The Day After

Hugh: The Fife Diet – Slow-motion Running

I am about to go to bed. When I wake up, I will once again morally, ethically, and by full force of social contract be able to drink tea and eat tomatoes, scallops, lamb, rice, and things with sugar in them.

Hurrah.

Alex: Fife diet, aftermath

So, I’m no longer on the diet. It feels strange to have culinary freedom again.

So my thoughts on the diet:

The Fife diet had several glaring holes in it, sugar of some form was necessary, and butter, milk and bread would have been incredibly useful. Maybe you can get these from Fife, but it sure ain’t easy. Also I think it would have been a lot nicer if we had allowed ourselves spices (as I believe the originator of the diet does).

The beer and wine situation was frankly a bit odd. Drinks made outside Fifeshire, like Fraoch (Alloa) and Cairn o’ Mohr (Perthshire) are on it, but other drinks made in similar places such as Carlsberg and Smirnoff (both Alloa) are not, despite both being equally organic^* (i.e. they’re not) and none of them actually being sourced from Fife. I appreciate that the first two go along with the spirit of supporting local producers, but then local people work in the Carlsberg factory, too.

What these restrictions meant was that anything I drank had to be very expensive, and had to have a Ye Olde Scottish feel, which got annoying after a while. Can’t I also drink some nice ale locally sourced from Yorkshire, or at least anywhere in Scotland if we’re going to bend the rules like that? It’d be cheaper, and less dull.

There were definite up-sides to the diet. Although restrictive, I didn’t find I missed my normal diet of takeaways and crap beer at all. The Fife diet was bland, and I started to really hate some aspects of it (the bloody potatoes), but the food wasn’t crap, as I find many of the cheaper takeaway options are. I started to feel healthier, drank less, and didn’t snack, except on oatcakes. I also found that the lack of strong flavour made me feel less like gorging myself on the stuff when I came home after a few beers. The diet really focussed on content over flavour, which is the opposite of what I normally eat.

So, that’s all. I don’t think I’ll be staying on the Fife diet, but maybe I’ll start shopping for more locally sourced stuff, (but not potatoes, for a while at least).

* Thanks Steve for that lead.

Paul: The Fife Diet: Day ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException

The Diet, she is over. After midnight last night I ate a pint of ice cream in under twenty minutes. This morning I had three mocha lattes, just because I could, and this afternoon I am relearning old lessons about overconsumption and the consequences thereof.

21st-century modern conveniences are available to me once again. After shooting at the Farmer’s Market today, we went into a coffee shop, sat down and reviewed the footage. I was like a country yokel on his first trip to the big city, gawping wide-eyed at the pretty lights.

Alex’ post here pretty much sums up my reaction to the Diet. But I’d like to add a few points:

1. It’s impractical if you live in a city, or have a job, or don’t own a car.
2. It’s expensive.
3. It lacks seasonings, spices, and flavourings.
4. It lacks fibre, necessary fats, calcium, and nutrients necessary for moral stability.
5. It probably doesn’t actually help save the planet at all.

On the other hand it’s taught me a lot about how to be inventive with limited (and often bland) ingredients, how to avoid wastage, and the origins of our dinner. And I’m eating vegetables now, which is probably a good thing.

More details will be available in the episode, coming soon to an Internet near you.

Some of the Hotel guests have given me two slices of artichoke, olive and jalapeno pizza. And I’ve been nabbing the bar snacks, which have paprika on them. Dis is livin’, I tell you. Aaapril in Pareee….

Hugh: The Fife Diet: A Day Late

It’s over. The swede, the slowness, most of the moodswings, the endless cooking. We’re done.

Alex and Paul have already posted their witty, elegant and startlingly insightful summaries of the week, so I recommend them if you’ve not read ‘em already. Sadly, my write-up was delayed by my ungodly powers of procrastination, as I realised last night I had two and a half hours to judge a film festival I’d been asked to do about a month previously. On the upside, I think the contestants may have dramatically preferred my judging mood yesterday to any time in the past week. “More fucking Machinima! And I’m eating oatcakes! Disqualified for having the temerity to be filmed whilst the director was still able to drink FUCKING HOT BEVERAGES!”

I’m incredibly poor now, which is a bit of a feat considering I was doing quite well on the cash front a week ago. Discounting other expenses, it seems I spent about £140 on a week of the Fife Diet, on food and drink alone, compared to approximately £80–90 under normal circumstances. That’s a pretty serious hit, particularly considering I drank water in the pub two nights. To be fair, I slightly overbought on the meat, but only slightly—I had venison bolognaise last night, and that finished off the last of my meat, whilst I still have some oatcakes, a few sprouts, a leek, a bit of Kale, and a small portion of the green, crunchy slopes of the European Cabbage Mountain remaining.

So, it’s bloody expensive. And no, I don’t believe it would be significantly cheaper in Fife—we bought our veg in Fife, Bouvrage prices are if anything higher in shops, and I don’t think that either Fletchers or Puddledub gets much cheaper on their home turf, although I will check.

Health I’ve already covered. It was interesting walking into the supermarket yesterday and having really severe cravings for possibly the first time ever—upon reaching the fruit and vegetables, my stomach just siezed control from my concious mind and lunged for the limes.

Well, y’know, I lunged for the limes. Had my stomach done so directly it would have probably attracted more attention in the produce section.

I had to fight to restrain myself to just three. Lime Presse has rarely been such a luxurious experience. I noticed my mood improving within an hour of starting to eat, and it’s been dramatically better since. Contrary to expectation, I didn’t have a huge sugar rush or crash, suggesting that all the muscle pains, tiredness and so on weren’t the result of coming off huge quantities of processed sugar. I suspect, frankly, that I was suffering mild malnutrition.

I’ve failed to mention the odyssey down Leith Walk of Thursday night, asGordon and I failed to find anywhere that served things made in Fife. Even counting Carlsberg, afte Steve’s stunning revelations, we had to walk more than half-way down the Walk to find a pub that offered the luxurious combination of beer I could drink and surroundings that were unlikely to end us up in A&E. Ah, Leith Walk pubs. If you can’t see in, that’s a hint. Overall, to call the Fife Diet “deeply impractical for anyone who’s out a lot” is a bit like calling Tom Cruise a “wanker”—entirely accurate.

Was the food nice? Yes, it certainly was, aided by our generally being hungry enough to knaw the tires off nearby cars if the rubber had been locally sourced. A couple of dishes didn’t go so well—my roast on the last night was a bit rushed, and as a result was kinda tough and metallic-tasting, although I suspect this may partially be down to it being about to go off, too.

On the other calcium-deprived, shaking hand, I’m definitely doing more stews, particularly considering the speed of cooking, I was tremendously impressed by my potato, leek and bacon soup, which was probably the finest meal of the week, and I’m really glad I finally got around to cooking pork belly.

And of course the challenge and interest factor of the entire diet were great. I do like me a challenge, and it’s an even better challenge when it can provide a conversation-starter with pretty girls on coffee stands (or anywhere else). If only I hadn’t been too nutritionally-deprived to be witty or charming.

Summary

We made it. Thank fuck. Tea?