and cheese coated in crumbs and deep, deep fried. Oily fingers speak for themselves. It looked very innocent, though. Sneaky Arancino ;) Of course, I liked it, but at the very moment I ate the last bit (this one was definitely not for the beauty!) I officially had to shout a dreadful 'hello' to my upcoming extra kilograms.

Arancino

Last but not least, fish and sea food. All in all, Sicily is an island with water sea water on every side. Well, we have fish everywhere, but not everywhere can you have salmon and herbs-stuffed Orata (English gilt-head bream :O Wtf?) roasted in the fireplace, prepared with a lot of laugh and warmth not only by the fire :) Oh, and believe it or not, but I was able to eat one whole king prawn - as I reckon - because it was peeled beforehand. If I can eat prawns, I can do anything! ;) We are good to go, then, the miracle-maker!

Kings on the table

Isn't Orata charming?

I will allow myself to devote the last line to individual muaking! for gorgeous holidays, guiding, cooking, showing, bearing, feeding etc. and official baccioni for hosting two of us in a lovely house with high ceilings and 8 to 10 (who knows?) scary cats. I'm officialy stating - Sicily can be loved!

Nuovo inizio e vecchia trattoria (what's not to love?)

It has already become a common phenomenon to me that a new stage in my life has to be marked by means of a change in oral fixations :D (much as I wish to boast about my sex life, I will only stick to the food that my mouth take in).

In a nutshell, my student life was full of VIFON instant soups;

the UK life has already marked its name on my raped intestine with pre-cooked, ple-sliced, pre-chewed, pre-swollen (how come I want to get British citizenship so badly? :O) lunches, breakfasts, brunches, dinners, and suppers;

my "sweet home Alabama" always used to spoil me (and my finer than 90-60-90 figure) with made from scratch 3-course dinners;

my first step into mature life was oily from all the fast food, pizza, crisps, party snacks etc. and hardly any regular meals at all (in order to save up space for the already mentioned);

my single stomach was fed with beers, wine and whatever-there-is-in-the-closest-off-licence

Mamma mia! What's next?

Pasta, garlic and oil? By miracle or not - you will lick the plate...

I like to make myself believe that what’s coming next is more precious than any of the previous habits. Well, it doesn't show me what I already know, or what I prefer never to get to know; it goes easy on my mind and strict on my heart :O

… What's not to love? :)

My new fixation is patient, it is kind... Hey! Corinthians, bring it on! - "It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud (…) it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs...".

I like to make myself believe I’m blessed ;)

Eat it. Drink it. Love it.

This is how I found myself studying the philosophy of Italian life and language, power of pasta, and importance of a kick-your-day-off espresso.

Allora... much as I wish to be objective (and leave subjectivity to non-professionals), for once my drunk heart decided for me to FUCK! (yes, my drunk heart swears at times) the rules and to go with the flow. And the flow SOUNDS like Alessandro Mannarino, SMELLS like morning coffee and the unknown perfume that has won me over without introducing itself, TASTES like Pinot Grigio (given 6 on my 5-note scale!) with a twist of cigarette smoke (which I blindly adore, anyway), FEELS like a fresh-shaven kiss emerging from beneath a blanket which gets too small towards the dawn, and LOOKS like what I imagine to be my crisp, un-oaked and elegant dream (pizzicami!). It's a one big versatile flow, affecting all my senses (Fuck the Renaissance! Da Vinci is long dead and we are not from this planet!).

So what not to love?

Having no idea how to brew espresso, how to transform mere (?) pasta into the best dish ever, or which syllable to put accent on in “vincere”, against all odds I made my life orbit around a variedly understood Italian culture. Poor me!

Morning! :)

Dungue...
I made pasta my bread, ‘va bene’ my common answer, kisses my language, and his arms my home (:O).

What’s not to love?

Well, life is a matter of choices, and I like to make myself believe that from all the pastas out there, I chose the best one :) Buon Appetito!


Bonus track:

(And then she looked down and saw a miniature heart

y dentro del corazón pequeño ella ha visto un gato 'pequeñito'

e il gatto piccolo è sembrato di avere un piccolo cuore

a miniaturowe kocie serce - o dziwo! - pompowało jej krew!)

I spojrzała w dół by zobaczyć swoje miniaturowe serce

I w środku miniaturowego serca ujrzała miniaturowego kota

A miniaturowy kot zdawał się mieć miniaturowe serce

a miniaturowe kocie serce - o dziwo! - pompowało jej krew!

I co zrobić z takim kotem?

Co zabiera przestrzeń w sercu i rządzi krwią jak swoją…

I z takim futrem siwo-czarnym?

Co kicha na wszystkich wokół i wszystko…

Rozłożył się niczym zadomowiony i chrapie

a przecież go nie wyrzuci bo świat by jej ucichł boleśnie

I z serca go nie zepchnie bo od dziecka boi się zimy i chłodu

A i tak ma nadzieje że by wrócił

Kot zaczepia obcych, nadużywa kawy i cukru

I miauczy w języku, którego one nie rozumie

A jego miniaturowe oczy i nos i usta są pięknięjsze od niej

I każą jej tęsknić i myśleć i serce zapuszczać

Pfffffff!

I zniewolone są już jej oczy patrzące w dół na miniaturowe serce

I zniewolone jest jej miniaturowe serce z miniaturowym kotem

I zniewolone jest miniaturowe serce, które zdaje się mieć miniaturowy kot

I zniewolona jest już jej krew – pompowana zniewolonym sercem kota