Ten days since my last post, and not as many of them as low-carbohydrate as I would like. Today I had a lovely beetroot soup at my friend’s house, and recalled two batches I made earlier this year (when I was ‘just practising’ my low-carb cooking). Batch one: beetroot fresh from my local market, boiled, cooled, skinned and made into simple soup with onion, salt, pepper and sour cream. Batch two: the same as before, except made with pre-cooked beetroot – it was okay, but lacked the earthy deeper taste of the first lot. My friend’s soup had cabbage and a hint of clove – subtle and delicious. Beetroot is a great vegetable, beautiful, tasty and healthy. It ticks all the boxes, including pleasure, which is essential.

I stamped on a food pleasure this week. Struggling to leave the rice pudding for the children, I found myself taking my younger child to task about his love of fizzy drinks (soda). I had been thinking about it, and the opportunity arose, and we got out the scales and spooned sugar into the pan of the scales until we had weighed out the amount found in a 500ml bottle. I explained that our bodies have only recently been exposed to these kind of amounts of sugar, and that we are over-burdening them. A couple of days later, he has decided to leave his sweet snack on the table, and take only crisps and a piece of fruit for his school snack. I am proud of him for taking a decision on this.

Next, investigating the effects of phosphoric acid – and would crisps (potato chips) be best fried in something other than sunflower oil?