Culture Clash

Today I worked from home.  This meant that I had an opportunity to cook up something tasty and interesting at lunchtime.  Sadly not the case.  For some reason, whenever I buy bread it always gets thrown away having eaten only 2 slices.  I started getting the 'Little Big Loaves' and that just meant throwing slightly less away.  We just don't eat much bread in our house.  However, whenever I do want bread it's always mouldy!!!  A cruel trick by Kingsmill etc.  So I have to 'make do' (who'd have thought I'd crave a canteen polystyrene box?!) with whatever I can find in the fridge and cupboards.  So for breakfast I had:

Toasted Tiger Bread with Marmite (right) and Bon Maman Raspberry Jam

Yes this is bread but this is 6 day old, and therefore stale, bread.  Revived by a light toasting.  My rule is if it's not mouldy it's edible (although I have been known to pick off the mould in times of desperation).  Perhaps I should have had cereal...

I decided after this that the stale Tiger bread was probably not going to feature in my lunch menu so I needed to find an alternative.  I left it too late to put on a jacket potato (and I don't have a microwave) so decided to go back to my roots (well half of them) and have something Egyptian.  Normally I'm quite vocal in rejecting this part of my culture as I feel that I'm very English but I do like some of the food from my youth; the food that I hated when I was young because everyone else was eating sausage and mash and Turkey Twizzlers.  Now most of the stuff that I was embarrassed to eat in front of my friends (and often didn't like the taste of) I actually enjoy.  So for lunch I had:

Foul with pitta

If you look at the picture and the name of this dish you may find my lunch repulsive but actually it's really nice. It's basically just fava beans warmed through and squished to make a kind of dip.  You add cumin, lime and olive oil (and some add salad but my fridge was bare) to your taste and eat with flat bread, preferably sitting on the floor (I sat on the sofa as I'm no traditionalist).  We always knew the bread pictured as pitta but it isn't.  I'm not sure what it's really called but you can get it in mediterranean supermarkets.  Foul may look gross but I like it and not a spot of mould in sight! Foul was followed by:

The rest of last night's melon.  I'm in trouble for finishing this off.

I got the baking bug at about 5.30 so I made:

Leek and Cheddar Muffins

Couldn't resist having one of these fresh from the oven.   They tasted good and were made with random ingredients I could scrape together from my bare cupboards.  Might freeze the rest to have at work with soup.

Finally, to balance out my Egyptian lunch, for dinner I had:

Traditional English Fish and Chips

A naughty Friday night treat (as if I've been a food saint for the rest of the week!) with half a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc (not English but definitely not Egyptian).  I'm sure fish and chips used to be the cheapest of the takeaways but it seems quite expensive now and we have to go and pick it up!  No delivery! We then have to wait for 30 minutes while they cook it!  They really make you work for it nowadays so maybe I don't need to feel so guilty about eating it...

No Comic Relief crisps today (I think I've had enough saturated fat).  Maybe tomorrow.