A whole year has gone by and most of us may very well be a few pounds heavier. We have not had to rush to catch the train on our morning commute. We have not had to run around all day at work, we have not had our regular doses of retail therapy in our lunch hours.
During lockdown we have apparently drunk more alcohol and eaten more sugary and fatty foods.
In our boredom, it has become a habit for many of us to raid the snack cupboard for crisps, biscuits and chocolate; and those delicious Chinese and Indian takeaways haven’t helped. Things have taken their toll and a year on, a certain sluggishness may have set in.
A healthier dinner
With more time on our hands, many of us have discovered not only the joy of baking, but also of home-cooking. It’s going to be pretty tough to lose those lockdown pounds but there are ways and means of doing things. Fortunately, these unhealthy habits we may have developed during lockdown are only a year old and can hopefully be shaken off.
When my daughter arrived home from uni due to lockdown she noticed that both her parents had put on a few pounds and didn’t want to end up the same! Fortunately, she loves to cook all sorts of dishes from biryanis to risottos.
While at uni, she and her friends discovered a local Korean supermarket and regularly started shopping there, so while in lockdown, she shared her culinary discoveries with us. For breakfast she would dip her spoon into a bowl which looked like dark liquid cement! It turned out to be black sesame cereal mixed with water creating a very intense sesame taste. I must admit I had to give that a miss.
Sesame cereal for breakfast?
Evening dinners, on the other hand, were a culinary delight. We ended up switching from say, southern fried chicken and chips, to gyozas with vegetable fried rice; from roast beef and potatoes to yellowfin tuna chunks with spicy noodles on the side; from lamb chops and peas to sticky pork covered in sesame seeds served alongside some pak choi.
We enjoyed the most simple but amazing protein and fibre-rich dishes loaded with chopped cabbage, beansprouts and spring onions. We incorporated tofu and egg into spicy soups. As a result, we’ve learned so much about Asian food. There was only one thing for it: adapt or die!
Korean food has amazing protein and fibre-rich food
Fortunately, these days, my husband is a lot more daring when it comes to trying out different foods.
As a child one Sunday lunch time, on a visit to his aunt and uncle’s somewhere in Yorkshire, when his aunt placed some kedgeree in front of him, he hated the look and smell of it. He firmly but politely declined to try it announcing matter-of-factly, “I’m very sorry auntie but I do not eat foods I cannot recognise.”
Poor Auntie! She quickly rustled up a boiled egg on toast instead for her little nephew.
Unless we remain open to new dishes, to the vast culinary delights that so many other cultures have to offer, we are in danger of eating the same foods over and over again, creating a monotonous and narrow variety of foods and missing out on glorious flavours and nutritious possibilities.
For me it’s about making small adjustments, for instance, a Korean seaweed rice cake is pretty tasty and has far fewer calories than a packet of crisps. A candied plum is sweet and chewy but has less sugar than a couple of jelly babies.
I look forward to my trip to the Korean supermarket next time I visit my daughter at university.
Ready-made gyozas
I think I’ll do a little online research first. I can’t wait to pick up some Ramyun noodle soup, buckwheat rice and try some lotus root and burdock tea. Walking through the aisles will be a fresh experience, I’ll probably feel out of my comfort zone, and intrigued by the colourful packaging and logos.
In the meantime, I might go further afield and visit some St Albans supermarkets that I don’t usually shop at and walk through the aisles that I rarely venture down; then meander to the freezer section and have a good look at the veggie range.
As we gradually return to normality we’ll go back to our old habits and lifestyle or maybe cultivate new ones. ‘Lockdown’ for now is almost over. It was never meant to be a permanent state of affairs, so neither should the habits we picked up be. We need to move on now. We can forgive ourselves for any emotional eating to cope with being in lockdown. We tried our best.
It is okay if a Joe Wicks workout was followed by a cheeseburger. Or a long 45-minute walk was followed by a strong coffee and a sticky hot cross bun. It’s okay that our kids were allowed to snack on sweets and crisps more often and have more gaming or TV time as their study day was less structured.
As the restrictions ease, we’ll be able to leave all of these previous dilemmas behind. It’ll take time to adjust once again. As the weather warms, we’ll hopefully want to turn to salads, light wraps and sushi. We’ll hopefully come out of our loungewear and try on some old jeans and if they prove to be a little tight, we can use them as an incentive to get the waistline back in trim.
We’re not the same people we were a year ago. We have all had time to think things through about our lives. Maybe now we can attempt to put new structures in place beginning with our food shop, taking more time with it and being mindful of what we are putting into our baskets.
- Marisa Laycock moved to St Albans in 2000. She enjoys sharing her experiences of living in the city. These columns are also available as podcasts from 92.6FM Radio Verulam at www.radioverulam.com/smallcitylife
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