And so it starts. Not a restaurant review.

Posted by on December 3, 2016 in food | 10 Comments

And so it starts: Sunday 30 October.

At Le Manoir, for C’s birthday. I ate only two of the four canapés. What have I become?


This is not a restaurant review. I mean, technically I was in a restaurant for some of it, but as you’ll see, I’m not writing about it. Or at least not like I used to.

As well as the canapés, I ate a salad with chunks of very fragrant apple, which cost a fortune and about a quarter of a slice of sourdough. The sourdough! Bread of heaven bread of joy. I even refused the bread I love, the one worth the journey, the potato one.

I had one glass of champagne.

I then had monkfish and mussels with saffron. I had one chocolate from the petits fours. One. I had a few spoonfuls of the pear sorbet that they brought in case I felt left out whilst C was eating a dessert. Why did I not just leave it? I don’t know. Fear of not pleasing perhaps.

Did I love my meal choices? No. What would I like to have had? The agnolotti with pumpkin,  at least two rolls of bread, another glass of wine (or two) and the roasted vegetables main. I’d have chosen some cheese for dessert, or the millionaire shortbread. Or both. I would have eaten more of the petits fours. Probably all of them. I would have been properly full.

Instead, I am at that point where I know I’ve eaten and I’m not actually hungry. My head is happy, but another part of me wants to sabotage it and eat some more. I am not hungry yet I am not full. I am not used to being not full after a meal and I wonder whether I can ever get used to it. We will see.

When I was last at a healthy weight (five years ago) I wasn’t overeating, but I was doing Weight Watchers and I truly believe that is a crap form of eating, living your life through points and denial. I ate badly and I was a miserable cow about everything except my weight. It worked, but only whilst I ate in a way that went against many of my eating principles.

Almost so desperate that I was prepared to do it again, I stumbled across an article about it which made me realise that it wasn’t the answer. So I’m doing something different.

This thing is denial too, but not in the same way.  It chimes with my desire to eat healthily and to feel properly fed. I’m going to write about it because it helps me and who knows, it might help someone else.

And for old times’sake, here are some pictures of that meal at Le Manoir.

And please don’t think I don’t know that this is incredibly self-absorbed and also particularly #firstworldproblems. Maybe it’s because everything else feel so out of control that I feel that at least I can control my own weight. Also: no-one is making you read it.

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Please don’t ask what it cost 

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Lovely, formerly a last choice item.