Food, Glorious Food

Introducing the new Brussels Diet
I kid you not. Never mind Low GI, Atkins, Cabbage Soup and all the other ridiculous diet fads. The best way to get in shape is to move to Brussels.


Yes I was homesick and didn't eat for a while, but I got over that. Everyone is slim here, and I was trying to figure out why. One key difference is that they don't snack throughout the day like us Brits (no vending machine - what?). But it's actually very simple: it's just too difficult to do!


Don't do lunch - du lunch
We went out for lunch on Friday, and I ordered the chicken, bacon and cheddar club wrap with chips and salad - a tad expensive at 8€, but it sounded amazing. It wasn't. 

• Firstly, it was plastic bread rolled up. 
• Secondly, it was a ham like substance that may once have been waved at a chicken. 
• Thirdly, bacon in Europe is not what it is in England. It's that fatty dark ham. 
• Finally, it was NOT cheddar. Instead it was the plastic square cheese you buy to put on burgers when you're catering for a large number of people. 

To top it off, my accompanying salad was covered in mayonnaise, despite my 'sans oignons, sans mayonnaise' chat. It seems they can't believe you don't want it at all - surely you will want it on your salad?

Also their fries (the Belgians invented chips by the way), are fried twice, so for someone like me who isn't a huge fan of once fried chips, they're basically another no-no.


Luckily, I went to Guides and happily peeled away the innards, and ate my plastic bread dipped in ketchup, leaving the remnants of my 'club sandwich' on my plate.


Supermarket Sweep

I (finally) got paid yesterday, so as I was skipping from the bank to Carrefour I was quite excited about the dinner I was going to cook. Yes, cook. I wandered around the supermarket working out cheaper options (bag of frozen, raw, discount prawns was only €3 for 28-33 king prawns), and choosing my veg, happy as Larry (whoever he may be). As many of you will know, I have a tendency to eat too much ice-cream, so I thought I'd have a browse. White Chocolate Magnums. Yes. 

However, much as I like them, they are quite sickly, and I usually eat half before I start to regret it. Therefore I was rather annoyed to discover I had to buy 8. They were running a promotion so it was two boxes for the price of one, but the boxes were tied and sealed together. I may have wanted a combination of flavours AND I have limited space in my freezer. The fact that I was forced to buy 8 (in England this is a breach of advertising law) annoyed me. Now, because they were in my freezer, I will (eventually) eat 8 magnums. 

Anyway, I went to the checkout, pulled out my ORANGE bank card with a flourish, and put in my pin number. Of course, the machine decided I had insufficient funds in my bank account and wouldn't let me pay. Cue pigeon French explaining it was a new card and I would go and get some cash out.

So off to the cash point I go. Put in my card, and hey presto I have money. Then I realised the machine didn't dispense cash. So I used the other one... which was out of 20€ notes. And 50€ notes. And 100€ notes. So, I waited for the remaining cash machine which dispensed cash, and had 20€ notes.

Back to the supermarket I went. And queued, before smugly announcing 'Je peux les acheter maintenant' (which I worked out whilst queuing). She (of course) then needed to launch into a rant about how bizarre it was that I could take cash out, and weren't all banks full of criminals (I think her fondness for chatting was the reasoning behind the queue)?

All men are equal before fish

After a lot of nodding, smiling and 'oui'ing, I escaped and went back to cook. Of course, having bought the cheap crevettes, I had to peel them. Seriously. I discovered this after defrosting them, so I proceeded to peel wet, raw prawns whilst making pasta. They were pretty amazing prawns though - total bargain.

I then had a magnum... and after eating half I felt sick. C'est le vie!

Luckily, the boyfriend brought me a nice collection of Bri'ish food which will last me a while... once I work out a meal made from Heinz Baked Beans, Heinz Ketchup, Birds Custard Powder and Cadbury's Dairy Milk!

Bikini Ready

Anyway, the main point of this post is that I can now fit into my UK size 6 (US size 2) black skinny jeans. I have 2 weeks until I go on holiday, so let's hope the Brussels Bikini Diet can continue to work its magic on me!