Out & About January 2018

As we head towards 2018, ROMILLA ARBER encourages you to embrace food and look at ways of enjoying what’s on your plate, starting with cooking from scratch Food glorious food

T he festivities are over and with a sigh of relief or of regret for time passing we put the decorations away for another year. New year resolutions, particularly about weight, diet and exercise will be made and probably broken by February, which begs the question, when life can be so pressurised, why we pile more pressure on ourselves over food? Food is something that adds to the pleasure of life and should not be something that adds to our stress and anxiety. That said, I am not suggesting that we should all continue to indulge in the way we have over Christmas.

your family, not in front of the television. Stop and enjoy whatever you eat instead of making it part of another activity. Plan some of your leisure acitivites around exercise. This can just be a walk. Walk more quickly to your next meeting. Take the stairs instead of the lift. All these things will make a difference, more of a difference than a diet as they are things you can keep up and incorporate into your life. At Honesty cookery school this year, we have a whole host of courses to get you excited about food and cooking from scratch. We have some new tutors to introduce to you as well. Sasikala Krishnan will be taking you through some amazing vegetarian dishes from southern India, and on January 19, she is teaming up with Abi King for some yoga and Indian cooking. There is so much more to Indian food than we often think, having gained a narrow experience of it in restaurants. So this is definitely one to sign up for. We are also teaming up with a new tutor this year and working with him on cooking with confidence classes, to encourage more people to learn to cook and become confident about planning meals and cooking simple but satisfying dishes.

So let’s cut back on alcohol consumption, but carry on making your food an important part of the day. We are well into the dreary, grey winter months where food can bring some solace. So why not make your new year resolution a promise to take more trouble over your diet rather than decide to follow the latest fad? Diet plans will dominate every paper, magazine and social media, so if you have put on weight over the year it is tempting to try one. But let’s be honest about diets, they do not work. They may have some effect in the short-term, but that’s it. That’s why we are bombarded with an array of new diets with grand claims. What happened to last year’s diets? Weight lost quickly will be weight gained again and the funny thing is that when they don’t work we don’t tell ourselves ‘oh the diet didn’t work’. Instead we beat ourselves up about having messed up and not stuck to the regime. Diets can’t work as our bodies are biologically constructed to not let them work. Put simply, a diet is just a way of starving yourself and the body reacts against this in many ways, particularly by storing fat and slowing our metabolism. So make your resolution a promise to take more trouble with your eating and your leisure time. Cook the food you eat this year from scratch. Of course eat out, but choose where you eat more carefully and what you eat when you are there. Sit down and eat at a table with

If you are interested in attending these courses, which we are hoping to run at subsidised rates, please get in contact. Happy new year to everyone.

What’s for dinner? Second helpings by Romilla Arber, £20, directly from the group, or plus p+p www.honestygroup.co.uk

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