The FastDay Forum

[Tracieknits]

Many thanks to Moogie for this Foodies corner!

If I'm going to bed hungry on a fast night, my favorite trick is to put out some frozen croissants to proof overnight. I especially like the almond ones from Trader Joe's, because they aren't overly sweet - they just have a lovely bit of almond paste in the center.

They're safe in that I have learned the hard way that you absolutely cannot bake them from frozen, they need those 8 hours sitting out!

That is a genius way to get through a fast.

I have some Green & Black's dark chocolate (just a small piece - about 1/10th of a 100g bar) every day I'm not fasting. (Sometimes I have some even on fast days if I've saved up enough calories.) It caps off the night for me.

Bacon or anything with chocolate.

Occasionally the day after a fast I get up and fry up 1-2 rashers of bacon (golden and crispy) and make a sandwich with them out of one slice of bread (cut in half) and some home made BBQ sauce.

Chocolate - anything goes but what I am finding is that I don't crave it as much as I used to (pre 5:2). Sometimes I will have a bit b/c I still love it but I am no longer crawling over glass to feed the chocolate craving monster . I cleaned out my pantry not so long ago and found a pack of Tim Tams (chocolate cream filled biscuits) that had expired. That never would have happened prior to 5:2.

Cheese on toast with butter and marmite under the cheese, mmmmm! I'm more of a savoury than sweet fan. Regular diets tell you to stay off the cheese or switch to low fat, which tastes horrible IMHO. Long live 5:2

[carorees]

Cake for me! I really look forward to having my coffee and cake break at around 10.30 am on a feed day in the company of OH who also works from home most days. I feel I have a duty to bake cakes so as to use up all the lovely eggs our chooks lay for us! Well, that's my excuse !

Dark chocolate, hands down, although I stop at one cube/piece now. I enjoy going out to eat more now because nothing is off the list, I can eat what I want. If I don't finish, then I have seconds to take home! Yay!

[carorees]

I used to have rhubarb for breakfast when I did Atkins. I used about 1kg of rhubarb, gently poached with some splenda for sweetness, then added some ground almonds and double cream. It was yummy! I could never cope with eggs for breakfast as they made me feel queasy, so this was my alternative. When the rhubarb in the garden ran out so did my adherence to the diet!!!

[carorees]

Our rhubarb is enormous, but our freezer is tiny
If poaching the rhubarb produces too much liquid, you can strain it off and it is delicious added to apple juice or other fruit juice.

Now, as we're asking for useful recipes, what about gooseberries? I'm not really a big fan of them and we have 4 bushes that produce masses of fruit every year. OH makes a lot of jam with them but we still have a couple of kilos in the freezer left from last year yet to be converted to jam once we have freed up some more jars. I do use it to fill cakes, but that's about my limit for gooseberry-related cuisine!

Um, perhaps I'll post this on another thread as I'm getting off topic!

Ice cream...the world would be darkness and chaos without it...

Izzy, yes it's Worcester, Massachusetts. and yes there are, or were, many diner cars here and I've been to most of them. Some do live up to expectations but some are a little nasty. Not many left though that are actually operating unfortunately.

[Tracieknits]

We have a few diner cars around here, and when I was younger, in Hartford (CT) I went to one that had been converted to a goth/punk bar in the basement, with surprisingly fine dining upstairs!

The food is hit or miss - definitely read reviews before you go to one. Generally, they're American greasy spoons with rather low quality ingredients and portion sizes that could choke a horse! I'm a bit picky now and prefer organics, so I haven't been to one in a while.

Oh, how I miss grilled cheese (or bacon cheeseburger) and fries from a greasy spoon diner! Alternatively, if it was breakfast time, a big ol' stack of pancakes and bacon (crispy, of course) would also do me nicely...

[Tracieknits]

My son saw an atrocity on TV that he wants me to recreate at home. A cheeseburger that uses two grilled cheese sandwiches instead of a bun. So bread - cheese - bread - burger - condiments - bread - cheese - bread.

I may have a heart attack just thinking of making that! LOL

I'm a big fan of cake. I like denser cakes like carrot cake and hummingbird cake (it has banana and pineapple inside). Cakes in Japan are mostly chiffon (sp?), so at least I'm not constantly tempted. My favorite treat right now is chocolate covered rum balls the cafe at work make.

Finally, I'm really looking forward to some crispy bacon when I'm in the US later this month. Mom will most likely make homemade biscuits to put them on. Yum yum!

Hi there, good thread! I am definitely going through a home made banana ice cream phase at the moment (finally warm here in Yorkshire!)

I make sure I overbuy bananas and then freeze them in chunks once really ripe. To make ice cream you just whiz a few chunks in a food processor with whatever add-ins you like. The other week I made cherry chocolate with frozen cherries and finely chopped dark chocolate but I think my favourite so far is peanut butter and jam swirled in after the bananas have smoothed into ice cream. It takes a few 'stop & scrape down' with a spatula moments and I usually sweeten with maple syrup (sometimes the bananas give it an odd aftertaste) and sometimes add a dollop of yogurt to help the texture but really anything goes. You can scoff it down there & then or return some of it to the freezer for later (may be a bit icy when you get it out again). Cocoa powder is also good.

So it's healthy in that its mainly fruit/no added double cream or any artificaial stuff but potentially quite calorific. I find it reasonably filling though, for say a banana and a small handful of cherries-worth so its not too bad. I'm sure most of you are aware of this method of ice cream making but every time I do it I feel like such a culinary genius that I want to yell it from the rooftops!

And whenever I watch Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives I immediately want to take a foodie road trip across America! Especially to some of those BBQ joints. But would also like to hit some of the Vegan/Veggie places in Portland. And the food vans in Austin. It all looks so interesting.