Over the recent half-term I was getting a bit lazy and indulgent, inasmuch as I’d be working hard on decorating, DIY or woodworking stuff, and I’d figure I’d earned the right for lunch out.
I had lunch in an American style diner one time, the local Wetherspoons – formerly the Hippodrome cinema – at least twice, and although I can’t recall anywhere else offhand, I suspect it wasn’t just thrice in all.
So it’s become almost a reflex to want to pop out and spend money, despite my not having any. I decided therefore that today, I’d cook my own lunch. When I do this, it’s often just a sandwich. Or, if it involves heat/work, then it’ll often be cheese on toast, or beans and a fried egg. That sort of stuff.
Today it was three slices of toast, two with cheese, one with a fried-egg, and beans liberally slathered atop the lot. A steaming cup of tea, and a recipe book, to contemplate dinner plans, and I’m happy.
The book I casually picked up was the Farmacy Kitchen cookbook. Although the author says she’s not trying to convert anyone, such earnest healthiness as she espouses does have the effect of making me, a former vegetarian myself, feel somewhat guilty or disapproved of.
I look at my cheddar cheese on white bread toast, my egg and beans, and the phrase ‘conscious living’ has me imagining the possible sufferings of the cows, from whom the milk for the cheese came, or the chickens that laid our eggs. And my ‘umble lunch doesn’t even have meat in it!
And then there’s the Berty quote, visible in my second snap, above. I didn’t know Herr One-Stone was a veggie!? [1] The funny thing is, however, that whilst I agree with author Camilla Fayed, that we ought to be conscious in both our living and our shopping/cooking/eating (plus it’s difficult to do these things whilst asleep!*), I’m not sure I agree with her or Albert more broadly.
Part of my reasoning is related, oddly enough, given that Ms. Fayed herself claims that ‘Nature knows best’, to what some snipers shoot down as the ‘natural fallacy’ [2]. But as I don’t want to get into essay length discquisitions of a philosophical nature – not on this occasion (I often do!) – I’ll just conclude this brief post by thanking Fayed for her ‘food for thought’.
I may even go a step further, and cook/prepare one of her recipes tonight. Tuesdays have become a ‘Seb cooks’ night of late. It all started with a paella I cooked, Omar Allibhoy style, a few Tuesdays back.
* Joke! I know she’s talking about a different kind of consciousness, man…
[1] I subsequently read that he converted to vegetarianism in his last year of life.
[2] There’s a whole mish-mash of stuff this can be related to, from the ‘naturalistic fallacy’ of philosophy, to the commonplace of certain threads in popular culture where, um… nature knows best!